Airmiles......

So, I've been doing the airmiles thing for a few years now and FINALLY have enough for our family to go on a little trip. (Nanaimo for Christmas) Anyhoo...I've recently started getting obsessive about airmiles...I realized we weren't accumulating them nearly fast enough and am finally learning the air miles game.

1) I upgraded our mastercard to gold (1 mile for every $15 you spend. The gold card also allows you to redeem flights for 80% of the regular airmiles cost. The problem is...the gold card costs $90 a year. I could never justify if before, but realized if I upgraded the card I would end up saving over $200 on our flight this year alone...plus easily gain well over $90 each year worth of airmiles....so it actually is worth it. If you consider...one air mile is worth thirty cents...you can figure out if it's worth it for you.

2) Here's a neat site I found. I'm NOT a safeway shopper.....BUT they do have awesome airmiles deals every week. This site calculates which airmiles deals are the best for the week. So, we buy whatever the best air mile deal is of the week (if it's something we would actually use or eat).
http://www.bestairmiledeals.com/

I think if I keep it up should be able to go on a trip (paid for by airmiles) once a year or so... :) We've accumulated 500 airmiles this month alone....and haven't really gone too far out of our way.

Do you have any air miles tricks?