Fly for Free on Airline Credit Cards

I’d like to provide a quick overview of a method I’ve used to accumulate a ton of bonus airline miles. For most of my financial life, I’ve used Citi’s Platinum Dividend Select, a cash-back rewards card. However, I recently stumbled upon this great post at Chris Guillebeau’s Art of Nonconformity blog. Here’s the punchline: Bonus miles earned by opening frequent flier airline credit cards. On to the facts…

Objective: Quickly accumulate airline miles to get free airfare.

What I Did:

• Opened Delta Gold AMEX card, received 30,000 bonus miles after spending $1,000 with the card. Annual fee waived for first year.
• Opened Citi Premier Pass Elite card (Expedia), received 20,000 bonus miles after spending $600 with the card. Annual fee of $75 charged.
• Opened Chase British Airways card, expecting to receive 100,000 miles after spending $2,000. Annual fee of $95 charged.

Total Credit Access: $30,000
Total Bonus Miles: 150,000

Coach class round-trips to Europe are about 50,000 miles, so that’s THREE FREE ROUND-TRIPS TO EUROPE!

My credit score dipped from 830 to 760 and is now slowly creeping back up. The average age of my accounts has decreased, but my credit utilization rate is now much lower as well, which will give me a better score as my accounts age. A few weeks of free score monitoring is available from FICO.

The British Airways 100k bonus is a fantastic offer. Next on my list is Citi’s American Airlines card which comes with 25k miles. If you own a small business, you can sometimes open two of each card and double your mileage bonus; that’s one card for you and one for your business. I don’t recommend the Citi Premier Pass Elite card; the rewards are cashed in via Expedia, and there seem to be a number of restrictions on what you can earn miles on, a lower miles-to-cash-value redemption rate, and fewer redemption options.

If you don’t regularly have enough expenses to reach these spending requirements, you can search the web for other spending strategies.

John Gerzema: The Post-Crisis Dunce

When I first discovered TED, it offered a variety of truly great, inspiring talks. Lately, some major duds are showing up on the website. A video of John Gerzema, an executive of ad firm Young & Rubicam, appeared on the TED website in October. His talk is titled The Post-Crisis Consumer, and he argues that the “consumer” is proactive, not reactive, particularly in this time of crisis.

Let me give you his two lines that offended me the most.

“The consumer drove us headlong into the crisis that we face today.”

“This is a tremendous opportunity for the consumer, who drove us into this recession, to lead us right back out.”

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Radio Program Explains the U.S. Financial Crisis (Part 2)

This American Life – Episode 375: Bad Banks

From the same guys that brought us the “Giant Pool of Money“, another ultra-simple explanation. This time, it’s the quandary that the big bad banks, taxpayers, and U.S. government currently find themselves in, with a dollhouse analogy and a simple balance sheet to introduce the concepts.