Saving for a vacation. What do you pay for to accrue "miles"?

[bisous]

My Mom recently mentioned that in the next two years she wants to do a big family trip to Hawaii. She says she'll pay for the condo--we just have to be able to get there. I just checked out airfare and WOW it will cost a lot for a family of six to fly to Hawaii. I'm going to try to start saving and thought using miles would be a smart idea in addition to putting aside money monthly for our vacation account. We just don't use our credit card that often though. I know I had a friend growing up who's mother used to use the miles card to pay for his USC tuition. They got loads of miles, lol. My biggest monthly expenses are rent and student debt payments so I'm looking in to being able to pay off my loans with my credit card (which seems weird, we'll see if that's allowed!). What do you use YOUR miles cards for?

TIA!

[mackmama]

When we moved into our last home, we used our CC to pay for window blinds throughout the house. We got a lot of miles out of that. We now use the CC to pay for any large-ticket items like furniture in addition to restaurants, shopping, etc.

[DualvansMommy]

We have a joint Amex that we use for most purchases. Our mortgage company allows us to pay the monthly statement with our Amex, put big ticket purchases on the card. recently, it's our window treatments in our kitchen, den and dining room, so that cost a lot of bucks. Any kind of bookings; hotels, broadway shows, restaurants, movie theaters, etc goes on the card.

In the future, when our DS goes to private school, we'll be paying the tuition n the card. That'll provide a lot of miles on it!

My tip is anything you can charge, put it on your card. But be sure to pay off the balance in full monthly otherwise you won't get the points earned.


Cate

[crl]

We pay for pretty much everything except bills on our AmEx: groceries, clothes, eating out, etc. last time we had a mortgage we couldn't pay it on our credit card, will have to check and see if we can with this one.

Catherine

[gymnbomb]

I learned last year when I ended up with a big credit on my credit card that we could pay our insurance with it. The credit paid about a year's worth of homeowners (it was our first year's payment -- now it's bundled with our mortgage) and we were able to spend a difficult to use pre-paid card toward our auto insurance. We can't do our mortgage with credit because we got a lower rate by having it automatically deducted from our checking, but if you don't have that restriction you may be able to?

[crayonblue]

We put EVERYTHING on one personal and one business credit card and pay them off monthly. Everything that can possibly be paid via card, even our tithe to our church! We get free Marriott nights with one card and percent back with the other. DH travels so we get miles from all his flights.

[bisous]

Insurance, tithing, didn't think of those things! I'll look into all of it. Unfortunately my rent goes to a nice little couple. I drive it up to their home and put a check under the mat--I'm pretty sure I can't charge that, lol. :)

[AnnieW625]

We have a Jet Blue Amex and a Costco Amex. We chose the Amex cards we have because we have Jet Blue at the airport three miles from our house and we shop at Costco. I am too chicken to pay for everything on the card in case of a financial emergency I don't want to be stuck with a lot of debt. By doing this it takes us longer to accrue miles, but most times we still get at least one free round trip ticket about once a year. Our Costco rebate we can cash out so we have used that for a variety of fun stuff like Disney passes, and other stuff we have been saving for.

[bisous]

We have a Jet Blue Amex and a Costco Amex. We chose the Amex cards we have because we have Jet Blue at the airport three miles from our house and we shop at Costco. I am too chicken to pay for everything on the card in case of a financial emergency I don't want to be stuck with a lot of debt. By doing this it takes us longer to accrue miles, but most times we still get at least one free round trip ticket about once a year. Our Costco rebate we can cash out so we have used that for a variety of fun stuff like Disney passes, and other stuff we have been saving for.

We shop a lot at Costco, too. Last time I checked into "miles" cards, the recommended cards were Capital One Venture and I'm pretty sure you can't use that at Costco! Also, Southwest seemed like a good miles program to use but it doesn't look like they fly to Hawaii so that wouldn't help us in this scenario.

[gymnbomb]

If you know ahead of time what airline you're going to fly, it may or may not be beneficial to get a card with that airline. I have a Delta AmEx (it does have a $99 annual fee -- every year I do the math the see if it is worth it to renew, and so far it has been) that allows me to 1) get a $99 companion ticket each year -- there are some blackouts, but by being just a little flexible on dates/airports we've been able to use it at Thanksgiving twice, 2) 1 free checked bag for up to something like 8 people traveling on the same reservation, and 3) allows me to use miles as cash toward the price of a ticket -- each 10K miles = $100 off ticket price, only restriction is it can't be combined w/ the companion ticket -- sometimes this is the better deal and sometimes the straight miles fare is the better deal, but it does allow more flexibility if you don't have quite enough miles or want to buy 1 way tickets. I believe they waived the fee the first year and gave about 25K miles for signing up. I am sure other airlines have some similar deals. I also have a Capital One card with no fee that pays 1-2 points per dollar depending on where you shop. I can cash out 5K miles for $50 statement credit at any time. I alternate which I use most depending on how many miles are in my Delta account and if I think I'm going to need them for anything soon.

[Zukini]

We are also airline specific with our card. We like the AA Citi card and use it for travel spending, even work travel expenses eschewing the corporate card offered by DH company, and big purchases like furniture and electronics. We don't go out of our way to put any daily household spending on the card. DH and I both fly AA pretty exclusively (lived near hubs) and have accrued miles (flown miles and spending miles) and airline status with them so it keeps us loyal. The perks differ depending on the actual card and they often run multiple mile promotions.

I had a coworker who paid for her family of 4 to go from DFW to Hawaii on AA using a ridiculously low # of miles in the summer by booking months out and making an extra stop through a much smaller airport like El Paso or something on the way to California and then to Hawaii. Her kids were teenagers so the awkward and lengthy schedule was not an issue.

Personally, I've found that booking at least 6 months out on personal international trips has allowed us to get 2- and 3- leg trips for a fraction of the normal miles (35k economy round trip from dfw to the caribbean and mexico, 50k business class) You just need to be sure of the dates and if offered, purchase travel insurance as a buffer to enormous change fees (unless your cc offers some type of benefit with change fees, also very very useful when looking at multiple seats).

Tip, if you eventually do purchase some of your tickets with miles and the remainder with cash, make sure to call the airline and have them link your itineraries (AA calls them PNRs, not sure if that's a standard term). That way if any changes to actual aircraft flown, seating arrangements, rebooking, etc, your tickets and seats should! be handled as an intact group. I would also occasionally monitor to make sure that nothing changes with the flights in the months between purchase and departure With one of our international tickets at Christmas, we intentionally had a long layover to see family for the entire day. However, between June and November, AA's computers tried helpfully to "correct" our itineraries and give us a shorter layover (12+ hours to 2-3) by moving our flights. Required multiple calls to have them revert it back.