Starter Kit, Vol 3: How to Transfer & Redeem Your Hard-Earned Points

The Thrifty Traveler Podcast

In this episode of The Thrifty Traveler Podcast, hosts Gunnar Olsson and Kyle Potter dive into the essentials of redeeming travel points and miles, focusing on

Key takeaways

Credit card points are more valuable than airline miles due to their transferability to multiple partners.
Transferring points to partner airlines or hotels often yields higher value than using them directly through travel portals.

Main topics

Difference between airline miles and credit card points
Transferring points to partner airlines and hotels

Notable quotes

"Airline miles are stuck. You have all of your eggs in one basket, and that's what makes credit card points really shine."

Conclusion

Redeeming points effectively requires understanding the value of transferable points, researching award

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) Yo, welcome to the show. I'm Gunnar Olsson, a reporter for Thrifty Traveler and a flight deal analyst for Thrifty Traveler Premium. And joining me for this special series and every episode of the Thrifty Traveler podcast is Thrifty Traveler executive editor and our Points and Miles professor. It's Kyle Potter. Kyle, how do you like professor? Last week we did coach and the week before that we did Sherpa. Do you like professor better? Yeah, but it's a low, low bar. Okay. Speaker 2 (0:27) We're trending in the right direction. There's been consistent improvement through the end of the starter kit. I'm curious where Speaker 1 (0:32) we're Speaker 2 (0:32) going Speaker 1 (0:32) to end up at episode five and six. Me too. Me too. My vocabulary is running thin already, as is my voice. I'm sorry for everybody out there who has to listen to my voice. I had too good of a weekend, as we discussed on our last episode of the Thrifty Traveler podcast. I'm just impressed you're still learning new words. I know. Good Speaker 2 (0:49) for Speaker 1 (0:49) you, buddy. I know. At my age. All right, today on the show, we're talking about the best ways to actually redeem those miles you've been stacking up. It's a topic we covered in episode two of Starter Kit. You've already done the work. You signed up for a credit card. You got your big bonus. You've been using shopping portals to earn extra points. Now it's time to do what you came here to do. We're booking travel for less. This is the fun part of the travel process. I think for a lot of people, it's also the stressful part. I'm here to tell you. transferring points especially, which we're going to talk about a lot here, is not that scary. It's also not not scary. Have you, Kyle, ever been nervous transferring points or doing big redemptions like this? Yeah, I think that's part of the fun. You Speaker 2 (1:32) need that little jolt of adrenaline it makes when you actually get that ticket booked, confirmed, that much more special. You know, you got to have both sides of the pie in order to have joy in life, is what they say. And it doesn't get not stressful. It gets less stressful. And that's kind of what I think we're going to help coach people through is start to do these things, get better at it, get more comfortable at it, knowing that it's never going to be like a stress-free experience. That's part of the thrill of the chase, I guess. Speaker 1 (2:02) Yeah. Awesome. All right. Today on episode three of Starter Kit, we're talking about... how to redeem your points and miles, about how to understand what points you have in your account, what you can do with them. We're going to walk through why and when to transfer points. We'll talk through how to find award availability, maybe the most important part of all of this. We're going to go through the mechanics of transferring points, and we'll discuss some points and miles pitfalls to avoid too. All that and more. Welcome back to Starter Kit from Thrifty Traveler Podcast. Speaker 1 (2:34) Okay, we're back. Let's get into it. The most important thing that we touched on last week deserves kind of a revisit here this week, Kyle. So quickly, what is the difference between points and miles? So we use points and miles as Speaker 2 (2:50) shorthand. What we're talking about are credit card points and airline miles and to a lesser extent, hotel points. And I think the biggest thing to keep in mind is that when you're talking about airline miles, as an example, or hotel points, those are stuck. Those live with a specific airline. Once you have Delta SkyMiles, once you have American Advantage miles or Alaska Atmos rewards or United Mileage Plus miles or Hilton Honors points, they live in those accounts. You cannot transfer them or send them to another airline, even if those airlines partner together. You can't turn Delta SkyMiles into Air France KLM Flying Blue miles. There is, of course, one major exception to this, which is all of the airlines overseas that use Avios as miles. So that starts with British Airways is the biggest one, but there's also Iberia, Aer Lingus in Ireland, Qatar Airways uses Avios, and most recently, Finnair. And if you have Avios in any one of these five airlines, you can send them to each other. But that is the exception. The rule is... Airline miles are stuck. You have all of your eggs in one basket, and that's what makes credit card points really shine. Credit card points have so much more flexibility because on the one hand, you can use Chase Ultimate Rewards points from cards like the Chase Sapphire Preferred to just book through the Chase Travel Portal. Or more importantly, the big thing that we're talking about today is you can transfer them to a dozen different airline or hotel partners. So Chase Ultimate Rewards aren't just stuck with Chase. They can become Virgin Atlantic Flying Club points. Air Canada Aeroplan points, Amex points you can transfer to not just a dozen, but nearly 20 different partners. Same thing goes with Capital One and a handful of the other big banks. That is what makes credit card points so much more valuable and more flexible because you have all of these options. You're not just stuck in one place. Speaker 1 (4:44) Yeah. Okay. So let's focus on points and you touched on this already, but where can you use credit card points that... you've earned. I know you mentioned travel portals. What is a travel portal? So Speaker 2 (4:55) this is the starting point for most people is they've got this big batch of say 100,000 Chase Ultimate Rewards points because they opened up a Chase Sapphire Preferred card and earned a big bonus. The easiest way to use them is just to go log into your Chase account, navigate to your travel. portal and search for flights or hotels. And generally speaking, when you're redeeming points directly through Chase, directly through American Express like this, you're getting a flat value of one cent per point. So if you're trying to book a $500 flight, you can book that for 50,000 points. Is that simple? It absolutely is. It's incredibly easy to understand. There's a reason why this is the entry point for most people. It's also not all that valuable. It really limits how much value you can get out of your points. Now, some banks like Chase offer some bonuses for redeeming for select flights and hotels. So you might, instead of getting one cent per point, you might get as much as two cents per point using, you know, Chase calls it points boost redemptions. But these are, you know, I would say, generally speaking, not a guarantee. Certainly not a slam dunk. Capital One allows you to, instead of just using its travel portal, you can use what they used to call a purchase eraser. So instead of booking through a portal, you just book any travel expense, whether that's a flight, a hotel, an Airbnb, a cruise, whatever, on your Capital One card. Go back a couple of days later and erase it from your statement using your Capital One miles. Again, every mile is worth a single cent. So a $500 flight or a $500 Airbnb is going to cost you 50,000 Speaker 1 (6:30) capital one miles. Yeah. Using these portals is a good way to use your points, but I think there is a best way. And most often that would be from transferring points. So we're going to get into all that in one second, but I have one other question here proposed by J Tucker 30 and our premium Slack group, which I think is worth mentioning. He says, how do you determine if a flight or hotel is a good value? to use my points. A simple question with a not so simple answer, but how do you determine what's a good deal in award travel? You know, there is an element of Speaker 2 (7:05) you know it when you see it and you know it better as you do this more and more. I think that's kind of the ultimate barometer because so many things in travel are ultimately just personal. The best way to use your points is going to be different for you than it is for me. There is a formula that you can use, cents per mile or cents per point. So you take the total cash cost of whatever it is you're booking. You subtract from that the taxes and fees that you might be paying because every time you're booking a flight using airline miles, you're going to pay at least $5.60 for a one-way domestic flight. Some cases closer to $1,000 or more if you're flying abroad or flying a business class flight home from London or something. And then you divide that by the total number of miles that you're using. And that's going to give you the value of what you're redeeming your miles for. Now, what is good and what's bad? This is the hard part. It varies based upon which airline miles or credit card points or hotel points you're using. So this is why I think we get to, it's better to look at it less about am I getting max value from my points and more about are you booking something? that you otherwise couldn't afford? Or are you using your points to take a trip that you otherwise wouldn't take if not for redeeming those points? I think that's ultimately the best yardstick to determine, is this a good redemption or not? Speaker 1 (8:26) Yeah, that's absolutely been my North Star in this since I started in points and miles. And I think just, yeah, using your points for something you otherwise wouldn't have been able to afford is always a good redemption if it means that you're traveling. right? It's just as simple as that. Chasing maximum value, being obsessed with maximum value is how you end up with 5 million Amex points and you can't figure out how to use them. Having 5 million Amex points is not cool. Having a TripIt feed full of flights and trips coming up, that's cool. That's the ultimate flex. All right, let's get into transferring points then. We're going to go over the mechanics of it. We're going to talk about ways to use your points as well. But first, Kyle. Why should you transfer points to airline partners? Why jump through all the hoops that we're about to talk about? Okay, so let's use Chase as Speaker 2 (9:14) an example here. There are a dozen or more different transfer partners that you can send your Chase points to. Finding the best way to redeem those points, finding the best partner to send your points to in order to book a flight for fewer points than it would cost using the Chase travel portal. That is the name of the game here. So it's not a slam dunk. You need to do the research. You need to compare the cost of sending your miles to, say, Virgin Atlantic Flying Club to book a Virgin Atlantic flight or a Delta flight versus just booking directly through the Chase travel portal. But if you do the research, if you do the math, probably eight to nine times out of 10, you're going to come out ahead, and in some cases, come out ahead by a lot by transferring your points. If the reason why you're getting into this is because you've seen people flying business class and you want to be able to do that yourself, to book that through a travel portal, if that business class flight costs $3,000 each way, that means 300,000 points is what you need. You might be able to book that exact same flight by transferring. 30,000 points or less to one of these transfer partners instead. That is the real value of transferring points. And the same is true, that same kind of disparity in how many points you actually need applies to economy too, and premium economy. It's not quite as drastic as it is for business class, but there is still much more value here if you do the work and study up on these transfer partners. Speaker 1 (10:45) Yeah. And that makes it sound really easy. You and I both know it is perhaps not that easy. And that is because of this variable, the most important part of all of this, and that is what's called award availability. Can you explain to me what award availability is? There are two elements to every Speaker 2 (11:02) single time you book an award ticket using airline miles. There is the award rate, the number of miles you need to book that ticket.