Arguably, the best use for frequent flyer miles is long haul international flights in business or first class.  This is the only way many of us will ever experience the luxury of flying with lie flat seats, elaborate meals, and top notch service.  I don’t disagree.  Avid point collectors have the means to experience these “once in a lifetime” trips year after year.  That being said, domestic travel is a more common need for most of us, and ticket prices have been rising steadily.  Luckily, as point collectors, we seem to have a glut of great domestic flight options these days.  Here is a round up of some of my favorites…

Citi ThankYou: More than $3,125 worth of travel

Citi has quite a few decent signup bonuses right now that will award you ThankYou points (you can find these on my “Best credit card offers” page):

• CitiBusiness: 50K
• Citi ThankYou Preferred: 40K
• Citi Forward: 30K (via this FlyerTalk trick)
• Citi ThankYou Premier 25K

Citi allows each person to sign up for two Citi cards at a time.  After that, you need to wait approximately 95 days before signing up for more.  A couple could leverage these deals as follows:

• Round 1: Each person sign up for two cards: the CitiBusiness card and the ThankYou Preferred.  Total ThankYou haul: 180K
• Round 2 (95+ days later): One person sign up for the ThankYou Premier and the other sign up for the Citi Forward card. 

After the two signup rounds described above, this couple would have over 235,000 ThankYou points.  The reason for getting the Forward card (besides the sign-up bonus) is that it allows this couple to continue to earn ThankYou points at a rate of 5 points per dollar at restaurants, movie theaters, and bookstores (see “Forward 5X“).  The reason for getting the Premier card is that it allows this couple to book airfare at the rate of 1.33 cents per point.  So, those 235,000 points earned from sign-up bonuses become worth $3,125 of travel!  Even better, flights flown with these points earn airline miles and elite credit.  Of these Citi cards, only the Premier card has an annual fee.  It may be possible for this couple to avoid even that by cancelling the card after a year and then have the other person sign up.  Alternate annually.

ThankYou points can be used equally well for international travel, but you are likely to find better value with other point programs especially if you want to fly business or first class.

Southwest Companion Pass: Up to $3674 worth of travel

Once a person earns 110,000 Southwest RapidRewards points in a calendar year, they are awarded a companion pass that is good for the rest of that year and all of the next. As many other bloggers have pointed out, now is a great time to work toward your 2013 calendar year haul. Here’s how:

• Sign up for two Chase Southwest cards (there are several to choose from. See “Best credit card offers“).
• Each card requires $2K in spend before you will receive the 50K sign-up bonus. Do not complete the $2K spend until early in 2013. That way you can ensure that both 50K bonuses get credited to you in 2013.
• After meeting the spend, you will have 104,000 points. Earn an extra 6000 points through credit card spend, point transfers from hotel programs, or via the Rapid Rewards shopping portal.
• Once you have been credited with 110K points in 2013, you will get a companion pass good for all the rest of 2013 and all of 2014.

When using points to book Southwest flights, each point is worth 1.67 cents towards “Wanna Getaway” fares. So, the 110,000 points you’ve accumulated are worth $1837 worth of flights for one person. However, since you can now fly a companion for free, it is really worth up to double that amount: $3674 worth of flights! Please note, though, that the only way to get $3674 worth of travel with those points is to spend them all during the two years that your companion pass is valid, and to spend them all on “Wanna Getaway” fares. While this is still an amazingly good deal, most people will probably get less than $3674 worth of travel from it.

British Airways Avios: Up to $3,885 worth of travel.

There’s nothing new about this, but it’s worth mentioning that British Airways Avios points offer amazing value for short haul direct flights on BA partner airlines.  Here are some examples:

• Fly Detroit to NYC for only 4,500 points each way on American Airlines.
• Fly Seattle to Honolulu, Hawaii for only 12,500 points each way on Alaska Airlines.
• Fly NYC to Toronto or Montreal for only 4,500 points each way on American Airlines.
• Fly Miami or NYC to Bermuda for only 7,500 points each way on American Airlines.

To see how valuable this is, take the first example above.  Delta and American Airlines currently charge about $700 for round-trip flights from Detroit to NYC (LaGuardia airport).  With Avios, you can take the same American Airlines flight for only 9000 points round trip.  That means you will get 7.77 cents per point value.  In other words, 50K Avios can be worth as much as $3,885 worth of travel! 

To see if Avios will work for you, it’s a good idea to check first for direct flights on BA partner airlines from your local airport.  An easy way to do that is to search Wikipedia for your airport and look for “Airlines and destinations”.  Look for flights from One World partners such as American Airlines, LAN, and Cathay Pacific; and BA partners such as Alaska Airlines and Aer Lingus.  Then, use Wandering Aramean’s Avios Redemption Calculator to figure out how many points those flights would require.  Note that the partner airline has to have saver level award seats available for you to be able to book with Avios.

Since Avios points can be transferred from Chase’s Ultimate Rewards program or from American Express’ Membership Rewards program, getting Avios is easy.  Here are some examples of how to get 50K Avios with a single credit card sign-up:

• Chase British Airways Visa: 50K points after $1K spend
• Chase Ink Bold or Ink Plus: Currently 50K points after $5K spend.  Then transfer to Avios.
• American Express: Offers between 50K and 100K come and go.  Watch my “Best credit card offers” page and keep an eye out for good targeted offers in your mail.  One great thing about Amex is that they frequently offer 30% or higher transfer bonuses to British Airways.

Which to choose?

The deals shown above vary greatly, so which is best for you will depend heavily on your personal situation.  Here is a brief overview of each:

• Citi ThankYou: Most flexible opportunity.  Fly any airline any time.  Earn airline miles and elite credit for flights.  Requires the most credit card sign-ups (6 cards total: 3 per person).
• Southwest Companion Pass: Companion pass can be used on any Southwest flight in which seats are available.  Can be used for paid flights or award redemptions.  This deal is obviously limited to Southwest flights, which means domestic flights only.  Requires one person to do two credit card sign-ups.
• British Airways Avios: Avios are the least flexible of these options since they can be used only on BA and BA partner flights.  BA flights are almost useless because BA charges huge fuel surcharges when booking awards on their metal.  Further, you’ll only get good value for relatively short, direct flights.  That being said, often those short, direct flights are quite expensive so Avios can be a huge win if you can use them.  Requires only one credit card sign-up to get 50,000 points.  Of course, you can get even more value through multiple sign-ups.

What about Ultimate Rewards?

More often than not, I write about ways to earn Ultimate Rewards points.  Why not here?  As always, Ultimate Rewards are amazingly valuable and can be used for domestic flights.  Here are some examples:

• Book through Ultimate Rewards to get 1.25 cents per point value (and earn airline miles and elite credit for flights).
• Transfer points to Southwest and use points for “Wanna Get Away” fares.  That way, you’ll get 1.67 cents per point value.  Note that points transferred in this way do not count towards a companion pass.
• Transfer points to British Airways and use for short haul, direct flights on AA or Alaska Airlines.
• Transfer points to United Airlines and use for domestic awards.  If you redeem 25K miles for a $500 flight, you will get 2 cents per point value.

That being said, I personally like to keep my Ultimate Rewards points for luxury travel.  For example, transfer to United Airlines and use for international business or first class Star Alliance flights.  Or, transfer to Hyatt to stay at hotels that would otherwise cost $500 or more per night.

Caution

The deals described above require signing up for various credit card offers.  If you always pay off your credit card bills in full each month, then these are terrific opportunites.  If you tend to run a balance, then do not do this.  The best rewards cards tend to also have the highest interest fees.  If you run a balance and pay interest you will not come out ahead.

This weekend, long-held vacation plans were thrown out the window.  Not one, but two itineraries now compete to replace the original. 

Months ago, I booked a European vacation for my family.  Our itinerary had us flying into Paris and returning from Amsterdam.  I was proud that I had found business class seats in the summer at the cheapest rate Delta allows: 100K miles per person round trip.  I used SPG and Club Carlson points to book fabulous looking hotels.  I downloaded “learn to speak French” iPhone apps with the best of intentions (I will open those apps one day!).

Recently, Mrs. Miler and I noticed that our return from Amsterdam butted up closely to our son’s departure to away-camp.  Would it be too much for him, we wondered, to return from Amsterdam and then set off for camp almost immediately afterwards?  Luckily, as a Delta Platinum elite member, I can make award booking changes for free.  So, I started looking for alternative return dates.  Unfortunately, but predictably, all available options would have cost us a huge number of extra miles.

Starting Over

When I ran out of Delta options, I realized I didn’t need to stick with Delta at all.  I have tons of Ultimate Rewards points that can be transferred for free to United Miles so there was no reason I couldn’t cancel the Delta flights and book United / Star Alliance flights instead.  As I thought about it more, I realized that not only could I cancel the Delta flights for free, but I could cancel the hotel reservations for free as well.  In other words, we could go anywhere in the world our miles could take us.  There will be plenty of opportunities to visit Europe in the future. If better options were available now, I realized, we were free to take them!  But where should we go?

Vancouver and Beyond

A month or two ago I read from a blog (sorry I forget which one!) that a great use of British Airways miles was to fly business class between JFK and Vancouver on Cathay Pacific.  I ran a quick search and found that award seats on those flights were wide open!  One thing led to another and soon Mrs. Miler and I found ourselves shopping for an Alaskan cruise (in part, thanks to Rick’s recent post).  With help from MileValue and Scottrick (more on that in a future post), we soon had flights booked from Detroit to Anchorage for the start of the cruise, then post-cruise Vancouver to NYC, stop-over, and finally NYC to Detroit.  Except for the final leg, all is booked in first or business class and all of it is fully (or mostly) refundable. 

Or Asia Pacific?

Early on Sunday, Gary from View from the Wing posted that United was pricing award flights to and from Hong Kong at only 4 miles per award!  I jumped online and booked our first class flights to Hong Kong.  The total fare came to 12 miles and $346.50.  I booked a similar trip in February to coincide with our son’s winter break.  I also booked a trip for my mom and her husband.  Of course, I don’t think United will really honor these tickets, but I had to try!  You can’t beat an international round trip first class award for 4 miles per person!  If the tickets are really honored, then I’ll look into adding on additional flights to get to wherever we want to go in the region.  Singapore? Myanmar? Philippines?  We’re open to suggestions!

Where to?

We’ll wait a few days before booking the Alaskan cruise to see if the Hong Kong tickets will be honored.  If United does honor the tickets, we’ll cancel our newly booked award flights to Anchorage and NYC.  We can always try again next year…

I’ve met only one out of two goals, but have managed to rake in over 1 million points and miles anyway…  

In January, I wrote about “my strategy to buy Platinum and a million miles.”  The  basic idea is to put a huge amount of spend on my Delta Reserve and Delta Platinum credit cards in order to earn 50,000 MQMs (medallion qualifying miles).  Combined with roll-over miles and actual flying, that will be enough to get me to the 75,000 MQMs required for me to maintain high level Delta Platinum status.  For details of why I want to do this and how this can be pulled off, see my recent post “Mileage running, from home.”

The plan I wrote about in January was to pump up spending by taking advantage of shopping portal mega-offers: buy merchandise in order to get lots of points, then sell the merchandise for as close to the original buy price as possible.  By doing this well, it’s possible to maximize points earned and pump up credit card spend, while minimizing my out of pocket costs.  At the time, I didn’t know what shopping portal bonuses might be offered nor did I know if there would really be enough to make this plan viable.

Results so far: shopping portals

So far this year, I’ve only taken advantage of two shopping portal mega-offers: Nordstrom 36X through the British Airways shopping portal, and Sears 15X through the Southwest Airlines Rapid Rewards Shopping portal.  See “Weekend Update” and “Sears 15X: Frequent Miler’s almost final results for details.  My Southwest points still haven’t moved from pending to available, but I’ll assume that they will soon.  In total, these two shopping sprees led to a combined 269,000 points.  In order to reach 1 million points over a year, I would need almost twice than number of points in 6 months so I’m pretty far off from that target.

Results so far: credit card spend

Across both Delta credit cards, I need to spend $110,000 this calendar year in order to get all 50K MQMs.  So far I’ve spent $56,000, so I’m right on target!  Except for the shopping portal mega-offers described above, most of this was achieved through 1X spending: Kiva loans, gift card churning (buying gift cards at a discount and selling for little or no loss), and personal spend.

Beyond 1 Million

Even though I haven’t earned a half million points so far via shopping portals, I have already earned slightly over 1 million points and miles this year.  Thanks to Club Carlson’s generous promotions, a few credit card sign-ups, Ink Bold 5X spend, and other tricks, the points and miles keep rolling in.

Reader goals and results

Do you have mile earning goals?  Elite status goals?  What are they, and how well are you doing so far?  Do you have any great success stories to share?

A few days ago I published a complicated scheme that I thought could get you to Hawaii round trip for $182.24.  Then, the next day, I posted a caution saying that some of my prior assumptions seemed to be wrong.  I said that I would check the facts and let you know.  So, here is the final word on those assumptions:

Assumptions Busted

The Hawaii trick relied on a couple of faulty assumptions about the American Express Membership Rewards shopping portal.  Many emails, reader comments, and FlyerTalk posts have led me to understand the following:

• Amex Platinum and Centurion card holders are given an extra point in the shopping portal above what others see.  So Sears 4X only applies to those cardholders.  Everyone else sees Sears at 3X.
• Unlike almost every other shopping portal in the world, the rates shown by Amex are inclusive of your standard credit card points.  So, 4X means you will get 1 regular point from your credit card spend and 3 bonus points. 
• I don’t yet have an answer to whether buying Sears gift cards through this portal will result in extra points.  Apparently, it can take quite a while for this information to show up on your statement and it is not as readily available as it is on other portals.

With the above information we can officially call the Hawaii scheme a failure.  C’est la vie. 

A reader challenged me recently to help him find a way to quickly earn more Membership Rewards points.  He’s planning on taking advantage of the current bonus offer in which Membership Rewards points can be transferred to British Airways Avios miles with a 50% bonus.  That is, until May 31, for every 1000 Membership Rewards Points transferred, you get 1500 British Airways miles.  Below is the plan I suggested.  It’s not easy, but if you want British Airways miles this will do the trick.  It will also help quite a bit with meeting minimum spend on an Amex MR card if you need to do so.

Prerequisites

To do this trick, you need an American Express card that earns Membership Rewards.  You also need a nearby Kmart that sells BP gas cards.  And, you need nice cashiers at that Kmart.  Oh, and patience and attention to detail would be helpful too.

The Plan

The plan is to buy Sears gift cards through the Membership Rewards shopping portal, upgrade them to BP gas cards, and then sell them to get most of your money back.  The end result is that you will have bought Membership Rewards points for about 1.07 cents each.  Once you convert those points to British Airways miles with the 50% bonus, you will have bought British Airways Avios for .71 cents each.  Here are the steps:

Step 1: Buy Sears gift cards

Go through the Membership Rewards shopping portal to Sears and buy Sears gift cards for yourself.  Currently the portal offers 4 points per dollar for Sears so you will earn 4 points from the mall and one point from your credit card for a total of 5 points per dollar.  Note that you can buy either physical gift cards or e-gift cards, but the physical ones are a bit easier to use at Kmart so I recommend those.

NOTE: A few readers have reported that Sears only shows 3 points per dollar through their view of the Membership Rewards shopping portal.  Apparently, the bonus points you get depends upon which Membership Rewards card you have.  If you only see 3X, then this trick is not for you.

CAUTION: Reader Kathy stated in the comments section that Amex bonus points are inclusive of the regular points you get for credit card spend.  That is, when the mall says 4X it really means 3 bonus points plus 1 regular point.  If true, this kills this opportunity.  Rats!

Step 2: Upgrade the gift cards

This is the painful part.  Hopefully you pre-checked that your local Kmart carries BP gift cards.  If so, go to Kmart and buy BP gift cards using your Sears gift cards.  I’ve done this many times and only once was told no.  Since then I’ve only bought 2 or 3 at a time and usually load up my cart with staples I needed anyway (tissues, cereal, dog food, etc.) to obscure the gift cards.  That has always worked for me.

Step 3: Sell the gift cards

Go to the TopCashBack portal and find PlasticJungle.  PlasticJungle currently buys BP gift cards for 91 cents to the dollar.  You’ll get 4% (of 91%) additional cash back from TopCashBack.

Add it up

Suppose your goal is a round trip ticket to Hawaii.  You can go from LA to Hawaii using British Airways miles for 25,000 miles round trip.  To get that many miles, you’ll need 17000 Membership Rewards points.  To get that many points with this plan, you’ll need to buy $3400 worth of Sears gift cards.  Now, let’s do the math:

• Buy $3400 in Sears gift cards via the Membership Rewards shopping portal.  Receive 3400 X 5 = 17,000 Membership Rewards Points.
• Upgrade to BP cards and sell cards to PlasticJungle via TopCashBack.  PlasticJungle will give you 91% of $3400 = $3094 cash back.  TopCashBack will give you 4% of $3094 = $123.76 cash back.
• Total cost: $3400 – $3094 – $123.76 = $182.24
• Transfer Membership Rewards points to British Airways and you now have enough mile to go to Hawaii!

Considerations

Note that the trip to Hawaii was just an example.  BA also has great short haul redemptions such as Detroit to New York City for only 9000 miles round trip.  With this technique, a trip like that would only cost about $65!  Will I do this?  Honestly, probably not.  I already have a boatload of BA miles and I don’t really cherish the idea of virtually living at Kmart for the next few months.  Also, my favorite points are Ultimate Rewards, so I’ll continue to focus on schemes to buy those.  This trick is tempting though…

Stay informed:
Follow me on Twitter / Like me on Facebook

If you’re new to Frequent Miler, please start here

Aadvantage eShopping Mall

For quite a while Sears has offered 10 miles per dollar for purchases made through Aadvantage eShopping, but I found today that Sears is now down to 6 miles per dollar.  Rats!  Also, Sears is still pegged at 4 points per dollar in the UR Mall.

Nordstrom

When Nordstrom offered 36 British Airways miles per dollar, I threw down over $4K.  Since then I’ve been trying to sell the items for as little loss as possible.  My stated goal was to average a loss of .5 cents per mile.  Sales are not complete, but so far I’m tracking pretty closely to this.  Also, my British Airways miles finally moved to actual usable miles!  For those of you who participated, how is it going for you?

Amex Platinum 100K Offer

Yesterday I asked for help deciding how to handle my next credit card churn.  The general consensus seemed to be to go ahead and signup for the 100K Amex offer now, and worry about other offers later.  So, I went ahead and did just that. I was approved on the spot!  Now I’m trying to figure out why I was targeted so that others can get in on this too…

How I plan to turn the Nordstrom 36X opportunity into cheap travel. 

I’m sure that most readers know of The Point Guy’s recent post “Amazing Deal Alert: 36 British Airways Avios Per Dollar Spent at Nordstrom!”  When I first read this, I was skeptical because the deal relies on two promotions (a Nordstrom double points promo AND a Nordstrom first purchase triple point promo).  I was betting that they would only award points for one promotion.  However, since then, I’ve seen that many people, including The Points Guy, have all 36 points per dollar showing up as pending!

If you have a real reason to buy from Nordstrom, you would be crazy to let this deal pass up.  Make sure to jump on it by February 14th before it expires!  Also, be sure to carefully read The Point Guy’s post showing exactly how to qualify –you don’t want to take a chance of messing this up!

Buying Miles

For those of us that are not really interested in buying from Nordstrom, all is not lost.  If you’re willing to invest some time and energy into buying and selling, I believe that you can turn this promotion into an opportunity to buy British Airways Avios miles for as little as half a cent each.  With Avios, you can fly round-trip short haul American flights for 9000 miles, or LA to Hawaii round-trip for 25000 miles.  If you can buy Avios for half a cent per mile, this means that you can fly round trip on short haul flights for only $45!  Or, you could fly round trip from LA to Hawaii for $125!

In my last major mile-earning adventure, I bought and sold electronics from Sears.  With Sears offering 10 points per dollar through the Ultimate Rewards Mall at the time, and with the ability to double dip by buying Sears’ gift cards and then using them, I was able to earn over 20 points per dollar.  As I described in the post Mileage run shopping results, I gained over 49,000 Ultimate Rewards points for a net cost of $391.  In other words, I bought Ultimate Rewards points for .79 cents each (which is an awesome value, by the way).

I think it is possible to do a similar churn with the Nordstrom promotion:

In my Sears adventure, my net costs amounted to 17% of my total Sears spend.  If one can find items at Nordstrom to resell for a similar loss, the math works out even better.  Suppose, for example, you buy $5000 worth of items at Nordstrom and sell them for a net loss of 18%.  In that case you would earn 180,000 Avios for $900.  In other words, you would buy Avios for .5 cents each!  The great thing with this promotion is that it would be OK to have a net loss as high as 36% because this would amount to buying Avios for 1 penny each, which is still a great deal if you redeem your Avios wisely.  Even at 1 penny each, for example, round-trip flights from Detroit to NY would cost only $90!  Sweet!

Should I do it?  Should you?

My first look at Nordstrom’s website was depressing.  Gift card purchases don’t qualify for the promotion.  DSLR cameras (which I bought through Sears) are nowhere to be seen.  However, I dug deeper and found some great possibilities.  I’m now convinced that this deal is worth investing in and that it is possible to earn Avios for a half cent each. 

If you decide to jump on this, please be aware that this could end up costing you much more!  There is no question that this is a gamble, so go into this only if you’re willing to risk big losses.  Also note that this will cost you time and effort that would be hard to justify if you count this time as “work”.  Do this only if you can afford it, and if it is a hobby that you enjoy.

What to buy and how to sell

I’m not going to publish what I plan to buy.  If too many people buy and sell the same items, the resale market for those items will be flooded and the resale price will necessarily drop.  None of us would do well in that scenario.  Instead, in tomorrow’s post I’ll describe how I went about finding the best options for resale, and I’ll follow up with another post on how to sell your inventory.

Are you in?

Are you planning to take advantage of this opportunity?  If so, what is your strategy?

Win a Nook!

Reminder: Until Feb 14th, you can win a Barnes & Noble Nook Color simply by adding a comment to our ever growing story. Visit this page to participate!