cindyloo

OK, am I the only person who does not have a credit card that helps me to earn miles? We are looking for one and would love some advice/suggestions.<BR><BR>TIA!

clevelandbrown

I looked at a few cards that offer miles, but I found that they all have fees and charges substantially higher than on my current cards. While I use my cards frequently, I couldn't see a situation where the extra fees involved would not be greater than the value of the miles earned.

soccr

If I were you, Cindyloo, I'd wait until the dust settles around all the bankruptcies and chapter 11s and so forth, if you are thinking about the cards specifically related to particular airlines. Those credit cards do cost you money -- at least $50/year off the top -- and if you don't pay in full each month, the interest rate is very very high. So you could easily spend more per year to have a card than you would &quot;save&quot; by getting a FFlyer award ticket. <BR><BR>Look at it this way: to get a RT ticket within the US, it's usually around 25,000 miles -- which translates to charging $25,000 worth of merchandise, restaurant meals, etc. etc. or Unless you are flying a heckuva lot, it may not be worth it. (Although I just did the Kellogs cereal calculation, and unless my calculator's sick, that's &quot;only&quot; 50 boxes of Kellogg's Low Fat Granola!)<BR><BR>A lot of people are now picking up credit cards associated with hotel chain &quot;premier&quot; clubs (one in particular is very good, but I can't remember which -- ?Hilton? 6 Continenets?), which allow you to &quot;buy&quot; tickets through the hotel chain based on your card use. This is not the same as collecting FFlyer miles, because you can't upgrade -- all you can do is have the hotel chain buy you a ticket on partner airlines. But check that out, too.

Flyboy

I'm a big advocate of concentrating your miles-earning activities, which means looking very hard at the airline that you use most of the time (if you have a preferred carrier.) By putting all of your miles in one place, you will earn your awards more quickly and avoid multiple accounts with &quot;orphan&quot; points in them. <BR><BR>Next, choose a value for a single FF mile. In my own case, I value a mile at 1.5 cents. To recover a $50 dollar annual fee, I want to charge an average of a little more than $275 a month. In fact, I run a lot more than that through the account. It's not difficult to do if you use your card for gas, groceries and incidentals for which you might otherwise use cash. (As others have pointed out, this is not the card you want to carry a balance on. I have mine set up to draw the full balance from my checking account each month.) <BR><BR>You should be able to get a sign-up bonus of thousands of miles that will put you a year or two ahead of the game in terms of recovering the cost of your annual fee in the form of miles. In addition, there are many promotions that give you bonus miles. (In short, there is no way that you will need to charge $25,000 on that card to get a free ticket.)<BR><BR>An additional benefit to an airline affinity card is receiving marketing attention from the airline in the form of discount coupons, FF mileage discounts and deals from marketing partners.

sunlover

I &quot;used&quot; to have a United Airlines Visa. That was when I lived in chicago and before the current problems of United. I loved it! Obviously I chose the United Card due to them being headquarterreed in Chicago and I could go anywhere from my home airpor with them. some say they would never charge enough to get the advantage of the card (it did have a higher annual fee) but htat is not true. We basically used that one card for everything. I charged my groceries, all my gas, any shopping I did, all eating out, I even paid my phone and cable bill via credit card (heck if I could have paid my mortgage with the card I would have!) It was not that we didn't have the money for things like groceries, we just charged them to get the miles adn paid one HUGE bill every month (we charged $3000-$4000 each month on credit card)! We put all of our money in our account all month long and then just wrote one big check every month instead of paying as we went. Now if you are and over spender adn tend to charge things you really can't afford, DON'T DO THIS. But if you can afford your groceries and what not, why pay cash or use your check card seeral tiems within a month when you can write one check at the end and accumulate al those miles?<BR><BR>We now have a new card thru USAA or insurance caarrier that lets us get &quot;eagle points&quot; which are redeemable on any airline and we pretty much do the same thing but are not so limited. Now that we live in a smaller city which is not a hub airport for any specific airline we tend to fly different airlines all the time so this works better.

clevelandbrown

I would suggest you do some calculations before signing up for one of these cards. These are the figures I ran when considering the USAA Eagle card, which is probably one of the best.<BR><BR>I currently have a Visa, Mastercard, and Discover. None has an annual fee; each is paid off completely each month. The Discover gives me a 1% rebate on the amount I charge (actually slightly less as it is graduated up to 1%, but I use 1% because I use this card heavily). The annual fee on the USAA Eagle card is, I believe $49.<BR><BR>If I charge $4000 a month, my Discover rebate is almost $480 per year.<BR><BR>If I switch to the USAA Eagle card, I lose that $480, and I incur a fee of $49. for a total of $529 per year. In return, I get 48,000 &quot;free&quot; miles, almost enough for two domestic flights. I live in Cleveland and one of my sons lives in San Diego; I have never paid as much as $529 for two round trips to San Diego. Further, with many cards you are limited to getting tickets through specified outlets, which often do not have the best prices, or to certain flights.<BR><BR>I am sure these cards make a lot of money for the banks, and that money comes from the cardholders.

LT

Cindy:<BR><BR>I agree with most of the other posters who say that if you plan on carrying a balance, you can forget about an airline-associated credit card. The % rates are close to usury!<BR><BR>Flyboy makes an excellent point about thinking about which airline to choose. If you live in Arizona, for example, getting a US Airways card probably isn't a good idea, unless you do a lot of travelling back east. <BR><BR>I don't like the bank &quot;miles&quot; cards, because you can't get upgrades, etc. -- all you'll get are free tickets. I guess I'm also just skeptical about the choice of airlines, etc.<BR><BR>As far as a Discover Card, I don't personally like them, and if you do any travelling overseas, you might as well leave it home, as most non- US-based businesses don't accept it.<BR><BR>I've been very happy with the American Express Membership Miles program. They have partnered up with many different airlines, retail outlets, hotels, and more. You get a point for every dollar, and you can keep your points in a &quot;bank,&quot; and you can then transfer points into your airline FF account, or you can buy items, hotel nights, etc.<BR><BR>I also like the Continental Airlines VISA through Chase. The fee is about the norm ($65 I think), and CO's miles don't expire.<BR><BR>I guess the bottom line is to do your homework before getting any new card. Good luck!

Patty

cindyloo,<BR><BR>If you can answer some of the following, it would help us point you in the right direction:<BR><BR>1. What carriers do you normally fly?<BR>2. How much do you expect to charge <BR>annually? Do you carry a balance?<BR>3. Do you already have a FF account(s) that you want to top off?<BR>4. What will you be using the awards for (domestic, international, upgrades, etc.)?<BR><BR>In general though, I agree with LT in that I also do not like the bank miles cards as you can't combine those miles with your FF account miles. I am very loyal to Amex and really like their Membership Rewards program but their charge cards carry a large fee.<BR><BR>One card I haven't seen mentioned yet is the Starwood Amex optima card (a credit card product). It's fee free for the first year, starting the second year, it's $30 annually (but many people have indicated that they were able to get the second year fee reduced or waived). There's almost always some sign up bonus. It's not technically tied in to any FF program but rather to the Starwood frequent guest program (you'll have to open a Starwood account if you do not already have one). Once the points are in your Starwood account, you can then transfer to a number of airline partners mostly on a 1:1 basis (one of the major exceptions is UA where it's 2:1). If you transfer 20,000 points at one time, you get a 5,000 mile bonus. Recently there was a 10,000 point bonus offer, so just as an example with the sign up bonus and the 5,000 transfer bonus, you're looking at charging $10,000 before qualifying for one free domestic roundtrip. I have to add here that I don't think domestic roundtrips are really the best use of miles, upgrades and int'l business class represent much better values.<BR>The one criticism I have about the Starwood Amex is that they're really stingy with the initial credit line and trying to get them to increase it is not easy, even if you're already an Amex Platinum cardholder! Other than that I think it's a good product. Hope this helps.

cindyloo

You guys and gals are awesome! Thanks for the information. This really helps!