Prepare for Travel after Covid-19 by earning miles from home

If you are like me you yearn to be traveling after this long period of staying at home. As we do the right thing and halt travel for the time being you can of course take this time to read up about destinations you might want to visit once restrictions ease. There are also options you can use now that Donna and I use to continue earning miles and points for once we can travel again. Here are a few ways you can be earning point and miles while sitting at home. Some of these options have a cost and other items are completely free and only take your time.

1. Airline and Hotel Credit Cards- This is a way you can earn miles, hotel points and other travel related benefits through your normal spending. You will find many credit cards offer great sign up bonuses with some like British Airways, Aer Lingus (Ireland) and Iberian (Spain) offer 100,000 Avios miles at times to sign up for their credit card (you have spend amounts you need to hit to get the miles). We use credit cards for our normal spending and pay them off at the end of the month to avoid interest. You will need to be disciplined to not get into debt and do not spend just to earn miles. We only do our normal spending on the cards.
2. Online Surveys -You can take online surveys for cash that can be redeemed for Airline Miles, Hotel points and if you want gift cards for other things like restaurants. These marketing surveys can be about many different subjects from Food, dinning out, purchasing cars, your field of work, politics and other items. You sign up and fill out a profile about your skills, interests, the area you live and the survey site will email you surveys to take. Some can take a couple minutes and other can take 20-30 minutes or more. Some survey sites give you direct points such as 50-100 miles for a survey or hotel points. Others give you rewards cash (not true USD) that you can trade for different airline, hotel or giftcards. Donna and I while watching TV, waiting at a doctors office, sitting on a bus going to work or other times will take these paid surveys and earn more miles. On one survey site I took enough surveys to earn a round trip ticket on United over time (it takes a while but they add up). Here are a few of the sites we use:
   1. E-Rewards: This site is invitation only but you can get invited through an airline you have a airline loyalty account: https://www.e-rewards.com/en/
   2. Opinion Miles: This is related to United Airlines and gives you MileagePlus miles. https://www.opinionmilesclub.com/
   3. Guest Opinion Rewards: This is a survey site that gives you Hilton Hotel (Hilton Honors) points. https://www.guestopinionrewards.com/
3. Mileage Plus X- This app allows you to buy E-Gift Cards and register a credit card for use at certain retailers that allows you to earn United Airlines MileagePlus miles. We use this at places like AMC Theaters, Chili’s, Olive Garden, Jiffy Lube, Petco and many other different retailers. Its a way you can get many extra miles for normal purchases you will take. Its easy to use as you just ask the cashier to scan your giftcard. We have earned many miles through this with United and it helped pay for our flight we took to Bimini, The Bahamas (we used United Miles for half of the trip). https://www.united.com/ual/en/us/fly/mileageplus/earn-miles/mileageplus-x.html
4. Online Donations- If you have the ability and want to donate to help others that are struggling during this time while earning some Southwest Rapid Rewards miles you can go to the Southwest website and donate to the Red Cross, Team Rubicon or Feeding America and they will give you 10 miles per dollar for donations $25 or over. Its a way of giving back to others and earning some miles. This offer goes until May 31st: https://www.southwest.com/RRCoronavirusDonations/
5. Shopping sites — You can also earn miles through sites like Rapid Rewards Shopping, United Airlines and others where you visit the Airline page and login and then visit the retailer site through the airline and you earn miles for whatever you purchase https://rapidrewardsshopping.southwest.com/
6. Dining — You can also earn miles through airline sites (most have them) by dinning at certain restaurants and using a credit card registered to the airline site. We have earned miles by dinning at restaurants we enjoy that has turned into trips. https://www.rapidrewardsdining.com/

Donna and I are using methods such as these to earn some miles as we stay at home. The travel world will be different for sure after the Covid-19 Pandemic and there will be more checks and restrictions but I can tell you we will still travel and look forward to getting back out there as soon as things are safe to do so! If you know of other ways to earn miles or other survey sites put a comment below and share with us all.