Education of a Points Freak – Introduction

• Education of a Points Freak – Introduction
• Question 1 – Is accumulating points and miles for everyone?
• Question 2 – Won’t applying for credit cards hurt my credit?
• Question 3 – What are the pros and cons of different airlines’ mileage programs? (US Legacy Airlines)
• Question 4 – What are airline alliances and how are they useful?
• Question 5 – How can I keep track of all my account balances?
• Question 6 – What are other useful tools I can use?
• Question 7 – What are some good credit cards to start with?

Over the past year, I’ve learned a ton about the miles and points game. I thought I would start this blog off with a series debating some of the things I have learned. I’ve distilled things down into a few questions, and will update the links as I answer them. These aren’t necessarily questions that someone might ask, but they are questions that I learned the answers to as I started becoming more and more obsessed with points (or, to my wife, a points freak). Hopefully this will be helpful to any prospective points freaks out there.

Between my wife and me, we have earned approximately 400,000 miles in various programs since last September – not including points accumulated through regular spending. Currently, I am fulfilling minimum spend requirements on a couple of credit cards that should net another 175,000 miles as well. (My wife is forcing me to take a break from applying for new credit cards for her, otherwise we’d be getting a lot more than that!) My point is, there are a lot of points to be out there, but I know if you’re not into the points game and you are reading this, it sounds too good to be true. Is becoming a points freak really that easy? Is it for everyone? That’s what I’ll be answering in my next post in this series.