Take this from another newbie who means well, if you aren't willing to put in any effort to figure some of this out on your own, you are not going to get much help here. I'm not trying to be difficult, but my experience in reading here is that some of the members have been doing this for years, which means they have invested numerous hours in reading and contributing to this board, probably have numerous charts, and reap the benefits of their hard work. What you are asking for is a hand holding, spoon feeding, give me free info so all I need to do is sign up. I doubt you will have much luck here with that type of mentality.

This forum appears very helpful to those that are willing to at least appear as though they tried to turn their brain on or read a few threads. In fact, by searching, you will probably find the answers to many of the questions you may have, including how to plan out your own course of action.

Take the advice that was given, i.e. sign up for a few cards and meet the spend. While you are meeting the spend, read some threads. Take on some of the risk by trying some of the ideas and reporting back. If you do this, I guarantee that in a month, you will see why I suspect many, many, many of us newbies are just flat out annoying (charitable term here) the more experienced members. If not, prepare to have your questions ignored or get a flame suit ready because I think I can guarantee its coming.

To help and not appear snarky, try figuring out where you want to go, who can get you there (which airline), look at the master card list which shows the cards and their bonuses, etc. Put together a plan and then if you still have questions, try a few threads like http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/credi...me-advice.html.

US airways Miles do not transfer to any of those accounts unless you use a third-party broker (such as points.com) where you will lose significant points/money in the transaction.

You can redeem US airways miles to take United flights, but that doesn't get you away from the fact that US airways does not have special pricing for one-way awards.

At this point I would echo the previous suggestions that you cool it a bit and read a lot more. The information is out there and yes it requires time, but it is worth it. In your eagerness to get started you are already making mistakes/not properly calculating which cards you need for your desired travel. If you are not willing to put in the work, honestly, for the kind of handholding you are asking here you really should hire someone.

Well said gents, I will cut the applications, and earn my 40K miles on the Barclay card first. Meanwhile I will do more research. Thanks for the help already given me though!

One other questions on credit cards - let's say I'm churning a Barclay card, is it good to have another card with Barclay to keep open permanently? Or will that not benefit me?

It depends.

Reread post 16. @:-)

Am I right in saying that "churning" means "applying, getting the signup bonus, use bonus, close account, wait, reapply for the signup bonus again?" I read some threads and people seem to have different interpretations on this word. Some say churching is a once in a life time thing, while others say churning is a once in a long time thing (with 20+ months of wait in between), and others say churning can be done every 3-4 months... Very confused.

I do keep an old Barclays card open despite having another one. They give you 10K miles annually, as a well as a lounge pass, and often some challenges to get even more miles, so if you don't mind an annual fee, it makes perfect sense to keep your old card.

As to your other question on churning, people use this term interchangeably with the word app-o-Rama. Technically, when you apply for the same card over and over again, it's churning, but when you apply for a lot of cards simultaneously that's app-o-Rama.

There are many articles and postings related to the impact on credit scores and there is no one answer for everyone due to the number of criteria looked at and the methodologies used. Nevertheless, for me, I drop around 7 points when I apply for a credit card and it recovers in 3-6 months.

I'm not very concerned about my credit score because I have a good score now, and I won't be apply for loans or mortgages any time soon (at least 5 years). Basically, it would be safe to say that if I were to apply for lets say 2 Citi AA cards, and 2 Hawaiian Airline cards, I spend the min., get and use the reward miles, keep the card open for 11 months, close the card. Then wait another year, I should be apply to apply again without much problem, correct?
I know reapply signup bonus is no guarantee, but waiting 24 months before previous and next application is a good rule of thumb?

Many folks on FT would consider the blogs to be spoonfeeding information. So if you dont think they are exceptionally helpful to newbies, you will not get a lot of sympathy here. Also, if you are new to credit card bonuses, you dont need to worry so much about churning as you can continue to do several rounds of apps with all new cards.

If you could not make use of the Super-Spoonfeeding of Million Miles Secrets who even organizes his blog with Tabs and the How To, then this game is not for you [...moderator edit...]

Just the mere fact that you dont [...moderator edit...] understand how US program works before you went ahead to get the card - then realized US is not on a one-way system but Round Trip. Then where you get the wrong idea of US miles can transfer to AA?

None of the airline programs' miles are transferable without going thru 3rd party which would take a big chunk of your "assets" to facilitate such transfer.

As others already suggested, the bloggers actually provide the easiest to digest information. You would do yourself a favor by slowly reading and absorbing the info being blogged, especially that from Million Miles Secrets - this is by far the most newbie-friendly, most well-organized blog out there with PLAIN English.

How fast do you need to redeem those miles? It's not really that hard to pick up another 20k (or a lot more) in the Grand Slam promotion, which US Airways has run each fall for several years. No guarantees it will happen again, but keep your eyes open for that.

Not in a rush at all. The 40K points will probably be good for me until next spring as I won't be traveling as much until then. But come next spring I will definitely need to apply for the Hawaiian Airlines cards or two Citi AA because I will need the miles for summer vacation travels. Meanwhile I figured I'd hold onto this US Airways card and read more threads.

Churning means applying for and getting the signing bonus for a card and then re-applying and getting the signup bonus again FOR THE EXACT SAME CARD.

when you use the bonus isn't relevant, and whether you close the account and how long you wait differs from card to card. That is why you see some card where people have to wait 18+ months to "churn" the card (Chase, most Citi cards) while other cards you can churn every 3-4 months (Barclays USAirways card).

Some cards are not churnable at all, meaning no matter how long you wait, you'll never get the bonus again, so if people are talking about once in a lifetime, then they are saying a card "isn't churnable".

So basically, you have the idea of what churnable means, but there is no set time frame for all cards. Each one is different. Hope that clears up the definition of it for you!

That's another extreme. Why waste a perfectly good year rather than do a little research and get into the game now? This year's sign up bonuses are already weaker than 2011, so who know what will be available next spring? Just a thought.