Yesterday I posted offering some ways to earn Alaska Miles, and I have to hand it to our readers – we got amazing feedback. So I thought I’d do a bit of a recap, and flesh out some of the suggestions offered with some additional research.
Churning Cards
This is the simplest approach, which was offered by Pedro and James was to Churn Credit Cards. In my defense (especially as my wife would say), I seldom take the easiest path. Even if I would prefer to take the path of least resistance, I would argue generating 400,000 miles solely from Credit Card Sign-ups at 30,000 and 25,000 a pop is pretty challenging.
Buy AMEX Gift Cards, then Buy Miles or Products
TraderProfit and Scott each offered to buy AMEX cards, and then buy products with that. This is normally an excellent option; especially if a deal like what Frequent Miler posted in June were to come back.
If we take that option, factor in 4% cash back, initially bought with an Alaska card, we generate 1,182 miles, and pay $1,135.20. If we then buy Alaska Miles with that AMEX Gift Card (GC) at a cost of $1,182.50.
Buying Alaska Miles.
Then we get those Alaska miles at $0.028 per mile. Its certainly unfavorable. If we factor in resell, then it at a minimum defrays some cost or could turn into profit, but, really, if my math is correct, I’d have to generate a minimum profit of 2.8% after shipping and resell. If we go with something from Finish Line, then it might be the difference between loss or gain.
Transfer from Starwood Preferred Guest (SPG)
Crazy 4 Rewards offered SPG points. The challenge there is, (1) I don’t have so many, and (2) if I were to MS, would cost me the same $0.0034 that it would cost me if I were to MS the Alaska Airlines credit card in optimal conditions.
Book via Korean Air
Miles first commented, although Ozaer kind’ve refuted this because of the fuel surcharges, but if I were to generate 5x on my Ultimate rewards cards (up to $1,500 on each Freedom per quarter, and up to $50,000 on each Ink), I’d be able to generate the necessary 400,000 miles with $80,000 spend before fees. The problem is, I can’t seem to definitively find how many miles Korean air would take. So if I go with the BA equivalent of 160,000 per person and $960 per person, needing 320,000 (lets say UR points, so $64,000 spend), plus $1,920 (conservatively, lets say at 5% cash back, I need to spend just shy of another $40,000). So we’ll leave it at me needing to generate roughly $104,000 in spend, unless Korean Air is worse or better.
Conclusion
Clearly there were a lot of options I didn’t consider. I’m still going to keep at it, honestly, I am hoping that the Mileage Plan mall starts getting more competitive, but if it doesn’t, I may just have to split spend between my Ultimate Rewards cards and maybe my American Express Blue or Barclay Arrival Plus.
What I want to highlight the most though, is the amazing feedback that I got on yesterday’s post. We’re a new blog, but we’ve got some very astute readers, and I personally am very appreciative for every comment we receive.
Christmas is the hot bed of deals on Mileage Malls!
How are you grabbing points at 0.32c under “optimal conditions”?
Sorry, I had a minor mathematical error. In theory, I could do it for .34c. I’ll e-mail you.
I have to refute that churning would be challenging. CITI prior to 2009 was the game for churning, Barclays prior to 2013, Amex prior to May of 2014. BofA is the current big game in town, maximize it! $1 spent yields 30,000 miles, is that good enough for the “underpants” factor for you? Experian and Equafax both emerge all BofA inquiries as one, so throw In Virgin Atlantic in every time and pick up 50,000 miles after $2.5k in spend!
Cheers,
PedroNY
Pedro – Great point. I suppose I meant that churning would be challenging, with trying to buy a new house (aka new mortgage). Without that as a concern, one could definitely churn the heck out of it. Btw, Citi is again one of the games for churning.
You mean Citi Exec? That and HHonors are only that I know of. Also, I do get mortgage app and refi, so I hear you on that one.
Best,
PedroNY
It was back when you could do the other Citi’s for 75k each with the two browser trick. Although b/w the wife and I, we have gotten our share of Citi Execs this year. Haven’t gone for HHonors yet. Status is too easy to get, and until recently, could do nicely transferring UR>Virgin Atlantic>Hilton.
But the Alaska cards that I have seen all have a non-waived annual fee. So, unless I’m not looking in the right place, it’s $79 plus the $1 spend for each 25/30K sign up, yes?
I’ll check it out sometime this weekend to verify, but the last time I applied (a few months back, so I’m due for another), I booked a flight through Alaska, got the offer for the card with a $100 statement credit after $1k spend, which covered the annual fee. I found it on FrequentMiler’s Credit Card site just now – https://www.applyonlinenow.com/USCCapp/Ctl/entry?sc=VAB6CK#b
Mind sharing how (if) you ever got the 400k Alaska miles? I recently purchased kitchen appliances from Sears for a house I’m selling — 8x Alaska miles and got the double dip with gift cards for 16x. Not bad, but would be great if I could identify a potentially profitable item to purchase for resale with the current 8x Alaska/Sears bonus… Need another quick 75k to book two Emirates flights to BKK.
@Ryan – I ended up generating another 400k+ miles. Most of the miles were generated via credit card sign-ups (being able to apply for 2-3 cards at a time makes a big difference), but I also jumped on a few promotions like Alaska’s promo I talked about here. A bunch of the products I had bought back in late last year aren’t really around at the moment (Sears has been woefully disappointing). I bought ~46k points with Alaska’s most recent 40% bonus purchase program.
Its not my typical advice, but you could try going for 2 Bofa personals and 1 biz? recently I got my miles before I got my cards.