Sunday, August 2, 2009

Miles Miles Miles

If you are a "semi frequent" flyer - or a frequent flyer but not really loyal to an airline - there is a good chance that you will end up with "miles" way away from 20000 or 25000 miles required to get your free round trip.. This is your dead beast - essentially of no use but the savings number. Recently I figured out a way to use this dead beast rather meaningfully -

It turns out we can subscribe to many news papers and magazines at relatively cheap miles! Here is a quick summary of what you can get for round trip miles that you have earned on your last NY-SFO flight...
Fortune Magazine for 12 Months (1200 Miles)
Forbes Magazine for 12 Months (1400 Miles)
Wall Street Journal (Daily) for next 8 Months (2600 Miles)
Barrons for 12 Months - (1200 Miles)
Your Local news paper for 2 Months (600 Miles)
Econmist (51) - 3100 Miles

I guess thats an impressive list - if you are one like me - who loves reading all these business articles - and specially in a print format this is a free treat with your dead miles - Enjoy!

(Btw, now you know secret behind my daily wall street - Also eventually no one is going to pay any money for this - you can read this case here)

4 comments:

Amogh said...

That was a good one Ameya!

Thanks :)

Ameya said...

@Amogh - I know why u r enjoying this - I don't think you are going in that "semi" frequent bucket.... but oh hey - I don't think u will buy round trip either!

Unknown said...

I am assuming not all of these subscriptions are free. You must have done research on how much you spend on them. Numbers?

Ameya said...

@Ashwin - it turns out these business magazines are quite expensive...
Economist 52 issues would cost you well over $150 (http://www.magazines.com/search/list?query=economist)

WSJ yearly subscription is around $200
(www.wsj.com)

Other magazines are in the range of ($40-$100) range....