Mileage Credit Card

A very helpful and logical type of credit card is the popular airline mileage credit card. These type of credit cards offer you rewards in the form of frequent flier miles for the money you spend with the card. As with any type of financial product, there are different types of a mileage credit card available, each having specific advantages and disadvantages

One advantage of a good mileage credit card is that you get points for both the money you spend and the miles you fly. Essentially, you are getting a double benefit when you purchase a flight with your mileage credit card. For starters, do not open a new mileage credit card, or any new credit card, if you carry a credit card debt. If you are consolidating to a lower interest credit card as part of you reducing credit card debt efforts, you should still consider purchasing a mileage credit card. If you do not carry a balance, then opening a mileage credit card may be a good idea for you. Airline mileage credit cards are offered both by the airline companies themselves as well as by banks. One advantage to using a bank card over a specific airline's mileage credit card is that usually the miles earned on the bank card can be used on a number of airlines. Depending on what airlines fly into your local airport, you need to be careful when considering a specific airline mileage credit card. There are also other factors when choosing a new mileage credit card which may offset this limitation.

A few other things to consider when looking into starting a mileage credit card include the minimum miles to redeem for a flight, the interest rate, processing fees, when the miles expire, and the annual fee. A minimum of 25,000 miles is required with a mileage credit card before you can redeem a flight for most airlines. Some new mileage credit cards will offer you up to 30,000 miles just for signing up if you qualify.

Even if there is an annual fee, in this case it would be offset by the free ticket. It is important to read the fine print as sometimes these miles accrue at a rate of 1,000 miles per month for the first 25 months or something similar. If you have a specific time frame in mind for when you'd like to use your mileage credit card miles to redeem a trip, the expiration date/life of the airline miles is important. The last thing you want is to save mileage rewards for 3 years for a trip only to have them expire and get no rewards whatsoever for your mileage credit card purchases. Be sure to keep this information in mind regarding a mileage credit card when you begin your research for a new card.