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Everyone always looks for “free things to do in NYC” or “New York City on a budget” when they are preparing for a trip to the Big Apple.
And New York City on a budget is quite an awesome trip. For my wife and I, who live in Michigan, this probably means that we would drive there, stay in a hotel in New Jersey, and then travel into the city on the subway. This trip would allow us to save some money and still see all of the sites and sounds that Manhattan has to offer. This would definitely be an awesome way to see NYC!
Anniversary trip
However, in 2016, my wife and I were celebrating our 15-year wedding anniversary. Since this is such a monumental anniversary, we decided to not worry about free things or budget-minded things in New York City.
Instead, we decided to do everything first class. We had a flight in first class, stayed in some top hotels, and really tried to make our anniversary trip special.
Our total bill for this trip should have been around $5,000. But we did the entire trip for $22.40 plus a few bucks for tips!
Forget about NYC on a budget.
We did NYC for free!
I know that you are probably thinking that this doesn’t seem true. How can a $5,000 trip cost less than $30? We stayed in the heart of Manhattan, visited some of the top museums and attractions, and did it all for a little bit more than the cost of a pizza!
As you may guess, this trip was made possible because of a little bit of travel hacking.
Our free(ish), first-class flight
Whenever my wife and I go on a plane trip, we usually walk right past the first class section and into the main cabin. Especially with 3 kids, flying coach is way more affordable. We always enjoy traveling, but we definitely do it with the budget in mind. However, since we were on our anniversary trip and we were travel hacking, we decided to fly first class to New York City.
It was pretty cool, especially since we hadn’t done it before!
It definitely was New York City on a budget because our first-class flight only costed $22.40!
Flying first class allowed us to get on the plane earlier, get comfortable in our larger seats, and receive more personalized service than we would normally get on a flight. We also received a free beverage, which we definitely enjoyed. Honestly, for a short flight such as this one, paying extra for first class wasn’t really worth it. But we definitely enjoyed our time!
How did we get a free flight?
Of course, you probably want to know how we were able to do this. What specific things allowed us to get flights, which would have cost over $600 each for $22.40?
Let’s take a look at the simple steps we took:
STEP #1: I signed up for the Citi AAdvantage Platinum Select World Elite Mastercard. As of this writing, this card offers a 50,000 point welcome offer after spending $2,500 within 3 months. Currently, it also waives the $99 annual fee for the first year.
STEP #2: I went to the American Airlines flight award chart. This chart shows that a trip from Detroit to New York City in first class would cost 15,000 points, plus $5.60 in fees. Not too bad of a deal! Keep in mind that you can get flights in economy class for as low as 7,500 points.
Step 3: I went to the American Airlines booking page. This allowed me to see the price, in dollars or points, for a flight to New York City. After I went to this page, I typed in my flight and made sure that I clicked the “redeem miles” checkbox. On the next page, there are 4 different options as you can see below. I clicked on the Business/First Mile SAAver option. Notice that some dates don’t have flight availability for 15,000 points. Since my dates were flexible, I choose dates that have 15,000 point availability.
Step 4: I booked the flight! It cost me 30,000 points and $11.20 each way for our two tickets for a total cost of 60,000 points and $22.40. Not a bad deal!
The other great thing about the Citi AAdvantage card is that it allows you and 4 companions to get your first checked bag for free. This allowed us to save an additional $25 per bag, each way, or $100 total on our trip!
Our completely free hotels
When most people think of free things to do in New York City, they usually don’t think of staying in a $900 per night hotel room.
And my wife and I are the same way. Usually we are comfortable staying in hotels that are significantly more modest than the first one that we used for our New York trip. However, we were on an anniversary trip and we were able to get our hotels for free.
So we decided to splurge!
We got free hotels by using a Hyatt credit card
Before our free trip to NYC, we had already signed up for the World of Hyatt credit card. At the time, the welcome bonus included 2 free nights at any Hyatt hotel after spending $1,000. This included the beautiful Park Hyatt hotel located near Central Park. Normally, nightly stays at this hotel are around $700 and the room that we stayed in had a cost of more than $900 per night.
However, we paid $0!
In case you’re trying to figure out how to stay in a Hyatt hotel for free, you can look into this credit card. As of this writing, the World of Hyatt card has a welcome bonus of 50,000 points after spending $6,000 within 6 months and paying the $95 annual fee.
Since many Hyatt hotels only cost 5,000 points per night, the welcome bonus alone can give us up to 10 nights for free! Even the Park Hyatt only costs 30,000 points per night!
The other cool thing about this card is that it gives you one free night at a category 1-4 Hyatt hotel each year that you have the card. So by paying the $95 annual fee, we are guaranteed a free night that would often cost $200 or more.
You can find out more about the World of Hyatt card by clicking here
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We could have used the Chase Sapphire Preferred Card
I didn’t think of it at the time, but the Chase Sapphire Preferred Card also has a welcome bonus of 60,000 Ultimate Reward points after only spending $4,000 within three months and paying the $95 annual fee. These points are worth $750 when they are redeemed through Chase Ultimate Rewards. They can also transfer to a variety of partners, including Hyatt. Plus, you can get double points on travel and restaurants through this credit card.
However, after spending 2 nights at the Park Hyatt, we didn’t want to pay $900 per night to continue to stay there. We were doing a first class trip, but we didn’t want to pay for it! Remember that we were still looking to do NYC on a budget.
Our second hotel
We spent our last two nights at a Courtyard by Marriott hotel located near Times Square. We still were able to get this hotel for free because of our Starwood Preferred Guest credit card. Currently, Starwood has merged with Marriott, so the points are a little bit different than the were back in 2016. However, the Marriott Rewards are still valuable since there are Marriott hotel properties located just about everywhere.
Check out the link to find out more about the Marriot Bonvoy Boundless credit card.
Other savings
On a trip, the biggest expenses are often the hotels and airfare. Being able to get these for free will often make the trip extremely affordable and allow us to travel to a lot of places that we wouldn’t have been able to go to otherwise. However, we still were able to save a lot of money on other parts of the trip.
Besides free airfare and hotels, there really are a ton of free and budget-minded things to do in NYC.
Museums
We went to the Guggenheim, the main branch of the public library, and the 9/11 Memorial and Museum. Like many museums in New York City, the Guggenheim has a time when it is free in New York City. Because of this, we were able to join hundreds of other people and see the cool building designed by Frank Lloyd Wright (as well as the weird, contemporary art of Solomon Guggenheim).
If you want to see what other museums provide free hours or times, just click here to get an extensive list.
Nature
If you want to stick to a budget in New York City or any other place, one of the easiest things to do is going out and exploring nature. Obviously, NYC doesn’t have as much natural beauty as many other places, but there are small amounts of nature in the city that are fairly cool.
The one that everyone knows about is Central Park. My wife and I loved to spend a lot of time in the morning running through the park. Although we love running by ourselves, it was really cool to run with hundreds of other runners who were trying to become physically fit while still enjoying nature in the city.
Another cool place that we walked was a converted elevated railroad called The High Line. This railroad provides a nearly 1.5 mile long walking path that is surrounded by trees, bushes, and buildings. However, after about a mile of walking on this path, we came across this sign.
Other ways to see NYC on a budget
One of the best things to do in New York City is to spend a lot of time walking around. We walked through Little Italy, Times Square, and Wall Street. We saw thousands of people playing Pokemon Go on one city block, saw street performers playing in the subway, and tried to blend in with thousands of New Yorkers on their way to work. Without spending any money, walking around is a great way to see and experience a city.
We also saved a lot of money on things that we wanted to do. For instance, we wanted to go on a boat ride around the harbor, but didn’t want to pay much for this boat trip. So instead of taking a ride on an expensive sunset cruise or sightseeing boat, we took the Staten Island Ferry. This is a free boat ride that goes from the tip of Manhattan to Staten Island. Along with commuters, many other tourists were on the boat with us and got to enjoy views of lower Manhattan and the Statue of Liberty for free.
Taking in a Yankees game was a must for us to do. To get tickets for a little bit cheaper, we went to the StubHub app and bought tickets for a little bit more than half the price of normal tickets.
We even appeared on the set of The Today Show and held up a sign to show our kids back home!
Paying for everything
Although we had the flight and the hotels paid for, we still got a cash back credit card to help pay for the miscellaneous expenses in New York City. The card that we used had a welcome bonus of $500 after spending $3,000 within 3 months of opening the card.
A great card to use today is Capital One Savor. It offers a cash back bonus of $300 after spending $3,000 within a 3 month period. It also offers 4% cash back on dining and entertainment.
So like I said, we spent $22.40 (plus a few dollars for tips) for a first class trip to New York City!
Forget about New York City on a budget. We got it for free!
Let us know how you have saved money on travel to NYC and tell us about some of your upcoming travel in the comments below.
And thanks for reading!
~Nathan
Let’s keep living a great life … with the help of money. So what’s next?
- You can travel for free by using rewards credit cards.
- You can get motivated and get out of debt.
- You can check out the next post or the previous post and continue to learn.
But no matter what you decide to do, let’s leave the ordinary behind and take action today!
Just so you know: Life Before Budget has partnered with CardRatings for our coverage of credit card products. Life Before Budget and CardRatings may receive a commission from card issuers. The content of this article as well as comments from users are not meant to be professional financial advice and have not been reviewed by the advertisers. Please read our disclosures page for more details.
2 Comments
Chris Roane
That Hyatt cards sounds awesome. We have the starwood AMEX card, and it seems okay…but the amount of points for a hotel in new york is crazy (I think it was 20-30k in points). I’ve currently got 166k+ in points on that account so far, and we will use some points later this year.
I’m leaning towards the Chase Sapphire Reserve card as our next card. Do you think this is the best card for general travel? My only hesitation is that there aren’t too many United flights from our smallish city, and delta has more options. But I really don’t want to go with the AMEX delta card….
Life Before Budget
With the new merger between Starwood and Marriott, your Starwood card will become branded as a Marriott card. Points will be easier to come by and still valuable, but worth less than the old Starwood points. For instance, it looks like many of the Marriott hotels in NYC are 35-50k points.
On the other hand, Hyatt points are quite valuable. For 20k points in NYC, you can stay at a $350 hotel. Or, for 30k points, you can stay at the Park Hyatt, which currently is $995 per night. Now I don´t think that any hotel is worth $995 per night, but that one was pretty nice!
I definitely like and recommend the Chase Sapphire Reserve card. The sign-up bonus just went up to 60,000 points, which is the highest amount ever. This can either be redeemed for $750 in travel, $600 in cash, or transferred to one of the Ultimate Reward Partners. Keep in mind, that Hyatt is one of the partners, so you could transfer your points to Hyatt. Another good transfer option (besides United) is Southwest points.
One other thing you might want to try is looking at is the Ink Business Preferred Card. As a business owner, you might appreciate earning 3 points for every dollar spend on travel. It also has a sign-up bonus of 80,000 points!
Sorry for the long reply, but I love talking about this stuff! I am also in the process of writing a longer article about credit card rewards that I will be publishing soon. Feel free to contact me further if you need any more recommendations.