airline-miles – stlplace

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I felt it’s easier to make money from those offers from writing iPhone, iPad and iOS apps. At least this is true for me so far. Another plus side people may not pay attention is the “no tax” benefit of the bonus miles/points. Also keep in mind if one needs to apply for home loan (buying new home, or refinance), he/she should be careful not applying too many credit cards in the near term to hurt his/her credit score (and potentially pay higher rate for home loan). With that in mind, I would describe some of the cards I applied this year.

Airline cards
United Mileage Plus Visa Signature Chase: earlier this year I applied this via my Mileage acct, received the 50,000 bonus miles. UA is doing 30,000 miles with $50 coupon now. Check united.com web site.

Continental OnePass MasterCard Chase: applied this after UA card. 50,000 miles. They are offering 30,000 miles as of now. One needs to sign up OnePass from Continental site first. Continental has merged with United, and the milage program will be merged at the end of 2011.

British Airways Visa Signature Chase: applied this in May. Got 50,000 miles with remaining 50,000 miles pending (needs to spend $2,500 in first 3 months).

Hotel cards
Marriott Visa Signature via Chase: 50,000 points worth about 5 nights at Courtyard. And one free night at category 4 or above. The link is here.

Intercontinental Hotel Group Priority Club: 60,000 points, worth about 4 nights at Holiday Inns. New account only. Link is there.

Currently I am thinking about two cards, the Amex HHonors (62,500 points for Hilton family hotels, as described by Loyal Traveller) and Chase Sapphire reward card.

Note compared to writing apps, one can not expect make this as a business, rather than a nice way (almost effortless) to complement income. I have used my bonus AA miles, and Marriott hotel points for my recent travel to Shanghai. Not to mention the convenience brought by my Amex SPG (Starwood Preferred Guest) when travel in the US.

(Update 07-09-11) I saw this Southwest airline reward card deal from myMoneyBlog. I jumped.

How I redeem AA award miles for someone else

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Not really someone else, but my in-law 🙂

Here are some explanations on redeem mile for someone else at About.com. I thought about this idea, because I got about 55,000 miles in my AA advantage account (mostly from my China trips, plus some business travel I did in last year), and it appears a deal to redeem the miles (rather than pay cash/credit card) for my in-law China to US air ticket. It takes 70,000 miles for a round trip ticket. So what I did was holding the ticket first, bought 15,000 miles using credit card (it cost $375 + $30 processing fee + $28.xx tax). It took a few days for AA to process (I bought miles on Friday, the miles was added to my acct on Monday). Once I got the miles, I click on “Purchase ticket” (the ticket I previously hold). At that time I paid $38.xx tax for the ticket itself.

Overall I think it’s a deal because I paid about $472 for the air ticket. Obviously saving money is secondary comparing to the joy for my wife meeting her dad. Another reason I decided to pull the trigger early was I was afraid those redeemable seats run out quickly.

Rule of thumb
Should I redeem miles or buy the ticket?