Joel Wishkovsky is the CEO and Co-founder of Card Gnome. A greeting card service that makes it easy to send the perfect paper card from the internet. Setup reminders or schedule cards for up to a year in advance.
Everywhere I turn these days there are more offers for “miles” and I’ve become very pessimistic about the true value that they hold. I mean, really, if everyone is giving them away by the 10s of thousands, can they really be worth something?
The answer is a resounding yes! Using just miles I’ve been able to book a 3 week trip to Colombia, Venezuela and Ecuador this April. Think about that, I got a complicated $1,300 international flight for free except a few unavoidable taxes. I’m terrible at organizing and keeping track of my frequent flyer programs and don’t maximize points with credit cards or special deals, so for me that was shocking.
The honest truth is that I was gonna pay for the flight with cash before I was checking out my balances on UsingMiles.com. What do you know, I had enough miles on United for the flight! I’m lucky I checked my balance before the flight. The next time you are looking at flights for an upcoming trip, I highly recommend checking your balance and giving award travel on UsingMiles a quick search.
