Strategy for CC miles
 

Hello Flyertalk,

First-time poster here. I'm a frequent world traveler. My goal: get myself onto a program that will give me seat upgrades. I fly way too much, I'm too tall, and I really really want seat upgrades.

Here's my situation: I run my own business and we have millions of dollars in expenses. I could, if I wanted to, probably pay a lot of those expenses on a CC. I realized that this might be a big opportunity for me to boost myself into some excellent mileage category.

Here's the problem though: I don't have a million-dollar credit limit. More like a few thousand dollars. Can I do something like make a deposit payment on my CC, and then charge a very big amount ($300k or whatever) and get credit for that? Which CC should I go for?

I don't have a wonderful credit rating so I also am worried I'll have difficulty getting an affiliate card. However I can try; my rating is in the high 600s at this point, and going up.

Thanks!

You Are In Luck
 

Welcome to FT

I think you will find that as you start to charge and pay off items your credit limits will start to move up very quickly. It is not uncommon to have credit cards with limits of up to $100,000 and some cards have no limits at all.

I own a business too and run a lot of my expenses through my corporate reward cards. You will be flooded with points and the banks will LOVE you if you pay off early.

I often maker interim payments on line to free up credit so I can charge more.

One item to consider is once interest rates start to go up again, you may be better off holding on to your money and paying on the due date so you can earn interest on the float while the funds sit in your bank account.

The most important part of this equation is to NOT roll over charges so you are charged interest. Any miles you get will NOT be worth the interest rate or late charges the credit cards ding you with for rolling over balances.

In short charge lots, pay early, pay often, charge lots, repeat

Safe Travels

Mike

Agreed with above.

In case you didn't already realize this, after paying off balances at/near your limit on time a time or two, if you call and ask for a higher limit, they will probably do it for you.

+1. In fact, after a time, it can be easier to get your limit raised than lowered (at least that has been my experience in the past).

As to your particular strategy, you may not even need credit cards. The best way to get seat upgrades is to get elite status, and the best way to get elite status is by flying. Since you're already flying a lot, if you haven't done so already, you should sign up for your airline's frequent flyer program. You should also, if you can, consolidate your flying onto one airline, so you're accruing, say, 50,000 miles on one airline, as opposed to 10,000 miles on five different airlines. You say you're a "world" traveler, so I assume you're flying a lot internationally. Always make sure to fly on the international airlines that are partners with the domestic carrier that's your "home base".

Some credit cards will give you "EQMs" -- elite qualifying miles. This depends on what airline you fly. But it is possible to get a few (maybe 10,000) EQMs with a credit card. I call that "a few" because elite tiers are usually every 25k, so 10k doesn't do all that much for you, though it can be a nice bump if you're close to the next level.

You can, of course, apply for lots of credit cards to get miles. You can redeem these miles for trips in business/first class. You can also use miles to upgrade. The particulars vary by program, and for this we'd need to know what airlines you tend to fly. But if you are flying a lot for business, you probably don't have lots of flexibility re your schedule, etc. So the easiest way to get upgrades is by elite status.

Thank you!

I actually have no debt of any kind and never leave a balance on a CC. My weak credit rating is due to problems in the past, and also not having a mortgage. I understand that the top-tier CCs are mainly only available to people with mortgage history.

Wow, that would be fantastic! I could easily charge $100k a month in biz expenses, and pay it in full.

That's what I want to do!

Right, I just confirmed that I'll be able to do that. In fact my current CC gives me 1% cash back, so what I'll do is send over a huge deposit ($1mil) and charge it right away and pocket the resulting $10k.

I'll never leave a balance on it.

Which top tier cards? Other than Citi having some issues with seeing my income increase tenfold (I applied right after I started my job after I graduated from college), I haven't been denied for any cards (yet I don't have nor do I plan to have a mortgage.)

The only one that I'm "missing out" on is the Amex Centurion, but that's more of a status symbol than a useful points/miles card.

Do you not have status already?

I have to echo the points re mortgages. I was in my late 20s (and got my first card around 19, so less than 10 yrs of history) and had a score in the high 700s, with no mortgage. By the way, I got my mortgage in early 2011, and got into the cc game in mid 2011. I went to refinance in late 2011, after applying for a bunch of cards, and not only did I easily get approved for my refi, my credit score was basically unchanged (+/- 10 points).

So, (1) you don't need a mortgage to get cc's, and (2) having lots of cc's won't affect your mortgage eligibility.

Bad idea. That is a known trigger for either a Financial Review with AMEX or an Adverse Action with Chase.

Banks don't like prepayments.

Safer way to do it, though not nearly as convenient: Spend 10k, pay 10k, spend another 10k, pay 10k, rinse, repeat.

+1+1+1 Correct -

Start charging everything you can on the card and make interim payments to pay it down and then charge it up again. Once you start to develop a firm and timely payment history you will beable to get your limit raised and then leverage that to other card applications.

Don't go crazy on apply for cards until you start to trend up your credit report. If you apply for many and get shot down that will put you further behind. Leverage your existing relationship.

The more you charge and pay the more desirable you become and I suspect other offers will start to show up. Check out the Credit Card Form on FT and start researching how each bank does their evaluations and start mapping out which cards you want.

Having banking relationships with the banks can help. I think my banking relationship at Chase as created a steady flow of offers to my mail box that I did not get when I had almost no money over there.

I agree with the advice these guys have given, charge/pay right away, charge/pay right away. You can make a payment with some banks each day, others every 2-4 days.

You can always ask for higher and higher credit limit increases, the worst they can say is no but its not a hard credit pull or anything.

When I first started my spend with Amex, I called and talked with one of their banking advisors (diff. dept. than the csr side) about spending habits to get higher CL to avoid getting a denial on a larger spend and they were helping in telling me what they look for.

Most of all, like the others have suggested, get elite status, combined with paying for a ticket, its your best move for upgrades.

Mucho thanks for the advice guys.

I was just about to (literally) send a $1mil wire transfer as a pre-payment. I think I'll belay that action because that would obviously trigger me being 86ed. My biz is in a unique situation in that we get paid by our customer before we need to pay our suppliers so it results in having up to a million dollars in the biz account and a correspondingly large amount of payments we need to make. We get very little or not margin from the transaction but it's an awful lot of flow through.

Instead I'll do as you all suggest, make interim payments and focus on getting higher CC limits.

Right now I don't have any status on any frequent flyer programs so that's what I need to get smarter about. I've heard that with the right status I can get lifetime upgrades and that's what I really need. I love flying biz or 1st class.

Look into getting the AMEX Platinum. There is no specific credit limit as its a charge card (and not a credit card), and the upper tiers of users spend hundreds of thousands a month. There's a somewhat steep annual fee ($450), but if you're looking to start charging a bunch, I'd head that route personally.

Most of this thread was about credit cards, but in practice, you are much much better off trying to get upgrades by making a high tier of a particular airline's frequent flier program.

Amex Centurion, I think, has arrangements to get elite status on some airlines, but getting a Centurion card is not easy, and it's quite expensive.

The main thing to do would be to fly on a single airline or at least airlines in a single network. You will typically need at least 75,000 actual miles flown in a year to get to the top level, sometimes a bit more.

In some cases you can get a credit card that will help; for example, some Delta Skymiles Amex cards give extra elite qualification miles based on how much you spend.

Merely running a million or two through a credit card will not do wonders for upgrades. You can accumulate points and use them for upgrades, but typically it's not a good use of the points. You might be able to use the points for tickets, but it will depend on how flexible you are. If you charge a million a year, you could get at least a million airline points, and if you used them for overseas business class tickets and were able to get the "low mileage" awards each time, that would get you ten tickets. Bonus promotions might help you do even better. But getting elite status is probabl best of all.

Be advised that the those unlimited upgrades are US domestic only.

To upgrade international flights on ANY airline requires upgrade "instruments" (miles or status level earned upgrades) You do say you are a world traveller so it's best you know that up front! :D

Be advised that the those unlimited upgrades are US domestic only.

To upgrade international flights on ANY airline requires upgrade "instruments" (miles or status level earned upgrades) You do say you are a world traveller so it's best you know that up front! :D

Given the amount of miles you seem likely to be accruing it may actually be better to think of Premium cabin redemptions.. rather than upgrading a Coach fare.

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:D

Probably not. It is known that no balances can hurt. I think very low is typically best.

Ok, now that we've established (from later posts of yours) that you have credit issues, let me suggest that the next best thing to upgrades for a tall person is seats with extra legroom. Since it may be some time before you have the miles (or whatever) to upgrade you all the way into the next cabin, I suggest you consider two things:

One, if you do gain status with one airline, even the lowest level of status on many airlines will let you reserve exit row seats (if available) at the time of booking. That can be a great improvement over a 31" pitch seat, even if still not as good as a business class cabin.

The issue with this perk is that many planes used for int'l longhaul have very few exit row seats (and in some cases, half of the exit row seats are bulkhead and don't actually have much extra legroom).

With that in mind, you may want to consider airlines that have "premium economy" seats with more legroom available for sale (at the time of booking, preferably) at a price you can afford. BA and some other airlines do this with a separate cabin, while UA/CO and DL do this (or are planning to do this) with a subsection of the main coach cabin.

Again, if you can afford to fly (on cash or with miles or with status-specific upgrade instruments) in a real business or first cabin, that's great. But if you can't, and you still have to fly internationally, you might want to refocus on the more specific issue of how to get the next most comfortable seat for you if you can't get all the way up to business class.

Update: got the Mileage Plus Explorer
 

Hi everyone it's been a while.

I didn't think it was possible but somehow I managed to get my bank to issue me a regular $2,000 limit card. Then I sent off a bunch of apps for a bunch of other cards. All declined, until, somehow Chase said yes and gave me a United Mileage Plus Explorer card. In fact that's the one I want the most because United is convenient for me and the most obvious perks of free checked bag, plus twice a year lounge access, are worth more than the annual fee to me. Then I get a big miles bonus for signing up, plus earning lots of miles as I spend, etc. I will be able to route a lot of biz expenses through this card. It has a $5,000 limit (which also surprised me) but with on-line payment I can get payments to clear into it the same day.

I guess I'll wait a bit and then perhaps apply for the next one, maybe a Delta Amex of some kind. I fly enough that perks like lounge access are a big deal for me.

Anyway, I'm happy to now have two CCs, one of which is the mileage card I wanted the most.

Thanks for the advice everyone!

Yes, zero balance is definitely bad. My research indicates you want about 10% utilization. You start getting some degradation if it goes up much above that.

NOTE that your CC will report your utilization on some specific day of the billing cycle. You may need to call them to find out. My credit utilization fluctuates between 0% and 100% several times throughout the month so if you know you need to optimize your score, you need to find out which day of the month it reports, and peg it at 10% for that day.

Hi everyone, another update:

I have already earned just about 100,000 points on my Chase United Mileage Explorer card, which is amazing because I didn't think I would even qualify for any kind of card, and they sent me a Visa Signature card. I'm happy with it because of all the extra services, also, like purchase protection.

Well, I also want hotel points, and I really wanted the Priority Club card. I've had great experiences at Intercontinental and I often stay at Priority Club hotels for business. The Chase Priority Club card gives me 5x points on hotel stays, point rebate, extra points, blah blah blah, all of which are very helpful to me.

I could not imagine that I would get it. I have a credit score around 600. I think I had to apply for it several times, and they finally issued it to me, with a $10k credit limit! I was amazed. This one is not the Visa Signature so it has less purchase protection. That's fine. My strategy is to put most of my purchases on the United Visa Signature card, where I get United points (which are more valuable than hotel points) and I get the higher levels of purchase protection. However when I pay for a Priority Club hotel, I'll get a major points boost from that, so I'll use the Priority Club card. I'll also use it for groceries, restaurants and gas, as they give 2x points for that. It's clever of them because it encourages people to keep the card with them and use it regularly. They probably take a slight loss on those purchases but they want users to get in the habit of using this card.

Anyway, I'm happy about this whole situation, especially because I'm remodeling my home right now and can pile up points from that, plus all the expenditures from my business. It really adds up.

I love to travel and it looks like I'll have enough points for a biz-class round trip to to Europe and a few days in a top-end Intercontinental this year. That's a great deal!!!!

I'm still amazed that all this happened, given my credit score.

Chase is smart. This makes me think they will also refinance my house. These loyalty cards are very effective way to build customer relationships.

JFR, one way to turbo the card yield during a remodel job is to buy discounted Home Depot or Lowes cards at Card Pool, Plastic Jungle, etc. for 92% of face and use them for materials.