<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by Randy Petersen:
I can't agree with the logic here since parking cash for two months in any kind of account is pretty low earning since your speanding is actually spread out over the two months, not all at once. As for charging against the 2% cashback - not sure why you'd do that since the miles have their own value. In your scenario, 66K is two coach tockets to Hawaii on Delta at some $500-$650 apiece, depending on if you live in a hub city or not. That is let's say an average rebate of some $1,100 from the credit card alone, meaning your total rebate from your $28k spend is about 4% - twice what your cashback card can give you. Let's say you use your 66k miles for an upgrade from coach to biz to Europe, the difference there is some $4,000 of card rebate benefit (difference between coach and biz), meaning your rebate from an affinity credit card is now over 14%. I've never been a fan of cash back since it always has only one value - i'll always choose an affinity credit card and yes like the rest of you have really stepped up my spending with this double miles thing with Delta and United. I'm sure to spend $100 during the same period and that's 200,000 miles versus $2K (cashback card).......got to be miles </font>
Randy:
I'd like to clarify. My "logic" is not that cashback cards are better than affinity cards, or vice versa. My point is only to argue that affinity spending-based miles are NOT free - there's an opportunity cost attached. Moreover, as was pointed out previously, the opportunity cost differs; People who use the miles for domestic flights have different opportunity costs than people who upgrade international Y to C or F.
[This message has been edited by ynewman (edited 08-01-2002).]