Originally Posted by
crimson12
If you and your wife each got one of these cards, you'd spend $19,000 [is my math wrong? not sure how he got $18,000] and get 225,000 miles each.
Nah, I'm bad at math, apparently.
Originally Posted by
Bob Herrington
"Between the two of you, it should be easy to accumulate 468k miles in AA within 6 months, using $18000 of spend." What does the $18k refer to?
As crimson12 noted, if you take all three credit cards, the minimum spend requirements add up to $9500 per person.
Also --- do you know of a post in here (or anywhere) that explains the basics of CC sign up bonuses? Most of you guys are talking at graduate level and I'm still a freshman.
Post #2 on the AA card thread in this forum (
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/miles...t-2-first.html) is a great introduction. Step by step, how to get the bonuses. If you read, say, the last 100 pages of that thread, it might take you a few hours, but that's a great education.
I have tons of basic questions and I hate to bother you with them all. For example, I am the sole owner of two LLCs for some real estate holdings. Can I sign up for a credit card in each? (That way I could have 3 AA credit cards.) If so, when it comes time to redeem the miles, can they all be put into one?
Citi will let you sign up for two personal cards at once, then 2 months later, one business card. The best way to handle the situation might be to use one of the LLCs for you, then have your wife apply as a sole proprietor with $0 income. There are examples in the AA thread of people who do things like this.
Another question: When do the points expire? What makes a mileage account "active"? Do you have to fly on that airline once a year or is simply credit card activity enough to qualify? Since most of the CC's give you the first year free, it makes sense to cancel them at the end of the first year if you only got them for the bonuses and aren't using them.
The expiration is specific to each program. For AA, you have to have a "qualifying activity" every 18 months - almost anything that earns or uses miles. You might want to cancel the CCs before the annual fees hit or talk to Citi's retention department about a bonus. (There's a citi retention reports thread in the "Other Credit Cards" forum.)
Finally, assuming the miles go away after a year, would it be foolish to go on a CC acquiring spree right now and end up "blowing my wad" by having more miles then I can use in a year and having not enough the second or third year?
Just make sure you understand the expiration rules of each program you use. Most of them are trivial to get around.