Ryan, what a great story. I'm thinking of heading to AAA this afternoon. I'm trying to figure out what AA or Citibank could do to prevent that? How can they prevent you from buying TC

IT is too late for the AAA "deal".

AAA will only allow you to charge travelers checks on a AAA credit card. My hat is off to those that took advantage.

United Visa had an occasional promotion. You could get double miles on any check you wrote to pay off another CC. No transfer fees involved. You just had to pay interest on the money. I used my United CC to "pay off" my USAir.I didn't owe USAIR any money on the account so a credit balance was vcreated. Then told USair to pay United. THe net result...I paid interst on the advance for a week and got 50,000 miles ...each time I got the offer in the mail.

I got a few friends into doing the same for themselves.

As my son would say...sweet.

I own three restaurants, i set up some major suppliers on my amex platinum card, i'm ringing $50,000 a month in miles, which translates to two free first class tickets to europe every four months, three trips a year for tickets that would cost $25,000 a trip! not bad!

Tuscan, are you trapped by UsAir in CLT like me ?

Patrick - your equity line of credit charges start from the date of posting! If this is not clear on your statement call you Equity Line of Credit bank for verification! Sorry if this is a shock to you!

I've been considering getting an AA Advantage card or the Capital One...most of my current miles are with AA. Any opinions on the best card to go with? Also, all the AA cards I've seen have an annual fee (~$75)... are there any out there without the fee that I'm missing?
thanks

Hi,
As a self-appointed Frequent Flyer Diva, here are some of the ways I've earned miles
-college tuition (3 years, until the college started charging a fee: caveat--never pay a fee for Frequent Flyers
-home remodeling (a big one)
-car down payment (another big one)
-furniture purchases
-anything you can pay off in one month!
If you can't pay the balance within the billing cycle, it's not "free" anymore!
I've had the AAVisa card for 15 years and it's fine; we looked into the Capitol One, but there were hidden restrictions that we didn't care for. Another tip: focus on one airline that goes where you like to travel and get all your miles on that card. (Although we do have the USAir Visa too and alternate purchases according to billing dates)
This approach has gotten us many free tickets to Europe, Hawaii, Aruba, and Bermuda. In fact, I rarely purchase tickets anymore!

Coqui1024

I just had an offer for an AA Mastercard bronze, with no annual fee.I didn't look at it closely as I already have an AA Visa and an AA MC. You might check into it though

Forgot to mention..with the no fee bronze AA card you don't get 1 mile/1 dollar ..it's 1 mile/$2.00 and there is a cap but i don't recall what it is. I use my card for everything so the $50.00 fee give me many more miles than a free card would.

tuscan, regarding points for a wedding -

Many years ago the Marriott newsletter included an article about a man who told his daughter that she could have any kind of wedding she wanted... as long as it was at a Marriott property. He received points for every dollar he spent on the wedding and had enough points for a great cruise.

He and his wife went on the cruise. I still think it would have been a great honeymoon "gift"! :-)

N2it, I think you failed to understand my post. Of course, the Equity Credit line charges from the day you write the check, but my point was I put a big charge on a CREDIT CARD to get miles and to delay writing that Equity Credit check for the first month. That way, it DOES delay interest charges for a month, as you'll get no charges from either the credit card or the Equity Credit account until after you've paid off the credit card charge with the check. Get it?

In other words, if you're buying something like $ 6000 worth of new appliances that you'd normally put on the Equity line, instead, charge it to the card, get 6000 miles and then a month later pay off that balance to the credit card company with the Equity check. You've saved an extra month of interest charges from writing the check itself at the time of purchase.

Is it better to have miles or cash value that Discover & AMEX offers ? as I see it if you have the cash you are not restricted as to when you can use your miles

Well, jean to each his own, but I usually cash in my miles for free business class tickets to Europe. Those are actually worth about $7000 or more each and cost me 90,000 miles. I easily earn 90,000 miles most years using all the sources mentioned above including lots of bonuses -- very few from actual miles. I can't imagine why I'd have to do to earn $7000 credit on a cash back card! I think using miles to get a free flight that could possibly be gotten for $200 -$300 with a little advance planning is foolish -- at least for me.

Late last year I received a Citi-Bank CC offer including a zero-percent transfer option for 13 months. I had 60 days to make the transfers and had to put and additional $100 on the CC for the transfer offer to be valid. So I transfered college tuition from Miles CC plus spent $103 on card (and no more ever!!). So I have zero interest on the transfer until February 2006. I pay about 96 cents a month interest on the $103 I put on the CC. Patrick, sorry I misunderstood your post!!

I guess this is kind of repetitive, but we also use our CC for large purchases, i.e., new cars, remodeling, etc. We always have the cash to pay off the following month.

What I don't understand is this: Friends and family know that we do this, yet no one has a CC linked to an airline FF program.

We want as much bang for the buck as we can get.

My nanny tax :-( (but, hey, now I can run for President!), and the $1000 it took to buy additional miles to be able to purchase biz class tix with miles (believe it or not, that was cheaper than the coach seats we might have upgraded-- scary!)