I’ve recently started to become a points hound and I’m always looking to earn United Airlines miles now. Last year I did the majority of my airline travel with JetBlue and ended the year without much to show for it. I certainly had a few free flights from acquiring miles but you don’t get status, there’s no real perks, and I just wasn’t satisfied with the experience.
This year I’ve made the switch to United in an attempt to get status (at least to Silver), as well as be able to acquire miles that can be used for international travel. If you use the miles acquired to travel domestically you’re selling yourself short.
The United Airlines Miles offer from Fidelity
Once I started looking into ways to get miles I stumbled across an offer from Fidelity. If you switch over to Fidelity for your investments you can earn up to 50,000 miles, almost enough for a round-trip international flight. To look at the details just login to your United account and go to Earn Miles and click Financial Partners.
Now certainly the offer has some catch and that is minimum transfers. There are three tiers that Fidelity and United offer. The first is that if you open an account and transfer $25,000+ you can earn 15,000 United Airlines miles. The second tier is for $50,000+ and earns you 25,000 miles, and the third and advertised tier is $75,000+ and 50,000. Perhaps the argument goes that if you can afford to have $100,000 in liquid assets maybe you don’t need the 50,000 miles, but if you were looking for a new broker anyways then this is definitely a great way for you to earn miles.
Other Ways to Earn United Airlines Miles
I’ve also looked into some other ways to earn miles such as signing up for credit cards, purchasing from partners, or just plain buying miles at a discount. I’m planning to cover these in a future post but this Fidelity offer to earn United Airlines miles caught my eye and I’m planning on taking advantage of it. I don’t have the full $100,000 in liquid assets I’m willing to transfer at the moment, but if I play around with my account balances I may be able to get to that level. Doing an hour or so of work is definitely worth the miles, especially when it’s almost a round-trip international flight to Asia’s worth.
To view the specific offer and potentially take advantage of it yourself go to http://www.fidelity.com/united
About Tom Verskans
Miles and points collector, frequent traveler, and an investment analyst for an alternative asset management firm.
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