Tag: points

Why You Shouldn’t Worry About Transfer Bonuses

The biggest advantage of earning transferrable credit card points is the flexibility when you need to redeem them for travel. You can never know in advance which airline program will have availability on the flights you want to take. It’s impossible to put a value on being able to move points into whichever program you need at the exact moment you need them.

As a reminder, here are the transferrable point currencies from the major banks:

  • American Express Membership Rewards
  • Capital One Venture Rewards or Spark Miles
  • Citi ThankYou points
  • Chase Ultimate Rewards

You can also transfer points from the Marriott Bonvoy program to airline programs.

Occasionally, banks will offer bonuses to transfer points into a specific program. Most of these offers last for 1 to 2 months, so there’s not usually a need to jump into them right away.

While these promotions offer great value if you were planning on transferring points anyway, speculative usage of transfer bonuses isn’t a good idea for the average traveler.

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Here’s Why You Should Collect Miles and Points

I have a challenge for you. Take a moment and ask yourself why you’re spending your time learning about points, miles, and other travel-related stuff. It might take a few moments to come up with an answer, I know I had to think about it for a while. It doesn’t matter what the answer is, just remember the answer.

Personally, I could think of two reasons.

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You’ve Just Booked An Amazing Award Ticket. Now What?

You’ve been working to booking your dream trip for as long as you can remember. You had a goal and worked diligently to achieve it. Finally, the day has come. You’ve booked the award ticket you’ve been looking forward to all this time. If you are flying on the same airline you redeemed your miles with, using AAdvantage miles to fly on American for example, the process is relatively straightforward. While making a reservation with your miles, you provided all of your information and were also able to make your seat selections. For those who are newer to points and miles, flying with the same airline you’ve booked with is often referred to as “Flying on the airlines own metal.”

What if your dream ticket involved booking a ticket with partner airlines? First of all, I hope you’re aware of the challenges when using miles for such a ticket but it’s often the best use of your miles. It does add some extra steps to the process.

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If She Wants A Unicorn, It’s My Job to Make It Happen (a.k.a. “Our” Travel Bucket List)

Disclaimer: I love my wife very much. So much so that I asked and was given her permission to write this post (Note from Sharon: Yes, dear).

I find myself amazingly lucky that Sharon and I agree on so many things. One of them is we don’t need to heap presents on each other to show our love and affection. That notwithstanding, there are some occasions when Sharon wants a particular item and it’s my job to acquire it. While it may be a larger item or one that might take some time to find, it’s never been impossible (yet), and I enjoy the challenge and the pleasure when I deliver.

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As we’ve started to try to declutter our lives, our lists of “wants” have changed from things we want to have to places we want to go, like a bucket list. But one that we tend to fill up quicker than we can empty it.
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