Zach and Kaitlin bought a house and got a free holiday to Greece out of it.
Then they used credit card points to cover most of a £15,000 honeymoon in Hawaii.
Their total out-of-pocket spending on two major trips was roughly £5,200. The rest was points.
The couple, both in their early thirties and based in the Lake Country area of Wisconsin, earned their Greece trip through RBN Rewards, a platform that gives buyers and sellers reward points on real estate transactions.
After closing on their first home, they redeemed the points for an eight-day trip across Greece with flights, hotels, transfers and excursions covered.
The value came to more than $10,000.
“We wouldn’t have been able to afford a $10,000 trip without the rewards, definitely not,” Kaitlin, 30, who works in pharmaceutical sales, told CreatorZine.
“To get a trip that was this curated and special would never have happened at this point in our lives.”
The house came first, eventually
The path to the free holiday was not smooth. The couple met on Hinge while Kaitlin was living in Chicago and Zach, 32, an emergency medicine doctor, was completing his residency in Detroit.
They worked with two real estate agents before finding RBN Rewards and their participating agent Ashley Myhre at Keller Williams.
Their first purchase fell through after an inspection revealed multiple issues, leaving them temporarily homeless and renting an apartment.
A month later they found their current house and closed with around $15,000 in costs, covered partly by a sign-on bonus from Zach’s new attending physician role.
His access to a physician mortgage meant they put zero down and avoided private mortgage insurance.
“Buying the house has been great,” Kaitlin said.
“We were able to finally give our dogs a yard and had some real room to spread out and feel like grown ups.”
The points landed in their account within two weeks of closing.
Mykonos, Milos and Athens
Greece had been at the top of Kaitlin’s bucket list for years.
“Seeing pictures of the white buildings amongst the bright blue waters was always so enticing,” she said.
“Also my favourite cuisine is Mediterranean, so it was perfect.”
The highlights included a chauffeur-driven tour of Mykonos, a sailing trip around Milos and a six-hour guided tour of Athens.
RBN’s travel agents helped plan the itinerary.
“The hotel in Mykonos specifically was above and beyond our wildest dreams and we still talk about it as the best hotel and service we have ever experienced,” Kaitlin said.
“The views in Greece were absolutely breathtaking. Pictures do not do it justice.”
A £15,000 honeymoon for a fraction of the price
The rewards habit carried over.
The couple booked a honeymoon in Hawaii for August, securing more than $20,000 worth of hotel rooms for under $7,000 using credit card points.
The Greece trip was celebrating several milestones at once: their first home, Kaitlin’s 30th birthday, Zach’s first full year as an attending physician, and their recent engagement.
“It truly felt like a culmination of so many things,” Kaitlin said.
“All of our accomplishments allowed us to get to that moment.”
Why it matters
Rewards hacking content has a dedicated and growing audience on social media, and this couple’s story hits the key ingredients: specific numbers, aspirational destinations, and a system that other people could theoretically replicate.
For creators in the personal finance and travel space, real estate rewards programmes are a relatively untapped content angle compared to the saturated credit card points market.
The appeal is the same: showing people that strategic spending on things they were already going to buy can unlock experiences they assumed were out of reach.
The couple are still travelling. Hawaii is booked for August. The dogs, presumably, are enjoying the garden.
