Frequent Miler on the Air - Is this points & miles hobby worth my time? | Question of the Week Ep16 | 9-21-26

Episode Date: September 21, 2026

This podcast episode is sponsored by Saily. Saily is an ESIM service app created by the security experts behind NordVPN. Instead of paying absurd daily rates to your home carrier or swapping SIM cards on arrival, Saily gives you flexible prepaid data plans in over 200 destinations worldwide. Download Saily from your app store and use our code FREQUENTMILER at checkout to get 15% off your first purchase. https://saily.com/frequentmilerIs this points & miles hobby worth my time? Reader John asked this question recently, saying:Do you ever calculate the return on your time in the points and miles game? We spend a lot of time talking about return on spend and cents per point, but I rarely hear anyone talk about return on time invested. For me, points and miles are a hobby, not my job, so I sometimes catch myself asking whether saving an extra $200, or getting that credit or getting another 30,000 points is really worth two or three hours of my time. I tend to think about what my time is worth financially, but I also think about the opportunity cost. That might be time with my family (which really prompted this question) , working on my business (this honestly has much better return) , exercising, or just doing something else I enjoy.I know you guys sometimes go to extraordinary lengths because there is value in being able to report the results to your readers and listeners. But outside of the journalism side, do you personally put any value on the hours you spend playing the game?(01:04) - Why Greg's answer is "Absolutely!"(07:14) - Why Nick's answer is "Yes and no."We’ve been answering a reader or listener question at the end of each Frequent Miler on the Air podcast episode. Now, we’ve turned the question of the week into its own weekly episode. Tune in every Monday at 1pm for our Question of the Week podcast. And if you have your own question you’d like to submit, you can send it to [e-mail] out all of our other travel podcasts from around the worldThis podcast is part of the Voyascape Network, a collection of some of the world’s best travel podcasts. Explore more at Voyascape.com. For advertising or sponsorship opportunities on this show and across the network, email [e-mail] or you can find more information at Voyascape.com/advertsing.

This is a Voyescape podcast. You can find all of our travel podcasts from around the world at voyescape.com. This podcast episode is sponsored by Sayley. Saly is an e-Sim service app created by the security experts behind NordVPN. Instead of paying absurd daily rates to your home carrier or swapping SIM cards on arrival, Saly gives you flexible prepaid data plans and over 200 destinations worldwide. Setup takes just a couple of minutes on your phone before you leave. your data activates automatically when you touch down.

Plus, in order to reduce your data consumption, Saly actually blocks malicious sites, trackers, and annoying ads while you browse. Whether you need a quick gigabyte for a weekend away or unlimited data for a longer adventure, Saly keeps you connected without any surprise bills waiting for you at home. Ready to upgrade your international roaming? Download Saly from your app store and use our code frequent miler at checkout to get 15% off your first purchase. Details are in the show notes. This week's question of the week, is this hobby worth my time?

John writes in and says, do you ever calculate the return on your time in the points of miles scheme? We spend a lot of time talking about return on spend and cents per point, but I rarely hear anyone talk about the return on time invested. For me, points of miles are a hobby, not my job. So I sometimes catch myself asking whether saving an extra $200 or getting that credit or getting another 30,000 points is really worth two or three hours of my time. I tend to think about what my time is worth financially, but I also think about the opportunity

cost. That time might be spent with my family, which really prompted this question, working on my business, which has a much better return, exercising, or just doing something else I enjoy. I know you guys sometimes go to extraordinary lengths because there's value in being able to report the results to your readers and listeners, but outside of the journalism side, do you personally put any value on the hours you spend playing the game? So, Greg, how do you determine if this deal is worth my time or do you spend time thinking about how much your time is worth and how much it's worth investing in the hobby? Absolutely. This is a great question.

I do. I don't try to calculate it, though. So for me, it's more of a gut reaction. Like, I look at a deal and I say, you know, I don't say it. I just, you know, somewhere in. beside me is like, oh, that one sounds like a lot of work or a lot of time just to fully understand this and figure out what's going on. And then I compare that to, well, how much is the opportunity? So if we're talking about saving 10 bucks and it's a lot of like thought involved and all that, I'm probably just not going to do it. But if it's a really big reward, then I might be like, oh, this is probably, this is worth at least. figuring this out so I understand what's involved, then decide, you know, is it worth doing?

But there is a lot of stuff I just, I don't do because I don't want to do the kind of work involved in getting there. And so that's really common. I just rarely do the stuff that, especially if it's stuff that I find tedious. And I'm saying it that way because a lot of the stuff in this game, I find fun. To me, it's like a big puzzle. If you think about like any puzzle, yeah, there are really challenging parts to it, but there's a lot of satisfaction and figuring it out. So whether that's the side of like figuring out how can you best optimize a deal or, you know, get the most points per dollar for your spend or or even more, you know, finding hard to find awards, all those kind of things. To me, it's a game. And I enjoy it. And, you know, if you don't enjoy those things, that's probably much more normal than me. But, you know, I think there's a ton of things you can do in this game with minimal effort.

If you don't enjoy those things, I was just talking about. There is so much you can do by simply taking advantage of great sign-up bonuses when they come along. And tools like travel freely can make it really easy. Like, it'll recommend what card you should get next. Sign up. It'll alert you when, you know, make sure you've met the minimum spend. And it'll alert you, like, a year later, don't forget to cancel this card if you don't want to keep paying for it, that kind of thing. And so I'm sure there's other tools that do that too, but that's just one I'm familiar with.

And, you know, so I think that people can get a lot out of it with minimal investment. But if you enjoy it, then do the things, do the parts of it that you might. enjoy and then it'll all be rewarding, not just the outcome of it. And to address the specific about opportunity cost for me, I don't tend to let it affect my family time. You know, I tend to do the stuff, whatever this is that we're talking about, I tend to do most of it when I'm alone anyway. So it's not like I'm like, oh, should I go do this stuff with my family or, or, or, or, or, or do this stuff. I don't usually have that question when I'm with my family and with my family not doing

this stuff most of the time. On the flip side, I think that the game has led me to a lot more time with my family because we travel a lot more than we would have otherwise. And when traveling, we tend to spend more time together than when we're at home, you know. And the other thing about me, I don't know. to me, like when I'm doing this kind of stuff, for me personally, I'm not talking about for frequent milder of the business, it's usually in, you know, instead of doing other leisure activities. Like, it's not like, you know, should I do this or spend time with my family or do this or do my

job? It's more like, well, maybe I would be reading or maybe I'd be doing even more New York Times games than I heard already too. Or maybe I'd be watching. Or maybe I'd be watching. watching TV, I don't know, listening music, something like that. So it's just one of the many activities that I like to spend my time doing. Of course, you know, the question about like tradeoff between investing in your business versus the game, now I happen to be, and both of us are in a very unique and great situation where this stuff is our business. So anytime we spend doing this stuff, even for ourselves, to earn points and things for ourselves, helps the business because it makes us more knowledgeable that it can inform others about how to do these things as well. Yeah, that's so true.

You know, there have been a number of times I've been traveling in the last couple of weeks where I've picked up little tidbits over the last couple of weeks that I thought, oh, if I didn't actually put this into practice, then I wouldn't have noticed this aspect or that aspect that I can write. about or talk about it in a podcast. And so you're right. Like there's definitely a lot of, a lot of that for us in terms of there's more return. And it's not return in the same way that I think maybe John meant it when he thought, you know, I could be working on my business because I don't think we look at it as like, oh, I'm going to book this trip so that frequent miler can increase its revenue. You know, it's more like, you know, engaging in the hobby leads you to find things that you think are interesting and useful. And so there's overlap. there. It's not exactly the same as what I think of if you have a business that provides a service

or a product that is not at all related to this hobby. Then it would be very different. I don't know. Anyway, yeah, so I thought this question was really interesting because, you know, when you ask, do I spend time thinking about, you know, how much it's worth or how much my time is worth or whether the hobby's worth it? It's kind of a yes and a no thing for me. And I think a lot of the stuff that Greg said is spot on. And, you know, and so perfectly said, uh, in terms of like, not chasing the deals that you find tedious. You know, there are definitely deals that I've turned away from because I've said, you know what, that sounds too complicated or, uh, or, or, you know, if it's a Delta thing. I don't really fly Delta ever. And so it might be a great deal if you fly

delta a lot, but I don't. And so, you know, I don't dig into that as much. And I know Greg will. So, uh, so there are a lot of those. types of things that come along. But I especially think that what you said about how it's, like, it's a leisure activity for us. And it might not be for you. And that's fine. And if it's not something you really enjoy digging into, what Greg said, that was actually my very first reaction to this was that there's so much low-hanging fruit out there that there are plenty of things you can do to earn lots of points that don't require a major time investment. And if you find it tedious to track every little point and every little thing, then don't. You know, if you just

earn a few new welcome bonuses each year, you'll be pretty far ahead of the game. And there are plenty of opportunities to use them well. And if you don't want to spend hours on the phone with customer service, then don't book through that program that might require that. If you look at that as a challenge and you're like, you know what, I want to save 20,000 points. And I don't care if I have to spend some time on the phone with an agent, then, you know, go ahead and do that. And I think, Greg and I are somewhat different in that regard, whereas I'm probably more likely than Greg to book through that cheaper program and go through the hassle of whatever it takes to do it than Greg is. But there's definitely things that I find tedious, just like Greg said, that I all

avoid. So, you know, I think that that meter is just so variable for people. But the thing that really struck me about the question was the opportunity cost part, because that's definitely something that's real. And because I have young kids at home, I run into this from time to time where a great deal will hit. And it's at a time when, you know, one of my sons is asking for my attention or we're trying to play a board game or something like that. And there are times when I do have to decide, well, which thing can I do? And so I think in those cases, I really just have to evaluate, well, how big is this deal? Like Greg said. And I think our recent podcast episode on our biggest point Gambles provides a lot of examples of situations where I might have said, you know what, I'm going

to put the board game aside right now. Hang on, guys, because I'm about to go earn enough points for us to travel in business class for the next couple of years. You know, like something like that, Conservation International deal that we talked about, or even the Iberia deal, the, you know, 90,000 points for booking a bunch of flights from years ago. Like, that's something that I would probably say, you know what, I'm going to turn away from something that's important to me because the opportunity here is big enough. that it's going to provide more family time in the future, just like you said. And especially when it seems like a short-term thing that's going to disappear really quick.

Like that time that ANA First Class Awards were widely available and we all got together right away to see how we can book it. That's one of those things that you know is going to disappear if you don't attend to it. So that's something that, you know, if you are not. not willing to sacrifice any of your family time for something big like that, that's fine. That's a perfectly reasonable decision. It's not like there's not like there's that many people out there that are doing these things, right?

We're in a unique club. Yeah. Yeah. But I think it's wise to consider how to use your time. But that's so subjective, right? If you think your time is better spent doing something else, then by all means, go do that something else. You know, you don't don't feel pressured.

And I think it's easy to get that like, like, like, oh, you know, I have to do this and I have to track that. And I have to have to have a spreadsheet for this other thing. And no, you don't have to. I mean, Greg and I tend to enjoy that stuff. So we do some of that stuff and we write about it. So, you know, it's a great combination for us. But if it's not something you enjoy doing them, like, you know, again, I feel like we've kind of said that already. But do that.

For me, it often depends on what I'd be doing instead. And, you know, if it is that thing. family time type of the situation, I think that that family time type of situation would take precedence in all those small deal situations where it's not something that's time pressing. It's not something that is not going to come again. If you look at like, is 30,000 points worth two hours of my time, 30,000 points probably wouldn't pull me away from the board game because I know another 30,000 points is going to come around some other time. But if I'm instead going to be like scrolling social media or even doing something I enjoy, like, all,

those things that Greg mentioned. I like watching movies or watching basketball. Those are things I enjoy, but they don't necessarily have a meaningful return to me. So if I look at it and I say, well, I can earn half of a business class ticket to Europe or I can watch this movie I'm kind of interested in, I tend to lean towards the business class ticket to Europe. That doesn't mean you should, John. That just means that that's what I tend to do because I value that experience. I love to travel. And this hobby has made it possible for me to travel way more than I ever imagined. And I would. Greg said, that does create opportunity for family time and exploration. And that's a leisure activity that's really important to me. So there's a lot more things that I might take advantage of because of that.

Now, like Greg said, do I calculate it out and say like, okay, this is going to earn me $632, but it might take me four hours. Is that worth my time? You know, what's my hourly rate and this and that? I don't calculate that. Just like you probably don't calculate if you do like the New York Times wordal or, you know, connections or whatever, you probably don't calculate how much that's worth to you. Like, is it worth doing connections today? I don't know. Like, I could be working on my business. And yeah, you could. And if you're a business owner, then probably nine times out of 10, you're going to pick work on your business when, you know, when you have the opportunity to. But, uh, but when it comes for me, a lot of those leisure time activity type things, I do put aside

because this is my leisure activity that I enjoy. So basically I said the same thing as Greg. I just use more words to say it. I totally agree. This episode was produced and edited by Carrie Yoder, music by Annie Yoder. If you've enjoyed what you've heard today and you'd like to get more of this in your email inbox each day or each week, go to frequentmiler.com slash subscribe to join our email list. Follow us on all the various social media. Join our Frequent Myler Insiders Facebook group.

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