Hello!
I'm a new member here. Just want to say ahead of time, sorry for my not knowing all of the lingo ahead of time, and I appreciate your reading this and being patient. FT is a pretty incredible community, with a mind-boggling amount of information, and it's a little hard to process it all at times.
So here's the deal. I'm almost 22 years old, graduating from college this coming May, and am looking to take an extended trip starting either at the end of next summer, or the beginning of next fall (2011). As a college student, I don't have a lot of cash on hand, and am trying to figure out the best way to go about travelling cheaply. I currently have only one credit card, my Chase Freedom card, which I rarely use. I also have my Chase debit card, and a Perkstreet Financial debit card which gives me 2% cash back. Up until now, these three cards have done everything I've needed. I pay back my credit card debt every month, without fault. I think I should have excellent credit, though I don't have a large credit line.
As detailed in
this post, it seems that I'm shooting for about 140-160,000 miles to make this trip work. Does this sound right? (This OneWorld Award deal seems pretty incredible.)
Now, getting those points. Seems the best deal at the moment is
this one, which, if I understand it correctly, I could sign up for two cards with, a personal and business card (and maybe even a third one), and as long as I spend $4000 on each one of those cards within the next six months, I'm all set. that would be 150,000 miles.
According to
this, I can basically rack up charges on my credit cards by buying mint dollars, depositing them in the bank, and paying off the card. Obviously, this would be a little bit of a hassle, but seems absolutely worth it if it's going to save me basically $8000 in travel fare for a little bit of time and effort. I'm still not quite sure how long it would take me to pay the full $8000 back through the US Mint scheme (2 boxes? as in 2 boxes per order every 10 days? or 2 boxes of any particular kind of coin?), but barring some horrendous bank situation, I think this is all do-able. Though it does seem much too good to be true. Does anyone have experience doing this that they could pass my way?
So, does anyone have any advice? Is this a good plan? Does anyone know of a better plan? Are there better deals and techniques out there? It seems with the time I have allotted, basically, that I want to be travelling by the end of next summer or early next fall, and that I have no miles, no credit card programs, no nothing right now, this kind of quick mile-grabbing scheme by signing up for cards is the best way to go. But again, I'm a complete neophyte at this, and would love to hear some advice from someone with more expertise.
Thanks so much!
All the best,
Stufferino