How to travel (almost) for free if you are a college student
As we all know, the college years are the most expensive for a person: one has more and more "adult" expenses, [...]
Some of the offers included in this article may have expired, to find out what offers are active right now click here
As we well know. the college years are the most wasteful for a person: one has more and more expenses as an "adult," but without yet holding a job that allows total economic self-sufficiency, and this leads several families to make non-trivial economic sacrifices for their children's education.
In this article:
Going on a vacation, perhaps once the summer session is over, is all a student desires, but given the costs and especially the already large expenses faced by college students, these desires often do not materialize.
However, by following the advice in this article and taking full advantage of the benefits of reward travel and loyalty programs you will discover that it is possible to travel and enjoy your vacations for free through daily spending throughout the year.
The perfect checking account
Taking advantage of these early "adult" years to create a credit history for yourself is important so that you do not find yourself in trouble when you want to make the leap into the adult world instead. Of the many current accounts on the market, certainly Mediolanum's Selfy account is among the most attractive.
Did you get your flight cancelled, miss your connection, land late?
You could get up to 600€ compensation per person
Selfy allows you to manage your daily banking routine, how to get a loan in real time, arrange an instant transfer, carry out trading and fund purchase transactions, in total freedom and autonomy. All this is guaranteed by the solidity of Banca Mediolanum, one of the most reliable banking institutions in the market.
It is a comprehensive, digital current account dedicated to all customers who want to have the freedom to try Banca Mediolanum by independently choosing services and building the bank to their size and measure. Selfy is fully digitally subscribable and manageable through web and app. It is also completely free for everyone for the first year. For customers up to 30 years old, it continues to be at zero cost.
The real uniqueness is that Banca Mediolanum has its own loyalty program. which allows customers to accumulate points by using products offered by the bank, through daily spending and through the "introduce a friend" promotion.
The right paper
In addition to the checking account, we must carefully choose the credit card to be used, for it will be the instrument with which we make our payments as well as the source of all our rewards.
The most suitable cards for this type of situation are undoubtedly American Express cards due to the possibility of accumulating points in the pMembership Reward programs. Every time you spend with the card you will accumulate MR points (1 for every €1 spent), and it is from these points that our vacation benefits will arise.
Also Until October 14, 2021, you can take advantage of the SUPER bonus OF WELCOME.
If you become a starter Of the American Express green card, with free fee for the first year you will get 50 thousand MR points, enough to spend 3 free days in a Hilton hotel around the world.
If you choose the green card you will get as many as 100k MR points, absolutely unheard of so far (on average welcome bonuses are around 30k MR points). Points that you could turn into a round-trip ticket in business class with Emirates in New York.
Accumulate points
Before spending these points, however, they must be accumulated, and with the expenses of a college student's life, it is not at all difficult to do so.
It may sound strange, but contrary to popular belief, even hefty expenses, such as university tuition and housing rent in the case of off-campus students, can be paid with the card. In fact, by now all university platforms also accept card payments (including, of course, American Express). Already with these two charges one could earn about 20k MR points.
Unfortunately or unluckily (depending on your point of view) of expenses and purchases to be made there are many others: books and other study materials, meals out, groceries at the supermarket, entertainment, etc...
The amounts are extremely subjective and may vary according to our needs and lifestyle, however surely about 10k MR points can be earned in a year. A trick quite widely used to accumulate points if you are in a group and have to meet a common expense, is to offer to advance with our card the entire amount, then having each person reimburse us (with PayPal it's all quick and easy, without futile via-vaulters of change).
By doing so between welcome bonus, tuition and rent, daily expenses we skillfully reach 130k MR points. There are other "tricks" and accelerators to earn MR points, the most common being Amex's "Introduce a Friend" initiative that allows us to accumulate up to 175k MR points each year if we introduce our friends who become American Express cardholders. However, I do not recommend taking advantage of this initiative during these weeks, as with the current offer only 10k MR points are credited for each friend introduced (while you usually get several tens of thousands).
Of course, the benefits of the American Express Gold Card don't end there. Being a cardholder will have excellent insurance coverage in travel and product purchases. Free membership in the standard level of Priority Pass with two free accesses each year (worth a total of €145), free membership in loyalty programs and discounts with hotel and car rental chains, 2X1 for movie tickets, ability to book events in advance thanks to American Express presales, and more. You also get a bonus worth €50 each year for travel.
Spend the points
After working hard for almost a year trying to collect as many points as possible, and having accumulated our haul of approximately 130k MR, it is finally time to spend them.
![Everything you need to know about Membership Rewards points: how to use them, how to transfer them, how not to waste them [agg.2023].](https://staging.theflightclub.it/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/IMG_3720-900x675.jpeg)
Obviously, a person who knows little about American Express may not know how much these points are worth, so before spending them you need to understand their true value and what the maximum potential of these points is.
Each MR point has a nominal value of 0.004€, which means that for every 1000 points you can have a discount, voucher, or rewards catalog product from Amex worth 4€; so our 130k MR will be worth about 520€. For example, by spending 97,900 points we could get the Samsung Galaxy A52, or we could get 5 coupons from Italo with a total value of 650€..
The way to maximize the effectiveness of MR points, however, is to convert them with airlines. By converting our 130k MR with Emirates, we will get 104k Skywards Miles (the ratio is 5MR:4SM) which will be enough for one round trip for one person in Business class from Milan to New York (90k miles+€90 tax) worth about €2,500.
Or we could take always on the same route two round-trip tickets for two people in Economy class (90k miles+120€ tax) worth about 1,500€. Of course, the options on how one can spend MR points are endless, what I have listed are just examples to show that with such a sum of points one can also receive prizes worth a few thousand.
Why do it now?
There are several reasons why in my opinion these days are the best time to apply for this card and start accumulating MR points right away. First of all because of the pandemic situation: now thinking about intercontinental travel is no longer as utopian as it might have been just a few months ago; indeed in these months many travel companies (airlines, hotel chains, etc...) are offering really high bonuses to their customers (e.g. welcome bonuses from Amex). Also being October, there is still plenty of time to accumulate points to spend next summer on our vacations. Finally, the advice is to absolutely takeGold's 100k MR points welcome bonus of Amex, which is absolutely something unbelievable, never seen before and certainly not to be seen (barring extreme situations) in the future.
Some of the offers included in this article may have expired, to find out what offers are active right now click here
