Well, actually it's to get the best return (miles or $) but i would love to get miles (this is milesbuzz after all). I did read through those offers and am hoping to see if others have vetted the programs. had success or failure. Been hit with a minimum time or socked with a large withdrawl fee. Please keep the suggestions coming. the thoughts on miles per dollar at bankdirect and superior savings are great. I also like the ameitrade spg offer. Maybe I'll move it around some.

Well--I can say that I used AA's real estate partner when I sold a condo in Chicago a couple of years ago.

I pretty well knew that it would sell quickly and it was a company transfer, so the realtor fee was covered by my company.

So it was a no brainer to pick a realtor in their network and I think I got about 100,000 miles on the sale. AA was very good about keeping in contact with me and checking to make sure that I was satisfied with the realtor's service.

I wished I would have investigated the mortgage side a bit more and used AA mortgage partners. I could have gotten pretty much the same rate as others were charging and I would have yielded another chunk of miles.

And the realtor and mortgage aspects are independent of whatever you do with your down payment money.


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I think you will find it most helpful to read the Finance page of my website Free Frequent Flyer Miles. There are lots of bank and broker deals there. With a large amount of money there is no reason why you can't do several of them.

Most bank deals have early closing fees. You can avoid them by bringing the account down to the minimum to avoid low balance fees until you can close without a fee.

Most brokerage deals have a closing fee, no matter when you close. Also, they often won't pay your miles until you leave your assets for a period of time, usually 6 months. It is rarely a good idea to leave cash in a brokerage account. Their money market funds usually pay very little compared to the banks listed on my website (especially ING and Virtual Bank).

Beware of the T&C below:
Please allow 4-6 weeks from account funding for the first half of Starpoints to appear in your Starwood Preferred Guest account. Account must remain open with minimum funding for 6 months from date that first half of points are posted to your account at Starwood. After that time, allow 4-6 weeks for the second half of the points to appear in your Starwood Preferred Guest account.

Also, Ameritrade charge $20 for wiring fund out of the account.

To clarify I was comparing two Ameritrade offers. It is the same deal with airline miles - they give you half the miles in 4-6 weeks and the remaining half 4-6 weeks after 6 months.

To get 25K miles directly with the airline you need to invest $50K. To get the 25K by going through Starwood you need to invest $25K. On that basis the Ameritrade-Starwood seems better than the Ameritrade-airline offer.

However, Ameritrade does not charge anything for ACH transfers which take about 2-3 days.

I now have a 28,000 mile Ameritrade - Delta Airlines miles offer on the Finance page of my website, Free Frequent Flyer Miles.

Good summary

One thing to add:

For UA mortages there is a great bonus offer until Nov 15th where you can get 5,000 miles for each $10K borrowed with WACHOVIA, , and CHASE HOME FINANCE.

Thread:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=351463 and on freefrequentflyermiles.com web site.

http://www.united.com/page/article/0,6722,50776,00.html

I didn't know that all of those great promos were available for small businesses! I guess I'm still an FF ingenue..