In the heyday of traveling with miles and points folks who wanted to earn miles quickly would often go on what was called a ‘mileage run.’ The basic idea is to buy long flights for low prices as miles were earned based on the distance you flew. It could mean paying $150 for a back-to-back round-trip flight across the United States to earn 10,000 miles. Unfortunately, those days are mostly gone, with airlines now awarding miles based on the price you paid for the ticket, your class of service, and your status with the airline. Basically, the mileage run is dead.
Undeterred, those of us who continued to pursue cheap flights using miles and points figured out other ways to earn points quickly so that we could achieve our goals: long-haul travel in business or first class. With enough accrued miles (nowadays something like 50-80k within a particular program) one can fly business class across the globe.
That begs the question: what are the best ways to earn points quickly? Check out the list below to determine your next steps.
- Credit card signup bonuses: If you are itching to sleep in a lie-flat seat on your next transatlantic flight, then get a bigger wallet. By spending between $2000-$5000 within three months of being approved for a card you could get enormous sums of points. Cards like the Chase Sapphire Preferred or Reserve offer a great way to get transferable points that could be useful for airlines like United and Southwest or hotels like Hyatt. Various websites offer explanations of the bonuses and ancillary benefits you can get from them. Just watch out – sometimes there are targeted bonuses that only the ‘in crowd’ gets to know – like my recent 250k American Express bonus from a new Business Platinum card I opened. Fair warning, however, if you have issues paying off your credit card bill in full every month – do not sign up for new cards.
- Referral bonuses: Once you have those often-sought credit cards, you can suggest others sign up for the same ones while you earn a kickback for it. Credit card companies are willing to fork over 10-15,000 points if someone uses your referral code and is approved for a card. Those bonuses can add up quickly.
- Category bonuses: The third best way to pump up your points also relates to credit card spending – this time, though, it’s about your regular habits. Basically, many credit cards have “category bonuses.” For example, the American Express Gold card (open the link in incognito mode for a 50% better sign-up bonus!) earns you 4x the points back for all restaurants as well as grocery stores. If you spend $500/month on those purchases, that earns you 24,000 points per year – enough for a one-way economy ticket within the US. By analyzing your spending habits on both personal and business expenses, you could earn more points for the same purchases you already make.
- Random deals: The final big category of ‘get points quick’ options may seem a little scheme-ish. Essentially, there are random deals for which you may not realize you can take advantage. I once went to a Chevrolet dealership to test drive a car to earn 7,500 American Airlines miles – and they didn’t even make me complete the test drive! Additionally, There are programs like Rakuten that offer American Express points as ‘cash back’ from purchases you were already going to make or your credit card company might have its own (like the Chase Shopping portal). If you read more about this you may go crazy so just choose a few websites to pay attention to and you’ll start benefiting immediately.
- Bonus level: If you want to take the red pill and learn how far down the rabbit hole goes, then you should learn about “manufactured spending.” Essentially, it is a concept whereby you use a points-earning credit card to buy a product and eventually turn that product back into liquid cash, allowing you to pay off the credit card you just used. The archetypal story of this was purchasing dollar coins from the mint by the thousands with free shipping, only to deposit them in a bank account and pay off your bill. You can imagine how quickly that was shut down. Nowadays, deals like this pop up on semi-private Buying Groups whereby you purchase an item, ship it to the Group owners, and they pay you back. Be warned, however, sometimes there are issues with payment, shipping, logistics, etc. This option is not for the faint of heart.
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