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!

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!

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!

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.