Hi - I'm new to this and overwhelmed. Anyone want to help me figure out where to start? The things I'm particularly confused by are:

1. What's a good cent per mile rule of thumb? Looking to set up my own values for when something is a good deal to both earn and redeem flight miles and hotel (SPG for now) points.

2. The lingo - oh my gosh, the abbreviations! So much to learn.

And of course I'll take any other advice anyone cares to offer - just make sure a rookie can understand it. Thanks in advance for your time.

DYKWIA - Do you know who I am?? Complaint of rude, obnoxious travelers pushing around airline and hotel personnel based on perceived elite status. We know you're not one

I also had to figure out OP - refers to the original poster if you are commenting on his or her post.

Many others you'll pick up along the way. Welcome to FT.

Hey lisanorcross,
Welcome! Here's one blogger's (Frequent Miler's) approximation for point value: http://boardingarea.com/blogs/freque...rading-prices/

As for lingo, check the glossary: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/glossary.php
You'll see people refer to airports by code (ATL = Atlanta, IAD = Washington Dulles etc). You'll see people refer to airlines by their IATA code (UA = United, WN = Southwest, etc).

Read lots and learn lots. Don't fret!

Look at the "Help" link at the top of each page of FT. There's a drop down menu there that includes two aids for searching acronyms and terms used here: "Airport Code Lookup" and "Glossary." That'll give you some context. There are also other links, including FAQs and guidelines, that will help you get comfortable in this community.

I've found that determining the value of miles and points is directly dependent on your goals and means. Where do you want to travel? In what class on an airplane? Do you care about how nice a hotel you're staying in, are you just looking for a place to sleep, or do you even need to worry about a hotel because once you get to your desired destination, you'll have friends who can give you a place to stay? How good is your credit? That last question is important because one of the primary methods of earning points and miles is credit card signup bonuses.

For instance, some people want to do "aspirational" travel--Bali, Maldives, etc., stay in a nice hotel, and fly only in first or business class. Many of these folks have great credit and can take out a lot of credit cards.

Others, younger, less financially secure, and less creditworthy (and thus less able to take a large number of credit cards), are happy flying coach from here to Australia, staying in hostels, and hanging out in pubs and on beaches.

People in the first group telling people in the second group that they should be flying in business to Australia and staying at the Park Hyatt Sydney are probably going to get a cool reception because each of those redemptions might chew up an entire credit card bonus with an affiliated airline/hotel card--thus, limiting the amount of travel the second group can do. As a result, "value" to the first group differs from "value" to the second.

But even within the second group, there might be someone who, despite those limitations, might want to pop the question to a significant other by having the Sydney Harbour Bridge in the background. Because that's a once-in-a-lifetime trip. And, I suspect a "value" that's a lot higher than will ever be achieved by the folks in the first group.

Once you start figuring out your goals, doing some regular reading here on FT will start filling in the blanks, both about specific techniques and possible destinations. Although a lot of us like to keep focused on MilesBuzz, there are a lot of forums here, including a number with great advice on various destinations around the world.

Welcome to FT! And happy travels!

Cardinal:

from the 1970s Monty Python show concerning The Spanish Inquisition. The cardinals Fang, Biggles and Jimenez would suddenly show up in a random skit when somebody would say something like "Bloody Hell! I didn't expect The Spanish Inquisition."

They would torture the innocent with couch cushions, the dreaded dish rack, and etc. because if you were innocent "We will soon convince you otherwise."

The cardinals we are concerned with are the fraud examiners, loss prevention, audit, risk and other professionals who don't particularly like our business model. You just ain't gonna feel the love from them. They make surprise calls, conduct financial reviews, shut down accounts and generally use surprise and fear to intimidate.

As a card carrying cardinal I know how cardinals think and act which gives me a bit of an unfair advantage.

Virtualization:

Some credit cards allow you to generate one-time-like credit card numbers that can be used for transactions. It can appear to certain vendors that you are using different cards when in fact it is the same card. Sometimes used to bypass volume limits per card card transaction placed by vendors. Devastatingly effective with the US Mint credit card transaction limits and some current opportunities.

Welcome! ...from a fellow rookie/newbie, and there appear to be many of us.

I hope it's ok to post this, as I'm learning that it's not always easy to know what to post and what not to post, but this article was very helpful to me. http://www.insideflyer.com/articles/...e.php?key=6585

Have fun. This site is fabulous!!!

About 1 cent per mile. But a lot more if use the miles to redeem for first or business class airline tickets.

FT = FlyerTalk

I'd like to give a somewhat more refined view of the value of points, because it is specific to an individual.

The value of a point is:

1) The VALUE to you of the award you redeem it for, divided by the points required. Value is not the same as price. Your value cannot be greater than the price, otherwise you'd pay cash for it. But if a ticket would cost $5000 if purchased but it's only WORTH $2000 to you, that's it's value. In my case, for example, my wife flies to Europe every year. The minimum value of a ticket is the price of a coach ticket, because I have to buy it, period. However, if a coach ticket is $1500 and business class is $5000, the VALUE to me of a business class ticket is more like $2000-$2300, because if I asked her how much she would pay in cash to upgrade, her answer would be in the range of $250-$400 each way.
2) Subtract any benefits you would get if you paid cash. Points or miles you'd earn, value of status miles, etc. For some people, status miles are extremely important, for others they matter very little.
3) Subtract the value to you of the time you invest in managing your accounts. For most FTers the cost is fairly small, we don't really mind. But if you find it really annoying, adjust your values for that.
4) Subtract the value to you of the time and effort spent hunting for award space. This can be significant.
5) Adjust for taxes and fees, which again, can be very significant on certain routes and carriers.

One personal caution I'd give is, for hotels I would compare the value of a room to the Priceline Name Your Own Price cost. If you have status with a hotel chain, or absolutely must be at a particular hotel, that's different. But just as an example, a few weeks ago I was in Charlotte NC and I just needed a 3-star hotel almost anywhere except downtown, and in 15 minutes I got it on Priceline for about $67 all-in. If the street price for the room, including tax, was $129, and it required (say) 8600 points, the points would NOT have been worth 1.5 cents. They'd have been worth closer to 0.8 cents. (This is one reason I don't bother with hotel points.)

Personally, my rule is 2cpm for coach, 2cpm for hotels and 5cpm for biz/first (should be able to do much better). Otherwise, not worth it.

One thing that's not immediately obvious is also consider how many miles you'd EARN if you paid cash for the ticket and factor that into your cpm analysis. For instance if you want to fly IAD-HNL, that's about 4800 miles each way--9600 r/t. So if you value miles at 2cpm, that's nearly $200 of value back when purchasing the ticket in cash. So I'd use that new value of (cash price) - $192 = actual ticket price when calculating cpm.

I suggest you spend a couple of hours reading everything on my website below. Then you will have a very good handle on the types of offers available. Start in the How to Begin and Value of Miles sections.

They have a little class in Chicago sometime in October, bring $75.00 or so and they might let you in the door.

Pays to stay at the Holiday Inn,.

It is no problem gettng miles, the problem is finding the time to use them.

I've only been at this since the beginning of the year. Having said that: reading many blogs and spending way too much time here on FT, I'd suggest starting here:

http://www.milenerd.com/p/newbies-start-here.html

then check out http://www.milevalue.com

then come back here

I have no connection to those 2 blogs aside from being grateful for their work.

Start small, and go large with it.

Welcome to a world of free travel! Welcome to FT!