The Lesson I Learned On My President's Day Weekend

Over President's Day Weekend, I was invited to go to a cabin with a bunch of friends. The cabin located in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia promised to be a relaxing weekend.

As I previously wrote, living in a city can be hectic and sometimes the city can start to feel overwhelming. For this reason, any time my friends invite me to escape the city, I jump on the offer regardless of the location.

This cabin weekend promised drinking, a fire-pit/Smores, a hot tub and high speed internet. In reality, only 1 of those happened. The Drinking!

The problems with the weekend started less than .1 mile from the cabin. A few days earlier, the region received a large snow storm. The final road to the cabin is a combination of gravel and broken pavement with a steep incline.

We were warned by the owner of the cabin that we would need 4 wheeled drive or chains on our tires. Us, city slickers, did not heed the advice. We made it half way-up the hill and started to slide down the hill backwards directly into a snow bank.

We parked the car and luckily hopped a ride with a local to our cabin. Thank you, Charlie!

After arriving to the cabin, we soon learned that the hot tub was broken. A quick call to the owner and we learned that the cabin lost power and the hot tub froze destroying the pump. Therefore, no hot tub.

Before coming to the cabin, we stopped at Lowe's to pick up wood for the fire for fire. The "fire pit" needed to be dug out and was more of an oven than a fire. Plus it was in the "driveway." Not a great place to sit by the fire.

What made the situation worse was the Marshmallows? The marshmallows, bought at Walmart, for the S'mores, were over 1 year past its expiration.  They were soft on the outside, but hard as rock inside.

The bedrooms in this place were decorated interestingly.

                                   

 

 Now the worst part....the plumbing stopped working; leaving us with only an outhouse.

Kidding! The plumbing never went out. But if it did, it would have been par for course.

The high-speed internet was just a little better than dial-up. I spent most of the weekend on my cell phone, but service could only be found in one corner of the house or by the nonworking hot tub.

After all the disappointments of the cabin, the best part of the trip was the company. Add in lots of alcohol and good times were had by all.

This trip was refreshing. No points were earned. No points were spent. There was no need to rush to the airport or hotels to check-out of. Sometime the best times occur when you do nothing. Its watching the Olympics watching the sun set behind a big hill. Or its playing beer pong, outside in 20 degree weather, with your fraternity brothers racing to finish before the beer freezes. I could have jetted off to some warm island and layed on a beach by myself; however, I don't think I would have had a great time.

What could have made the weekend better?

Probably earning points. However, it isn't always about points. That's something I am learning ....

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Earn Miles By Transferring from Points.com

This is again one of those "I don't know if this is the best value for your miles, please do your research, have your goal and see if this is the best way to earn miles" posts. Points.com is a website that helps track your point balances in your frequent flyer accounts.

The service is free and has helped me keep track of my account numbers for airline and hotel loyalty programs. One of the most unique features of Points.com is the ability to trade or swap points between two different loyalty programs. I will discuss both options below:

Trade Points

Points.com allows you the opportunity to trade your points in one particular loyalty program with someone else's points in another loyalty program. The trade could be 1:1 or another amount.  Here are some examples of trades that were offered to me:

To complete the trade you will have to pay a fee. As you can see, the fee gets more expensive as the amount miles being trade increases. Is this a good deal? It depends on the offer and your need at the moment.

Swap Points

The other options is to swap points from one loyalty program to another. The transfer rates depend upon the program. For instance, here is what you would need to trade to earn 1,000 United Mileage Plus miles:

None of the transfer rates are particularly attractive. If you have orphan points in a loyalty account transferring to another program might be a good idea. However, transferring points just to earn more Mileage Plus miles is a terrible idea.

Below is a list of loyalty programs participating with Points.com:

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eRewards: The Turtle of Earning Miles/Points

eRewards is a site that pays you for taking surveys in miles/points. This is not an easy way to earn miles/points. It can take months just to earn 2,000 airline miles. Why bother you might ask? In the past, airlines have offered bonuses for transferring miles from partners like eRewards.

The first step is to register with e-Rewards. My recommendation is to search your email for e-Reward offers. Many times airlines and hotels will send emails inviting you to join e-Rewards and included in that email is sign-up bonus offers. A quick search of my email turned up offers from JetBlue, Southewest, and Priority Club in the past 60 days.

Jetblue:

Southwest

 Priority Club:

Also in my email account was an offer from United Airlines offering 250 miles for setting up your profiles and completing a survey in 3 months:

If you can't find an offer in your email box, United has the same offer available here.

After registering for e-Rewards, the next step is to fill out your profile. It is important to be honest in this step as it will determine what surveys are sent to you. If you stretch the truth in your profile, you might start noticing that you don't qualify for any surveys they sent you. There are 9 different sections that you need to fill out to complete your profile:

Here is a sample of the questions you will have to answer:

After filling out your profiles completely, sit back and wait for eRewards to email you invites to surveys. I typically get at least 5 invites a week. Each email looks something similar to this and lets you know the subject of the survey, the time commitment, and payout:

Click on the link within the email and you enter the landing page of the survey. This page will have the same information as the email except it also has the amount you will be paid for testing out of the survey. Being paid for testing out of the survey is one of my favorite parts of eRewards. They give you something for trying. That is why I always attempt to take surveys, nothing to lose.

After completing or testing out of surveys, your account is typically credited immediately; however, some surveys have taken a few days to credit. Once your account has at least $25 in it, you have the option to cash out in exchange for miles. Currently, eRewards allows you to transfer to the following airlines: Air France/KLM, AeroMexico, AirTran, Alaskan, AA, Emirates, Etihad, Fronteir, Hawaiian, Iberia, Jetblue, Southwest, Spirt, US Airways, United, Virgin America and Atlantic. Here is a list of all the partners:

As we have been talking about earning Mileage Plus miles this month, here are the redemption options for United:

After choosing your redemption level, you will be asked to enter your MileagePlus number and eRewards password. Typically, the miles will show up in your MileagePlus account within 3 weeks, but eRewards warns it could take 6-8 weeks. Therefore, this is not a way to transfer miles to your account for an immediate award purchase. Here is some important information about transferring miles to MileagePlus:

Overall, eRewards is a great way to earn a handful of miles. It's time consuming and the payout isn't huge. However, if United has another partner bonus like they did in December, it would be nice to be ready. A little bit of time now can payoff later. 

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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