I think we may be on the downhill side of the golden age of mile hacking or whatever you like to call it. The credit cards are getting tougher on sign up bonuses. The airlines and hotels are devaluing the awards and making them more restrictive. There seem to be less and less free miles out there. You know those “follow us on twitter” and get 500 miles, etc. #repeatandchurn.

My favorite deal in the past was the US Airways Grand Slam events. It’s how I got started in “the game”. I miss it soooooo much. Sure earning the miles was the goal but it was like a worldwide scavenger hunt to figure out how to rent a car for 5 minutes for like $15 to get a hit or how to buy that $2 cat collar on skymall when you don’t own a cat. It was just fun. I really thanks Mommypoints for turning me on to that fun time.

I think the miles and points world is changing. It had to. Technology is catching up to the error fare deals, OTA’s and app-o-rama’s. The bright spot left is maybe just doing old fashion mileage runs. Not because they are a good deal for the miles you earn but because they help you earn status and miles and go places you want to go. We’ve become addicted to the travel in nice seats. Now it’s about how to keep traveling. Sure we’ll get a few drive-by deals and I pity the poorly organized promo’s that we will be sure to exploit. But it’s like a rolling or flying party. We have our own rock stars (Gary, Seth, Summer and many others) and we all seem to want to fly to exotic locations in big front seats.

I’ve earned and burned over 1,000,000 AA miles in the past few years but only 100k or so are EQM’s and sitting on a lowly Gold status. Maybe I’m going about it the wrong way…Stay tuned.

(Flying in First on AA 77W DFW-HKG (for free)).