Most people have a dream, once-in-a-lifetime trip loosely planned in the back of their head. Many would like to steal a kiss while their mate stares on at the Eiffel Tower. Some envision theirselves snorkeling off the Great Barrier Reef. Others want to just spend a week bumming around Maui and learning to surf or they may want to turn a rocky corner and walk up to the majesty that is Petra. Whatever your travel dream is – keep it! With the right planning it can be achieved. It might take you years to get there, maybe even decades, but your everyday life can help you get there and part of this series will help you understand that. My warning concerning collecting miles toward that dream is this: please do not lose sight of the bigger goal. Airlines (somewhat dishonestly) advertise that for a mere 25,000 miles you can earn one free round trip ticket to any commercial airport within the US 48 states. But why would you waste those miles on that?
No one secures a free RT ticket to a domestic location for 25,000. It’s going to cost you 40,000 miles. It just is. At 40,000 banked miles you’re almost halfway to that dream trip to London. However long it took to get the 40,000 miles, double the time and now you’re roughly going to have enough for one free ticket back and forth to a dream location. Now let’s go back and visit the ticket you were going to buy that was going to cost you 40,000 miles for a trip from Indy to Dallas. Wait two weeks and the cost to simply buy the ticket is probably going to be affordable and you’ll earn more miles toward your dream goal. Shoot, in the time it takes to read this blog the price for the ticket might be affordable. The pricing of flights is never stable. What I’m saying is, don’t waste your miles on a easily affordable domestic trip. Are there exceptions to this rule? Of course. If you want to go to West Yellowstone in June it might cost you $600+ to do so. Burn the miles. What about flying to Telluride in November? Some airports are super expensive. Just keep in mind the value that your miles have. Once they’re gone, they’re gone. Was Seattle worth all the hard work to burn all those miles?
Please note, if business travelers stumble upon this blog (which is fairly unlikely), this doesn’t apply to you. To the woman who’s earning 75,000+ miles per year for her job – spend your miles how you want. With your schedule you don’t have to wait all that long to achieve that dream trip. This entry is for the guy like me. The guy that flies a hanful of times per year but can’t fully see the value his miles have. Stick with me and this series, and I’ll show you how you can achieve that dream trip.
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