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.

I also would love to know how you are getting those types of returns. :) I'm not even close!

Well I've received some very interesting Pm's from people and it seems I'm far from optimal earnings. No big deal though we all have to start somewhere. Also it's not in the best interest of the "game" to list out methods and strategies for earning. By no means is it a secret though, you just gotta put in the time and enjoy reading FT. Keep the responses coming!

He's been buying lots of diamond rings at Costco and returning them

Must be:confused:.

If it's not, I've got no clue. I think of myself as "in the know" on this stuff, but apparently, I'm in the slow lane. The SUPER slow lane.

Impressive
 

Can you at least give some hints? I've seen the coins, I've heard buying cards at Costco and other etc.

I'm all for keeping it a secret as much as possible as I've read the threads on the "tricks" and FD which went down due to too much publicity and a airfarewatchdog post. Just be willing to PM if you don't mind.

First of all, hahaha on the diamond rings... would that even work? Also interesting point on the gift cards, I was actually thinking about getting into that but it would require the use of my own money with no liquidation outlet. There are FTers that yield alot more than me and there are some that yield less (like i was 4-5 months ago). It's all about trial and error. If it works, great add it to the arsenal, if not move on to the next. That's the only way we'll get up there with the big boys.

potpot53.....milesbuzz is about sharing information. you just seem to be bragging and when people ask for evidence its a hush hush secret. there aren't many secret ways to gain miles. if u hadn't heard of the costco diamond ring deal then u really haven't been hunting around here enough. i won't tell u about though cuz its a big secret

First of all I'm not bragging about anything, this thread was started because I wanted to see how I compared with other FTers not about the diff. methods people are using to gain mileage. If that's what your looking for then go here: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/miles...iles-free.html That's great that you have a diamond ring deal, use it to your advantage.

+1

Especially since you said folks PMed you with more deals you weren't aware of. I can appreciate caution in not giving out deals publicly and I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you're taking your time to be thorough and composing a nice reply to all the PMs I'm sure you've gotten, but do please respond to the PMs at least.

The diamond ring thing was a joke. There was a whole thread dedicated to buying and returning items to earn miles which should have been locked after the 3rd post IMO. Honestly, some things like buying 1,000 dollar coins and running to 2 walmarts and buying money orders and having the police called on you, going to several casinos to try and deposit 1k in coins, or returning items to earn miles are all either questionable or a complete waste of time for $10 or 1,000 mile gain. At some point I feel that certain threads should be locked unless there is new information. A moderator could edit the first post with the full details of a deal.

There are things like funding your initial bank deposit or buying gift cards when there was a 5% rebate that may be worth your time and may have great rewards. I've learned that sometimes it is better not to share any information at all unless it is a deal that can be done by a lot of people. Or if you are smart you share with a small group of trusted people. I don't think you can get away with posting that you earned 51k in returns in less than a month without spending a dime and not expect to get lynched when you tell people that if they want to know they can look it up. You learn from your mistakes, but can we lock this thread?

I couldn't agree more. The fastest way to go from collecting 50K miles/mo to zero is to post the details here and watch the deal quickly die.

Too many people are like bulls in a china shop.

And bragging doesn't help.

So 2 FTers actually answered the original question, while everyone else just wanted to bullsh*t. Mods can you please lock this thread.

One last question
 

Yes or No? You don't have to tell me how you did it. Did you use anything else than the Coins and the Funding a savings account with a credit card?

Popot53, FT is a community that works best when information is shared with mutual respect. Why do you think this thread should be locked? This is not a deposition where you ask a question and the only acceptable response is a direct answer to your question; it's more like a conversation.

You claim you found some lucrative deals by reading the threads with tips other people posted. Now, some people are asking you which ones you found most helpful, yet you refuse to share. By your own assertion, you learned about the deals from reading the threads, so the information is already in the public realm.

You might do well to actually contribute as a member of the FT community to help others, unless your motivation for starting this thread was just to brag about how many more miles/points you're getting than other people.

^ He is milking FT and has FT to thank for all his miles(Didn't state he found a single deal himself.) but won't share the publicly posted deals from other people he's used.

He's either a) he's full of it and can't substantiate it or b) he is trying to brag and find others who have gained more to then ask them how they're doing it even though he won't share his own.(If he says no, then why even bother posting a thread like this if you're not going to ask how people earning more than you are doing it.)

Either way people like him are useless members of the community here and should stick to lurking and milking everyone else's deals and refrain from posting.

A quick review of his post history will show that he has no problem taking others provided deals/info and asking a ton of questions and help.

I also highly doubt the numbers he is stating given everything he has said. The thread link he posted are all the well known tricks and if these are truly "free" spending, he couldn't have just gotten it from that thread alone.

This turned from a brag to a defensive topic.

EDIT: I just spent 5-10 minutes browsing all his other posts. There's a couple things:

1. He's fairly young and just started to get a handle on the FF programs (thus, a lot of questions on bonuses for applying to CCs for the first time).
2. He's probably getting the majority of his free spend from the Presidential Coins. He has asked a lot of questions regarding how much trouble he could get and trying to change his billing addresses around to skirt the limit they placed on ordering.

Basically, nothing new to learn here.

Personally I haven't used the coins, gift cards, or account funding because I'm new and truthfully scared. (For good reason: I jumped the gun on Citi with a 3rd app a couple months ago).

But I realize to take advantage of even a few of the best CC offers spend is important. (The SW gift cards for 5K in 3 months is even scaring me).

So I plan to throughly read all the coin, account, and gift card posts and then do a few of each to test the water meekly. Hopefully Chase won't trash all my accounts for a couple coin purchases.

Is Chase that much worse for disallowing coins etc than Citi and AmEx? Is AmEx pretty wide-open for these things like Citi seems to be? Is there one of the 3 that should be avoided for coins, accounts or gift cards?

Hello Everyone,

Here is what I've been averaging (Not including CC bonuses and the use of my own money):

May- 167k
June- 495k
July-948k
August- 1447k

The only problem is that I am ridiculously good looking, and have women throwing themselves at me every time I make a deposit of $1 coins at the banks. Also, I drive a 2015 Porsche and own 3 Boeing jets that are invisible. How do I compare to everyone else?

LOL. Looks like you may have a new best friend in the OP.;)

Even though I'm a guy, I want to have your baby

drumdrum

Details Bad for Business
 

Agree - public details are often bad for business.:cool:

Aloha, I'm not responding just to you, but I would like to try to more clearly state a point that someone else made on this thread. And please note that I stated earlier that I am sympathetic with being careful to not be too public as to ruin opportunities. But as someone else pointed out, popot said that he got all his methods from FT, which means that these methods are already publicly posted. Listing them helps FT'ers, it doesn't help a co Googling FT to find their loopholes.

It isn't company's googling FT that kills deals, it an excessive number of people hitting on some deal, often with such a lack of finesse that they are practically begging the company to shut down the deal.

Who tends to have the least finesse? People who need to be spoon fed a deal. They are the ones that walk into a bank with 10,000 coins, demand that they be accepted and start spouting legalese to the bank manager about how they have to accept them for deposit or else.