Originally Posted by
Miles Meyers
So I am new to the mile game and have been reading through all the forums and different mileage blogs to learn the ropes, but I still had a few questions I was unsure of. Any advice you have would be greatly appreciated!
-MM
1. How long should I wait for points to show up when complete different activities? (credit card sign up bonus, online contests, partner activity, ect.) If the points don't ever show up, what should I do?
2. How do you figure out how many miles you earn when you actually fly? And when you redeem miles for flying, can you pay with both miles and cash?
4. When you redeem miles for RTW flights, can you split it up amongst different mileage programs? (ie. fly from San Francisco to London on Virgin, London to Thailand on Cathay, then Thailand to SFO on something else)
4. How long do my miles last? do they ever expire? If an account requires "activity", what does that constitute?
5. When churning cards, how many a year/month is good to limit yourself too?
1. It depends, sometimes things post almost immediately, other times they take months. Usually they'll have the terms and conditions that say how long you need to wait.
2. gcmap.com is great to find out the base miles for your flight and usually pretty accurate. Then depending on status, promos, which airline you're flying and attributing to, etc. you add or subtract from that.
4(or 3
) Some airlines allow one ways, some allow round trips, some allow stopovers, some allow open jaws and the key if figuring out the most efficient use of your miles to get you from A to B (or C and D and E...)
4. Again it depends on the program. Continental used to never expire, whereas other airlines have expirations...depends on the program.
5. I'd recommend reading/following frugaltravelguy's blog for information on this.
Where are you flying from and what does your typical travel look like?