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Hey there, you’re reading an outdated post! The updated series from April 2015 can be found here.
This is the fifteenth post in a monthlong series. Each post will take about two minutes to read and may include an action item that takes the reader another two minutes to complete. I am writing this for an audience of people who know nothing about frequent flier miles, and my goal is that by the end, you know enough to fly for free anywhere you want to go.
I’ve already talked about a ton of ways to earn miles: card sign up bonuses, category bonuses, online shopping, dining programs, among others.
But there are tons more, a few I’ll highlight in this post, and the rest I’ll tell you where to find.
For simplicity, I’ll be looking at ways to earn United miles in this post, but most of these ways work with every airline’s loyalty program. On United’s homepage, put the cursor over Mileage Plus and click Earn Award miles.
Look at the category marked “When you spend…” and click on its links.
I’ll highlight a few of the most popular deals:
1. Netflix- 2,000 miles for signing up. Current and previous members are ineligible, and other airlines are offering more miles.
2. Fidelity- Earn up to 50,000 miles depending on the size of your deposit into a new non-retirement brokerage account. Thepointsguy has a great post on exploiting this program.
3. Others: you can earn miles by changing your phone company, energy company, buying flowers, joining a wine club, and dozens of other ways.
Some of the options to get miles are incredible values, and some are marginal. For each one you have to do the math of how much the miles are worth and how much time or extra money you’re spending to acquire them.
The point of this post is simply to open a beginners’ eyes to the fact that almost everything you buy could be earning you miles. It may be worthwhile to root around on United’s Earn Miles page and the comparable page of your other favorite airlines.
What if you don’t want to spend time sifting through all those pages? The easiest way to keep abreast of the best opportunities to earn miles is to check Flyertalk’s MilesBuzz! forum daily. In it you’ll find all the best credit card sign up bonuses, portal bonuses, all the deals I’ve mentioned in this post, and much more.
Bonus
There are two other ways to earn miles that I’m not covering anywhere else in this series, so I’ll put them here.
Earn Ultimate Rewards–transferable to United, Southwest, British Airways, and Korean Air–by the thousands by buying an American Express prepaid card and Vanilla Reload cards with your Chase Ink Bold then using your prepaid AMEX for purchases and ATM withdrawals as explained here.
Earn Ultimate Rewards by “buying” free after rebate software from Staples through the Ultimate Rewards portal. You spend money upfront then get a refund by check. This is good for a few thousand Ultimate Rewards per month. I’ll have a post on this soon. For now, see the Frequent Miler’s post.
Just getting started in the world of points and miles? The Chase Sapphire Preferred is the best card for you to start with.
With a bonus of 60,000 points after $4,000 spend in the first 3 months, 5x points on travel booked through the Chase Travel℠ and 3x points on restaurants, streaming services, and online groceries (excluding Target, Walmart, and wholesale clubs), this card truly cannot be beat for getting started!
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Is this Staples deal still valid or did it expire? I tried going through the steps for the Staples deal, and I don’t see any “free after rebate” offer, listing or pricing. It looks like I’d pay the full price if I went through with a purchase.
For Fidelity, the promotion still exists. But probably cannot achieve it via “cycling”.
@Dave, the staples FAR items come and go every week or so. Frequent Miler is usually the first to point it out on his blog. Takes about 5 minutes total to log into UR Mall, go to Staples.com, buy the software, and fill out the online easy rebate. Staples sometimes has discount codes available too that make the total outcome profitable. Always use ink bold/plus for these deals to maximize points.
Hi. Wondering if you can clarify the Fidelity promos. Do I need to keep $100k in the account to get the full 50k miles, or is it the total deposit amount $100k? For example, depositing $100k and let it sit there for 6 month, versus making multiple withdraws/re-deposit (withdrawal/redeposit the same $10k 10 times over for a “total deposit” of $100k—not that obvious, of course!).