While the mileage game isn’t as fun as it used to be, there’s something to be said for a boatload of miles, with relatively few strings attached. Two offers of to note for those looking for a fairly quick juicing of the mileage accounts:
1) 40K United Mileage Plus miles
Chase is rolling out another fat bonus with their Mileage Plus Visa: 40,000 total bonus miles, but you don’t get them in one shot. 20,000 up front, and more as you spend, and after one year:
20,000 bonus miles after first purchase
10,000 bonus miles after your first anniversary
10,000 bonus miles after approval and making $10,000 in qualifying transactions in the first six months
The first year fee of $60 is waived. One other caveat: The fine print says you can’t get the bonuses if you’ve had a Mileage Plus card before. (Hat tip to AskMrCreditCard!)
2) 25K American AAdvantage miles
A simpler, less-confusing offer. 25,000 AA miles from Citibank, with their MasterCard or Amex (yes, Citibank issues Amex cards now). Spend $750 on the card, get the bonus.
Again, the first year’s fee ($85) is waived.
—
If you’re going to collect these miles, don’t hoard ‘em, spend ‘em. And consider canceling the card after you’ve collected the bonus.
RSS (FeedBurner)
Read with Amazon Kindle
Subscribe by E-mail
Follow on Twitter
November 18th, 2008 at 9:57 am
Very timely. I’ve had the Chase United card for a long time, but am looking to drop it. United just sucks too much, and I’m sick of a $60 annual fee.
The question is: what do I move to instead? I move a lot of money through my card each month to build miles, paying it off each month to deny the vampires their exorbitant interest rates.
Southwest is my airline of choice these days for business, but they don’t serve Newark, which is a frequent destination for family travel.
Anyone have guidance on the cards that let you redeem on multiple airlines?
November 18th, 2008 at 10:09 am
PFR,
I personally have dropped airline-specific credit cards entirely, earlier this year. My weapon of choice is the Starwood Preferred Guest American Express, which (obviously) feeds the Starwood Preferred Guest account.
SPG points are convertible to many airlines at a 1:1 ratio, and even give a 5000-mile bonus when you transfer 20,000 points at a time. I’m not a fan of the SPG Flights program (reviewed here) but it’s nice to have the option as a fallback for point burn.
The SPG Amex has an annual fee ($40, I believe) but that’s waived in the first year.