Many Of You Can Buy United and American Miles For Less Than 1.4 Cents Apiece

One month into writing this blog, back in June 2002, I explained how you could fly Concorde for $1258.95 by earning miles for magazine purchases. Your cost would be even lower, of course, if you donated the magazines to a non-profit and took a tax deduction.

Inside Flyer was offering Starwood points for subscriptions. Back then Starpoints transferred to Qantas at 1:2 plus transfer bonus (20,000 Starpoints transferred to 50,000 Qantas miles). The Qantas program was still valuable (through 2004) and Concorde was still flying. And they let you fly Concorde for the same points pricing as British Airways first class.

That deal is long gone, but you can still buy magazines, earn lots of miles, and even potentially donate them for a tax deduction (provided it still makes sense for you to itemize under last year’s tax reform).

There are other shopping portals which reward magazines.com spend but none are quite as lucrative right now as these two offers which are like buying miles in either program at 2 cents apiece and getting miles. (HT: Joel G.)

That’s more than either currency is worth however if you’re in a position to leverage this with a tax deduction you may reduce your cost basis by a third and that lowers the price down to a level that’s likely worth it.

Similarly if your business needs magazines — you have a waiting room for instance — then the cost of these miles magazine subscriptions would be a deductible business expense.

More broadly the point is to think about leveraging deals and reducing their cost.

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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Comments

  1. Anyone have experience cancelling subscriptions right after 90 days (hypothetically I hate all my magazines 😉 ?) Terms indicate you’d get to keep all the points from the referring portal and youd’ be refunded for all remaining issues, which seems to generous to be true. In other words, for a 2 year subscription of a monthly magazine, you’d be refunded at least 7/8 of your initial purchase (but likely higher since these magazines often take a few weeks to begin a subscription).

    Just wondering if Cartera (or Magazines.com) has a history of taking back miles or blocking you from future portal usage if you do it too much? I’m sure this is YMMV but any recent data points would be helpful.

  2. Anyone have experience cancelling subscriptions right after 90 days (imagine I hypothetically hate ten different subscriptions after 3 months)? Terms indicate you’d get to keep all the points from the referring portal and youd’ be refunded for all remaining issues, which seems to generous to be true. In other words, for a 2 year subscription of a monthly magazine, you’d be refunded at least 7/8 of your initial purchase (but likely higher since these magazines often take a few weeks to begin a subscription).

    Just wondering if Cartera (or Magazines.com) has a history of taking back miles or blocking you from future portal usage if you do it too much? I’m sure this is YMMV but any recent data points would be helpful.

  3. Not quite sure what “buying miles in either program at 2 cents apiece and getting miles. (HT: Joel G.)” means. Surely buying miles means getting miles? Thx

  4. Just remember that not all magazine subscriptions are eligible for the 50x. In the small print for mileageplusshopping it says:
    “Not eligible on select Magazine Titles including American Patchwork & Quilting, Better Homes & Gardens, Country Gardens, Diabetic Living, Do-It-Yourself, EatingWell, Every Day with Rachael Ray, Family Circle, FamilyFun, Fitness, Martha Stewart Living, Martha Stewart Weddings, Midwest Living, Parents, Siempre Mujer, Successful Farming, Traditional Home, Wood, Fit Pregnancy, Flex, Globe, Men’s Fitness, Muscle & Fitness, National Examiner, Natural Health, OK! Magazine, Shape, Soap Opera Digest, Star and The National Enquirer.”

  5. @Gary – I guess I’m being thick here, but how does a 50 miles per dollar deal become less than 1.4 cents per mile?

  6. Earlier this month I took advantage of an offer to earn 7400 American miles from the Aadvantage AND 5600 Alaska miles from the Alaska MileagePlan shopping portals respectively by subscribing to Motley Fool — a stock advisory services that charges a monthly fee of $19 for their advisory services which are sent to your email address. The terms indicated that I must signed on as subscriber at least for 45 days to be eligible to earn the miles on offer. So, for an outlay of $76 I get to earn 7400 AA miles AND 5600 Alaska miles which were mighty sweet deals as it was the equivalent of acquiring AA miles at 0.51 cents a piece and 0.67 cents a piece for the Alaska miles.

  7. @Christian, I think he might be including the potential value of the tax deduction. What I did a couple of years ago was call a local women’s shelter and ask them if they’d like to receive magazines as a gift. They were delighted and offered several titles they’d be interested in getting. I think it’s time to do that again.

  8. I tried it once..Magazines.com via AA via Cartera..Never got the miles but was subjected to a great run-around by Cartera. After jerking me around for a year, they closed the case. Both AA and Magazines said I was owed the miles. Take screenshots and complain quickly

  9. if you actually receive the miles, .02 is about the same as the .0188 fee for buying them from the airline, but there’s an annual limit on how many miles the airline will sell you.

    I prefer United , even at 110,000 miles , to book LH first because I set expertflyer alerts for space and it’s a lot quicker to book United rather than checking Avianca (which often doesn’t have the first space) or Aeroplan (which has fees that are probably worth paying for the 70,000 mile award but takes a little longer to book).

    I recently got an expert flyer alert as soon as the plane I was flying landed and I had the LH first booked and seats assigned before we got to the gate.

    I’m cognizant of the almost $2200 I’m paying to travel each way, but West Coast to Munich or Frankfurt and beyond is worth spending $4400.. Besides, although I should theoretically value miles I have already at the same price as purchasing new miles, I certainly don’t . In my mind, there’s some discount applicable to existing miles .
    I’ve never checked with Amex to see what the discounted price would be under the IAP or who the carrier would be…..but that might make a difference given the mileage earned.

    As to the magazines, they are not worth much because Amazon often sells 12 months subscriptions for $5 and will let you renew a lot of those…like my Flying or Wired magazine subscriptions. Of course, without the Magazines.com subscriptions I’d never have learned how to crochet a parachute as the plane is going down in an emergency.

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