Great post and it is amazing how much we had in common with our scheming. I eventually got busy (and bored) and slowed down, but still netted 1mm or so points.
Be sure you convert/cash in the points sooner rather than later, as AMEX has been -very- active in pruning their ranks and canceling card accounts...cancel = list points...
1/How much money did you spend in total for your 2.8MM points?
2/How much of that do you think you would have spent anyway?
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1/ An average of about $10 per tx. I would have put more $$ on it but my Earth Amex had a 3 point per $ promo overlapping with this one and so larger tx went onto the Earth. ie $8000 gave 24K on Earth vs 12000+ 1000 on my Amex MR card.
2/ Most of it. However I have brought many purchases forward from 2009 into 2008. ie I will not have to buy socks for a while In addition while I did buy a lot more coffees, drinks and snacks than normal (ie extra spend), I did also as detailed in the OP made a lot of genuine savings which offset that. ie when you shop everday you can buy EVERYTHING at a great discount..for if it is not on sale now...wait a few days or a week and somewhere it will be....and I went to a lot of wheres Fortunately Christmas in Australia tends to be a major shopping time anyway for both presents and food. Add to that 3 birthdays and that was a great head-start.
Technically, yes I could have averaged a much lower $$/tx.....but I put most of my normal size transactions on it, with just the very largest ones going onto Earth.
Last edited by lovetravellingoz; Mar 5, 09 at 2:02 am.
Good heavens, that is awesome! You got 10 x what I got and I really had to struggle for it. I basically did a much lower budget version of your strategy: eggs from Coles, milk & bread from Woolies, laundry soap from Bargain City, shampoo from KMart, etc and shopped just about every day. I was at the point I never wanted to see another mall again! We ate a lot of $5 cheap Tuesday Dominos pizzas and I found a couple Subways that take Amex.
I had sent quite a lot to SPG before Sept 30 and the rate went back up but the Oct-Dec is getting us at least 2 x BNE-Europe and 2 x BNE-South Pacific through Krisflyer. I didn't buy anything that I wouldn't normally have bought except maybe a few extra coffees and made about 20 x $2 donations to various charities and some ITunes, I just did like you did and shopped exclusively at places that take Amex.
Wow, this is great story! I think this tops any FT mileage accumulation scheme that I've heard about.
I especially like how you say that you hate shopping, and that this quickly became a burdensome chore but you still persevered because of the lure of the points . 27 transactions / day on average for 3 months is amazing!
In addition while I did buy a lot more coffees, drinks and snacks than normal (ie extra spend), I did also as detailed in the OP made a lot of genuine savings which offset that. ie when you shop everday you can buy EVERYTHING at a great discount..for if it is not on sale now...wait a few days or a week and somewhere it will be....and I went to a lot of wheres
Fortunately Christmas in Australia tends to be a major shopping time anyway for both presents and food. Add to that 3 birthdays and that was a great head-start.
