Frequent Miler on the Air · Friday, September 4, 2026
The podcast revisits a past "point gamble" from 2012 where a listener, likely the host, took a significant risk by purchasing $4,000 worth of watches from Nordstrom. The strategy involved leveraging a promotion on the British Airways shopping portal, aiming to earn 36 points per dollar, which was an unprecedented rate at the time.
“Let's start by going all the way back to 2012 when, uh, all right.”
“So this is a story. I think this is just a me story, not an us story, right? Yeah, this is definitely before I was, I was in the game. I don't think I had I knew that this world existed in 2012.”
“But, uh, one of the things that, uh, happened was, uh, British Airways shopping portal was running a promotion where they were, uh, offering a multiplier on rewards, and Nordstrom, uh, was offering a promo through the British Airways shopping portal at the same time.”
“And those things combined to mean that you could get 36 points per dollar shopping at Nordstrom. And that was unheard of huge at that time.”
“So, uh, I, uh, I had bought ten of these $400 watches. I spent $4,000 with this gamble.”
“And, uh, based on earning 36 points per dollar, that would be 140,000 British Airways points is what I could earn.”