
How Travel Hacking Helped Me Heal – Nat’s Story
Welcome to Fly Smart Club Blog!
I’m Nat and I am a Brazilian living in the UK for the past 12 years! Travel was never a big deal for me before, if I had one week per year all inclusive holiday and a few road trips during the year I was happy! But this was before having children.
I had a really dark period a few years ago and had to stop everything like work, couldn’t drive for some time, my children were really small and I had to rely on my overworked husband a lot! I had to start therapy and really take care of myself. I just want to give you some idea as to where this all comes from. It was from a dark place, but it took me to a place of deep and true happiness.
During that time I had lots of time, so I started to dive deep into the points and miles world. This is a huge thing in Brazil, because you have more than 500 types of credit cards, you can also buy points really cheap resulting in travelling really cheap when you master the airmiles world.
So I bought a course from a Brazilian lady that lives in Germany and teached Brazilians living in Europe everything about points and miles from Europe AND Brazil. I consumed and applied everything that I could, after a few months of learning and turning my EVERYDAY spending into Avios I was travelling for nearly free! I was still recovering emotionally and mentally and it was on one of these nearly free trips to Germany, visiting one of the biggest labour concentration camps that I understood what a cultural travel is. As a Brazilian, the war didn’t have a huge impact on us, we were really blessed. But as a history lover I always wanted to go to one of these places and really see it with my eyes and know more about what really happened. Anyway, on that trip I realized that there’s a lot more to see than just going to a warm country for a week with all inclusive food and drink and just laying by the beach and pool. Don’t get me wrong, I still make sure I have one of these holidays once a year but travel has a whole different meaning now.
As a mom I realised that there are travels that are just not made for children. Some people think it’s ok to take children on every single trip, but I really like to soak in what the guide is saying and pay attention, something I couldn’t do with my neurodivergent child.
I am also a childhood advocate and think children need to have happy memories. I believe as parents, we need to protect their innocence and guide them and prepare them to adulthood without compromising their childhood.
I have learned so much about myself, about finance, about parenting, about really caring for my marriage and all of that started when I was broken and had nothing but time to invest in new knowledge. A knowledge that changed the way we spend our money and make our money work for us, that would give us the opportunity to travel better and for a lot less. Something that gave me the opportunity to learn a lot more about finance, that took me to the digital marketing path and brought me here. Teaching you and hoping to really make a change in your life through the amazing world of travel hacking. It’s really rewarding, literally,(rsrs).
English is not my first language so I apologise for the grammar errors.
I met Beta doing this course, we started talking and were always exchanging experiences with rewards flights redemptions. It’s a lot to learn and she even reminded when I was buying my flights to Brazil to get my inbound flights from the UK through Iberia instead of BA. I saved £4K on those flights!
Nat