Questions and Answers

Hello all,

I’m pretty new to the points game – former airline employee who has the travel bug just like so many of you all on here.

I have the Amex Premier Rewards Gold Card at the moment which seems pretty decent to me, although in terms of redeeming for hotels/miles I don’t seem to be having much joy, presumably because I don’t spend as much on it as some members here seem to do.

So I guess my question is, how much do you usually spend per year on your most-used redemption card? As someone who has literally never booked a flight or hotel with points in my life I’m trying to find the foothold to get started, but if I’m not in the same level of spend as most of the users here I may just step back and admire from afar.

Thanks for any advice.

Brian

I think the trick is to pay for every single thing you can with a credit card. If there’s a fee for using cards it’s usually not worth it but sometimes it is. Look at Plastiq for making rent payments. Check your car loan terms to see if there’s a fee there. Groceries, utilities, charity donations, etc. Every penny helps. With the Amex Gold card you get 2x MR points at grocery stores so you could look at buying $500 Visa gift cards and using that at places where you’d earn only 1x MR point (or where Amex isn’t accepted). Of course there’s a fee for the Visa gift card so you’d have to do the math to see if it’s worth it for you.

Welcome to the Forum. Agree with @MidSouthSkier.
Also, remember what Lucky said about “not doing anything without considering the miles/points consequences of that action first”.
For me what worked VERY WELL (in addition to credit card signup bonuses of course) was making most online purchases through those shopping portals (whether AA, DL, SWA, UA). I prefer AA: [URL]https://www.aadvantageeshopping.com/h____.htm[/URL]
Most stuff I buy online, I go through them. Often I wait until there are increased points offered. Now if you run your online shopping through these sites, that is truly FREE miles/money. To give you an example: let’s see you buy a $100 worth of perfume at Sephora.com. Using most credit cards, you will get 100 miles/points for that purchase. HOWEVER, if you access Sephora.com THROUGH AAdvantage eShopphing for example, and particularly when they increase the miles/$ spent to let’s say 12 miles/$ spent, then just by accessing Sephora [U][B]through them[/B][/U] you will earn an [U]ADDITIONAL[/U] 1,200 miles!!! So 100 versus 1,300 AA miles……
That is how over the last 3 years I (and my wife) got 140,000 AA miles!

Credit card bonus’s will help. Read the “Start Here” Being strategic is a big big help. Always aim to get more than 1 point/dollar of spend! 😀