This is how I book free flights
Okay so real talk. I used to scroll past those “Free Flight” videos.
I used to see those girls posting about booking a first class flight to Bali for basically nothing and I would roll my eyes so hard. Not because I wasn’t impressed, but because that whole world felt completely inaccessible to me. You need good credit to get those cards. And at a certain point in my life, good credit was not something I had.
What nobody talks about in those videos is that building credit from scratch (or building it back) is a completely different journey than maintaining credit you’ve always had. Those girls have never had to dig out of anything. Some of us have.
I lost my job last May. And when that happens, you realize really fast how many things quietly depend on your income staying consistent. It’s not always one big dramatic moment either. Sometimes it’s a medical bill that caught you off guard. A payment you missed during a hard month. A divorce. A move across the country. Life stacks up, your score takes the hit, and suddenly you’re looking at a number that doesn’t feel like you at all.
And nobody hands you a roadmap for getting it back.
So here’s what actually worked for me.
1️⃣ The first thing I did was stop avoiding my bills and start getting ahead of them.
I went through everything that reports to the bureaus and set a reminder three days before each due date. Not on the due date. Three days before, so I actually had time to deal with it. Late payments are genuinely one of the worst things for your score and they are so preventable once you have a system.
2️⃣ The second thing was giving myself a monthly money date.
I know that sounds a little silly but hear me out. Once a month I sit down, open everything up, and actually look at it. My score, my bills, my accounts, all of it. No more avoiding the apps, no more pretending it’s not there. The more you look at your money, the less scary it gets. Truly.
3️⃣ The third thing moved my score the fastest and it’s what I want to tell you about properly, which is why I’m writing this out instead of just leaving it at the video.
It’s called Kikoff, and it is genuinely designed for the girl who is starting from zero or building back from a rough chapter. Not for people who already have perfect credit and are just optimizing. For people who need a real starting point that actually shows up on their report and moves the number. That’s what it did for me.
These three things done consistently, and one tool that met me where I actually was has changed everything for me. The free flight era is coming. I’m just building the foundation first.
