When Does a Mile Not Equal a Mile?

The biggest misnomer we'd like to clear up is the term "mile" or "point". It's forgivable if you believe that when you earn a 50,000 mile bonus, you're able to fly that many miles. Unfortunately this is not the case. (If that was true, you could fly around the world twice with that single sign-up bonus.)

The terms "mile" and "point" are interchangeable and it just depends on which reward program you're talking about. The key to understanding the term is to think of miles/points as a currency, and not distance. If miles/points are a currency, how much are they worth?

Vanilla Cards - A Hard to Find Treasure

Vanilla Reload Network cards are part of the Vanilla Ink Bold strategy. These are sometimes tricky to find due to a couple reasons:

• In larger cities you have competition of other people trying to buy them out.
• Some of the stores will have them but will only allow a cash transaction

Redeeming Your Points (Part 1): Introduction and Southwest Airlines

You've signed up for a credit card, completed the promo to earn the bonus and you are now ready to unleash the point beast to do your bidding and spirit you to faraway lands.

Whether that point beast is a demure little thing that makes it easy for you to plan your trip or a too-high of a level Pokémon that ignores you when you need it most (I'm looking at you, Charizard!), is completely dependent on the program from which you are redeeming.

Some are fantastically user-friendly and easy to redeem while some are notorious for their limited seats/schedule.

This is the first of a multi-part series on point redemption; this post will focus specifically on my experiences with Southwest Airlines.

What's More Luxurious Than Showering On A Plane?

How about that shower having heated floors?

One Mile at a Time is a blog I check at least twice a day. He just flew to Dubai in suite class on Emirates. No, not business class. And no, not even first class. Suite class.

I need to get myself into one of these. Check it out now, since he's updating his blog right now. On the plane. While staring at a reflection of his smug face on a built in vanity mirror.

Vanilla Ink Bold

Ladies and Gentlemen, how would you like to travel business class to Europe or Asia round trip for $300-$400 dollars? Yes, the price of a cross country domestic flight in economy could get you a much better vacation, but where's the fun in that? This system takes a little reading to understand, a little more work then other deals, but in the end it is easier than it sounds and well worth the trouble. 3 steps to follow!

Plastic Balling: Increasing Your Credit Score through Churning

In our Credit Basics section we have described how your score is calculated by lenders. After being asked, "Doesn't opening and closing credit cards negatively affect your score?" it dawned on me that we have not fully explained how we use this game to not only keep our scores stable, but earn the status of what my old roommate called "Plastic baller"!

Chase Ink Bold

The Chase Ink Bold is a business charge card that is the keystone card in the Vanilla Ink Bold strategy. The benefits for this card are:

• The current promotion is 50k Chase Ultimate Rewards (UR) points after you spend $5,000 in the first 3 months. 
• Normally, the promo is a spend of $10,000 in three months, so get it now!
• 50k UR points are basically worth ~$500, but you can always find more efficient ways of spending the points.
• 5x points per dollar spent at office stores or on utilities like cell phone/landlines, internet and cable.
• 2x points for dining and gas. 1 point per dollar for everything else.

If used correctly, you can earn a crazy amount of UR points that can be used on various airlines and hotels.