A miles story (Free business class seat?!)

Not a huge expert at the miles collection, sharing my humble knowledge in this field. Many seem to think that it’s impossible and / or complicated but after sitting the first ever free business class, I’m happy to say that, although patience is required, it’s definitely very possible!!! Especially with many of my friends doing house renovation / making big purchases (my heart breaks a little for them whenever they didn’t use miles card for these purchases 🥲).

On to the story~

Managed to book a business class seat to Japan ~6 months before the actual day at 52k Miles 🤭

For certain countries, you’d not need to book so far in advance, but for Japan, we definitely needed to. We chose to fly to Osaka because Osaka had more time slots and we wanted to explore take day trips to Kyoto, Nara and Kobe, before heading off to Tokyo.

How long did it take us?

If your spending is about $500 a month, it will take about 2 years for one way of 52k miles, else, if your spending per month is $1k, then it would be about 1 year.

What cards to use?

I would recommend these 3 options:

1. Citi rewards + Instarem Card (linking instarem changes all spending to miles)

2. UOB preferred platinum

3. HSBC revolution

Worth-it meter?

Definitely worth it! Previously I was using cashback cards, and although that was not too bad, it definitely does not amount to ~3k per year / even 2 years (which is ~a business class seat). Although that’s just my personal opinion as a travel-lover☺️

Other tips:

Look out for great deals! I got ~40k miles from UOB when I signed up and fulfilled all the requirements, which makes up one way to certain countries already, like Singapore -> Hong Kong is 34k miles). This will definitely make the accumulation time shorter.