Curious about monthly "Free" spend...
 

Hello Everyone,

I started reading FT/mile hoarding around April of this year. All of my mile earnings come from various "free" methods (coins, bank accounts, etc...) all over FT. I am curious to know how many of these "free" miles people collect on a monthly basis. Here is what I've been averaging (Not including CC bonuses and the use of my own money):

May- 22k
June- 49k
July-46k
August- 51k

The only problem is that these miles are spread among Spg, UAL, Continental and AA. I'm interested to see how I fair amongst other FT's.

by "free", do you mean no money was spent?... if so i would like links please...i suspect that you are talking about business flights, hotels, etc....thanks....good luck...

edit to add....on reread, you are talking about other people paying, i guess....

so, my answer to your ? is none, in the last 25 yrs, during which my bw & i have amassed ~ 6.5mm....

by "free" I mean recycling on credit card spending.

So I assume you are referring to buying coins, funding bank accounts and the such? Which is technically using your "own" money just end up getting it back.

yes correct.

Looks like you're doing pretty well, especially if you're excluding credit card sign up bonuses. Are you counting debit card sign up bonuses, and, if so, are you including the 50,000 CO checking account/debit card bonuses as "free", even though there are $90 in fees?

Monthly averages are always difficult, since there's a lot of low-hanging fruit that a newbie can grab but for which those who've been in the game a while may not qualify.

E.g., if you'd never had the BA Chase card, you could have signed up for it this year for 105,000 BA miles (adding an authorized user), and do the 2 current AA offers for 220,000 miles apiece (for spending $20k). But if you'd already had those cards, you mightn't qualify.

ALSO -- to address one of your "problems", don't forget that those SPG points can be converted to AA miles (among others) with a nice bonus, 20,000 > 25,000 usually, although recently there was a special promo for 35 pct more. (Personally, I'm holding my SPG points to see if there's another bonus, unless I really to transfer them.)

No I'm not counting the newbie bonuses of any kind. It's basically just buying cash equivalent and then paying off the card like everyone else does. The bonuses I have received though were UA 50k, spg 25k, citi AA 200k and amex biz gold 50k. Yeah I'm def. holding on to the starpoints in hope of another AA bonus transfer. So how about everyone else?

Dear popot53,

I know exactly wht u r talking abt...and believe me u r doing very good! congratulations...u have just set a new benchmark for me...I have been trying hard to get such free miles but I am way behind you...I donot think I can catch up with you but I can make it close...
Congrats again...keep up the good work!:D

Hi,
Can you elaborate how you got 51K in just 20 days of August?

Thanks

well technically i'm at 43k but ill have 8k more by the 30th. There are literally like 6-7 ways to spend money on CC. Coins and bank accounts are clearly obvious. I just spent time digging around FT, there is ALOT to learn from this forum.

I'm surprised that only one person knows what I'm talking about. In any case, Delta2010 just keep doing what your doing, I'm sure there are plenty of FTers that are yielding way more than I am.

Do you have a list of how you're getting these miles? I'd love to just see a breakdown list of all your bonuses to see where they are coming from/what special promotions/etc.. I'd love to get more into this, I'm a big newbie at this :)

Those are impressive #'s. I'm running 15-20k per month but I'm not puting forth a huge amouint of effort. I know I could be getting some more but I don't see how I could get it up in the range of 50k

hmm....YHPM

Wow, these are pretty solid levels considering you don't take into account CC Bonuses. Without CC Bonuses I'm nowhere near that.