I have a certain amount of spend planned on my credit cards, but I will hit my credit limit before I get to the next tier.

I don’t have any business travel planned next month, but I could book some personal travel and have plenty of AMEXMR points that I could pay for revenue tickets with. But where can I find good deals on that travel site? Often it seems like they’re cash/points Prices are a lot higher than just paying cash out right on aa.con then cashing my MR points out for dollars.

Any sweet spots in that redemption method or other ways to get and extra 10-15k LPs?

Generally flight + AAHotels is your best bang for the buck. A weekend trip or two could easily net you the LPs there.

Otherwise, if you're willing to just buy LPs outright and get little to nothing valuable in return (ymmv), the shopping portal is your best bet, you can sign up for a month or two subscription for a food kit or the motley fool and get a large sum there (just read into the posting time, I believe some you have to be subscribed for a month or two).

How many more LPs are we talking about?

Is the credit limit really a limit? You can make multiple and/or early payments to spend more than your credit limit in a statement period.

You may also consider the eshopping portal if you are going to spend cash. I have no status with AA currently, but on the way to reaching gold this qualifying year. With purchases made with cash via the portal in addition to a couple of flights, I will reach gold spending less than $4,100. If I had just concentrated on spending flights alone, I would have had to spend at least $8K to reach gold. I concentrated on stuff I would normally have purchased and things I was going to purchase anyhow.

Not a good idea with Citi. They don't like cycling, tons of shutdowns on their Double Cash card for it and I wouldn't risk it on AA.

Mattress runs are probably your best bet. I did one last weekend and one stay for about 18,000LPs through AAhotels/Rocketmiles which put me within 5,000 to requal for EXP which I will hit after this next trip. They both posted as of today.

eShopping deals aren't that generous anymore — and neither are AAhotels — and with one exception every transaction has required months of delays and emails to post. Two Marriott stays last July only just posted on 10 Jan. The AAhotels portal seems much more reliable.

I pay my credit card early all the time -- e.g., I use my Citi card for business expenses and immediately pay those expenses once I get the funds from my employer. I never let those expenses go unpaid prior to the statement closing date as doing so would ding my credit score by carrying a high balance. I've never had Citi or AX care, keeping in mind I pay off the balance in full each month regardless. I've never done an analysis to see if all of this spend exceeds what is my credit limit in a given month, so it's possible I just never ran into some sort of T&C that others have.

To OP's question:

Mattress run on AA hotels or some eShopping would be easiest best to secure the LP's. You can view eShopping merchants and sort by earn rate to see where you can get the best bang for your buck.
That coupled with the base miles from AA CC spend should hopefully get you there.


Citi is looking a more recognizable pattern of cycling, perhaps with purchases from a small group of merchants, or merchants with higher risk factors (i.e. MS activities) that are repetitive monthly or in $$$ amount.

Similar to USFlyerUS, I had a 4 month or so stretch where I was expensing alot of work stuff om personal CC to get miles. Probably a half dozen or so merchants mixed in during the period, and cycled the CL 1-2x per month for a few months. Nary an issue there.

Yea, paying your balance down early here and there for legitimate charges is never a problem.

Cycling thousands month in and month out (especially with MS typical stuff) is what will get you shut down.

If the OP has more legitimate spend they could do this month but is up against their credit limit it is laughable IMO to suggest that they would risk a shutdown by paying it off early and continuing to use their card.

Pardon my ignorance, but what is "MS typical stuff"?

MS is manufactured spend. I don't really know all the ins and outs, but I believe gift cards or prepaid debit cards are usually involved.

Of course it is. It you paid it off already, it's not credit.

Thanks - this helps!

The credit limit is an overall credit limit, not a statement period credit limit. At any one point in time, that's the most credit the issuer is willing to extend, regardless of when the charges were incurred.