Student Looking for Miles
 

Hey all,

I'm new to the forum, but I've heard great things about it. Anyway, I'm currently a student (so not a particularly big spender and a little wary of annual fees) but I'm in the market for a new credit card and was wondering what the best selection would be given that I want to get the most miles I can get. Any suggestions? Any other general suggestions. Thanks!

First, welcome to FlyerTalk! I am a student, too, and I also operate under budgetary limitations, so maybe I can share one or two ideas.

First, a couple quick questions that people will want to ask:

• Can you tell us what metro area you live in? This might impact which program(s) would be of most use, based on what air/rail carriers have service there.
• How much travel do you typically do? For example, some of my classmates make annual trips to Asia to visit family. Others travel to academic conferences/boondoggles.
• Can you tell us what your "travel goals" are? For example, I'm trying to accumulate miles for travel on Amtrak, for free travel in the Northeast corridor where I live and attend school.

One other question, what are you studying? (It's really none of my business, so please feel free to ignore this question...)

As for credit cards, I have signed up for a Continental MasterCard from Chase, because it has a significant bonus and I fly CO. It has a $65 annual fee. But, I had learned a trick on FlyerTalk: I called up and asked to cancel, citing the fee as disproportionate to the card's utility -- which is how I really feel. The fee was waived.

There's also an Amtrak Guest Rewards card from Chase, which has no annual fee. I'm going to sign up for this soon. AGR is kind of special in that award travel can be redemeed for 3,000 to 10,000 points, as opposed to 25,000 to 50,000 for air travel. Typical credit card earning is 1 point per dollar spent.

I'm sure many will chime in with more ideas, and I'm sure you'll learn a lot from FT. Welcome again!

Well, who do you fly with? Or want to fly with?

If anything, make sure you setup accounts (that have the option) as student accounts. You earn double Rapid Rewards with Southwest for flights if you're a student and have a student acount.

Btw, welcome :)

Thanks for the welcome! I'd say Southwest and Delta both appeal to me. I'm currently located in Raleigh-Durham, live in NY, but will likely be leaving the Raleigh-Durham area in the next year. Southwest Rapid Rewards looks like a good deal. Any other suggestions? (And, if you'd like me to specify on anything more, feel free to ask.)

If you have a banking relationship with Citi, I'd suggest the Citi mtvU card. It gives you 5% cashback on restaurant (including fast food) spending and bookstore spending. I think you get points for having good grades too?

With a banking relationship you could redeem the points for fixed flights via ThankYou network. Otherwise you could also redeem for gift cards, etc.

This is assuming you pay off your balance each month because this card does have a pretty high interest rate.

Don't have a citi relationship. My bank relationships are Bank of America and Everbank if that helps...And, I just signed up for rapid rewards already!

First, welcome to FlyerTalk! I am a student, too, and I also operate under budgetary limitations, so maybe I can share one or two ideas.

First, a couple quick questions that people will want to ask:

• Can you tell us what metro area you live in? This might impact which program(s) would be of most use, based on what air/rail carriers have service there.
  
  -Student at Raleigh-Durham, family home near JFK/Laguardia. (Likely to be living somewhere other than R-D next year, but not sure where yet)
  
• How much travel do you typically do? For example, some of my classmates make annual trips to Asia to visit family. Others travel to academic conferences/boondoggles.
  
  -NY-RDU a few times a year. Occasional visits of friends in Boston, Chicago, DC. Looking to do more traveling with more miles!
  
• Can you tell us what your "travel goals" are? For example, I'm trying to accumulate miles for travel on Amtrak, for free travel in the Northeast corridor where I live and attend school.

-Travel goals = probably to accumulate enough miles to get a couple of free flights for domestic travel to visit friends/travel for fun.

I haven't been paying attention lately so I might be wrong, but CO and UA will be coming together in some fashion fairly soon (right?). Sign up for UA's mileage plus and you'll get 10k miles when you graduate, and their credit cards all have bonus miles as well, and there is no reason not to get both the personal and biz cards. Get a CO one as well. Put tuition on the UA card for double miles for the first $5k, then use a refund check to pay the card off.
Doesn't thank you network pretty much translate a point into $0.01 towards the cost of a ticket or something like that? If so, that is garbage. I have a citi card that earns thank you points and haven't touched it in years.
Southwest would be good if you never plan to use rewards for anything fun or expensive (premium cabin international travel). You would also have to fly Southwest, and it's up to you to decide if that is a pro or con. 5% cash back on restaurants probably wouldn't add up to that much, you'd probably save more just drinking water instead of a coke at dinner or having one less beer per week.
Considering there are only two other posters and I apparently disagree with both of them, I guess the best answer is decide what you want to do and then find the card(s)/bank(s) that best allow you to do it. It's going to be different for everyone.
If you are just after easy miles, sign up for all the FF programs (it's free, so why not), and go after some credit card and promo bonuses. You just missed the DL Bosley and rental car deals, but these things pop up here and there.

That's not true. If you use variable points to redeem for flights, then yes it's 1 cent per point (cpp), but it includes taxes. However, if you use fixed points flight redemptions you can get up to 2cpp for economy or 3 cpp for business. For ex. 20k points will get you an economy ticket w/in continental US and Canada valued up to $400; for 90k points you can get the same ticket in business valued up to $2700. There's a complete chart for fixed points at www.thankyou.com - click on help. Fixed points redemptions do not include tax - you need to pay the taxes. There are many threads on thank you network and how to maximize your TYPs, in the "other credit cards" forum.

Wrong. I believe the merger was off the table a while ago.

Well, not quite right. It's not the regular United Mileage Plus Program.

Students should join United College Plus (for free) in order to earn the graduation bonuses. I believe you have to join before you graduation but have up to a year after graduation to claim the graduation bonuses. There are some threads over UA Forum.

I don't think that's a good idea either.

First of all, some FFPs offer referral bonuses for sign-up. It won't be wise for OP to sign up for everything without checking out all the current referral bonuses offers.

Secondly, it's better to concentrate mile-earning in one FFP, especially for students without big spending power. Nowadays if you have 15K miles here and 20K miles there, you will be nowhere near ONE free domestic award tix. Normally, for an award tix (with availability), you need 25K miles (and soon to go up to 35K for some FFPs), excluding the short-haul or special route promo. I don't fly Southwest and have no idea about the RR thingy.

You may also like to check out our Credit Card Programs/Partners Forum. I remember there were some threads with good advices for students in tight budget.

My advice:
1. Compare all the airlines and alliances.
2. Choose one FFP to bank all your mileage activities.
3. Try your best to fly airlines in the same alliance, so you can credit all your miles into one FFP.
4. Get the credit card affiliated with your chosen airline.
5. Most importantly: Visit FT On a Daily Basis, so you won't miss out any goodie or bonus promo. :D

Welcome to FT, jmp29!

Southwest Rapid Rewards: 16 points equals a standard reward (roundtrip with blockouts).

1 point per A to B flight (connections dont earn more.)

8 round trips equals those 16 points. You get a few points jsut for starting an account and as a student you earn twice as many points, so 4 round trips.

Southwest Visa gives you 8 points (halfway to a roundtrip reward) after your first purchase and you can transfer balances to earn up to 8 more points.

So if you open a Southwest Visa, get the student account, you're quite likely to just need 1-2 flights to earn your first Standard Reward.

Another benefit of the Citi PremierPass Elite card is the 'flight point' match - so you charge $10K, get 10K Thank You Points, also get 10K Flight Points which are transferred as Thank You Points. So for $10K in spend, you get $400 airline ticket, a 4% return. If you use for premium cabins, the return is 6%.

The merger itself is off the table but CO is planning on joining the *A next year.

A few other points of consideration.

How much to you anticipate spending on the card each month? Most miles cards have annual fees, and if you're only spending a few hundred a month, the miles earned won't be worth as much as the fee is costing you.

Second, miles cards typically have high interest rates, so a good rule of thumb is to only use it for purchases you will pay off in full every month. Don't carry a balance on a high interest miles card. It's also worth mentioning that many college students get themselves into bad debt by over-spending when they get their first card. Don't fall into that trap.

And, welcome to Flyertalk!

I thought of asking the same thing myself.
 

I live in Ilinois and travel every other month to SJU. I'm currently PLT with AA, and AA is my airline of choice overall. With UA I only have 35k miles, and 25k miles with CO. Forget about DL, the conection at ATL is not beneficial. Anyhow, I also have the Citibank AAdvantage Mastercard as my primary card. For auto rentals I moslty use National, but I have not been able to move up in their elite ladder, maybe this year. Am I maximizing my mileage returns? or am i missing something. Please advise, I forgot to mention that on my car rentals, I prefer to have rental credits as opposed to miles. I do not have much with hotel rentals as I do not use them that much.

Anything else to help maximize my mileage will be appretiated.

The return can be even higher since you get 20k bonus points for signing up and spending $600 within the first 3 or 4 months. However, for PPE there is a $75 annual fee, and the OP would like to avoid annual fees. I would recommend a fee free Citicard with Thank You Points and then link an expedia.com account to your TY account in order to get fixed flight points redemptions.