My Take on Frequent Flier Miles
During a conversation about buying plane tickets, a family member once told me that he did not believe in frequent flier miles. Well, I told him, they believe in you.
His opinion was that they were too much of a hassle to deal with, and it was just easier to find the cheapest ticket on the cheapest airline. To an extent, I agree that you should always go with the cheapest ticket, however as I have always traveled a lot for work, we tended to stick with United/Continental out of Newark as they had the most flights out of all the airlines. Back in 2003 when I first started my current job, I signed up for their rewards program, and have pretty much always tried to stick with them ever since. I do not fly or travel as much as others, but I've traveled enough to where I've formed an opinion on the various rewards programs.
My take on rewards miles is pretty simple. If they are free, you should collect them. Try to stick with one program in an alliance, so that you can make them add up. Same thing goes with hotel rewards. If you're staying in that hotel, you might as well collect the free points, whether they be hotel points or converted airline miles. I have gotten many free plane tickets using rewards miles, as well as free hotel rooms in Hawaii, Ireland, etc. using collected hotel points.
When it comes to rewards credit cards, I differ from most point collectors in that I think cash back credit cards offer a much better reward. You can use cash for anything. When traveling for work, I've been using a 2% cash back card from Fidelity for years. Yes, I still make sure I collect the miles when flying since they are free, but I'd rather have the cash back which I can use for whatever I want, and I don't think 1 mile for $1 spent is worth having the credit card.
That being said, there are still ways to pad your mileage account without having the co-branded credit card. I'll use my MileagePlus account as an example.
This is a free program to sign up for, and you can find many participating restaurants in the NYC/NJ area. You get 5 miles per dollar spent dining out. You can register as many credit cards as you want. I register all my cash back credit cards, eat out or grab a drink, get my cash back as I normally would, but collect the free miles at the same time. It definitely adds up. I picked up a $200 happy hour receipt recently with some friends, and ended up getting more rewards miles than my one way flight to Denver from Newark.
This program works out great for me, as my local bar right around the corner from me, Jack's Cabin, participates in the rewards program.
I get 60 miles every time I order this bloody mary.
Ever order anything off of Amazon? If you're like me, with multiple orders a month, would you like to earn free miles with your orders? Using this app, you can buy Amazon gift cards and receive 2 miles per dollar. Amazon gift card balances never expire. So if you're going to buy $17 worth of oatmeal, just buy a $17 gift card first using the app and apply it to your Amazon account, then buy the oatmeal. It's no cost to use the app, so you might as well collect the free miles.
So that's my opinion on miles. Stick with cash back rewards credit cards, but collect miles if they are free. Feel free to leave any comments if you agree or disagree, and any other tips you have would be appreciated.