Base and Bonus Air Miles

So...just to give myself some idea of what I need to be doing in order to reach my goal of 3 'free' tickets for a trip to the sunny south next year I have calculated what I am hoping to accumulate in both base and bonus air miles.

I am hoping that I can purchase around $1000 a month on my AMEX card. I think that that is an attainable goal because I usually budget around $1600 a month on my Visa aerogold. Given that AMEX is not accepted as much as Visa is, I think $600 a month less is realistic.

So, if I do manage to average around $1000 a month on my air miles AMEX card, that translates into 600 base air miles a year. I also hope to collect 30 airmiles a month from the air miles toolbar alone which translates into 360 a year. So in base miles I will have 960 air miles

That means the remainder of my air miles for our trips in 2011 will have to come from these bonus offers. Each free trip costs 2675 air miles, therefore we need 8025 air miles to reach the goal of 3 free trips. We currently have 2647 miles, so we actually need 5378 air miles within the next year to reach the ultimate goal. Now...dividing that number by 52 weeks means that we have to earn on average 103 bonus air miles each week.

That's a little steep, and may not be attainable. May have to look into the platinum AMEX card that they are currently offering until March 14. It costs $50 a year...which is the bad side of it...but there are a few positive things about it. You get 250 air miles on approval and 150 more when you spend $1000 on your card in the first 3 months. PLUS it would mean we would get 1 air mile for every $10 at Lawton's AND Sobey's, and 1 air mile for every $15 everywhere else. So...that would mean over 200 more base miles in a year (it's hard to count the actual number because I don't know how much of the $1000/month will be spent at Lawton's and Sobey's)...plus the bonus 400. So for $50 we get over 600 more air miles. I think I will probably apply for this card.