Welcome to Class! In this latest section, we have gone over earning points and miles through actually flying and staying in hotels, as well as through using credit cards. However, those are just the top two methods by which one can earn points and miles.
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Given the huge amount of money at stake in the buying and selling of points and miles, there has been quite a bit of innovation in try to earn a cut of that sweet cash. It is my hope to go over the main players in easy ways to earn more points and miles, as well as a brief case-study in how I have used it in the past to get extra miles in my everyday life.
With just a little bit of effort, you can build up quite a balance of points and miles through a variety of means. I’ve earned over 200k American Airline miles alone by using a few simple methods that don’t require a lot of effort.
In this post, I’m going to go over the key rule to earning easy points and miles in your everyday life and the primary vehicles by which you can earn them.
The Key Rule to Earning Easy Points and Miles in Your Everyday Life
I have a Ph.D. in psychology, so I try my best (and probably fail) to take learnings from my work and apply them to my life. They help me in a variety of manners, whether from an efficiency standpoint or just to make me happier.
Many of these processes that I’m about to discuss require an extra step. Many people see these ideas, think “It’s too hard to do this,” and then just forget about them. The key thing to do is to set yourself up for success by making access easier, creating automation of the habit at hand (and thus, habit formation to form more quickly; Lally & Gardner, 2013).
For a more concrete example, consider learning to play guitar. To get good at guitar, you have to practice. Even with the best of intentions, if you keep your guitar in a case in the closet, you aren’t likely to form the habit of practicing. However, if you keep the guitar on a stand in a place you see it regularly, you are likely to form the habit of practicing, because you set yourself up for success in forming the habit.
The same goes for points and miles. Want to earn easy miles that often just require an extra click or two? Set up systems to make them an automatic habit. You’ll rack up miles quickly with whatever you’re doing!
Systems by Which to Earn Easy Points and Miles
What systems are worth setting up to earn easy points and miles? Well, I’m glad you asked! Let’s get right into it:
Points, miles, and cashback rebate portals
One of the easiest ways to earn easy points and miles (and possibly cashback) is through a rebate portal. How they essentially work is that you go to the portal, log-in, and click on the store from which you want to purchase something from. You then go to the website and purchase your items as you normally would. You get the points from your credit card, but you also get points from the portal, which are divvied up in whichever way the portal gives out the rebate.
There are a variety of types of portals: these include miles (these are often associated with airlines), points (these are associated with banks such as Chase, Barclays, or indirectly through Rakuten, American Express), or cashback (such as TopCashBack). You should pick whichever one works best for you. If you’d rather take the cash, do it. If you’d rather take points or miles, do it! It’s really whatever you want. I typically stick with the American Airlines portal, as I am hub-captive to American Airlines and get both redeemable airline miles and Loyalty Points for all of my purchases (which I’ll get to in a later post).
Now, here’s a real life example: I needed to pick up a snow shovel from Home Depot. Instead of going to Home Depot’s website and purchasing the shovel for pickup at my local store, I would go to my preferred rebate portal (for me, it’s American Airlines) and go to the Home Depot page. I would click on “Shop now,” make my purchase, and then collect my American Airlines miles. It’s that simple!
As you can probably guess, different categories payout at different rates, but that’s not that important. What really matters is is that you’re getting extra points, miles, or cashback from your everyday purchases. As I’ll explain later, I’ve generated about 70,000 American Airlines miles from this, which is enough for a one-way business class trip on Qatar Airways Q-Suites.
Because of my broadening connections to the UK, I’ve checked out the British Airways portal as well, and it seems to be top notch.
Extra Credit: Really want to up your points and miles game? Many portals have giftcards.com as a merchant from which you can get cashback or points and miles. You can purchase a giftcard to be emailed to you immediately which you can use at your website of choice. In the above example, I could go through a portal to purchase a giftcard for Home Depot from giftcards.com (getting portal miles) and then go to Home Depot’s website through a portal to make my purchase, paying with my giftcard (and earning portal miles). It’s a classic 2-for-1 schtick. I do this for Instacart sometimes, particularly when Instacart giftcards are on sale, as I’ll get 1 American Airline mile, 1 American Airline Loyalty Point, at least 2 cents worth of credit card points, and 1% back on future giftcards.com purchases.
Looking to compare different portals easily? I use Cashback Monitor.
For shopping portal bonuses, I have links for my two favorite sites (when not available on American Airlines or if they have great cashback bonuses):
Rakuten (spend $30, and we both get $30): CLICK HERE
TopCashback: CLICK HERE
Dining Programs
This is a very niche way of getting extra miles, but a lot of the major airlines also have dining programs that anyone can use. You simply sign-up for an account, put your credit card number, and then it monitors your statements to see if anywhere you’ve eaten at is a part of the program.
Now, it’s important to remember that you’ll usually only get 3 points per dollar spent, and it’s not like you get miles at every restaurant you go to. I tend to view this as a set it and forget it kind of thing. If I happen to eat at a restaurant in the program, amazing! Free miles, but I generally don’t seek out places to go eat based upon them being included in the program.
Of particular note is that TopGolf is now a part of the program. I prefer to buy discounted TopGolf giftcards (you can find them for 20% off at Costco), but good to keep in mind if you forget to buy giftcards or if you don’t have access to discounted cards.
Card-linked Portal
A few years ago, I wrote about how Simply Miles would be a niche way to obtain cheap Loyalty Points in the American Airlines program. This is an example of a card-linked portal.
Basically, companies have decided that there are a few ways to try and drum up extra sales by giving you a few miles when adding them to your card. Similar to the dining initiative, you add your credit card to the program and then activate the offer. You then go and make your purchase and then you get the extra miles.
My two favorite ones are Simply Miles and Rakuten, which has both the cashback portal and an in-store offering (and is good for generating American Express Membership Rewards). I don’t know of any specific to other airlines beyond American Airlines or any other card-linked portals like Rakuten, but they might exist.
Conclusion
In this class, we have talked about three additional ways to generate points and miles from the comfort of your daily life: Rebate portals, dining programs, and card-linked portals. This is by no means exhaustive, but are definitely the easiest ones for most people to use on a day-to-day basis.
Do you plan on using any of these options? How do you plan on using these tools to generate points and miles?
I was inspired to use the Chase reward portal to book a travel activity and got a great deal! Much better value than cash back. Thanks for the tips!
Hi Isabelle! That’s fantastic! Glad that you’re getting use out of it! It’s a great way to get some extra points everyday. Hope you have fun during your activity!