I'm about to pay down about 50k of my mortgage. Is there any easy way to turn this into a mileage earning opportunity? I haven't been able to find anything, but it sure seems like there ought to be a way to get a few miles out of the deal somewhere.

Unlikely IMO.

First issue is I doubt your mortgage lender would accept Credit Card. Secondly, would your CC allow you to put 50k on card in a month - I doubt it.

However others may have a different view?

Andrew

http://www.creditcards.org/article/p...ow-do-it-.html

I got tons of hits when I googled "pay mortgage credit card". I just put one link above but there seems to be a lot of information available on this topic. I'm off to read some of it now.

Edited to add:
Looks like you can pay it with cc (for the float) but not get miles / cash.

Can you wait about 7 months to make the payment? You could fund a Fidelity account and get up to 25k miles on select airlines, or get 25k AMEX points. You have to keep the funds there for 6 months, but could then pay the mortgage with it. Heck, you could even double your money with the right high risk high reward investment!

That's probably the safest/surest way of doing it, but is pretty slow. You could put the money in a safe fund that earns a few % too, to help offset the cost of waiting to pay down the mortgage.

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/miles...-airlines.html

The AMEX points could be the best bang for your buck, since you can xfer the points to Delta or BA for 50% bonus.

If the OP has a mortgage at 5% interest, he would pay $2500 in interest over 6 months to earn 25K miles. Not a good trade in my opinion.

I would throw the money at the mortgage ASAP and start pocketing the interest savings

(I'm sure someone will bring up the fact that one could be getting tax savings from the mortgage interest deduction, but even if that reduces the benefit to $2000, that's still worth a lot more than any miles one can find.)

Fidelity used to post miles every Sunday. I was able to put money there on Thursday and take it out the next week and got the bonus miles.

I was a new Fidelity customer.

Yes, you would have to look at it financially and weigh the cost vs reward. However the mortgage interest is half what you stated, since it is 6 months and not a year. Assuming a 5% interest rate it'd cost roughly $1,000 in mortgage interest by waiting 6 months (roughly adjusted for mortgage interest tax deduction). That could give 25k AMEX points which could possibly be 37.5k Delta or BA miles with a transfer bonus promo.

It may or may not be worth it, but it is the only way I can think to get a big chunk of miles for a $50k mortgage payment. The key would be what rate of return they could safely get in the Fidelity account over 6 months. If they could get a 3% return then after taxes it might only cost $400-$500 for those miles.

No really good way to do this. If you found a bank willing to take a card and you're willing to pay the percentage Amex would charge (probably the only way you'd find a willing bank), you'd pay $1500 and receive 50,000 MR points. You can purchase 60,000 straight from Amex for the same amount. Most other credit card/miles schemes would pan out just about the same way; you'll spend more money than you'd get in miles if you just took the money and bought the miles directly.

that 50k would only generate $1250 in interest in six months at 5%. it would be $2500 if done for a year. Regardless, not a great return.

Try www.chargesmart.com. Not sure if your lender is on the list but maybe and they are usually flat fee

Costs look a little high for reccuring payments. Maybe the onetime large payment.... Depends on if it's a flat fee or not.