Should I Save My Air Miles For A Big Trip Or Use Them Everytime?

If you are a frequent flyer you have probably asked yourself whether or not you should use your airline miles every time you fly or save them for one big trip. The easiest way to come to an answer on this is do you like the feeling of having one free trip or a bunch of discounted trips.

If you are a frequent flyer you probably are going through plane tickets every couple weeks. Business class flyers probably travel on a weekly or even daily basis. The air miles you get can rack up pretty fast. If you have your air mile credit card with the airline you fly every time the airline will probably want to see you use them one time instead of all the time. If you use you air miles one time they would have been able to collect more money from you during the time you were saving them up. The money you were paying them goes into a savings account in which they earn interest off of you.

Why would you ever want to give a company your money up front to get something in the future? You wouldn’t. The best thing to do would be to use your airline miles every time you fly. It does not matter if the rewards you earned pay for 8% or 12% of the ticket. What you did was save yourself money out of your pocket. By doing so you can now put that 8% -12% you saved off of air fare and put it in your savings account. Airline miles should be treated just lock buying stock in a company. The air miles are not worth anything until you cash them in. So you better start getting in the habit of cashing them in every time you buy a plane ticket. Do not wait until you save up enough so you have a free ticket. During that time you could have been putting all of that extra money into a savings account earning you more interest.

Hopefully you are in a good habit of paying off your entire credit card balance every month. If you do not then those airline miles are wasted. Most airline credit cards come with interest rates in the 12% to 22% range. You earn one point or 1 mile for every dollar you spend. What’s the point about getting excited about earning air miles if you are paying so much more for them in interest. Its almost like you paid 10% more for that “free air fare” your air miles earned you.

Once you understand how important it is to cash them in every time you will be one step ahead of everybody. The airlines hope you keep on banking them away for your yearly vacation. Little did you know the airlines can tell you when and where you can use your airline miles. If you can use them now, then use them. It would be a real pain in the butt to see those air miles get thrown to the wayside if the airline says you can’t use them when you want to. What happens if that annual vacation gets passed up on this year. Work gets in the way or you just can’t make it. Some airlines have restrictions as to how long you can save them for. Most major airlines will only let you save airline miles up for two years. After that time it becomes a “use them or lose them” guideline.

There is an old saying that is commonly used to describe a situation like when to use you air miles. “One in the hand is better than two in the bush.” You should use this mentality when you travel. If you have the air miles and plane to fly, then you need to use the air miles every time. Not using them until you earned enough for a free ticket is silly.