Complete Beginner Please HELP!!!
 

I am completely new to the idea of accumulating frequent flyer miles to get free flights, but I just graduated from college and I have an EXTREME desire to travel! This whole concept seems awesome to me, but I have no clue where to start! Could someone please help get me started! Here are a few questions I have.

1. Is there any good resources that will walk me through the beginning steps of accumulating miles and explain exactly how frequent flyer programs work.

2. Is this possible to do a small budget. Like I said, I just graduated from college so I'm not exactly rolling in money.

3. Any tips you have for a complete beginner!

Thanks in advance for the help :)

Welcome to Flyertalk!
I've been doing this since I was a sophomore in college. As long as you have decent credit, you'll be fine. Start out reading many of the blogs (search around for them), and learn how cc apps change your credit score.
"Spoon-feeding" is shunned here, since these types of questions have been answered many times. The search function is your friend.

Complete Beginner Please HELP!!!
 

My suggestion would be to focus less on points and cards and more on how to be frugal. Personally, I'm not big on churning beyond opening a card when it is useful. The risks to your credit and work involved both get increasingly larger the more you depend on bonus points to totally find your efforts.
So, in addition to looking at credit cards, I encourage you to learn what you can about expertflyer and finding low fares and deals, and seeking out interesting yet relatively inexpensive destinations. I traveled on a shoestring for years and while my experiences weren't first class, I was able to do more than my peers because I traveled wisely. Good luck.

Don't be overwhelmed as there is tons of good information out there. To make some of the points stated above, I would say pick, read, and follow a couple threads of interest (depending on your "learning" goals), and within no time, you'll be surprised how much you actually pick up! FT is one of my favorites, b/c there are so many travel categories and subcategories I can tap into

2x on the frugality. For me, MORE travel at 3-star hotels leads to greater fulfillment than LESS travel at 5-star hotels. To each his own.

+1

If you are planning on financing a car or buying your own place in the next few years, best to not get into churning like others and just focus on building and maintaining your good credit. Still many other albeit slower ways to accrue points/miles.

Wow! Thanks so much for the help everyone. It's great to know that people in the flyer talk community are welcoming and helpful. I look forward getting involved!

(emphases mine)

Credit history will play an important role in the games we FTers play, if credit card signup bonuses are what you have in mind. This thread may also serve your purpose w/r/t building credit history & reasonable expectations financially:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/miles...o-i-start.html

Welcome to FT!

^ +1

Ability to play this game is directly related to your credit profile and how much spending you can make or manufacture. My wife and I have been able to qualify for an almost limitless line of rewards cards, and I can spend or seem to spend at least $50-$75K annually. If you can't get the cards without dinging your credit score unreasonably, alas, you have to wait until your credit file is thicker and more robust.

Much also depends on just how you want to travel. If you want a weekend in California with 3 nights at the Raddison, that's different than a business class ticket to Europe and 5 nights at the Park Hyatt.

+1. Start with a goal, work toward it. Everyone has different ideas of fun.

Be frugal, you can collect miles and points for your flights but i would focus on finding cheap airfare and get out there, I will be goign to europe next week for my 8th time, however this will be the first trip i will stay at a name brand hotel or a hotel that costs more than 100 per night for that matter. rememeber travel is about the places you see i would not wast my youth saving up for first class tickets to get out and see the world,
finally i would recommend against ever planning a "trip of a lifetime" instead focus on a "lifetime of trips" you may find great opertunities just by talking ot friends, i had this girl i was dating(now mrs particlemn) who had to go LAX- amerstdam for 2 days of meeting for work, I found a RT ticket for under 500(it was february) we went for just three nights and then back to the US. it was one of the most fun trips and was only 3 night and over 10,000 miles in the air.

Plenty of good tips already by other members.

Pretty much read as much as you can and then basically devise you plan to work towards your goal.

I would suggest having some spending goals for you travel in mind - say $4-5k an year. Then figure out how much you can spend monthly on cards (say $2k), then figure out what cards you can get (lotsa options), and finally see if it all comes together into a grand trip with a particular set of card choices + your travel fund.

There is much information on other threads, but the first thing you need to do is to decide how you wish to use your miles (where you wish to fly etc.) and which airline is the best for use to use when you fly paid flights (where do you fly from and to? who offers the best prices and routes?). Then you can decide which airline to make your primary carrier and try to concentrate your accumulation of miles on that airline.