There are lots of guides out there that go through the best way to redeem miles and points depending on which airline or credit card program you are looking at. In this post I want to talk specifically about why you should not book flights using flexible points currencies like Chase Ultimate Rewards or American Express Membership Rewards within their travel portals. The topic of points and miles is a massive rabbit hole, and one of the biggest things I try to do in my writing is simplify these largely complex topics.

First, let’s define what flexible points currencies are. Flexible points currencies are those which you earn from everyday credit card spending. The most popular flexible points currencies are Chase Ultimate Rewards, Amex Membership Rewards, Citi Thank You Points, and Capital One Venture Rewards. These large banks offer various credit cards that accrue points and miles within their own programs based on how much you spend on these cards.

The first point I want to make is the following: these companies do everything they can to extract maximum value from you. As such, they advertise all sorts of ways to redeem points that are more often than not a terrible value to you. When someone tells me that they redeemed Chase Ultimate Rewards for a flight using Chase’s travel portal, I often cringe BIG time. There is a reason that they advertise these travel portals and offer them to you. They want you to use those points in the cheapest way possible for them. If you redeem 100,000 points within a travel portal for $1,250 worth of flight value, they are ecstatic because you’re “letting them off the hook”. If you instead redeem those 100,000 points by transferring them to a hotel program and redeem them for $3,000 or $4,000 worth of hotel value, this costs them much more.

A well known “sweet spot” in the points and miles world is transferring Chase Ultimate Rewards to Hyatt. You can often get 4 or 5 times the value from your Chase points by doing this rather than using them for a flight within Chase’s travel portal.

As a general rule, you can usually get more much value by transferring these points and miles to either a hotel program or an international airline than you can by using them for a flight on a US airline. And if you do plan to use them for a flight on a US airline, it’s not always a bad thing and there can indeed be some great value at times. But PLEASE transfer them to your airline account and book your flight through the airline directly. Here’s why:

• When you book flights with miles and points through a bank portal, they are often non-refundable and a major pain to change, cancel, etc.
• When you book flights with miles and points through your airline account directly, you have MUCH more flexibility, like being able to easily take advantage of price drops.
• And sometimes, you can even take advantage of a bonus by transferring your points out of the flexible currency to the airline program. Many of these flexible points programs will offer periodic bonuses of 25% by transferring your points directly a certain airline.

As I mentioned at the top, the points and miles game can get very complex and be hard to understand. Whenever redeeming points and miles from these flexible points currencies, in my opinion, you should aim to get a minimum of at least 1.5 cents per point worth of value. In other words, if you can’t get at least $150 of value for every 10,000 points you’re looking at redeeming, you are usually getting a “bad” value. Advanced players will often get at least 3 cents per point worth of value from these flexible points currencies, and sometimes even much more.

If you ever have a specific points and miles question, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us. We love helping you maximize your travel spend!

support@theskykey.com

-Jacob

Co-founder @ The Sky Key