Airmiles

[skyring]

As mentioned, yesterday I transferred a whole bunch of "True Rewards" points from my credit card account to my qantas Frequent Flyer account. At a rate of 2 TR points for one FF point, I found that I swapped 45 000 points for 22 500 air miles. I get one TR point for each dollar I spend on my credit card. I'm not quite sure how I managed to spend $45 000 off my credit card when my actual income is pretty close to not a lot, but I think it's mainly because of my habit of shuffling money around to pay for stuff in the most convenient manner.

For example, I'll use my credit card to pay for postage on books, and I later get reimbursed by ABE and Amazon etc for my postage. There's not a lot of profit in postage, in fact it's often the reverse and I eat up some of the book profit in shipping, but it means that I spend a lot on postage. Say I send a thousand books to the USA, each one costing $US9 in shipping, then that works out to over $AUS11 000, which means 11 000 TR points and consequently 5 500 FF points.

I discovered that 60 000 FF points is enough for a one-way trip to London. Or New York. And presumably 120 000 FF points for a return ticket, and 240 000 TR points to generate this. I don't have to actually spend a quarter of a million points to get a free trip to London, I just have to run that many dollars through my credit card. I'm wondering whether I could do something like buy and sell shares, say $5 000 worth each week using my credit card. Shares tend to hold their value reasonably well and all I need to do is make enough profit to pay for the brokerage and sell them quickly enough that I'm not paying interest on the credit card. Or find something similar to generate turnover with low risk. Maybe I earn points by simply using my credit card for a cash advance. Move money out and move it back immediately and I earn 5 000 TR points without paying interest. Do that once a week and I get a free trip to London. Or wherever.

This train of thought got started because when I checked my TR points, I found that I could have traded them in for something like an iPod Shuffle, worth about $AUS150. That makes a return flight to London worth six iPod Shuffles or about $AUS900 equivalent, which is a bargain.

I'll have to check on the rules for TR points, but maybe I'm onto something here.

Comments

[resqgeek]

Of course this is the kind of reasoning that causes nightmares for the executives at the credit card companies. They need people to actually buy things and pay interest in order to make money. My wife and I also have habits that make the credit card reps shudder. We charge almost everything, and even take out cash as change on our grocery purchases, but then we pay everything off before the end of the grace period, so we pay zero interest. When a solictor tries to sign us up for a new card using a low interest rate, we laugh at them. We're more interested in the annual fee (preferably none) and the rewards program.

[thebiblioholic.livejournal.com]

I've been using my Amazon.com credit card for most everything. For every $2500 of random purchases (or $833 if spent at Amazon), I get a $25 gift certificate. Getting "cash" back seemed more useful to me than airline awards. Too much fine print on the airline awards about expirations, blackout dates, etc.

Careful with cash advances. My credit cards start charging an outrageous rate of interest from the moment you get the cash, unlike the 20-25 day grace period on purchases.

Like Resqgeek, I have yet to pay interest on my credit cards. I only spend what I have, and pay off the bills when due. I can't believe some of the ridiculous rates these days. They try to hook you with zero or low interest rates, then jack it up to nearly 20-25% after a while. I think credit card companies are the legalized loan sharks. I thought there were laws against usury, but they seem to get by.

[whytraven.livejournal.com]

That's what I've started doing. Since I realized that the last four flights I took were with United, and I like them, I signed up for their credit card, and now run everything through the same card. The idea is to pay the balance off every month in full. D. puts his expenses on the card and they get reimbursed. I am finding that it's much easier to keep track of everything.

[mattod.livejournal.com]

hey! I picked up your book that you left in the ANU cafeteria!

i am reading it, which as you said on bookcrossing.com that you didnt.

a pity, it seems slightly humourus.
Thanks!

[mattod.livejournal.com]

by the way, i happened to see you are a friend of a friend of mine here on LJ

wow.. 6 degrees~!

[skyring.livejournal.com]

Canberra's a small place!

Not too sure how the book came to be in the ANU cafeteria - I haven't been there for a long while!