How to Maximize Your American Airlines Miles Account
If you have an American Airlines miles account and you’re saving up for that dream trip to Hawaii (35,000 miles per ticket from anywhere in the continental U.S., 70,000 per ticket if you want to fly first class), I can help you get the most out of your dollars and earn miles for most of the things you are doing already.
The first and most obvious rule is to submit your miles account number each and every time you fly. Most everyone knows that that is how you earn those miles. But there are more tricks that you can apply to really bulk up your miles numbers.
The first thing you should do is to apply for the American Airlines AAdvantage Citibank Mastercard. Every dollar you spend with this card will equal one mile in your account, and you’ll get 12,500 miles just for signing up. You can apply on line at www.aa.com, or you can call AAdvantage Citibank at 1-888-766-2484. Now, once you’ve got that card, don’t put it away. The card is no longer a credit card, this card is now your checking account. Put everything you purchase or pay for on it, but never carry a balance. The miles only apply to purchases, not past balances, so carrying a balance will not help you in any way, and you’ll end up paying the current APR. We are able to pay for pretty much everything except our rent and payments to other credit card accounts with the card (the credit industry frowns on paying off one debt with another). Each time we use it, we write the purchase into our register, just as if we’d used a check. Then at the end of each month we reconcile the register with our credit card statement to ensure that we did not miss anything, and then we send a check off for the entire amount.
Here are some examples of things we pay for with our AAdvantage card: all purchases in retail stores, all our groceries, our utility bills, our car loan payments (this is one case where the card is allowed to pay off another debt), pretty much everything we had previously written a check for. Our rule is that any purchase over $5.00 goes on the card. You can even use it at your local Starbucks or other coffee houses that offer re-loadable cards. Obviously you won’t want to make yourself crazy having to log in each of your $3.00 cups of coffee, but if you just buy a re-loadable card and put a balance on it occasionally with your card, than each of those cups of coffee now equal 3 miles! McDonald’s now accepts credit cards as well, and those fast food meals can be expensive.
But there are more tricks for bulking up your miles that are less obvious. American Airlines has a partnership with the Rewards Network, which is a network that offers bonus miles each time you eat in a restaurant or stay in a hotel that is registered with them. You can sign up by following the link on www.aa.com, through the AAdvantage tab. The link is on the left side of the main page. From that tab, scroll down to “Partners and Mileage Programs”, and select the tab that says “Dining” which will take you to the Rewards Network page. Once you are signed up, you will earn between 3 and 10 miles each time you dine in one of their restaurants and pay with your AAdvantage credit card. The number of miles you earn per dine depends on your level of membership, which is based on the number of times you use their network. If you dine out 10 times in a year (which most of us qualify for within three months), you can become an “elite” member and you will earn 10 miles per visit. You can find a comprehensive list of the restaurants that participate on the Rewards Network website. There are even a few select restaurants that offer 20 miles per dollar. The miles apply to everything you spend, including drinks, tax, and tip.
Now don’t be afraid to finesse the use of this perk a little bit. If you’re dining out with friends, and can recommend a restaurant in the network, it can add up to beaucoup miles for you. If you’re all going “dutch”, offer to put the bill on your card and collect the cash from the others in your party. You can then deposit the cash right back into your checking account for the time when you’ll be paying off that bill, and the miles are major!
If you spend any time in hotels, you already know how expensive the stay is likely to be (even in the budget places). It takes some of the sting out of paying for your visit knowing that you are staying in a Rewards Network registered hotel (and you should never have to stay in one that is not), and that you are earning 5 miles per dollar. You can also find the list of registered hotels in every state and every country at the Rewards Network link on the American Airlines website.
Do you shop on line? Excellent! You now have a new way to look at it. From now on, you will do all of your shopping through the American Airlines website. You can find just about everything there and you’ll earn between 2 and 10 miles per dollar spent (each merchant has their own amount, you don’t need to do anything special to qualify). They have hundreds of national retail establishments listed for just about everything you could imagine. The Gap, Target, The Sharper Image, Best Buy, Tower Records, you can even buy your computer on line at Dell, the Apple Store, CompUSA, Toshiba, or any of several other companies listed. Just remember not to go directly to the website of company you want to browse, you must connect to them through the American Airlines site to qualify for the bonus miles. We were able to get all out holiday shopping done on line, avoid the hustle and bustle of the pre Christmas mall rush, and earn 6,500 miles to boot! And remember, you get to add one to the number of miles you earn at each of these sites, and through the Rewards Network restaurants and hotels; you are still getting that one mile per dollar spent from your AAdvantage Mastercard account.
Be sure to check the American Airlines website often. They regularly host “specials” where they will double the number of miles you can earn for dining or shopping between certain dates. You generally have to register for the specials to earn the bonuses, so make sure you stay in the loop.
Now if you have a little time at your disposal and like playing on the computer, there is also a website called e-Rewards that offers you e-currency for taking surveys on line. The length of the surveys and the amount of e-currency you’ll earn vary. The good thing about this site is that you can trade in your e-currency for miles in your AAdvantage account. A balance of $25.00 e-Rewards dollars will buy you 500 miles. $50.00 in e-Rewards dollars will buy you 1,000 miles. $100 in e-Rewards dollars will buy you 2,000 miles. I have made as much as $20.00 on a single survey, so it is not a terrible way to pad your miles. They send me several survey offers a day, and some of them are about three questions long. Those typically earn only twenty-five cents, but they take no time at all, and those quarters really add up!
So make the most of that AAdvantage miles account. Except for the surveys, you’re doing all these things already. Make them count. Aloha!
