Ok, so then you DID intend to mislead people just to draw traffic to your website. Pretty lame. If you make a habit of doing that, you will not build an audience.

I assume he meant the TOS of the mileage program. But yeah, as you pointed out, they will sell miles, so there is obviously some value. I believe the difference is that you're not allowed by the TOS to sell them to other folks yourself.

I can't believe someone who wants to give others advice on travelling places zero value on miles.

It is not misleading as much as it is a delay in facts. People need a reason to keep reading the series. Imagine if they had destroyed the ring in the first book in Lord of The Rings. I did just spend $40 for my ticket. I believe the layman follows my train of thought that miles have no monetary value.

Yes, I am speaking about the TOS of the mileage program. No, I don't think that you can add monetary value to miles just because an airline sells them. I believe SWA award tickets fetch $300 on ebay (haven't checked in years). Does that mean that each point is worth $18.75? Or do you value it based on a LAX-LGA rt with 24 hour notice?

What then about my 100k UA miles? Let's assume 50k miles values at $1,647.50 Does that mean that my 100k miles are worth $3,295?

My flight was LAX-MVD for the last 10 or so days of Dec/early Jan. UAL shows $15,000 for that ticket.

My point of view is that I traded 100k RDMs for a $15k ticket and it cost me airport taxes of $40 or so, miles that I was earning without going out of my way for Walmart GCs, buying stuff from the mint, or doing MRs. Idine & CC purchases.

If they were to have any value, it would be the $135 a year I was spending on the CC annual fee .. but even that was usually waived..

Miles have the value you give them. A layman that takes 1 flight a year gives miles $0. The same thing probably goes for the business man whose company pays for his trips that he needs to take anyway. They will either choose to not earn them or burn them on upgrades.

It is the third group of people that gives miles value, but that, again, is based on the investment the person made and what they intend to do with the miles.

I don't place zero value on miles, I place zero monetary value on miles. Just because I used 100k UA miles doesn't mean I mislead people when I say I flew in F for $40. To me 100K miles = 10k miles = 1,000,000 miles = $0

I flew F to south america for New Years .. I saved 15k. I would never purchase a ticket in F. I will be flying myself and 2 others to South Africa for around $300 and all the miles in my account, saving about $7,500 assuming $2500 tickets from GRU for july 2010. That is the value I give my miles

I am yet to hear what monetary value you guys place on miles and why.

True, but in ALL cases the value of 100k UA miles will be considerably higher than $0. Personally I would place the value at a minimum of $2,000 since anyone could earn that amount for spending 100k on a 2% cash back credit card like the Schwab Visa...when that same person would earn 100k UA Miles for the same amount of spend on their UA Mileage Plus Visa. My point is that you are misleading people by saying that you flew for $40. The fact is the $40 was the least valuable part of the transaction.

The error here is that you assume I spent 100k on the credit card to accumulate miles.

Many miles where earned flying and a majority of the miles were also made by taking advantage of Idine promos .. Back in 2004/2005 they had double mile promos .. so I was earning close to 20-40 miles per $1 spent ..

That is the point of the articles I am writing and what most of us know here on FT. How to earn RDMs without having to go really out of your way .. how to maximize benefits to be elite with less time on a plane.

How to earn 100k miles without having to actually spend 100k.

That is why when I am asked "what value do you give your miles" my answer always is ... it's personal. It depends on how hard it was for me to come by! But they will always have $0 in value because I can't barter or sell them, I can only use them on myself, or ticket flights from family.

If there was a white market for them, then that would change things greatly. But, unfortunately, you can't use black market values to appraise RDMs

I earned close to 750k miles with UA from Nov 2002 until Sept 2006, when I jumped shipped to AA because UA stopped flying to MVD. But I found it difficult to earn miles with AA as their fares where more expensive to where I wanted to go. 5 months and 50k AA miles later, I jumped .... to CO and have raked in 250k in less than 18 months, not including what I am going to get for my DEQM MRs coming up in Oct, Nov, and Dec.

Since my UA miles where easier to come by, they were valued less. My AA miles were harder to come by, so they were more valuable, i really wanted to use them for something worth it. By CO miles are worth more than my UA miles but not as much as my AA miles.

In the end, you can't assume that 100k UA = $2k because that is what you would earn spending 100k in a 2% reward card.

The second error is you assume you will get 2% cashback on all purchases and that you are not limited to a certain amount of cashback per calendar year, which I vaguely remember being the case with those CCs.

This statement slightly offends me because, as you can see through the articles, I am guiding people towards an end goal of being more mileage savvy. Whether they place a monetary value in RDMs is their own choice, but you can't claim that I am misleading people when I am giving them a play by play on how to do what I did.

To the first point, I wasn't assuming you had earned the 100k miles from CC spend, but rather was answering your question about what value I give my miles.

As to the second point you can assume you will get 2% cash back on all purchases with no limits as there are none with the card I mentioned.

And I apologize for offending you, however slightly , but I still contend that however you earn the 100k miles the value to anyone has to be greater than $0. It is true that everyone will value them differently, but regardless of how you came to acquire them in all cases there is a value. Even if you plan to use them for what are generally considered crappy redemption options (such as 4 round trip domestic tickets in coach) you still have to figure 100k miles are worth at least $800. And that's just about worst case. Any way you slice it you didn't fly in F for just $40.

I've updated the URL links for the articles as I have moved everything to a different domain.

Expect PART 3 to be posted soon!

Part 3 in the series

How I flew in First for $40 And How You Can Too Part 3: Miles and More

I personally like your articles. they are easy to read and are user friendly. i am also saving up for the world cup in south africa.

The title is lame, and the article is a waste of time.

Thank you .. that means a lot ...

I was on the phone with CO asking about GRU-JNB flights on South African .. and apparently they are either sold out on flights or haven't released any award seats yet, because the guy couldn't find anything.

It is supposed to be 60k miles in Y from south america to south africa, but I may need to do an 'around the world' type .. LAX-lisbon-maputo-south africa!!

why oh why did they choose such a hard to get to place!

Thank you for having one of your 98 posts in the last 20ish months be this constructive gem.

Any other feedback would be greatly appreciated. What did you not like? What do you think you would enjoy?

Again, these are geared towards novice users, so I doubt anyone her would get anything out of them!

I suspect that finding flights and hotel rooms using points/miles will be very hard to find for that trip.

You asked for an opinion and you got it.

The problem is: not a lot newbies peruse FT often, so this is likely not the best audience for you.

I was a newbie once but FT quickly taught most of the things I needed to know. If you are not lazy and know how to use the search option, most everything is available here. With that in mind, your article is not that useful, and the title is really annoying: you cannot get a ticket for 40$, you need to do a lot of flying or spending to get all those RDMs.

Cheers.

I Read the article.Sorry to say waste of time,I mean no informative value.Title is just to tempt audience ,I guess.

I completely understand the last 2 points ... i wasn't posting the articles to give out information or anything anyone here already didn't know.

I was looking for some criticism towards the newbies ... sometimes being in the system makes you forget what it is like being a virgin and not knowing anything.

Someone pointed that out in my first article, where I talked about status, forgetting someone may not know what silver vs gold vs platinum is .. so I wrote an article on that!