Originally Posted by
Adam Smith
Based on the rough numbers you threw out the other night, I thought you would be burning these miles more in the 18-24 month timeframe. To me, that's a long way away and a lot of risk to assume on a very substantial purchase like this. I also see correlation between lack of EYW and general lack of travel - if you're thinking that things will be so bad for a while that AC won't want to do an EYW, that will probably also mean your burn rate slows way down on the Aeroplan miles, further pushing out the amount of time it will take you to burn them.
I would see this as a somewhat risky investment then, and one with limited upside - points values tend to be like ratchets, only ever going one direction, so it's not like you're going to be able to redeem 80K points for a J round trip to Europe soon. If I'm going to gamble, I'd rather put it to work on a risky investment in the market that has a higher chance of paying off (maybe even AC stock!
) than airline miles.
Re running another EYW, you should just suggest that they run it all on DH3/DH1s so that your ecological consequences are positive instead of negative
An EYW payout, including the 1 million, plus all the points for the wings, plus the Aeroplan miles for actual flights, plus the SE bonus (~1.3M), lasts me less than 12 months. I've been pretty consistently burning through ~1.8M per year for the last few years. My current balance is in the 1.7 range, but I have, for example, a 2 pax SFO-TYO F round trip booked for later this year, so I'm counting that in my runway.
Flights may be reduced, but that doesn't mean I won't be picking up my typical travel schedule as soon as borders open. And I think the optics of doing EYW when there is still any kind of risk from COVID-19 is going to be problematic. I don't think they won't "want" to run it to encourage more travel, but if you thought "hey come burn fuel for fun" was bad, "hey come sit within 6 inches of a stranger" is going to be worse.
I can easily redeem my miles at 3-4 US cents per mile for trips I would actually otherwise pay for. So if we take the low end of that (3), and redemptions are devalued such that I need x times the current miles to redeem, then I need an investment that can do 3/x before I redeem this, which would likely be by the middle of 2022 at the latest.
I was going to say let's estimate x at an obnoxious value of 2, but I think that's too obnoxious, so let's go with 1.5. Does an investment exist that can do 200% in 2 years? Definitely. Can I find it more easily than I'm willing to bet on
my travel picking up by then and x<=1.5? I'm not so sure about that. And I think x will be a fair bit less than 1.5.
Another thing I'm consider and worried about is come June when travel still hasn't picked up. Will there be another TAH promotion? Will there be another mileage sale? Will I have exhausted my 500k/year purchase limit?
RIGHT NOW, I am thinking I might pay for 250k, get the 90%/115% bonus, and then leave the rest for future possible promotions.
But I am (obviously) putting a lot of thought into this.