Write Up - My First Year Collecting FC Miles
Posted: 27 Mar 2015, 13:44It’s just over a year since I started this hobby so I thought it would be a good time to reflect on how it’s been going. I've been pretty happy with my earning/spending but didn’t really know what value I was achieving as it all gets very complicated very quickly!
Having done all the totting up I thought it may be useful for other v-flyers who are new to this game to see how things have gone. Most of my learning came from this site and http://www.headforpoints.com, the latter is a great resource for new and experienced points addicts and well recommended to anyone who hasn’t been over there yet (hope it’s ok to link to that here, please remove if not).
My earning was done mostly from credit cards so I’ll start with them, then some details of how we picked up miles from other sources and lastly how we’ve enjoyed them
VS Amex
In January, the two of us signed up for the VS black amex (£140 per year) which at the time came with a 25,000 mile bonus. This quickly became the main card we used for spending - everything that possibly could go through it, did! I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how widely accepted American Express is, for the shopping we do it’s consistently between 85-95% of total spend. As soon as we’d achieved the spending target on my other half’s card we closed that one and just put everything through mine with her as a supplementary holder. Over the initial twelve months we managed to get 175,862 miles from the VS Black card between us (including 50k of sign-up bonuses). We’ve organised a few holidays with friends/family this year so putting all of those through this card then being paid back managed to contribute nicely to the pot
American Express Platinum
Having been bitten by the bug we then went on to get an Amex plat card each in late March. These cost £450 per year (!) but come with a fair few benefits which may or may not justify the fee. We got referrals for the cards which meant they came with a 35,000 mile sign-up bonus. The plan with these was to get through the spend target as soon as possible on one then cancel it, doing this gives a pro-rata refund of the annual fee so one of the cards only cost us £37. At the time the refund was given for any month which was unused or partly unused so by hitting the spending target in less than two months we managed to get in and out very cheaply. I believe this has now changed to a pro-rata day rate, but even so if you’re just in it for the bonus it doesn’t have to be a costly investment. We decided to keep the other card on and see if the £450 is justifiable. I’m still mulling this one over...
Over the course of the year we’ve managed 88,200 miles from these cards.
Earning Through Travel
We had some revenue VS flights booked when all this began (it was really the thing which instigated the whole obsession!). We flew MAN-MCO PE out and UC back which netted us 23,810 miles between us. Early 2015 we did a ski trip (more on this later) which earned us 17,450. My other half didn’t have a FC account when we started so by referring her we managed another 11,250 in recommendations bonuses. We had a small number from Virgin Trains plus a few from a stay at a Hilton hotel while they had a promotion on, bringing our earnings through travel to 53,631 miles.
Other Sources
There were a few other places we managed to grab some miles: Virgin’s shopping portal, Shops Away got us 15,485, having points auto tip from Tesco Clubcard got us another 25,950 and boosting miles on the florida trip (while there was a bonus promotion on) got us another 21,120.
Due to some timing difficulties (more on this in the spending section) we also had to buy miles a couple of times through the year, fortunately we managed to do the bulk of this while there was a promotion on so they were a bit cheaper than they could have been. Over the course of the year we bought 61,000 miles.
So the grand total of earnings over the whole of the year was 441,248 miles. I’m really pleased with this as it’s a fair bit over the initial estimate I’d made of around 300k.
To get all these miles we’ve had to spend a bit - £450+£37.50 on the amex plats, £280 on the Virgin Black cards and a few pence shy of £800 on boosting/buying miles. This latter part comes in at 0.97p per mile on average. The total extra cost to us this year has been £1566.
The Fun Bit - Spending the Miles!
Collecting not far off half a million miles is great, but without spending them on something it doesn’t really mean much! Thankfully we’ve managed to burn through a really good chunk of these and in doing so I think we’ve managed to have some brilliant experiences, things which otherwise just wouldn’t have been possible (and there are still more to come!).
For our first ever reward redemption on VS we booked an amazing family ski holiday to america. We flew into New York, spent a few nights there, travelled on to Denver (with United on cheap revenue tickets) did a week in a ski resort then flew on to Boston for a couple of nights in the city. By being a little flexible on dates we were able to get UC transatlantic tickets for me, my other half and my eight year old with Virgin over february half term. We did this using 120,000 miles and revenue economy tickets (M class) which cost around £2,750 and earned us back some miles/TPs. It was a brilliant trip and one that I think we’ll all remember for a very long time - from the first sight of the LHR clubhouse to having a drink at the bar of a brand new 787 it was a real once in a lifetime experience... Though with how this hobby is going, maybe it doesn’t have to be a one off!
Our second redemption was for a trip to Vegas and California in the summer. Eagerly awaiting tickets being released I managed to pounce on a couple of Gs for July this year (just the two of us going away this time). We are flying MAN-LAS on the way out then coming back into LHR from JFK on the way back. This is another thing I’ve learned this year, being flexible not just about dates but about which airports you use really helps with redeeming miles. We love america so splitting up holidays and spending some time in different cities is a big positive for me, the fact it makes spending miles that bit easier is just a bonus. The plan when we are on the west coast is to drive up from Vegas through California to San Francisco, do a bit of wine tasting in Napa then get across to New York/Long Island for the last few days of the trip.
As of fairly recently Delta have opened up the possibility of doing one-way redemptions using VS miles. This is great as Virgin America still charge the full return price even if you only need one leg (75,000 in First). The other great thing about Delta redemptions is how ridiculously cheap the tax bit is - we’ve booked 2 First Class seats SFO-JFK with proper lie flat beds for just £7.41
and 90,000 miles. The transatlantic VS flights cost us 180,000 + £1,030 as we went for straight miles redemptions this time (we were wanting to minimise the cash outlay as far as possible). To say I’m looking forward to this trip is a bit of an understatement!
Balancing the Books
So, we’ve spent 390,000 miles and in return got 5 UC transatlantic return flights and 2 transcontinental First Class Delta flights for a total cash cost of £3,800. Add in the cost of the credit cards and miles purchases and it all comes out at a total of just over £5370, or put another way, about £450 per leg - not at all bad for UC/FC travel! We’re very much in Economy territory here for that sort of money.
With each of the redemptions I priced up straight revenue tickets at the time for comparison: the NY/BOS trip would have cost us £8300 and the Vegas/NYC trip would have been around £9300 - a total of over £17.5k! Would we have spent this much? Not even close! But to be able to travel like this for pretty much the same price as economy seats has been amazing. It’s been a fair amount of effort but I’ve really enjoyed doing it and hope to have many more trips like this on the back of it.
Things I’ve Learned
- Being flexible with plans is the key to getting redemptions, dates are important but look at other cities too as availability differs hugely across the network.
- People often talk about valuing airline miles, it’s a hard thing to do as it only really applies if you were going to book exactly the same thing anyway (which for us was never going to happen). Also, the prices I got for revenue tickets were at the time of booking, it's very likely they could be had for less at a different time. However, for the purposes of this experiment, the net saving we achieved was £12,260 (£17,633-£5,373), this comes out as 3.14p per mile if you’re into that sort of thing.
- Get organised! Despite all my best efforts we still ended up buying miles in order to secure tickets we wanted, to then see those miles pop into the account from a credit card a few weeks later is a bit galling but I’ll live with it this year! In future I think I could cut out around half the cost of earning miles by being a bit more organised/having a bigger balance to fall back on.
- The Clubhouse is one of the most amazing places you’ll ever go. What a way to start a holiday. From now on there’s no chance I’ll be booking a trip that doesn’t start in Heathrow!
Thanks to everyone on here who has offered help and advice over the past year, we'd never have been able to find our way through all this without V-Flyer
Having done all the totting up I thought it may be useful for other v-flyers who are new to this game to see how things have gone. Most of my learning came from this site and http://www.headforpoints.com, the latter is a great resource for new and experienced points addicts and well recommended to anyone who hasn’t been over there yet (hope it’s ok to link to that here, please remove if not).
My earning was done mostly from credit cards so I’ll start with them, then some details of how we picked up miles from other sources and lastly how we’ve enjoyed them
VS Amex
In January, the two of us signed up for the VS black amex (£140 per year) which at the time came with a 25,000 mile bonus. This quickly became the main card we used for spending - everything that possibly could go through it, did! I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how widely accepted American Express is, for the shopping we do it’s consistently between 85-95% of total spend. As soon as we’d achieved the spending target on my other half’s card we closed that one and just put everything through mine with her as a supplementary holder. Over the initial twelve months we managed to get 175,862 miles from the VS Black card between us (including 50k of sign-up bonuses). We’ve organised a few holidays with friends/family this year so putting all of those through this card then being paid back managed to contribute nicely to the pot
American Express Platinum
Having been bitten by the bug we then went on to get an Amex plat card each in late March. These cost £450 per year (!) but come with a fair few benefits which may or may not justify the fee. We got referrals for the cards which meant they came with a 35,000 mile sign-up bonus. The plan with these was to get through the spend target as soon as possible on one then cancel it, doing this gives a pro-rata refund of the annual fee so one of the cards only cost us £37. At the time the refund was given for any month which was unused or partly unused so by hitting the spending target in less than two months we managed to get in and out very cheaply. I believe this has now changed to a pro-rata day rate, but even so if you’re just in it for the bonus it doesn’t have to be a costly investment. We decided to keep the other card on and see if the £450 is justifiable. I’m still mulling this one over...
Over the course of the year we’ve managed 88,200 miles from these cards.
Earning Through Travel
We had some revenue VS flights booked when all this began (it was really the thing which instigated the whole obsession!). We flew MAN-MCO PE out and UC back which netted us 23,810 miles between us. Early 2015 we did a ski trip (more on this later) which earned us 17,450. My other half didn’t have a FC account when we started so by referring her we managed another 11,250 in recommendations bonuses. We had a small number from Virgin Trains plus a few from a stay at a Hilton hotel while they had a promotion on, bringing our earnings through travel to 53,631 miles.
Other Sources
There were a few other places we managed to grab some miles: Virgin’s shopping portal, Shops Away got us 15,485, having points auto tip from Tesco Clubcard got us another 25,950 and boosting miles on the florida trip (while there was a bonus promotion on) got us another 21,120.
Due to some timing difficulties (more on this in the spending section) we also had to buy miles a couple of times through the year, fortunately we managed to do the bulk of this while there was a promotion on so they were a bit cheaper than they could have been. Over the course of the year we bought 61,000 miles.
So the grand total of earnings over the whole of the year was 441,248 miles. I’m really pleased with this as it’s a fair bit over the initial estimate I’d made of around 300k.
To get all these miles we’ve had to spend a bit - £450+£37.50 on the amex plats, £280 on the Virgin Black cards and a few pence shy of £800 on boosting/buying miles. This latter part comes in at 0.97p per mile on average. The total extra cost to us this year has been £1566.
The Fun Bit - Spending the Miles!
Collecting not far off half a million miles is great, but without spending them on something it doesn’t really mean much! Thankfully we’ve managed to burn through a really good chunk of these and in doing so I think we’ve managed to have some brilliant experiences, things which otherwise just wouldn’t have been possible (and there are still more to come!).
For our first ever reward redemption on VS we booked an amazing family ski holiday to america. We flew into New York, spent a few nights there, travelled on to Denver (with United on cheap revenue tickets) did a week in a ski resort then flew on to Boston for a couple of nights in the city. By being a little flexible on dates we were able to get UC transatlantic tickets for me, my other half and my eight year old with Virgin over february half term. We did this using 120,000 miles and revenue economy tickets (M class) which cost around £2,750 and earned us back some miles/TPs. It was a brilliant trip and one that I think we’ll all remember for a very long time - from the first sight of the LHR clubhouse to having a drink at the bar of a brand new 787 it was a real once in a lifetime experience... Though with how this hobby is going, maybe it doesn’t have to be a one off!
Our second redemption was for a trip to Vegas and California in the summer. Eagerly awaiting tickets being released I managed to pounce on a couple of Gs for July this year (just the two of us going away this time). We are flying MAN-LAS on the way out then coming back into LHR from JFK on the way back. This is another thing I’ve learned this year, being flexible not just about dates but about which airports you use really helps with redeeming miles. We love america so splitting up holidays and spending some time in different cities is a big positive for me, the fact it makes spending miles that bit easier is just a bonus. The plan when we are on the west coast is to drive up from Vegas through California to San Francisco, do a bit of wine tasting in Napa then get across to New York/Long Island for the last few days of the trip.
As of fairly recently Delta have opened up the possibility of doing one-way redemptions using VS miles. This is great as Virgin America still charge the full return price even if you only need one leg (75,000 in First). The other great thing about Delta redemptions is how ridiculously cheap the tax bit is - we’ve booked 2 First Class seats SFO-JFK with proper lie flat beds for just £7.41
and 90,000 miles. The transatlantic VS flights cost us 180,000 + £1,030 as we went for straight miles redemptions this time (we were wanting to minimise the cash outlay as far as possible). To say I’m looking forward to this trip is a bit of an understatement!Balancing the Books
So, we’ve spent 390,000 miles and in return got 5 UC transatlantic return flights and 2 transcontinental First Class Delta flights for a total cash cost of £3,800. Add in the cost of the credit cards and miles purchases and it all comes out at a total of just over £5370, or put another way, about £450 per leg - not at all bad for UC/FC travel! We’re very much in Economy territory here for that sort of money.
With each of the redemptions I priced up straight revenue tickets at the time for comparison: the NY/BOS trip would have cost us £8300 and the Vegas/NYC trip would have been around £9300 - a total of over £17.5k! Would we have spent this much? Not even close! But to be able to travel like this for pretty much the same price as economy seats has been amazing. It’s been a fair amount of effort but I’ve really enjoyed doing it and hope to have many more trips like this on the back of it.
Things I’ve Learned
- Being flexible with plans is the key to getting redemptions, dates are important but look at other cities too as availability differs hugely across the network.
- People often talk about valuing airline miles, it’s a hard thing to do as it only really applies if you were going to book exactly the same thing anyway (which for us was never going to happen). Also, the prices I got for revenue tickets were at the time of booking, it's very likely they could be had for less at a different time. However, for the purposes of this experiment, the net saving we achieved was £12,260 (£17,633-£5,373), this comes out as 3.14p per mile if you’re into that sort of thing.
- Get organised! Despite all my best efforts we still ended up buying miles in order to secure tickets we wanted, to then see those miles pop into the account from a credit card a few weeks later is a bit galling but I’ll live with it this year! In future I think I could cut out around half the cost of earning miles by being a bit more organised/having a bigger balance to fall back on.
- The Clubhouse is one of the most amazing places you’ll ever go. What a way to start a holiday. From now on there’s no chance I’ll be booking a trip that doesn’t start in Heathrow!
Thanks to everyone on here who has offered help and advice over the past year, we'd never have been able to find our way through all this without V-Flyer
