Help with Frequent Flyer Programs

In Boulder, CO, where I live, one of the growth industries is life coaching. If you engage a life coach, you pay him or her help you analyze your life, set goals and, theoretically, achieve them. I'm quite happy with my life, thank you -- except when I am trying to use some of my accumulated frequent flyer miles. Thanks to Michelle Singletary, a syndicated Washington Post personal finance columnist and broadcast reporter on such financial matters, I now have some resources -- coaches, if you will -- to help with next time I want to use some of my frequent flyer miles. She shared them with her readers, and I'm sharing them with you.

Randy Petersen and Tim Winship have devoted years and built reputations from untangling frequent flyer programs. You might think of them as life coaches for air travelers. Colorado-based Petersen publishes InsideFlyer magazine and maintains http://www.webflyer.com/ and http://www.flyertalk.com/. Winship was a contributing editor to Frequent Flyer magazine, which was published by OAG but has been folded in favor of on-line OAG Executive Travel. He also contributes a column to http://www.smartertravel.com/, and according to Singletary, publishes http://www.frequentflyer.com/.

The two teamed up to write Mileage Pro: The Insider's Guide to Frequent Flyer Programs, published by OAG Worldwide. It is $19.95 at bookstores; $23.90 directly from OAG with standard delivery and $27.90 with expedited delivery, and is also the November selection for the Post's Color of Money Book Club. The Travel Insider's review stated, "It seems for many of us, the more we know (about frequent flier programs) the more we realize we don't know." There I am -- waiting to be coached on to manage my miles better." The Travel Insider does take the authors and/or publisher to task for not including an index, but I guess you cant have everything. I'll suspend comment until I've actually seen it.

BTW, because a friend asked me, I arbitrarily selected "flyer" over "flier" for the spelling I'm using in this blog. Why? Because I wanted to. Now, if air travel frustrates you, go check out those other websites and buy the book.