How to Beat the Unseasonably High Temperatures in the Bay Area

Today is one of those really warm days in the Bay Area and everybody seems to be dying from the heat. I don't have air conditioning on my boat and so I really don't want to spend a sweltering evening on the water waiting for the temperature to fall to acceptable levels. I could stay at the office and play video games. Instead I am going to spend the next several hours on planes gathering frequent flyer miles.

Every year I look at how many miles I have flown and what frequent-flyer level that puts me at for my most traveled airlines. Last year I lost all of my perks on Delta but didn't really care. When I went to Disney World in May, I just made sure the purchase first class tickets on Delta. Then I didn't need to worry about if I got upgraded or not.

I generally fly on Alaska Airlines between Salt Lake and the Bay Area. I discovered that I wouldn't make the most elite level this year without a little help. When Alaska ran a sale for really inexpensive flights between SFO and LAX, I snapped up a few round trips for $101. That will push me over the top and next year I will reap the benefits.

So how do I decide if making the next level is worth the cost in flights? Easy, I look at the perks and assign a price to each one. When the perks outweigh the price for these extra tickets, I buy some inexpensive round trips. It is important to assign accurate values to each of the perks otherwise you can convince yourself to spend $20 for $10 worth of benefits. One example is the bonus miles awarded at the higher frequent-flyer level. In my mind I figured it was worth about 25,000 extra miles for the year. That is the equivalent of a domestic ticket anywhere Alaska flies. Rather than use my estimation, I calculated how much the benefit was worth this year and it turned out to only be around 15,000 miles. That is significantly less than my initial guess.

There are all sorts of tips and tricks to getting frequent flyer miles and reaching elite levels for the various loyalty programs. You can't be an elite member in more than one (or for a very rare group of people two) so it is important to pay attention to what your travel will be like in the future. If I was to quit flying for my job then tonight's flight would be wasted money. Fortunately I don't see that happening any time soon.