Homeless Man Living Off Frequent Flier Points Gets Job
Free nights at hotels kept Jim Kennedy off the streets.
May 13, 2010— -- An unemployed, homeless man who spent months living in hotels off loyal program points, has found a job as the CEO of an Internet advertising firm.
Jim Kennedy, a 46-year-old California man, weathered the recession by using his one-million-mile-plus stockpile of hotel and airline points to keep a roof over his head.
Since being kicked out of his foreclosed home on Jan. 17, the former corporate development manager has relied on all those miles accumulated during years on the road to find a place to stay -- a Holiday Inn Express here, a Hampton Inn there and a Motel 6 in between.
But that is about to end. On Monday, Kennedy started work as the new CEO of Netword, an Internet advertising company that tries to pair search results with local advertisers.
Kennedy was featured two months ago on "Good Morning America" and other media outlets. He said that the managers of a venture capital firm that is funding Netword saw one of those reports and brought him in for an interview.
Stay Up to Date on the Latest Travel Trends from ABC News on Twitter
The timing couldn't be any better.
"I was probably down to three or four weeks" of free nights, Kennedy said.
And that was only after Wyndham Hotels gave him some extra points after hearing about his plight.
Kennedy still is living in a hotel -- paying for his room in cash and points -- while he searches for a more-permanent place to live.
"I hope to resolve that in the next two weeks or so," he said.
For four months, Kennedy has been using points for rooms wherever he could. He switched hotels, sometimes staying up to a week in one location, depending on the availability of free nights or where he needed to travel for interviews.
Hotels often charge different rates for different nights, even when paying with points, and Kennedy shopped around for the best bargain.
Finding a hotel that offers a free breakfast is a bonus, though Kennedy noted that the free breakfasts can get monotonous. A lot of hotels, regardless of chain, seem to get their food from the same supplier, so even the powdered eggs taste the same.
"You get tired of the same options every day," Kennedy told ABC two months ago.
Back then, he was searching for hotels with free Internet service so he could send off resumes, and also looked for "a place with a microwave and fridge so I can buy frozen dinners."
Even the entertainment options were important. Kennedy knew which hotels offered HD TV and how many channels they provided.
Sometimes the hotels had an unpleasant and surprising fee tacked on: $10 to park at a hotel near Disneyland, $20 to park at an airport hotel.
"That's three, four days of my food budget," Kennedy said.
Related Stories
ABC News Live