How to earn thousands of miles without making a single airline purchase

While opening credit cards is a big way to travel hack, that’s not the only way you can earn points and miles for travel. One of the ways we travel more for less is by earning miles or points on top of the credit card points we’re getting for the purchases anyways.

As Chicago residents, we fly out of O’Hare International Airport, which is a United hub. Because of this, we’re on United flights more often than not because it gives us the most options with times and destinations.

Year-to-date, I’ve earned more than 11,500 miles from non-flight spending and in addition to the credit card points I earned for each purchase. A one-way from Chicago to many major US cities can be as low as 7,800 miles, so if we keep this up, we’ll have earned enough for a round-trip flight within the United States.

How? Two ways.

The first is the United MileagePlus X App.

We have a post where you can view learn about the app in detail – here. Simply put, the app allows you to buy gift cards and receive miles for the purchase. You still receive credit card points for the purchase, and, if you use a Chase card, the purchase codes at as the category. For example, Starbucks gift cards via the United MileagePlus X app code as dining because Starbucks codes as dining, so you would earn 3x Ultimate Rewards points for the gift card purchase through the app. When we have used our American Express Gold via the United MileagePlus X app, it codes as “travel” for all purchases, so we haven’t earned that 4x for dining per the AmEx categories. In addition, to earning miles for the multiplier stated in the app, you can also earn an additional 25% miles with every app purchase just for having a United credit card attached to your MileagePlus account. You do not need to make your purchase with the United card for the 25% bonus.

The second way is the United Shopping Portal.

This is an extension that you can install in your internet browser, and every time you are on a site that gives miles for purchases, a notification will pop up asking if you want to active the miles for your purchase and say how many miles per dollar. One thing to note is that you cannot use the United Shopping Portal at the same time as a portal like Rakuten. You can only use one of these two on a purchase.

In some cases, you can stack a United MileagePlus X app purchase with the United Shopping Portal. A few months ago, I wanted to buy something from Lululemon. I bought a $60 Lululemon gift card through the MileagePlus X app and earned 120 miles for 2 miles per dollar. Because I have a United card, I got an extra 30 miles (25% of the 120 from the purchase). Then, I used my Lululemon gift card on the website and earned 288 miles for a $48 dollar purchase, for 6 miles per dollar.