Shangri-La

We don’t live in an ideal world. That’s for sure.

Life is messy and requires compromises and grit and overcoming obstacles and all of that.

No endeavor worth pursuing is without its own trials and tribulations.

And of course the miles game is no different.

If you play the miles game, as I play it, there’ll be points of frustration.  If you play it more aggressively, there’ll be more.

You may buy a few thousand dollars worth of gift cards and drive out to the armpit that is “Super” Walmart and find that the cards were improperly activated. You will then have to email copies of your receipts to the gift card bank and wait a few weeks before your money is again liquid and usable.

Or you may be like my friend who bought a Walmart gift card instead of a Visa gift card and was unable to load it onto his bluebird card. He then had to figure out how to blow $1000 at Walmart. Yuck.

Such is life. No pain no gain.

But sometimes you’ve just got to daydream a little and imagine life the way you want it to be, not the way it is.

Sometimes you’ve got to picture the ideal. For if you don’t have this picture in your mind, how will you know when you’ve arrived at nirvana?

I was thinking about this the other day because of some recent exciting developments in the miles game.

I suddenly realized that Shangri-La for me would be the ability to manufacture at least $10,000 a month in spending without driving anywhere or actually purchasing anything in  person.

I decided to christen this elusive ideal “passive manufactured spending.”

Despite the initials, just thinking about this concept puts me into a good mood.

My PMS feels nothing like this…

PMS would be like a virtual reality version of the miles game. Climbing mountains, jumping out of planes, deep-sea diving, hitting spending bonuses, and saving the world, all from the comfort of my own couch.

It would be the travel hacking equivalent of passive income.

And as it stands right now, I figure I’m over 60% of the way there.

My current strategy involves Loyal3 accounts for both my wife and me.

We both automatically purchase $50 of each of the 55 companies offered each month by credit card. We then sell our shares about a week after their purchase, netting us $5500 in credit card “spend.”

Sometimes the shares will go up and sometimes they will go down. My guess is that if this opportunity stays open for a long time (which I very much doubt it can,) I’ll end up a little bit ahead overall. But even if I end up little bit behind , that’s fine too. After all, I’ll be earning thousands of dollars in airline bonuses while I’m happily writing my blog, lining up putts in my basement, and reading bedtime stories to my kids.

Add on another thousand dollars in Amazon payments and we’re up to $6500 a month in PMS sweat free.

Which means that as it stands, at this shining moment in time, I only need make one monthly trip to the dreaded Walmart to load $4000 on to my and my wife’s Bluebird cards.

The fierce urgency of PMS is upon us

And if and when that eureka moment comes, and I find the missing $3500 a month in PMS ready to be snatched up, you’d better believe you’ll read about it right here first.

Which makes me wonder, what is your miles game dream?

Your comments are always welcome.