4 Ways To Multiply Your Reward Miles

Get to far away lands for free with these tips. Photo: Osaka, Japan by TravellingFool.com

An avid traveler usually focuses on how and when they are going to get to their next destination. Amid all the deals and noise it’s far too easy to stretch your miles and rewards across many programs. The problem with doing this is that it becomes harder and harder to accumulate enough points to actually do anything with them, but you don’t want to give ignore those hard earned points and watch them expire either. Here are some tips to get the most points possible without much effort:

Pick a single airline or hotel

By focusing on a single reward program it is much easier to watch your reward miles multiply and certainly easier to use them to get the vacation you’ve been dreaming of. I’ve always focused on airline miles, especially since I often stay in hostels, but always staying at the same hotel chain works just as well!

Leverage credit card rewards

A lot of people churn credit card rewards, which is the process of opening a card only for the bonus points and then closing it after you’ve received them. While I don’t subscribe to this method I do use credit cards to add to my point stash. Any card I have that has a rewards system I always make sure that I can transfer the rewards for a bonus or 1:1 exchange.

Shop through the rewards program

Most programs, especially with airlines, will have some kind of shopping rewards where by following a link and buying something they will give you a certain number of points per dollar spent. This is an easy way to chip away at your next big reward spend with very little effort.

Take a quick flight just for the miles

I’ve only done this once but it was a ton of fun. I flew to Vegas for the day, about 18 hours, because the flight was super cheap so there was a very good cost per mile (CPM) for the flight. This is the distance you are travelling divided by the cost of the ticket and is often used to determine whether a flight is a good deal or not. On some of the message boards it’s called a “Mileage Run” and can incorporate upwards of 3-5 flights.

An excerpt of this post has been featured on Forbes and the Level Up by Forbes newsletter