What to do With Your 25k Miles: Getting the Most for your AirMiles

By now, hopefully you have opened your Chase account and are happily waiting for your easy 25K miles to be deposited into your Continental OnePass account. Now comes the fun part-- planning where to go with your reward ticket. What can you do with your 25,000 miles you wonder? Well, 25k is the minimum number of miles needed for a reward ticket for travel within the US and to Canada. We like to get more mileage for our airmiles so we think a free ticket to Alaska, British Columbia, California and Washington State (or wherever happens to be furthest from where you are) make the most sense, or just to any destination for which tickets tend to be pricier. For instance, Jackson Hole, Wyoming is not as far as Seattle, Washington for us (we are in New York City) but tickets are usually quite a bit pricier, so that would be a great place to use a reward ticket for. We wouldn't be likely to use a reward ticket for a popular route like Miami because that would really only be a savings of about $160. But using it to go to Vancouver, makes that reward ticket worth over $500 to us!

If you're willing to wait until you get to 35k miles, then you'll have enough for destinations in Hawaii, Mexico and the Caribbean. In the past year alone, we have used free reward tickets to go to Hawaii at Christmas (published fares were over $1100), Provence for lavender season (published fares were over $1600), Mexico, St. Louis, and to island hop from Kauai to the Big Islands; in other words, we used 135K miles for over $3500 worth of airplane tickets! Now that's getting the most for your airmiles.

Earn Triple AirMiles Just for Paying Your Bills!

By now, hopefully you've opened your new Chase account, as we suggested last week, for an easy 25,000 Continental OnePass miles. Well now you can start putting that account to work for you for even more miles. Chase is offering, for the second time this year, the chance to earn 3 miles per dollar for bills you pay with your OnePass Chase debit card. We earned over 5000 miles the last time this offer was available. Just click here to find out more details and register, then pay your grocery, utility, and other bills with your Onepass Chase debit card between August 10 and October 31, and your bonus miles will be awarded in November, 2009. Finally, something to make you feel good about paying all those bills!

Dining Rewards... a.k.a. Airmiles for Eating

Most airmiles programs partner with the Rewards Network and allow you to also earn miles when dining at certain restaurants. The Rewards Network is often seamlessly integrated with your airmiles program. There are no extra or hidden costs for you, and it is completely automated once you take a few minutes to set things up. You just need to open an account and register your credit card numbers with the program... up to 5 cards, and, then any time you dine at a participating restaurant with one of these cards, airmiles will magically post directly to your airmiles program account usually within a week. These really are free miles that you are likely missing out on, especially if you eat out with any regularity.

Generally, you will accrue miles at a rate of at least 3 per dollar spent, however, there are often promotions and incentives that can increase that rate. Our favorite is the one that kicks in after a number of dines within a calendar year (usually between 10-15); the rate then jumps to at least 5 miles per dollar spent for all dines for the remainder of the year. When you do this on a credit card that also gives you miles for purchases, these miles are in addition to the miles that you get per dollar spent on the card, so this often means you are getting at least 4 miles per dollar spent. The particular rates, of course, vary depending on the airmiles program.

Although only a small percentage of restaurants in a city will choose to participate, you can often find a few that you like. You can search for participating restaurants here. We have our favorites, but it is a nice surprise when we eat someplace new and discover it has netted us some additional miles. And, every now and then, we browse the list and look for a new place, esp. if we know we are about to spend a lot on a meal.

You can belong to many dining rewards programs, i.e. one for each participating airmiles program, however, a credit card can only be associated with one airmiles program at a time. We recommend choosing the dining rewards for one airmiles program and adding all of your credit cards to it.

For your reference, here are some quicklinks for registering for dining rewards with our favorite airmiles programs. Happy Dining!

• Northwest WorldPerks Dining for Miles
• Delta SkyMiles Dining
• United Mileage Plus Dining
• Unfortunately, Continental OnePass no longer participates in the Rewards Network and has no dining rewards program at the moment.
  

Earn DOUBLE Miles Shopping with Northwest WorldPerks Mall

One of the many ways we accumulate airmiles is by making our usual online purchases through either Continental's ShopOnePass or Northwest's WorldPerks Mall. Both of them offer miles for your purchases at popular sites like the Gap, Target, Macys, Dell, etc. Some partner sites get you as much as 20 miles per dollars spent (e.g. FTD and Teleflora) for purchases you were going to make anyhow. During the Christmas season alone, we easily rack up 10,000 miles or more.

From now until the end of September, Northwest is offering double the miles for almost all purchases. That means you can get 8 miles per dollar spent at Figleaves, 4 miles per dollar spent at Macys, 4 miles per dollar spent at Barnes and Noble, and more. You just have to make sure to access them through Northwest and enter your membership number in order to receive proper credit. As with all special offers, you have to register for it. Click here to register and to see complete details.

Get a Free Continental Reward Ticket Fast!

Want a free reward ticket right away? Now's your chance. When folks hear that many of our great trips are done with free frequent flyer reward tickets, they often get excited and want to know our "secret" for getting them. However, as soon as we start listing all the many things we do to amass miles, they generally start to zone out. We think an hour of our time per week is a tiny investment for the pay-off, and we actually think it's fun to come up with new and creative ways to earn more miles but we understand that you might need to see (at least) one quick pay-off in order to get excited.

So here it is: a way to earn your first free ticket, with one simple action. Well, maybe 6 actions, but they're all related. For the past 2 years, Continental OnePass has offered between 20,000 and 25,000 miles for opening a Chase checking account. The extraordinary offer is usually valid for a 2 month period but they've re-issued the offer for the 2nd time this year, and this time it's being extended to the end of the year!

All you have to do is open a new Chase checking account, with a new $100 deposit ("new", meaning you can't withdraw the money from an existing Chase account to open the new one). That's the main step; the other 5 requirements are simple: just request the Chase OnePass Preferred Debit card ($40-$60 annual fee) and make 6 purchases with it within 60 days of opening the account. You will receive 10,000 miles for opening the account and 15,000 for making the 6 purchases within 60 days. For those who don't want to pay the annual fee for the preferred debit card you can skip that part and just get 10,000 miles for opening the account only. Personally, we think the fee is worth it because with the Preferred card, you also get 1 mile for every dollar charged to the card. We use it to pay as many bills as we can, and therefore get miles for our utility bills, insurance, groceries, etc.

See our primer on Air Miles to learn more about the different programs but for now, get on down to Chase and start planning your first free trip!

Click here to get the voucher you need to print and bring with you to open the account, and also for full details on the terms of the offer.