I signed up for an airline credit card and succeeded in booking a trip using points. I feel like I've beat them at their

[davester]

wurm wrote:
Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't all airline miles credit cards have an annual fee? Every time I've looked for a new credit card, an annual fee is the first thing that eliminates a candidate. Maybe if we traveled a lot it might be worth it, but for us, it's cash back. I can spend that anywhere.

Many do, but some don't. The ones that do have additional benefits such as free checked baggage trip insurance and double miles for certain categories (the savings realized from that will generally offset the fee). Also, most fee cards waive the fee for the first year. I've also found that if you call them and tell them to cancel the card because you don't want to pay the fee, they will either waive the fee or will provide you with a statement credit for more than the fee (I last week called Alaska Air to cancel my card with $95 fee and they offered me a $175 credit if I kept the card and used it for at least $1500 in purchases over the next three months. A no-brainer decision.

Since I just retired last year, we are catching up on our plans for worldwide travel that were severely cut back during Covid. If you're traveling, it is highly advantageous to have airline miles cards (we've already been to Mexico, Switzerland, England and Tahiti in the last year, not to mention domestic destinations) because they are much more valuable for traveling than cash back cards, especially if you check baggage. We've done a lot of worldwide traveling over the last decade and have only paid cash for flights on very low cost domestic routes where it would be a waste to use miles. The only down side of mileage cards is that you do need to do a small amount of homework and pay attention to managing your miles to get the greatest benefit from them. If you can't do that then by all means get a cash back card. The airlines are gambling on the fact that most people are not willing to do their homework, which is exactly what happens.

My mileage card hero is the pudding guy! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Phil...repreneur)