Originally Posted by Happy

You need to learn the concept of "stretching" your miles even in the way you use your miles. Would you like to be able to "fund" for 5 trips with the same $ spend to earn the miles or you are quite content as long as you would get 3 trips out from it? I find it hard to comprehend why people would not be willing to change their thought process just a tad in order to understand why miles are not created equal and the "value" derived from them largely depends on how you redeem them - which of course, require knowledge and skills - armolkold actually is very kind to point out the obvious and lists examples. Unfortunately his words are totally lost in those with a closed-mind.

No, amolkold does not say the miles are negative, he just says the miles are not free and I wholeheartedly agree.

For you to earn those miles, you would have to give up an earning that is CASH - on a Cash Rebate cards some of them still pay 1.5 to 2%. Essentially you are exchanging (or dare I say, buying) your miles with the Cash Rebate you forfeit by putting your spend on the mileage earning cards.

Granted, miles always worth more than straight cash - WHEN you know how to maximize the value of your miles. The flight to TPA is not it. I am sorry, despite the poster thinks he has saved a lot of cash - because if he puts his $5K spend into Chase Sapphire Preferred card or AMEX Membership Reward card - he would earn the points that can be transferred to UA (via Chase) and BA (via AMEX) - with the UA miles he then has access to all Star A flights including the US. Currently believe it or not, UA miles have the BEST availability. It is almost like a complete turn table from the past. With the BA Avios the poster would have access to AA flights. On top of that, AMEX runs 40% to 50% transfer bonus to BA at least 2 to 3 times a year - this means your $5K would earn 7500 BA Avios when you transfer your 5K MR pts to BA AVios during the bonus period. Further more, BA Avios is a distance / segment based program - it costs A LOT LESS on a single segment domestic Mid Con or better, the short hop.

As the example give, ORD-TPA only costs 7500 Avios versus 12,500 on either UA or AA and may be 20,000 on DL...

You need to look beyond your initial "saving cash" basics and learn how to save a lot more cash with the same outlay.

If someone tells you, here on the table, you have a $1000 worth gadget, and a $500 worth gadget - both would require you to spend $300 to get it. Both gadgets would perform the same task. Which gadget you would reach out for? Dont tell me you would opt for the $500 gadget... But the TPA redemption on DL essentially equals to reaching out for the $500 gadget while completely ignoring the $1000 gadget because it is not so straight forward - it does require some thinking and some analytical skills that some here may find it a bit daunting.