How to Earn Free Plane Tickets and Cash Back by Shopping Online

DH and I both have United Mileage Plus CCs, which are paid off every month. Then there is the Mileage Plus online mall that give miles on top of that.

We rack up enough miles to get tickets to Hawaii every other year.

I have always taken advantage of airline credit cards. Currently saving up for Delta tickets to Hawaii. I ususally cancel the card though before the fee kick in. It It is important to always compare how much miles actually costs so you can chose either a rewards card or miles card.

Also, did anyone check out the JetBlue thing? Pay a one time monthy fee and you get free travel all month!

“What about you? Do you participate in rewards or rebates programs? Which are your favorites?”

I love my USAA World Mastercard. It has an extensive Rewards program, and NO Annual Fee (and a very low 6% interest rate, but that’s a moot point). Whatever I put on it, gets paid off in full each month. I try to put as many items in my monthly budget on it as possible (gas, food, etc) to reap the rewards. I get as many points as possible during the year, and then use them at the end of each year to purchase gift cards as Christmas gifts for my mom, dad and little brother. It works well for me, since I’m on such a tight budget/small income, because it takes the stress out of trying to come up with extra money throughout the year for gifts.

I’m cheap and I like cash.

My main card is the Capital One no-annual-fee cash back rewards card. I get 1% back on all purchases. (I don’t think this card is offered anymore.)

Recently, I also got the MBNA Smart Cash card (no annual fee also), which gives me 3% on groceries and gas and 1% on everything else. I use it for groceries and on-line purchases only because I kept the limit on this one RELATIVELY low (it’s really hard to get credit card companies to set a $1k limit).

I use a Visa for gas purchases because I get a 5% discount right on the bill.

The most cash back I received in one year is $400…which depresses me when I calculate how much I spent to get that rebate.

Personally, I do not like the airline rewards cards. Airlines have the ability to change the rules at any time. You are (as stated in the article) paying $50 a year to use a credit card. On top of that, to get maximum benefit you are shopping only at partnered sites. I’m not familiar with drugstore.com, but you could be paying more by shopping only at specific vendors. Additionally, don’t you still have to pay taxes and fees with your “free” tickets? (I could be misinformed here). For me the hassle is not worth it.

I go with an Amazon.com card, which nets me 1% on all purchases and 3% on Amazon purchases. I hate going to stores, so I do most of my purchases through Amazon. It makes sense for my spending patterns.

I guess the bottom line is to decided which rewards fit with your lifestyle. This may include not using a credit card at all!

Cheers,
Phil

I’ve got to add that this may not be useful for any non-Americans. I only have my knowledge as a Canadian, but my experience is that shopping online is problematic at best. Many places won’t even ship outside the US, and those that do charge such exorbitant shipping that it ends up being more expensive. Canadian-based online stores do exist, but usually only for specialty items, not general household purchases.

The JetBlue thing is legit for $599 for Sept 8-Oct 8. Really $640 after taxes and not a bad deal if you are in one of its hubs. However, after checking where they fly, it doesn’t seem as worth it, and one would have to take a lot of connecting flights.

If someone could arrange a last minute month off from work… this would work, but this looks like a win for JeBlue. $640 = 2 good transcontinental flights. You gotta to do more than that to make it worthwhile. Don’t forget all the hotels/housing costs.

I’m not down with the spend more save more kind of activity. This is where many folks get doomed and de-railed off their finances.

If you so happen to need to travel at a particular time, great! But don’t travel for the sake of the miles, or a perceived great deal. REWARD CARDS/PLANS ARE EVIL! Don’t let them make you spend more than you usually do!

Happy Friday everyone! So glad the stock market is back. YiiiiiHAAAW!

Best,

RB

I have been using rewards credit cards for 95% of my monthly spending since I was 18. And honestly, I still couldn’t tell you what the interest rate is on either of my two rewards cards because I never carry a balance. As the article stated, if you carry a balance than these cards will kill you.

However, I have paid about $50/year to keep these cards. I was just talking with my wife about this on our plane trip home from New York last week, which was paid for with miles earned from purchases (and a couple small plane trips for which we gained miles), and I figured I have spent nearly $400 on yearly fees over the last 8 years to keep the cards.

However, my wife and I flew first class to Florida from LA for our Honeymoon on “free” tickets (90,000 miles) and now we just flew first class to New York from LA (90,000 miles) and we still have a combined 60,000 miles with Delta and 35,000 points with Starwood.

So the way I look at it is that we have paid $400 for 4 first class cross-country airline tickets. And as someone mentioned earlier, there is a $5.00 processing fee for the tickets purchased with miles. So I truly spent $420 for 4 first class tickets.

Rewards cards are great (i.e. airlines, hotels) so long as you travel and you like the program you are with. Delta flies everywhere I want to go and the Starwood properties offer great hotels all across the world. But if vacationing isn’t your thing (like my brother) than I would certainly use a cash back card like he does.

I think we get hung up on the credit card issue, since there’s a good argument for just using a cash rewards credit card that has no annual fee, and then sticking the money in a high-yield savings account. But I think you point out a good reminder, which is that we should look toward our favorite retailers and see if we can shop through an airline’s website to get discounts as well as mileage points.

Another thing that’s useful is consolidating your frequent flyer accounts. For example, though I’m a member of Iberia’s frequent flyer program, I transferred my miles from Iberia over to British Airways. On my most recent trip (to ORD and then to MSN), I flew on American Airlines on the way there. Because AA is a British Airways affiliate, I was able to transfer miles there.

Also, look to see what opportunities your current credit card provides in terms of rewards. I have an Amazon.com student Visa, which gets me Amazon.com gift certificates. However, they’re now transitioning to offering other rewards through different merchants. After this, if I have 6,000 points on my card, I can get 5,000 miles with British Airways. Though this isn’t a ton, it’ll still keep my frequent flyer miles current. It’s also a nice benefit since I use my Amazon credit card for almost all purchases, especially around Christmas, birthday, and textbook purchasing time.

I definitely use a credit card rewards program. In just a few months I’ve earned several thousand points (making sure to pay off my balance at the end of every pay period, of course!)

I’ve really enjoyed April’s posts and her tying in of philosophy (like the “finding flow” in her previous post). She has a lot of practical advice. I hope to see more of her writing!

I’ve got some frequent flier miles with NorthWest… From a trip to New Jersey and a subsequent one to England. I’ve tried to redeem them for something else (gift cards mainly) but can’t seem to do that. Only like 15,000 miles though, but hey, it might be enough to at least get a discount or something on tickets. (I REALLY don’t fly often at all. Those two trips are the current extent of my airline travel.)

I pump all my normal bills I can through our cash back card. I know I buy things a little to easily online with CC too. I have used miles before for a family vacation before, but I remember the how hard that trip was too due to only two miles seats per plane (international partner). In the end, I’ll just pay for our next trip. I’ll take the cash.

If you are going to spend the money traveling or purchasing things, you might as well get some benefit from doing so. My husband and I rarely charge any personal expenses except for things we buy online, such as airline tickets, and the monthly charges for Netflix. When we do charge, we put it on a Master Card that gives us points for our locally-based airline. We use those points at least every other year to travel to different parts of the country to visit family.

In addition, my husband travels all the time for business and to keep his business expenses separate from our personal expenses, he charges all those to a Golf Digest credit card that gives him points for free golf equipment. He’s traded in those points for various golf clubs in the past. He also is a member of frequent traveler accounts with a number of airlines, hotel groups, and Hertz.

Earlier this month we returned from a vacation to the Pacific Northwest in which we tried to maximize as many accumulated points as possible. A previous poster was absolutely correct that it’s very difficult to use airline points to travel where you want when you want — especially during summer with little notice. In arranging this trip, I looked at four different airlines that DH had points with as well as figuring out the cost difference between flying out of Milwaukee or Chicago and flying into either Portland or Seattle. In the end, the only flight I was able to get free was my husband’s outbound flight. We had to pay for his return and my ticket, although I did get a fairly low price on those. In addition, I booked us a Hertz car with one week free. All we had to pay for was the Neverlost, the taxes and fees, and the extra day — I think that came to about $145. We got four free hotel nights – two nights at a Marriott in Portland and two nights at a Holiday Inn in Seattle — and only had to pay for parking at the holidays ($28/night at Marriott, $10/night at Holiday Inn). The locations for both hotels were great — we could either walk or use public transportation in both cities. We figured we weren’t going to these cities to hang out in our hotel rooms, so having clean rooms in a safe area were our only criteria. Because we saved so much money, we were able to splurge on the hotels we stayed at on the Oregon coast. We also charged all our meals to our credit card to earn airline points to visit family next year.

It does take a lot of work to maximize various reward programs. But for weeks like the one ending today, during which my husband traveled four days on business, at least we can envision a mostly free trip together sometime in the future. And since we couldn’t use his United or American miles on this summer’s vacation, he’ll keep accumulating them with the hopes of getting free tickets to the U.K. next year. We just need to plan far, far in advance.

I’ve tried them all, and the Southwest Visa card is the best reward program I’ve ever found. We even charge our son’s college tuition on it, which easily produces one free roundtrip a year.

As others have mentioned, the key to making the rewards “free” are being able to pay it off every month in full.

Unlike Delta, United and other airline programs which we have tried, Southwest generally has space available, and their agents are reachable and easy to deal with. Only 19,200 miles for a roundtrip, and with Southwest you can split the roundtrip reward tickets into two one-way tickets, unlike most other airlines. I think the fee is $60 a year.

I switched to a cash back card with no annual fee because it is almost impossible to use the airline miles.

Like the other Tyler with an earlier comment, I’m skeptical about airline miles programs, and even more skeptical reading advice to accumulate them from someone who’s never used them. I’ve yet to see anyone actually get a free flight anywhere with them. If you can get two seats on the same flight, next to each other, to the destination you want, on the dates you want, I’ll be impressed, but like I said, I’m skeptical. Let me know if it ever happens, maybe I’ll take airline miles more seriously then.

Also the notion that they call them “miles” is ridiculous. If you have 80,000 miles you should be able to circle the globe several times. France and back is probably about 10,000 miles if you’re in the US. You should be able to get 4 trips to France for two out of 80,000 miles.

@Ann #7: What’s the benefit of keeping a card’s credit limit at $1000? That hurts your utilization (credit score); better to have a higher limit and not use it.
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I put everything on Discover or Amazon cards (Chase Visa) and get hundreds back each year. I’ll tweak my buying to take advantage of the quarterly 5% back or 10x points on whatever they’re offering (stuff I buy anyway!), plus if you shop through their websites you can get a lot of cashback, which is great for larger online purchases. The best deal this year was 10x points for recurring bills on the Visa: gas, electric, water, XM, cable, cell and home phone, etc. I pay those bills anyway and netted hundreds in Amazon.com gift cards just by switching to that card. (Then I switched them back to Discover when the promo was over!)

Good article. In Canada we have Air Miles and they can be redeemed for more than airline tickets. I used to put rent on my Air Miles credit card (which also had an annual fee – but was worth it), and earned enough Air Miles to get $50 gift cards every 6 weeks or so. I could probably have saved up for a flight somewhere nice quite fast, but I chose to use my “points” to go to restaurants or get clothing store gift cards instead.

I still earn Air Miles thru grocery store promotions, the Yahoo! Air Miles toolbar… tons of places offer Air Miles.

It’s true – a reward credit card is good if you pay in full every month. Otherwise, any savings will be negated by interest, and if you go as far as maxing out the card then you’ll be paying massive interest AND won’t be able to charge any new purchases, so you won’t get any new rewards either.

Also, sounds obvious, but make sure when you select a rewards card that it’s actually for rewards you WILL use. There’s so many out there that you need to do research for the best fit. No point paying an annual fee and not using the rewards.

That’s good to know about American airlines, especially since once I’ve used my miles with Northwest and Delta, I want to find a different airline – their customer service has gone completely downhill.

Here’s how credit card companies are winning by offering rewards. (You do know that they’re winning don’t you? Otherwise their programs would come to a screeching halt). They are encouraging you to spend more with reward $, and in so doing, they are raising the odds, which increases your risk, that eventually you will make a late payment or miss a payment, at which point they can charge a hefty late fee, and they are banking on the fact that you will carry a balance – maybe not every month, but one or two along the way. Some people will carry a balance every so often. That happens to even the best-intentioned people. And the higher interest rate charged by most reward cards can offset the reward if you carry a balance, not to mention the annual fees. Paying the balances takes discipline. While it probably is true that people have received free tickets, what you don’t know is, have they ever been charged any late fees? – are they carrying a balance on their charge card(s)? – that’s not information that they would probably want to share.

I’ve found it very difficult to actually book a flight using reward points. Great if you have an absolutely flexible schedule and don’t mind leaving/arriving at odd times, if you can get a seat (or seats) AT ALL. I’d rather use a rewards/cashback card and put the cash I receive into an account earmarked for our vacation. Maybe it’s not quite as good a deal, but much less hassle in my book.

April – another great article – you still have my vote for #1!

I’ve been doing this CC airmile thing for about 15 years now. I haven’t paid for an airline ticket in all that time!! That includes taking my kids on vacations and I travel worldwide.

One STRONG word of caution – get rid of any card you have to pay money to get the miles. Another STRONG word of caution – DO NOT use airline cards. They lock you into one airline for your tickets AND getting flights that are even remotely convenient are a virtual impossibility.

To give you an example. My wife and I have been married 3 yrs, when we got married she had an USAir card, I had my rewards card through. Every time we wanted to fly somewhere she would try to use her airmiles, no luck, ridiculous schedules with crazy layovers or no availability on our dates. I on the other hand never had any problem, simple as can be.

Another note – given people’s propensity to abuse CC’s I’m not sure you were strong enough in your warning about only using this strategy if you pay off your CCs monthly. This is critical or you ABSOLUTELY will lose ALL advantage of this strategy by paying interest.

Finally – it is a proven fact that people spend about 25%+ more on things if they use a CC vs cash. If someone uses this approach they have to be very careful to NOT spend money you wouldn’t normally have. While, like you, I charge everything on my rewards cards I have to continually remind myself not to overspend and I’ve been doing this a long time. It’s amazing how easy it is to justify spending a few extra bucks because you’ll get “Rewards/Miles”.

@J.D.
I don’t mean to imply that I think no one ever redeems airline miles, or that it’s impossible to ever get free flights out of them, but they seem a lot like mail-in rebates, which are specifically designed to be enough of a hassle to keep a lot of people from redeeming them.

Chris G. as you mention redeems them all the time, but he’s essentially built a living on top of knowing all the ins and outs of airline miles systems. This is a level of dedication I’m not willing to commit.

I should be able to go to American Airlines (or whichever airline), log in to my account, select tickets to purchase, and if I have enough miles to pay for the flight, the credit card entry page should say “would you like to pay with your miles account?” I should be able to click “yes” and get a free flight.

Because they don’t allow this sort of thing, and I have to go out of my way to get anything out of a miles account, I view the system warily. I shouldn’t need to buy an e-book just to figure out how to redeem miles that are supposedly something of value that I’ve earned.

But like I said, I don’t like mail-in rebates for the same reason, or store loyalty cards or even gift certificates for that matter.

And I was lying earlier when I said I’ve yet to see anyone ever get a flight out of these things. I’m actually pretty sure I’ve known people who’ve paid for a flight or two with airline miles, but I’m pretty sure this has always been a case of “pay for ten flights and the 11th might be free (depending on when and where you want to go)”, rather than “fly anywhere you want for free just by using our credit card for your regular purchases.” Sure, the latter is probably possible, but how much work is it? Also, I’m afraid of the sort of experience that Trini (#46) had.

I’d be interested in seeing April’s follow-up to this post after she’s actually purchased her tickets, noting whether it was worth the amount of hassle required to get them this way.