CNN Travel Readers – I’m thrilled that you’ve joined the 3,000 plus daily Million Mile Secrets readers today!
I’m just a regular guy who has a regular job and drives a regular car. And I don’t travel much for work.
But I’ve managed to collect ~900,000 airline miles and hotel points this year, and I earned almost all of them without flying or staying in hotels. I use those miles and points to have Big Travel with Small Money.
What is Big Travel with Small Money?
Quite simply, it is traveling more often and paying up to 99% less than the regular price for such experiences. Sometimes it means traveling to exotic new countries in First Class which would otherwise cost $15,000 or more. And sometimes it means visiting family in Florida. Sometimes it is staying in fancy hotels, and sometimes it is staying in the only hotel in town.
Here are some of the ways Emily and I have had Big Travel with Small Money:
- Flying the girl of my dreams to London to ask her to marry me using American Airlines miles (this is my favorite blog post)
- Flying in British Airways First Class for a few hundred dollars & American Airlines miles. To put that in perspective, the cheapest economy tickets are close to a thousand dollars!
- Flying in a private First Class suite on Jet Airways for a few hundred dollars & American Airlines miles
- Taking weekend getaways to Miami, Washington, DC, Vancouver, and many other places using miles and points
All this is possible by collecting airline miles and hotel points and my readers (this blog would be very uninteresting without its terrific readers!) and I share our experiences earning and redeeming miles and points on the blog.
Travel Hacking
Collecting miles and points is sometimes referred to as “Travel Hacking”, but don’t worry, we’re not doing anything illegal! All we do is figure out ways to accumulate miles and points and, later-on, how to best redeem them.
Credit Cards
By far the easiest way to accumulate lots of miles and points is through credit card sign-up bonuses, which the kind folks at CNN Travel interviewed me about.
I did blush a bit when they wrote:
“Dubash is a pro when it comes to using credit cards to accumulate miles.”
There are lots of folks on FlyerTalk, MilePoint, and on the many different blogs who helped me along the way!
Other Ways
But there are also lots of other ways to earn miles and points, such as by signing up for email promotions from airlines, liking them on Facebook, or by taking part in the US Air Grand slam, where you could earn up to a 100,000 miles by making small purchases from different US Airway partners.
- So click around the blog. Don’t worry – there are no booby traps!
- Read my interviews with other miles and points bloggers to learn more about our hobby.
- Ask me questions via email!
- Be part of the 3,000+ readers who receive daily blog posts in your email inbox or RSS. Or follow me on Facebook or Twitter!
Have fun and soon you’ll be like the many folks who can travel anywhere in the world for a fraction of the cost because of their miles and points, but who just don’t have enough time off to do it.
If you want to know more about me, check out my interview with Gary from View from the Wing and my About page.
Thanks for stopping by!
Daraius & Emily
Very nice article! May I ask how did you get extra miles for your dry cleaning be registering with the network/area? Thanks.
Congratulations and 200% agree with everyone here.
Excellent interview, like many of us we don’t travel for business but yet earn our miles by Credit Card bonus sign ups.
Congratulations Daraius!! Well done!!!
Kudos and well done Darius & Emily.