Somehow I forgot two important pieces of information:
- 1. September is over
- 2. Milenomics passed its 1 month Birthday.
In celebration of #2, I’ve decided to put together this cheat-sheet of sorts, where you can catch up on anything you might have missed from the last 30 days or so. My Goal has been to express the system that is Milenomics in detail, and I hope I’m doing just that.
Milenomics Cheat Sheet:
Milenomics is: The study of miles and points. Part of that study is knowing your travel needs, and another part is knowing what type of traveler you are. Milenomics also asks you to come up with a literal value on your time, your T-Rate. Many posts use this T-Rate to calculate costs. Because Milenomics places a value on your time, a lot of tricks that people use to earn miles and status break down, and aren’t things we Milenomics should be doing.
Earning Miles
Instead we earn our Miles on Milenomics Mileage Runs, like this one currently going on until October 8th. We keep track of all of our costs for these MMRs, and we use our least expensive miles whenever possible. Milenomics believes Miles are not free, because of this we should take what we need, not all that we can. The law of supply and demand of miles was born out of this. Keeping your supply of miles in equilibrium with your travel demand schedule means you don’t waste time and money.
Domestic Travel
To conserve miles we set up two groups of miles, one for domestic travel, and another for International travel. For a while we focused on how to book Domestic tickets using free booking services. When there just aren’t any awards we went over what to do to with the Low Level Hedge. We also covered ways to save with free one ways on Domestic Award tickets using the Hybrid System.
International Travel
International travel is something I’m passionate about. We spent a week going over how to decide on a program, and how to book international awards for AA and UA/US. The importance of knowing when to use a free-one way (always with AA) and when to use a stopover or Open Jaw instead (UA) was next. The Leapfrog method was introduced, whereby you spend time working on two international awards at once, always looking towards future travel needs. We got into some higher level award bookings with operation twist, and the three best places to live for using AA Miles.
Elite Status (BYOE)
Elite status is somewhat overrated to Milenomics. I’ll walk that back a bit–Being your Own Elite (#BYOE) is important, but the value of Airline Elite Status is not very important in Milenomics. To date no one has taken me up on the offer of your very own Milenomics Elite card (Titanium level no-less!), the offer still stands.
Credit Cards
Credit cards are obviously important to Milenomics. We went over the Credit Card Calendar, and applied for cards in September that will allow us to earn up to 32 miles per dollar for the next three months. When the 11 month itch starts, strategies to avoid Annual Fees will be important to know. Milenomics loves Chase UR, but it doesn’t love the Chase Sapphire Preferred. Instead the Chase Freedom was shown to be a better long term choice. And finally when you do close a card ideas on how to keep your miles and points were discussed when we went over Open vs. Closed Credit card systems.
Philosophy
The Philosophy of Milenomics is an ongoing series. The two questions I hear the most are “Why are frequent Flyer Miles so hard to use” and “Miles are Too Much Trouble.” The answers will hopefully keep you involved in Miles.The basics are that we’re retraining your brain, and approaching MMRs with an open and positive attitude. We’ll also continue to debrief deals after they are shut down, as we did with the Chase Gift Card debrief. Finally, the epic question: First class, Business Class, or coach was tackled with a surprising answer.
Thanks for reading, if you have questions, leave a comment, or find me on twitter (@Milenomics), or Facebook and also via email: samsimontravel@gmail.com[rule]
Thank you! I feel like you wrote this post with me in mind! We left on a month long vacation in late August and so I fell down on my blog reading, and I vowed to catch up specifically with yours when I came back. (Many other blogs I could skim through, but yours requires more attention than that.) I will start at the top and work my way down.
I appreciate your analytical approach and “scientific”/mathematical analyses, and while I have not been a big fan of much of the content on F2B, I do think your blog makes it better.
Thanks again.
Great recap! I have some catch-up reading to do. As you already know I come from the mileage running side of the family (or at least that’s where I started) but am trying to get catch up on manufactured spending game as well. You really have a wonderful blog here.
Love your blog, congrats on one month! It’s been refreshing to read posts, I’m learning from them so thank you. I love that you don’t push certain cards because it doesn’t make sense at this time of year, it’s rare that I see a blogger talk strategies or every other rounds of apps for a husband and wife team. I appreciate the content.