Originally Posted by sdsearch

I guess that depends on how much credit card spend you friend and his wife can do without counting dines. She can probably get 100k AA miles just for signing up "simultaneously" (in different kinds of browsers) for both the personal Visa and the personal Amex at away7.citicards.com, as long as she can manage $6k spend within 4 months. (Note: If they can't manage $12k spend together in 4 months, one should apply for both cards first, and then after the spend requirement is completed, only then should the other apply for both cards. Unfortunately, this specific offer may or may not still be available several months from now. OTOH, maybe an even better offer would be available?)

So then the question becomes is this amount of spend easy for them without dines (in which case the dines are relatively trivial), or do they have to put absolutely everything (including all these dines) on those cards to meet the spend requirement in time.

(While dining is a way to keep adding to a miles account, for those who have never had the credit cards -- or those who haven't churned in a couple years -- the credit card apps far outweigh what you can earn from day-to-day credit card spend or day-to-day dining in the short term. But these Citi AA card offers cannot be used more often than about every 20ish months, so in the long term they alone may not be enough, depending on how much someone wants to travel and where and in which cabin and with how much advance notice.)