{"id":10465,"date":"2024-10-09T04:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-10-09T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/?p=10465"},"modified":"2024-10-08T23:46:34","modified_gmt":"2024-10-09T05:46:34","slug":"wednesday-wisdom-the-tipping-point","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/2024\/10\/09\/wednesday-wisdom-the-tipping-point\/","title":{"rendered":"Wednesday Wisdom: The Tipping Point"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>One of the hardest transitions between casual churning and becoming a heavy hitter is the switch from earning miles and points to earning cash back. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The transition should happen when you\u2019ve earned all the miles and points you can spend cover your travel for the next 12-18 months, because:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Miles and points devalue by 30-50% in the span of years<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>The programs with the best redemptions change over time<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Points don\u2019t earn interest<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>The value of an unredeemed point is zero<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Most of us don\u2019t travel as much as we think we will (even if we travel a lot)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>When you earn more points and miles than you can burn in a short time, the risk that excess points eventually become worth much less than when you earned them grows bigger than James\u2019 Giant Peach from the famous historical documentary that I think is called \u201cA kid finds a big fruit and someone wrote about it\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Why do we fail to transition to cash back, even when we know analytically that it\u2019s not the best option? The common answers I hear and that I\u2019ve thought are:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Points and miles are fun, pennies aren&#8217;t<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>I&#8217;m motivated by travel, my job covers my cash needs<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>What if me and six of my closest friends <em>need<\/em> to fly Lufthansa F on last minute notice to Frankfurt and I don&#8217;t already have the miles banked, and my 800,000 Membership Rewards won\u2019t post for another week?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>They&#8217;re all valid reasons, but seeing them written can help prevent you from falling into the same trap. Trust me, you don&#8217;t want to be down 100,000 Hawaiian miles that expired a few years ago because you didn&#8217;t ever have an actual use for them and weren&#8217;t active in the program; $1,000 would have been a lot better. #askmehowiknow<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Happy Wednesday!<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"600\" height=\"371\" src=\"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/Point-Values-and-Self-Worth-versus-Miles-Earned.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-10470\" style=\"width:429px;height:auto\" srcset=\"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/Point-Values-and-Self-Worth-versus-Miles-Earned.png 600w, https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/Point-Values-and-Self-Worth-versus-Miles-Earned-300x186.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center\" style=\"font-size:14px\">Nerds gonna nerd.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of the hardest transitions between casual churning and becoming a heavy hitter is the switch from earning miles and points to earning cash back.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_editorskit_title_hidden":false,"_editorskit_reading_time":0,"_editorskit_is_block_options_detached":false,"_editorskit_block_options_position":"{}","footnotes":""},"categories":[66,56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10465","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-scaling","category-wisdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10465","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10465"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10465\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10475,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10465\/revisions\/10475"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}