This is one of the things that makes this whole discussion somewhat less than credible to me.
If you're really on that level of income, finding ways to earn additional income would have far greater impact than any points-oriented strategies. And if you would theoretically be up to the rigmarole of regular air travel, your options for generating income should not be all that limited.
I think you should be aiming more for quality than quantity on the travel front, and status runs fall into the latter category.
Best I can manage long-term is volunteer work unless you know a job that will let me do a minimum of 8 hours per week from home on a completely unbound 24/7 schedule that allows me to work when I can for as long as I can with the ability to stop and not do anything for up to two weeks to two months at a time at random. I could probably work full-time if I was able to log in and out of a system, do my hours at whatever ungodly hour I happen to be capable of doing a job that I consider to be satisfactory but that means one day I'd do 4 hours at 3am or 7 hours on a sunday at 3pm, starting to see the problem?
No one wants to hire certain categories of disabled people for anything other than wages LESS than minimum wage, fortunately you have to actually agree to be paid that for it to be legal so I can opt for volunteer 8 hours a week instead or simply study something that teaches me skills that I value and use to make my life better. I'll take my chances with token rebates, console/g-card refurb and flips and frequent flier miles, it's easier on my health and I can do it even when I'm confined to the house.
This is why I didn't simply walk into a coles and try to stack shelves for extra money, I can't get a job for a fair adult wage because of my illness, it is quite legal to not hire me and to force me to agree to less than minimum wage to the same job as other people, just less often and with more flexible hours. I'm not taking less money than I earned as a 17 year old boy because I happen to have a disease now, that's even more degrading than being on reduced work capacity, studying and doing volunteer work to pass the time.
My condition makes me less reliable than people with down syndrome, that's completely incompatible with a normal working life. Best I could manage is doing the same sort of jobs they give people with severe cognitive deficiencies for under minimum wage(gov subsidizees the wage), jobs doing very, very small scale busy work with people who don't understand that they won't have kids, a family or a life and probably need legal permission from a carer to have sex living a life designed to trick them into thinking they are "normal." by filling it with superficial erstat replacements for things like work and social life managed by government workers.
But sure, I'm sure that will be more lucrative than studying and cracking FF miles, the "nvidia rebate program" and then structuring my finances to take maximum advantage of these things...
I've lost jobs for fictitious reasons whenever I've tried my best to keep working like everyone else despite the fact I've provided medical certificates and prior warning of my condition and how it works and it's more painful than you can imagine being drummed out of low wage work, treated like disposable garbage because you have a disease and it's easier to fire you than accommodate your condition after having worked a good job and been respected as a subject matter expert by people twice your age who did everything in their power to keep you employed when you first started to get ill.
I have documentation that proves the things I'm saying if I feel like taking pictures of bills, medical reports and my hardware if you don't believe me about my purchases or what I've been doing with my life but it's kinda disheartening for people to assume that because I'm ill and I can't work that I'm not the person I was before I got ill when I'm feeling well or having a good run. I just don't get to be the me I was all the time anymore, only part-time and that's good enough for me even if it's not good enough for other people.
I've had a good run this year, I slept in a bed with a woman who is crazy about me every night for months for the first time since before I got ill and better yet I met her in VR so we're still in contact every day. I can sit on my bed in the same spot we used to sit when we talked and see her beside me and hear her voice, we've game all the time in VR so it's like she never left minus the getting to touch each other part but our relationship was like that before she got here so it's not unusual to me.
I got to explore my own state with her and I'm almost finished completely outfitting my bedroom, updating all of my hardware AGAIN and I've got a trip for japan booked, cash put aside to spend and 5 more months to get up more funds and prepare myself for my 12 day trip. I managed all of this without a job, without access to a credit card beyond a Harvey Norman card my carer let me use.
Oh and she was also disabled, sick and unable to work, living on food stamps in Texas, I flew her here and paid for everything on 13.2k per year, the 500 dollar advance you get each was our spending money, we spent it on groupon and scoupon purchases, spent our time at St Kilda beach and at my place in VR. You'd be suprised how much fun two computer geeks who grew up on the internet consuming anime by the truckload can have with a private room and two VR HMDs that let you be anyone you want, I sold off my original Vive when she left so I won't get to try that cough again for quite some time.
I get paid 550 AUD per fortnight, I don't even get rent assistance so you go and do the math on how I managed to pull that off without an income stream beyond what token rebates I could claim off my computer hardware I bought for VR, what value I could get for things I bought, repaired, played with and traded away when I was done with it and what the government thinks is acceptable to give the disabled, sick or injured when they have nowhere else to turn to.
