I read this article, on my phone unfortunately...it was just way too long for a phone article but I was interested so I kept going.

I loved the up in the air movie but yeah this is totally different.

There was a few things I didn't understand and maybe you guys can shed some light.

He's working strictly for this website he runs, which brings in ad revenue and referrals and then some award consulting he does for a fee. That's awesome, I'd be doing that too if I could make a living from it, forget all the flying/hotels.

But there's no WAY that all this comes from just credit card signups and bonuses. He said he started doing mileage runs at an early age. Maybe that was more profitable then, it seems like mileage runs for redeemable miles now isn't as good of an idea, it still works for status, but even then it doesn't make sense (99% of the time) to do MRs to achieve status, it makes sense to push yourself from 90,000k to 100,000k or whatever but not all MR just for status.

So they briefly mention manufactured spend, and I know there was a great thing going with Target Red or something. I did enough reading to know just a bit about it and that it was dead and that it didn't really apply to Canadians, so I was out. But from my recent readings there isn't much TRUE MS these days if any. I mean true as in you get your money back or the goods were something you'd pay for anyway that never expire and never go bad (but that can still only take you so far).

So where do all these miles come from? He even admits to paying for many of his hotel rooms, I'm assuming he strategically pays for the cheaper ones, but hotels are insanely expensive and I can't see him paying for that many of them considering he's doing hotels for an entire year.

My other thing was...ok great he loves to fly, not necessarily travel, but fly. It seems like he's built in stopovers strictly to try other products, or just to keep flying. Is that accurate? Like arriving in Tokyo at 3am only to leave again at noon? I realize travelling would add to his expenses but I just don't see the point in flying OZ F for the 5th time ICN-LAX after flying across the ocean the day before. He doesn't say he's mileage running much, it SEEMS most of these are being done on points, or am I nuts?

It sounds glamorous and I like that he points out the loneliness, which makes it feel more genuine. I know it's also kinda advantageous for him not to give away all the secrets, but I wanna know the background behind the stuff he's doing, not because I wanna do that myself, but because I think you could probably scale it down to do a couple times of year. I'm probably already doing that now following the teachings on this board, but he seems to travel FREE, whereas I can sign up for a credit card, but having to meet a $500/$1000/$3000 spend in 3 months isn't always a good idea/practical/easy.

The whole thing is only made harder too by being a Canadian...damn you maple leaf!!!! We have like 3-4 viable credit cards to what seems like your 10-15!