Originally Posted by
Tilto007
All the proposed trip plans that I have seen here and also on Reddit make no financial sense,.They all involve around 3k of travel and mnimum $1500-2000 in expenses (hotel food etc) All of this to collect a prize of $4500-5000 depending on how you value the points, In addition there is a 2 week punishing travel schedule where many things could go wrong. I cannot understand why anyone would do this challenge. If I had two weeks of down time, it would not be spent running around trying to grind out a $500-750 "profit". I did understand the SAS
challenge. That was also a lot of work but the payoff was worth it. Again this makes no sense.
I don't think there's a minimum of $1500-$2000 in expenses for everyone. If you're based in NYC or BOS, you don't need to have lodging costs. You'll need to eat, but unless you fast on days when you aren't flying Jetblue, it seems odd to treat all of the food costs as part of the challenge as opposed to the difference between what you would pay for your normal food and what you'd pay for the times you're in an airport instead. (Personally, I tend to nibble on trail mix on flights and might actually spend less.)
$4500 would be a very conservative estimate for 350,000 B6 points and I would say a likely incorrect one if you factor in earn from ticket purchases/credit card bonuses. You're also treating the value of 25 years of Mosaic 1 status as $0, and while I wouldn't count on that lasting for 20 years or value that at much more than $100 per year, others may feel differently.
I wouldn't do this challenge (and I don't expect to), but I suspect the payoff is larger for some than this post suggests.