How do people end up with millions of points?

I’ve met quite a few people who’ve had in excess of 1 million points at their disposal. Sometimes it’s multiple millions.

But how do they do it?

To have a balance in excess of 1 million points, you’d have to do a lot of flying. Realistically, you’d probably be doing it in fully flexible Business or First Class tickets. In fact, this is common in the corporate world, especially among lawyers and consultants who travel regularly. When you’re on flexible tickets, you get a lot more points than the cheaper tickets.

For example, if you were going to Hong Kong once per month on a fully flexible Business Class ticket on British Airways, that would net you 42,048 Avios. That’s assuming you’re a Gold member. So it would take just under two years to get to the million points mark. Throw in some credit card spending and a holiday or two and you’d be there sooner.

But even for those of us who love spending time at 35,000ft, that’s a lot of flying.

Realistically, most of us who do that kind of flying use an “earn & burn” strategy. We keep a small balance of points, but we never get to the point of having millions because we spend them too quickly.

There are two strategies here.

Firstly, you can sign up for credit cards that offer bonuses for new customers. American Express do this a lot. The offer will be something like 30,000 points if you signup and spend X within a certain period. People will sign up, get the bonus, and then ditch the card. This used to be the winning strategy among points hackers until American Express got wise and changed the rules. Now you don’t count as a new customer if you personally held an American Express within the previous 24 months. So that hack is now dead.

Secondly, and this is far more common, is running a business using your credit card. Small business owners especially will put every expense they can think of on the credit card. The benefit of this is that not only does it help with cash flow, but it racks up an obscene amount of points in the process.

If you’ve managed to build up over a million points, why are you sitting on them? Spend, spend spend! They will only leave you exposed to a devaluation.

If you’re struggling to find options for your points, let us know and we can help you.