Travel and touring costs can eat away at your bottom line as a touring musician. That’s why it’s super important to keep costs down while traveling. I outline different ways you can cut costs and save while touring in the article, How to Break Even or Turn a Profit On Your Music Tour. In that article, we discuss various facets of touring and being on the road such as eating, budgeting, routing techniques, lodging, merchandising, and crowdfunding. But there’s one big area we didn’t get to touch on and that’s using travel rewards. If you can set yourself up on a system of reward traveling, you could save lots of money on lodging – much more than you ever dreamed possible. Staying in nice hotels for free or really cheap is just the beginning of amazing travel rewards you can take advantage of. Unlike old model travel rewards programs, you don’t have to fly to earn these rewards. You can earn them by just spending what you would regularly spend on everyday expenses.
How can you travel for free? The short answer is credit cards. If you’d like to save money on lodging, flights, and other travel, credit cards is the way to go. I don’t mean piling up debt just to get the rewards points though. I mean using a strategy that allows you to spend what you would normally spend according to your everyday expenses on a travel rewards credit card and paying it off immediately with your actual money. With this strategy, you pay off your purchases before the interest kicks in. That way, you don’t incur any interest fees or late fees. You just get the points.
In order to play this game, you have to be organized, have good credit, and most of all, you must be comfortable with using credit cards for your normal expenses. I know credit cards can be a turnoff for people trying to get out and/or stay out of debt. But before dismissing this option, you should really consider if it’s worth it for you. I have been doing this for over two years so far and it’s been a game changer for me. We’ve picked up shows in other cities and made a much bigger profit due to rewards and we’ve even been able to take a destination vacation while only spending money on excursions and food. On our last trip we spent a week in Florida staying at fancy hotels and doing the most!
Dry Tortugas National Park 
Rob and I on a Sunset Champagne Cruise 
Segway Tour – Fort Lauderdale, FL
We’re already planning our next trip!
How does it work?
Since you are a business, you are in a great position to reap rewards that equate to thousands of dollars by utilizing business credit cards. Once you apply for a credit card and get approved, you’ll receive a huge sign on bonus after spending a certain amount of money. For example, you might have to spend $5,000 in the first three months of opening the account in order to qualify for the bonus points. These requirements are usually achievable if you put all your monthly expenses on the credit card. The points just appear in your account and you can use them towards any travel such as hotels, flights, rental cars, and other experiences. This is attractive for independent musicians because not only can you use bonus points on travel, certain purchases you make such as eating, social media advertising, business related expenses, and more can also earn you double or sometimes triple bonus points. So even if you don’t have points, you can quickly earn them and use them retroactively or save them for your next hotel stay.
Which cards work best?
I recommend starting off with the Chase Biz Ink card. I think it has the biggest bonus offering. As of the time of this writing, you can get 80,000 bonus points as a sign on incentive, plus because you get points based on your spending, you’ll get another 5,000 points for meeting the $5,000 bonus requirement. So that’s over $1,000 in free money just for spending money you would have already spent. The Chase travel rewards credit cards are the best option for traveling on rewards because you can book flights and hotel and pay with your points right from within your account. The points are also transferable. You can send them to any other rewards account you might have – with an airline or a hotel, for example.
If you don’t think you can spend $5,000 in the first three months, does $1,000 feel better? Because you could also try the Chase Southwest family of cards, and they only require you to spend $1,000 in your first three months. With a Chase Southwest card, you can get 40,000 points or 60,000 points if you open a business account.
Things to Consider
There are some very important things to consider when looking into travel rewards credit cards.
The first is your credit score. In order to get approved you have to have good credit, probably 700 or higher. If you’d like to check your score visit Credit Sesame. They’ll show you your credit synopsis for free. After looking through your credit story, you may find that you need to increase your credit score. Check out this helpful article by NerdWallet on how to increase your credit score fast.
Secondly, if you’re in any kind of significant debt, it’s best to eliminate that before tackling this. This kind of credit card spending takes a lot of organization and strategy. You’ll need to be focused and keep track of open dates, close dates, bonus awards, etc. Being in debt can be distracting and can also zap the fun out of the process and everything else for that matter.
The other thing to consider is that some cards might have an annual fee. You’ll need to be prepared to pay that off right away so you don’t incur interest fees. Some cards waive this fee for the first year, though.
When applying with Chase, be aware that they have a little rule in place to keep people from overusing the system. You can not open more than 5 cards in a span of 2 years. So if you’ve opened more than 5 new credit card accounts in the past two years, you won’t be approved.
To get the full scoop on travel rewards, I recommend taking this free course. It helped me get my head wrapped around the nuances to traveling on rewards and I think it’ll be a great resource for you.
Guidelines for Applying
If you’re applying for a business card which is what I recommend, there are a few guidelines I want to share with you for answering questions on the application that will put you in the best position to get approved. It gets a little murky if you don’t give them what they’re looking for, so I’m going to tell you what I did. As a musician, you’re a business and you don’t have to prove that to anyone except maybe the IRS if need be, but certainly not a credit card company. However, if your answers are inconsistent with a business, then you’ll be rejected. So here are my special guidelines for musicians filling out business credit card applications.
- Business Name. Your business name is your legal name. Not your stage name. Unless you have a Tax ID associated with your stage name.
- Tax ID Number. If you don’t have said TAX ID number, use your social security number.
- General Industry. In this section select Arts / Entertainment and Recreation
- Category. In this section select Independent Artists, Writers, Performers
- Specific Type. Select the same option you chose under ‘Category.’
- They will ask for your income. Don’t be afraid to tell the truth here. They’re not looking for anything in particular. Just that everything makes logical sense.
NOTE: These guidelines are applicable for the time of this writing (July 2019). If you are going through this process and find something different please let me know in the comments section, and I’ll update this blog accordingly.
The application is pretty quick and painless. Typically, you’ll get a message afterward saying that your application is under review or that they need more time. You should get a card in the mail within 7 business days. If after the 7 days is over and you don’t get the card, call the review line to see what’s up. If you find out that you haven’t been approved call the reconsideration department. Here’s an article explaining this process.
Independent musicians can benefit a lot from travel reward credit cards. You can get free hotels, significantly reduce the cost of touring, earn up enough points to take yearly vacations for your family, and keep better track of your expenses by putting them all on credit cards.Whether you use your rewards for tour traveling or for taking vacations, reward travel is a great option to choose as an independent musician. Have you used travel reward cards? What’s been your experience?
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