Mileage and Point Reward Status (July 2011)
This is my monthly recap where I look at what reward programs we were able to add miles or points to over the previous period. Now that we are completely moved into our new home, and have a tenant for our old home, I can start concentrating on acquiring massive amounts of new miles. My main goal over the next couple months is to take advantage of a Continental Airlines credit card offer before they go away with the United merger. Hopefully there are some other nice inspiration credit card offers out there in the near future too so we can now take advantage of them. Another goal will be to try and start using some of these miles and points in some of our miscellaneous accounts that we do not plan on using towards a future Hawaii trip.
This monthly exercise also worked in my favor because I had to update our address on file for all of the accounts.
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The following is a brief summary of the things we have done in the past month to build up our accounts.
Delta SkyMiles– Audience Rewards trivia questions in all three of our accounts.
United Mileage Plus- No change.
Continental OnePass- My wife and I each have two accounts due to checking accounts opened a couple years ago. I have not been able to figure out why our total went up 1,000 miles this past month as I am not even showing any activity in any of the accounts.
US Airways Dividend Miles– Toolbar use and Audience Rewards trivia in both of our accounts.
American Airlines AAdvantage– The LAX promotion from several months ago finally posted to all of our accounts.
Hilton HHonors– No change.
Priority Club Rewards- MyCokeRewards had an excellent promotion to redeem points for Priority Club points. I picked up an extra 4,000 points.
Starwood Preferred Guest– This past month we decided to finally open a SPG account to take advantage of some free points promotions out there and see where the program can take us. We are hoping to grow our balance in this account, and thus why we are now tracking them.
This past month we also opened up Frontier accounts for each of us, and received some initial promotional miles; however, we are not tracking them yet because I am not sure how many miles we will really ever earn with them.
Note, we also have reward accounts with AirTran, Southwest, Choice Hotels, and Wyndham Rewards, but since we do not really use them, there is no point in including them in this list. I debated about including Southwest Airlines, since we do have some of the old credits from the previous Rapid Rewards program; however, after looking at what we would need to earn in the new point system to receive an award before they expire (old points still appear to expire), makes it unlikely that we will ever get anything out of the system.
You could apply for the Southwest credit card and use some of the 50,000 bonus points towards credits. However, while there are no blackout days for using points for flights, there are black out days for using credits towards a flight.
Starting with the Continental card is a great idea since it will be going away soon.
@Daraius- Thanks for the suggestion. Loved your article today on the really smart thinking on converting the Hawaiian Airlines card to HHonors points! I am tempted to do it, but have not been a big fan of the Hilton brand the past couple of years.
The graph is nice. Just starting on Priority club, what do you think is the best way to increase those miles other than the obvious credit card sign ups?
@DKAS- You are correct in that the easiest and obvious way to really add substantial amounts of points and miles to your accounts is through credit card promotions. If done correct, there will be minimal impact to your credit scores, and the possibility of being able to take advantage of offers from different creditors or lines of credit.
There are countless other methods to really boost your balances, some more lucrative than others. Just a couple off the top of my head would be to take advantage of any dining programs an airline might be affiliated with; shopping online through each of their respective portals; or signing up for exclusive offers via their websites. Typically though, none of these offers are as lucrative as the credit card sign-ups. I look at more of these promotions as ways to extend my expiration on accounts we might not use to often.
If you are staying at Priority Club properties, do not forget to register for the various promotions, which I have heard lots of people being able to score major paydays when you factor in the stacking affect of the promotions. A great resource for promos is Priority Club Insider.
Excellent, thanks.
I don-t see how opening so many credit cards does not impact your credit rating; if you do not use them after the initial period, and the credit card company deletes them, this is a negative impact. Also, after the first year, most cards charge a fee, if they are complementary the first year.
I really don-t see how you can open so many credit card accounts without it impacting your credit; if not used, and they are discontinued by card company, that reflects negatively.
@John- Opening (and Closing) credit cards is definitely something that needs to be carefully planned and coordinated with your future goals. Personally, we are now done buying a home and have no big purchase plans coming soon, plus we have the advantage of having very high credit scores, so we can afford to take the couple point hit by opening up a “couple” of new cards in the future to take advantage of the bonuses. However, even those have to be carefully planned for various reasons. Opening (and closing) credits cards is definitely something one should not handle lightly, even though it is easy.
For an excellent read on this issue, please see this article from the Rick, the Frugal Travel Guy. Rick does an excellent job of explaining how it is not a race, and something that should be planned over a lifetime.