How Credit Card Miles Work: You Most know about it

Credit card miles refer to the traveling rewards you get on a number of credit cards when you spend credit. Different credit cards offer different incentives when it comes to miles. However, you’re limited to specific airlines depending on your creditors’ airline partnerships. 

For instance, a typical credit card could award you one mile for each credit unit spent. There’s a minimum number of miles you’re required to earn to be able to travel and the number of miles per air-travel depends on the airline instead of the creditor, in that the airline decides how many miles you need to accrue to take their flight.

A huge misconception among many people is that you can travel the number of miles you have accumulated. Miles earned through credit card spending are not literal miles. It does not work like that and depends on various factors, like your creditor’s airline partner, where you plan to go, travel class, whether or not its peak travel season, and the price of the flight without miles. As an example, given specific factors, you could need anywhere from 25,000 to 100,000 or more credit card miles and they may qualify you for a flight that is 1000 miles of travel depending on the above factors.

How to Get a Credit Card With Miles?

Virtually every major credit card issuer has at-least one credit card with miles in their offers. However, different creditors could have partnerships with different airlines as well as different mile awards for the same level of spending. You’d want to choose the card that is most suited to your preferences. 

The best overall mile rewarding credit card according to Forbes is, Capital One Venture X Rewards Credit Card that provides you a bonus of 75,000 miles if you spend $4000 on your credit line in the first three months. The 75000 miles reward equates to $750 in air travel. Additionally, you get rewarded 10,000 miles every year on the anniversary of you getting the card. The card has an annual fee of $395 and you’d require a credit score of 750-850 to qualify for it. You can apply for it here. 

How to Earn Credit Card Miles?

In a nutshell, you earn miles through spending on your credit card. However, miles are relative to spending. Many creditors exclusify a few domains of spending with higher number of mile rewards to encourage spending there specifically. These could include booking hotels and air-travel itself. The number you earn on other purchases is basically the same. However, cash advances and balance transfers are exempt from mile reward incentives. 

Can You Lose Your Credit Card Miles

Unfortunately, credit card miles are hard to earn but easy to lose, provided you make specific mistakes or are simply out of luck. 

There’s three primary ways you can lose your credit card miles.

1. Getting a Refund

If you earned a number of miles on a purchase you made through a mile rewarding credit card which you later get a refund on, you’d lose the miles you’d earned on the purchase.

2. Missing Credit Bill Payments

Other than incurring late fees as well as higher interest rates, you also risk losing miles on your credit card. It depends on the creditor.

3. Airline Going Out of Business

This one is through no fault of your own but if the airline that is in partnership with your creditor goes bankrupt, all those miles simply become useless, unfortunately.