Hi all,

I am a complete beginner trying to accumulate miles in pursuit of a particular goal: a year (or so) of work/travel before gradschool. I have some savings and am working on developing internet-based income sources. Still, money is tight. I'll be traveling coach and staying in hostels. I'm a lot less interested in hotel miles than flight miles.

I currently work full time and I'm going to keep my job for the next 7-10 months. This is what I think I know so far. Please let me know where I'm wrong:

Miles usually do not expire within 2 years so I should start racking them up as soon as possible. Some cards award miles after spending for a number of months, which is further reason to start while I still have a job.

Ideally I'd like to be able to take three intercontinental flights (South America, Europe/ME, and Asia). One way flights are generally not possible so it will most likely be three roundtrip flights from the US. These three flights will cost in the range of 40-60k miles. I should aim for a minimum of 150k miles.

Credit cards with 50k mile signup bonuses are rare and a good deal. If possible I should sign up for a couple of those.

Questions that I have:

Is there a good resource for how miles can be converted between companies/understanding if some miles are worth more than others?

Is there maybe a cheaper type of ticket (RTW or some other deal) that would let me pull this off with fewer miles?

When applying for multiple credit cards, is there a particular strategy that increases chances of being accepted or minimizes any credit score hit?

What else am I missing?

Thanks in advance for everyone's help.

Finally, if anybody with more experience wanted to go as far as to recommend specific cards/programs that would be good to try I'd be really grateful.

Wirelessly posted (BlackBerry8530/5.0.0.601 Profile/MIDP-2.1 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/417)

Welcome to FT!

Are you credit worthy? What is the maximum you can charge per month? From what city will your trips begin?

You're missing a lot...but it's really not difficult at all.

You can do this without much effort and hit all three destination regions without much effort

1. Get BA Visa 50K (25k w/1st purchase) - redeem whatever miles for a one-way to somewhere exciting in SA with a direct connection to Europe on a *A carrier.

2. Get the UA Card - get the 50k bonus then figure out some way to get the extra 10k you need for a redemption to Asia, which is 60k (broken into two one-way trips). Then route the flight to somewhere enjoyable like BKK or SIN, but I wouldn't choose my summer home in TSN. You will be glad to know that *A hubs are permitted stopover points, so maybe ZRH or FRA or MUC interests you. Then you can go home

* - I don't use UA miles, I use US so please correct me if this isn't possible.....

It should look like this:
USA-SA - About 20k BA miles
GRU-FRA-(STOPOVER)-PEK (Seemingly infinite Y availability per KVS....LOL) 30K UA
PEK-USA 30k UA miles.

The UA experts can weigh in on this, but I think you can have your return leave from a different city than the one I chose for you, PEK, meaning that an example return can be SGN-NRT-LAX. I also think you might be able to get another stopover on the return too, but I'm not a UA expert. I just know that for the purpose of this itinerary, it is easier to get the required UA miles a lot faster than the US miles (well, not that much faster...).

You need to apply for the BA visa (or AA too with higher mileage required) (or be able to afford a cheap fare to a nice place in SA)

You also need to apply for the UA visa.

You then need to learn how to search *A award availability (but you need to wait until you get the miles to ask us what this means)

Links can be found here by searching.

I know that there are ways to go around the world on Air Canada for as little as 75K miles. However it involves some tricks on the routings - if you look at the Air Canada forum under "mini-RTW" you will find more information. However, it's not trivial to get Air Canada miles. You can transfer American Express points to AC, but there are no USA-based credit cards with Air Canada points that have a particularly good signup bonus.

guv - I can charge 1-2k per month. My credit score is 725 according to creditkarma. I don't care where in the states I leave from. I live on the east coast but would happy to take a cheap flight to visit friends on the west coast if it made sense to leave from there.

benze - Thank you for the quick and detailed response. I don't know what most of that means, but I'm googling now.

redtop- Thanks for the tip, I'll look in the AC option. Does that mean that any AMEX card signup bonus would transfer 1 to 1 onto AC or is it more complex than that?

AC awards will have higher fees (or very high?) than the other option I proposed, and you will have difficulty obtaining 75k without a big big AMEX bonus.

It doesn't matter where you leave from as all awards are priced from USA-Destination, however availability will be a key factor. You might need to pay a little bit for a positioning flight dependent if the alliance has award availability for your desired dates. Shouldn't be a problem though.

Wirelessly posted (BlackBerry8530/5.0.0.601 Profile/MIDP-2.1 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/417)

It is not correct to say that all awards are priced from USA to destination. While that is true of many programs, it is not true of all. In particular, it is not true of BA's program, which is distance based, and charges separately for each segment flown.

Wirelessly posted (BlackBerry8530/5.0.0.601 Profile/MIDP-2.1 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/417)

Assuming that: A) you can get the cards; B) you can meet the spend requirements; C) you want three separate inter-continental trips; and D) American Airlines survives its bankruptcy reorganization; here is what I would do:

1) Apply for two Citi/AA credit cards (one Visa, one Amex) on the
same day to maximize your chances of getting both cards -- and their associated bonuses. Check here in MilesBuzz! for the best current offer (I think it's 50K bonus miles per card), as well as what procedure to follow when applying for both cards on the same day. If you are able to get both cards and meet the spend requirements, you should end up with 100,000+ AA miles.

2) If you can, wait several months after getting the AA cards, and then look for the best offer for the Chase Sapphire Preferred Visa card. Chase points can be converted to BA or UA miles, and Chase typically waives the first-year annual fee on the Sapphire Preferred card, but not on the Chase BA Visa card mentioned by another poster. I got the Sapphire Preferred card last year, and the offer was 50K bonus points after $3,000 spend within the first three months. Dining and travel charges earn two points/dollar spent.

3) Use the AA miles for award travel to Europe (preferably during the mid-October to mid-May off-peak season, when the roundtrip only costs 40K AAdvantage miles), and to Asia (50K-70K miles for a roundtrip, depending on destination and time of year). Use the BA miles for travel to/from South America on AA or LAN. A roundtrip using a direct flight from the U.S. (typically JFK or MIA) to deep South America will cost 50K BA miles.

Note that international awards obtained with AA miles permit a free stopover at the North American "gateway." So, for example, 20K miles can get you back to NYC from Europe, but for the same 20K miles you could fly Europe-JFK, stopover for months in NYC, and then continue on to someplace else in North Amnerica, like Hawaii, Alaska, or the Caribbean (all subject to award-seat availability, of course). To get back to NYC, you could use the first part of your U.S. to Asia award, and then continue on to Asia months after your return to NYC. (There are some fine points and limitations to this strategy, but for now, you just need to know the gist of it.)

If you are planning 3 separate trips then you will need about 150k miles, as you said. Some things to think about if doing this are:

AA offers "off-peak" specials to Europe, Asia (Zone 1: Japan, Mongolia, Korea), and South America (zone 2, basically southern SA). Off-peak seasons are:

Europe: Oct 15-May 15 (40k roundtrip instead of 60k)
Asia: Oct 1-April 30 (50k roundtrip instead of 62.5k)
South America: March 1-May 31, Aug 16-Nov 30 (40k roundtrip instead of 60k)

Just by traveling in off-peak times, you could save yourself 52.5K on those three trips...which would be good for another trip altogether!

However, if you want to combine the trips, say go North America to Europe, then go Europe to Asia, and then Asia to South America and finally back to North America, you can look at AA's distance based chart. Basically, this is a possible RTW ticket and allows you up to 16 stopovers. The ticket is good for a year. The mileage you pay is based on the distance you fly.

You can use milecalc.com to check how many miles you'd be flying by putting in an itinerary.

Then, use the AA OneWorld chart to determine how many miles it would cost.

As for credit card signups, I'd definitely recommend the Citi/AA Visa and Citi/AA Amex, which will earn you a quick 100k AA miles. Just make sure you sign up at the same time for these! And the Chase Sapphire Preferred is the best everyday card spend out there, especially when traveling since it has no foreign transaction fee. The 50k Chase points don't hurt either!

You say you have used credit karma to get your credit score, while I think that service is better for tracking credit changes, you should definitely get your official credit reports (which you can get free annually I believe) to make sure there are no errors (more common than you would think).

I would get the two AA cards (50k x2), Chase Sapphire(50k), and the US Airways card to start (easy 40 k and a good start for the Grand Slam).

In a couple months, I would get the United Explorer and the Freedom cards.

This could potentially get you 100k AA miles, 130k United miles, and 40k US Airways miles pre-Grand Slam. I think that would get you well on your way if you could get all these.

And the US Airways Mastercard carries an additional advantages by reducing your needed miles by 5k...

Dude all you need is this website. Read it every single morning.

Do it now. I'm not spamming. This guy really made me know all that I know

http://thepointsguy.com/beginners-guide/