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

[mattkime]

Who's subsidizing this racket? Not me...then again, I wonder what their cost is for the flights. Looked like about $800 total.

Flexibility in flights was a necessity.

[Carnos Jax]

On average, enough customers use the card in a sufficiently favorable way (to the issuer) that makes it all the worthwhile.

[NewtonMP2100]

....don't turn around....

[cbelt3]

My kid used his to pay rent for two years. Just took himself and their college friends for a week in Miami. All flights s hotel paid for..

[Racer X]

I have enough airmiles for 2 r/t to India.

[Ombligo]

We haven't directly paid for a flight in the last 20 years - all credit card miles. Everything we buy goes on the card, which is paid off every month. You do have to pay attention to travel dates as the difference of just a single day can be an enormous number of miles.

[Michael]

My kid is a master at this stuff. She took her family to Belgium completely on points the year before COVID. Apparently she primarily gets points by paying her estimated taxes on a credit card. That costs slightly less than 2% but the benefit is huge. I'm not great at it. The best I did was to get a Southwest companion ticket in Jan 2020 that was good for 23 months. Of course that was right before COVID shutdowns. We did manage to take 4 trips over the next 2 years only paying taxes. So I have no complaints.

[mattkime]

I much prefer getting 2% back on my credit card instead of airline miles. I'm open to the argument that airline miles are worth more than 2% but I won't make it easy.

[Bill in NC]

cash rewards for me as well since I never fly enough.

plus airlines happily depreciate the value of the points whenever they want.

especially now where's there's strong demand for airline travel.

[wurm]

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.