Buying Platinum and a million miles: 6 month update

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I’ve met only one out of two goals, but have managed to rake in over 1 million points and miles anyway…  

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In January, I wrote about “my strategy to buy Platinum and a million miles.”  The  basic idea is to put a huge amount of spend on my Delta Reserve and Delta Platinum credit cards in order to earn 50,000 MQMs (medallion qualifying miles).  Combined with roll-over miles and actual flying, that will be enough to get me to the 75,000 MQMs required for me to maintain high level Delta Platinum status.  For details of why I want to do this and how this can be pulled off, see my recent post “Mileage running, from home.”

The plan I wrote about in January was to pump up spending by taking advantage of shopping portal mega-offers: buy merchandise in order to get lots of points, then sell the merchandise for as close to the original buy price as possible.  By doing this well, it’s possible to maximize points earned and pump up credit card spend, while minimizing my out of pocket costs.  At the time, I didn’t know what shopping portal bonuses might be offered nor did I know if there would really be enough to make this plan viable.

Results so far: shopping portals

So far this year, I’ve only taken advantage of two shopping portal mega-offers: Nordstrom 36X through the British Airways shopping portal, and Sears 15X through the Southwest Airlines Rapid Rewards Shopping portal.  See “Weekend Update” and “Sears 15X: Frequent Miler’s almost final results for details.  My Southwest points still haven’t moved from pending to available, but I’ll assume that they will soon.  In total, these two shopping sprees led to a combined 269,000 points.  In order to reach 1 million points over a year, I would need almost twice than number of points in 6 months so I’m pretty far off from that target.

Results so far: credit card spend

Across both Delta credit cards, I need to spend $110,000 this calendar year in order to get all 50K MQMs.  So far I’ve spent $56,000, so I’m right on target!  Except for the shopping portal mega-offers described above, most of this was achieved through 1X spending: Kiva loans, gift card churning (buying gift cards at a discount and selling for little or no loss), and personal spend.

Beyond 1 Million

Even though I haven’t earned a half million points so far via shopping portals, I have already earned slightly over 1 million points and miles this year.  Thanks to Club Carlson’s generous promotions, a few credit card sign-ups, Ink Bold 5X spend, and other tricks, the points and miles keep rolling in.

Reader goals and results

Do you have mile earning goals?  Elite status goals?  What are they, and how well are you doing so far?  Do you have any great success stories to share?

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