Questions and Answers

Hi Ben,

I just got a promotional email from American Airlines stating that I could earn 40,000 miles (1 mile per $1) on a loan I start through Lending Club. Am I correct to assume that I might be able to start a loan, pay it off right away, and easily earn 40,000 miles for “free”? This seems too good to be true.

Thanks

Hi Ben,

I just received a promotional email from American Airlines stating that I could earn up to 40,000 miles (1 mile for $1) on a loan started through Lending Club. Am I correct to assume that I could get a $40k loan, pay it off right away and earn the 40,000 miles essentially for free? This seems to good to be true…

Thanks!

Welcome [USER=2910]@AndrewKi[/USER] – you’d need to check to see if there are origination fees, application fees or anything else that would impact the cost per mile. Your credit score will take some kind of hit too. But depending on your need for the miles you may find it’s worth doing all the paperwork.

The offers usually sound great but usually people don’t qualify for the full amount. FM had a post about a similar deal with prosper a while back: [URL]http://frequentmiler.boardingarea.com/2016/01/27/should-you-borrow-money-to-get-up-to-35000-united-miles-from-prosper/[/URL]

If you decide to do it make sure you read the fine print!

Per the above with the origination fees usually doesn’t make it worth in, compared to going to a bank and getting a loan, often you can straight up buy miles for cheaper than the origination fees, although if it is worth it to you and you need a loan you can look into it