Searched for Ameritrade offeres and only saw star point offers.

Ameritrade is offering you a great escape!
Open and fund a new Individual or Joint Ameritrade® account (that is titled differently than your existing account) by September 16, 2005, and you'll earn up to 25,000 airline miles from one of our airline partners: America West, Continental Airlines, Delta, or United Airlines.ą

$1,000 deposit - earn 3,000 miles
$5,000 deposit - earn 8,000 miles
$50,000 deposit - earn 25,000 miles!

Click Here

Dear Kibison:

Thank you for contacting us today regarding a new account.

The promotion you are referring to is valid for existing clients who are opening
a new account that will be titled differently from their existing account. For
example, if you currently held an individual account, a new joint account would
qualify to receive the promotion.

For the full details of the promotion, please click on the link below.

http://www.ameritrade.com/offer/earnmiles.html

If you have further concerns or inquiries, please reply to this message.

Sincerely,

Dorian Larue
New Accounts, Ameritrade
Division of Ameritrade, Inc.

See Gary's Free Frequent Flyer Miles page for current Ameritrade offers:
http://www.freefrequentflyermiles.com
(under Finance)

Usually there's the same $1k/$5k/$50k offers mentioned in the OP, but for new accounts. In August there was an extra 10k bonus miles with America West. Plus there's usually an SPG offer too.

nice offer, if you've got $50k lying around. looks like the money must stay in account for 6 months to receive miles, then another 3 months with the minimum funding. for the record, $50k at 3% interest for 6 months is $750, so unless you love miles more than money I'd rather put it in a savings account...

Either that or invest it intelligently and earn a much better return!

Try this, for the conservative investor.

Take $50K from your ING/Emigrant account.
Invest in Ameritrade, $50K = 25K AA miles.
Buy $50K of American Beacon Money Market Mileage Fund, approximate return = 2.62%. That almost makes up for the loss of interest from the ING/Emigrant account.

The MM fund earns you 1 mile a month for every $10 invested. That works out to 5,000 miles/month. 12 months = 60,000 miles.

That's 85,000 miles for keeping your $50K in a relatively liquid, safe investment.
Interest earned @ 2.62% = $1310, plus 85,000 miles.

Compare that to Emigrant, which gives you 3.5% on your $50K.
Interest earned @ 3.5% = $1750.


Granted, you could probably do better than the American Beacon Fund, but you wouldn't get the miles.

Grasshopper: Does the Beacon American MM Mileage Fund also apply to Mileage Plus (or DL or CO) miles or just AAdvantage miles? Your proposed approach appears to be very well thought out and quite advantageous.

Are you sure American Beacon Money Market Fund is available at Ameritrade? I thought you are limited to the Prime Reserve money market funds.

I don't think AA miles are available through Ameritrade. Perhaps Grasshopper was thinking of TD Waterhouse (which has mileage offers for AA--not sure of the current amount).

He/she also has the mileage amount wrong for the money market account. It's 1 mile for every $10 annually. But credited monthly. Which turns into 1 mile for every $120 monthly. In fact, they cover the $50k example explicitly in the prospectus and say it earns 417 miles per month (page 28):
http://www.aafunds.com/pdfs/mileagepros.pdf

I think if you invest at http://www.ameritrade.com/spg you can receive up to 20,000 starpoints which you can then convert to 25,000 AA miles.

That is correct. 417 miles per month with $50k investment (this will go up minimally as the account appreciates throughout the year) per month. I am not sure 3% APR and 5k miles justifies an investment. I rather get the 20k *wood points, convert them to 25k miles and then invest in something else. I like the thought process there.

What I would do is invest the $50k in Ameritrade for *wood points. Then after the 2nd bonus hits from SPG transfer the account to Fidelity for additional miles.

If someone was really aggressive they could try to get the bonus through TD Waterhouse right now. Then when they merge with Ameritrade transfer the account to Fidelity for a bonus and then transfer the account to Ameritrade for another bonus. It would take about 16 months for all the miles to hit but when all is said and done you would have about 75k miles. Not too bad.

Ach so... (ref: Stalag 17)

You are all correct and I apologize for my miscalculations. That changes the equation quite dramatically, as I agree the minimal returns are not worth the 5K miles. much better to do as MoCheez says and try and hit all the bonuses. Time to open the TDW account.

Mo Cheex is onto something. I have recently switched money between various brokerage houses. Took money from Fidelity to another (for me temporary) investment then brought it back to Fidelity to accrue mileage for "new" money to an existing Fidelity account.

Now with the Ameritrade offer, I took some of my Fidelity investment and transferred it "in-kind" (not selling the investment itself, just having it an Ameritrade account). I need to leave it there for NINE months (not six!) in order to obtain the full 25,000 miles. After those nine months I will transfer the investment back to Fidelity "in kind." No tax consequences, money is invested in the same mutual fund with Ameritrade as it was with Fidelity.

Altogether for investing no new money I will have made something like 50,000 miles.

How about closing and/or inactive account fees?? This used to happen as I have a designated "milewhore" brokerage account that goes to the highest bidder , have been doing frequently until almost all brokerages started hitting us with these fees. Never whored my account to Fidelity yet since I haven't had use for United miles...until I just applied for its Visa with the 20k signup bonus and no fee for a year...My nine months are up in October with Ameritrade and intend to transfer it to Fidelity and one of these days I will check on closing/inactivity fees. If anyone knows, please post.

The Starwood offer is the best one out there. You actually only need to open an account with $25K (not $50K like the airline offers) to get the full 20,000 SPG points. And the good thing with Starwood is that you can transfer those 20,000 SPG points into 25,000 miles on most airlines. So if you go the SPG route, you are basically getting the same thing (with slightly more flexibility as you can transfer to different airline choices) for half the initial investment. ^