Hi all, just recently found FT and the travel hacking community. So much information to take in! Thank you all for patiently sharing so much information.

I'm close to DFW airport as a hub. I travel once per year for business which is paid from my credit card and reimbursed. The wife and I are open to almost any destinations with nothing specific in mind. We are just looking to maximize value and spend as little as possible getting there.

Wife and I just finished the Barclaycard Arrival 40,000 point bonus, she moved on to the Chase Saphire Preferred, and I'm looking to apply for 1 or more cards by tomorrow.

I've been reading on the U.S Bank Hilton hotel card with 85,000 bonus, the IHG hotel card with 80,000, the AA cards around 50k bonus, the Saphire Preferred, and a few others. Any thoughts on the most valuable card to go after right now?

We don't spend much money, have to pay rent with cash/check, and currently rely heavily on Amazon Payments. I can pay college tuition with a credit card, but registration won't begin again until May for that.

All tips and thread recommendations are welcome. Thanks again for sharing so much info!

Hey everyone,
Just wanted to say hello, been lurking on here for few days, finally joined. Very excited to learn some tricks about enhancing my travel experience.

RR

Hi All,

Decided to stop wasting what little money I have on partying in hollywood and start traveling again. So i'll be doing most of my ::partying:: on here until I leave in mid/late April for Europe.

-your friendly neighborhood degenerate

New to FlyerTalk
 

Hi, I'm Janelle and I would love to learn more about traveling inexpensively.:)

Hi all, finally taking the plunge as I've been 'lurking' on this site for a few months now (mostly on British Airways forum, plus Club Carlson) It was a heavy year of business travel for me, and was thrilled to hit BAEC Gold recently but would not have done it without tips from this site (specifiically as I learned about the 2 week grace period that BA offers if you are close on hitting a tier threshold) Great resource, thank you!

Hello!
 

Hello all! I'm Mike. Long time lurker; figured it was long overdue that I registered! I have thoroughly enjoyed the great information and discussions here, and I look forward to being a part of it! :)

Welcome to all the new members. I hope your poat in this thread will be the first of many as you venture into other forums and become involved in the discussions. If you don't think you know enough to answer points / miles questions, give it a few months... you'll have learned lot! In the meantime, perhaps you can help your fellow new members here in the Info Desk forum. Or check out the destination forums - someone may be looking for information on your hometown!

Hello everyone: Been a lurker for sometime and don't fly as often as most of you, perhaps 4 times a year.

Greetings all!

I stumbled upon FlyerTalk last fall and became intrigued by the world of mileage accumulation. I had been an AAdvantage member since 1988 but never gave elite status a thought.

So, I learned about ITA Matrix and started booking mileage runs. Long story short, I went from a balance of 5K miles to AA Platinum in six weeks time. Why? Well, to make 2014's mileage runs all the more comfortable.

Two months into 2014 and I'm 40% of the way to EXP already. My typical Saturday day trips are based from LAX or ONT with destinations on the east coast.

Thanks for the wealth of information found here. I hope that I can contribute and be a good FT citizen.

SlaveToTheMiles

Hello
 

I'm babalootie and I joined to see if anyone else had this crazy experience I'm still going through. Citibank hounded me to get their black card with a bunch of bonus miles until I finally did, then they, as promised, posted a bunch of miles which I cashed in for tickets to Europe, then a few days ago I was making routing reservations and my balance said 0 miles, so I opened the account and it said my balance was MINUS 19000 miles.
I wrote twice to customer service with no response, so I called, and the AA rep said, rather sheepishly, that it was a computer glitch and they were fixing it by hand, and "imagine how many people this happened to!" So I asked how many and she didn't know. But please give them 48 hours.
This morning I looked and the -19000 had been reduced to -10000 owing to another deposit from the black card, then just now I got an e mail from AA cheerfully informing me my new balance was -19000. No explanation at all. I assume these were bonus miles they decided to deduct but really I don't know. How should I proceed? If I close my account I'll lose my permanent gold status but will I also lose my mileage tickets? Can I reopen another account? It's insane to just keep pouring new miles into the black hole the black card. Citibank of course claims to know nothing about this.
Advice?

Hello!

Lots of useful information in these forums so I figured I'd finally stop lurking & become a member. lol :)

Hello to all,
joined today after a coursery look around and finding a wealth of information in a very friendly athmosphere.
Besides being generally interested in the business of air travel I'm mainly looking for the best ways to stay BAEC Silver and making my travels/airports as painless as possible :-)

Hi Everyone!!! Been a reader of the forums for quite some time, decided to finally take the plunge! I travel a fair amount for business, love traveling for pleasure, and am interested in all the fast track programs for Hilton and United!

Thankful for everyone who posts. I've been visiting FT off and on for the last year or so and decided today to take the plunge and become a member. I'm not new to points and miles, but not even close to being an expert. :) Will be focusing my energy on getting my family of four to Europe in the summer of 2015. Hopefully mostly free flights and as much free lodging as possible. :)

Hello everyone! I'm a cabin crew so a really frequent flyer :). It's nice to find a website with lots of useful information.