A new year brings new opportunities. It's always a good idea to list your mileage & point balances at every beginning year and look for gaps or places of improvement.
So here it goes:
Patrick
American Airlines - 20K
British Airway - 114K
Continental - 83K
Delta - 117K
Hawaiian - 7K
United - 117K
Virgin America - 1K
Hilton - 23K (Gold)
Starwood - 44K (Gold)
Priority Club - 5K (Plat)
Nadia:
American Airlines - 5K
British Airway - 108K
Continental - 51K
Delta - 51K
Hawaiian - 5K
United - 30K
Virgin America - 2K
Starwood - 1K (Gold)
Priority Club - 20K (Plat)
As you can see, we are sitting comfortably on a lot of miles. But there are gaps. Both our American Airline accounts were wiped out by our recent First Class trip to Europe (125K each) so we need to work on building up our balances again. We both still have our British Airways Credit Card sign-up bonus of 100K+ miles and need to find a way of spending it - twice to Europe or 1 far-away trip??? Or maybe first class to Europe again? Ah, choices..choices....
Since Continental will soon stop to exist we maximized our credit card/bank mileage collection in the past few months. My 83K and Nadia's 51K will bolster our United accounts nicely...
Delta - we are both sitting on a lot of miles - I am happy with my number, however Nadia could try to bring the number up to 100K for maximum travel flexibility. I will have to look for any Credit Card sign-up deals that are new for this year from Delta....
Hawaiian - we are almost out of Hawaiian Miles since we flew to Kauai last year for almost free ($105 per ticket = 2x $50 annual fee for 2 CCs plus $5 booking fee) - that's unacceptable. :) I already applied for both Hawaiian Airlines credit cards again (50$ annual fee each - 20K for each card after first use) and will bring my total back up to over 40K (enough for a free flight to any Hawaiian island). Nadia will have to do the same shortly...
United - our main carrier here in SF - we are just sitting back and waiting until our Continental miles fold into our United Mileage Plus accounts at the end of the years (approximately). Unfortunately, booking free flights with United will be harder than it was with Continental but that's what happens in mergers - the worse program unfortunately survives...
Virgin America - we love to fly Virgin - normally we pay for our flights but last November we used my VA Credit Card sign up bonus and a lot of major US Mint coin purchases (2x $5000 in coins - yes it was heavy and the bank teller wasn't happy! :)) to fly for free back from NYC. I will start to buy coins again soon and at least bring it back up to 10K-12K in the next few months...
Same goes for Nadia of course...
As you can tell, we mainly focus on free Airline miles and our Hotel points are pretty dismal. That's because it is more important for us to get to places for free instead of staying at them for free. Free hotel rooms are oftentimes of questionable quality so we have no problem paying top dollar for a nice experience.
Nevertheless, after staying at many, many different hotels and brands we have found that Starwood and most of their brands, especially Westin & W, is one of our favorites. Thus, we will try our best to maximize point collection in this program. We love the flexibility of the program and it's points & cash redemption option - paying $60 and 4000 pts for a top class metropolitan Westin is a great deal. With 44K we can do that 11x! :)
Now the wish list for 2011:
Hawaiian - 2 cards for both of us - 40K+ each by May in both our accounts
Continental - waiting for a new personal/business Checking deal - 25K for each new bank account - hopefully it will be back!!
Virigin America - COINS!!! Free flight to NYC??
Starwood - COINS!!! Free stay in NYC??
Nadia should start enrolling in Hilton & Marriott to open up more stay options.
In addition, Chase just came out for the first time with a Hyatt Credit Card which provides free upgrades and a few points to start you out - waiting for the sign-up bonus to increase....\
American Airlines- It seems I will soon have enough miles for a domestic ticket (5K away) but Nadia's account was wiped out by our First Class trip. She should sign-up for CC from Citi again and hope for the best...Citi has become very stingy lately, all credit card companies unfortunately have....but since Nadia has very few inquiries and CC applications on her record it should be relatively simple.
For all those who are still very nervous about their credit score - it's your credit and you operate all these deals at your own risk of course but I can tell you from my experience that my credit score has gone up, and up and up the more cards I carry. Sure there's a small dip 5pts or so when you apply but you get that back & extra sometimes, after a few months when the credit bureaus update your status again. Remember - only use the CC for the deal. Don't carry a balance, just get the sign-up bonus and put the card away for a while...Cancel after 6 months or a year, or keep it if it's useful and comfortable for you. Either way, be smart about your credit! :)
Now - start your own list & add a wish list!! Here's to a great new travel year! :)
