When Does a Mile Not Equal a Mile?

The biggest misnomer we'd like to clear up is the term "mile" or "point". It's forgivable if you believe that when you earn a 50,000 mile bonus, you're able to fly that many miles. Unfortunately this is not the case. (If that was true, you could fly around the world twice with that single sign-up bonus.)

The terms "mile" and "point" are interchangeable and it just depends on which reward program you're talking about. The key to understanding the term is to think of miles/points as a currency, and not distance. If miles/points are a currency, how much are they worth?

Vanilla Cards - A Hard to Find Treasure

Vanilla Reload Network cards are part of the Vanilla Ink Bold strategy. These are sometimes tricky to find due to a couple reasons:

• In larger cities you have competition of other people trying to buy them out.
• Some of the stores will have them but will only allow a cash transaction

Redeeming Your Points (Part 1): Introduction and Southwest Airlines

You've signed up for a credit card, completed the promo to earn the bonus and you are now ready to unleash the point beast to do your bidding and spirit you to faraway lands.

Whether that point beast is a demure little thing that makes it easy for you to plan your trip or a too-high of a level Pokémon that ignores you when you need it most (I'm looking at you, Charizard!), is completely dependent on the program from which you are redeeming.

Some are fantastically user-friendly and easy to redeem while some are notorious for their limited seats/schedule.

This is the first of a multi-part series on point redemption; this post will focus specifically on my experiences with Southwest Airlines.

What's More Luxurious Than Showering On A Plane?

How about that shower having heated floors?

One Mile at a Time is a blog I check at least twice a day. He just flew to Dubai in suite class on Emirates. No, not business class. And no, not even first class. Suite class.

I need to get myself into one of these. Check it out now, since he's updating his blog right now. On the plane. While staring at a reflection of his smug face on a built in vanity mirror.

Vanilla Ink Bold

Ladies and Gentlemen, how would you like to travel business class to Europe or Asia round trip for $300-$400 dollars? Yes, the price of a cross country domestic flight in economy could get you a much better vacation, but where's the fun in that? This system takes a little reading to understand, a little more work then other deals, but in the end it is easier than it sounds and well worth the trouble. 3 steps to follow!

Plastic Balling: Increasing Your Credit Score through Churning

In our Credit Basics section we have described how your score is calculated by lenders. After being asked, "Doesn't opening and closing credit cards negatively affect your score?" it dawned on me that we have not fully explained how we use this game to not only keep our scores stable, but earn the status of what my old roommate called "Plastic baller"!

Chase Ink Bold

The Chase Ink Bold is a business charge card that is the keystone card in the Vanilla Ink Bold strategy. The benefits for this card are:

• The current promotion is 50k Chase Ultimate Rewards (UR) points after you spend $5,000 in the first 3 months. 
• Normally, the promo is a spend of $10,000 in three months, so get it now!
• 50k UR points are basically worth ~$500, but you can always find more efficient ways of spending the points.
• 5x points per dollar spent at office stores or on utilities like cell phone/landlines, internet and cable.
• 2x points for dining and gas. 1 point per dollar for everything else.

If used correctly, you can earn a crazy amount of UR points that can be used on various airlines and hotels.

Presenting... the "King of Cards", Starwood Preferred Guest - American Express

For the past five years, the Starwood Preferred Guest (SPG) American Express (AMEX) has ruled the wallets of travel hackers, knighted savvy spenders to elite status, and allied itself to hotels and airlines alike.

The SPG AMEX comes in two forms: personal and business. The current promotion is at 25k. About two or three times a year, the promotion is at 30k points. (See "Important Note" at the bottom of the post.)

But if its only a measly 25k, why have so many bloggers been calling it the king of cards for the past 5 years?

NBC Video: Mileage Running to Achieve Elite Status

Hate over paying for bland airport food or sitting in tight quarters with no leg room? Even worse, the long lines during the holiday season? See why some people actively spend weekends flying to exotic locations to not even leave the airport. Check out this video interview of some of the more experienced bloggers and travel hackers.

500 Free AA Miles for Completing Facebook Survey

American Airlines is offering 500 free AAdvantage miles for liking them and completing a survey on Facebook. Promotion valid till Dec. 17th 2012 or the first 200k entrants. Miles post in 6-8 weeks. It is so easy, David might just even do this promo.

This is a great way to pad your account or keep activity up.  Every mile counts. You don't want to be the person booking an award ticket to find they're 2000 miles short and end up paying $50 to get enough miles for that ticket. Its happened to yours truly.

Get the miles here.

Meeting Spend Requirements

Meeting minimum spend requirements is one of the scarier parts of travel hacking. Unfortunately, that's the most common requirement you need to meet before the credit card company will give you reward points. So it's unavoidable.

Spend requirements per card can range anywhere from spending $1,000 in three months (super easy) to spending $10,000 in three months (super hard... unless you're rich—in which case, why are you even here?). Both Goober and myself are firmly grounded in the 99%. While we're not starving, we do stare wistfully at the electronic lottery billboards.

So how do we do it?

Goal oriented miles earning

Once you accumulate enough miles you can redeem them for domestic trips, or the international trip for your dreams. A good hint is to have a goal in mind then finding what programs/miles club allows you to get there the cheapest way.

Annual Fee? No Problem!

While a lot of credit card promos offer to waive their first year's annual fee, there are some that don't, and they want you to cough up $69-99 on your very first statement.

Don't let that dissuade you.

Chase Sapphire Preferred card

 

Chase Sapphire Preferred

This is a damn sexy card, literally and figuratively. It's dark blue, has a non-embossed front and is much heavier then any other card to the point where ~20% (complete guesstimate) of cashiers will compliment the card (you just might be able to finally score that number of the cute cashier).

The current promo is a bonus 40k Ultimate Rewards points after spending $3,000 in three months. The benefits are so good that this card should become one of your go-to cards for all your purchases even if you have no requirements to meet.

Chase Southwest Rapid Rewards Premier Card

Chase Southwest (SW) Airlines Rapid Rewards Premier Card is probably the best card for the beginner since the card user (you) has the fewest hoops to jump through to get your points.

What you need to do:

1. Spend $2,000 within three months.
2. Pay the annual fee ($99)
3. Annnnnd... that's it.

What you get:

• 50,000 Rapid Rewards points, which is approximately two round trip tickets.
• Anniversary bonus of 6,000 points every year. (which is basically the annual fee in points)

And So It Begins!

Welcome to our new project! We would like to share with you all, our hobby of traveling in style for cheap! You CAN go on the trip of your dreams now—not only when you are retired. But if you're retired, then you have all the free time to take advantage of this! 

If you are new to this concept please check out our Getting Started page to get a general idea. We will to keep updating this with new deals to take advantage of them as they come up as long as David doesn't get lazy editing our blog.

Please feel free to leave comments, questions, and suggestions about posts and the blog! We value your input and will work hard on clarifying things(well david will clarify, I just do content :P).