The Miles Genie may receive compensation from Travel Freely when linking to Travel Freely resources. Thoughts and opinions are the author’s alone.
What is Travel Freely?
Travel Freely is a FREE tool that helps users navigate the process of earning credit card rewards for free travel. TF helps you stay organized, plus the CardGenie feature recommends the best travel cards based on your specific situation.
Zac, the founder of Travel Freely, and his team have done a great job of making it as user friendly as possible. He welcomes feedback and works to continue to improve user experience.
Whether you’re a beginner or a seasoned award traveler, Travel Freely can make your life a little easier.
How does Travel Freely help?
You can easily book thousands of dollars worth of travel from credit card welcome bonuses, but you have to play your cards right. With so many cards on the market, choosing the best cards can be overwhelming. Staying organized is also very important.
First, the Card Dashboard helps you keep relevant card details organized in one place. Then each time you’re ready for a new credit card, the CardGenie feature analyzes your existing portfolio of credit cards and is able to rank the best offers for subsequent applications. The personalized recommendations are based on your 5/24 status, business card eligibility, and other factors.
Getting started with Travel Freely
First of all, you do not have to give any credit card numbers or personal bank information at any time.
To get started, all you need is your email address and you will need to create a password.
You can change any of these details at any time in the settings.
- Choose your level of experience (beginner or advanced) with travel credit cards and rewards. You’ll receive access to appropriate guides and resources based on your answer.
- You’ll also need to choose whether you want to track just yourself or if you also have a partner to track (2 player mode).
- If you are a business owner, you can identify yourself as such since that will change which cards are best suited for you.
Travel Freely does a good job of walking you through the features during the sign up process, but I’ll discuss the Card Dashboard and CardGenie.
Card Dashboard
The Card Dashboard keeps track of important information and dates for each card you hold.
When you sign up for Travel Freely, and as you acquire more cards, you can enter each card you have with the following:
- Card name
- Date opened
- Welcome bonus amount
- Minimum spending requirement for bonus
- Next annual fee due date
- Active or closed status
- Notes (optional)
On the Card Dashboard, you can view these details for each card:
- Card name
- Perks (such as car rental insurance)
- Earn rate (2 points per dollar on dining, etc)
- Date opened
- Active or closed status
- Welcome bonus amount
- Minimum spending requirement for bonus
- Bonus deadline
- Annual Fee
- Next annual fee due date
- Notes
2 player mode
Another great feature is that you can use Travel Freely for 2 users. If you travel with a partner, I always suggest that each partner open his or her own cards when possible. This is helpful for several reasons, but the main reason is more points from welcome bonuses.
Once you enter a card into the dashboard, Travel Freely keeps track of important dates.
Once you sign up, you can change your email notifications setting at any time. You can choose how much or how little you want TF to help you track important dates and deadlines.
Minimum spending deadline for welcome bonuses: You’ll receive reminders when you’re getting close to the minimum spending deadline. Once you’ve met the spending requirement, you can update the welcome bonus status to reflect this.
Annual fee due dates: Travel Freely will send an email reminder when your annual fee due date is approaching. This is helpful because you can make a decision about whether or not to keep the card open.
5/24 status: Travel Freely makes it easy to keep track of your 5/24 status. If you do not know what 5/24 is, read this before applying for any credit card.
Do you qualify for business credit cards?
If you’re unsure, check out this article.
If so, great. Your earning potential just got a lot higher for 2 reasons. First, you can earn more points from welcome bonuses. Also, several business cards do not impact your 5/24 status, so you can open some business cards while you’re still under 5/24. These rules can get confusing when you’re trying to decide which card is best, but Travel Freely takes all of the guesswork out of it.
CardGenie Recommendations
After you’ve met the minimum spending requirement for one card, or when you’re ready to apply for another card, Travel Freely has a great tool to help recommend the best credit cards. This is called CardGenie.
What makes this unique is that rules such as 5/24 are considered. For example, if you’re already over 5/24, the CardGenie will not recommend a 5/24 card. Instead, it will show you the best offers for non 5/24 cards.
Also, welcome bonus eligibility is considered. For example, you cannot earn a Chase Sapphire Preferred bonus if you have received a Chase Sapphire Reserve bonus (or vice versa) in the past 48 months. So the CardGenie would not show anyone who has received a Chase Sapphire Reserve bonus in the past 48 months the Chase Sapphire Preferred card as an option.
A note about affiliate links
Travel Freely and The Miles Genie earn a commission on many credit card links on our sites. This is how we’re able to keep all of our information and tools free.
The Miles Genie has always pledged to make reasonable efforts to show only the best available public offers, regardless of if we have an affiliate link. Travel Freely does the same, so you can be certain that you’re receiving the best credit card recommendations.
I’m selective about partnerships. When Zac contacted me about a potential partnership, I wanted to do some research before moving forward. I’ve played around with the CardGenie tool quite a bit just to make sure I agree with all of the recommendations based on several different scenarios. Thus far, it’s spot on with what I would recommend.
Final Thoughts
Travel Freely is a great way to stay organized and keep track of everything involving credit card rewards. This replaces the need for a spreadsheet.
The CardGenie tool is also great for beginners who may not be fully aware of the rules and restrictions that some banks have.
Travel Freely is free, and there’s no sensitive information required, so there’s no reason not to sign up and try it out!
