BryceC

I've been reading this site as well as a few blogs for a few weeks. I'm not a frequent traveler however my wife and I and 3 couples have been talking about going to Europe but it keeps getting put on the back burner.

I'd really like us to get enough miles to get there and back and I think it's fairly easily attainable, I was going to have each person in each couple get a Chase Sapphire Preferred as well as the Chase United Mileage Plus card for the bonuses. That's about 75K points total and that gets us from our origin to destination (Minneapolis-Munich) and our return (Rome-Minneapolis) for 30k miles each way in economy on United. This is for several reasons: I think the booking is easiest, and everybody is familiar with and comfortable with United, and those cards have low min spends (3k/3 months and 1k/3months) and we have plenty of time to spread it out over the next year as we wouldn't be booking for probably a year anyway.

Am I missing something? It seems easier than I expected. If we get the bonuses and convert them to miles, could we cancel the cards before the first annual pay comes up and keep the miles? I thought it was separate accounts and not tied to the cards. United clearly lists the taxes and fees and it looks like they don't have fuel surcharges.

Sorry I feel like I'm asking dumb questions when it comes to the threads on this board but I literally have been looking at this for about a month and I just feel like I am missing something in fees I don't know about or other things.

Thanks in advance for any help.