“Hi, I was doing some research on the american advantage miles and ran across your website. I was just wondering what it actually means to have lifetime gold status. Do you get benefits, discounts, etc? I have personally racked up alot of miles by churning through the citi cards just to get free flights. I was never aware that they kept track of the total accumulated over the lifetime of the account. Anyway, good luck if you are still trying to get there!! ”

- Derek C

I replied with:

It’s an unpublished benefit that once you reach 1 million miles on American Airlines you get lifetime Gold Status and lifetime Platinum status at two million miles. AA is the only airline I know of that counts all miles earned regardless of source although this could change at any time or could have changed at any time. I’m not actively pursuing the million miles at the moment by churning the citi cards because I enjoy the big credit lines but I did accumulate around 100,000 miles this year through credit card charges alone.

For the benefits of each status check the official AAdvantage site.

I’m always happy to answer questions that are sent in. One of the reasons I’m not actively pursuing million mile status on AAdvantage is that I figure with just continued credit card usage and occasional flights I’ll hit that million mile mark sometime in the future. The future of the unpublished benefit and American Airlines itself is uncertain so I’ll just continue to earn miles and use them like I would with any other airline.

I guess I should have been more clear in the original post. Generally, margin interest calculated mostly depends on your broker. Most brokers should charge interest the following way:

(interest rate/365 days)*(amount being borrowed)*(number of days borrowing funds)

At 7% for $3000 you get (0.07/365)*($3000)*(days). You’ll only pay 7% exactly if you hold onto the loan for 1 year. If you’re daytrading the interest charge is minimal. As long as your holdings beat 7% annually, you “win” in the sense that you came out ahead using someone else’s money.

I would like to know more about the optional “balance transfer request” in the application for the Bank of America WorldPoints™ Platinum Plus™ MasterCard® Credit Card. This is the card with the $50 bonus and the iPod Nano. I like your game plan. You said you would initiate a balance transfer of $2,000 and get it direct deposited to a high yield savings account like Emigrant Direct. (I will use my ING account.) Do you have to make this transfer upon applying for the card, or do you do this at some later time when you have already received your card? All the application asks for is the amount to be transfered, who the check should be made out to, and the account #. Do I just put the account number for my ING savings account there? Will it work? Is it direct deposited or do I receive a hardcopy check that I must mail to ING to make the deposit?

There are 2 ways that I know of to get money out of a balance transfer:

1. Generally citi cards allow you to have a negative balance, meaning they owe you money. So let’s say I have a $0 balance on my Citi Dividend card. I do a balance transfer from BoA for $2,000 (3% fee) to my Citi card. My balance at Citi will now be -$2000 and my balance at BoA will be $2060 (3% BT fee). I simply log onto my account online at Citi and request a check for my negative balance since they owe me money.

2. Some CC companies allow a transfer of money straight to your bank account if you can provide the account number and routing number. When I got an MBNA card a couple months ago and called the number to activate, the CSR gave me this option. If not, try asking for it. If transferring money directly to your bank account isn’t an option, then you’ll have to use option #1.