It is a lot less time and effort.
If you're super free and value miles enough to spend hours and hours analysing them and chalking up miles, then great! Perhaps travel hacking will be something you'll enjoy.
But not for me. Frankly, the sheer amount of time and effort it takes to accumulate miles, then search for suitable tickets to redeem them with, be waitlisted, change your travel plans (dates) again and again because your desired dates aren't available, just to accommodate your free flight redemptions, etc... That kind of effort isn't worth it for me; I'll rather spend my time and energy on my investments - something that generates me money and for years to come.
I've said it time and time again, the amount of work that goes into miles hacking just isn't
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