“Yes!” the American Airlines agent told me, in a voice that was far too excited considering the state of customer service in the airline industry. “There are seats on that flight available for 100,000 miles each!” He was talking about two one-way tickets, from Paris to New York City. ONE WAY.
Jon and I have a wedding to go to in London in August. So as long as we’re going to be bleeding money, we figured we might as well spend a week in Paris. We got a credit card that earns airline miles last year, and charged a ridiculous amount of money on it, in large part because of the wedding and honeymoon. We also got various bonuses, and now we have 51,000 miles. Which will get us … nowhere.
At least, not in the summer, when we actually are planning to travel. I tried to get tickets to see my sister in San Francisco in June, and there weren’t any seats available remotely near the days I wanted to fly. I’m sure we’ll be able to use these miles eventually, but I now think that the hassle just isn’t worth it. (Plus, there’s the annual fee–we have to call about each year in order to get it waived.) I rarely travel in the winter, and if I end up taking an extra trip just to use up the miles, then I haven’t really saved anything. Now, our credit card spending has dropped dramatically, post-nuptials, so our mileage accumulation has slowed accordingly. I know some people are good at putting all their spending on the credit card and paying it off every month, but that makes me really uncomfortable. I’m not going to cancel this card, but we may start putting most of our spending on a cash back card instead.
Any suggestions for cash back cards? Or does anyone out there belong to a better frequent flier program?
2 Comments
April 28, 2008 at 8:51 pm
I just cashed in 25,000 miles for a flight in June to seattle, no problem. What I recommend is finding a credit card with travel point options that is not tied to a particular airline, as they can offer you the most options for use (mine is through a credit union, but I think other companies offer them as well). Of course, I had those miles because of GOING to a wedding, and all the expenses incurred with that, and needed the flight to go to another, so don’t worry. You’ll have more nuptial expenses, they just won’t be yours:)
September 17, 2008 at 12:09 am
This is way late, but I saw this when I was looking through your archives.
I agree that the mileage cards tied to 1 airline suck! (Well maybe not Southwest, I’m not sure.) I used a United Mileage Plus card for ages, but at some point, they wouldn’t waive the yearly fee ($60? not sure) and that made it not worth it at all since it would’ve taken me longer to earn those miles from my cc than if I just saved the $60 every year.
We use a credit union card which lets us use the “points” for a lot of different things (gift card to whatever yadayada) including air tickets.
I’ve heard that Amex Blue is a good cash back card, but only if you spend more than $10k-$15k per year on your card, otherwise Chase Freedom visa is good.