Hello all,

I was wondering if anyone could help me ease my girlfriend's apprehension over accumulating miles via CC signup bonuses. She has some major travel ambitions so I'm trying to get her into this stuff.

Some background info on her:

1.) Currently in grad school
2.) Little to no income; works a handful of hours a week in a computer lab as part of a work study program
3.) Major expenses include tuition and monthly rent, all paid for by student loans.
4.) Her credit score took a plunge years ago due to a miscommunication between her and her parents regarding student loans; however, her FAKO Experian score is now in the mid 700s.

What can I tell her to ease her concerns? Or is she perhaps not currently in a position to comfortably get into this right now?

Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks

Take her on a trip somewhere she wants to go. Since she desires to travel, giving her a taste my give her an appetite for more.

Or not. Lot's of folks just don't want to play this game. It's not their thing.

If one is using student loans to pay for school/room/board I can only assume that the total student loan debt number is large. I would complete a calculation of what that number will be when she graduates and do a reality check of weather you will be able to travel versus paying down the student loan. even with free airfare and free hotels travel can be expensive. by the time you are ready to use miles/points they may have been greatly devalued.

miles credit cards will be around later. think of this like housing, dont get fooled by a realtor that you need to buy now or you will be priced out of the market forever. you dont need to rush into getting tons of miles if you wont be able to enjoy them.

I may be in the minority here but i dont think i could take a relaxing vacation knowing that i had 100k plus unsecured student debt outstanding.

Points / Miles lose thier value when you pay interest to get them. If a student loan is use to pay off the credit card then you will be paying interst for a long time on theose points and miles

That's the plan - only thing is that I just recently got into this game myself so my stash is relatively small. So I figured if we plan on making traveling together a habit it would make sense to apply to the same cards in order to double our bounty.

Well, she plans on taking a trip to Europe next summer before her rotations start (she's in PT school) so if she's going to travel either way I thought using signup bonuses would probably be in her best interest.

And she ends up paying out of pocket for her monthly rent (pockets backed by student loans) so rather than pay with her debit card or directly from her bank account I figured it would make more sense to pay using a CC in order to meet spending requirements.

I wish you the best of luck, I just wanted to point out some of the downsides since most on this board think miles are the end all be all.
i would recommend before she signs up for a credit card she does two things.
1) map out how the minumum spend will be made on paper. so if its 3,000 in 6 months show how you can spend the requires amount with spend you would already do. this step keeps you from getting too many cards. we see a lot of posts here that say "i got thses six cards and there is no way i can meet the spend what can i do?
2) check right now by using the online search for the airline you are wanting to get miles for and see how many miles it would cost to get the ticket you want to europe right now for next summer. Summer is typacally the most difficult time to use miles. while you can find some lower cost flights in summer you are limited so review this. Also it often is easierr to get tickets on tuesdays and wednesdays. this does not always work with ones time off but sometimes it does.

again best of luck

All of this sounds good. Thanks for your quick responses.