Traveling beyond your means on miles and points
 

When I talk about my upcoming trips, like the one to Brazil, I often find myself adding like a disclaimer or something--"Of course I got free flights on miles". There is no way someone of my income level could afford the kind of travel I do otherwise, especially in Australia where they don't have the mega credit card bonuses I can get as a US citizen with a good Fico. It's like I don't want people to think I am secretly wealthy (I am not) and try to hit me up for loans or something. And I don't want people who see us walking out of an IC or Westin (on points) to think I am one of those rich people who usually stay there.

Does anyone else do this? I mean "apologize" or add disclaimers when they talk about their travels?

Nope. I travel, eat and drive what I want to, when I want to and make no apologies for it. By some standards I'm on a pretty good income, and by others I'm not, but I'm not interested in what others think of me, what I do or how I spend my money/time.

The only exception is when I'm talking about staying in a particular hotel room (IE Penthouse Suite or something) my friends will often ask me how I scored the room. I'll tell them that I didn't pay for it, it was upgraded to me due to my status (I don't use that word, I'll say "my frequent user level" or similar) and that I only booked a standard room. This is meant as an explanation not as an apolgy.

Be careful... if they see you have lots of miles or points, they may hit you up for free flights and rooms.

"Wow, you travel for work and collect so many miles on so many airlines. You can't possibly use them all, so how about sharing some?"

I'll venture to say, if you're travelling on miles and points that you've earned (and probably worked hard to acquire) you aren't "travelling beyond your means".

My friends know about my FF hobby, and understand most of my trips cost me little to nothing out of pocket. For anyone else, it's NOTDB.

This is actually a fairly common situation in trying to explain why, for example, you picked Thailand or Bali for a trip. "Well, if you can get around the airfare somehow, your land costs are actually pretty cheap," I'll explain (sometimes to Customs on the way back).

In some countries you can make back the cost of the trip in savings on medical or dental care or prescriptions if you plan it right. It usually takes several trips to get in the groove there. Not needing a rental car and taking bus or rail inter-city can also really save in many countries, and some places have lodging that is a good value for the money.

I also took a buyout offer years ago with a severance that allowed me to travel around for a year IF I could hold the total budget for everything to $60/day. That meant a bias toward less-expensive countries...some have done that as a RTW trip, but thanks to miles I was able to do it as 90-100 day trips.

Sadly, many of those in the U.S. working for the Man are in corporate cultures that celebrate sacrifice, doing the work that 4 people used to do, not taking all your vacation (or taking money in lieu of vacation days), or (worst of all) not being considered promotable or serious about your job or considerate of overworked co-workers if you take 2-week vacations at any time other than Christmas. But you need that kind of trip length at minimum to do a decent trip that crosses the Pacific.

One other thing: I've self-funded about 98% of my airline earning activity (even when working for someone else, as I got very little travel with that). OTOH, I don't get the sense there are lots of self-funded, shoestring-budget people like me out there with big balances in HOTEL programs. With enough points in those you can live a pretty cloistered existence if you want.

99% of my friends still don't get the concept that you can basically fly anywhere in the world in first class for "free" with careful signups and use of ccards plus some BIS time. I try and try to explain it to them, but they have no desire to learn.

I assume that they know I am not paying for all my airline tickets, as given the volume of travel and the class of service I have been traveling in, my flights would total up to well over a hundred thousand dollars a year in airline expenses if I had been paying out of pocket (I checked kayak for same day/class/flight # for all the flights on my most recent award redemption and those flights alone would have cost close to $30,000).

Sounds like class welfare to me.

If you do not work for it you do not deserve it.

As CC in Asia become more popular you will find the free rides a little harder to find, most Asians handle money better than most Americans.

If you are travelling from your earned miles and points you are not travelling beyond your means.
If you learn and know how to shop for travel bargains that you can afford you are not travelling beyond your means.

When I am travelling well for very low cost, we usually leave the cake for everyone else.

Well said. Me too.

What if those earned miles were one someone else's dime?

I piled up a bunch of miles and status flying for work. It was able to get first class tickets to Hawaii. they were (are) certainly beyond my normal means. I would not be able to pay cash for them, nor would I have ever been able to fly enough on my own dime to get the miles/status that got me the seats.

Maybe I didn't phrase the idea very well. I am someone who is considered low income by Australian standards but because I am a dual citizen, I have a SSN, good Fico and can get USA credit cards. My friends and family see me and my husband taking off on fabulous trips to places like India, Cook Islands, Brazil and think I must have a secret trust fund someplace or huge bank account. Then when I say I can't do something or buy something because I can't afford it they think I am lying or a cheapskate or something. They don't get the idea of being cash poor but points rich.

So it's this falsely perceived idea that I am rich because I do trips that only people with high incomes can do which leads to awkward situations when they think I should be able to do other things that I would need cash for. Does that explain the concept better?

Same thing when I am overseas, vendors see us walk out of the Crowne Plaza or IC and jack up the prices because they think we are "rich" but they don't know that we booked those hotels on points and if it weren't for the points we would be in the local backpacker hostel.

It's no ones business but I do feel like I need to explain why one second I'm complaining about paying $500 in car repairs then the next I'm booking a business class ticket to Bali. I explain CC sign up bonuses, paying my rent with Amazon Payments, and only paying $50 for the reward ticket. I don't think they ever fully buy it because they don't really understand it. After that I don't feel guilty or any need to explain myself.

I do that all the time, OP, then get mad at myself afterwards because I really don't owe anyone an explanation.

As this thread focuses on uses of miles and points, please follow as the thread moves to the MilesBuzz forum. Ocn Vw 1K, Moderator, TravelBuzz.

Traveling beyond your means on miles and points
 

I'm 22 years old and have earned over 100,000 FF miles between AA & UA just in the year 2012. In the last two years I've made two trips to South America (spent 5 months there total), two trips to Hawaii (second trip to Hawaii was all first class), a two week trip to Sydney, Australia (business class upgrade on the flight back-best flight of my life, I think MSRP one way was about $15,000, rumor mill went crazy after that one) andddddd i just booked a trip to Turkey, open jaw flying home from Paris after new years 2012/2013. If it is hard explaining the points rich cash poor concept to somebody as a 40 year old, try explaining it as a 22 year old. Nobody understands. My uncle honestly asked to borrow $50K from me a few months ago. It is really funny to me, most of the time I just let people draw their own conclusions. It is fun. Earn em and burn em baby!