CC and free millages

You only pay interest if you don't pay the balance off at the end of the month. That goes foe all credit cards, not just miles rewards cards. On the other hand, if you take a cash advance from your credit card the interest starts immediately.

You can get an amex card and put absolutely everything that you can on it... utilities, food, gas, almost everything you need to pay...then you just pay it off at the end of the month with no interest and the miles you accumulate can be used on any airline as well as for just part of a ticket. Some cards gold and silver give 2 or 3 x for certain purchases. For every 10,000 miles you get $100 off your ticket, or if you have enough for a whole free ticket with an airline you can transfer enough miles for a nominal fee and use them that way... It's a bit of a game and you have to keep track, but it really pays off sometimes.

Lou, Andrea's comment above is correct. Of course, that only tells a teeny, tiny, very small part of what one needs to know if you want to play the credit card/frequent flyer game successfully. As well-meaning as folks here on Rick's website are, I see misleading, incomplete, and sometimes just plain flat-out wrong information on this specific subject posted here regularly. This forum is a wonderful resource for good, reliable, insightful info on travel to Europe - probably the best source there is for that info. However, it's not the best place to learn about how to be successful in the frequent flyer miles game. For that, get yourself over to flyertalk (Google it) and be prepared to invest some time learning the tricks of the trade. It's a bit complicated, but worth becoming educated with the way it works. My wife and I have done virtually all our international travel over the past 10-15 years using dozens of "free" flights using miles (almost all of them from credit cards). We've gone to a large chunk of the world, many times, and are sitting on enough miles in the bank for our next 3 trips to Europe and Asia. But you need to learn how the game is played and how to avoid the pitfalls - if you don't, you'll never get to use your miles and/or will waste them needlessly - which is most people's experience. You can do it - but you need to learn how it works (the airlines deliberately make it difficult for you, so you need to get smart first). Good luck.

And as you learn about this, please keep in mind that the miles earned are not "FREE". They are a type of cashback bonus that on many cards is simply 1%-2%-35 and for some quarters of the year on certain purchases 5% cash back (subject to limitations on annual and quarterly amounts) but paid in miles, with various restrictions. In order to really figure this out, you need to determine how much you are spending on the credit card, how much you will earn in miles, and what the worth of those miles is, compared to the straightforward 1-5% cashback that you can get.
And different cards have different cashback deals. As an example I am always seeing 2% on gas and groceries from one card, and 2% on restuarants on another. But then a third card ahs 5% gas and restaurants this coming quarter, followed by 5% on airline tickets in October (albeit limited to totals of $1500 in those categories that quarter). You need to do some homework to see how to win at this game, there is no one solution, it depends on the user.. And don't forget, if your card charges an annual fee the equation is immediately changed.

Thank you all! mmmm..., i need to educate myself :)

Lou ... you don't sound stupid. A lot of people have gotten themselves in a lot of trouble using credit cards. So it is smart of you to question, and to study them carefully, before you ever apply for one.
My personal rule of thumb is to never carry a balance. I never charge anything that I can't fully pay off at the end of the month. And I never pay annual fees. There are plenty of cards with no annual fees that will give you frequent flyer miles, or points that can be converted to mileage or cash. Once you are comfortable with using credit cards, and are sure that you have the self-discipline to use them wisely, and have time to research the various programs and frequent flyer websites, THEN you could start playing the frequent flyer game.

I agree with Charlene. As you are a full time student and you have never used a credit card, you need to know how you handle credit. Without a full time job, are you able to pay off your credit card each month to avoid paying interest if you are charging everything to one card in an effort to get "free" miles? What's your backup plan if you have an unanticipated expense - like major car repairs or medical bills not covered by your insurance company? Would you still have enough money in your bank account to pay off your monthly credit card bill? Many of the special offers to earn extra miles on certain purchases are offered to people who have Gold or Platinum credit cards and if you don't have an established credit history with a decent credit score, it's unlikely you would be offered a gold card right off the bat. And the other poster is correct - the miles are anything but "free". As an example, if it takes 60,000 miles to earn a free ticket and you sign up for a credit card that will give you 20,000 miles just for enrolling in their program and then gives you 2 miles for every $1 you charge, that's still $20,000 you need to spend before you get that ticket. For some people it's probably very easy to charge $1600/month to their credit card and stockpile miles, but they probably aren't grad students trying to pay off student loans. Start working on establishing a solid credit history because you'll need it since many companies run credit checks on potential employees and it will help if you need to rent an apartment or buy a new car at some point after you graduate. After that, you can figure out which perks program would work best for you based on what you can pay off each month - miles, cash back, points, rewards, etc.

Thank you all for your help, it is a blessing to have your inputs. Defiantly I will not signup for a CC without understanding it well...and that is not going to be anytime soon. Yet, I'm glad that I'm learning about CC and free millage stuff now :)

Well, David sparked me to test how stupid I am regarding current credit cards in hand, especially given almost no exposure to the travel website he mentioned. Feeling OK now, as my two cards are in the "current top credit cards" list. Whew! Probably just danged lucky though. Hoping other folks lingering on this website pack the proper credit cards.

Alright, so here's are the basics. Since you haven't dealt with CC before, we have to take a step back and look at the credit card itself before looking at mileage cards. Credit cards are designed to get your money. They give you a lovely amount of credit, but they expect their cut and you have to be careful when you are getting started. I know you know it's not free money, but you have to be careful. The banks, in general, are not your friend. :)
Credit cards have a couple different variables. The three key variables that immediately jump out are credit limit, APR, and annual fee. The annual fee is the price you pay just to have the card itself. The APR is the percentage, on an annual basis, that you pay on whatever balance you have on the card. The credit limit is how much you can spend. That's the fundamentals. Your credit affects both your APR and your credit limit, as well as the cards that you can get.

On top of this, the banks try and make their cards look attractive to you. That's why they have all the special promos and things like the mileage plan, however if you are not careful these benefits are less than the costs. That's the way the bank wants it, after all. Generally, the more rewards a card has the higher the APR. Mileage cards, for example, have APRs that are up near 17-19%. A good credit card with no rewards will have APRs near 8-10%.
Now, why sign up for a mileage card or any other reward card? Because you're making a bet that you can spend responsibly and avoid the fees that you agree to with the card and that you'll be able to redeem for an award (having a billion points means nothing if you can't get anything for them!). The key tricks here are sign up bonuses (which are generally worth about $100-200), "churn" which is cancelling a card after 9-10 months and opening a new card to avoid the annual fee, and paying on time to avoid the APR.

thank you Nicholas!! very good information...

Nicholas writes, "The banks, in general, are not your friend. :)" Neither is that nice young teller, encouraging you to get overdraft protection, or the mileage card, etc. That is their job-to sell you products. They often receive incentives for doing so. It used to be that you could get some decent financial advice from your banker. You still may. But the employee's motivation is not usually in your best interest.

David! Ummm, want to give the rest of us a few tips? I'm moving from Germany soon to Texas, but will NEED to come back here every year or so....

Elaine - I've already given you the most important tips: 1. Don't expect to find complete, accurate information here. Not because people here are dumb or lazy or mean, it's just that the subject matter is too complex and arcane to really address adequately here (and people here would quickly tire of all the pertinent details if anyone tried). This forum, great as it is for info on European travel, is a poor source of information on the FF game. 2. Go to where the complete, accurate information can be found (flyertalk). It's a wealth of information and useful links. 3. Invest some time learning the game, and staying on top of the details of its constantly changing landscape. Some things change every day. You don't need to be obsessive and dedicate your life to tracking it all (although some people clearly are and do) but it will require some of your time to get up to speed and understand how to make it work for you, and you need to be patient - take the long view. Don't overlook details. Most of what's been posted previously in this thread is correct, but it's also very incomplete. What's good for me or Larry or Nicholas may not be good for you - there are a lot of variables and if you're going to play and win, you simply have to spend some time learning how it works. Reading a few posts here will not equip you for success. You have to "do the work".

Maybe I am missing the boat here, but I have gone to flyertalk a number of times and find it very confusing, less than helpful and set up in a way I do not understand. There is just way too much info for it to be useful to me. I don't think people here would be bored with some concise information...as most of us are on a budget... and as far as inaccurate information, if you know something to be incorrect it might be helpful to question the logic. (I do use miles frequently, but am always open to ideas on how to use them more effectively)

I too find flyertalk confusing, full of "insider" talk and "cool crowd" stuff, hard to navigate and basically useless to me. But despite my laziness and ignorance, we have managed to fly to Europe on miles, in business class, pretty much whenver we have wanted to (5 times so far), plus numerous domestric trips. So I don't think it is necessary to learn ALL the tricks, just enough to get those tickets. And I didn't learn those tricks on flyertalk or on this board; most came from Fodors or from just working it through my own self.

David - you say to 'get on over to flyertalk'. Can you tell us WHERE to look on that site?

FlyerTalk is a double edged sword. Yes, it is highly technical and you have to learn the lingo, but that lingo is very concise and tells you what you need to know to get some great deals. My best experience with FlyerTalk was flying SEA-KIX (that's Osaka, Japan) for $435 roundtrip. The fare only last two hours, but because of FlyerTalk I went to Japan for $100 more than I paid to get from Seattle to Milwaukee (family... not my favorite destination). If you want minimal jargon, check out http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/mileage-run-deals-372/ and http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/milesbuzz-370/
Those are the two main forums with the deals posted, either the "buzz" on credit card mileage offers or other offers or information on "mileage runs", which is flying somewhere just for the miles (I've only done three mile runs. Once I flew to Boston, bought a magnet in the airport and flew back to Seattle because the ticket was cheap enough and the miles I earned there bumped me over an elite threshold.. NOT something I would recommend for everyone.