Frequent flyer program retirement goals and update

Regular readers will know that we have big plans to travel when we hit early retirement in a couple of years’ time.

However, we’ve only fairly recently become converts to the credit card hacking and churning scene. The goal there is to take advantage of credit card perks where possible (airport lounge invites, cashback offers, etc) and sign-up point bonuses (spend $X within Y days and get Z number of reward points).

When I wrote the original article on credit card hacking I said it was a regret that we hadn’t done it sooner. If anything, that regret has only grown over time. It won’t make you rich, but it can be quite beneficial over time.

If only we’d done it sooner… Sigh.

But what’s done is done. We can’t change the past, but we can still influence the future.

While we’re signed up to other supermarket rewards programs, as well as other frequent flyer programs just to be on their books, our main rewards program is the Qantas Frequent Flyer program. Between some travel for work and our early retirement travel goals, it makes sense to focus on it while we still can.

So with a late start to our credit card hacking, and not much time until we retire at the end of 2024, we have some ‘fairly lofty’ goals to quickly reach.

In the 18 months since we started credit card churning, we’ve quickly earned around 1.3 million Qantas points.

Our goal is to have earned 2 million Qantas Frequent Flyer points by the time we retire. And our points balance at our moment of retirement will be… Well, that’s still up in the air.

Today’s blog post talks about what those points could be worth, how we hope to reach that target, what we plan to do with them, and what our post-retirement credit card plans are.

The value of 2 million frequent flyer points

As with everything in the financial world, the answer to what 2 million Qantas Frequent Flyer points are worth is: “it depends”.