Most days, you’re more likely to discover Katie Genter, PhD ’17, in entrance of a laptop computer … simply not fairly in the way in which that she would have anticipated when she was learning laptop science on the Gates-Dell Complex. And particularly not the place she anticipated.
In the primary 9 months of 2023, Katie and her husband, JT Genter, have been to 68 cities and 22 nations. They began the yr with a flight from Birmingham, Alabama, by Dallas, Texas, to Sydney, Australia, with stops in Brisbane, Hamilton Island, and Melbourne. This summer time, the Genters attended a music competition on the Gorge in Central Washington in between a July spent largely in France and an August in South Korea, China, and Japan. They additionally snuck into Austin for a few days, visited their households in Florida and Georgia, and attended knowledgeable convention in Minneapolis … earlier than flying out of New York City for 2 weeks in Bali. By the time this difficulty of the Alcalde hits your mailbox, they’ll be on a visit to Qatar, Kuwait, Jordan, and the United Arab Emirates—the latter for simply someday to catch a flight to London. On any given night time, Katie and JT is likely to be RVing in a state park or eating on a flight the place the service is fancy sufficient to advantage really having fun with the meals.
But the Genters don’t spend a lot money on journey in any respect. They are what some name “points and miles” individuals—masters of frequent flier applications, resort loyalty applications, and bank cards—in addition to “digital nomads,” with no everlasting bodily home since they emptied out their condo the yr Katie graduated. They have managed to show their passions for each journey and financial savings into careers.
In most circumstances, “digital nomad” may imply somebody who spends a couple of months or a yr in a single unique place, working for an American firm. The Genters as an alternative dwell week-to-week, and typically even day-by-day. They additionally aren’t distant working per se, as a result of the journey is the job. They are concurrently journalists, individuals, and position fashions in easy methods to use factors and miles. Katie is at present a author and senior editor for the The Points Guy web site, to which she’s contributed since 2015, whereas JT, who additionally beforehand wrote for TPG, is at present editor-in-chief of the factors and miles monitoring service AwardWallet.
If you journey often for work or pleasure, you most likely have a most popular airline, maybe with an affiliated bank card. You most likely persist with that airline with a view to rack up the bonus miles and perks (early boarding, a free checked bag, seat upgrades) that include elite frequent-flyer standing. Maybe you’ve even signed up for one or two bank cards in recent years particularly to gather a welcome bonus or sure helpful assertion credit.
But these fundamentals have little in widespread with the Genters’ technique. To pull it off requires loads of analysis, work, and elaborate spreadsheets. Less obligatory are Katie’s PhD in laptop science or JT’s background in accounting, although each definitely assist. It additionally takes loads of bank cards—Katie and JT’s present complete between them is 56, together with eight new ones simply up to now yr.
The way of life is, evidently, not for everyone.
“Most people shouldn’t even have eight cards, much less get eight cards in a year,” Katie says.
It all began at RoboCup.
That’s a global robotic soccer match, not a Paul Verhoeven film. And whether or not you name it a sport or an educational analysis venture (it’s each), it’s one more space the place The University of Texas excels. It’s additionally what initially introduced Katie Genter to Austin … after which turned each the Genters into vacationers.
The daughter of an accountant (mother) and a programmer (dad), Katie grew up in Cumming, Georgia, about an hour north of Atlanta, and obtained her bachelor’s in laptop science at Georgia Tech. That’s the place she met JT—and in addition the place she first attended RoboCup. The match, wherein laptop science college students from all over the world program robots to compete in soccer, was held there in 2007. Genter volunteered on the occasion, the place she first encountered Peter Stone, UT laptop science professor and director of the Texas Robotics program. When she determined to take a look at graduate faculties, Stone’s affect and the scholars she met who had been already in his Learning Agents Research Group made UT the proper match. Her plan then was the identical as most PhD candidates: to ultimately train and conduct analysis as a professor herself. But first, there was RoboCup.
In 2011, RoboCup had been held in Istanbul; that turned Katie and JT’s first large worldwide journey collectively, with time inbuilt for tourism. The subsequent yr, Katie helped lead UT’s “Austin Villa” workforce to victory in Mexico City as a second-year grad scholar. Even although the 2012 match was comparatively near home, JT needed to miss it attributable to work. But he nonetheless obtained to be an enormous a part of the championship celebration, lobbying the Office of the President to mild the Tower orange to commemorate Austin Villa’s win.
He vowed by no means to overlook one other one once more, particularly with Katie becoming a member of the occasion’s organizing committee in 2013. RoboCup turned their annual trip: the Netherlands in 2013, Brazil in 2014. Katie’s journey bills, no less than for RoboCup itself, had been coated by the workforce, whereas JT discovered himself low cost flights.
Then got here 2015, when the match was in Hefei, China, and he couldn’t discover something for lower than $2,000 round-trip. By then JT had began following this web site known as The Points Guy and had even met the eponymous “Points Guy” himself, Brian Kelly, at South by Southwest that yr. Feeling impressed, JT determined to use for a Chase bank card that provided 70,000 “Chase Points” upon creation of the account.
“I had no idea what Chase Points could get you,” JT says. “But I found out you could transfer them to United. And what do United miles get you? Oh, you can fly one-way to China for 35,000 miles. I was hooked after that.” Soon Katie could be, too.
Over the following couple of years, JT began running a blog himself after which freelancing for TPG, together with writing about that first journey to China. Eventually he was contributing a lot that he took a sabbatical from his accounting job to write down and journey for some time. Instead, Kelly requested him not to return to accounting. And Katie ultimately joined The Points Guy as a freelancer. She wrote a good quantity of her PhD thesis—on the potential use of robotics to maintain birds from flying into aircraft propellers and wind farm blades—aboard an airplane.
After Katie graduated, the Genters determined to go all-in to pursue their love of journey and the points-and-miles way of life. They packed up their home in Austin’s Far West neighborhood at the same time as Katie defended her PhD (the straightforward half, in comparison with writing the thesis) and bought or gave away all the things they owned besides no matter may match of their respective automobiles, which they then stashed at their dad and mom’ homes. Ditching practically all of their possessions was emotional however finally liberating, Katie says.
But that they had no concept if any of it could be sustainable—mentally, bodily, or financially.
“I think we figured we would be on the road for about a year,” Katie says. “Maybe more.” That was greater than six years in the past.
Technically, the Genters’ home is in Neptune Beach, Florida, the place JT’s mother lives. That’s the place they ship their mail, go to the dentist, have a library card, and vote. They additionally hold an RV in Georgia, the place each Katie’s dad and mom and JT’s father dwell.
The RV was acquired early within the COVID-19 pandemic, which almost trapped them in Johannesburg, South Africa. As borders started to shut, JT was capable of get them each on the second-to-last Delta flight again to the United States.
“The airport was pretty much apocalyptic,” Katie says. “People were panicking, flights were being canceled and delayed. You’re hearing the prices some people paid, and we felt very thankful that we got back on points.”
In the primary yr of the pandemic, they lived with their respective dad and mom for some time—after which, naturally, discovered an RV relocation rental that will permit them to highway journey from Los Angeles to Dallas for $1 a day. They ultimately purchased a used RV of their very own and drove full-time for a few yr earlier than returning to worldwide journey within the (largely) vaccinated world.
Part of their job, together with JT’s social media presence, is to point out individuals how it may be accomplished. To paraphrase Renée Zellweger’s character in Jerry Maguire, firstclass was once about a greater meal, and now it’s about a greater life—however there are many methods to enhance the journey expertise with out making it to firstclass.
For instance, it’s unthinkable for the Genters to not verify a bag every; they’re on the highway an excessive amount of and for too lengthy to not. Contact lens answer alone must be restocked consistently if they may solely carry it in 3-ounce bottles. But they definitely don’t pay checked bag charges. And if a canceled flight strands them for eight hours at an airport, they’re most likely enjoyable in a lounge and/or have delay insurance coverage, plus elite traveler standing meaning they don’t have to face in a type of interminable customer support strains to get rebooked.
“We’re not the travelers that are sleeping on the chairs in the terminal,” JT says. “We were those travelers back when, but not anymore.” (Though they nonetheless fly coach lots, the Genters observe, particularly with Southwest’s companion go.)
The line between work and play could be nice—and the work remains to be work. The reserving (JT handles the flights; Katie, the lodging), the writing, the transit itself, and the truth that they transfer round a lot as an alternative of hanging someplace for a very long time.
“It can be exhausting,” Katie says. “You can feel like you’re always working, not experiencing the place.”
But since they’re each basically business reporters moderately than experiential journey writers, as soon as they flip within the story, they will have their enjoyable. If they’re on the pool, it’s as a result of they wish to go to the pool, not as a result of they need to get an image of the pool for a resort assessment. And whereas they enjoyment of getting fed the very best meals for the least quantity of money when they’re in resorts, airline golf equipment, or planes, they’re additionally not going to let that hold them from hitting all of the eating places they wish to in Japan.
Will it ever finish?
Teaching should be in Katie’s future, however not as long as she’s nomadic. And they even managed to convey a pet together with them for some time: Their cat Gracie, whom they’d gotten in 2006, put in loads of miles. (According to her European “pet passport,” she was of German origin.) Gracie as soon as “wrote” a reasonably withering assessment of the then-Kimpton New York City resort the Ink 48, and lived with Katie’s mother when she didn’t take part on the travels. She died in 2022—which ended up being one other time that factors and miles served for extra than simply enjoyable, when the Genters booked a last-minute, cross-country flight to Georgia to be together with her.
And youngsters? They aren’t positive in the event that they wish to have them, but when they do, they might certainly not surrender journey. They have met others who nonetheless journey full-time with kids, for whom your complete world turns into their faculty. There are additionally so-called “traveling circuses,” or teams of nomadic households who’ve academics of their group.
“People ask us about this all the time,” Katie says. “Like, ‘oh, when are you going to settle down? Where are you going to get a house? When are you going to stop doing this?’ And we’ve always just said, “whenever we don’t want to be doing this anymore.’”
CREDITS: Photographs by Jon Pack and courtesy of Katie Genter
