Masterrocks, you may not be too familiar with airmiles. It is a loyalty program with many partners such as Shell, Safeway, American Express, Mastercard, etc. At Safeway, they have specials almost weekly where you can earn 250 bonus miles by spending $200 in groceries, plus many of the brands will have specials ie 8 kraft product gets 50 miles. It takes our family maybe 2 to 3 years to get 10,000 miles. So with the Mosaic Westjet card we now see our miles go a lot further. The only way it would take spending the kind of money you mentioned is if you only used the credit card and never shopped at an airmiles partner.