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2015 has been a great year for travel. I’ve already stepped foot on three continents, witnessed a permanent lava lake erupt right in front of me, visited Japan during cherry blossom season, and went completely around the world in business class.

It was my first time at the front of the plane and I picked a good time to do it. After all, my wife and I were flying from Calgary, Alberta to Kilimanjaro, Tanzania, which took us through England and Turkey. From Tanzania, we flew to Ethiopia for a month and then to Japan for three weeks before coming back to Calgary over the Pacific Ocean. It was a lot of long flights and many time zones to circle the world but having full lie-down beds on the flights made it much more bearable.

I certainly can’t afford business class tickets around the world. It’s a tough itinerary to price out but just flying to Tanzania and back in business class came to $15,000 each when I looked it up on multiple search engines. It’s safe to say that it would have cost us at least $35,000 USD to make this trip happen, had we paid for the tickets.

Instead, the trip cost just $750 CAD each. That’s because we used frequent flyer miles to “pay” for the rest. Since becoming a travel hacker a few years ago, I’ve managed to earn over 1 million miles through credit cards, everyday spending, and various promotions. However, even though earning miles is crucial, redeeming them for high value rewards is much more important in the world of travel hacking.

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20% for humanity. Room to Read. Kiva.Yeah, it’s a big number. A huge number! But it’s also an inspiring number and something I’ve always wanted to incorporate into a business.

So as of now, 20% of all income from Canadian Free Flyers will help support the amazing work of Room to Read and Kiva. 10% will be donated to Room to Read to assist in educating women and children all over the world and the other 10% will be lent to entrepreneurs in developing countries via Kiva.

Both of these companies have inspired me tremendously over the years and I’m truly astonished by the great work they are doing and the lives they are improving each and every day.

I’m overjoyed to now incorporate this into the Canadian Free Flyer club and am pleased to let Canadian Free Flyer members know that by learning how to earn points and travel around the world for next to nothing, they are also helping make the world a better place and supporting the great people that live in the places they visit.

Thank you to all the members of Canadian Free Flyers and cheers to traveling the world and helping those less fortunate.

As I work to finish up 2 ebooks that will be sold on Canadian Free Flyers, I wanted to come up with a way to give the information for free to all CFF members. I didn’t want to wait for all the boring editing and other tasks that go along with ebook creation.

I figured that what members want is the information. They probably don’t care to much about how fancy it is. They just want to know how to earn points effectively, how to redeem their points, the best resources on the internet for travel talk and advice, how to get 4-star hotels at 50% off, and other things like that.

So I went ahead and created Free Flyer School. This is a password-encrypted page that will direct members to all the information that will be in the ebooks plus more. In fact, it’s going to consistently grow each month as I add more and more things. That’s the beauty of doing it this way. I can update and add information anytime I want.

At first, I was going to limit it to all things “points” related but I’ve decided to expand it to be a complete travel education center. I’ll post things like how to get the best insurance, how to get cheap roadside assistance, where to look for unique travel spots, and so forth.

If members want a new section added, they just have send me an email and I’ll start looking into it.

I love finding value in things I buy. This addition to the website gives me a great way to provide more and more value to each member, while still keeping the same low price of $10/mth.

Happy Travels,