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If you’re anything like me this year, the holiday managed to sneak up on you woefully under-prepared. If you find yourself struggling for a nice gift for someone you love (who you wish would start earning and redeeming miles to travel in the kind of comfort and style you think they deserve), you might consider a generous gift of a ticket to FTU Seattle this winter – to be held February 24-25, 2018 at the Crowne Plaza Seattle Airport. Through December 31st, you can save $20 with promo code FTUSTOCKINGSTUFFER, which also gets you an free copy of Chris Gillebeau’s new book — Side Hustle: From idea to income in 27 days. Click the image below or click here to go to the event registration page.
Of course, as with each of the FTU events this past year, I will be in attendance. I’ll be giving a couple of presentations, as I did in Chicago this fall. The schedule is still being finalized, but I am expecting to give the following two presentations:
Bagging a bargain: the tools we use to save big: Advanced techniques for spotting opportunities for significant savings.
This presentation will be a re-tooled version of the talk I gave in Chicago this fall. If you saw my previous presentation, this will definitely be an enhanced version, with a similar backbone but some new extremities. For those on the west coast who did not make it to FTU Chicago, we’ll talk about a number of the tools we use to find and evaluate deals.
Buying a car: how to maximize your mileage: Methods for making miles worthwhile when buying a car
With a new bundle of joy on the way within the next couple of weeks, I had been planning on a vehicle purchase since the summer. One of my curiosities from the outset was how to maximize mileage on the purchase without sacrificing savings. In this presentation, I’ll talk about a few angles and discuss how I’m going about maximizing return on a big purchase.
I’ve been attending FTU events since long before I worked here at Frequent Miler. Tickets are $249 per person before the coupon ($229 after coupon). For several years, my wife and I found it worth the cost of admission, flights, and hotel for the two of us to attend these events. First, there are some excellent speakers — this time around including:
Tiffany Funk of One Mile at a Time on Aspirational Award Travel
Matthew Klint of Live and Let’s Fly on the Latest Developments in Award Travel
Stefan Krasowski of Rapid Travel Chai on Credit Cards
Jon & Ben Nickel-D’Andrea of No Mas Coach on Alaska Mileage Plan and Marriott-SPG
Ariana Arghandewal of PointChaser on High Volume Manufactured Spend
Mike Graziano of Make Travel Hacking Great Again on Manufactued Spend Techniques and When Things Go Wrong
Senitra Horbrook of Points Travelher on Bank and Credit Union Manufactured Spend and Hotel Mattress Running
But beyond the sessions, some of the most valuable tips I get at these seminars are the ones picked up in casual conversation outside the session rooms, at meal times, and hanging out at the hotel bar in the evening. One of the best resources to have in mastering everything from manufacturing spend to award chart sweet spots is a network. Our Frequent Miler Insiders group is a good example of having a network with the knowledge to answer questions and help you navigate the world of award travel — but sometimes, having personal connections with others who share your passion for earning and burning miles (or hoarding and cherry picking) can be invaluable.
So whether you’re considering a gift for yourself or you and a travel partner or a loved one who you wish would earn their own miles, I think FTU could be an interesting and memorable gift under the tree this year. If you are attending in Seattle, please say hello!
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Nick, I’m intrigued about This FTU event — especially since my wife’s been wanting to visit Seattle for a couple of years. Any idea when a more formal agenda will be posted on the website?
I expect that is combing within the next week or two. You can see a list of confirmed speakers here:
https://ftuniversity.com/ftu-signature-seattle-february-2018/speakers/
Topics covered generally run the gamut from beginner topics (like booking your first award ticket) to high volume manufactured spend. Knowing or having met most of the speakers on the list, I expect it’ll be a good event.
If you’re planning to visit Seattle and do some more touristy things, you might want to plan a few extra days. The schedule at FTU is usually pretty tightly packed during the day (and the host hotel is always in the airport vicinity — which makes it easy to get to the event, but it’s not a walk down the block to Pike Place Market for lunch). When the full schedule is uploaded, I’ll update this / post another quick tip.
Nick, I’ve never been to an FTU. Can you go to each of the seminars, or do some run concurrently with others?
Some of the speakers run concurrently. This is to make sure there is plenty of content for everyone. For example, you may fly Delta weekly and be interested in how to best leverage your SkyMiles or increase your chances of an upgrade, whereas I haven’t flown on Delta in more than 30 years (just haven’t had the scenario where it was my best option in my travels) — but I’m really interested in the Alaska Mileage Plan program. You may be interested in the most luxurious hotel properties at which to use points whereas someone else might be interested in how many Category 1 nights they can spend at family-friendly Hilton properties. So there are usually two or three presentations happening concurrently at FTU events. When my wife and I attended together, we often went to separate presentations to divide and conquer.