Regret. There is nothing like regret to motivate a person to throw themselves at a project, or to avoid making past mistakes by researching and seeking advice. I’ve been blessed to do some pretty amazing travel in the past 20 years. Sometimes I wish I could go back and do it again, but do some more research this time, take more pictures, actually keep up with the travel journals I ALWAYS start and ALWAYS forget about by day two. Another major regret: I wish I had joined a frequent flyer program (or three) before I started traveling back then.
**random thought: I wonder if people sign their kids up for FF programs? Is that allowed? Do you have to be a certain age? If not, that would be such an awesome gift to give your children upon adulthood – 18 years of mileage built up over their childhood.**
So back to my own regrets. I’ve flown Quantas round trip from LAX, as well as round trip between Cairns and Sydney, and Sydney and Auckland. Wouldn’t it be awesome to have credit for those? I mean, sure, that was in 1996, but maybe I could have used it for something? I flew round trip to Paris in 1997, and London in 2002. I don’t even remember what carrier we flew on! (I do remember that on the 2002 trip, we checked in at the airport, and my 6’7″ father requested seats in the bulkhead, and they happily sat my family in that row. Like, no big deal. It seems like a million years ago!) I’ve flown to Mexico several times, and again – I couldn’t tell you what airline. I certainly didn’t accrue miles.
I did sign up for OnePass about 5 years ago, and started to funnel any travel opportunities to Continental, and then post-merger United. Thank goodness! I mean, I wasn’t doing anything with them, but at least I wasn’t “leaving money on the table”, as they say.
So here we are now, mid-2013. Andrew and I have four round trip flights planned for the rest of the year, and we are trying to maximize our mileage, credit card spending, hotel stays and all the rest of it with one goal in mind – a trip to Ireland in spring 2014! And to really wring every drop of value from that trip, I want to fly there (practically) for free, and use that savings to do things we otherwise couldn’t afford.
I’ve already learned so many things from reading the ‘frequent flyer’ blogs that have helped. I learned about “open jaws” and “stopovers” from [Hack My Trip](http://hackmytrip.com/2013/06/award-routing-rules-united-airline/). This has inspired me to consider adding a 2 or 3 night stopover in London to our itinerary. London is my favorite city – where else might I bump into Mr. Darcy, Sherlock, and Dr. Who? We can do this without increasing the miles needed for our round trip tickets, which with the Saver Award fares at United should be 60k round trip each.
That’s why our goal right now is 120,000 miles. It feels like a race against time, because Saver Award availability seems to change all the time, so I’m trying to accrue the miles asap! As of today:
Beginning Balance as of 06/10/2013: 106,365
Airline Activity: 0
Non Airline Activity:
– MileagePlus Dining: 144
– ERewards Welcome Bonus (signing up through United.com): 250
Ending Balance as of 06/11/2013: 106,759
MILES TO GO: 13,241
Whoa. We have some work ahead of us! I am looking forward to my CC spend hitting for June – that should give me a nice boost.
Courtney Hoyt 
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