Register for every promotion even if you think you may not use it.

Many of the bonus offers require registration and while you may not think you can take advantage of the bonus offer, register anyway. Who knows when your employer may send you to Phoenix for a meeting and you don't remember or realize that the airline you're flying on was offering double miles on all flights to or from Phoenix. By registering for an offer when you first see it, you're making sure you don't miss out on any bonus opportunities.

Pay for everything with your mileage/point earning credit card

This is by far the easiest way to rack up miles outside of actual flights with the airlines or stays with hotels. Put everything that you buy on your credit cards right down to the chocolate bar from the corner store. Every mile counts no matter where or how you earn it. If you have a card that earns 1.5 or 2 times the points/miles at gas, grocery, and drug stores make sure you use it there. Plus if you want to earn higher mileage from your card for shopping or eating out, buy gift cards for your favourite stores and restaurants at the grocery store or drug store to earn your 1.5x or 2x multiplier. Be warned however, if you run a balance and pay interest on your credit cards, those miles you earn will never be worth the money you lose in paying the interest. If this is your case get a low interest credit card, and lucky for you some low interest cards now carry rewards.

Carry different credit cards

Some bonus mile offers or other offers like free gift cards (see Cash in on other rewards below) require that you only use a specific credit card like a Visa. So if it is economically viable for you to do so, carry a Visa card, a Mastercard and an American Express. Think it may be expensive? Well there are quite a few no fee credit cards that earn points. Of course you don't even have to get a mileage card for your additional card, you could go for cash back rebates or merchandise but since this is an article on miles, why wouldn't you? Another method of earning more miles or points with credit cards is called churning. This entails applying for a card, receiving the sign up bonus and then cancelling the card followed by reapplying for the card sometime down the road to receive the bonus again. The time period varies by card issuer so check with them first (or research it online) plus watch your credit scores, too many applications in a short period of time can have a negative effect on your credit rating.

Double & Triple Dip

Double dipping is the term coined for earning miles twice in one purchase or transaction. This basically involves your mileage earning credit card being used for a purchase where you also earn miles in the same program as the credit card. Buying gas at Esso? Using your Aeroplan Visa or American Express and then swiping your Aeroplan card ensures you are double dipping.

Triple dipping is little tougher then double dipping and mainly involves travel purchased on your credit card. Certain airlines and hotels offer some sort of mileage bonus if you buy airline tickets through their website directly. Thus the triple dip in this case would be the online purchase bonus, the miles earned on the credit card plus the miles or points earned for taking the flight or completing the hotel stay.

Double and Triple dipping does not have to involve the same program. You can always use a credit card that earns in one program while collecting the actual miles from another program for your flights, hotels, shopping or anything else you can earn miles on.

Upgrade your flights

Take steps to fly in business or first class by buying the ticket outright (the expensive way unless there is a really low or mistake fare) or by making sure that you meet criteria to get upgraded (this works more for those who are status members in their respective programs) to ensure that you earn the 25 to 200% class of service bonus associated with the upper classes of flying. This is an easy way to build up those mileage balances and your qualification for status \

Cash in on other rewards

Sometimes reward programs offer bonus or rewards other then miles. Some airlines have had promotions whereby you take three flights and you'll get one free. Same goes for hotels, many hotels have promotions that offer up free nights after a certain amount of stays. Hotels also like to offer gift cards for future travel after certain stays. In many cases you have to be a member of the respective company's reward program so this goes back to the beginning where you may just have to join the program to take advantage of the offer.

Keep track of your miles and points

If you don’t keep track of your miles and/or points, you stand to miss out on potential rewards and even worse you can lose all the miles and points you earned thanks to programs inactivity or expiry rules. It can be extremely time consuming to keep track of all the programs you participate in but thankfully there are ways to make it easier. There are handful of websites out there that will help you keep track of your balances (and some also track your expiry dates) and most of them do it for free. Examples are sites like Awardwallet.com a which are both free although Award Wallet does offer a paid upgrade version. Don’t like handing out your membership numbers and password/PIN codes to these sites? Then it can be as simple as creating a spreadsheet to help track your balances although you still have to manually check all your programs or you can download a program like Miletracker which runs on your computer and not a third party server.

By following some or all of these steps you will see the balance in your reward programs grow faster then you think. Then those reward flights, nights or merchandise will be within arms reach and you won’t be waiting years to get them.


Care to comment on the tips to Maximize your Miles? Which of these tips do you use yourself? Do you have any other tips for our readers? Share you views and experiences on our Blog, Facebook and Twitter!

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