Financing My Senior Trip: Budgeting, Credit Card Hacking, and More
My Senior Trip
This December, I graduate and, as a well-deserved break, my boyfriend and I decided to take some time off to travel. Currently, the trip is set up to last a little over a month. However, because we are financially well-prepared, we are considering extending it for another month or two. At this time, our agenda looks like a week in Tokyo, three weeks in Osaka, and a weekend in Okinawa and Gifu City. What is nice about this trip is that we paid off the entire thing about three months before we were set to leave! The funds to do this came primarily from two methods.
Saving
Since my freshman year, I’ve allocated a specific amount of each paycheck towards saving for tuition. Generally, here at Financial Wellness Center, we highly recommend that you allot a portion of your budget towards paying for school. However, my approach took it a step further. If either I won a scholarship, or had saved up enough to pay for the current school year, I continued saving to cover the next school year.
Thankfully, by the time I was a sophomore, I had won enough in scholarships to cover the rest of my education (details on how I did that here), and although I did slow down my savings, I continued to save for the unfortunate case that I lost my scholarship due to a drop in GPA, or if some circumstance made me fall below the required amount of credits.
I motivated myself to continue saving by telling myself that any leftover money would go toward paying for my senior trip. Using this technique, I managed to save seven thousand dollars!
Credit Card Hacking
The second way we paid for this trip required a bit more research. We used credit card points to pay for some of the airfare and for the hotel in Tokyo.
Around the start of our junior year, when my boyfriend and I had a stable credit score, we started to take advantage of it to do some serious credit card hacking. I got two credit cards and he got three more.
How We Got Started
Hotel Cards
The first card we applied for was the Hilton Honors American Express card, which offers about 100,000 points if you spend $2,000 within the first six months. Once my boyfriend had the card, he referred me to the card. This made it so that on top of the 100,000 points each we earned an additional 20,000 points. He took it a step further, and for his trip that he had with his friends he would put $2,000+ stays on his Hilton card to take advantage of the 7x back on hotels (and, of course, the free breakfast).
Then, we both got the Capital One Venture One which had a 20,000- point sign-up offer. Unfortunately, we weren’t eligible for a referral bonus on this one. However, for about a year before our trip we spent everything that wasn’t dining or gas on this card as it had a 1.25% flat rate on purchases.
Airline Cards
Next, my boyfriend applied for the Delta Gold Card where he earned 50k points in sign-up bonus and linked the card to his Lyft account where he earned SkyMiles for every Lyft he took.
Pooling our hotel points for the Hilton paid for a week’s worth of hotel in Tokyo, and pulling together our flight points paid for the flight back from Japan. Additionally, our Capital One cards have no international fees, so we already have a card we plan to use while in Japan.
All in all, preparing for a big trip like this takes months or even years of planning. I had to reach out to academic advisors and take summer classes to make sure I’d graduate in time. I also had to take care of health problems to make sure I’m medically cleared to be out of the country for so long. Additionally, it is important to mention that I did have the financial privileges of being in a couple, so I recommend that other young couples start to have serious conversations about their finances and goals to be able to do things like this. With proper planning and budgeting it is possible, and I encourage people to use fun vacations like this as a motivation to save up and stay on top of their goals.
Key Takeaways:
- Start Early & Stay Consistent: Set aside a portion of each paycheck from freshman year and keep saving even after
scholarships cover tuition—leftover funds became trip savings.
- Leverage Credit Card Rewards: Use travel cards with strong signup bonuses and referrals, concentrate spending strategically,
and pool points to cover major costs like flights and hotels.
- Plan Ahead Academically & Personally: Coordinate degree timelines, handle health clearances, and communicate financial
goals with your partner.
Make the Goal Your Motivation: Let a big future trip drive your budgeting and saving habits over time.