Was about to say that, very important thing to keep in mind. You'll have to use your points to get out of economy for international trips.

Check into creditkarma.com it will show you things you can do to increase your credit score or what is negatively affecting your credit score.

For me my main negative time is the # of closed accts. Mystudent loans have been sold so many times that I have 22 closed accounts.

"Free Lifetime Upgrades" (even domestic) will require a lot of flying, typically at least 1 million actual miles flown. Even that will not get you the highest level of status. And merely having status doesn't guarantee upgrades. Even 75K miles a year is, after all, the equivalent of about 15 coast-to-coast round trips.

You really need to pick an airline or airline alliance and focus on it.

Miles will have very limited use for upgrades, because in order to use miles for an upgrade, you usually have to purchase a fare that is higher (sometimes quite a bit higher) than the lowest fare.

Saw this and it made me think of that good old SNL commercial for First CityWide Change Bank

First CityWide Change Bank skit

I'd love to rack up the miles you are going to be able to get. Just imagine what you could do with the Chase AARP Card and 6 months of unlimited 5% cashback on all purchases.

Thanks again for all the info.

My main desires for upgrades are on intl flights. Domestic flights are so short I don't care. I also don't care about priority boarding (we're all going to get there at the same time anyway).

So it sounds like what I need to do is focus on getting miles and using that for upgrades, and also on being smart about shopping for tickets. Sometimes biz / 1st class tickets can be bought a less than full price. I also can help rack up the miles by using the right CCs.

As for credit ratings, thanks for all the advice. I've already done a ton of research on that and everything that I can do, I've already done or is in progress. I expect it to get better but the real bump won't happen until a) I get a mortgage and b) I wait another year for a couple of things to drop off my report (biggest is probably a charged-off CC account from a few years ago).

I'm very aggressively working on credit score improvement. I've gone up about 100 points since I started working on it, and I just last month got my first "normal" CC in years and I hope that's the start of being able to qualify for some more desirable options.

Not true on all carriers. AA SWUs can be used on any fare.

Another thought- if you had enough cash on hand that you could "prepay" credit card expenses of $1 mil, you could also "park" $200k @ BankDirect and earn 240,000 AAdvantage miles per year for doing nothing. That's at least 2 international round trip business tickets.

With over 1mil in spending, you would also have enough mileage points to prebook Business Class award seats and not worry about upgrades.

That's a bit misleading. The OP doesn't have status anywhere. You didn't explain that you only get SWUs on AA if you reach EXP status, which requires 100k EQMs or 100k EQPs. Also, the OP says they fly a "lot" internationally, but didn't explain how much. The SWUs you earn as an EXP only are enough for 4 international flights per year.

Meanwhlie, until/unless you're EXP, AA does let you use miles on any fare, but charges $$$ co-pay to use those miles for upgrades. Now, given the miles upgrades usually aren't guaranteed ie confirmable at booking time, that's financially better than other airlines in that you don't have to pay co-pay if you don't get upgraded (while at other airline you have to buy the more expensive fare first, and then if you don't upgraded you get nothing for that).

The OP didn't explain what kind of travel this is (remimbursed/paid by work, or not). If it's totally personally paid, the OP may find that outright business class award may sometimes make more sense than paying for a fare, paying for the co-pay, and then still using half the miles (that you'd use for an outright award) to upgrade.

By the other thing the OP has to figure is: How likely are they to have any of these upgrades confirmed? That depends on lot on how far ahread they book, whether they have flexilibity to choose a flight that has better upgrade possibilities, etc.

Thanks again for the info. I don't have status anywhere and my main desire for upgrades is on int'l flights. Hmm, I think my best bet is to keep improving my credit score.

Btw I was just rejected from the Citi AAdvantage card. The reason:

• Too few satisfactory credit references were recorded on your credit bureau report.

That's an improvement from a year ago, and I think that now that I finally have a real CC (USBank, 2k limit) my score will start improving and I'll get access to better cards.

Your credit is definitely way to important to risk. You should make that a priority over signing up for CC bonus offers.

A great way to get into a Rewards CC is by upgrading an existing CC. After having this new CC for a while you could request upgrading to a more valuable card.

There are plenty of other ways to earn miles/points as you will see by sticking around this site.

Good Luck improving your credit score.

Be advised you're still likely to get the same "Too few satisfactory credit references were recorded on your credit bureau report" mantra from the Citi even after you've landed a few major CCs form other banks. Since my wife went back to work (last Spring) she's been able to apply and receive 2 Chase cards, 2 Amex, a Discover, plus she's had a few dept store cards since before. Score in 750s, and yet, it's still "Too few satisfactory credit references were recorded on your credit bureau report." nonsense from the Citi. The have become notoriously difficult to deal with if you don't have a long list of revolving accounts, so Delta and/or Chase credit cards maybe a safer bet for you at this point. I would start slow, too, since too many inquiries that aren't followed by new accounts are not a good thing for your score.

Indeed. It is a multi-year process if you've screwed things up (as I did after being widowed suddenly).

There's a fair amount of gaming the system one can do by making sure, for example, that your statements don't cut with high balances (and thus affecting your utilization). There are also resources out there for getting as much inaccurate cruft off one's report, but it's a lot of work.

Until there's one 10k limit card, probably sticking to 1-2 new accounts a year is the best strategy. That worked for me.

If you don't mind could you clerify it for me? Thanks.

Sure.

Utilization is on a per-account and a total sum basis.

Let's say you've got two cards, and one has a $10k limit and one has a $25k limit.

You've got a $5k charge, and put it on the $10k card. That card is now at 50% utilization, and you will lose FICO points for that -- only for the time it's high, mind you, but that can cause adverse action if it's a big enough hit. I know from personal experience that, on a clean report, you can lose over 100 points for utilization. Ouch. Fortunately, it was a temporary situation when I didn't know better.

Most banks report to the credit bureaus as the statements cut, but not all do (HSBC reports at the end of the month).

If you know when that posts, then you can make sure that you've paid down your balance before the balance gets reported and thus avoid losing the FICO points.

For most people most of the time, you don't need to know this unless you're suddenly using credit or applying for credit.

Thanks. No, I do understand that. I'm kind of interested in ways to nudge the system in the opposite direction. I have reasonably generous credit on most of my cards, and I believe my score kind of suffers from under-utilization (it's normally within 1-3%). So I was wondering if it would work the other way around - if I beef up spending on one of my lower-limit card up to perhaps 25% by the time of posting - would that be enough to up my score? That trick would be especially useful after the App-o-Rama when your score takes a nosedive.

I guess there is only one way to find out