Miles for Purchase of Engagement Ring? Help!
 

While I am incredibly happy to be getting formally engaged soon to a woman I love more than anything, I am hoping that someone on FT has a good idea on how I can mitigate the $6-7K hit I'm going to take on buying a lil' ol rock by at least earning miles for the purchase. Any ideas?

Much like certain airlines nowadays, I am facing a liquidity crunch and will most likely be putting this purchase on a credit card and carrying a balance of about 1/2 the value as I pay it off the remainder over the course of 6 months to a year. Unlike certain airlines, bankruptcy protection is somethng I'd rather avoid - I'm not expecting a gov't bailout. :p Putting it on a high-interest rate WorldPerks Visa or the like for the long haul wouldn't make much fiscal sense, but I'd love to find a way to earn miles for such a big purchase. I dont' care on what carrier, but I'd prefer to get 'em on NW, AA, KE, OZ, UA, or DL.

The only thing that I could think of so far is to buy the ring on my WorldPerks Visa, pay off the amount that I can with my cash on hand, and then do a balance transfer for the rest to a 0% for the first year card or something. My other ideas involved just getting a cheaper ring ( :eek: heh - not what I want to do. And by I, I mean she. ;) ) or using a reward ticket to go somewhere in Africa and smuggle a cheap stone back rather uncomfortably.

Any and all suggestions welcome!

Thanks!

peace,
~Ben~

try www.ashford.com The prices are not cheap, but you can earn a slew of miles. I think Continental is 5 miles per dollar. I bought something a couple of years ago at 10 miles per dollar and the miles posted promptly. NW is 2 miles per dollar and $20 off orders over $199, harldy worth it for your ring. Don't know of other partners although they may exist. Check the nontravel shopping partners of each airline.

And while this doesn't solve your liquidity problem, at least you will get some miles and your pay off some idea and then transfer to a zero balance makes sense. Be careful, at 18% per year, $3000 in debt still costs $270 in interest if it takes six months to get the balance onto a low intersest card.

Otoh, welcome to the married world where you will be in debt forever anyway (surely through none of your own fault) and if you try to buy a cheap ring, you will start out in the doghouse, so you can't do that, can you ????/ :)

If you buy the ring online through a shopping portal, you'll probably take home plenty of miles.

Ashford.com offers 5 CO miles per dollar, 2 miles in most of the other airline malls.

Blue Nile gives 1 mile per dollar at the Delta mall. Ice.com gives 3.

I'd recommend you shop around and find the right ring before worrying about whether the store offers miles.

And don't let your wife-to-be ever know that how many miles you could get factored into selecting her ring.

It's quite a few less miles but a much better deal to shop on Blue Nile. I've been pricing the engagement rings myself last couple of months and Blue Nile is a much better product. Overall they always have the better price on a comparable diamond. You still get the Delta miles (from Andrew Crams Page) and whatever credit card miles you want and then call someone like Discover and do a transfer for a 0% life of the loan rate. If you do a google search for Blue Nile discount you can probably find atleast a 10 percent off coupon. It's a great source for diamond buying education also, I never knew how much was invloved with picking a good diamond. Good luck, hope it works out for you.

I would advise using your favorite mileage earning card and then doing a balance transfer to a card with some sort of 0% introductory offer for transfers (and no balance transfer fees hidden in the fine print). There seem to be a number of these out there.

I recently received a solicitation for a Choice Privileges Hotels Visa from Bank America offering a 1.9% APR on balance transfers with no annual fee or balance transfer fees. I can't remember off the top of my head, but I am pretty sure the 1.9% is for the life of the balance... I will pay my transfer off soon, so it doesn't concern me too much. Here is a link to the online offer:

http://www.bankofamerica.com/choiceh...A0100069029938

The offer also included 6,000 Choice Privileges points after the first purchase, so I took it to Starbucks and purchased a coffee then put it away because interest on purchases will continue to accrue until the transferred balance is paid first. I don't use Choice Privileges but the points can be exchanged for airline miles (I transferred 5,000 Choice Privilege points for 1,000 AAdvantage miles, which took only two days to go through).

I was pleased with the BofA offer and have been happy with their customer service and website.

Congrats on the upcoming engagement (or am I supposed to say "Best Wishes;" I can never remember)!

Get yourself a Chase Cashbuilder card. It has 0% for 12 months on balance transfers and no transfer fee. And they seem fairly generous with the credit line as long as you have good credit.

Then buy the ring with the card of your choice (as long as it's not also from Chase) and xfer the balance.

A few pointers:

• If you're transferring the balance to a card like this one that has 0% on xfers but a higher rate for purchases, do _not_ use the card to make any purchases until you've paid off the whole balance. If you make a purchase, you won't be able to pay the purchase off until you've paid off the whole balance transfer, and they'll start charging you interest on the purchase right away.
• Also (this should be obvious, but just in case), be very careful not to miss any payments, or your 0% rate will go bye-bye and be replaced overnight with a rate of something like 20%. I recommend setting up an automatic billpay system to cover the minimum payment at least a week in advance every month so you don't have to worry about forgetting.
• Note that the credit scoring systems look at what percentage of your credit line you're using on each card. So if you plan to apply for other credit cards (or a mortgage or other loan), you may not want to max out the credit line on any of your cards. But if you won't be needing your credit rating for a while, you can write yourself a balance transfer check to max out the 0% card and keep the cash in an ING Direct account to make a few extra dollars along the way. I did this a year ago and my credit rating was low while I had the 0% card maxed out, but once I paid the whole thing off, my credit rating immediately bounced back.

Mazel tov.

walmart takes visa and disover cards

One other advantage to buying online is saving the sales tax.

So don't tell your fiance-to-be that you did it for the miles. Tell her you were able to get her more ring than you'd otherwise have been able to afford...

Blue Nile
 

Check with the AA holiday shopping promotion. It looks like you might be able to get 6 miles per dollar, plus a 10,000 mile bonus for Blue Nile. But don't quote me on that. :) And congratulations!

I understand that you have recently become engaged. As someone who is also in "the market" for a ring, just curious if you took a mileage stance in purchasing one. (In browsing your blog I've learned a great deal - thanks)

I didn't buy online. I comparison shopped online, and the jeweler I purchased from beat the best price I could get on the internet. I didn't have to tell my fiance I bought her ring on a website. At least the jeweler took Diners Club. ;)

One more comment about online shopping though -- both Blue Nile and Ashford are featured retailers for the AA holiday threshold bonus
http://www.aadvantageeshopping.com/holiday/

Pay with Mastercard and you get (a) double miles and (b) these two merchants get you additional threshold miles, spend $1000 and get 10k bonus miles.

A $5000 ring at either of these merchants (paid for with a Mastercard) would get you 40,000 AA miles plus the miles for charging the item to your credit card.

something more important than miles?
 

Hate to be a heretic, but....

Don't know if the aforementioned websites (ashford, bluenile, etc.) sell products that come with GIA certifications, but that is really something you should insist upon, regardless of mileage-earning potential. Blue Nile favors the AGSL which is not as well respected, IMHO, as the GIA.

Also, at $6-7,000, while a big hit, you're not necessarily going to be buying an investment quality diamond, so when deciding which of the four cees to focus on, I heartily recommend the one that all of her friends will notice first: carat. Flawless, VVS1, and VVS2 diamonds are great, but if it's less than a carat, her friends will only see a small diamond (they're not going to be breaking out their loops to see how included it is -- they're just looking at size and setting). About six years ago, I bought mine a 1.50 carat, VS1, F color diamond with two smaller side baguettes that was more than I expected to pay, but continues to make Mrs. Don in LA happy. (Disclaimer: I got no miles for the purchase.) Also, while platinum or white gold settings show off a diamond better, that should be more a function of what color jewelry your bride to be favors.

If you can examine the specific diamond you'll be buying and be able to reject it if you don't like it, and still get miles for the eventual purchase, more power to you, but I don't know if you get that opportunity through ashford or bluenile.

Just my two carats....

And congratulations.

I bought my fiancee her engagement ring earlier this year. If only I'd known about the mile earning potential :(

Anyway, a couple of other guys hit the nail on the head IMHO. Choose the diamond and setting before any other consideration but I will disagree with the above poster. Quality over quantity everytime and a reputable jeweller is also a good idea.

And congratulations!