✈️ The million-mile challenge

Estimated read time: 4 minutes and 36 seconds

Howdy, and happy Monday from Kuala Lumpur! I’ve been busy planning my trip around the world to earn a MILLION miles - which I’ll tell you more about today.

But before the crazy stuff, let’s talk about some simple but valuable ways to rack up some easy points:

• ✈️ United’s new Mile Play offers

• 💪 Stay in shape and earn Hyatt points

• 🌎 SAS Million-Mile Challenge

✈️ United’s new Mile Play offers

United is back with another round of Mile Play offers.

In case you’ve never heard of them, they’re basically targeted offers that award varying amounts of points for completing straightforward tasks like flying on United a certain number of times or spending a certain amount of money.

Personally, I received a simple offer to earn 7,700 bonus United miles after completing two trips.

The one catch is that each “trip” needs to cost at least $150. Still, it’s not a bad rebate on that amount of spend if you already need to travel.

Since I’ll be in the States in just a few days, this works out perfectly for me. I found a couple of flights to Toronto for about $300.

And while that’s way too expensive for such a short flight, I don’t care - because I have about $270 of United credits that need to be burned by the end of November, which I earned from these two methods:

• Using the airline incidental credits on this card to load up my United TravelBank

• The semi-annual $25 United credit I get from holding this card

Overall, this is a great way to use my credits before they expire while getting some extra value for a trip I already need to take.

You can follow this link and enter your United number to see which offers you have available.

So far, here are some that I’ve seen from others:

• Book one flight for at least $100 and earn 5,000 bonus miles

• Book one flight for at least $225 and earn 12,000 bonus miles

• Book two round-trip flights for $225 and earn 12,000 bonus miles

• Various versions of those offers with different price requirements and awards

So here’s the bottom line:

Just see what you have in your account… if you have any domestic travel coming up, it could be a cheap and easy way to get some outsize value from your flights.

💪 Stay in shape and earn Hyatt points

I don’t know about you, but staying motivated to go to the gym can be tough.

When I’m jet lagged and exhausted after a long flight, the last thing I want to do is go sit on a bike for an hour and exercise.

Unless, of course, there’s an incentive (other than being a healthy human). 😏

Thankfully, Hyatt is offering members bonus Hyatt points for completing Peloton workouts at their properties.

Here’s how this works:

• Link your Hyatt and Peloton accounts

• Earn 100 points each time you complete a 20-minute workout

• Earn a maximum of 1,000 points per month

I love this. First of all, it’s cool to see Hyatt incentivize wellness and exercise like this.

Second, 1,000 extra Hyatt points per month isn’t anything crazy… but it’s also not nothing.

You can book nights at Hyatt for as few as 3,500 points per night, so earning a potential free night every three months or so while staying in shape sounds great to me.

As of now, this partnership is available at over 700 hotels in North America, Europe, and Australia.

You can see the full list here. I’m hoping this rolls out to more Hyatt properties worldwide, as I’d definitely be racking up those points!!

🌎 SAS Million-Mile Challenge

Okay, this is a REALLY fun one, though I suspect few of you will be able to maximize it.

SAS (Scandinavian Airlines) recently joined the SkyTeam alliance after breaking up with Star Alliance.

To celebrate, they’re offering ONE MILLION MILES to anyone who goes all-out with SkyTeam.

Here’s the deal:

• If you fly with various SkyTeam Airlines around the world and attach your SAS loyalty number to the booking, you’ll earn bonus points as follows:

  • 10,000 points for flying with five SkyTeam airlines

  • 100,000 points for flying with ten SkyTeam airlines

  • 1,000,000 points for flying with 15 SkyTeam airlines

• Only cash flights or flights booked with SAS miles are eligible

• Only 16 SkyTeam airlines are eligible…

That’s right. If you fly with 15 of the 16 eligible airlines before December 31st, they’ll give you a million SAS miles.

Since business-class flights from the U.S. to Europe cost just 50,000 SAS miles each, well, I’ll let you do the math. 😉

Now I saw this and thought to myself, “Wow, that’s crazy cool, but it would be so expensive and difficult to fly with basically every single SkyTeam Airline.”

For example, you’d probably have to fly to Europe with Virgin Atlantic and Delta, which is SO expensive…

Oh… wait… no it’s not…

But, I mean, you’d also have to fly a bunch of airlines in Europe, too. Oh wait, but you just flew Virgin Atlantic to Europe… so that’s not too hard either…

But one of the airlines is Kenya Airways… Surely you wouldn’t go all the way to Kenya just for this challenge…. right…?

Oh wait, you don’t have to… they have a fifth-freedom flight from Bangkok to China for $150.

And since you don’t need a visa to enter certain cities in China, this means you can also knock off China Eastern, Xiamen Airlines, and…

…oh god… I have to do this, don’t I?

I mapped out a route starting in Toronto next month that will cover fifteen of the sixteen eligible airlines (all except Aeromexico) over the course of about three weeks.

And the total cost?

$2,130, which includes a couple of non-SkyTeam flights to connect some of the dots.

Is that a lot? Yeah. For sure.

BUT… those million miles can be used to book TWENTY business-class flights from the U.S. to Europe or from Europe to Asia.

That means I’d effectively be paying $107 per flight to fly in twenty lie-flat seats to Europe for the foreseeable future.

Given the individual cost of these flights, that is a STAGGERING amount of value for a little over $2,000 of spending (and some serious jet lag).

Anyway… I know this sounds crazy to the average person. Trust me, I get it.

BUT if you have the time, flexibility, and adventurous spirit, this could be a way to earn a life-changing amount of miles for pennies on the dollar.

If you are seriously interested in this, check out the SAS website here to read all of the details, and make sure you register in the SAS app.

As for my adventure, I haven’t locked it in yet. So please help me:

If I end up doing this, I’ll be sure to keep you posted here in the newsletter… or maybe soon, there will be an even better place to keep you posted…

… but you didn’t hear it from me. 🤫

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That’s all for today, folks! I hope you enjoyed some quick and easy tips along with some… well.. not so quick and easy tips.

This points and miles game really can cover such a wide variety of tactics and opportunities, so I hope there was a little something for everyone today!

See you tomorrow!

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