FLY FREE FASTER..FROM 0 TO AWARD!

When it comes to frequent flyer program there are ton of them available. That said the way to get that free flight award faster requires two steps:
1. To identify which frequent flyer program best meets your needs and collect miles on them.
2. To know techniques which can help collecting miles faster so that you can redeem your award quicker.

The answer to (1.) lies in two things:

• Knowing where you want to visit and which airline frequent flyer (FF) is best suitable for you.
• How easy or hard it is to collect miles on your FF program.

Once you identify the FF program based on above two parameters the next question (2.) is to find the techniques to collect the miles faster. I have written a generic answer on Ways to Accumulate Miles & Points, but this post will go in more details for specific examples.

Let's start with an example:

You are in US wishing to visit Male in Maldives for that dream trip.
Step1:
The best bet to get there could be either Via Singapore or Doha. Since you are in US it would be hard to collect miles for either one of those, but you have Star Alliance to your rescue here. Since US Airways and United Airlines both are member of this alliance you can essentially collect miles on any one of them to get to Male.

Step2:
Once you know that US Airways or United Airlines can get you there, the next question is to search how many miles? I did a random search on united.com and below are the results for flights from San Francisco (SFO) to Male (MLE) and the cost in miles. The total price is 80k miles and $57.7. Just to give a perspective I have also shown the cost in actual $$.

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United: SFO - Male

Step3:
The next step is how to get those miles? There are more than 1 ways to get there and I will highlight one of them below:

Credit Card Churn: As you would have known by now the easiest way to get the miles/points for that free flight is taking credit card. Since we need 80k miles below are the cards you can take:

• United Airlines Explorer Card: This card is issued by Chase. The publicly available link for the card is here. This card gives you 25k miles on first use and another 5k for adding an authorized user. So that takes you tally to 30k miles.
  
• Chase Sapphire Preferred: This card is also issued by Chase and thus it is preferable to have a gap of 3 to 4 months between United Explorer and Sapphire Preferred application. You get 40k ultimate rewards points after spending $3k in first 3 months using this card. Ultimate reward points transfer on 1:1 ratio to United Mileage plus miles. The link for this card is here. Once you get this card and put the minimum spend requirement you are richer by 43k miles (3k miles/points are for $3k spend) and thus taking your tally to 30k+43k = 73k miles.
  

United partners earning:

• Netflix - You can earn 4k miles for enrolling in Netflix and paying by your United Mileage plus card. The link is here. Since the service cost $8/month and usually miles post in a month you can cancel the service if you want after the first month. Total miles 73k + 4k = 77k miles.
  
• Mileage Plan Dining - You can join the dining program and get 1k miles after spending $50 on your first dine on one of the partner restaurants. The link is here. Total miles 77k+1k = 78k miles.
  
• ShareBuilder - You earn 2k miles after enrolling and doing your first trade via ShareBuilder. Since the commission for the "invest automatically" trade is $4. You can very well buy any cheap stock and you are on your way to 2k miles. The link is here. This brings you to the magic number of 78k + 2k = 80k miles
  

Wooooohoooooooo that's enough for your trip to Male. If you add all the cost of getting there it would be < $100.

This was just a glimpse on what is possible. You could earn potentially miles by renting a car, staying in a hotel or filling up the gas! There are tons of free ways of earning miles as well like enrolling for MyPoints (500 miles) or Buying from Gilt (1500 miles after $50 spend), E-miles (250 e-miles) and E-rewards (250 miles only by invitation). For complete list of United Mileage earning partners check here.

Hopefully this will help to piece that trip together!