My wife and I have 9 kids (7 adopted), and are finally having some of them moving out of the house...to the west coast of course (washington and alaska). Being a one income family (spouse is a stay at home mom for obvious reasons...), and I don't have a job with business travel that generates free miles, I'm diverting some of my spare (ha!) time to figure out how to get some free flights.

In the past, we had credit cards that paid cashback rewards instead of miles, since (for us at that point) cash was of far more value than miles, even though I realize you could generally do "better" in an economic sense by getting miles instead of cents, especially if you took advantage of all the special deals, but since miles weren't of value to us in the past, well, we didn't go for them.

I recently signed up (in my name) for the 50K amex open small business card, and a 25K personal gold card, and the 50K united visa mileage card. In addition, I have the chase amazon card where I'm a month or two away from having 25K points which I could redeem for a free ticket.

My main question is whether this scenario will let both of us get a free ticket on the same flight at some point in the future? In other words, the united miles are obviously tied to my FF account, which I believe I could transfer miles at some hideously terrible rate to my wife's FF account, but I'm thinking that I can't use, say, the 50K miles there to get two tickets for the same flight, one in my name and one in my wife's?

And in terms of the amex MR points, I'm assuming (hoping) I can transfer them to FF accounts for both my name and my wife's, or else directly pay for two tickets via their travel services?

I really, really want to avoid the situation whereby we fly separately to visit one of our kids, since that would take a lot of the fun and romance out of the trip, so any thoughts and suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

I am going to continue reading your site for some great ideas on how to take advantage of mileage offers...i do have a good credit score and no CC debt, so presumably I can keep doing these deals.

Now if only I can figure out how to use miles to get babysitters for the rest of the kids still at home I'd be set.

Thanks!

Welcome to FT!

Of course you can redeem two tickets with two names of passengers on UA if inventory is available. So you don't really need to transfer you UA miles to your wife's account to get her award ticket.

As FT is a good place for learning frequent flyer programs with many FTers generous enough to give prompt response, you might want to take some time to read the terms and conditions of the frequent flyer programs and upgrade systems that you are interested in. You will play with the rules better when you know it better.

Thanks for the fast reply! I really do appreciate the time "donated" by the junkies who hang out in forums like this!

I have an MBA in finance, I an responsible for analyzing billions of dollars of spending in the company I work for, I have 7 kids with special needs...and yet none of those can prepare one for the complexities of dealing with mileage programs, airline travel/fares, etc. I was reading one of the threads about how spouses view the "addiction" some of the people here have towards optimizing miles, and I can understand how you could really, really get into all this stuff.

At this point, I'm more into the "low hanging fruit" theory of rewards - if I can get a decent scheme going with no thought on my part, that's "good enough" for now, with everything else going on in my life. So, for now, I'll stick with cashback cards and the occasional "great deal" for miles until maybe I get more time and experience with all this.

And yes, I did finally find the FAQ about using miles for other names on the UA mileage plus website. I had tried to find it earlier, but missed it.

That being the case for UA, and I'm assuming somehow I can use "my" amex miles for both of us in some fashion, I guess I can feel better about not worrying about how I was going to explain to my wife that I was going to fly first class to alaska and she was going to fly with the chickens in third class because all the credit cards were in my name.

Where's your home airport? It helps FTers to come up with good recommendations for airlines.

Of course you can! If you have enough miles in your account, you can redeem as many tickets as you like either for yourself or in others' names, as long as there are available award seats.

Don't try the transfer route. It costs too much. Not worth it.

You have a good start!

Kudos to your wife and you taking in 7 adoptive children. ^ I am not sure if your wife, being a (career) housewife (I assume), has enough credit history to get credit cards in her own name. If so, have her apply the same cards like you. If not, well, you will keep being the miles-earner in your household.

The best strategy is to concentrate all your miles-generating activities in as few frequent flyer programs (FFPs) as possible. And under the same name, of course. It may not be a bad idea for you to concentrate on UA (you got 50K bonus) and/or Alaska Airline (where the kids are). If your Amex cards are giving your AA bonus miles, both AA and Alaska are OneWorld Alliance partners that you can credit/redeem in the same alliance. The idea is to not spread your miles too thin across different FFPs.

Welcome to FT!

Good point - I'm outside of burlington, vermont. Great ice cream (home of ben and jerry's...my nephew used to baby sit for them!), but lousy air fares. Close enough to manchester, NH to take advantage of southwest if the fare is low enough to make a 3 hour trip worthwhile.

The good thing about amex is (I guess) that I can hold the miles there until I need them and transfer them to a variety of FF programs - in this case, they do southwest, jet blue (hooray! jetblue flies out of burlington), delta (hard to get seats from what I hear), and continental. Didn't really check to see if any of the other programs they support (like BA) can then indirectly transer via an alliance to an airlines like alaskan, since (as you observe) that would be an obvious choice.

I am going to try applying for some cards in my wife's name too...waiting for her to get some targeted offer with high miles (like 30K or more). If she never gets any I can always try the standard offers that pop up every so often for 25K miles.

I can feel an addiction coming on...the need to use my mileage cards to buy gift cards to pay for things via portals and such.

Please pay attention to some referral bonus miles/points opportunities before your wife's applications, such as UA MP visa, etc. You might earn another thousands of miles with your wife's applications.

In addition to the blogs on boardingarea.com, I found Rick's http://frugaltravelguy.blogspot.com/ another good resource for beginners' reference.

and another wonderful site from our fellow FTer, pgary: http://www.freefrequentflyermiles.com/index.htm

Don't take my words for it, take Ritz':

Good point made by Cory on the referrral bonus. Just be careful, though. If you refer your wife for a Starwood AMEX, for example, you get 5,000 points. If she does it on her own, she gets 15,000 points. And I agree that you should each have individual accounts, not joint.

Many people on FT are big fans of Starwood AMEX due to the ability to transfer to essentially program with a 25% bonus and the ability to transfer points among family members at the same address.

You may want to take a look at American's program. I've been with it for over 25 years and, planning far enough ahead, have gotten pretty much all the award travel we want, including the partners. We just snagged two free first class tickets on Alaska from Logan to Portland for October using our AA miles.

Here's a link to a free primer I put together at the request of friends who know of my FF obsession. You may find some advice helpful.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/17745143/F...Flier-Tipsheet

Good luck!

I just got approved for the 25k bonus amex card- I'm a student and had problems trying to get the AA Citibank Chase card! I suppose the Amex only looks at your credit score, not so much credit history. Best of luck to you^

good links...especially enjoyed the tipster sheet.

Its going to take some time for me to be able to read and disgest all of these strategies, get cards in place, etc.

At the very least, i think you can get a lot of the value by doing the following:

1. get an SPG card for everyday purchases
2. figure out everything that can be paid via that card
3. take advantage of special credit card offers like the 30K/50K ones

I figure everything after that is gravy, since I just don't travel enough (and never on business) to really take advantage of a lot of the other opportunities. Obviously people who travel a lot (especially on someone else's dime) have a lot more opportunities to maximize miles by doing things like mileage runs, changing hotels every day, etc...

cool website, great people..thanks!

LOL! Very true. I am still new to all of this but because of what I have learned I have accumulated about 300K miles on AA since oh, say December 2008. All without 1 credit card.

The above info is very useful. Focus and know what your goal is. Mine is to fly around the Pacific Rim in business class when I retire from the Army in a couple of years.


Be ready for scorn and ridicule. But don't worry, she will "get it" when the rewards start impacting her travel.

Two anecdotes to provide you with encouragement.

1. DW didn't believe that me focusing on reaching top tier status on AA would have any practical benefit for her. (She too is a stay at home mom)
So we were flying from CLT-DFW-FRA in domestic first (F) and international business (J) on a deep discount coach fare. As we (DW and two kids) were enjoying a nice breakfast in F my wife leaned across and planted a kiss on my check. Same was repeated from DFW-FRA. That flight included, she has flown 5 TATL segs in J, all on cheap tickets.

2. We flew from Frankfurt to London and on the return trip I guested her into the LHR F lounge. She had a nice lunch, a couple of glasses of wine and relaxed in a very nice atmosphere. All for free.

She has now drank the Kool-aid and "gets it." In fact she is now a mid-tier elite on AA.


So good luck and welcome to FT!

The people are indeed great. I am currently stuck in the US trying to get back to Germany and have received numerous offers for lodging. What a great bunch of people!

millervt....welcome to ft....i'm sure you will have a great time here....

you seem to be getting some good advice on airlines, but if you are looking at a hotel program to earn some quick points then i would suggest checking out priority club....its very easy to earn points with them....go to this link http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/inter...ad-2010-a.html & sign up for everything you can....i have over 80k pc points & have only had a single one night stay with them ever....

if you sign up for their credit card here http://www.chasecreditcards.com/prio...ub-rewards.asp then you can get another 30k points after your first purchase....

thanks, i'll check into PC.

My primary focus has been airline miles, since I know we will need them to visit our various kids, and I'm assuming we can generally stay with them (and not a hotel) when we do so. Of course, this is mostly for my wife, since she will presumably be visiting mostly (since most of our kids are daughters and married and she wants to go and help them set up new places, etc). I'll get to stay home and be "mr mom" for the kids while she takes advantage of MY miles.


However, I do have this dream of a "second honeymoon" on our 35th anniversary (in 18 months or so) with her for a week in hawaii, since our first anniversary (seems so long ago..since it was!) was 3 days on the jersey shore, and since then we've only managed a few weekends off alone since childcare has been so tricky with so many special needs kids. I want to accumulate enough airline miles (80K) and also hopefully some free hotel stays so this trip is financially manageable.

So I guess the moral of the story is that I need to start looking into hotels too, not having any idea if it is even possible to get free nights in hawaii. But I guess i'm about to find out!