Wedding Challenge

In your 20s and 30s, weddings seem to pop-up on a non-stop pace. Your friends from high school & college, your cousins and co-works are all starting to walk down the aisle for the first or second time.

Photo Credit: http://www.onscreenweddings.com

Attending weddings is not cheap; especially, if you have to travel to the wedding. The costs of attending a wedding away from your where you live add up: airfare, hotel, rental car, food, booze, gifts etc. The cost only increases if you are a member of the wedding party. Last year, I wrote about Christopher Sledzik, "who racked up $10,000 in debt by attending 12 different weddings and being of 3 different wedding parties over an 18 month period."

10,000 Gs of debt from weddings. That's ridiculous. However, I can see how you can rack up debt by attending weddings. Its difficult to say no to a friend's wedding invitations. Your friends are getting married, your other friends will be there, and it you know its going to be an awesome time.  But I wonder is there a better way to reduce travel costs to weddings?

For this reason, I am coming up with The Wedding Challenge.

The goal of the challenge is to earn enough miles/points to pay for the airfare, hotel nights and a $100 gift for an upcoming wedding. Let's assume the following things:

• Wedding is located on the West Coast i.e. requires air travel

• 3 hotel nights 

• $100 gift - which I feel like is average wedding gift

Like all of my challenges, there are rules:

• No new credit cards ie no points earned from new credit cards can be used

• Can't buy points

• Have to earn the points by end of 2014

• Can use Swagbucks and MyPoints

• Can't just transfer miles from Ultimate Rewards; have to earn them from today on to transfer

Success on this challenge will be achieve by hitting the following milestones:

      1)  25,000 United MileagePlus 

      2)  45,000 Hyatt (Gold Points) - 15,000 a night or $200 worth of Hyatt GCs

      3)  Enough points (most likely from Swagbucks or MyPoints) for a $100 gift card to 

           some department store

My goal of this challenge is to show people that attending a wedding for cheap is possible not that I am cheap. For my friends and family, I would travel the world to celebrate their nuptials. However, the cost of attending weddings is one of the main reasons why people can't attend. 

Do you have a wedding you need to travel to in 2015? Join my Wedding Challeneg to see if you can reduce the cost of attending by earning miles & points.

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Do It For The Points: Sign-Up For MyPoints

I just got an email offering me up to 1,500 United miles for signing up for MyPoints.

I wrote about the MyPoints/United Partnership here, during the 31 Ways of Earning United Miles.

The offer sent to me in the email is the same one offered on the "Earn Page" on the MileagePlus website. Therefore, I pretty sure this isn't a target offer.

To earn the entire 1,500 miles, you need to do three things:

1) Register for MyPoints - earn 500 miles

2) Create your Mypoints Profile within 30 days - earn 250 miles

3) Complete a $25+ purchase through the Mypoints Store within 30 days - earn 750 miles

The Mypoints store has over 1,200 stores. Spending $25 won't be to hard.

If you don't want to make the purchase, earning 750 miles for signing up and creating your profile is a no brainier. This is a great way to make sure your United mileage balance doesn't expire.

Is MyPoints Legit? Yes, I have been a member since 2005 and earn at least a $1,000 worth of prizes.

Now, go Do It For The Points/Miles!

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 Follow us on Twitter @doit4thepoints! Have a question for me? E-mail me at jdteitelman@gmail.com

Recap of all 31 Ways to Earn Miles

31 days, 31 Ways to Earn United Miles.  I hope this series helped show you the shear volume of ways earn United miles and that with a little work, your dream vacation can be closer than you think.

Here is a recap of all the ways to earn miles:

Day 1: Flying

Day 2: Insurance

Day 3: e-Miles

Day 4: Buy / Transfer Miles

Day 5: Exchange Gift Cards

Day 6: Shopping Portals

Day 7: Tickets to Shows

Day 8:  Social Media

Day 9:  Credit Cards

Day 10: Mortgages

Day 11: Hotel Stays

Day 12: Super Shuttle

Day 13: Buy Wine

Day 14: Amtrak

Day 15: Renting Cars

Day 16: Peapod

Day 17: Eating Out

Day 18: Electricity Bills

Day 19: eRewards

Day 20: Transfer from Hotels

Day 21: Gilt

Day 22: RocketMiles (PointsHound broke up with United...no longer a way to earn)

Day 23: Investments

Day 24: Thanks Again

Day 25: Send Flowers

Day 26: Points.com

Day 27: DIRECTV

Day 28: Gym Membership

Day 29: MyPoints

Day 30: Surveys

Day 31: Sign Up For MileagePlus Emails

Happy Earning!

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 Follow us on Twitter @doit4thepoints!

 Have a question for us? E-mail me at jd@doitforthepoints.com

MyPoints and United: Win/Win Partnership!

I have been a member of MyPoints since at least 2005 and been very very very satisfied ever since.

MyPoints describes itself as "a reward network, just like when you earn miles on an airline or cash-back on a credit card. The difference is that MyPoints is flexible. You don't have to stick with one store to earn Points, and you don't have to take your rewards in just one form."

MyPoints offer thousands of different reward options from gift cards to cash. One of those available rewards is United miles. Currently, you have the chance to turn your MyPoints points into either 2,500 or 5,000 MileagePlus miles.

There are many ways to earn points though MyPoints:

The other way is to use the MyPoints shopping portal to purchase from your favorite stores:

I would recommend using the United MileagePlus shopping portal over MyPoints portal, as described here.

The way to earn United miles through MyPoints is during the sign-up process.  By using this link, one can earn 250 United Miles for signing up with MyPoints and 750 more award miles for making a $25+ purchase through their shopping portal within 30 days of signing-up. Go here to find the link to the offer.

A similar offer was sent to me via email last week (third week of July), so check your emails as well.

The terms and condition of the 750 additional award miles state:

This is a great offer to participate to earn miles. At the very least its 250 free miles. A little work and transferring a purchase can net you 750 more.

This is a win-win promotion!
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Follow us on Twitter @doit4thepoints!

Have a question for us? E-mail us at chris@doitforthepoints.com or jd@doitforthepoints.com