NOTE: Please also see a newer post: Hacking Hawaii Revised.

Last week, Mrs. Miler and I were at a dinner with friends when the topic of Hawaii came up. They’ve never been, but they would like to. Their kids have been begging to go, but they feel they need to save their money for future college expenses. I totally understand that, but it’s a shame. I’ve been to many wonderful places around the world, but Hawaii remains my favorite. The photo above is from a trip my family took to the town of Poipu on the island of Kauai. The water on the left, in this photo, is an amazing snorkeling beach. A few hundred feet to the right is a terrific boogie-boarding beach. From there you can ride the waves, watch sea turtles swim, and sometimes watch dolphins play. About a mile further along, are amazing sandstone cliffs which make for exciting and awe inspiring hikes. And all of that is just in the small town of Poipu! Venture out a bit more to see beautiful waterfalls, hike the Waimea canyon, and so much more! And, that’s just Kauai!

So, all of this ruminating gave me an idea and a challenge: find a realistic way for this family of four to go to Hawaii for free.

Hawaii is not an easy destination for this challenge. It’s almost impossible to find low award availability for reasonable dates and times, especially considering our friends would need to book for four. Remember, this needs to be realistic, so the dates of travel are fairly rigid: their kids are both in school so they need to go to Hawaii during a school break. Further, since they live in frigid Michigan, it would be nice if they could go in the winter to get away from the cold. Winter also happens to be the best time to spot Humpback whales in Hawaii. All of this means that they would ideally go during the kids’ winter break from school in February.

For experienced travel hackers, free travel to Hawaii is actually quite easy. The trick is to sign up for lots of credit cards which offer huge sign-up bonuses in the form of airline miles and travel points. Once enough miles and points have been accrued, the trick is to book award flights and hotel nights at the lowest possible cost in the form of miles and points. This is great, but it takes a while if you’re starting from scratch; and it takes a real commitment to learn the ins and outs of credit card signups, minimum spend requirements, award travel booking, and the like.

Instead, this post is for the real family: the one that doesn’t want to wait a year while accumulating points, and doesn’t want to sign up for dozens of cards. And, to make this challenge even harder, I’m going to assume that this family isn’t interested in gift card schemes for meeting minimum credit card spend requirements (e.g. How to meet minimum credit card spend AND get 50,000 to 100,000 extra miles, and How to meet credit card spend thresholds without breaking a sweat). In other words, I won’t ask them to sign up for credit cards requiring minimum spend thresholds that they can’t afford.

Assumptions

In order to make this work, I need to make some reasonable assumptions:

• This family has good credit ratings and has not recently applied for Chase credit cards.
• Both mom and dad will participate in the solution.
• Mom and dad always pay their full credit card balance each month (and will continue to).
• Mom and dad each spend, on average, $1000 per month using credit cards. Even if they don’t spend that much, today, the assumption is that they can by using their cards for all purchases possible: groceries, utilities, cable & phone, restaurants, coffee, etc.
• Mom and dad are willing to sign up for three credit cards each over the course of the year.

The Solution

(Updated on 10/29/2011 due to an error in the original post)

Instead of trying to accumulate airline miles, mom and dad will purchase a vacation package from Delta Vacations. I’ve written before about how it’s possible to save on airfare by buying a vacation package. For example, I found a package that matches up with their kids’ winter break that includes airfare for four and a mid size car rental for a total of $3,116. If they were to book airline tickets alone, without a package, the best current rate for the same dates would be $3660. So, by adding a car, they will save $544! You’re probably thinking that sounds good, but doesn’t sound free. You’re right! Read on:

Mom and dad will use credit card signup bonuses to pay for this trip. Additional credit card signups will provide lodging. There are a few big advantages to this approach over collecting and using miles for airfare. First, there is no need to wait before booking. Mom and dad can start planning their trip right away. Second, everyone in the family will earn airline miles from this trip! This is a long flight, so by the time they are done, the family will be well on their way to accumulating enough airline miles for another trip! Third, this approach includes a rental car. In my experience, to get the most out of a Hawaiian vacation, you really do need a car.

Step by Step

Mom and dad can follow these steps to get their vacation for free:

STEP 1: Sign up for two credit cards each

In one day, both mom and dad should sign up for these cards (note: I do not receive referral fees for any credit card signups):

Chase Sapphire Preferred

After $3000 of spend in three months, this card you will give mom and dad 50,000 Ultimate Reward points each which can be easily and instantly transferred to airline miles, hotel points, or cash.

Chase Marriott Preferred Visa

After your first purchase with this card, mom and dad will each get 70,000 Marriott Rewards points and a certificate for one free night in any category 1 through 4 Marriott!

STEP 2: Call the bank’s reconsideration line if either card is not approved

There is a chance that Chase’s automated system will deny one of the applications. Assuming mom and dad have good credit, though, they will almost certainly be approved once they talk to a real person. So, if either card is not approved, call Chase at this number: 888-245-0625. See also What to do when your credit card app is denied.

STEP 3: Use the cards!

When you receive the Marriott card, make a purchase right away: buy a coffee, fill up your gas tank, buy a $1 Amazon gift card, whatever. It may take a while to get your Marriott points so you want to get this started as soon as possible. Once you have made the first purchase, put away the card. Instead, start putting all of your spend on the Sapphire Preferred card in order to ensure reaching $3000 of spend in three months.

STEP 4: Book your Delta Vacation

Go to deltavacations.com and book a “Flight + Car Rental” vacation. You might have to play with the dates a bit to find the best price. For example, in order to find the $3116 fare, I put in a Sunday to Sunday trip. Returning from Hawaii is an overnight ordeal, though, so the kids will miss one day of school (Monday) if you do this.

Another trick to note has to do with picking your rental car. You might think that to get the best deal you should take the smallest car they offer. Look carefully at the rates, though, and you might find a better car for the same or even less money.

When you get to the payment screen, note that you can pay all at once or pay a deposit now and the rest a few months later.

If you can’t afford to cover the full amount right now from your savings, then just pay the deposit. Either way, make sure to use your Sapphire card since it will help you complete your minimum spend and you will get double bonus points when you use your card for travel purchases.

STEP 5: Book your hotel

Once both Mom and Dad receive their bonus Marriott points they will have a total of 140,000 points to use for redeeming free hotel nights. Marriott has many great resorts in Hawaii and pretty good availability for rewards, so you should be able to find something very nice. If you need a few more Marriott points, keep in mind that the bonus points from your Sapphire cards can be transferred directly to Marriott points! Another option is to find points plus cash options. For example, I found that at the Kauai Marriott Resort (see photo below), you could stay for the week for a total of 150,000 points plus $50 per night. Not bad!

STEP 6: Pay for the vacation, partially, with points

When it comes time to pay the balance of the Delta Vacation package, both Mom and Dad will hopefully have met the minimum spend requirements on their Sapphire cards and have received their 50,000 bonus points each. In order to meet the minimum spend, they had to charge $3000 to each card, so those purchases would have amounted to additional points. So, mom and dad will have, at least, 106,000 points at this time. Redeem those points for cash in order to get $1060 back. Use this money to help pay for the vacation package.

STEP 7: Sign up for one more card

With this link, the Chase Freedom card offers $300 cash back after spending only $500 in 3 months. As a rewards card, it gives 1% cash back on all purchases and 5% cash back on specific types of purchases (the types change every 3 months – currently it is for department stores, movie theaters, and charities). After having met the minimum spend on the Chase Sapphire cards, Mom and Dad should each sign up for this card and begin using it for all transactions until they have spent $500.

Wrap Up

For this seven night Hawaiian vacation including airfare for four, a rental car, and resort hotel, mom and dad will shell out a total of $3,116. Thanks to Chase credit card bonuses, though, they will receive a total of $1,660 cash back. So, in total, mom and dad will spend $1,456 which amounts to $364 per person for a fantastic trip to Hawaii! Additionally, each family member will earn approximately 10,000 airline miles that can be used towards future travel! If, instead, this family were to pay for this entire vacation (including lodging at the Kauai Marriott resort), it would cost $4,838 from Delta Vacations or much more if they booked the flights and hotel separately. With this plan, they would save, at least, $3,382!

So, this plan doesn’t quite get the family of four a free trip to Hawaii, but it makes it much more affordable. If you’re really committed to the “free” part, all it really takes is a few more credit card signups, such as this Citibank offer which will give mom and dad 50,000 Citi ThankYou points each after $2500 of spend. Another is the Chase Ink Bold which offers 50,000 Ultimate Rewards points after $5000 of spend in three months. If you go for this card, I’d recommend doing a single application and work together to meet the minimum spend. By redeeming the points from each of these cards (two Citibank cards and one Chase Ink Bold), you will get back over $1500 in cash and gift cards, and now your Hawaii vacation is truly free!

Do you have ideas or suggestions to improve this plan? Please contribute and post your ideas in the comments below!

In part one of this series, I introduced the idea of the quest for the perfect perpetual point machine. A perpetual point machine (PPM) is a scheme in which, after a little push, hotel points and/or airline miles are accrued over and over again, forever, with little or no additional work. In itself, this sounds great, but I also introduced some rules that would be necessary for the machine to be perfect:

1. The PPM may take effort and money to setup initially, but must not take much effort or money to keep it going.
2. The PPM must be able to generate hundreds of thousands of points per year.
3. The PPM must do no harm.
4. The perfect PPM would also somehow do some good for the world, not just for the recipient of the points.

I’m not going to claim that I’ve found the perfect PPM, yet, but today I will introduce a scheme for an imperfect PPM that could nevertheless result in hundreds of thousands of miles for anyone who wants to put in the effort. This scheme capitalizes on an opportunity I’ve written about before to double-dip on Ultimate Rewards bonus points for shopping at Sears. Through the Ultimate Rewards Mall, you can buy Sears gift cards and earn 10 bonus points for every dollar spent. These bonus points can be redeemed directly for cash (at a penny each), so you can essentially buy Sears gift cards for 10% less than face value. The double-dip comes when you go through the Ultimate Rewards mall a second time and purchase Sears merchandise using the gift card. Even though the mall makes it look like you need to use your Chase credit card for purchases, several readers have asserted that you will receive bonus points for purchases that use gift cards. I am testing this theory and will post with the results as soon as I can. Assuming it is true, it means that it is possible to buy anything you want from Sears online and receive 20% back in the form of Ultimate Rewards points. A nice little bonus is that if you sign up for the Sears Shop Your Way program (it’s free), you will get an additional 1% back in the form of Shop Your Way points. So you’ll really get 21% back for all Sears online purchases.

NOTE: AS OF NOVEMBER 2011, SEARS PURCHASE BONUSES HAVE DROPPED TO 6 POINTS PER DOLLAR

The Sears Double Dip Machine

This Perpetual Point Machine idea is to buy items from Sears and re-sell them at lower cost, over and over. You can discount these products up to 21% off and still come out ahead. How? By using the Chase Sapphire Preferred card for its outstanding rewards. In addition to 1 Ultimate Reward point for every dollar spent, this card also offers a year-end bonus of 7% of all points earned. If you were to buy and sell $10,000 of Sears merchandise per month without profit, you would still earn 10,000 base points per month from credit card spend and even more thanks to the year-end bonus: Through the double-dip, each 10,000 of spend amounts to 200,000 UR extra points plus 10,000 base points. Your end of year bonus, then, would be 7% of 210,000, which equals 14,700 bonus points per month. So, in total, you would earn 24,700 UR points each month for a grand total of 296,400 points per year!

This probably sounds like a ridiculous amount of work in exchange for a few hundred thousand points. Consider this option, though, to make it much easier: list for sale high end, low margin products on eBay or Amazon before you have bought them. When someone orders an item from you, go through the Ultimate Rewards portal to Sears to buy enough gift cards to cover the purchase. Then, go through the mall again to purchase the item (using the gift cards) and have the item sent directly to the buyer. That way you never have to deal with having unsold stock on hand, and you don’t have to worry about packing and shipping! By concentrating on high end products, you will have fewer sales to deal with. If, for example, you can sell just five $2000 laptops or TVs per month this way, you would do well.

When pricing your items, you need to account for all of your costs: vendor fees from eBay or Amazon, sales tax, shipping fees, etc. I’ve done the math for a few sample products and have found that it is still possible to undercut the cheapest vendors (on Amazon, for example), but there isn’t much room for error. Also, it is critical to find items where Sears has a good price relative to the competition. Otherwise you’re out of luck.

Why this machine is imperfect

1. It takes more work to setup and keep going than I’d like. Personally, I wouldn’t want to deal with cranky customers who have shipping problems, product questions, and returns.
2. Sears will catch on. At some point, Sears will figure out the double-dip scheme and close the loophole.
3. This PPM does not fit the “do no harm” rule. At the very least it hurts Sears’ margins. At worst, they lose money on every one of these sales.

Still Searching

Personally, I’m not planning to do the Sears Double Dip machine. How about you? Instead, I’ve been working on another scheme that could meet all of the criteria for a perfect perpetual point machine. I’m happy to report that this scheme does not involve Sears or Ultimate Rewards in any way. On the down-side, it has been harder to get it going than I had thought. I won’t reveal the details of the new scheme just yet, but I’ll give a small hint: I put together a new website called “Best Travel Hacks“. This site is itself an attempt at a perpetual point machine. Yes, “Best Travel Hacks” is, itself, a travel hack! I think, though, that people will find it useful as well. Look for more info soon.

See also:

• The Perfect Perpetual Point Machine, Part 1
• The Perfect Perpetual Point Machine, Part 3
• All Perpetual Point Machine (PPM) Articles

As I’m sure you know, credit card companies frequently offer huge sign-up bonuses. NerdWallet, for example, lists seven current bonus offers worth at least $500 for signing up for credit cards and meeting minimum spend thresholds. Signing up for the cards is the easy part. Meeting the minimum spend thresholds can be harder. Recently I posted a way to meet minimum spend thresholds without breaking a sweat. In that post I detailed how to easily buy and liquidate American Express gift cards in order to meet your spend requirements. For some, this will still be the best way to go, but in this post I’ll offer up another option that will let you meet the spend requirements and earn huge numbers of extra bonus miles.

In previous posts I’ve talked about how the Chase Ultimate Rewards mall offers 10 extra points per dollar spent at Sears. See, for example, this post or this one. What I didn’t know at the time was that you do not need to use your Chase card when making purchases through the Ultimate Rewards mall. A reader named Scott pointed this out to me yesterday. He has reported success in going through the mall to buy Sears gift cards, and then going through the mall a second time to make Sears purchases using the gift cards. What this means is that he was able to get not just 10 extra points per dollar spent at Sears, but 20! This amounts to, at minimum, a 20% rebate on Sears’ purchases since Ultimate Rewards points can be redeemed for cash for a penny each. Better yet, use the points to purchase travel via Ultimate Rewards and the same points amount to a 25% rebate. And, best of all, if you value airline miles at 1.5 cents each, you can transfer Ultimate Rewards points directly to airline miles, which then amounts to a 30% rebate! As if that wasn’t enough, remember that if you have the Chase Sapphire card, you will get an annual bonus of 7% for all points earned during the year. So, those 20 extra points earned for Sears’ purchases will net you an extra 1.4 points per dollar spent at the end of the year! Or, if you have the Chase Ink Bold card and a Chase checking account, instead of a 7% bonus, you can get a 20% end of year points bonus!

So, the basic idea here is to use this trick to meet your minimum credit card spend and get huge numbers of extra miles! For the purpose of this example, I will assume that you signed up for the Starwood Preferred Guest (SPG) card which requires $5000 in spend to get the full 25000 points. I’m purposely picking a non-Chase card just to show that it is possible. Adjust the directions below to your situation. Wherever I say to use the SPG card, use instead whatever card you have for which you need to meet spend requirements. Also, this example assumes you need to spend $5000. For your card, you may need to spend less, which is perfectly fine. OK, so with that out of the way, here is how to do it, step by step:

NOTE: AS OF NOVEMBER 2011, SEARS PURCHASE BONUSES HAVE DROPPED TO 6 POINTS PER DOLLAR

Step 1: Make sure you have access to the Ultimate Rewards Mall

If you have the Chase Sapphire Preferred credit card or the Chase Ink Bold business charge card, then you’re good to go. If you don’t have either, I highly recommend signing up for one (or both) since they offer great sign-up bonuses, and they offer great rewards for day to day spend as well. Once you get one of these cards, make sure you can sign into your account at chase.com. From there, you should see a link to Ultimate Rewards.

Step 2: Sign up for the Starwood Preferred Guest (SPG) card (or any new credit card offering a big bonus)

If you haven’t already picked out which credit cards to sign up for, or if you’re still wondering whether it’s a good idea, you’ll find a few useful links here.

Step 3: Browse to the Ultimate Rewards Mall

Browse to www.ultimaterewards.com/mall and login with your Chase ID and password. Find and click on Sears to shop at the Sears online store:

Step 4: Buy $5000 worth of Sears gift cards using your SPG card

Sears has a limit of $500 per card, so you will need to buy at least 10 cards. I’d recommend, though, getting a mix of different value cards since smaller denomination cards can come in very handy as gifts (and, the holidays are coming up, you know!).  I also recommend ordering the physical cards rather than the e-cards (or a mix of both) because if you need to it is possible to sell the physical cards to PlasticJungle for 83 cents on the dollar. People have reported having trouble trying to do the same with e-cards.  But, only sell the cards if you need the money immediately for paying off your credit card bill.  Otherwise, there are much better uses for the card (as I’ll show later in this post).

Note that you will most likely get a call from Sears’ fraud department. That’s OK! You haven’t done anything wrong, and they are just doing their job. Be polite and answer their questions and you’ll make it easily through this step.

At this point you will have now met your minimum spend requirements AND earned 50,000 Ultimate Rewards points! Remember that you can transfer these points instantly into valuable airline miles or hotel points!

Step 5: Use the Sears gift cards wisely

The reason this trick works is that Sears gift cards are incredibly versatile, and they never expire.  So, if you can afford to, take your time and spend the cards for purchases you would have made anyway.  The cards can be used at Sears, Land’s End, or Kmart. As much as possible, you should use the gift cards online because you can go through the Ultimate Rewards mall a second time in order to make these purchases! This means that it is possible to turn the $5000 purchase of gift cards into an additional 50,000 Ultimate Reward points. In total, you will have earned 100,000 Ultimate Rewards points from this trick and that’s before counting your annual extra bonus of 7% (for Chase Sapphire card holders) or 20% (for Chase Ink Bold + Checking account holders)! Also, remember to sign up for Sears’ Shop Your Way program which will give you an extra 1% rebate on all purchases.

If you’re still scratching your head about how you can possibly make good use of $5000 in gift cards, here are some ideas:

Gifts:

As mentioned earlier, you can give the gift cards away directly as gifts. A better use, though, is to order gifts through the online store so as to earn bonus points a second time!

Shop for clothing:

Land’s End sells terrific clothes, and they accept Sears’ gift cards!

Every-day staples:

Whether you need shampoo, tissues, detergent, etc, it’s all available at Kmart.

Automotive needs, home improvements, appliances, tools, electronics:

It’s all available at Sears.

Charity:

Consider buying (online, of course) new toys and warm clothing to give to the needy for the holidays. Keep your receipts and take deductions at tax time!

Sell the cards:

If you really need cash, you can turn the gift cards into real money through PlasticJungle.  While this deal is currently available, I can’t guarantee that it will continue (especially if this hack becomes popular!).  They currently pay 83 cents for each dollar of Sears gift card value.  On the PlasticJungle website, make sure to select “Get Paid” rather than selecting either of the Instant Funding options:

Conclusion

If you can afford to have your money locked into Sears gift cards, you can earn amazing amounts of extra miles and points.  Remember that all of these points are in addition to the miles and points you will earn from credit card signup bonuses!

Chase’s Ultimate Rewards mall is currently offering 10 bonus points for every dollar spent when reserving rooms at Holiday Inn, Holiday Inn Express, and Intercontinental Hotels. So, if you have the Chase Sapphire Preferred card or another with access to the Ultimate Rewards mall, and you plan to book reservations at one of these hotels, you should definitely consider booking via this portal. Remember to use your Chase card at check-out. According to the rules, you will be credited with the bonus points after you have completed your stay.

Possible hack: It might be possible to earn these bonus points while buying Priority Club points for .6 cents each. Technically, the bonus points shouldn’t post if you do this trick because you won’t have really completed a reservation, but it wouldn’t surprise me at all if they do.

This trick does not always work, but when it does you can easily save hundreds of dollars in airfare. Most airlines have an affiliated travel agency that sells vacation packages. Examples include Delta Vacations, American Airlines Vacations, United Vacations, etc. Each of these sites allow you to book packages that include flights and hotel, flights and car rental, or flights, car rental, and hotel. When booking flights, it is always worth checking out prices via sites like these even if you don’t want their hotels or car rentals. For example, many times, when booking flights for three from Detroit to Hawaii, I have found that the per-person price on Delta Vacations (for flight + car) is hundreds of dollars less than the best available per-person price for airfare alone! Since I’ve always needed a rental car in Hawaii, this has meant that I’ve not only saved a bundle on airfare, but essentially also received a free car rental! Additionally, Delta Vacations is almost always running a promotion that includes additional discounts, additional bonus miles, or both. What about hotels? I can’t speak for the other programs, but with Delta Vacations, in my experience, the added cost for a hotel is usually no better than the price you can find yourself. I’d recommend using the vacation package for flight and car rental, but look elsewhere for lodging. An exception to that rule is if a particularly good promotion requires a hotel stay, or if you’re flying to a city where you don’t need a car. Here are some other things to note about buying vacation packages:

• It’s not at all obvious, but most vacation companies allow you to book your car rental or hotel for just part of your trip instead of for the whole trip. Since most of the savings are in the airfare component of your travel anyway, this can be a great way to save more money if you have other alternatives for car or lodging (such as using hotel points, for example). Some web sites make it easy to do this directly, but for others you really need to call for help with an itinerary like this.
• When you rent a car through a vacation package, it is usually the case that you won’t earn points or status from the car rental company. Worse, if you have status with the company, it will be ignored for this rental. Yes, you will be stuck in line waiting for your rental car with everyone else. On the plus side, you’ll have a lot more money in your wallet to keep you company while you’re waiting.

Stay informed: Follow me on Twitter / Like me on Facebook

When booking travel around the holidays, car rentals can be shockingly expensive. Rentals that are usually about $30 per day often shoot up to $100 per day or more. If you’re staying a while, that difference can add up to huge expenses very quickly. If you find yourself in this situation, consider looking for “near airport” car rentals. Here is an example where I searched for car rentals via Orbitz for a week in Florida around the Christmas holidays. The best price available via this search was from Budget for a total of $608 for the week:

By using Kayak, though, I can easily see car rentals that are available at off-airport locations. In the example shown below, I can rent a car for the week from Enterprise for a total of $245. That’s a savings of $363!

The only problem now is that you still need some way to get to and from the rental car agency. If a friend or family member can help, great! Otherwise, use a tiny fraction of your savings to pay for a taxi. Also, check directly with the off-airport rental agency: Once I rented from an agency that had a presence both in the airport and off-site. In that case, I rented from the off-site location, and took a taxi to get there, but dropped off at the airport – all at off-airport rates!  Here are some additional tips thanks to reader Charles McCool:

• Enterprise will pick up customers. I know they are not able to pick up at Ft. Lauderdale airport (not sure of other airports). I have not used Enterprise for years. I know someone that takes the first hotel shuttle (or a predetermined hotel shuttle) and has Enterprise meet them there.
• Rather than a taxi, use hotel or other car rental shuttles. Tip a buck or two if needed.
• Rather than a taxi, take a local public bus. Or hitch a ride (with a fellow passenger or other transport). Amazing what you can learn just by asking at info desk, talking to airport workers, or asking around baggage claim.

The last thing you would expect to find on a BoardingArea blog is advice in favor of checking bags. There are many reasons not to do it. For example, if you’re hoping for a last minute schedule change, or you want to get bumped from an oversold flight (for compensation, of course), you will have a tough time if your bags have already been checked through. And, when you arrive at your destination, do you really want to be standing around with the crowds at the luggage carousel?

However, there are times where checking bags makes sense. Maybe you’re flying with a big family and simply have too much stuff to lug around; or maybe you have multiple layovers and you simply don’t want the hassle of worrying about your bags. Whatever your reason, did you know that if you have back to back flights booked on different carriers you can still check your bags all the way through? For example, let’s say you booked a Delta flight to LA and then, separately, booked the next leg of your trip on Hawaiian Airlines to Honolulu. When you check your bags at Delta, simply show the ticket agent your full itinerary (including the Hawaiian Airlines part) and asked them to check your bags all the way through. In addition to the convenience factor, you can save some money this way especially if you have status on Delta, or a Delta credit card, that allows you free checked bags. You will find that you won’t be charged for checking bags on the second leg!

Update: Several readers have commented that this trick doesn’t always work. In particular, reader Derek says that this will not work with Southwest Airlines. So, while you can’t count on this always working, if you’re going to check your bags anyway, you might as well ask.

One unusual gadget I take with me whenever I travel is a wireless pocket router. Just like a standard wireless router, this device turns a wired internet connection into a wireless one. The only real differences my travel router has from a standard router are: 1) it is tiny, so it is very easy to pack; 2) it can be powered via USB; and 3) it has a shorter range than a standard router. The one I have is from D-Link, but I expect that others are good too. The router has proved itself worthy in multiple situations:

No Hotel Wireless

On a few trips I’ve been surprised to find that the advertised internet access was wired-only. That is, no wireless was available at all. Since I regularly travel with my iPhone and iPad, but without a laptop, the lack of wireless is a big deal (since neither comes with a network port). With my travel router, the problem is easily solved: power it up, plug it in, and voila, I have wireless internet!

Slow Hotel Wireless

On several occasions I’ve found the hotel wireless access to be unbearably slow while, at the same time, the hotel’s wired internet was much faster. In these situations, the pocket router has allowed me to surf the internet at the faster wired speed while remaining un-tethered.

Charge for Multiple Devices

Some hotels not only charge for internet access (which should be considered a crime in itself!), but exasperate the situation by charging, not by room, but by device. That is, they expect you to pay for internet access for every device that you connect to the internet. When I travel with my family of three, we usually have six or seven devices that we would like to have connected to the internet. With the pocket router it can appear to the hotel as if there is a single device connected to the internet rather than six or seven. Note that this depends on the technology the hotel system uses. The trick has worked for me twice, but struck-out once.

Some hotels have wireless internet, but no wired internet. Others have great, free wireless internet. In those cases, the router hasn’t helped at all, but it’s so small that I’ve never regretted taking it along… just in case.

I’ll keep this post short since I’m writing on my iPad’s touch screen. I love my iPad, but writing more than a sentence or two is a bit tortuous. I’m writing from my room at the Hotel Intercontinental in London. I booked three nights at this fabulous hotel using 80,000 points I “earned” by signing up for the Chase Priority Club visa, plus 10,000 points I had earlier accrued, plus $60 per day. The same room, if I booked a paid stay, would have set me back over $700 per night! Despite getting such a great deal for a standard room, I hoped for a room upgrade as well. The good news was that the Chase credit card bonus alone was enough to bump me up from no status to Priority Club Platinum level. However, I had heard that Priority Club status means nothing to Hotel Intercontinental since they have a separate Ambassadors Club program (which I am not a member of). Worse, I have read that even Ambassador Club members do not get any perks when booking an award stay. So, I went in with two strikes against me: no Ambassador Club, and an award booking. At check in, I asked the clerk if room upgrades were available. He told me they were, but that there would be an up-charge. So, I pointed out my Platinum status. He typed furiously for a few minutes and soon enough came up with an upgrade to a gorgeous room on the club floor! Pushing my luck, I also asked if he could comp my internet. In return he gave me a code for 24 hours of internet access! So, back to the title of the post: it never hurts to ask

.

I began blogging as FrequentMiler with a goal of simplifying free travel. As a newbie to travel hacking I was amazed by the opportunities that existed, but also overwhelmed by the complexity. There seemed to be countless tips and tricks all of which required understanding arcane airline specific rules, hotel policies, credit card bonuses, and the like. It seemed to me that I could do a service by writing a dead-simple “how-to” blog targeted to those who don’t want to dig through mountains of Milepoint and FlyerTalk threads or read dozens of blogs a day.

Instead of making things simple, though, I think I’ve done the opposite. I’ve posted complex schemes for buying and selling gift cards, triple-dip shopping, and buying miles for less than a penny. I plan to get back to my original goal (soon, I promise!), but for now I’ve become obsessed with trying to find the perfect perpetual point machine. A perpetual point machine is a scheme in which, after a little push, points and/or miles are accrued over and over again, forever, with little or no additional work. I truly believe that the perfect perpetual point machine is out there. We just have to find it!

Actually, an awesome perpetual point machine already exists and is well known: credit card sign ups. Much has been written about the incredible signup offers that are readily available to people with good credit scores. Simply by applying for a handful of cards and meeting minimum spend requirements, you can earn thousands of dollars worth of travel rewards with very little effort! Every three or four months, you can apply for more cards and earn even more free travel. It’s simply amazing. If you’re not already taking advantage of some of these deals you should seriously consider it!

So, if there is already such a great perpetual point machine available, why am I looking for another? To me, this is a great game in which we win by earning huge amounts of points for very little effort or expense. Since the credit card machine is already so well known, playing that game only gets us to even ground with everyone else who is playing the same game. If we find a new machine, though, we’ll get ahead! In the end, hopefully, everyone will have fun along the way, and everyone will go home with the prize of free travel.

So, how about it? Do you want to help in the search for the perfect perpetual point machine? If so, here are some criteria to help us judge whether we’ve found it:

1. The Perpetual Point Machine (PPM) may take effort and money to setup initially, but must not take much effort or money to keep it going.
2. The PPM must be able to generate hundreds of thousands of points per year.
3. The PPM must do no harm. In my earlier post “Perpetual Point Machine… Not!” I described a failed scheme to buy gift cards with gift cards and earn miles each time, indefinitely. The problem with that scheme is that, if it had worked, it would clearly harm the retailer who would have been responsible for buying all of those miles.
4. The perfect PPM would also somehow do some good for the world, not just for the recipient of the points. Kiva loans are a great example of this, but the number of points that can be accrued annually is limited by the amount of money you have available to loan. For most people, this won’t come anywhere near the goal of achieving hundreds of thousands of points per year.

So that’s it. Did I miss any important criteria? Do you have any great ideas that qualify? I actually have an idea that might meet all of the criteria. Before I publish it, though, I want to try it out because I’m not really sure it will work. Once I’ve had time to try it out I’ll blog all about it. In the meantime, what are your ideas?

See also:

• The Perfect Perpetual Point Machine, Part 2
• The Perfect Perpetual Point Machine, Part 3
• All Perpetual Point Machine (PPM) Articles