I am partial to Discover Card due to my long standing relationship with them. Discover was the first credit card I ever received, and is still the oldest account on my credit files. Several years ago my Discover More card received a new friend, his buddy the Discover Miles card, and it has been a happy union ever since.

My wife also carries a Discover Miles card in our household. By having her use the Discover Miles card, her credit has improved tremendously over the years from the couple small negative marks she had prior to knowing me.

Almost all of our combined daily spend (grocery, going out, etc.) goes onto the cards in my wallet, so she averages only about $700 per month in discretionary spending. She also uses the card every month, so the card is not sitting idle in a safe waiting for attention. You will see why this becomes important in a moment.

So last week my wife was targeted by a promotion from Discover Card offering her 60,000 bonus miles IF she spends $3,500 on the card from September 2012 until March 2013. She actually needs to call into Discover Card prior to 8/31/12 and register for the promotion. If at any point her spend falls below $3,500 per month, she will lose the bonus.

The Discover Card miles program values 1 mile at $0.01. At increments of 10,000 miles, they can be redeemed for $100 off any items on your previous 90 days of charges that were categorized as travel. So 60,000 miles is equal to $600 in value, which I consider pretty significant. This bonus is the largest I have ever seen from Discover for use of their cards.

Now lets look at the reality of the situation, and why this promotion has me racking my brain.

Within the past 24 months, my wife’s Discover Miles card has averaged $700 in spend, with the highest amount of spend once occurring at $1,700 around Christmas. Plain and simple, there is absolutely no credit history showing we could maintain a $3,500 spend over 7 months to warrant this offer.

On top of it, my wife does not has as high a credit limit as me, yet. So I consider it extremely poor thinking for Discover card to want her to spend $3,500 per month of her $5,000 available credit limit. My wife would effectively be using 70% of her card utilization, which ultimately could hurt her credit scores.

In reality, Discover may be testing her account out to see if it would warrant a credit line increase.

I really think Discover Card missed the mark on this promotion. 60,000 miles is extremely tempting, especially paired with 3,500 miles from spend each month. However, even if we moved all the daily spend from my cards over to hers, and paid bills such as student loans and mortgages, we might still have a really hard time meeting $3,500 in spend over a 7 month period.

I am so, so tempted and really want to partake in your offer Discover, but at least make the rules something obtainable. My creative mind is running trying to figure out a sustainable solution, but 7 months to keep a system up is long, even for me. Where is the Mint coin deal when I need it?

Try again Discover, because your ridiculous offer is going to mean a little loss of respect and maybe you will even make it to the safe.

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