What am I missing? How do folks get 500K miles every year?
 

I must be missing something.

I got the bug from here and others to get credit cards with bonus miles/points. I have read many threads that show folks churning to get 500K miles or even 1million over and over again.

How is this possible with Chase being the biggest/varied awards offerer and you can only apply for their cards once and get bonused once only.

Citi you have to re-apply after 18 months on personal card and 6 months on biz...

The timelines just don't make sense that some folks are able to do this on a yearly or so basis.

Appreciate a bit of insight here.

Different cards, different banks plus creative spending techniques :)

Credit card sign-up bonuses are just one part of earning miles. You should really take a look at frequentmiler's blog at boardingarea.com. I think he has one of the best blogs when it comes to figuring out how to get the most bonus points for everyday spend. You should also take a look at the Ultimate Rewards mall and see what stores are 5x - 10x. For example, in September, all sears purchases were 10x points. If you buy a $1000 sears gift card you would get 10,000 UR pts. You could then go back through the ultimate rewards mall and purchase something from sears using your gift card and you could earn 10x points again. If you don't need anything from sears then you can always buy items and sell them on amazon or ebay. I bought a bunch of tablets from sears, earned 20x points, and sold them on amazon. In the end, I lost about $200 and received about 40,000 UR points. Your going to have to be quite creative and spend some time, but it is possible to earn lots of points.

Just to join the chorus here, wildviper, it is possible, perhaps now more than ever. As merc1234 mentioned, you really should start following The Frequent Miler's blog. His speciality is researching how to "manufacture" spending, while getting most of your money back, or perhaps, incurring a small loss - that's more than made up for by the value of the miles you rack up.

Here's a very conservative example, using my favorite, Ultimate Rewards points:

Chase Ink Bold/Plus 50,000 UR points (business card)
Chase Sapphire Preferred 40,000 UR points
Min spend for both: about 20,000 UR points is a reasonable expectation
Buy/sell items thru UR portal: 6 times x 50,000 points each = 300,000 points
AmEx prepaid card 2000 per month for 6 months = 60,000 points

This is just a super-quick example of a single credit card churn of only two cards, meeting the minimum spending (and taking advantage of category bonuses), and creatively using a single American Express prepaid card for your run-of-the-mill monthly expenses (Google 'Vanilla Reload'), along with some buying and selling through the Ultimate Rewards portal to take advantage of merchant bonuses ($2500 at a time, six times, taking advantage of a 20x bonus via double-dipping). This comes up to 470,000 points/miles in about six months. And that's honestly the bottom end of what's possible.

Me:

Citi aa biz:50k
Bofa ha: 35k x2
Us airways: 40k
Ty checking: 20k
Swa x2: 100k
United: 50k
Continental:50k
Ur earnings: about 50k
Csp: 50k

Ink bold with 5% Office Depot is key. If I had to do over, I'd get ink bold instead of a swa card.

Ok NOW I get it!

Wow....I better set up a spreadsheet or something to keep track of all this! :)

THANK YOU!

Perhaps they do everything they can do that is listed on my website below. Takes only a few hours to read all of it. Then just sign up for the service that sends you an email whenever I put something on my What's New page (almost daily, except when I am traveling).

FYI, the link in your emails goes to another page on your website, and if you open it up in a mobile browser, it's tough to get to the "What's New" page.

But...

If you don't want to end up with your head spinning in all possible (and impossible) directions, start small. And by small I mean 4-6 card App-o-Ramas every 3-4 months. If you have never done that before, those technics will easily bring you up to a million miles for the first year; more actually, if you have a spouse/partner. Then you can move on to the Frequent Miler graduate course.:D

First of all, you have a couple things incorrect here. Chase is not once forever. There is a long waiitng time, and it may not be as well defined as Citi AA, but people do eventually get bonuses again. So from a "year after year" perspective, one of the keys is to "rotate" what you do in diffeerent years, so that after 2 or 3 years you can come back and repeat what you did 2 or 3 years ago.

Second, the Citi 12 to 26 month rule (18 months doesn't work for everyone) is just for AA cards. It does not apply to Hilton HHonors cards:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/miles...nors-visa.html

where Citi doesn't necessarily stop you from getting 100k, 200k, maybe even 300k or more on that card alone just by applying for (up to 2 at a time) as quickly (but no more ofteh than 2 Citi apps for any type of cards within 65 days) as you can meet the $1500 spend on each card.

It also does not apply to any of the TYP cards (of which there are several).

And btw, that points out something else: Different points are valued completely differentl. For example, 500k points in many hotel programs (Hilton HHonors, Marriott, Priority Club, Choice, Best Western, etc) is worth maybe roughly 100k legacy airline miles or 100k SPG points (in that converting miles to points in those hotel programs is done at a 4:1, 5:1, or 6:1 ratio; the worth if actually used for hotel stays may or may not be higher). So adding everything up that's in different "miles/points" currencies makes little sense, but lots of people do, and that inflates their totals.

And too many of the people accumulating lots of stuff are accumulating anything and everything, not caring how useful it is, just to "show off", and/or just because they'll figure out a use for it later. People who are concentrating on collecting just in a couple airlines and a couple hotel programs typically do not get the huge totals that people who don't mind keeping track of 25 programs (airline, hotel, train, creidt card etc) can get.

Another thing to watch out for in posts: Many people post totals not just for themselves, but including their spouse/partner. So they're getting double what anyone alone would have gotten with the same strategy. IMHO that's misleading to post as a single number (wihtout clearly stating every single time that it's for 2 people), but if you're just scanning posts quickly for totals you may not realize how often that is going on. (Just look at the post above mine for an example; the poster there calls it "getting more" if you have a spouse/partner! No, per person, you're not getting more, and IMHO it should be listed always per person to be comparable from one poster to the next!)

Haha..that is funny. The way I have handled this is by making my wife keep track off the cards and the payments/balances. :D

I think we actually have like 15 to 18 cards now I think. Unfortunately I didn't have much of a strategy before I started this process and now its a mess (and thus this post)! :P

See below for what I have now.

Thank you...I have actually come across your site before. Read the Glossary I believe! :) Thanx for your site...I am sure many appreciate it (including me). I will sign up.


Thank you for the clarification and detailed post. I think I am one of those that you mention who combine point totals....:P Not for bragging...but to bring a smile on my face. Kinda like George Clooney in that movie!

Btw, here are my cards....where can I go from here?

Oopss..I will add in a bit.

here is what I have currently.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/12826486/cc.JPG

I don't even know which one to cancel if any

Really key concept for me. If you accumulate just to accumulate and have no idea of how your accumulation can help you reach your travel goals, you can easily have 500K points that won't get 1 person much of anywhere. If you think that sounds silly, try booking a flight in business on USAirways to London in the middle of December for a week (as high as 350K Dividend Miles) and then set yourself up with a decent hotel with Hilton or IHG. That'll chew up more than 500K, right there.

Or, if you have a defined goal, a strategy using the techniques for earning and using miles/points discussed here tailored to meet those goals, and a willingness to be flexible, you can make 300K points get 2 people to some pretty nice places. Like AA in coach to Rome for their off-season price of 40K RT plus seven nights at the Comfort Hotel Bolivar (70K total for seven nights).

Unless you're retired, have lots of vacation time, or just like to take multiple weekend airline trips (not my style but understand that there are plenty who do this), the chances are pretty good that you can't use all of the points you accumulate in a year. And, of course, if your travel goals include business or first class flights only and a fancy hotel upon arrival, you'll use points at a higher rate. I understand that attitude, by the way, because I no longer can handle a cramped coach seat for more than about four hours--but when I was half my age now, didn't mind the coach seat if it got me someplace cool.

Points are a means; travel is the goal. Concentrate on the goal.

Very nice and even nicer! :cool:

I am really new to this, but I have always liked United. I also like hyatt properties (the higher end ones). FOr this reason I have concentrated my spending for me and my wife on our Chase Ultimate Rewards cards. The 1:1 is great.

Two things I changed:
1. I would always take the lame cash back and never pay attention to spending. Now, I have started making the vast majority of my purchases through the ultimate rewards mall. I look for where I can buy the same stuff I normally do on the UR mall.

(IE I use Kiehl's soaps and shampoo and whatnot. Kiehls.com is 1x to use the card normally, 4x bonus if you buy on Kiehls.com through UR mall, and 7x bonus if you use Saks.com to purchase the same product at the same price.)

It is a few hoops to jump through but it really isn't that much more work. I look into where the biggest bonus offers are and see what they sell... I have NEVER shopped at Kohls before, until now, because it is 10x bonus at UR mall. After finding out that they sell a lot of the home goods I use (keurig, etc) I get 11x on those now.

A simple investigation can yield those huge rewards. This month I've gotten >20k in UR points spending how I normally do, just using bonuses.

2. My wife had a useless no rewards card so we got her the CSP so we can put food and travel on it. For her, all spending on that card is still more than she ever got even at 1x rewards. Have her coming around to this too.

Lastly, even if the above sounds like something very interesting to you, try to make your big purchases give you a huge bang. A $1000 purchase at 10x +1x = 11,000 points.
At the saver level, a BIZ class to Europe RT is only 100000.