Reader question on million miles lifetime gold status

 Million Miles Quest, questions and answers  No Responses »
Nov 162009
 

I received this question:

“Hi, I was doing some research on the american advantage miles and ran across your website. I was just wondering what it actually means to have lifetime gold status. Do you get benefits, discounts, etc? I have personally racked up alot of miles by churning through the citi cards just to get free flights. I was never aware that they kept track of the total accumulated over the lifetime of the account. Anyway, good luck if you are still trying to get there!! ”

- Derek C

I replied with:

It’s an unpublished benefit that once you reach 1 million miles on American Airlines you get lifetime Gold Status and lifetime Platinum status at two million miles. AA is the only airline I know of that counts all miles earned regardless of source although this could change at any time or could have changed at any time. I’m not actively pursuing the million miles at the moment by churning the citi cards because I enjoy the big credit lines but I did accumulate around 100,000 miles this year through credit card charges alone.

For the benefits of each status check the official AAdvantage site.

I’m always happy to answer questions that are sent in. One of the reasons I’m not actively pursuing million mile status on AAdvantage is that I figure with just continued credit card usage and occasional flights I’ll hit that million mile mark sometime in the future. The future of the unpublished benefit and American Airlines itself is uncertain so I’ll just continue to earn miles and use them like I would with any other airline.

 Posted by dan at 10:27 am

The Shake Weight

 funny  No Responses »
Nov 112009
 

I cannot believe that this is a real product. It’s called the shake weight and I’m pretty sure nobody is naive enough to buy it and use it anywhere remotely within another person’s eyesight. Please watch the following infomercials and you’ll see the obvious innuendo.

1:19 into the video has got to be the most memorable.

Here’s advert for women:

 Posted by dan at 11:26 am

Mysterious Big Spender in Manhattan

 interesting  2 Responses »
Nov 102009
 

I was reading an article about a wallet slimming trick and then wandered over to another article (I tend to do this a lot) about a mysterious Malaysian guy in his 20s who appears to be splurging everywhere in Manhattan from $160,000 bar tabs to a $100,000 a month apartment. Read the article for some other interesting tidbits about his spending habits. I did some searching and the NY Post does have two articles related to his big spending habits and recent birthday in Vegas among other things. There’s pictures of him in those last two articles linked.

I’m not the type of person that hates or is jealous of others for having wealth. I believe there’s nothing wrong at all with enjoying your wealth. What piques my interest the most is not much is known about Taek Jho Low. Generally anybody with a big spending habit who rolls around Manhattan with a caravan of Escalades and spends the amount of money this guy does is on a lot of people’s radars.

Hopefully there’s a conclusion to this story whether he’s a son of a wealthy Malaysian, a really good con artist, or really a North Korean official. I highly doubt that his wealth is self-made because of his age and spending habits. Anybody have any good speculations?

 Posted by dan at 9:48 am

British Airways 100,000 miles credit card bonus

 deals  No Responses »
Nov 062009
 

Chase is offering a 100,000 miles on British Airways sign-up bonus. It’s a pretty good deal, even the NY Times is calling this the best credit card sign-up bonus ever.

  • 50,000 miles after the first purchase
  • Additional 50,000 miles after spending $2,000 within 3 months

There’s a $75 annual fee but that’s chump change in comparison to the sign-up bonus (even if you only get the 50,000).

See all the different ways you can spend 100,000 miles on British Airways. I believe they are good for two round trip economy tickets to various destinations in Europe. I already applied for the card and will get a decision within 15 days.

application link (note that a lot of articles are citing that this is not open to non-members of British Airway’s frequent flyer program until Nov 16th. so apply at your own risk before then)

 Posted by dan at 8:30 am

Kool-Aid Pickles?

 interesting  No Responses »
Nov 052009
 

I”m a big fan of pickles. Generally I prefer kosher dills but I recently discovered the existence of kool-aid flavored pickles. I don’t know if I want to try one anytime soon as I have mixed feelings.

This is a regionally thing in the south and being from the NYC tri-state area I’ve never encountered anything like this. Apparently the New York Times found kool-aid pickles so interesting they already did a scoop on them back in May 2007. Check out “A Sweet So Sour: Kool-Aid Dills” over at the NY Times website.

There’s a bunch of different recipes for kool-aid pickles and I found one video on YouTube although the author doesn’t seem to enjoy his own batch all that much.

 Posted by dan at 10:35 am

Dealbreakers

 Uncategorized  No Responses »
Nov 042009
 

My friend sent me this hilarious tumblr about “dealbreakers”. What’s a dealbreaker? When you meet someone and something you learn about them that just repulses you. Follow the link and read and you’ll get it. If you watch 30 rock you’re already on top of things as Tina Fey’s character writes a book about dealbreakers.

Here are some of my favorites:

 Posted by dan at 6:27 pm

Winning at the airfare game

 Uncategorized  No Responses »
Nov 042009
 

You’re the consumer, if you’re smart then you realize it’s your job to get the lowest price possible on airfare to get to where you’re going. The airlines are in business to make money, that means it’s their goal to get you to pay as much as possible. Getting the best airfare involves so many factors that’s it’s almost impossible to win at the game (unless you just decide to stay at home).

A month or so ago I’ve been planning a group trip with a bunch of my friends the weekend before Christmas. When everyone was okay with the itinerary I started looking for the cheapest tickets out of the three NYC airports (EWR, LGA and JFK). Generally it’s easy to get the cheapest airfare on any given day but the flight was 2 months away. The tricky part is trying to time when you’ll be able to book the lowest fare between now and the flight.

The first tool I used was SideStep which aggregrates airfare from numerous sources and gives me a pretty good picture at what the lowest fares are at the time. The cheapest flight I found was $325.

The second tool I use is Bing’s travel search engine which acquired FareCast. There you can learn what the chances are if the lowest fares are going higher or lower based on past historical data and other factors. Since the greater NYC airports are in their prediction markets the search gave me an indiction to wait since fares have a good chance of dropping within the next 7 days.

The third tool I use is the website of the airline who was offering the lowest fare. In this case it was Continental. I plugged in the itinerary which I found earlier on SideStep and before you even get deep into the booking process you can see the seat map which told me that over 60% of the seats on the planes were not even assigned! Although people are ticketed but not assigned seats this told me that a good portion of the seats on the plane was unsold. Therefore I could afford to wait.

Over the next couple days the lowest airfares I could find actually rose and continued to rise! Over the course of a week it went from $325 to $380. A lot of my friends started saying that they should just book already before prices rise even higher. I told them to hold off since I firmly believe that those prices are way too high. Over the next couple days prices fluctuated up and down but nowhere near what I was comfortable paying.

Then finally it went down to $269 after two weeks and I booked the flight thinking it was a short term drop so I better lock in the price. It continued to stay at that price for 4-5 more days and then dropped another $15! I’m not gonna cry over $15 since I have the peace of mind that my itinerary is booked already. I’m glad I paid 30% less than originally planned. In the end all it took was patience whichs mean you should plans your vacations and trips as far in advance as possible to watch airfares (but not book them) and it helps if you are flexible with the dates a little bit (I wasn’t).

 Posted by dan at 12:35 pm
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