We love to hear stories from our readers about how our passion for collecting miles and points has affected their lives. Honeymoon plans in the works, celebrating an anniversary in the Maldives, a gift to their parents, a vacation to Srinagar or Singapore or just that premium airline seat that they secured on redemption. We’ve heard many such stories, and we are trying to bring more of these stories to you.

In this week’s success story, I want to share how points and miles can not only fulfil dream vacations but also come handy and save money when last minute travel plans come up. Not just this you can use your miles to book tickets for others as well. Ajay and I have done this multiple time, and now Priyansh shares how he saved his family INR 25,000 by using his miles smartly.

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“Reading the various LiveFromALounge success stories this year, I thought I should share my story too. I have been an avid reader of LivefromALounge for the last three years. Originally, except using the Citibank PremierMiles, I wasn’t much into the airline miles or any other loyalty programs for that matter. I used to feel that one does not need a lot of in-depth knowledge to get value from those points or miles, as their value is always relative.

After following LiveFromALounge, I created my first ever JetAirways membership account, JetPrivilege. And boy! that was a good decision. In the beginning, the only miles I earned were through the few flights I took. Then after following LiveFromALounge, I understood that it’s fairly easy to earn JPMiles without flying. I started to quote my JetPrivilege number using booking restaurants through EazyDiner and Dineout, online shopping with Amazon, Flipkart via Jetprivilege Shop and all those spends which I already was doing anyway.

Later, I also applied for the JetAirways cobranded credit cards when there were some great deals. I got myself the Jet Airways American Express Platinum and the Jet Airways ICICI Bank Rubyx Credit Card and earned myself thousands of bonus JPMiles. To give you an idea, I received approximately 30,000 JPMiles as joining bonus from these two cards alone. Additionally, I earned 10,000 JPMiles via my regular spends, 15,000 JPMiles shopping with online partners and another 10,000 JPMiles by flying Jet Airways in 2 years. I gained five times more JPMiles without flying.

The plan was to save them all for a big fat holiday in the future. In August 2018, I got a chance to use a part of my miles balance. My brother-in-law who works in Dubai decided last minute to come back home to Ahmedabad for Rakshabandhan and surprise his sister. I was helping him sort his travels and last minute flight tickets were very high. A one-way Dubai to Ahmedabad ticket with multiple stops was costing INR 25,000 with inconvenient timings. The preferred flights were priced INR 40,000 upwards.

Without any hope, I logged into my JetPrivilege account to check if any last minute redemption seats were available. To my surprise, while there were no reward seats available from Dubai to Mumbai, I did find seats available on the Dubai to Delhi sector for 17,500 JPMiles.

The timings were perfect, and my brother-in-law would get a chance to celebrate Rakshabandhan with his sister and still be back in Dubai by night with these timings. This way, the trip that would have initially cost him INR 50,000, just ended up costing me 35,000 JPMiles and INR 2,400 in taxes. He did pay for the Delhi to Ahmedabad ticket, but the price of those tickets was minimal.

Until this time, I always thought that the best use of JPMiles is only on long-distance international flights or for premium business class redemptions. However, after this incident, I learnt that one could save a lot of money during on last minute travel by using the power of miles.

Next thing I did was shared the co-branded card link with my sister in law and brother in law to make sure they start earning miles for themselves to use them to defray the cost of their travel. Thanks to Shipra and Ajay, I continue to earn miles at every opportunity I get and still have a healthy balance to get myself an international vacation.

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If you’d like to learn more about how to maximise your daily spends to earn miles and points, join us for the Mileage Mentor MasterClass happening in Delhi next weekend. The workshop helped a participant increase his miles balance from 0 to 80,000 miles in just seven months. Also remember, the 100th participant gets his ticket free.

For sharing his story, we are sending Priyansh an INR 1,000 Gift Card. Also, we would love to hear more from you, our readers.  Tell us about your success stories with scoring a great redemption, a fantastic hotel deal and everything in between, please share it with us, on ajay @ livefromalounge.com and shipra @ livefromalounge.com and we will pick the best stories and publish them for everyone to read. Also, you get a prize to share your stories from our side as well.