5x Points: Office Supplies, Cell Phone, Cable, PayPal Digital Gifts via ebay
Limits: $50,000 per cardmember year

Cell Phone & Cable

This one is obvious, but autopay your phone and cable bills from your Ink card.

Office Supply Stores

This is less obvious, but office supply stores such as Staples and Office Depot sell gift cards to many other stores, both in-store and online. Staples, for example, sells gift cards to Amazon, Target, Home Depot, Shell, and Southwest Airlines, among many, many others. I can’t list them all here, so visit their stores and websites to see what is available.

Keep in mind that if you are buying gift cards, you might also consider purchasing them secondhand from a reseller. When I do this, I check Gift Card Wiki for the best prices. Depending on the retailer, you can often get a higher discount than 5%. You might prefer this to 5x points, though purchasing gift cards secondhand comes with some risks that buying them directly yourself does not.

Ebay (Gift cards)

For some reason, when you purchase gift cards from the seller PayPal Digital Gifts on ebay and pay with PayPal using your Ink card, you earn 5x points. This is the same play as buying gift cards from office supply stores, but this method provides many more options. Last I checked, PPDG sells over 500 types of gift cards.

Occasionally, PPDG will also sell select gift cards at significant discounts. When this happens, instead of buying gift cards to spend, you can buy them to turn around and sell to a gift card reseller. You might even walk away with a small profit on top the points you earn. When good deals for reselling present themselves, I’ll post them on the blog.

Verizon (Gift cards)

If you are a Verizon subscriber, the Verizon Message+ app has an option to purchase and send eGift cards. The trick is that you can charge them to your Verizon bill, allowing you to earn 5x UR per dollar spent. This is a small play, however, because you are limited to charging $100 per month to your bill.

Some merchants of note are Amazon, Best Buy, ebay, Home Depot, Sears, and Whole Foods. You can find the others listed in the app after you click Send an eGift Card Now!

The post How To Earn 5x Points (Almost) Everywhere appeared first on Miles Briefs.

For those of you who aren’t new to this game, I’ve also included a reference toward the bottom called Which Miles Should I Use? to show you the best miles to use for different regions of the world in economy, business, and first class.

And, lastly, a new page I’ve added today is called How To Save Miles By Knowing Your Geography. Many mileage programs just don’t agree what part of the world certain countries are in. American places the Canary Islands in their Europe region, even though they’re off the coast of Africa, where United considers them to be. This makes awards there considerably cheaper with American than with United. On that page, I list the discrepancies I’ve found so far, and I’ll continue to update it as I add more mileage programs to this website.

The post Which Credit Card to Get & Saving Miles with Geography appeared first on Miles Briefs.

Note: American’s search engine shows flights on American, Alaska, British, Cape Air, Cathay Pacific, Fiji, Finnair, Hawaiian, Iberia, JAL, Malaysia, Qatar, Royal Jordanian, S7, Seaborne, and Sri Lankan. For Oneworld availability on other carriers (e.g. Cathay Pacific), skip to Searching With British Airways. For availability on Air Tahiti Nui and other non-alliance partner airlines, skip to Searching With Expert Flyer and Etihad.

Award Chart: Flights on American Airlines as well as Flights with Oneworld Alliance. Also see this post from Travel is Free.
Changes: FREE.
Cancellations: FREE.
Close-In Booking Fees: None.
Stopovers and Open-Jaws: Open-jaws are permitted on round-trip awards.
Fuel Surcharges: British Airways and Iberia Airlines. Avoid redeeming American miles for flights on British Airways if at all possible. You can uncheck British Airways if they show up in your search results. Iberia Airlines fuel surcharges are not too bad.

1. Go to American. (Note: Use Multi city search to access American’s older but better search tool. Enter a random second segment if you only need to search one-way. Or you can just use the newer search if it doesn’t bother you.)
2. Fill out the form and submit.
   
3. Click Show Full Calendar and select your class of cabin.
   
4. Sort by Total travel time and expand Flight Details for any flights you are considering.
   
5. (Optional) If you are searching one way or one segment at a time, repeat this process for any other legs of your trip and assemble them into a round-trip or Multi-City Search. You can only do this if you were able to find award availability for all of your flight segments through American’s website and did not have to resort the other search methods listed below.
6. Select your flights and complete your booking. If you’re not ready to book, American allows you to hold an award for five days. You can find the AAdvantage Hold option on the same screen where you would enter your credit card information.

Searching With British Airways

British Airways shows award availability for all Oneworld partners that American does not. However, it does not show Mixed Cabin awards. This can problematic if you are searching for business or first class awards, so unless you are searching for flights in economy, you should always search British Airways one segment at a time.

1. Use Airline Route Mapper (tutorial) to look up possible routes.
2. Go to British Airways. Create an account if you do not have one already.
3. Fill out the form and submit. Search one segment at a time for business or first class awards.
   
4. Review your results. You’ll see below that British Airways is not finding the business class award that was found using the American search earlier. This is because I searched for my whole itinerary instead of one segment at a time, and the award American found was a Mixed Cabin award. If I had searched SFO-MIA and MIA-GRU individually, I would have found seats in first and business class, respectively, that I could have combined into a single business class award.
   So why use British Airways at all? The reason is that, unlike American, British Airways will show you awards on Cathay Pacific, Japan Airlines, LAN, and a variety of other Oneworld airlines.
5. Assuming you are here because you needed to look up flights that are not displayed on American’s website, you will also be unable to complete this booking with American online. Make note of all of the dates and flight numbers for your award and call American Airlines to complete your booking at (800) 882-8880. There is no phone booking fee.

Searching With Expert Flyer and Etihad

American Airlines has a number of partners outside of Oneworld alliance that cannot be searched on American’s nor on British Airways’ websites. While I won’t cover each partner in depth, four that I’ll cover here are Air Tahiti Nui, China Southern, Gulf Air, and Etihad Airways.

Once again, you will want to use Airline Route Mapper (tutorial) to determine where these airlines fly and what flight segments to search for. Awards that involve flights with these non-alliance partner airlines can only be booked by calling American at (800) 882-8880. Make note of all of the dates and flight numbers of the award you found to simplify things with the agent.

Air Tahiti Nui, China Southern, and Gulf Air – Expert Flyer

Air Tahiti Nui operates flights to and from Papeete, Tahiti as well as a flight between LAX and CDG. In any case, to search for their awards, you will need to use Expert Flyer.

• Sign up for a five-day free trial with Expert Flyer.
• Go to Award & Upgrade Availability Search.
• Fill out the form and submit. You will want to search one segment at a time (e.g. LAX-PPT), with flexible dates, and showing all results on one screen. You’ll see that I also selected Air Tahiti Nui as my specific airline and both class F (Business Award) and class U (Coach Award).
  
• Your results will look something like this. You can see that there are two to four seats in coach on every day, and two seats in business class on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.
  

A similar approach can be used to search for flights with China Southern and Gulf Air.

Etihad Airways

Etihad Airways primarily operates flights to and from Dubai, United Arab Emirates. For those of us on the West Coast, you can often find a more efficient routing with another airline, though many people still opt to fly Etihad if they can find award availability in Etihad’s The Residence or First Class Apartments.

1. Go to Etihad Airways, fill out the form, and submit. The web interface here is pretty straightforward.
2. On the results page, look for the column labeled GuestSeat. If there are any seats there, there is an award available that you should be able to book with American.
   

Advanced Tips & Tricks

Flights from Brazil (and the Philippines) – This is more of a general tip for any airline, but it is more applicable here because of the egregious fuel surcharges when redeeming for flights on British Airways. Fuel surcharges are illegal in Brazil (and the Philippines), so any flight originating here will not have any fuel surcharges. In particular, British Airways operates two flights out of Brazil, GRU-LHR and GIG-LHR.

Routing rules and restrictions – American has a few routing restrictions on award tickets that you should be aware of, but you will probably not run into them very often. Here are a few of the more commonly encountered ones, and for a full list you can also check this Flyertalk thread:

1. You are not allowed to transit a third region on an award, albeit with a few exceptions. For example, you cannot fly from the U.S. to Australia with a connection in Asia – if you are not flying direct, any and all connections must be in the same region as your origin or destination (in this example, the U.S. and South Pacific). There are several exceptions to this rule, but for flights originating in North America specifically, you can connect in Europe on tickets to Africa, India, or the Middle East, and you can connect in Asia 1 on tickets to Asia 2. You can get around this rule, of course, by booking separate one-way awards, but this may increase the cost of your ticket.
2. Travel from North America to Africa, Europe, India, or the Middle East must occur via the Atlantic Ocean.
3. Travel from North America to Asia or the South Pacific must occur via the Pacific Ocean, and if you’re flying to Tahiti or Fiji, you can’t connect in Australia or New Zealand.
4. You are limited to at most three segments each way on an award within the US and Canada and four segments each way on an international award.

It has been reported that the American Airlines app is not very good at enforcing these rules and restrictions, so it’s something to try if you are looking for a nonconforming itinerary.

Booking mixed-cabin awards with Etihad – If you are booking a mixed-cabin award on Etihad, you will run into the situation where phone agents cannot see the same award availability that you may have found online. To get around this, you simply need to have the agent start a fresh booking and add the lower segments (i.e. economy) first and the higher segments (i.e. business/first) after.

Booking awards with the Australian call center – Not all American Airlines call center locations can see the same award space. More specifically, there are situations in which you may find availability using a search engine such as British Airways, but when you call to book the ticket, US agents are unable to find the same flights that you did. Furthermore, if you call another location (e.g. Australia), you may find that the agents there can see the flights you had found and can therefore book the award for you. There is no particular rhyme nor reason why things work this way, but if your US call center agent is unable to help you, try Australia at +61 02-9101-1948.

Booking awards with the app – Occasionally when trying to select your award flights, you may see the error, “Our system is having trouble; Please try again or come back later.” This error prevents you from completing your booking online. Additionally, calling in does not help — agents will either not be able to see the same flight availability or be blocked by the same error. For some reason, this issue does not carry over into the American Airlines app, and you can use the app to book your award. You can even use the app to put the itinerary on hold and then come back to it later on a desktop computer when you are ready to pay.

The post Searching With American Airlines appeared first on Miles Briefs.

British Airways Avios is a distance-based rewards program. Single-partner awards are priced out segment-by-segment, meaning if your trip is actually made up of two flights with one connection, you pay for each flight individually according to the charts below. All single-partner awards price out according to the single-partner award chart, other than Aer Lingus and Iberia, which each have their own unique charts. Multiple-partner awards follow the multiple-partner award chart and are priced out based on cumulative distance, which can lead to lower pricing in some instances.

Award Charts: See below.
Changes: $55 or forfeit all taxes and fees paid, whichever is less.
Cancellations: $55 or forfeit all taxes and fees paid, whichever is less.
Close-In Booking Fees: None.
Stopovers and Open-Jaws: N/A for single-partner awards. Since you’re paying for each segment individually, you can create all of the stopovers and open-jaws that you wish. For multiple-partner awards, eight stopovers and one open-jaw are allowed.
Fuel Surcharges: On all airlines except Alaska and LATAM. Domestic flights entirely within the United States or from the U.S. to Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean, and South America are also free of fuel surcharges. And while Aer Lingus and many of the Asian airlines have fuel surcharges, they are typically low, so these partners can be okay too.
Sweet Spots: United States (West coast) to Hawaii in Economy; short flights (under 650 miles) abroad, particularly domestic flights within Asia, Australia/New Zealand, and Europe.

Single-Partner Award Chart (all partners other than Aer Lingus and Iberia)

Aer Lingus Award Chart (Peak)

Iberia Award Chart (Peak)

Note: Awards utilizing two or more partner airlines use the chart below. If you do want to fly multiple partners, keep in mind that you also have the option of breaking up your trip into multiple single-partner one-way bookings, depending on which is cheaper.

Multiple-Partner Award Chart

British Airways shows award availability for all Oneworld partners. However, it does not show Mixed Cabin awards. This can problematic if you are searching for business or first class awards, so unless you are searching for flights in economy, you should always search British Airways one segment at a time.

1. Use Airline Route Mapper (tutorial) to look up possible routes.
2. Go to British Airways. Create an account if you do not have one already.
3. Fill out the form and submit. Search one segment at a time for business or first class awards.
   
4. Review your results. Note that there should be a business/first mixed cabin award available on the date I chose, but it is not displayed below because I wanted to show what happens if you do not search one segment at a time. Remember, one segment at a time for premium cabin awards!
   
5. In any case, select your flights and complete your booking if you find something acceptable. You may have to call in for a mixed cabin award or if you want to verify award space before transferring points from American Express or Chase.

To search for awards on Alaska Airlines, you will need to use American’s search engine instead and then call British Airways at (800) 452-1201 to complete your booking over the phone. They should waive the phone booking fee if the itinerary was not bookable online.

Advanced Tips & Tricks

American Airlines Award Space – British Airways’ award search engine does not display American Airlines’ award inventory with consistency. It therefore makes sense to look on American’s website first if you intend to book an award on one of their flights using British Airways Avios. Assuming you find availability, you then will want to search for the same flight on British Airways’ site. It may be necessary to repeat your search multiple times (this can be done by clicking back-and-forth between different dates on the seven-day calendar of results from your initial search) to find the award space you found on American.

Nonstop Flights to Hawaii from the West Coast – This is one of the few sweet spots on the British Airways award chart. Nonstop flights to Hawaii from the West Coast will generally fall under 3,000 miles, regardless of where on the West Coast you are starting from, making the price of a round trip 26,000 Avios. You will need to use American to look for nonstop award availability on Alaska or American Airlines (ignore any results on Hawaiian Airlines because you cannot book those with Avios).

Using Stops to Save Miles – The number of Avios needed for a trip increases as the mileage flown goes up, but you’ll spot some oddities in the chart if you look for them. In particular, 13,000 Avios for flights under 3,000 miles is cheap compared to much of the rest of the chart. In many cases, you can save Avios if you can break off flight segments that are fewer than 3,000 miles. For example, a one-way nonstop flight from SFO-SYD (7,417 miles) would cost 51,500 Avios, but a flight with one stop, SFO-HNL (2,398 miles) + HNL-SYD (5,066 miles), would cost 38,750 Avios. You could also stay in Honolulu and turn the stop into a stopover if you wish.

Multiple-Partner Awards – The rules for multiple-partner awards are not well-publicized. Pricing might not be based on the highest class of service flown but rather the class of service flown for the majority of the trip (i.e. a trip that is 60% economy and 40% business might price as economy).

Iberia Airlines Awards – British Airways Avios can be transferred to Iberia Airlines Avios to book awards using the Iberia Airlines Avios award charts. For some flights (short range, multiple partner), fewer miles are required to book through Iberia. Iberia Airlines typically imposes lower fuel charges than British Airways does as well.

Reward Flight Saver – Some results will display the below icon to indicate a Reward Flight Saver award. While they will cost the same number of Avios as a regular award, the taxes and fees will be at a lower flat rate and may result in a lower overall cost compared to other options.

The post Searching With British Airways appeared first on Miles Briefs.

The point here is that none of the airlines agree with each other either. American Airlines, for example, considers them to be part of Europe, while United Airlines thinks they are in Northern Africa. One thing you may have just realized is that, in general, award from the U.S. to Europe are a lot cheaper than awards to Africa. So if you’re going to the Canary Islands, stick with American AAdvantage miles.

There are a handful of other destinations like this, where you can save a lot of miles just by choosing the right mileage program. Below I’ve listed all of the interesting discrepancies I’ve found so far. I’ll keep this list up-to-date as I add more mileage programs to this website.

Economy Class

Business Class

First Class

The post How To Save Miles By Knowing Your Geography appeared first on Miles Briefs.

Note: If you are specifically looking for a partner award that includes Shenzhen Airlines, skip to Searching With Aeroplan below. Keep in mind that, due to United’s recent devaluation and poor IT support, you may have trouble getting any awards that include these two airlines to price out correctly.

Award Chart: Link (Note that there are different prices for flying on partners vs. flying on United only).
Changes: FREE if within the U.S., Puerto Rico, U.S. Virgin Islands, Mexico, and the Caribbean. For other destinations, $75 if sixty-one or more days prior to departure or $125 otherwise.
Cancellations: FREE if thirty-one or more days prior to departure or $125 otherwise.
Close-In Booking Fees: 1,500 to 3,500 United miles.
Stopovers and Open-Jaws: Excursionist “Perk” instead of stopovers. Unlimited open-jaws.
Fuel Surcharges: None.
Sweet Spots: One-way economy flights within one region (outside North America, nonstop, under 800 miles only) cost 8,000 miles.

1. 1. Go to United. If you have their credit card or elite status, sign in. You will be given better award availability.

1. 1. Fill out the form and submit.
      

1. 1. Specifically check any dates you are interested in —  the rewards calendar is not always accurate.
      

1. 1. Review your flight options. Note that in the example below, we have found a business class seat on the 19th even though the awards calendar indicated there was no such award available.

1. 1. Toward the bottom of the page, you may also filter by price & schedule, airports, and/or experience. This can be useful if there are many results. You can do things such as filtering out long layovers, forcing your connection to be in a particular city, etc.
      

1. 1. (Optional) If you are searching one way at a time, repeat this process for any other legs of your trip and assemble them into a round-trip or Multi-City Search once you have found availability on all of your flights.

1. Select your flights and complete your booking.

If you could not find available flights, see below.

Searching with Aeroplan

Note: Due to United’s recent devaluation, the only purpose of searching with Aeroplan is to look for availability on Shenzhen Airlines.

The Aeroplan search engine will often find more creative routings than the United search engine will. And unlike United, it includes flights on Shenzhen Airlines in its results.

1. Go to Aeroplan. Create an account if you do not have one already.
2. Fill out the form and submit.
3. If you checked My dates are flexible, the results will include an Availability Calendar. If you did not check the box, you can still access the Availability Calendar from the top right of the screen.
4. For any routings that look interesting, click Details to see the individual flight details. These are the flights you will need to piece together for your United award booking. If you found a flight that looks good, skip to Piecing Together A Multi-City Itinerary.

Piecing together a multi-city itinerary (United Airlines)

Note: Multi-City Search no longer offers any benefits over a straightforward one-way or round-trip search and is only useful for utilizing the Excursionist “Perk.”

1. You can piece together your segment-by-segment itinerary using United Multi-City Search. Below is a screenshot of a form that has been filled out for a flight from SFO to MXP.
2. Select your flights and complete your booking.
3. Occasionally you will encounter an error during checkout. This is normal with more complicated routes, and it means you will have to call United at (800) 421-4655 to complete your booking over the phone. You may be asked to pay a $25 phone booking fee. Often you can get this waived if you point out that the website would not allow you to book the award.

Advanced Tips & Tricks

Excursionist Perk – The Excursionist “Perk” is United’s stingy way of offering a stopover/open-jaw that occurs entirely within a single region. The rules are as follows:

• The Excursionist Perk cannot be in the MileagePlus defined region where your travel originates.
• Travel must end in the same MileagePlus defined region where travel originates.
• The origin and destination of the Excursionist Perk is within a single MileagePlus defined region.
• The cabin of service and award type of the free one-way award is the same or lower than the one-way award preceding it.
• If two or more one-way awards qualify for this benefit, only the first occurrence will be free, i.e. if you have more than three segments in your itinerary.
• Any layover longer than 13 hours is considered a stopover and requires the use of the Excursionist Perk on a round-trip award. This also means that you cannot book a one-way award with a 13-hour layover.

Note that there is no mention of the excursion needing to connect with any of your other flights; therefore, a routing such as SFO-LHR, SYD-AKL, LHR-SFO is valid, where SYD-AKL is your free excursion.

Likewise, there is nothing in the rules preventing you from using cheap domestic flights as the first or last legs of your trip. The closest requirement is that your starting and ending cities must be within the same region, but having a cheap domestic flight at the start or end (or both) of your trip can satisfy this. For example, suppose you want to fly SFO-LHR and SYD-AKL in business class. If you tack on a flight from IAD-EWR in economy class for 5,000 miles, this will trigger the Excursionist Perk to make your SYD-AKL flight in business class free because SFO and EWR are in the same region. And because IAD-EWR is the last flight in your itinerary, you don’t actually have to fly the flight if you otherwise have no use for it. Lastly, if you are starting your trip outside of the US, there may still be cheap flight options that can be used to trigger the Excursionist Perk, e.g. intra-Hawaii and intra-Japan flights.

Occasionally, multi-city search will not show the same availability that you can find with one-way search when you are trying to utilize the Excursionist Perk. If you are unable to build the full itinerary you want due to missing availability when switching to multi-city search, your best bet is to search for and book just the one-way flight first. Changes are free within 24 hours, and you should be able to either Add Another Destination online or call United at (800) 864-8331 and ask them to make the change. If all else fails, you can still cancel the flight with no penalty as long as you are within 24 hours.

Avoiding the Close-In Booking Fee – United charges a $75 fee if you book an award flight within 21 days of departure. To potentially avoid this, you can book your flight on a random date that is more than 21 days out, call United at (800) 864-8331, and ask them to move the flight to the date you actually want. As long as you do this within 24 hours of booking your award, they will not assess a change fee. With regard to the $75 close-in booking fee, you are hoping that they forget to apply it. Apparently, this works fairly often, but they’ll occasionally remember to ask you to pay it.

United Global First Lounges and Arrivals facilities – If you are flying United Global First or United BusinessFirst to Europe and arriving before noon, check this list for arrival airport facilities. You will need to request access at check-in, but this is a nice way to freshen up when you arrive.

Improving United.com Award Search Results – I’ve seen reports that playing around with the United.com award search engine can result in finding more results than performing a straightforward search from the homepage. For instance, I saw one example where the initial search was a dummy booking with an incorrect departure city, and after changing the departure to the correct city from the search results page, extra award options were shown (as compared to performing an initial search with the correct cities). I have not experienced this myself but thought it worth a mention.

The post Searching With United Airlines appeared first on Miles Briefs.

1. Plan ahead for large purchases. Time your credit card applications with events such as a home remodel, buying new furniture, making a car down payment, or even a yearly insurance bill coming due.
2. Prepay (or overpay) a utility bill. Most utilities, such as your cell phone, cable, electricity, gas, etc. will allow you to pay more than you owe. They’ll show a credit balance on your account and apply your future charges against it.
3. Buy gift cards. Purchase gift cards to stores you know you will spend money at in the future, such as a grocery store, Costco (they accept all credit card types online), or Amazon. You can also purchase prepaid (e.g. Visa) gift cards from a grocery or drug store and just spend them down over time. Prepaid gift cards typically have a max load of $500 and charge a fee of about $5, so this method will cost you ~1% of your total.
4. Open a bank account. Some checking/savings accounts allow you to fund with a credit card, and this will be free to you as long as you are not charged a cash advance fee. Surprisingly, there are many banks where this is possible. Doctor of Credit manages a great list here of which credit card + bank combinations do and do not result in cash advance fees.
5. Pay your mortgage/rent/day care/tuition/loans/property taxes/income taxes. Check with your biller to see if they allow credit card payments. If they say yes, ask if there is a fee. Sometimes there isn’t a fee, but if there is, it will typically be in the neighborhood of 2-3%.
6. Pick up the tab when going out with friends. Have everyone else pay you back with cash, Venmo, or Paypal.
7. Pay for large purchases for friends. If you have any friends who might be making large purchases, try asking if they will let you charge their purchases on your credit card and pay you back with a check. Consider offering them a 1-2% discount to make up for the credit card rewards they might have earned.
8. Send money to your friends with Venmo or Paypal. These services charge a fee of about 3%, so only use this as a last resort.

Alright, that’s all I’ve got. If you still can’t meet your minimum spending requirements, it’s time for MS.

The post How To Meet Minimum Spend Requirements appeared first on Miles Briefs.

And although some banks do not require it, I prefer canceling my old cards and waiting a few months before reapplying. I also don’t like to cancel new cards immediately after getting my bonus and normally hold them for a total of 6 to 11 months. Remember that just because a card is churnable does not mean that you’ll get approved again. Try to stay somewhat on the bank’s good side.

American Express

American Express credit cards cannot be churned.

In practice, some people have had luck reapplying for a card after ~7 years. You can check if you are eligible to receive the bonus on a particular card by asking a representative via online chat.

Bank of America

Necessary to Cancel Old Card: Yes if Alaska Airlines (personal) or Premium Rewards cards; otherwise no.
Waiting Period: See below

Bank of America will approve you for at most 2 cards per rolling 2 months, 3 cards per rolling 12 months, and 4 cards per rolling 24 months. It is unconfirmed whether this rule applies to only personal cards or both personal and business cards.

Additionally, there is a waiting period of 24 months for the Alaska Airlines (personal) and Premium Rewards cards. There is also a waiting period of 24 months on the Cash and Travel Rewards cards, but only if you currently hold them. Oddly, there is no waiting period if they have been canceled.

Bank of America will often deny applications for their personal credit cards if you have opened three or more credit cards (with any bank) in the past 12 months.

If you are a current Bank of America deposit customer, the threshold at which you may be denied is increased to seven or more credit cards (with any bank) in the past 12 months.

Barclaycard

Necessary to Cancel Old Card: Yes
Waiting Period: None

Barclaycard has been enforcing some restrictions for the Arrival+ card recently, though the specific details are not known.

Chase

Necessary to Cancel Old Card: Yes
Waiting Period: 24 months after receiving the sign up bonus previously (48 months for Sapphire family cards)

For the purposes of signup bonus eligibility, all cards in the Sapphire family (Reserve, Premier, regular Sapphire) and the Southwest family (Premier, Plus) are treated as the same card. To earn the signup bonus on the Sapphire Reserve, for example, you must not have any Sapphire card open, and you must not have earned the signup bonus from any Sapphire card within the past 48 months.

Chase will deny applications for their credit cards if you have opened five or more credit cards (with any bank) in the past 24 months.

Citibank

Necessary to Cancel Old Card: No
Waiting Period: 24 months after opening or closing any similar card within the same brand (e.g. American Airlines, Citi ThankYou)

In practice, Citibank’s churn-worthy credit cards all have annual fees, so you’ll want to cancel them in

The post How To Earn A Signup Bonus Multiple Times appeared first on Miles Briefs.

How To Meet Minimum Spend Requirements – Because maybe I’m not spending $5,000 in the next 3 months.

How To Manufacture Spend – Spending money without really spending money.

How To Earn 5x Points (Almost) Everywhere – Leveraging credit card bonus categories to earn 5x points just about anywhere.

How To Earn A Signup Bonus Multiple Times – What to do when you love a signup bonus so much, you have to have it again.

Using Miles

How To Determine Which Airline Search Engine To Use – Sometimes you need more than American’s or United’s searches to find the awards you want.

How To Save Miles By Knowing Your Geography – Some awards can be cheaper when airlines don’t agree what part of the world a country is in.

How To Keep Airline Miles From Expiring – Because you can’t spend miles you don’t have anymore.

Credit Cards

How To Use Airline Incidental Fee Credits – Maximizing the Amex Platinum or Premier Rewards Gold $200/$100 incidental fee annual credit.

The post Tips & Tricks appeared first on Miles Briefs.

Now, let’s go over the best ways to push out your mileage expiration date without spending a ton of money. Most of these methods are not instant, so you’re going to need some lead time for the miles to post to your account. Also, there is currently no way to extend the expiration of Singapore Krisflyer miles (other than paying a fee to get 6 more months).

Use a Shopping Portal

Lead Time: Up to 8 weeks (usually faster than this though)

Making a purchase through an airline’s shopping portal earns miles and keeps your existing balance from expiring. All you need to do is visit the shopping portal, search for the store you’re planning to purchase from, and go through the link they provide to complete your purchase.

If there’s nothing you’re planning to buy right now, then go through the portal to iTunes and buy a song for $1. iTunes participates with every portal listed above.

Eat at a Restaurant in the Dining Rewards Network

Lead Time: 1-2 weeks

All of the U.S.-based airlines above participate in a dining rewards network. You can use the dining rewards website to link a credit card and to search for a nearby restaurant where you can earn miles. Use your linked card to pay your bill.

Transfer Miles from a Flexible Point Currency

Lead Time: Up to 24 hours

If you have points with American Express Membership Rewards, Chase Ultimate Rewards, Citi ThankYou Points, or Starwood Preferred Guest Starpoints, these can all be transferred to various airlines from the list above. Most of these transfers have a minimum redemption of 1,000 points, however.

Spend Money on Your Co-Branded Credit Card

Lead Time: Up to 1 month

If you have the co-branded credit card for any of the airlines above, any purchase you make will earn you some miles. They should post on your next statement’s closing date.

Make a Cheap Redemption

Lead Time: Varies, but on the order of 48 hours

For mileage programs that will extend your expiration for redeeming miles, a cheap redemption can be used. With most programs, the cheapest redemption will be either a magazine subscription or a donation to charity and will likely range from a few hundred to a thousand miles.

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