I'm reminded of an old colleague of mine. She worked as a food safety inspector for Cara Foods that service many airlines around the world. They have kitchens in airports and prepare the food for airlines. She would travel the world inspecting the kitchens. She would always travel business class and had an IATA pass/badge and had the ability to bump business class passenger and hold the plane. She wasn't paid well but was young, single and loved the idea of travelling the world in swank business class. She quickly learned two things, her company wasn't willing to give her time to take day trips into the city (so her sightseeing was airport hotels and the underbelly of international airports), and more importantly, flying economy feels really bad once you've spent time on business class flights.
So for this influencer, I imagine it's tough to live a regular life once he is forced to. If he wants to vacation with his friends, they are renting a 20ft boat rather than a 200ft boat.
That echos my experience really closely. I spent almost 4 years traveling twice per month with each trip lasting between 3-6 days, and each day, due to work schedules, being 12+ hours long. At the end of those 4 years, I couldn't tell you anything about the actual cities I visited, but I can still describe the intricate details of the hotel/conference centers in which I basically lived.
Hotels? none. It was always comp'd by the host org.
Miles? Ultimately not that many -- or not enough to be of long term value. It was enough to get high enough in the status tiers for reliable upgrades, but for the most part, a few ad-hoc spontaneous flights and that giant bank of miles you built up over the years evaporates over night.
It's a weird carrot on the stick that you kind of fall into. To ensure status, I would take purposefully crappy flights just to rack up the miles.
Looking back it was a silly thing to chase and a really stupid use of time.
I had a couple year stint where my job involved me flying 1-2 times a month. Not crazy compared to the road warriors but a decent amount of flying (almost all the flights were from one coast to the other so always long).
After going through that, and playing the airmiles game, airline miles seem to only exist to trigger human emotions around the fear of losing out and the same kind of dopamine dependency that's exploited by grindy video games and gambling. You need 5million experience to level up, and dammit, it feels so good when it rolls over.
A million miles is a lot. If you flew roundtrip from New York to London twice a month, it would take over 6 years to have flown a million miles: http://www.gcmap.com/mapui?P=JFK-LON
You don't need to fly close to a million miles to get a million "miles"/points. Miles are based on spend now, not on distance traveled, so it's easy to rack up a million when you're flying business or first class.
As an example, let's say you're a regular business traveler flying a $5k business class round-trip from NYC to London on American Airlines. You have the highest status level which gives you a 120% bonus on miles earned. Each dollar spent on the flight thus earns you 11 miles, so that one round-trip is worth 55k miles. Source: https://www.aa.com/i18n/aadvantage-program/miles/aadvantage-...
But wait, there's more. Of course you also bought the $5k flight on your AA credit card, which gives another 2 miles per dollar spent, which puts the total up to 65k miles earned for one 7k mile round-trip flight. Or maybe you put it on your Chase Sapphire Reserve card, which gives you 3X Chase Ultimate Rewards points for travel spending, so 55k AA miles + 15k UR points. Now imagine that you're doing this trip several times per month and the miles/points add up very quickly; you can get to a million in no time.
What airlines include card miles in your million miles count? Having a million miles is different from the million miles status which seems to be based on the first kind of miles you mentioned.
That wasn't the asked question though. And getting a million flown miles isn't all it's cracked up to be; you get a lower level of status guaranteed for life, but given that you're still actively traveling frequently for business you're gonna have a much better level of status anyway. And it all depends on the airline anyway.
American Airlines, for example, only gives you gold status (the lowest level) for life at 1M miles.
Delta did lifetime silver for 1M miles, which was their lowest level. They did give a nice Tumi suitcase at the 1M (or was it 2M?) actual miles mark, but I don't think it does much outside of a normal high status... probably zone one boarding, or something like that. Once you hit diamond status, upgrades domestically were pretty common. International... not so much. The flexibility was the really nice thing - they always would go out of their way to get you on the route you wanted if possible.
With status multipliers (but flying meat space), the most I ever hit was 623k miles in a year. I suspect it was close to 300k 'real' miles. Our travel person was booking 'round the world' tickets to save money at that point.
That may explain the disconnect when he talks about his goal: "I actually want to own a yacht. Owning a yacht, really owning it in full and being able to pay for its upkeep, means that you’ve somehow freed yourself from work and want."
He can much more easily free himself from work and want by skipping the super expensive yacht, putting several million dollars in a nice diversified portfolio, and withdrawing 3% per year. Not saying that's easy, but it's way easier than the yacht plan.
A group of friends could easily rent a 50ft sailboat. 20ft is quite small. ...and if one or two people has taken a couple of weekends to get a sailing license, it's actually a pretty fun vacation.
My girlfriend and I did it in the Abacos for a week, just the two of us. Sailing from island to island each day in the crystal Caribbean water. It's cost effective, super fun, and way more accessible than people realize.
I agree - my comment was more on the fact that he'll never be able to afford the lifestyle he lives during work hours, and it could be tough when that work goes away.
So for this influencer, I imagine it's tough to live a regular life once he is forced to. If he wants to vacation with his friends, they are renting a 20ft boat rather than a 200ft boat.