Wedding Challenge: Starting Point

Last week, I announced a challenge to earn enough miles/points to pay for a upcoming west coast wedding.

As a reminder for the challenge to be a success, I need to earn the following miles/points:


     1)     25,000 United MileagePlus

     2)     45,000 Hyatt (Gold Points)

     3)     Enough points for $100 gift cards


To ensure openness, here are my current balances of my accounts:

United Airlines:

Hyatt GoldPoints:

MyPoints:

SwagBucks:

Ultimate Rewards:

With my starting balances laid out on the table, the hard part starts now. I need to start earning.

As a reminder, here are the 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

Let's get earning.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------                                               Follow us on Twitter @doit4thepoints!

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.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------                                                 Follow us on Twitter @doit4thepoints!

What I'll Be Doing On This Snow Day

As everyone has heard, a snow storm has hit the East Coast. For once, we have a snow day WITH snow. I could write about how to protect yourself from travel cancellations (wrote about that here) or about jaunts to warm destinations.

View From My Apartment Balcony

Since I am stuck at home, not really Metro is running, so I could go somewhere, I feel like I need to get some long-standing tasks done. Here are 10 things I hope to accomplish today:

1) Complete Federal Taxes (Maybe use this offer)

2) Book March Trip to Canada (looking at you United Miles)

3) Finish Hotel Confidential Reports (don't know about Hotel Confidential, see here)

4) Pack for this weekend (Get Away to the Mountains)

5) Research Australia // New Zealand Trip (I doubt I even do this today)

6) Research 15 Ways to Earn Hilton Points (upcoming series)

7) Complete eRewards or Opinion Miles Club -  (I should earn some miles today, somehow)

8) Write a post on my secret love, Swagbucks.

9) Verify I have all my credit cards - I feel like I may be missing 1 or 2. I tend to leave them at bars

10) Drink??? Yes, best thing to do on a snow day is drink and I have this baby waiting for me:

Will I get all 10 items done? Probably not, but its better to have a list than sit in front of the TV waiting for midnight. Why Midnight? The release of Season 2 of this baby begins:

Happy Snow Day!
         ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                                Follow us on Twitter @doit4thepoints!