Flying with Miles

All international flights I took last year were flown using miles. I flew Business Class to Paris and Florence, then took Economy Class going and Business Class coming back from Seoul, South Korea.

How did I do it? I spent some time researching and learning about points and miles from travel blogs. Here are three guides I used to learn how to get started:

- Million Mile Secrets - Beginner's Guide to Miles & Points
- The Points Guy's Beginner's Guide
- One Mile at a Time - Beginner's Guide to Miles & Points

The first takeaway is to figure out your travel plans. I knew I wanted to fly to Paris and Italy so I worked out which airlines I wanted to fly.

Next, which is the key takeaway, is to sign up for credit cards that offer points that can be transferred to airlines for miles. Hardcore travel bloggers sign up for 4-8 credit cards every few months but I didn't need a million miles a year, so I started slow with signing up for three credit cards, which would give me enough miles for my trip. I opened up the Chase Sapphire, Chase Ink Bold, and the United Airlines credit cards. They gave me a total of 140,000 points after I met the minimum spending requirements.

Note: To make credit card points work best, you should pay your balance in full each month otherwise the interest you pay will probably add up way more than what you would get in miles. Also, if you're planning on a big purchase like a house, best not to open a slew of new credit cards since you want to keep your credit score clean.

I knew I wanted to concentrate most of my miles to one airline with multiple partner airlines. Being based in NYC, my best bets were United Airlines and American Airlines. After researching a bit on FlyerTalk.com, I decided on United which offers a lot of availability and routes on their frequent flyer program. (I may change to American Airlines since I'm getting a little sick of flying in and out of Newark, NJ.) I found Delta to have the worst frequent flyer program so they weren't in the running.

I created a spreadsheet with my credit card information so I would be able to keep track. I decided to keep the Chase Sapphire after I had it for a year since it offered no foreign transaction charges, unlike my American Express card. Now I use the Chase card whenever I travel. For the Chase Ink Bold and the United Airlines cards, I closed both accounts a month before they were set to renew since I didn't want to pay the annual fee.

To maximize the use of my cards and earn multiple points per dollar, I used the Chase Ultimate Rewards portal where you can shop through Chase and get bonus points.

Before my trip to Seoul, I had opened up the Chase Ink Business Plus card which gave me points to travel using miles, but not enough for Business Class both ways, so I flew Economy going and Business coming back. I didn't enjoy flying Economy, but I did like that I was flying for practically free.

Hope you find these tips useful and happy travels!