A couple years ago I was just a regular credit card consumer. I habitually paid my bills in full when they were due each month. On a trip to Texas I read in the airline magazine an offer for a major bank airlines credit card with a 20,000 point bonus points for activating a rewards card. I was concerned because they charged a $60 annual fee which I was not used to shelling out. In any case I decided to pay the cost in hopes of being able to earn/get/obtain enough credits to make it worth my time.

My desire was to earn 100,000 points in two years to pay for One free tickets to the Caribbean. This goal would take some strategy in order to be accomplished. On an Excel Spread sheet I wrote down all of the products that I usually pay for by cash and for which I could purchase with a credit card. I was able to group these expenses into lists. They included groceries, things related to the house, college expenses for my children and travel related costs. I found some good airline credit cardoffers online.

The conclusion I came to was most stores and restaurants will take cards. I was even surprised to discover that you could buy a cup of coffee at Dunkin' Donuts and pay for it with a card. You could use your credit card when you purchase food for the week, make a short trip to a pharmacy or go to the local White Castle and buy a couple of cheese burgers.

I started to use the credit card whenever I went to Kmart to buy hardware for the house or purchase appliances at Sam's Club. I don't think that there are many places that won't take your credit card even for the small or large purchases.

A major area in which you can acquire anywhere from 20,000 to 30,000 air miles is through making your children's college tuition payment through a credit card. One of my children's schools would allow payments to the charged by credit card and the other university wouldn't. I also charged all of the school supplies and booksneeded on campus.

Lastly, transportation and auto repair costs are another way of building to your credit card miles. Every time you go to the gas station, you should charge your fill up. Automotive repair will also earn you many airline miles.

What's most pressing here, is that use your plastic for almost anything you buy which you would regularly pay for in cash. This gives you many more airline credit card travel miles that you would normally not have. Looking at it from another point of view, you will need to budget your money in order to pay the card off at the end of each month. It is crazy to have the airline travel credit card and hope to earn miles at the same time paying a tremendous amount of interest which offset those miles. So if you want to fly the world, like I do then sign up for one of those excellent airline credit card reward deals and use the card responsibly and |treat yourself to a nice trip. I do and working on getting points to go to next year!