T1B

I hope all of you are using airline branded credit cards for everything that you purchase. Period! I bet that most of you are not though. In a recent PM I suggested a CC strategy for someone new to the points/miles game. Plus many of you business owners here should be putting all your business expenses on CCs as well.

In the interest of public service I will provide all of you with a basic intro strategy to get you started in the points/miles accumulation.

First thing to understand is the difference between a mileage based frequent flier program and a revenue based program. American is an example of a mileage based program. They award you the number of miles you flew on each leg of your trip. In other words you fly from Miami to Boston and you will earn 1258 miles for the one way trip regardless of what you paid for it (for the most part). When you accumulate enough miles you can turn them in for a trip. Southwest is an example of a revenue based program. Take that same trip from South Florida to Boston. If you were to purchase the cheapest ticket you would earn 4.3 points for each dollar you spent. So a $100 ticket would earn you 430 points. When you had enough points you could then use them to "purchase" a trip at a redemption rate of 50 points per dollar. So a $100 ticket would require 5,000 points.

Generally mileage based programs offer better values because cheap long trips can rack up points quickly. But one of the best ways to quickly accumulate points/miles is via Credit Card bonuses and spend. I have included links below for those of you that are not currently accumulating points or miles on a CC with a quick way to get 200,000 miles in about 6 months. That would be enough for a two people to travel in flat bed business class seats to Europe, Japan or China and back.

All that said, if you aren't currently accumulating points on Credit Cards the airline to start with is American and USAirways. They will be merging frequent flier accounts sometime in May. This provides an opportunity for us to maximize a few bonuses.



The first card to apply for is the Citi AAdvantage Platinum Select Card

This has a bonus of 50,000 miles after spending $3,000 on the card in the first three months. The $95 annual fee is waived the first year.



The second card to apply for is the Citi AAdvantage Small Business Platinum Select Card

This card has the same bonus of 50,000 miles after spending $3,000 on the card in the first three months. Annual fee of $95 is also waived first year.

Both of these cards come with free checked bags on American or USAirways, group 1 boarding and other benefits. Even if you don't own a business you can still apply for the business card. Just use your SS# as your business ID. If you sell something on Ebay or other similar type site, you would have a valid reason for the card. Even if you are just thinking about selling something there you can get approved. Just let them know you are thinking about starting a business and want a way to keep business expenses separate.


Then for the final first round of cards apply for the US Airways Permier World MasterCard

This card has a 50,000 mile bonus after paying the $89 annual fee and one purchase.


That is a minimum of 156,000 miles in your American AAdvantage account when the two programs merge in May. However, if you use the cards for everything you need to buy the miles accumulated will be much higher.

Two other items you should then start using to increase your mileage accumulation are:

The American AAdvantage Shopping Portal

For example Staples is offering 3 miles per $1 on everything purchased thru that portal. Then you pay for it with one of the above cards and you are getting 4 miles for each $1 you spend. On top of that if you spend a certain $ amount they ship 2 days for free.


The other quick way to rack up the miles is thru the dinning portal

Here you register each of the above cards you just applied for and you get additional miles on top the ones you earn for credit card spend.


So with these three card bonuses and 6 months of your normal everyday spending you would be sitting on 200,000 miles in the AAdvantage program. If you had your spouse of baby momma apply for each card as well in her name you would be looking at a combined 400,000 miles and First Class damn near around the world on a great airline like Cathay Pacific.


Any questions?

So I am sitting on 500k of Star Alliance points. I haven't looked because my present job has me traveling too much overseas, but if I were to burn those, it'd get me and my better half two 1st class seats to pretty much anywhere?

Rooster wrote:So I am sitting on 500k of Star Alliance points. I haven't looked because my present job has me traveling too much overseas, but if I were to burn those, it'd get me and my better half two 1st class seats to pretty much anywhere?

Are those all in one airline frequent flier program? If not it might take a bit of work but we could likely make it happen pretty easily.


One big mistake people make all the time is not crediting miles or points to the correct program. Just because someone is flying on a United flight, that doesn't mean they have to have the miles credited to the United frequent flier program. The wife wants to go the the Maldives and one of the easiest ways to get there is on one of the 3 gulf carriers. So I am currently crediting all of my American Airlines miles to my Alaska Air frequent flier account because Alaska has a very good first class redemption option with Emriates.

Here is another outstanding offer which would allow someone to travel free with you all year on Southwest.


Fly three round trips from ATL, get a Southwest companion pass for 2015.

This one will take a little bit of work. First off you are going to have to find a way to get an Atlanta address in one of the Metro zip codes. Once you do that you will then register for a new Rapid Rewards account at that address. Then you register for the promotion and fly three round trips that start and end in ATL. Upon completing the last trip you will be awarded a companion pass that allows someone else to travel with you for the rest of the year. (That person still has to pay the security fee.).

Couple words of caution on this one. If you have a huge balance of Rapid Rewards points today you might think twice about this promotion. You wouldn't want them to bust you and invalidate both accounts. If you don't have many points then this isn't an issue.

I plan to take advantage of this. I will just route a few trips thru ATL. Instead of buying one ticket like I normally would I will buy two tickets. For example, I have to go to Baltimore in early March. Instead of buying a ticket from San Antonio to Baltimore and return I will buy a ticket from San Antonio to ATL and return and a ticket from ATL to Baltimore back to ATL. This will get me one qualifying ATL round trip. Two more and all done.

My miles are broken up into two groups: 350k miles are Lufthansa Star Alliance and 15th are United miles. I've been told since they are all SA miles redeeming them would not be a problem.

It makes it more complicated, but it can be done. Good thing you have more miles with Lufty than United since United just decimated their award chart.

But you can take a really nice trip or a few trips for that balance.

I just make my clients pay for my flights. Problem solved and I don't have to get raped by a CC company to do it.

Hopefully you bill them for the airfare and pass it thru to them on your bill.

I don't "pay" for my positioning flights either. I purchase them on my card which gets me AAdvantage miles for the "spend", and then I bill them for the amount I charged to my card. Then I get the miles when I fly on the flights. Same with hotels.

Not sure what you mean by raped by a CC company either. I pay my bill in full each month and avoid interest as I am sure you do as well. Maybe you are referencing the annual fee some cards have, but there are plenty of ways to "earn" that money back as well.

So the CCC sends you on free vacations out of the goodness of their heart? Or do enough people fuck up their miles so the CCC loses money on you and makes it up on the retards?

Moving Sale wrote:So the CCC sends you on free vacations out of the goodness of their heart? Or do enough people fuck up their miles so the CCC loses money on you and makes it up on the retards?

The credit card companies buy huge amounts of miles from the airlines at a crazy rate. You and I can buy miles directly from the airlines at an average rate of 2 cents per mile. The credit card companies are purchasing them at a rate closer to one tenth of a cent per mile. So they can purchase 1,000,000 miles for $1,000. They then give me miles each month equal to the number of dollars I charged to the card. I pay the bill in full each month.

But as you pointed out some people carry a balance and pay the double digit interest rates. Their poor budgeting or emergencies are funding my travel each time they carry a balance.

In addition to the miles, my card also comes with access to the club lounge, free checked bags, early boarding, a refund of 10% of the miles I spend each year, special award fares, etc, etc.

If you pay your CC bill in full each month you really need to get in on this and start generating a bunch of "free" miles.


Hell, you thought 'Holic got pissed about Mikey's magic shade covering, that's nothing. Back in the day the US Mint wanted to get the dollar coin in more widespread use. So they had a program where you could order the coins and they would ship them to you for free. They were thinking businesses would send in $500 and then get the 500 $1.00 coins and use them in their daily business activities, like making change for customers. You could fund these $1.00 coin orders via a check or credit card. The mint even had a monthly recurring option where you chose how many coins you wanted each month. So a bunch of us ordered thousands of dollars of these coins each month via our credit cards. The mint would then send us the coins. We would then take the coins to our bank to deposit them. We would then use the deposited money to pay off our credit card. In doing so you generated miles for the "purchase" of the coins from the Mint. Sadly that option went away years ago when all the banks did was to send the coins back to the Fed banks instead of using them in daily business. But is was great while it lasted.