best strategy for managing miles? is there one?
 

I was reading another thread on what do to with with 500,000 miles and it got me wondering what is the best strategy for managing your FF miles.

I've always had the thought that I would rather use up my miles (on reasonably long distance award tickets such as us-oz) as I needed to rather than accumulate a lot of miles for an as yet undetermined future holiday flying biz class RTW for example. My reasoning is that you never know what's going to happen to these programs and the miles as well as the time value of money...as a consequence, I've tend to keep the balance in my MP account around 70,000 or below.

any thoughts on the best strategy? is there a threshold of how many dollars per mile below which you wouldn't redeem for an award?

My strategy is that as long as I have a shot at 1K, I don't use miles to maximize EQM. If I have no chance, I plan to just get the EQM I need for status, and burn miles for any remaining trips.

Our stragegy is to rack up miles and hope to score award travel in premium cabins as soon as we save enough miles. Wife and I have done two trans-pacific premium cabin award itineraries in five years; and now, we have enough miles to book another trip soon. To us, saving for an award in C (and if really lucky, F) is well worth the extra miles because the difference between coach and premium is like night-and-day.

I plan my trips so if it's cheaper to go by miles, I do that. Spend the $240 for transcon but if I have to fly into a small town for $500, try to do 25K saver award.

Similar to others, I try not to spend miles if I have a shot at status. In practice, I only spend miles on short, expensive trips or mid-cons on holiday weekends.

My personal rules of thumb are to spend miles:

If a mid-con ticket is more than $450;
If a trans-con ticket is more than $550;
If a HNL ticket is more than $850;
If an international ticket... well, never. I would always pay and upgrade. Some day I will spring for a *A F ticket. Some day.

The factors that go into the decision to spend the miles are:
1) Savings on the ticket cost.
2) Opportunity cost of 2xRDM + EQM + BIS (CR1/e-500-earning).
3) Cost of 25K miles + taxes and fees.
4) Lost chance of upgrading.
5) Usefulness of flexibility.

As a 1K, I am enjoying the freedom of no award fees. I can book a ticket with miles months in advance and, if the fares drop below my criterion, I can buy a ticket and redeposit the miles for free.

I do this as well, then enter my flights in yapta and let them monitor the price for me. Alas, I only have 10 more days as 1k :(

I start to think using miles on p.s. upgrades is more useful than *A F.
1 *A F = 8 p.s. legs in C while accumulating miles.
You say, "wait, p.s. flights aren't free." But again, neither is *A F considering TVM and the general hoops one must jump through.
I just want to fly, I am not really a cat in a circus.

I am the opposite. I prefer to use my miles to go long haul in style. When my balance gets high enough, I take along a friend or family member. They love international F, and so do I. C seems mighty comfortable as well.

Besides 4 RT will net (8) e500s so its not like you will always be in Y.

I never ever look for award seats - they're never available when you want them. All my miles go to upgrading int'l flights. Buying an ungradeable fare means you earn more miles for future upgrading purposes. Getting an award ticket means no miles earned.

I and probably a few others on the board would disagree with you on that one.

Very true.

I bank the miles and use them for companion travel and upgrades

For a upcoming trip to HK next week, I paid my ticket with TY points and hers with miles. I earn 19K EQM and 38K total RDM with the bonus and paid 60K for hers. Downside of this approach is no upgrades.

Using miles for international upgrades is the best use (once you have status). When I first got status going back and forth to Japan, I stupidly burned miles mid year for a business upgrade and lost status mid year. I think you had to have 50k back then for any status.


I would never do that again. I will requal for 1P by 3/6. Thank you FT!;)

Both good points. I understand that on some routes it can be really difficult to get C award seats as UA just doesn't make enough available on some routes. So if it's either spend money or spend miles to get a ticket (after getting status) - I guess I factor in spending miles first if it make reasonable $ sense.

Thanks for your input, FTer!

You are able to get miles for TY tix?

Most certainly. To United, TYN tickets look purchased, so you get the Airlines miles. They are just normal tickets. Heck, I've even gotten vouchers from UAL when the prices went down on TYN tickets!

My strategy is earn and burn. I see no good reason to wait for the next devaluation or a merger or change of partners to screw you. As soon as I have enough miles for an international F or C award (or 2 of them if Mrs. Alliance is joining me), I book my next award flight.

Since this is a topic with universal appeal, I am going to move this to TravelBuzz! for more responses.

iluv2fly
Moderator, UA

Very sorry for the "double handoff" here, but the best strategies for this question will come in our MilesBuzz forum. Please follow it there. Ocn Vw 1K, Moderator, TravelBuzz.

Companion travel and gifts.

I have give at least 200k worth of tickets away in the last three years, most often parents.

My earn/burn rate has been very close the last few years, but I still have over a million banked miles.

My spin: if, for a given trip, the $$-vs-award ratio is such that I might 'better' use the $$ for future EQM/RDM earning-power .. then it's BURN!!

- - - Good catch!! what is this TravelBuzz! you speak of ?? :D :D

I've always burned miles on Y tickets (since I don't mind slumming it in the back nearly as much as some people :)) but I'm now starting to lean toward buying an upgradable fare and using miles.

But I'm not entirely convinced... I mean, yes, the return on the miles is much higher when you use them for upgrades. And the experience is nice. But I can manage in Y for very long spans of time, so I think I'd rather make more trips in Y than less nice trips in C/F (I'm assuming the places I want to go are more compelling than the plane ride itself).

I use them for gifts (RT business class to Europe for our daughter's wedding present) and also for expensive long-hauls especially with stopovers eg. SFO-SYD return ADL-NAN-SFO

Since most of my travel is paid for by work, I tend to hoard my miles. I'm on my own for upgrades, so with United as a 1K, I'll use as many free upgrades as I can, but if I need more, I'll use miles.

I've also thought about using miles to trade on CC if there's something I'm interested in. For example, I just saw somebody post 4 CR1s for 50k miles. 4 upgrades on UA would normally cost at least 60k miles, so that was a good trade for the person with the miles.

I earn and use. We like to vacation for lowest cost. I used miles to go to Kona with Timshare for 2 weeks cost of trip about $468.

You seem pretty risk averse given that you are worried that United will straight up fold their frequent flier plan and take the miles away from you. It would take a lot for the industry to move to that and United is plenty happy to keep you content given how much you fly. I can't see any possible scenario where United would take all of your miles without you having a LONG period of advanced warning.

use them or the may be gone some day!!!!!!!!!!!!

I used to do the comparison of $$$ vs. points using some sort of $ per point valuation.

Over the last few years, I've realized that points/miles are rapidly losing their value and holding on to them makes much less sense. USAir miles haven't just gone from 20K to 25K for an award, they've really gone from 25K to 37.5K or 50K because award are practically unavailable at the standard (oh, pardon my, the Saver) rate.

This is happening all over the place - how many "xxx has massively devalued my points, I'm never flying/staying with them again..." threads do we plow through every year?

My problem is, I've paid for one flight and maybe 3-4 hotels in the last 5 years and still have 1M+ in both air and hotels. If I were able to burn them, I'd start thinking about conservative use once I got down to 250K air, 150K hotels - keeping enough in reserve for one week+ trip for the family.

Earn them and burn them. Devaluations occur all the time.
Nothing beats a no cost vacation a couple times a year.
(Life's short, don't hoard)