Hi there

So basically I am 17 and want to start earning as many miles and hotel loyalty points as I can.

I have signed up to HHonors, Etihad, Marriott Rewards and Starwood Hotels programmes.

What ways can I earn as many points or miles at this age? I have claimed the 1000 points on HHonors for changing password, and am a silver member after buying an upgrade for $2.
What other programmes are good to sign up to and that I can at 17, as I know many are 18+, and what ways are best to earn points without booking actual stays e.g. Buying points etc.

Many thanks

You can earn points by joining some survey sites, e-rewards that pays you to submit surveys, you can also join mypoints, which pays you as you click through adds, there are other similar cites like the above. Thing is that most are slow in accumulating points. For example, your 1000 pts you got to change your HH password will not get you anything, most HH nights are at least 15k.

You have time in your hand, is not that you are going to make a booking immediately, just keep chipping away and little by little you will have enough pts accumulated. Welcome to FT, stick around and you will learn numerous ways.

First, don't buy points unless you need them to keep others from expiring or if you just need a few to top up the account for a redemption. They are a terrible buy. In most cases you can just book the hotel for money cheaper.

I would focus on one or two programs to get started with, because you must add points to each a program on a fairly regular basis or lose them. Hilton will wipe your account clean if you do not have activity in a year. So focussing on a few makes it less likely that you will forfeit points.

At 17 you most likely do not have the ability to get the big credit card bonuses just yet. I am also assuming that you are not going to be able to earn via hotel points since most require you to stay and pay for a room in your name. I know that I could not do that at 17.

Although SPG is my favorite program, it is ver difficult to get SPG points if you are not staying in a hotel or using their credit card. While you can get a few points from a non stay related meal in some restaurant, I find that these rarely post correctly on their own. So I would leave SPG for later and focus on Hilton and maybe Marriott. Marriott will forfeit your points after two years of inactivity. That is a recent change so ignore the older posts that say they do not enforce it. They now do.

Both of these programs have shopping malls where you can earn points on the things you are ordering online anyway. An occasional purchase in each shopping mall will keep your points alive. Also, if you have a credit card (an authorized user card on one of your parent's cards should work) you can register it for the HHonors dining program and get a few points when you use it at a participating restaurant. This only works well in cities where there are a variety of restaurants signed up for the program.

Pretty soon you will likely be headed to college and may have some hotel stays on your trips home etc. I know my kid had an overnight stay every time he did the 20+ hour drive between home and school.

And welcome to Flyertalk!

Don't worry about the age thing. I've had my son registered for various frequent flyer accounts since he was days old. Use a fake birth year if necessary. Nobody is going to call you on it.

If you live in the US or can use flights on JetBlue, sign up for their TrueBlue program and start earning badges. It is exceedingly easy to earn enough points for a free ticket with them.

Visit Bing Rewards and Bing.com daily and you'll earn about 100-200 miles/points a month. While this isn't much, it acts as activity in your accounts and keeps them current. This is handy if you are not flying for extended periods of time.

Other programs that allow you to earn free miles include e-miles, e-rewards, mycokerewards and the various dining for miles offers where you can register a debit card.

Do NOT use a false age if applying for credit. That can result in a federal criminal charge. Not fun.

That said, my kids got airline FF accounts when they were still babies. However, my advice to concentrate on a few programs still stands. Here on FT, you will get a lot of well meaning advice. People tend to recommend what has worked for them. (This is true in life, generally.) What is best for you may be different. A lot depends on your location and what is available to you.

Since you already had Hilton points, you might as well focus on keeping them. Start slowly, focus on a few programs and learn the ropes. Then you can expand to other programs. Otherwise you may waste some signup bonuses. It is easy to get overwhelmed with too many programs to watch expiration dates on.

I speak from personal experience: I am now down to 3 airline programs after the AA/US merger and dropping Frontier after their rules got ridiculous and they stopped flying the one route I reliably could count on using them for. Glad to have two fewer balls in the air.

As someone else mentioned, you have time on your side so spend the next few years doing what you can to earn some things but mostly, learning the ropes.

Get involved here on FT in learning about the various programs and opportunities. Even though you're not yet ready to take that big first mileage redemption trip, read about the folks who are doing it and learn. Also there has been, and will continue to be, a lot of churn in the loyalty program world - with the US domestic airlines especially...keeping up with the news on here will help you be better equipped to get the most you can from the programs.

Perhaps more important than starting to try and earn a bunch, is to think about your travel goals and needs over the next 5 years and beyond. That will help guide you in working out what programs may be best for you. For example if your first two dream trips are to Locations A and B, and you'd like some free hotel nights, you'd want to obviously make sure you're not investing time in a hotel program that doesn't have properties in A and B.

I'd suggest reading threads from people looking for advice on challenging redemption issues and on "what program(s) should I use?" types of questions. Whether or not that person's situation exactly matches yours, I find I often pick up some useful tidbits of information from seeing the suggestions that the members here provide.

In signing up and beginning to earn some miles/points, be mindful of expiration policies as you may not be a regular earning in some programs. While it's relatively easy to keep miles fresh on most programs, it is something to keep an eye on- and you'll find many tips in the program forums here for easy ways to extend your expiration dates.

Welcome to FlyerTalk, MatthewB1!

My advice to you is to start reading the forums of the frequent travel loyalty programs in which you are interested or are already a member; as well as to participate in those discussions on FlyerTalk.

While some FlyerTalk members have already imparted advice to you here in this discussion, some of it is based on opinion which may not necessarily coincide with yours — and it is difficult to answer your questions with all of the details and information you need in one place.

I have witnessed a number of fellow members “grow up” on FlyerTalk from their teens — some as young as 12 — many of whom are now ardent contributors to the community...

...so please do not hesitate to participate; ask whatever questions you like; and do your research here on FlyerTalk...

...and eventually you will find yourself giving valuable advice yourself.

MatthewB1 Welcome to FlyerTalk

Where to you live?
What airlines are you likely to fly on or hotels you may stay at?
FFP's are for the long term. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/infor...help-here.html

You don't want to have a chain hotel stay or flight (except on aa very small airline) that does not result in credit to some program. For this, it used to make sense to just sign up for every program just in case. However, with alliances and partnership, perhaps now the more important issue is which FF program to credit when there are multiple choices. For example, most DL flights (exceptions are very inexpensive fare classes) can be credited to any SkyTeam FF program or AS; there might be other bilateral partners that can be used. Some DL coded flights can be credited to VS or VA.

Currently DL miles don't expire (until you do), so this is a good place to credit miles that might otherwise expire before they can be used. Note that DL redemptions aren't necessarily the best and all FF programs devalue their miles/points periodically.

There's a wealth of information on here. I started when I was about 19, and FT has given me the knowledge to accomplish so much that I would've missed out on. I agree with some of the others; learn the ropes, but take a chance when you really like it.

Some deals will never be seen again. I was lucky enough to jump in on the 100K bonus point Amex Platinum sign up bonus. It was a risk, but it worked out. In the same toll though, it wasn't easy as a 21 year old who just bought a home trying to meet the $3k minimum spend. Certain aspects will be easier to achieve depending on your situation. You will have to learn what works best for yourself based upon the knowledge here.

If I can offer anything, take advantage of the offers that you will be able to meet. Don't be too zealous. I really hit the credit card sign up offer bonuses hard when I realized my credit score was good enough to get these bonuses. I ended up with a whole bunch of cards, which isn't a bad thing, but I found that I needed to deal with numerous annual fees that I couldn't find value in paying for after the initial sign up(Amex Platinum alone is $450/yr).

Having so many credit cards canceled after only being open one year would have wrecked my credit score, especially when it was so fragile given my age. I had to selective cancel cards with annual fees while keeping those I still received the most value from even if the annual fee was dent in my budget.

Just know your limits and be patient. There's a lot to learn, take advantage of that.

I'm 18 now and started when I was 17, so I'm in a similar situation! I use a lot of websites to earn smaller amounts of miles, like e-miles, e-rewards, the Hawaiian Airlines toolbar, Opinion Miles Club, and the Checkpoints app. I usually don't have an urgent need to join a particular hotel or airline program, so I sign up when there is a small point bonus for joining. I also try to use an airline shopping portal whenever I buy something online. It will be slow going until I can start getting more credit card bonuses, but it's a start!

What's your home country? There are a number of programs that are country or region-specific.