Haverty, a 39-year-old financial analyst who lives in Philadelphia, traveled across four continents during a two-week vacation. He visited some of the world’s top destinations — Abu Dhabi; Sydney, Australia; and Singapore — and only flew in first or business class. He stayed in multi-room suites at top-tier hotels.
Optimizing credit-card rewards When Haverty set out to make this trip possible, he only had two credit cards. Over the course of a year, he would open seven more. He based his approach on the expertise he developed through his line of work. Read more: This woman paid off $10,000 in credit-card debt with a personal loan, but her first attempt landed her in the red again
Before closing a card, Haverty inquired about transferring the card’s credit limit to another card from the same bank. This way he avoided reducing the amount of credit available to him. Otherwise, closing these cards would worsen his credit utilization ratio — the measure of how much of their available credit a consumer has used — which is an integral part of a person’s credit score.
Throughout the 14-night trip, he only spent two nights at a hotel owned by a company other than Hyatt — in this case, a Hilton property in Frankfurt, Germany, during the final leg of his adventure.