I don’t travel enough to collect frequent flyer miles

There is often a big misconception that you need to travel a lot to collect a lot of frequent flyer miles that will be useful in scoring business and first-class seats. This is completely false. While people who travel a lot do collect a significant number of miles, you can earn more miles on the ground through a variety of different methods. For example, I travel on average once a fortnight and stay between 50 – 80 nights a year in hotels. While that is a lot of travel, 80 – 85% of my miles are collected on the ground through credit card bonuses, credit card spend and airline shopping portals.

You do not need to be a frequent flyer to earn enough points to fly like this

To illustrate what I mean, let’s look at an example. In the UK (at the time of writing), there is a credit card – the American Express Gold card, with a sign-up bonus of 30,000 membership rewards. Just for the record, the card has no annual fee in the first year, but $175 per year from the second year onwards. 30,000 membership reward points convert into many programs, for example British Airways Avios. A return business class ticket with British Airways, from London to Geneva or Paris is 30,000 Avios – which is less than the bonus you receive for signing up for the card.

London - Paris return in business class is only 30,000 Avios and £1 in tax

Another credit card on the market is the American Express Platinum card, which currently has a sign-up bonus of 50,000 membership reward points (with referral). Now, this card does have a hefty annual fee of £575, however, this fee can be easily offset by the many benefits offered by the card. With 50,000 MR Points, you can convert this to Qatar Airways Avios and use this to fly in business class from the UK to the Middle East in the excellent Qatar Airways business class product.

Credit card bonuses can be very lucrative

Another popular way to earn frequent flyer miles is shopping through shopping portals. In the UK, the British Airways Shopping e-Portal has well over 400 retailers, many of which most people regularly shop at. The amount of Avios you can collect depends on the retailer, however, you can earn anywhere from 2 Avios per £ spent to over 20 Avios per £ spent with some retailers.

There are many airline shopping portals globally, including Qantas Frequent Flyer, Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer, American Airlines, United, Delta and many more.

Shopping portals can earn someone a significant stack of miles and points

Apart from the credit card bonuses and airline shopping portals, there are various other methods to earn stack of points and miles. These range from credit card referrals, credit card spend (this is particularly lucrative for business owners putting through a lot of spend on merchandise), newspaper subscription services, car rentals, hotels and more.

In the coming weeks I will be discussing various methods of earning frequent flyer points and using examples to demonstrate.