Nearly everyone has heard of reward points, and many are even members of some reward point program or another. However, very few people ever earn enough points to actually see what their loyalty to any particular company has bought; they assume reward programs are meant for the business professional that is on the road 200+ nights a year. In reality, this is one of the easiest ways to travel for cheap, or even free* for anyone (*you will have to pay taxes and other mandatory fees).
One of the most effective ways of realizing great deals on airline and hotel reservations is by using their own currency: points. Points can be airline frequent flier miles, credit card reward points, hotel reward points, or any combination of all of the above. For the purpose of this article, I use the term “points” interchangeably to describe all three. The goal is to pay the “house” with their own money, using their own currency. For the unfamiliar, points are usually accumulated as a reward for spending money (i.e. flying with a particular airline or staying in a particular hotel) with the company that sponsors the reward program. However, accumulating points in only this way would prevent the vast majority of us from ever garnering enough points to actually be useful. I would like to stress that this method of gaining access to free travel – even in first-class, luxury accommodations – is open to, and attainable by, anyone.
It stands to reason that those who travel for business accumulate points on their preferred airline, credit cards, and favorite hotel brand. While this is certainly useful, there is a much more effective and affordable way to accumulate points and miles: through partners. Nearly every major hotel brand and airline has some sort of point/reward shopping site or allows it’s points to be converted into a reward program that does. Also, most reward program sponsor companies (Airlines and Hotels) partner with companies you already use to offer special “bonus” point opportunities from time to time. I will outline some real-world examples of this below, but first it is important to understand two rules of using partners to accumulate miles:
Don’t ever spend more money on any item than you would otherwise just to get points unless the cost of the points is less than $.01/point. Don’t ever buy anything you wouldn’t otherwise buy just to get points unless the cost of the points is less than $.01/point.
With these two rules in mind, I will outline a few real-world scenarios as an example of how to use partners to pay for your next vacation. For the purpose of the following example, we will use our hometown airline, Delta Airlines, and it’s affiliated reward shopping website www.skymilesshopping.com :
Example 1: I recently purchased a new toner for my laser printer. Before doing anything else, I checked Google to see what the best price, including shipping, was for the model I was looking for. $70.95 shipped was the best I could find. This is important, because I need a baseline to determine if I am paying for the miles, or if they are truly free. A quick search of www.skymilesshopping.com shows that the same toner is available from several vendors for $70.95-103.95, with vendors offering between 1 and 9 miles per dollar. If I went with the cheapest option of $71, I would get 1 mile per dollar for a total of 71 miles. However, if I went with the $74 option, I would receive 8 miles per dollar for a total of 593 miles. For $3.00 dollars more, I got 522 miles more than if we went with the cheapest option. This works out to just over 1/2 a cent per mile ($3.00/522 miles), and is certainly well worth the additional $3.00. However, if I went with the $103.95 option, I would get 9 miles per dollar. So while I would get 936 miles for the purchase, I would have overpaid for the item by over $30.00. Even more, I would have paid $30.00 for the 414 additional miles that we got by purchasing the $103.95 toner instead of the $74 toner. This works out to a whopping $.072/mile: over twice what I could have bought the miles for directly from Delta. The $103.95 toner would have clearly been a violation of rule number 1.
Example 2: I was planning a family trip to Italy, and I was 10,000 miles short of purchasing eight business class tickets. I visited www.skymileshopping.com and looked at which vendors offered the most miles per dollar, and then settled on a magazine company that offered 40 miles per dollar. I renewed some magazine subscriptions that we would have bought anyway, and we renewed for two years to bring my total bill to $250. I was credited 10,000 miles not long after, and was able to purchase our tickets to Italy. The cost per mile came out to $.025 ($250/10,000 miles), so I still came out cheaper than if we bought the miles from Delta directly. To top it off, I not only saved $.01/mile over Delta’s cost, but we also got a couple of magazine subscriptions that were effectively “better than free” when compared to paying $350 to Delta for 10,000 miles with no magazine subscriptions.
At first glance, Example 2 seems like a contradiction to both rule #1 and rule #2. However, I would have renewed the magazines anyway, and I wound up getting a better deal on two year renewals than the publisher was offering by renewing directly with them. Of course, you cannot buy a two year subscription to magazines every time you are a little short on miles, but there are certainly times when it can make sense to spend a little now to get the miles, and to save money in the long-term by “stocking up” on something you would have bought anyway.
Both of the above examples demonstrate that it is possible to earn a considerable number of miles using airline partners, but you are likely wondering how we make the leap from 10,500 miles for some magazines and a printer toner to earning free travel. Keep in mind that these are just two common purchases of the hundreds that the average household makes in a year. When you purchase everything possible through a partner reward site, your miles will add up quicker than you can count them. Additionally, there are nearly always partner promotions offering bonus miles on your airline’s frequent flier program website, and if you agree to allow them to send you emails when you sign up for their frequent flier program, you’ll be the first to know about one-time bonus mile offers from partners. Often the airline itself will offer bonus miles for taking a simple survey, or for allowing them to email you their special fare notifications.
Another popular way to accumulate points is through affiliated bank cards. Most hotels and airlines partner with banks or credit card issuers to create branded cards that earn points for every dollar spent. These are excellent for earning points, and they often offer handsome sign-up bonuses for new customers. A word of caution on these reward cards: most come with modest annual fees. Some waive the fee for your first year, and some don’t. In my experience, the fee is negligible when compared with the point-earning opportunities they present, but this is a personal choice. I often read reviews about the “best” travel reward cards, and in my opinion, the “best” travel reward cards are the ones that allow you to earn points with companies that you actually intend to do business with. I took my immediate and extended family (eight round-trip business class tickets) on a business class trip to Italy by using a combination of techniques, included among them, taking advantage of airline-branded credit and debit cards.
In Example 3 below, you will better see how miles can accumulate quickly through a combination of using airline-branded credit cards and partner reward shopping to accumulate enough points for various rewards:
Example 3: As of the date of publication of this article, the following “limited time offers” are available for Delta Skymiles members: 500 miles for requesting an auto or home insurance quote through Liberty Mutual, 45,000 miles for signing up for a Delta Gold American Express card (and spending $1,000 on it within the first 90 days), 10,000 miles for switching natural gas suppliers to Georgia Natural Gas plus one mile for every dollar spent on natural gas each month (an important note: the rate is actually less than I was paying with my old provider. An increase in rates would have easily erased any advantage to receiving the 10,000 mile bonus (see rule #1), 1,500 miles for signing up with Netflix, 5,000 miles for signing up for a check card with SunTrust bank (I have seen this as high as 15,000 miles for a personal debit card and 25,000 miles for a business debit card), and countless others. I have taken advantage of all of these offers, and within two weeks I was credited with 62,000 miles, with a total cash outlay of $55 (for the check card annual fee). 62,000 miles is more than enough for two round-trip coach tickets to anywhere in the lower 48 states. However, if I stack offers, and add in the 10,500 we earned for the toner and magazine purchases in Examples 1 and 2, plus the points I will earn for making purchases on our branded credit and debit cards, plus the points I earn for my monthly natural gas service (average of 400/month) and purchases made through the Skymiles Shopping site (all made with my branded cards, of course), I would easily have over 100,000 miles in a few short months. This is enough miles for two round-trip first class tickets to anywhere in the lower 48 states, or one round-trip business class ticket to Europe.
It is important to remember that, while I have focused on my hometown airline, that this process is possible with nearly any of the major airlines. American airlines calls their partner rewards affiliates “Non-Travel Partners,” and you can view the earning opportunities here: http://www.aa.com/i18n/AAdvantage/earnMiles/main.jsp?from=Nav . You can also earn AA miles for shopping online just as you currently do at https://www.aadvantageeshopping.com /. Similarly, U.S. Airways calls their program “Partner Offers:” http://www.usairways.com/en-US/dividendmiles/promotions.html . They also support an online store that ties together nearly every major online merchant, giving you the opportunity to earn miles on almost any online purchase that you might make: https://www.dividendmilesstorefront.com /.
So now that we know there are as many earning opportunities as there are exciting places to go visit, you will never look at your monthly gas bill the same. Anyone can accumulate enough rewards for travel: it is no longer relegated to the professional road warrior. I hope you will take a few minutes to familiarize yourself with the above websites and examples because your next vacation is waiting.