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.

I sent you a private message (PM) with some resources. Hope that helps.

I would suggest finding a travel buddy who can not only split travel costs (taxis, airport transfers, i.e) but also help in the accumulation hotel and airline points/miles so that you can plan longer stays somewhere. My sister and her best friend travel together a lot while splitting costs and pooling their hotel points and airline miles together.

There are a lot of helpful people on here but the main thing to remember is that you have to help yourself first. Like stated above, the search function will help you....a lot!! There are a lot of people that come on here and just ask for help without trying first and they get blasted by the (us) members. If you're reading up on things and following the blogs, then people are usually friendly. Just don't take things too seriously if somebody does blast you. Make it through and you will have a great time and learn a lot from the people on here. If there is anything that I can do to help you then PM me and I will try my best. Good luck in your travel adventures.

search and search again...research.
go to the airline's website to find out about their programs and earning opportunities.
It's a lot of dry reading but it is worth the effort.

Sorry to derail your topic, I have to ask somewhere (Google didn't help):

I understand I don't get award miles by flying an award ticket. The question is if I get status miles by flying an award ticket?

How do I accrue status miles at all by accruing miles from on-the-ground promotions?

EQM's, MQM's or butt in seat= bis miles are aquired by flying on a paid ticket. Though Delta/Amex have a relationship with some of their cards were you can earn MQM's and waive MQD's. Delta and UA besides flying 25,000 miles you have to spend $2,500 on tickets excluding taxes and fees to make lowest tier. Also I beleive it's Delta and UA again who have hotel programs you can earn 150-250 EQM's per stay at certain brands of hotels. Good luck with figuring it all out even some of us who have been flying for years are having trouble this year with all the new requirements. Life is not getting easier lol. Hope this helped a little instead of confusing you.

I appreciate you wish to help and by the complexity of your answer I see you are knowledgeable on the topic but please consider:

- I am not a native English speaker.

- I don't want to hurt your feelings but I am probably not the 1st one to say your grammar is, well hard to understand. OK, I can correct some of your words (aquire > acquire) but I have still no clue what do you mean by 'bis' besides unknown acronyms to me and it was all in the first sentence.

Speaking of acronyms, is there an 'official guide' to that or how on Earth I suppose to find out for example https://www.google.com/search?q=eqm+...Aflyertalk.com

Yeah, everyone says I suppose to use the search but see the above helpful results I get. :D

I also did not yet buy into this one: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/exter...h-america.html

Any help?

He gave you the answer ;) "butt-in-seat", but this is an unusual expression for me also.

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/glossary.php

By the way, the answer is that you are not going to get status miles for award flights. Maybe there are some tricks out there for the well-connected (Raffles?? ;)) but it is true for most of us.

If you live in France I believe you can acquire up to 4 "Qualifying Flights" towards your Flying Blue status by taking out an American Express Flying Blue Platinum card. You will need 15 "Qualifying Flights" to get silver status and no award flights count.

Except for that I do not know of any other scheme for obtaining status on the ground in the EU.

Click glossary at the bottom of the page. BIS miles = Butt in seat miles. Miles actually flown on paid tickets.

Ooops. I totally missed that glossary so far. Google brought totally inferior glossaries to my attention.

And thanks for clearly explaining the situation with status miles. Just as I expected.

Word missing from the Glossary! VFT?

Do you have some context?

Maybe VFT is www.vielfliegertreff.de?

That is totally possible, since the source was oliver2002 from Germany (I don't know where).