The Money Mustache Community
Learning, Sharing, and Teaching => Ask a Mustachian => Topic started by: pbkmaine on April 15, 2017, 08:21:00 AM
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I have 19,856 miles in my American Airlines account. I don't want to buy magazines, and I don't plan to travel on American anytime soon. American won't let me redeem for gift cards until and unless I have 25,000 miles on my account. What are my options?
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You can get a Citibank AAdvantage credit card and get their bonus miles (fee waived the first year), or you can join their dining program and get 3 miles for every dollar you spend at participating restaurants (not many around here, though).
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When you buy things on line go through their shopping portal. May take a long time, but at least your miles won't expire.
Edited to add: AA miles expire after 18 months of inactivity so be sure to do something to keep them alive. Using the shopping portal is the easiest.
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Second the CitiCard if you haven't signed up for it. Spend the minimum, you'll be around 60k, then redeem at you feel necessary.
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You can donate them if you think you wont use them. Red Cross, Doctors without borders etc
Giving them to someone else will cost you around $ 240
If you just want to keep them alive the AA Mastercard is a good way to do that and scoop up the bonus
You can also do the suggested shopping portal or just buy a few miles, they currently have a bonus buy promo, but the value is not really good
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Second the CitiCard if you haven't signed up for it. Spend the minimum, you'll be around 60k, then redeem at you feel necessary.
I actually did this twice since the second offer did not have 24 month language. Now have about 130K AA miles and am just waiting until I can take off of work to go somewhere nice with my SO. Highly recommend the AA Citi Plat for this reason.
If you can't find a 60K offer, call them and ask if they will honor it - I had a 60K on my first offer then a 50K on my second and they bumped it up to 60K.
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Second the CitiCard if you haven't signed up for it. Spend the minimum, you'll be around 60k, then redeem at you feel necessary.
I actually did this twice since the second offer did not have 24 month language. Now have about 130K AA miles and am just waiting until I can take off of work to go somewhere nice with my SO. Highly recommend the AA Citi Plat for this reason.
If you can't find a 60K offer, call them and ask if they will honor it - I had a 60K on my first offer then a 50K on my second and they bumped it up to 60K.
Lucky you!
I had the 50 k offer and the 60k came on THE DAY AFTER I had applied.
I called them and asked them to match it and they said no, but they gave me 1000 points for the trouble of calling.
Better than nothing, but still a bummer!
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Thanks, all! I took your advice and applied for the credit card.
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You can also use the miles toward a hotel stay (and car rentals) through their portal. I recently had ~18,000 AA miles I wanted to use up, and that's what I did.