Help me get started travel hacking

[serpentstooth]

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[$200k]

I'd visit flyertalk; they are probably best suited to helping you.  I also like: viewfromthewing; frequentmiler; and thepointsguy, these are just to name a few.

If I were you, I'd:

- Find the desirable airlines that travel to your locations;
- Find the best credit cards that issue huge bonuses for that airline, or are transferable on a 1:1 basis to that airline (all of the website I mention above have lists of "the best credit cards" so there is no sense repeating them here);
- WAIT for the best offers on those credit cards to actually appear;
- Sign up, meet the spending requirements for the bonus, then put regular spending to rack up additional points;
- Repeat the exact same process for hotels credit cards for hotels in Vancouver and Kuala Lumpur

[chucklesmcgee]

What credit card would you recommend for accumulating miles to defray the cost of the following scenarios?

I wouldn't recommend any airline card specifically for accumulating miles on regular spending. The rewards on airline-specific cards are usually pretty poor outside of airfare purchases.

Some cards have a pretty decent signup bonus, but you'll have to pony up a decent annual fee. Citi's Executive AA card has a 100k mile signup bonus for a $450 annual fee, a high price but well worth it if you're going to be flying that much.

Otherwise I'd recommend the Barclay's Arrival card with it's $444 signup bonus when redeemed on travel. It's not a traditional miles card and works more like a 2.2% cash back card. You receive "miles" for every dollar you spend. When you want to redeem your miles, you are presented with all of your recent purchases coded as travel expenses and can choose to reimburse yourself.

[DougStache]

I'd recommend the Barclay's Arrival card with it's $444 signup bonus when redeemed on travel. It's not a traditional miles card and works more like a 2.2% cash back card. You receive "miles" for every dollar you spend. When you want to redeem your miles, you are presented with all of your recent purchases coded as travel expenses and can choose to reimburse yourself.

I just started dabbling with travel hacking recently, and got started with milevalue.com.  I second the Barclay Arrival.

My wife and I are flying to the Grand Canyon in April (hiking to the bottom, camping two nights, hiking back up).  I priced out the air fair ahead of time and it was going to cost us about $950-$1,100, ouch!  So, I learned a little bit about that travel hacking thing I had heard of, and got both a Frontier Airlines card and a Barclay Arrival.  At the end of the day, we're flying to the grand canyon for a total of $80, and most of that is a (very worth it) annual fee on the Frontier card. 

Note that they just changed the sign up bonus on the Barclay Arrival card.  Originally it was $444 cash back after spending $1000 in the first 3 months (hello 44% cash back!), but they just recently changed it to required $3000 spent in the first few months.

[dragoncar]

Man, I remember when signup bonuses were just that - a bonus for SIGNING UP