Stop Thinking Airline Miles

Every once in a while - which is becoming more than once in awhile, friends ask about which credit cards I'm using to gain points, etc.

They all seem to have been trained to think that "airline miles" are the best credit cards to carry in their wallet. Someone will whip out their Delta Skymiles card for example.


I beg to differ and beg them to switch right now. What's even more painful is to see friends use credit cards that accrue absolutely nothing (plain vanilla mastcard or visa for example). If they own their own business or are doctors, dentists, etc, they have tons of expenses they are charging and get nuttin out of it!

Here's the card I use and recommend: American Express Starwood Card.



There's several benefits which clearly make this better than the plain old miles cards:

• You can redeem miles on most major airlines - not tied to just one airline
• When you redeem 20,000 miles, American Express will give you a bonus 5,000 miles free
• You can redeem miles for tons of other stuff like gift certificates to Sharper Image and other stores.
• Starwood Preferred Guest points are awesome because you can stay at a broad range of hotels from FourPoints to Sheraton to Westin to St. Regis hotels.
• There are NO blackout dates for Starwood hotels. If they have a room available to sell for cash, you can use your points to book that night.
• They have Starwood points package discounts which give you a MUCH better ROI on your points to make it worth % or more of your spending. For example, if you pay $25,000 on your airline miles card, you get 25,000 points, right? That's worth a domestic ticket which is say, $380 (average domestic ticket price according to Associate Press). That's 1.5% value of the $25k you spent. But with Starwood, you can easily get rewards worth 4% or more through their system.