Another update to my million miles quest. January was an okay month in that I accumulated 3,647 miles. 500 miles from E-Rewards for filling out surveys and 3,147 from credit card spending.
Total miles accumulated is now 31,044. I’m still a long way from my goal of a million miles but I’ve just begun. I’m looking into the possibility of doing some mileage runs this summer. 968,956 miles to go!
The last time I updated was at the end of August and my mileage total then was 23,350. Since then I haven’t made much progress as I haven’t flown anywhere or been actively looking to obtain miles.
I earned an additional 4,047 miles exclusively through credit card purchases bringing my total to 27,397.
Summary:
Citi AAdvantage Mastercard – 26562 miles
Points.com – 10 miles
E-Rewards – 500 miles
Opinion Place – 325 miles
Total miles earned in 2007: 27,397
So I have enough for a flight but I still have 972,603 miles to earn before I hit that million mile mark. I know at this rate it’ll take me 40 years or so but hopefully as I age I’ll be able to charge more everyday expenses and fly more often.
This is the August 2007 update of my Million Miles Quest.
For those of you that don’t know, my million miles quest is a personal goal to achieve a million miles on American Airlines’ AAdvantage program. Achieving a million miles gets you gold status for life. It couldn’t hurt to have a ton of miles to use every now and then either. I chose AA because they allow all miles regardless of however they’re earned to count towards your million miles.
I’m going to detail how many miles I earned this month and by what method those miles were earned.
UFB Direct
I opened the UFB Direct AAdvantage Checking and savings but never got around to setting up a real deposit for those accounts. I tried to do PayPal transfer to fake a couple of direct deposits but UFB doesn’t recognize them as direct deposits, there goes that.
Citi AAdvantage Mastercard – 22515 miles earned
I got a huge boost in miles when I signed up for the Citi AAdvantage Mastercard. You get 20,000 bonus miles after spending $250 on the card. You also get 1 mile for every dollar spent on the card. I charged tuition and all my lunches at work on this card. For gas and supermarket expenses, I use another credit card that nets
Points.com – 10 miles earned
Points.com has a 10 miles bonus just for signing up. You can track your balances from multiple frequent flier accounts on Points.com. Before I decide I was going to dedicate all my miles aquiring to AAdvantage I had multiple frequent flier accounts at several airlines so points.com lets me keep track of most of them easily.
E-Rewards – 500 miles earned
At e-rewards, I filled out random surveys from what soft drinks I like to what shaving products I use. It took about 3 weeks of filling out surveys here and there to earn 500 miles.
Opinion Place – 325 miles earned
Opinion Place involved filling out two surveys that took about 30-45 minutes each to complete. Miles were credited in about 2-3 weeks. I can come back about every 2 weeks to fill out more surveys.
Recap – Total of 23,350 miles earned this month.
My Million Miles Quest finally kicks off to a start. This isn’t a bad start, however I’m still 976,650 miles from my goal. The large number of miles earned this month was essentially due to the 20,000 miles credit card bonus. I’m planning on applying for the business AAdvantage credit card for another bonus sometime in the next several months also.
I’ve known from the beginning that most of my miles were going to be earned via credit card spending. However I only charge purchases where the most cashback I can earn is 1% on another card. A million miles is probably going to be a long long time away, but at least I’m starting towards that goal now at 20 years old.
In the past two months I joined two sites that offer rewards in exchange for filling out surveys. I decided a few extra free miles to pad my AAdvantage account wouldn’t be too bad.
E-Rewards offers other various other rewards besides miles also. Each survey pays you around $3.50 to $5 in e-rewards currency. $25 in e-rewards nets you 500 miles.
Opinion Place offers miles or cash for filling out surveys. The amount of miles earned per survey vary greatly as it depends on the time estimated for you to complete that survey.
My Million Miles Quest update for August is going to be posted later today. I detail how many miles I managed to accumulate in those two programs for August.
The total miles you’ll earn for filling out surveys will be insignificant but it’ll count as activity and reset the expiration clock on your account. So if you don’t plan on redeeming your current miles for awhile, filling out a survey here and there for extra miles might not be a bad idea.
Fill out an extremely short survey that took me about 5 minutes to receive 250 AA miles. Miles take 8-10 weeks to be credited to your account.
This is an update in my million miles quest.
I finally got my UFB Direct account kit in the mail on Monday. I added the accounts to PayPal and verified them yesterday. The next step is to send in the signature form and deposit $200 into each of the accounts. I should then get credited 1,000 miles for each account.
Here’s how I can earn more miles for the mileage checking.
For an additional 5,000 miles I’ll have to use the bill pay service for 12 months.
For an additional 5,000 miles I’ll have to maintain 3 months of direct deposit.
For the mileage savings I’ll have to maintain 3 months of direct deposit to earn an addition 5,000 miles.
I think the best solution here is to use PayPal to push as a direct deposit for 3 months and see if the 12 months of bill pay can be done without much hassle.
Today I’ve decided I want to earn a million miles with American Airlines and earn gold status for life… or at least start on the process. Why do I want to do this?
In a serious of posts entitled “Million Miles” you can follow along on my progress of 0 miles to a million miles. I’ll detail my progress and the bonuses I use to help me along the way. You can use the information to pad your own mileage account.
Here’s the first one:
UFB Direct
11,000 miles with their Mileage Checking
6,000 miles with their Mileage Savings
Hint: Use PayPal to meet the direct deposit requirements.
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