Advice for someone who doesn't live in North America
 

I headed over to Frugal Travel Guy's site. It is clearly for Americans only.

On frequentflyermaster.com I read:

What if I live outside of North America?

The information works best for U.S. and Canadian residents. It's difficult to regularly accumulate large numbers of miles (100,000+) if you live out of the U.S. or Canada. However, international residents can still earn miles from about half of the strategies and tactics described in the guide, and the amazing guarantee still applies.

Obviously I'd rather have it for free than to pay to a guy like Chris. :)

What's your best recommendation to me?

To the mod: thanks for creating my topic!

If you live in the UK it is also pretty easy, as per my blog!

A lot trickier in other countries, especially those with poor credit card availability. Your best bet is to follow the FT forum for the national airline of the country where you live, as the best deals will be posted there.

I appreciate the helping hand and that you blog about the topic.

The above ebook dos not sell info on how to sign up for credit cards in the specific British market (speaking of Britain, it is called the 51th State of America, and we are talking about offers for non Americans :P) or even non existent or inferior credit cards for inferior airlines in minor countries (seriously: for what use is that?).

I understand with enough searches I may find everything from the ebook on this forum as well but with this speed it will take quite some time. Not to mention time is money.

Yes, the obvious thing would be to learn everything here but if you translate my time to money and the insights I get here unfortunately I have serious doubts. :(

But anyways, as a first step if you could help me on this: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/22092838-post20.html
I'd really appreciate it!

What ebook?

Unfortunately the credit card churning game seems hard to play in "minor countries". So it might be a case of "take it or leave it".

Link in my first post: http://frequentflyermaster.com/
Thanks.

Unknown buzzword. Sorry :)

That website sounds like a scam.

Credit card churning: Some credit cards come with a bonus, e.g., spend £2000 in the first three months and you get 25,000 airline miles. The bank hopes you keep the credit card for a long time. But you move onto a new credit card right away for another bonus.

Churning is "To agitate milk or cream in a churn so as to make butter; to produce butter thus."; I suppose the imagery of going through lots of credit cards and thus producing lots of free airline miles is evocative of the process of turning boring milk into useful butter.

Advice for someone who doesn't live in North America
 

Join Lifemiles and you can buy miles at a decent rate. Lifemiles dot com. There is a forum under Airlines on this website. Lots of people have been able to fly premium paying coach prices.

Churning works in the US for credit agencies are not assigning a lot of value to the number of credit card applications generated. If they ever change the formula then it may cause serious problem for this activity. So please learn how credit card applications can affect your credit worthiness in your country.

If you Google Chris Guillebeau (the guy behind the site) he looks okayish, with 'normal' books written under his name, good reviews on Amazon, etc.

To quote the site:

FEATURING THE ONE FREE PLANE TICKET' GUARANTEE

What if I live outside of North America?
The information works best for U.S. and Canadian residents. It's difficult to regularly accumulate large numbers of miles (100,000+) if you live out of the U.S. or Canada. However, international residents can still earn miles from about half of the strategies and tactics described in the guide, and the amazing guarantee still applies

Thanks. I also learned about it in the meantime. As well as I should more concentrate on the parts of the mileage game that works for me.

Thanks. I learned about it: http://thepointsguy.com/2013/04/avia...ough-april-30/
So far I learned I may not really want to buy miles under most circumstances. I understand the only use for buying miles is if you want to buy yourself into Business/First. But the best things in life are free, so why would I want that.

https://www.lifemiles.com/eng/inc/starredawards.aspx
I also wonder how Avianca flights from Europe to Europe work. Can I use any Star airlines or just specific partners? A quick Google didn't help much.

@Raffles,

How much miles can you make in the UK on the ground by -I guess mostly - churning and perhaps a few other offers? Just to be able to compare UK possibilities to the US.

A separately interested question is if you collect miles on different accounts then probably how much % of the miles go to waste because you cannot really utilize them?

For example Cris Guillebeau claims 500,000 miles a year on the ground.

... His name is homophonous with "gullible".


:) I have always seen those hard sell "buy my $50 ebook today and make $5000 tomorrow" websites as a scam. Your call of course.

If you do buy the book, perhaps you could provide us with a fair and balanced review.

100k M&M on the ground is easy if you are based in Germany. Maybe we can help you more if you tell us what country you would be based in?

With minimal effort (ie a couple each churns a few credit cards) you could get 150,000 - 200,000 miles between you per year.

With a bit of effort - and this mainly involves using the Tesco supermarket chain and exploiting their promotions to earn Clubcard points to turn into Avios - the sky is the limit. Depends how much you want to turn into a professional ebayer!

As an example, though, Tesco offered the equivalent of 60,000 Avios last year for taking out a mobile phone contract. There are also 'manufactured spend' opportunities, see the UK thread in FT's 'Manufactured Spend' forum.

However, as mentioned above, the ability to buy Avianca points cheaply via their promos means that you can do a lot on Star Alliance via them at modest cost, albeit that Star does not have a UK hub airline now. VERY modest cost if you exploit the various foibles in the Avianca IT system!

More on the guy here: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/exter...ked-world.html

I will seriously buy into http://travelhacking.org/ for $1 - Later. When I have time for this.

If you are a couple and use double cards and also probably want to travel together, 150-200k for a couple translates to me as 75-100k per person.

To summarize:

Germany: 'Easy' 100k on M&M
UK: 75-100k (Avios?)

The question is, and to answer where I live (not in a high mileage country, then obviously I'd have a national resource as well), but in the EU and as a freelancer I have every right to 'set up shop' in the UK or Germany as well, though I have really no intention of physically live there. So the question is how these numbers change if, let's say have an address and credit in either the UK or Germany but do not physically there most of the time (think Tesco)?

And btw. which one is worth more? 100k M&M (Lufthansa has high surcharges, but you can always redeem on partner airlines) or 75-100k Avios? If it were 500k like in the US it would be a no-brainer to move (if it were another EU country) but for up to 'only' 100k is it worth it? :D

My other considerations btw., which did not get really addressed: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/europ...l#post22061540
Thanks.