A note of caution on the travel budget:

What NC_Girl talks about her travel budget, she may mean that is the TOTAL amount allocated to trips - the air fares, the hotels, the sightseeing, the incidentals when away from home.

When others talk about the travel budget, I sense that they are more like taking it as the amount to spend on air fares and a few hotel nights (for turnaround trips). In other words, the budget for flying to earn the elite status.

There may be a large gap between what OP's idea of travel budget and what the typical status chasers' idea of travel budget.

Welcome to FT.

If you follow the advice on FT you can totally earn over 2MM on American without ever boarding a flight. Mileage Runs and flights are just gravy.

100% of my AAdvantage milage has been earned without flying. :D

Best of luck with your travels.

Also, I think you asked about buying miles without getting an answer. Short answer, it's a sucker's bet. You don't get any benefits from them (except unless you buy them with your airline CC, and only then you just get a few extra miles for the month spent). The miles are just redeemable miles, not qualification miles. It's most often cheaper to buy a ticket than to buy miles for a ticket, plus then when you buy the ticket you do get benefits (such as earning miles or perhaps an upgrade).

I want to do what luv2ctheworld is doing :D

My travel budget is flexible if it is something I enjoy. I am lucky not to have any real expenses such as Rent/Mortgage or Auto payments so was basically throwing a number out there. Like most people, If I see this as something I enjoy over time, I will adjust the budget to fit what I enjoy. My biggest, most expensive hobby, dog sports, has been put on hold the last couple of years. I really doubt that I would ever spend as much on Flying as I did chasing after titles in that sport.

I have thought about buying first class tickets a few times over the years but when I see the prices of F at 500% or more markup over lowest coach fare I can't stomach it. I never even realized that FF miles could be applied towards First Class tickets!! If I knew that, I would have concentrated on one airline long before now. The only time I ever remember getting upgraded was the times we got put on the concorde and I hardly felt like that was an upgrade from First...

I am leaving for Nica in a couple of days but am reading reading reading all the threads I can now trying to determine what direction I want to go with me new "sport" when I return.

Thanks for the welcome and advice!!

I'd like to add a caveat or two in regards to my OP.

Those miles earned, for such cheap prices, were a result of many, many hours spent on FT and pricing out fares, mainly via trial and error. I remember on one mistake fare (YYZ-FCO-LCA in Business for $300 RT), I spent nearly 6 straight hours going back and forth between finding dates and routing and getting further info on the airline(s) involved. I didn't sleep that night, and was near useless at work. On the flip-side, three months later, I was sitting comfortably on my way to Europe (did it 3x's on that fare).

Another experience would be flying a red-eye out after work, sleeping less than 4 hours in a cramped economy seat on the plane... landing at IAD, getting a coffee, hopping onto a plane to JFK, head out to the city to meet a friend for lunch, and go back to the airport for a flight home the same night. Or possibly land at some airport late at night, find a bench or chair, sleep for a few hours till the first flight out the next AM (or get kicked out by security), and get back on a plane to go home.

In addition, I live in a location where cheap airfares come by on a semi-regular basis. That may not be the case for everyone and I know for those unfortunately stuck with only one carrier, it isn't necessarily possible to travel so cheaply.

So, what I'm really saying is, while it is great getting those high value award seats, I've had to go through a lot (in time and opportunity costs) to get them. I don't want to paint these awards to anyone with rose colored glasses, and then have those people become disillusioned once all the sacrifices and time/money becomes apparent.

Of course, the best gig to have is a job that pays you to travel (in first or biz, preferably), so you can then enjoy the miles on your employer's dime (I believe many of our fellow FT'ers do).

Regardless, good luck to your new hobby! I gave up my golf to focus on things to do from FT (mainly travel on the cheap) :)

FWIW, most people undersave for retirement - underestimate what they will need. I probably sound like an old fuddy duddy, but I would encourage you to make sure you are putting enough away before you start flying all over the world to earn status and miles.

This is certainly a contrary opinion on FT. :D

Nothing worth having normally comes easily and if it did it would no doubt be accesible to everyone, eh?

My job will never provide me travel opportunities but it is flexible and also allows me to spend hours a day online if need be hunting down the best deals.

I have no idea or not yet if there are lots of good fares from RDU, I will have to discover that in due time.

Right now I am trying to read up on this board all that I can and understand the different websites like ITA and others like farecompare... I am still a bit lost but suppose it will make sense in time!

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LOL, thanks, I am quite the saver or some would say- cheapskate- born into a family of savers and am thus am in good shape for retirement. Thanks for the very sound advice though.

I started flying for status and lifetime bennies back in 2006, and have been very happy with the results.

I was able to fly 50k miles (Platinum--2nd tier elite status) a year for ~$2600 quite consistantly, and the last couple years AA has done double Elite Qualifying Miles promotion periods, so that's been boosted up to Executive Platinum (top tier) last year and this year.

Doing the Platinum challenge will start you off with those elite benefits (like double redeemable miles) much faster and so is VERY worthwhile.

You won't earn upgrade instruments fast enough to be flying in domestic first-class all the time as a Platinum, so you may well want to consider investing some more time each year to earning and maintaining Executive Platinum status for unlimited domestic upgrading. That will also double the speed (assuming minimum qualifying mileage) you earn miles through flying towards LIFETIME STATUS. American is the last airline still counting ALL redeemable miles earned through *any* activity towards lifetime status: 1 Million Miles for Lifetime Gold and then 2 Million Miles for Lifetime Platinum.

Towards that, get an AA credit card and a Starwood AmEx credit card. The latter gets a 25% bonus when converting points into miles when done 20,000 at a time.

Also, there is Dining Rewards. Easy to quickly/cheaply earn elite status with 12 small purchases/dines, then look for their promotions, and when they offer bonus miles, pile it on. I buy gift certificates/gift cards during the promotions, and use them up over time, so as to maximize my mileage earning. The same group also does Hotel Rewards, where the prices are as good as Entertainment.com discounts *plus* you earn miles (usually 5 miles/$).

Also note that 2011 will be American AAdvantage 30th anniversary, and they had some crazy great promotions during their 25th anniversary celebration.

Also keep checking FlyerTalk for someone doing an Oops! promotion, where they are practically giving away the miles. USAToday was giving away a penny a mile for each new subscription, and you could cancel after the 1st month, so one guy bought a 1-month subscription for every apartment in his entire building! Or that Swiss cheese company was giving away at cheaper than a penny a mile and gopherblue bought enough to earn over 600k miles. Going back, Pudding Guy got 1 million miles and Lifetime Gold on American all at once!

There are also other avenues that might be available. Within the last year a guy had accumulated millions of Marriott Rewards points, and in 1 week converted those into 17 Fly-And-Stay packages that gave 120k miles each, and earned 2.04 million miles and Lifetime Platinum in one fell swoop! I'll admit that I have earned quite a lot of miles using that same method.

I never earned any miles though work activities, all personal time and money doing mileage runs and such, and you can see the summary below for the speed in which I was able to accomplish what you are looking to do too, and on the cheap.

Farecompare.com used to have a nice map function where you could more easily find cheaper airfares. Crossing to the other coast and back, preferably by bouncing through another airport (or lots if you can manage it!) to maximize miles.

I did WAS-FRA, but to earn more miles nested it into my "regular" mileage run route to SEA, thus hugely increasing the number of miles, plus avoiding regional jets and snow-crippling northern airports in winter, and did the intercontinental flights in a 777 rather than 767. That is called getting creative with your routing--which you need to be since AA flies direct to Europe from RDU.

It's worth it,

Steve32

From my perspective, the money incurred is not the issue as it is manageable for most who are aspired to travel. It is the time involved and the physical demand on one's body (red-eyes, long back to back trips, etc etc) the part that I know I am not capable to push to the degree you have done.

Given the current economy, chances of having another DEQM look good. When that happens, it would the the time to jump in.

BTW, AA now charges for Challenges. I believe it is $200. It used to be free.

This is one thing that irritates me about my job (OK, maybe not the only thing:)). I travel a decent amount for work. However, as a government mule, I generally have to use the GSA contract carrier for official travel because of the specially negotiated rates. There's no rhyme nor reason to who gets a given route - and they change periodically when the routes are re-negotiated. Just when I'm cruising along building miles on one carrier, the rug gets pulled out from under me. :td: