Your approach to travel awards

[bean1970]

my CC gives me points to use on all kinds of stuff. i have used them for travel, gift cards, set of kitchen pots, rental car and I can get cash back as an option for the points.  i like that flexibility.  That said, because my son travels A LOT...all of us have registered accounts with nearly every airline, hotel and car rental agency (not credit cards...just the preferred member accounts). I use these up when I can.  we have millions (yes i said millions) of hilton honors points...i have been starting to widdle away at those. you know it is bad when you actually get a holiday card from Hilton......

[StarTrekDoc]

You may want to expand on the southwest cards to get the companion pass since you travel with four. With three cards per person and timing it right, you can have nearly continual coverage with it and plenty of points on bonuses alone to fund flughts. And Chase ultimate as backup transfers to swa.

We then use Hyatt place since it has two queens and a sofa bed for the four of us and breakfast too. Hyatt card like you have and again Chase Sapphire and ink to funnel additional points.

We used to be huge spg fans but moving away from them right now for hotel stays with the loss of the business card club access upcoming. Still will keep it for the point transfer bonuses though that Chase ultimate doesn't cover adequately.

One other thing not mentioned since I see american in there. British airways avios can be highly useful for direct hauls. Shame aa isn't strong out of San Diego. Cause we're million milers from the years back on spend credits ????

[radonc23]

It's a lot of time, but can be useful and save substantial amounts of money, particularly in this specific case - long haul nonstop flights.

For example, from major hubs, it's much more costly to take a nonstop flight to Japan from DC (my hub). If I want to take the IAD to NRT, that routinely costs $2100 to $2300 for the roundtrip flight (almost any time of the year), because it's the only flight. If you use your Chase Saph Reserve points, you get 1.5x, so it would cost 140,000 to 150,000 points. But, because United is partners with ANA, that same flight utilizing United points is 70,000 round trip for each ticket. For the two us, we spent a cash value of $2100 to get $4200 worth of flights. To me, that's a good deal and it costs me very little time/energy to do that.

This works for Hawaii (book a United flight through Singapore's program), through Korean airlines to go to Seoul and various other places in Asia. It's not as valuable for Europe, but similar quirks happen - for whatever reason, the nonstop flight may be significantly more (even for a hub airport like Munich or Amsterdam or London). So, if you use points, it can be quite valuable.

It's also pretty good booking hotels from Chase's program, b/c at 1.5x, you're getting a nice deal.

If you have the time/energy, it's can be worth "nerding out" on The Points Guy or similar websites. Even if you have specific questions like "how do I use points to go to ___", they will have articles showing you possible ways to do it.

The real value is business class/first class (in terms of points -> dollars benefit), but I'd rather have more 2-3x more coach flights than a business class flight (although I'm jealous every time I walk past first class).

[PhysicianOnFIRE]

We're on our third would-have-been-expensive trip in the last six months, all of which were nearly-free on American Airlines with bonus miles from Citi cards. Took the family of four to Guanajuato, Mexico, Hawaii, and now Honduras. 11 of the flights booked with miles and 1 with CME money.

I created a spreadsheet highlighting some of the best cards that is designed to help me better track which cards I have, what the perks are, when the renewal date is up, etc... and of course, wrote a post on making travel rewards simple. The spreadsheet is attached.

Credit Cards for People Who Love Travel and Money

[artemis]

I love my frequent flyer miles and hotel points; over the years they've saved me significant money  and spared me some real discomfort (flying trans-Pacific in Economy Class is not fun; going in business class actually makes the trip a pleasure).  But it's getting harder to redeem miles for good tickets, so i think a lot of people will find a straight-up 2% cash back card is the way to go.  Not as potentially lucrative, perhaps, but a lot less work!

[Arkad]

I use my points to buy tickets for my kids usually.  I pay for mine as it helps increase my status with the carrier I use most.  While it may be a bit of a hassle to use points compared to just buying them, it makes me recall a quote by Paul Newman in The Color of Money when he says "Money won is twice as sweet as money earned".  I feel the same way about flying using hacks/points.

[VagabondMD]

Follow up to my previous post. I did end up using the 300,000 Chase Ultimate Reeards points and booked 3 RT flights to London over spring break (woo how) on Virgin Atlantic (operated by Delta). There was a small balance to pay, about $200, as I did not have enough points to completely cover all three flights.

[Jenn]

Easy for me- tiny town with one airline serving us. And usually buying from them is smartest way, and I use my gold AMX card to buy tickets anyway. SO I sign in, make my reservation, and they ask 'paying with miles or $?' and I use miles if I have enough for the schedule I want. Otherwise rack up more points paying with $ for the trip.

Why not take the time when you're likely to have luck (non busy travel holiday travel) to get your ticket via the miles program? WOrse case scenario you wasted 10 minutes. Best, you save a few $1000 and prevent losing the miles used.

[eyeballboy]

Redeeming miles through airlines is a major hassle.  Capital One gives 2% back for travel.  You purchase whatever travel you want on any airline, any hotel and then once it posts to your credit card statement, you use the purchase eraser to use the miles to give you the credit back.  No black outs, no specific airline/hotel, you buy the best deal/airline/hotel whenever you want and Capital One reimburses you with your accrued points.  Easy-peasy!  Hands down the best way to do it IMO.

[Mminter]

My opinion:

 

Pick a credit card sponsored by an airline company, for example Southwest credit card. It is very easy to redeem and accumulate points.

I had other cards that were a "pain" to redeem and so far I am happy with this one. They automatically transfer your points to your airline company(Southwest in this case)  so when you buy you go to the airline company and its right there all your points.

 

 

[Miss Bonnie MD]

treesrock wrote:

Chase Reserve user here, was previously using a Chase Sapphire Preferred prior to the Reserve coming out.  I’m surprised to hear people using this card’s points to book through the Chase portal, I’ve always found that the points are worth much more when transferring to Chase travel partners, particularly United and Southwest.

The point transfer one-to-one, and occur instantly, so if you see a flight that is cheap on the points you can immediately transfer the points and book.  Takes a little more work but you save WAY more money this way.  But then again, the Chase portal is super easy, plus you then have Chase travel support in case anything goes wrong.  But I personally transfer to the travel partners.  I’ve paid for numerous round trip flights with points alone using this method.

But to respond to the OP, based on your current use of points, I think you would be MUCH better off using a cash back card, since you don’t seem motivated to “travel-hack”.  It takes a lot of effort and unless you enjoy it, its not worth it and you might as well make things easy on yourself and mindlessly get cash back.

Click to expand...

it just never worked out for me to xfer points. Can only really do certain airlines too.

[hightower]

Molecularblonde wrote:

hightower wrote:

I take advantage of new card bonus offers like the Chase Sapphire rewards card I got earlier this year (I got the big 100k bonus points and it paid for a big chunk of our trip to Hawaii).  I always take the cash back option for that card if I use it because it pays 1.5%.  My wife is going to use a new sapphire card to pay for our house painting project this month.  We’ll get $500 cash back for using it one time and then we’ll never use it again.  So, I try to look for opportunities like that. 

Click to expand…

StarTrekDoc wrote:

 

Choose your preferred airline and it’ll get you mostly there.  Couple that transfer with some additional Sapphire transfers to United you have definitely a special vacation memory on hand with a week Ritz, First Class United (or any of its partners — even better), and Park Hyatt (via Chase points) to add a quick

I’m not certain if I should post this in a separate thread, as I do not want to detract from the OP’s questions….

 

Currently we have two credits cards. A Chase United Mileage Plus MC and an American Express Delta Skymiles card. As someone else said, we too have several hundred miles on both. Physician burn out is a reality and so I try to use the Mike’s as incentive to travel.  But we never seem to get any upgrades.

For day-to-day purchases, (gas, groceries, Amazon) I’m using our Wells Fargo debit card. Is there any product that is a debit card that offers cash-back or any other incentives for the user?

 

Also, is the the Chase Saphire card a better product than my current Chase Mileage Plus card? And, if so, can I switch our miles to that from the current Chase card?

Hightower had written above that. It’s funny, we never get bumped up to first class or anything like that with the Delta miles card.

Thank you in advance.

MB

Click to expand...

I should have clarified, we spend enough on that card to get us to the "Silver Medallion" status.  That is what gets us the free upgrades.

[RogueDadMD]

I'm not intense about the travel hacking, but I have done it many times and involved my wife (who was NOT supportive of the concept at the beginning).

Our everyday card is the Citi Doublecash -- 2% cash back on any purchase.

To make it easy for her, when we're trying to get reward bonuses on a card, I basically hand her the card and tell her to use for every purchase, then when we hit whatever threshold I take it back and she goes back to using the Citi card.  We've done this for multiple cards and as I've made it easy for her she's okay with it (still can't say she is supportive, but she's no longer negative).  It's also saved us tons of money (Chase points, AmEx, points, SWA points and companion pass) with almost no effort.

Unless you are such a high earner that you really don't have a need to pay attention to expenses at this level (such as WCI and above), it certainly makes sense to do it.  A few thousand dollars a year for a few hours of effort is a pretty good payback -- I don't make that much moonlighting, and even if I did, it's less stressful to screw around reading The Points Guy website and update a basic Excel document I use to track this stuff than to pull extra shifts in the ER.

I work extra ER shifts on occasion to pay for things such as fancy vacations without stressing the regular monthly budget.  If I am going to do that than it's only logical to instead spend a small fraction of that time credit card churning for the same purpose and for a higher level of reward.  If you're in a work situation where extra money generating opportunities are not available, then this makes even more sense than doing surveys or trying to find some random side hustle.

I've also ended up with small amounts of leftover points or without giant big trips to use them on -- I've either just let them sit knowing eventually I can use them or just redeemed them for whatever is available.  Just because a point sometimes ends up worth less than 2 cents (the 2% cashback equivalent from my regular card) doesn't mean you shouldn't use it.

[VagabondMD]

treesrock wrote:

Vagabond MD wrote:

Thanks for all of the responses.

I do use a cash back card (Fidelity) for the majority of my regular credit card functions. The cash reward (2%) gets automatically credited to my Fidelity brokerage account on a monthly basis.

I use Ally credit card (2.2% cash back for gas and groceries) and the Chase Amazon (5% back toward future Amazon purchases).

I was using the Chase Freedom card for the rotating (but limited) 5% back categories, but keeping track of all of this has gotten out of hand and particularly annoying for my wife, who always seemed to be using the wrong card at the wrong time. I have left her with two cards, Ally (Gas and groceries, written in Sharpie on the card ) and Fidelity (everything else).

I have been using the Chase Sapphire Reserve card, primarily for travel and occasionally for dining, and have accumulated nearly 300,000 or so points. Based on what I am reading here, I will probably use the points to purchase two RT flights to London over spring break ($3000 value, based on current pricing) and should have some points left over for other stuff.

I also have Marriott points (over 300,000) which I have been saving/hoarding for a special vacation, but I might as well start spending those down, too, when the occasion arises.

Click to expand…

Vagabond I suggest you check prices on your flight using points on United and British Airways, might be a better deal, might not be.  But worth a look.

Click to expand...

I did this, and it confirmed my previous experience and overall impression. The number of United Mileage Plus points for the RT spring break London trip for the preferred date/time is more than going through Chase (130,000 vs. 107,000) and if we flex on the time, slightly better on United (95,000 vs. 107,000). If we were not constrained by school vacations and such, you can go as low as 60,000 RT through United Mileage Plus, but we are so we can't.

We generally have better connections and options flying Delta, compared to United, but unfortunately Delta is not a partner with Chase. Also, Delta is not known to rough up docs nearly as much as United is.

[Molecularblonde]

hightower wrote:

I take advantage of new card bonus offers like the Chase Sapphire rewards card I got earlier this year (I got the big 100k bonus points and it paid for a big chunk of our trip to Hawaii).  I always take the cash back option for that card if I use it because it pays 1.5%.  My wife is going to use a new sapphire card to pay for our house painting project this month.  We’ll get $500 cash back for using it one time and then we’ll never use it again.  So, I try to look for opportunities like that.

Click to expand...

StarTrekDoc wrote:

 

Choose your preferred airline and it’ll get you mostly there.  Couple that transfer with some additional Sapphire transfers to United you have definitely a special vacation memory on hand with a week Ritz, First Class United (or any of its partners — even better), and Park Hyatt (via Chase points) to add a quick

I'm not certain if I should post this in a separate thread, as I do not want to detract from the OP's questions....

 

Currently we have two credits cards. A Chase United Mileage Plus MC and an American Express Delta Skymiles card. As someone else said, we too have several hundred miles on both. Physician burn out is a reality and so I try to use the Mike's as incentive to travel.  But we never seem to get any upgrades.

For day-to-day purchases, (gas, groceries, Amazon) I'm using our Wells Fargo debit card. Is there any product that is a debit card that offers cash-back or any other incentives for the user?

 

Also, is the the Chase Saphire card a better product than my current Chase Mileage Plus card? And, if so, can I switch our miles to that from the current Chase card?

Hightower had written above that. It's funny, we never get bumped up to first class or anything like that with the Delta miles card.

Thank you in advance.

MB