I think there are some good suggestions here. One thin that I have been eyeing for my little-used CO and AA accounts are inter-island flights in Hawaii. 5K RT on AA; 10K on CO.

Marathon man, you speak of simplifying your life with less PC use and fewer accounts to keep up with. Aren't you going through a lot of trouble to switch a credit card to a different idine account and then go out and order the right things from the menu to get you right at your award level? Doesn't seem overly simple, IMO.

yorock

I believe that in orderto end up with a FF account easily, it first is not a goo idea to keep hundreds of thousands of miles : a FF account is not a savings account. If you have less than 100 000, you an get rid of them very easily, and if you are down to less than 10000, get a free magazine or let them go, over 10000, to up, get a free flight and stop flying the dreaded airline. Done this with BA, VARIG, DL and CO : all accounts are now flat or there is just one flight to take.

yorock, you are way true!
ha ha ho...

The thing is that it is indeed aa very complicated (and sometimes drawn out) process to do much now in order to later BE simplified. I have had to switch and do things for a little while now to reach said goals.

I am now also working on this process with my wife's accts... I have almost 'finished' with mine. They are all at the award levels I like to have ready for future use, and that will probably all happen within the next 6 months (she will love the multiple trips to beaches and ski areas I can take her on for free!) So now it is her mile accts we are trying to work with. AND YES, she thinks I am as nuts as many here may, and so be it! http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif

The problem though is that in the process of my 'ramping up' to become 'simple' later, I GOT ADDICTED TO THIS and YOU see it as clear as day!

ha ha ha.

But one day... oh yes one day...
???

That's fine, but I prefer to take the easier option, one that is right there in front of me. And if I only have, say, 17K miles in an account, it ain't gonna buy a ticket for someone. So I'll just say, okay, fine, take the miles, pool them, and fly that kid somewhere.

Your option, while certainly a good one, seems like too much work for me, so I'll take the easy route.

with the whole tax and charity thing...

I belive that donating miles helps (would do it if I had several many hundred thou, etc. but I do not. So I donate $ when I can instead) but if you ever wanna try to convince any tax people on the WORTH of whatever you donated, try this:

If you go to book some award ticket, say 30k on DL to Hawaii and then you ask, "Hey Delta, how much would that ticket have cost me if I bought it instead of using miles?"

they tell you it is like $700 or something.
Then go to the site and set up an itinerary as if you were gonna buy one...

Then print that and show everything to the tax person.

I bet you could get the write off!
Worth a shot??

<<I bet you could get the write off!
Worth a shot?? >>

Yeah, It's worth a shot for a nice little tete-a-tete with an IRS agent.

RTowne

it's all in the way you file, mate!
I have not cheated on taxes, but if there is a way to claim, I will find the loohole. If "they" ever come callin, I have ALLLLLLLLLL the records to show and without a flinch on my part. Then, I would simply do what they tell me. Audits are rare. I doubt it would be a problem if done using the existing laws of the day/hour when you file.

know the laws. It is most likely in there.

Sorry MarathonMan,

No real new ideas. I thought donation but the naysayers made me thing and I don't know if the qty's we are taking about they take.

Accumulating up to a free ticket and then just taking the ticket...already mentioned. I took this route when I moved from DL back to UA. Using idine or just buying outright.

I didn't see this one (prolly just blind). Aren't there still those mile conversion services? Milepoint or something like that, never really kept track. Couldn't you transfer into common currency and then keep or move to your preferred FF programs. Also can you move to hotel programs? (I haven't really looked at much beyond accumulating with airlines so the above recommendation may be sketchy.)

Like I mentioned above, "MileTracker" is going to save you lots of time if you have many accounts that you can't keep track of yourself. Check this out...

http://www.moonlightlabs.com/miletracker.html

If you don't want to keep them, then the only real options are to transfer them somewhere else, and accept the loss that comes with going that route. The only reasonable conduits (in my opinion and to my knowledge) are HHonors and Diners Club.

-David

re: Deductibility of FF miles...

There was a huge thread here in the Buzz a month or two ago about this very topic. General consensus is that the IRS would just as soon consider FF miles as something with a value of zero, much like the coupons you clip out of the paper aren't counted as income. They won't tax 'em if you don't try to deduct 'em - at least that's the IRS' take.

The airlines all have links to donate miles to charity. Those links say the miles aren't deductible, but I don't think that's for another reason: namely that the airlines are taking your write-off for you in the form of the free seat they give to the kid or family in need of medical care. In other words, if *you* got to write off the donation, the airline couldn't write off the same donation in their corporate taxes.

Whenever I've been to a charity auction and seen a free trip, it has always had a "Value = $XXX" associated with it, like all items in the auction. That leads me to believe that the donor gets the write-off for that value, and the buyer gets a write-off if and only if he buys the item for higher than that value.

Anyone who has been to a big charity auction knows that people tend to throw high values on the items they donate, and whether they ever get questioned about it by the IRS down the road is another story. It's not unusual to see 2 free coach tix in the US, with typical award restrictions, valued at $800-1000 for the purposes of the auction. You or I would probably value these tickets closer to $300 or $400 because they are so restricted and don't earn miles, but what the heck: somebody usually pays the higher value for them for the charity.

The best way out is Hilton Honors, it's not hard to get any FF account up to 5000 and then shift to Hilton.

You just don't want to pass through HH back to another airline.

Rental Car, Hotel Partners, Idine - Safeway for UAL just Keep track, use mile tracker, and when you get to 5,000 move to the next one with orphan miles, when it is depleted dump it from your partner list and concentrate wher you want to be.

Also, if you are interested in United miles and have Continental - you can "launder" them through Amtrak at a 1-1 conversion rate. I believe you can convert CO to Amtrak, and then convert Amtrak to UAL. I don't think it goes the other way.

If you only have a few miles on a carrier you don't intend to use again - perhaps 2000. You could just say you have something of no value - and do what you normally do with something of no value - ignore it.