Originally Posted by
redtop43
I have two point uses. I burn 300K Air Canada a year (mostly coming from Amex) to fly my wife back and forth between Toronto where she lives, and Raleigh, where I live. That's a challenge since AC has negligible miles promos on their own, but fortunately I can often buy Amex points from co-workers and deposit them to my account.
I also get 1-2 biz/first tix to Europe a year. My wife just got her green card this year and I went on an app-o-rama in both names. I started the year with about 300K DL and 50K US points, and since then I've gotten about 200K UA/UR, 200K AA, 50-100K DL, and 110K US. I'm not hoarding them, but rather, trying to keep a robust enough balance so that in any given year I would have at least 200K available if needed to book on *A, ST, or OW. Of course this will require constant replenishment.
One thing it has required is that I take a certain amount of money and use it to lubricate the process. Right now is an extreme case as I have several spend targets to his, but I expect to end the year having prepaid my rent for 5 months, my estimated taxes for 3 months, cable and phone bills for a year, and having about $5000 in prepaid gift cards in my drawer. Fortunately, with interest rates as low as they are, the cost of borrowing or failing to invest this money is nominal.
I like the word lubricate
lol
yes I use words like liberate (to take) or vehicle (a card or product or GC that can be used) and such. Or incubate or gestate (to leave funds somewhere long enough to not set off alerts)
That said, I find much of what we do here IS an investment. Not having been one to know so much about stocks and the market, I find this is a more viable use of my available or borrowed funds than that is. And I can get what I need, which is in many ways similar to your needs.
I get miles to fly the family to EU a few times a year, to see family, and to be able to almost literally book something at the drop of a hat and say, Yes honey, if we book this right now, we CAN go to that nice island and stay in one of these hotels and do it all for nothing out of pocket but taxes and food (which is sadly often a lot of money too, but a great way to make further spend WHILE on vaca lol)
So yah.
And if I were very wealthy, I would probably STILL do many of these games because it's a personality trait more than anything. You need time but you need to get things rolling and keep the balls up in the air juggling. That in itself is the fun of it. We obviously want and need the miles and have figured out that having them can save us money on travel anyway, but we also love the whole process. It's part of who many of us are no matter the income. That said, you can bet that those who you know in your lives who are NOT into these things just don't share the same traits.
Pretty much every guy in my 10-12 person monthly Wed night poker game we have at a friend's house is simply NOT into this stuff. Some come close, and many like stocks and gambling and such, and many have lots of money too, but they just don't seem to care much at all about this world. I have dropped a few small hints to test that and I pretty much go to the games now without even bringing it up anymore, except to joke about something to do with miles now and then and they like it cuz they know that's my thing.
Also, a note on credit... I found that carefully using and paying back large chunks of my equity line eventually raised it higher than I imagined. It only goes down now with the hits you get during apps. Ingy is generally right though when he said if you have over 720 you can do much of this stuff.
MM