Bunked by the magic plastic card

Here's a question: If a frequent flier mileage credit card offers you $50 off a ticket for signing up, is it worth it?

My former professional life involved these questions on a regular basis. The moral is almost always that the catches make the deals not worth it.

But I anticipate a LOT of travel in the next year so I read the finest print and accepted this offer. With a full awareness that the $50 annual fee would immediately offset the saved $ from my first ticket.

So now I have the card, and yes the print gets even finer. No APR interest charged on balance transfers, that's good. Oh, wait, there's a "finance charge" for transfers of 3%, capped at $50. If I transfer $2000 (which I'm pleased to say I can't do) the fee is $50. But at least I get a FF mile for every dollar transferred so that helps right? Well, cashing them in for a ticket takes 25,000 miles, so in this scheme 25k miles are probably worth about $300 assuming I can get on the flight I want, which makes the cash-munny value of each mile-dollar transferred about a penny. So, I pay $50 to earn 2000 miles, worth about $20. The only way transferring balances is worthwhile is if you transfer so many the finance charge is mitigated. To break even I have to transfer $5000 and pay it off before the robust interest rate kicks in. This balance transfer offer is the kind of dog that should be kicked for looking cute but wanting to bite your hand.

Is the card a deal? Jury is out. I get to try it free for a year. I don't spend that much regularly on credit so it will remain to be seen if tickets purchased are a clincher and can make this work in my favor. I'm no longer optimistic.

And if you stopped reading before you go to this point your probably the kind of consumer that fine print printers make money off of. Not that you know it.