Flying for free with credit cards - everything you need to know as someone that thought it was a scam

If you are budget traveling, whether it's because you don't make a ton of money yet, or you're planning to go for a really long time, by far the most expensive part is gonna be your flight. You can fly for almost free just by using credit cards. I heard this information, but I'm a very skeptical person and I was just thinking to myself, what's the catch? I don't want to rack up money on my credit card and go into debt just to get points. That doesn't make any sense to me. But after finally sitting down and doing thorough research myself, this is not how it works. Let's start with the catch, because there's always a catch. You need to be making a decent amount of money. By a decent amount, I mean that you need to be able to spend about 4 to 5k in about three months for this to be worth it. I know that sounds like a shit ton of money, but if you're gonna move or you're gonna have another big expense, maybe you want to buy a camera, you can time the opening of your credit card so you can hit this amount. Number two, there's gonna be an annual fee, or the cost of having this credit card. You're definitely gonna have to pay it once and most likely twice to not damage your relationship with the carrier. However, this fee will easily pay for itself if you're gonna travel anyway. Again, if you do not travel, this is not for you. If you're starting out, this fee is usually about 95 to 100 dollars a month, so it's gonna be about 200 bucks. But let's get to the fun part, the incentive. I am opening a Chase Sapphire Preferred, which has a 95 dollar annual fee, and I get 100,000 points from that. I can fly to Europe and back three times from Chicago, and I only have to pay 100 to 200 dollars on taxes. For me, to fly to Europe on my own in cash, it would be at least 600. So you get what I'm saying? The annual fee is easily going to pay for itself because I will go to Europe anyway. And then after that, with my everyday spending as someone who makes about 80,000 a year and is pretty frugal, I'll get about 10,000 points a year, which isn't a lot, but I could do one domestic flight. That's why after a couple years with this credit card, I will close it and open a new one and get the sign-on bonus again. And no, that does not damage your credit score. Again, I thought that was all a scam, and that's why I thought it was all a scam. Unrelated but super important. The first credit card that you open should always be free. And the reasoning for that is you never want to close your first credit card because that's your credit history and that has a huge impact on your credit score. Other super important point, if you decide to do this, if you get the points from sign-on bonus, never spend them in that credit card's portal. Don't buy things in the Chase portal, the Amex portal. You always want to transfer your points to what's called a transfer partner because you're gonna get a way better deal. That's going to be another video, but I really wish I just knew this information and didn't think it was a scam and let it fly over my head because I've flown so many places for free. And I haven't. So I'm also happy to answer any questions because it's so confusing. And if I did the research and I might as well prevent you guys from doing it.