Later, 2017

Man, I’ve already written more long posts this week than I do in a normal month. I think I need a nap. Well, that’ll come soon enough. It’s time for my annual 2-week vacation, so I wanted to say a few words…

All of us, as humans, are voyeurs. Don’t you think?

I mean…we get dressed up, wait in traffic, and hand over our hard-earned money to sit in a dark theater just to be a fly on the wall of someone’s experience. At hotels, we walk past open doors and all of us have the same reaction…peeking in to see if we can catch a glimpse. We’re such curious observers of human behavior. And, oh man, was there some behavior to see this year. Here’s one of my observations about the strange time known as 2017…

With this constant stream of information, are we hearing so many words…so many illogical things every day…that we’re totally numb to it? Whether big or small…nonsensical statements just don’t phase us anymore. How about a small example of the types of things we hear throughout our day?

“Oh, Louis CK, Matt Lauer, Tiger Woods, and Harvey Weinstein…they’re all the same.”

Really?

Wait, what?

Tiger Woods had consensual adult sex. You might not like him but, um, Harvey Weinstein profoundly altered the course of multiple lives forever because he’s a violent rapist.

How are those the same things?

Lumping everything into one tidy box to avoid the complications of actual thinking is a dangerous game to play.

And it’s a VERY acceptable lifestyle choice in crazy town.

(By the way, the more common name of crazy town is “2017”)

Every day, our retardation of thought drifts into new and increasingly simplistic territory.

In crazy town, every perspective…no matter how nonsensical…is seen as legitimate.

Remember when we used to hear something absurd and then process it?

Now it just gets buried under the next wave of information that flies into our next moment.

If you’re comfortable lumping all women, all men, all black, all white, all Christian, all Muslim, all gays, all Republicans, all Democrats, all athletes, all entertainers, or all of any other group into a tiny box and making them the same “thing” in your mind…well, I hate to break it to you, but your thinking is fucked up.

That isn’t a political statement.

Just a statement of common sense for anyone who doesn’t want to be a terrible person.

It’s really important for details to still matter.

Whatever you want to call this…sloppy thinking…intellectual laziness…it’s as if we’ve grown 140-character brains. The advantages are clear, right? It’s easier to think in black and white than it is to deal with the greys of reality. And, shit, it’s so much faster. Snappy slogans and catchy headlines grab our attention. It only requires a second of focus and then we can resume zoning out on all of those annoying details.

We don’t need to process information anymore.

It can all just become a white noise of words that wash over us as we enjoy our mental hibernation.

Think about it, how many words came at you yesterday? Phone calls, texts, emails, social media, television, internet reading, and on and on…

How sure are you that this constant daily barrage has helped your growth?

Is it making you happier?

Are you confident that you’re still a clear thinker?

We hear a lot about “loving yourself” these days. Well, yeah, it sure as hell seems like a better option than hating yourself. Not much you can do for others when the person in the mirror is your enemy. But, in crazy town, “loving yourself” apparently just means buying shit that makes you feel good. Strangely enough, I always thought loving myself included seeing where I’m a fuckup…and then caring enough about myself to make changes.

Who are we kidding…

Are we actually interested in making any changes to our mental habits in 2018?

Have we even really thought about it?

Or are our brains too numb to handle that kind of–

–Hold on, there’s a scandal with a governor on TV right now…wait, my phone is buzzing…sorry, I just got a tweet from…no way, bitcoin is up again to…what, they’re doing a remake of that already?

Sorry, what were we talking about?

Well, I know one thing…I’m tired. In all seriousness, this year has exhausted me and I need to unplug. It’s time to recharge. If it isn’t obvious, I’d highly recommend everyone taking some time away from technology for a little while.

Ok, let’s handle blog business and then call it a year here.

Before I forget, if you do want to contact the guy from this week, let me know and I’ll put you in touch with his new anonymous email address. But I’ll do it in January. Because I’m unplugging. And, again, an introduction is as far as I’m going with this. I’m not looking to be a middleman in that conversation or a part of any decision.

As far as MileNerd, my end-of-year-thoughts are these…

If The Points Guy closed down, all of his sheeple would just move on to the next commercial blog and it wouldn’t be a big deal to them. I’m well aware that the same is not true here. And, honestly, that’s one of the biggest reasons I keep writing 5 days a week. It sure as hell wasn’t because I was worried about where I’d finish in those USA Today blog rankings (thank you for thinking of me, though). And it wasn’t to pad some numbers I don’t look at or to add followers on the MileNerd Twitter page which doesn’t exist.

The goals of most other bloggers are not my goals. They care about quantity – money, followers, likes, hits, etc.

I do not.

At all.

We just aren’t playing the same game.

My goal isn’t to be better than anyone else. But I’m also not going to dumb myself down because the bar is so low. I’m interested in being trustworthy. It continues to be important to me not to mislead people. There are zero games being played here. Maybe that’s why you guys are so loyal. I don’t know but thank you for all you’ve given me this year. I can feel that many of you guys care. And I tried to give you my best in return. Anyway, I’ll be making a pretty big announcement on January 1st. Until then, it’s time to sign off. Have a great 2 weeks and hopefully some of you will actually unplug. I’ll see you in 2018.

Happy holidays, nerds!

Europe Delta Discount

You can find some round-trip Business class flights to Europe starting at 98,000 SkyDongs. It ends tonight. Nice offer if you have the dongs and can find a flight that works.

What I Decided

I basically spent the day reading emails. Honestly, I really appreciated your thoughtful and articulate messages. I really enjoyed hearing all of the different perspectives. I tried responding to as many of you guys as possible, but there just wasn’t enough time in the day.

Before I get to my decision about yesterday’s post, I thought it would be fun to give you a summary of what my experience was like. So here’s a very small portion of some of the messages I received throughout the day. A little glimpse into my world…

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“This is a major decision to make! I’m going to be honest.. I want to be one of those that are selected and I’ll be happy to pay. But how will you chose those people?”

—

“Don’t stress too much No wrong answers here. You’ll do the right thing.”

—

“He is right, you have the reputation to put forth something like this and have people believe it. But sounds like it’s your reputation he’s staking, not his own.”

—

“You should definitely offer it to people.”

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“This talented individual should sell through his own blog, rather than use your good name.”

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“Over the last 5 years you have helped my family of three travel like I have never thought possible for two people in the field of education.  The reason for the email is I think you should offer the select few to make some money and points for the $100 buy in.  Of course, I would Love to be a part of that, but you will have tons of people asking you.  And how and why would you trust me?  I wish you the best with your decision.  I cannot thank you enough for the opportunity you have provided for me and my family.  We travel very well thanks to you.”

—

“Probably you’ve heard it already — but why does a millionaire who’s “set for life” want to charge $100 for advice given to what sounds like maybe 100 people anyway?”

—

“My advice: walk away. I feel like somehow you would be compromising. But that’s not what you do. And that’s why I read your stuff and follow your advice and information. And I don’t really follow anything else. Not worth it.”

—

“As I have grown more serious in this game, I found a lot of the fun is sharing the knowledge with friends. Not because it benefits me, but because if an opportunity exists, why wouldn’t you want the people you like to benefit as well? That’s called being a good friend, I guess. Rather simple. And its obvious that’s why you keep this blog the way it is. You don’t sell crap to n00bs and we love you for it!”

—

“Don’t do it.”

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“Obviously, I’d say share it. 100 people seems good. and $100 seems fair.”

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“Difficult choice for you but rest assures your readers will support whatever decision you make because we trust you.  I do believe in “gut feelings” so follow your gut amigo.”

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“I would climb mountains and dodge bullets to learn how your reader scaled deals as big as he did so please take my advice seriously: Don’t publish it.

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“I would pay $100 for the “intelligence” of which you spoke today; of course I would pay with a $ order . . . just kidding.”

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“If he/she did rack up millions of points/miles, enough so that he or she would never have to work again, wouldn’t they want to ride off into the sunset instead of trying to continue to profit off of their success? I truly believe that if someone was that successful at the game, they would want to keep their legacy intact and not reveal their secret to the highest bidder. My ass would be on the Big Island snorkeling the captain cook monument with my wife and I’d be sending you on a free trip too to thank you for the years of advice. Just my two cents.”

—

“In response to today’s post, I would say go for it. I would be willing to pay the $100 for the info. I understand it may be a gamble, and that’s fine.”

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“I can sense the amount of stress and the weight on your shoulders right now. Best of luck in making the decision and please do not hesitate to ask me if I can be of more assistance.”

—

“TBH I’m not sure I see your dilemma. If you’re really worried that people will think you’re compromising the ideals that make us love MileNerd, you’re downplaying the cred we give you for holding the line for so long. My only concern, truly, is trying to figure out why this guy who’s made a million bucks and 10 million miles in 5 years needs to collect 100 dollar bills. It’s got to be a tool to keep out scammers and grifters, and I appreciate that. I read your post to my wife — who grudgingly stands in line at WalMart to trade  VGCs for MOs — and her reaction shocked me: How does that guy do that? If he can do it, why don’t we???  So that’s my answer — go for it. Do it for us, your readers, and despite my non-communicativeness please please let me Venmo my $100 to this guy.”

—

“I say go for it.  I would buy the advice too!”

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“I hope your inventive friend didn’t simply want to ride on your reputation, plus have you doing the 100 dollar details for him”

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“I’d pay 100 bucks in a heartbeat to get a glimpse of the past. Would be pretty awesome. I’d probably pay 200.”

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“I look forward to reading your decision, and applaud you in neither dismissing not accepting the offer without such serious thought.”

—

Again, thank you so much. The responses were way more helpful than I expected.

I talked to our friend a couple of hours ago and I realize I didn’t do him any favors with my writing yesterday. Let me try to make up for that…

First of all, I have zero concern about him lying. He’s an honest guy and I do know other people (not many) who have scaled deals to that degree. He’s a real deal heavy hitter. There’s no doubt about that.

Second, as suspected, his charging money is an attempt to weed people out rather than maximizing profits. There’s no question he could make a ton more if he wanted to. In fact, he even offered me the money (obviously I turned it down).  The guy is essentially retired from this game and genuinely wants to try and help a few motivated people learn how to think differently. He says he didn’t have that kind of help when he started and it would have benefited him. His goal really is to find the right people.

Third, he never threatened to go to a commercial blog in any way, shape, or form. I haven’t looked at yesterday’s post again, but I think I probably mischaracterized that completely. His point was that there’s a reason he came to me. Meaning, MileNerd readers tend to be a different bunch and he feels there’s a better chance of him reaching out to the right people here. He believes doing it through me shows something about him.

Finally, this whole thing was confusing as hell. I think you guys would be surprised by the amount of stress it caused me. So, with all that backstory shared, here’s my decision…

I can’t do it. In short, it’s just not what I do here. And it doesn’t feel right. I told him and he understood completely.

People like this tend to be pretty quiet. He wanted me to choose for him because I have a different personality and could have helped him find the best candidates. But as you read in some of the responses above…it’s complicated.

For those who are interested in this, he’s going to set up an email address and do it himself. I can share a way to contact him (either in my year-end post or when I get back in January). But please respect the fact that I don’t want to do any more than that and have chosen not to have any further involvement in this. If my inbox today is any indication, he’ll be slammed with responses. From his personality, I can’t imagine he’ll spend his time answering questions all day. Maybe he’ll have someone else who can read emails and decide for him. I don’t know and I don’t want to know. It’s not going to have anything to do with me. I haven’t read the document but, as far as I know, the deals aren’t active. The value is in his scaling mindset and the details of how he did it.

The best part of my Tuesday was hearing from so many people. Really nice people who sound like they’re doing well and have their heads on straight with this stuff. As I told a few of you, I’m always interested in hearing how people are hustling…maybe the best thing that will come out of this is that I can bring some good people together. That’s where my head is at the moment. Again, thank you so much for your thoughts. Hopefully you guys will understand my decision to check out of this one.

Question

Let’s pretend I have a reader who I’ve gone back and forth with a few times through the years. He’s very smart. Unlike all of those amateur hour types who talk online all day and brag about how hard they hit deals…he stays quiet and does much more than they can imagine.

How much more?

Well, so much that the mile and point game has provided him enough that he’ll never need to work again.

Like I said…a rare breed.

Let’s say I know for sure he’s telling the truth because he talks about the exact things that can’t be blogged about without killing them for everyone. Not really the deals themselves, but how he scaled them to such a degree. He’s someone who has earned more in this game during the last 5 years than I’ve made in my life.

If this reader came to me one day and very respectfully asked to talk about something…of course I’d listen.

What if he then offered to write a document of how he did so well in this hobby? A completely open and detailed account of the top few deals he has done (which have totaled 7 figures of money and 8 figures of points).

Of course, he’d have my attention.

But then what if he said the document could only be available for $100 per person to a very limited number of people? Specifically, people who I trusted would keep it private.

Well, shit.

If he came to me very nicely out of respect for what I do here…I’d be in a tricky situation.

I don’t push links or use any ads here like everyone (including him) knows. So my reply would be to reach out to someone more suited to help with something like this. But his response would be, “Well, I could sell it for a much higher price to a commercial blogger. There’s a reason I came to you.”

Why?

“Because I trust you. Your readers aren’t stupid. People who are interested in learning how to scale deals big can learn how I did it in the past & apply it to future opportunities. I only want a small group seeing it. If ambitious, learning that mindset & the specifics of how I did it is worth 10 times what I’m charging. This isn’t available online. Especially not blogs or Reddit. I’m almost retired now. This will be the only time I speak about how I got here & the readers will benefit much more than I will. But I’m not doing it for free. So are you in?”

Let’s say that happened.

And let’s say I felt lost about what to do.

In that scenario, I’d probably ask for a few days and then write a post asking for advice.

Yup.

I need advice. So please feel free to email me and give me some…

 

Super Bowling

Thanks to reader Paul for sharing these Super Bowl auctions from Starwood. Not sure I’d call it “value,” but these definitely got my attention. Probably won’t be of much interest unless you’re a sports fan or rich with Marriott/SPG points.