Too much to keep straight!
 

I have been reading around on this site and others trying to wrap my head around miles, tips, tricks, lingo, everything but it is a bit overwhelming. I was hoping the fine people on this forum could give me some guidance. Here are my top three questions.

1. What should my first credit card sign up be?
I know some people sign up for tons of cards. I just want to start out with one so I don't get bogged down. Also, is there a great deal I need to snach up soon or should I wait for a deal on the horizon?

2. What are mileage runs? are they worth it? Are they right for me?

3. What are the biggest tips or tricks out there right now? I saw the video where a guy rented a bunch of rental cars just for the point bonus. How do you calculate how much $ to spend for points?

Again thanks for all your help everybody, I can't wait to get started!

1) That depends on what your travel goals are. Do you want free airfare or free hotels? What is your home airport? Do you want to travel domestically, internationally, or maybe to Hawaii? Will you be travelling alone or with a companion? There is no one best card for everyone, it all depends on what meets your own personal needs. My two favorite all purpose cards are the SPG Amex (it can be redeemed for hotels or transferred to airlines such as Delta, American, and US Airways) and the Chase Sapphire Preferred card, which earns points transferable to United, British Airways, Korean Air, Hyatt, Marriott, Priority Club, and Amtrak. However I had my mother sign up for a Hilton Amex as she is not willing to pay an annual fee or cancel a card after a year, but at least she is earning something for her spending.

2) A mileage run is where someone books a flight, typically with lots of legs or long distances to earn miles and earn elite status. I've never been on a mileage run, and if you need to ask, you probably don't need to be doing them either.

3) I think the best tip is to earn points and miles free through signing up for credit card bonuses. If you read the travel blogs (try Boarding Area to start) you will read when special offers are available, such as small quantities of miles for signing up for something. I usually don't pay for points, how much you should pay for them depends on what value you expect to get out of them. If you are close to reaching a goal such as a free business class ticket to Europe or Asia, and you expect to get 3-4 cents per mile, then I might pay 1.5 cents per mile for them, but someone else might be willing to pay more for them. I do participate in E-rewards and E-miles which gives me small quantities of miles or points for participating in surveys. Now I'm using E-rewards to save up for a Hertz free car rental week in Europe, all without ever renting a car from them.

Welcome to flyertalk.

Group your thinking into three areas. Getting miles. Using miles. Getting elite staus. These are all interrelated, especially 1 and 2. For some, status is not that important. For others it is crucial.

Anyway, start with a goal. You want to go to Tokyo and Sydney and stay in hotels for free for 7 nights. Or you want to take your significant other on an African safari. Or there is a hotel in a magazine you want to stay in.

Once you have your first goal in mind start researching how to get it. Who flies to Sydney? What kind of miles do I need to get that? Who allows stopovers? What are my hotel options? Now work backwards and figure out how to get what you need. Going through this process will get you familiar with how things work, and for your second goal you will be efficient.

Some things are no brainers. You need a chase card (or several) linked to Ultimate Rewards. But, for the most part, there are no shortcuts. Read, learn, ask, and, eventually, contribute.

I agree with Birdseye and Ikar -- you need to know your goal. If it involves airplanes, then you may want to focus on the programs of airlines that fly to your nearby airport, and their partners. I also agree that the SPG Amex is very versatile. (Ultimate Rewards not so much for me, yet.)

I am relatively new to points, except for accumulating miles on one airline for years, and always signing up for whatever rewards card was available. The world of points is overwhelming; read a lot of blogs and you can figure out the type of promotions that may come by again. Look at the special credit card deal master list (first thread on this forum) to get an idea of the possibilities.

Start small. (I did not follow that advice; in two months I've applied for two Chase cards and two Amex cards, but I already had other accounts with both, and a long credit history, and I had an immediate use for the bonuses. But now I don't plan to apply for any more cards until 2013, unless a great deal comes along.) One could easily get overwhelmed with minimum spend requirements.

There is a balance between how much time you have to spend and the return. I quit E-rewards because it was too slow and time-consuming for me. But I love doing Audience Rewards trivia every week or so for 28 points to keep my US Air account alive.

For specifics: apply for two Citi AA cards using the special links in this thread. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/miles...ey-appear.html

Then, make your minimum spend on the Citi AA Amex and Visa and enjoy your 100K in bonuses.

By the way, might also want to get a grammar book when writing post headlines. @:-) It is "too," not "to." :D

Sapphire. Mileage runs are an acquired taste - probably not right for you now. Spend under $10 per 1,000 miles.

Just as one example, I thought I'd share my strategy:

I need 300K Air Canada points a year and 100-150,000 points on other airlines for overseas trips. I book hotels on Priceline.

So I:

a) Aggressively churn Amex cards and go after signup bonuses, threshold bonuses, referral bonuses, etc. I also buy Amex points from co-workers, although this is very unusual for FTers.
b) Sign up in both my wife's name and mine for cards from AA, UA, US, DL, and Chase. My goal is that each summer when I have to book one or two overseas tickets, to have enough points to book one or sometimes two business class tickets on whichever alliance has the best schedules.
c) Manage the signup process so I can meet the spend requirements and sometimes spend requirements for bonuses, using some of the spending tricks listed elsewhere in this forum.
d) I do not bother with hotel cards, cards for primarily domestic airlines (like Southwest or JetBlue), or cashback or quasi-cash cards (cards where you get points whose use is tied to the price of tickets you buy). The incremental value isn't worth the time and effort.
e) Occasionally I have applied for a card solely for trade value; i.e. someone approaches me and offers me, say, 20000 Amex points if I sign up for the Amadeus Air (made-up name) miles card. Not often though.

There is definitely a point of diminishing returns, a trade-off between the effort involved and the gain from that effort.

Don't worry about 2&3. If you were teaching your kid to play touch football, do you toss him into a game with Drew Brees? Ignore rental car guy, ignore mileage runs, start with something easy, simple, and achievable.

For instance, back in the day, my husband and I each applied for an American Express Card, gaining us (I think) 25K apiece, all you need to book domestic travel to the 49 states and the however many Canadian provinces for a low level award. We then booked award tickets to Calgary during June, it didn't rain (well, not much), and we had a great trip for total air cost of $20 all-in.

If you have good credit, you really can't mess up too bad. Each adult traveler should apply for the credit card, get the miles, and then book the trip. You have now gone step by step and experienced a success. You can build from there.

Don't try to leap from kindergarten math to pudding guy math. You can apply for a credit card, get enough miles for a trip, and book it in a very short period of time if you are patient with yourself and willing to learn things a bit at a time. If you want to jump right ahead to advanced calculus, you just make yourself crazy, get discouraged, and give up.

Look, nothing much bad can happen if you apply for the "wrong" credit card or if you apply for "too few" credit cards. You'll get some trip out of it. Maybe not a cruise to the top secret Flyertalk champagne tasting headquarters in Myamar but you'll get a trip out of it. And you'll learn. And you can always apply for more later.

You're getting yourself overwhelmed by slamming together beginner and advanced material. Ride the tricycle before you ride the bicycle before you ride the unicycle in mid-air on a telephone wire.

I agree with peachfront, and the other have provided good advice as well. Thus, I will add my story for a data point.

We are a Disney family, and my goal is to reduce the cost of travel to/from both Orlando and Anaheim. While we could drive to California from Oregon, we need to fly to Florida, as a car trip would be too much.

To accomplish this goal annually, I started looking into companion airfares as a way to reduce the family's costs. There are options from Alaska, Delta, and US Airways available that work well. After research, I went with the Delta Platinum AMEX for several reasons. First, it provided the lowest companion airfare costs when accounting for the annual fee, too. Second, it provides a good set of ancillary benefits for the trip itself (boarding, baggage, reduced SkyClub access, etc). Third, I watched the various sign-up offers and when the offer reached $40k RDMs and 15k MQMs, that seemed pretty good.

That was it, until I started looking around. Since I travel once a month for work for a few days, I decided to review hotel rewards programs. Since Hilton had a variety near my work locations, good elite benefits, and several point usage options, I decided to concentrate on Hilton. Well, this led me to review the various Hilton co-branded cards, and I currently settled on the AMEX no annual fee, since I will be able to earn Gold status via hotel hopping.

Currently, I'm looking into other cards that provide recurring benefits that would pay for the annual fee, such as other hotel or airline cards.

As Gary says on the View from the Wing blog, there are three types of cards: 1) those used daily, 2) those we have for the benefits, 3) those we get for the sign-up bonus and then toss. I choose to concentrate on #2, while I decide what should be #1. However right now, Hilton in my #1 as I get ramped up.

Good luck, and I hope this helps!