How to Maximize Your American Airlines Miles Account

If you have an American Airlines miles account and you’re saving up for that dream trip to Hawaii (35,000 miles per ticket from anywhere in the continental U.S., 70,000 per ticket if you want to fly first class), I can help you get the most out of your dollars and earn miles for most of the things you are doing already.

The first and most obvious rule is to submit your miles account number each and every time you fly. Most everyone knows that that is how you earn those miles. But there are more tricks that you can apply to really bulk up your miles numbers.

The first thing you should do is to apply for the American Airlines AAdvantage Citibank Mastercard. Every dollar you spend with this card will equal one mile in your account, and you’ll get 12,500 miles just for signing up. You can apply on line at www.aa.com, or you can call AAdvantage Citibank at 1-888-766-2484. Now, once you’ve got that card, don’t put it away. The card is no longer a credit card, this card is now your checking account. Put everything you purchase or pay for on it, but never carry a balance. The miles only apply to purchases, not past balances, so carrying a balance will not help you in any way, and you’ll end up paying the current APR. We are able to pay for pretty much everything except our rent and payments to other credit card accounts with the card (the credit industry frowns on paying off one debt with another). Each time we use it, we write the purchase into our register, just as if we’d used a check. Then at the end of each month we reconcile the register with our credit card statement to ensure that we did not miss anything, and then we send a check off for the entire amount.