Travel Rewards – Best Uses for Credit Card Points
There is no shortage of bonus credit cards, and as more players enter the game, redemption opportunities expand as well. But, as noted Dan Frommer for Eater , points exchange for rewards for travel is probably the best option.
You can spend hours every day calculating and evaluating credit card reward programs (and a lot of people do that – an entire online industry is dedicated to this) to figure out how to get the best possible deal.
But, as Frommer points out, if you have a bonus card that is not your basic refund card (e.g. basic = Capital One Savor *, non-basic = Chase travel suite ), you are likely to get the most out of your dollar by redeeming your points for various travel deals such as flights or hotels.
“In particular, it’s usually best to transfer points to affiliate programs for things like business flight awards and luxury hotel stays,” Frommer writes. “Where you can get one cent per point (or less!) For cashback refunds, you can easily get double the value per point (or much more!) When reimbursing luxury travel expenses.”
The Points Guy often writes about this:
It seems like too many consumers are taking the easy route and trading their hard-earned points at below average prices for things like merchandise and even bad money-back offers. But if you do, don’t blame yourself too much. Credit cards, airlines, and hotels tend to make it easy to cash out your points for low-cost merchandise or redemptions for one reason: it’s cheaper for them.
Spend your points on what you really want
However, the “best” value overall is to use your points for something you really want, as Frommer writes in another article in his newsletter, Points Party .
But the best way to measure the value of redeeming points is to look at the big picture: Are you getting what you want or need out of it? Because this is ultimately the most important thing – and in fact, the whole point is to spend time and energy on it in the first place.
Of course, mathematically speaking, the best benefit might be using your points on a particular flight or in conjunction with another program, but if you don’t really want to fly that flight or stay at this hotel, this is not very valuable. And if, for example, you don’t plan to travel anywhere, but you have a high credit card balance, getting a loan might make more sense to you. It’s all variable.
Glasses are never worth going into debt. But with many bonus cards offering signup bonuses, if you spend X in Y months, some people may be digging a hole. “No amount of points is worth the cost of paying interest or worrying about falling behind,” Frommer writes.
Finally: glasses lose their value over time . So use them whenever you can, as Frommer writes about what makes you happy. (And read a very good Inventory interview with Frommer.)
* I have a Capital One Savor card.