Spending Money To Save Money

A sad Catch-22 tale.  Kleeneses at the ready.

Our neighbor, Anne, told me she is so glad they got an Aadvantage Citi Master Card.  They put everything they bought on it and - viola!  They had enough miles for all four of them (parents and two adult kids) to fly from LAX to Montreal to Dublin and back -- all cosily ensconced in 1st Class.

The imagination can barely imagine how that fueled my competitive spirit!  Which is considerably smaller than, say my laziness is enormous, but I digress.

I already had a Citi MasterCard so I called the nice people there and asked that they shift this card into an Aadvantage card.  They wouldn't do that so I got an entirely new account.

Armed with it, my new battle cry became, "I'll get that!  I want the miles!"  Friends, family and waiters were delighted!  I've never heard as many toasts to my continued good health or as much special treatment from the servers.  "Shall I cut your meat for you, madam?"  "Perhps you would like me to butter your roll?"

I finally spent my way to 62,000 miles.  Discovering that LAX to Las Vegas, round trip for both of us, would cost 50,000 of those richly-spent points, I decided to treat Richie for ur 29th anniversary.

And subsequently spent 45 minutes online, figuring out how to cash in miles, make the system accept the flights I want and then -- MAA (Major American Airline) charged me $160 in "service fees."  This mean that it will be $40 each to fly there and $40 more to fly back -- and killed 50,000 hard-earned miles. 

There's got to be a better way...