Big Holiday Bonus from United Shopping

United's MileagePlus Shopping portal is out with a pretty lucrative bonus for the holidays.  As a reminder, all the large airlines and US hotel programs offers online shopping portals where they award miles/points for shopping through their portal.  It's pretty simple - go to the portal, search for the store (i.e. Nordstrom, Best Buy, etc...) and click-through.  Shop as normal.

The bonus (which runs through 11/24) is in addition to the miles you'd earn through the portal.  Here's the earnings structure:

• 500 bonus miles for $150 in spend (3.33x)
• 3000 bonus miles for $650 in spend (4.62x)
• 6000 bonus miles for $1250 in spend (4.8x)

That is a pretty strong bonus.  $1,250 is a lot of spend in a few weeks but I think $650 seems doable especially if you're getting a head start on holiday shopping.  Let's look at a hypothetical example at the $650 spend level:

• Spend $650 at Nordstrom (currently 6x) and earn 3,900 miles
• Earn another 650 miles for the spend on your credit card
• Earn 3,000 bonus award miles

That's a total of 7,550 miles on $650 in spend.  I've seen stores (like Nordstrom) go 12x+ in November to entice people to shop early.  So be patient - possible that you could earn more than 18 miles per dollar spent at some point in the next few weeks.  Keep an eye on your email as I'm sure the other portals will be putting out competing holiday offers soon.