Manufactured Spending (MS) is a big part of the points and miles hobby. It’s a collection of techniques where you pretend to spend the money that you don’t have, in order to generate points. The general concept is that you buy cash-equivalent instruments with a reward-earning credit card, and then convert those instruments to cash in order to pay off the credit card balance.
Now that I am a points & miles millionaire, I wish I were a real millionaire. The truth is, there’s a pretty big difference between the two. How, then, do I quantify my treasure chest of travel currencies? In this article, I will share how my thought process evolved.
I’m off to India in the coming weeks, and as excited as I am to visit a new country (and attend an Indian wedding), in true #AVGeek form I’m even more excited to fly a new airline.
But while my return flight from India is booked in First Class on Etihad, it’s worth noting that it will actually be on one of the Boeing 777-300ER planes wet leased to Etihad from Jet Airways. In other words, the seat, food, and service really won’t be the same as that offered on standard Etihad flights.
Like many of you, I spend a ton of time on Flyertalk and these forums contain a wealth of information about everything you could ever want to possibly know about anything travel-related. But with user-generated content comes a fair amount of complaining. It simply comes with the territory. I generally group the complaints and rants that I come across into 3 buckets:
In case you hadn’t realized, I’m a math nerd (as are some of my coworkers). That means that numbers weigh heavily into any decision I make around getting the best value out of my miles. In fact, I even built a model that tells me when it makes sense to use miles or spend cash for a specific ticket. For my upcoming trip to India, I dusted off the model to compare a few different options. Here was the situation.
A new promotion from Hilton was just announced this week, which will allow you to earn double points for weekday stays and triple points for weekend stays starting September 1, 2015 and running through December 31, 2015. While many of these promotions are diluted based on specific hotels choosing to opt-out, the great news here is that ALL Hilton-family hotels will be included.
Hi everyone! This is Peter, Terence’s coworker and fellow actuary. Some time ago, he introduced me to the hobby of points and miles. And wow it’s been a learning process! Looking back at how I see the world differently, now, I’d like to give back to the community by sharing my experiences. Terence has generously allowed me to ramble on contribute to this blog. So here I am, as the first guest writer on Hungry for Points, on a mission to bring you a unique perspective on this hobby.
If you read this blog and follow others in the Boarding Area, you’ve probably invested hundreds of hours optimizing your experience in the air. But, have you done the same with your daily commute at a lower altitude? Now that Citi Thankyou Premier has taken the lead to include gas in its “travel” bonus category, it’s time for someone in this hobby to write about America’s favorite mode of travel: cars.
There’s a video circulating of a KLM Boeing 777 landing at Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport earlier this week into a windstorm that reached speeds of over 75 MPH. The scariest moment comes…
t’s been fun being a featured blogger this week on BoardingArea! To wrap things up, in case you missed it here’s a summary of the top posts from the past week. Just a note that you can still find Hungry for Points on the Prior2Boarding site, and the best way to keep up-to-date on the latest updates by adding me on Twitter or Facebook (or by using the buttons on the right-hand side) and feel free to drop me an email anytime!