Originally Posted by
taliesin
Well, you can check out the Fidelity offers
here. If you have some money you can park, you can get up to 50k miles for that. I believe ING and others have offered similar deals at one time or another. There's also
BankDirect, through which you can open a checking account that pays interest in miles rather than in cash. Depending on your particular situation, these may or may not be good deals, but they are out there.
And, of course, while many credit card sign-up bonuses now require significant spending to capture, there are still many that give the bonus after first purchase, or after relatively small spending. For example, the US Airways card gives 40k miles after first purchase, while the United card earns 50k after $1000 spend in 3 months. I would think just about anybody with good credit could get those.
Yes, I am aware of the Fidelity offer, but I didn't jump on it because I have my money invested primarily in a 457b/401k at work, and in a Roth IRA with Vanguard, which makes a lot more sense for me financially.
The trouble with the United and USAir cards is that, while they require a very low spend, in the end, you still only have 40k miles and 50k miles
which cannot be combined. Neither of these is even close to enough to redeem for an international business class flight. To me, this is almost a deal-breaker. In fact, I don't know if I even want to get into the miles game anymore, in light of this. I was really counting on being able to combine miles from different credit card bonuses. It would have been a bonanza. But, I guess the airlines are not that stupid.