Yes, we got paid $39 to move to Bali, and let me tell you, I would have done it for much less! We love living in Bali! Plus, it is actually saving us a lot of money to live here instead of living in the U.S.
The magical answer to how this happened is CREDIT CARDS! More specifically: the American Express Delta Credit card.
You get money for spending money! Now before you freak out and tell me how terrible credit cards are, I want to explain. A credit card should not be used to buy things that you don’t have the money to buy. EVER.
That means you already have the money to pay for your credit card bill in your checking account at the moment you buy whatever you are buying. If you can do that, credit cards will be able to get you a lot of free travel!
That’s exactly what we did to get paid to move to Bali!
Here’s how it worked:
We signed up for the American Express Delta Card that came with 60,000 miles. That is a one-way ticket for two to Chile! Or Paris! But we wanted to move to Bali, and Bali required 80,000 for a one-way ticket for two.
So we used their referral program, which gives you 10,000 miles per person that you refer! We referred my mom and got another card for ourselves!
After that, we had 80,000 miles on Jake’s account and another 50,000 miles on my account.
Great, but how did we get paid to use those miles? As a part of the sign-up bonus, if you buy a Delta flight within the first 3 months of using the card you get $50 credit onto your account!
Since the flights to Bali were fully paid for with the 80,000 miles, we only had to pay for the taxes on the flight. (This is for Delta since when we used our Chase miles we did not have to pay any taxes or fees).
The taxes and fees amounted to a whopping $11 dollars. $11 dollars to fly to Bali! Except we didn’t pay that either! Delta gave us $50 credit for buying the flight within the three months and subtracting the $11, we were paid $39 to move to Bali!
And all for spending money that we were going to spend anyways!
For more information about the specifics on how we use credit cards, the rules we follow, and the guidelines for choosing each card, check out my ebook:
More Posts About Bali:
- Where to Find the Best Pizza in Bali
- Best Cheap Restaurants in Bali
- Pros & Cons of Living in Bali
- How to Move to Bali for 6 Months
Ready to start credit card hacking on your own? Pin this for later!
Dayna Brockbank is a travel and language-learning blogger who has lived around the world but has now settled in Nice, France. She speaks 3 languages at varying levels of fluency: Spanish, Italian, and French, and graduated with a Bachelor’s in Spanish Education. She and her husband focus on making travel part of life by living cheaply and traveling on a budget.