DAY 11 - Transferable Points.... The BEST Kind of Points!

Transferable points are the holy grail of credit card earnings because they allow you to earn points that can be transferred to several different airline or hotel programs. There are more than are listed here, but I will talk about the most important ones--the big three. They are:

• American Express Membership Rewards (MR)
• Chase Ultimate Rewards (UR)
• Starwood Preferred Guest Starpoints (SPG)

These types of flexible points are SUPER valuable to any frequent flyer because they offer flexibility.

All three of these programs have partners in all three airline alliances, meaning you can book award travel on more than 60 airlines directly, and more than 100 using their partners. Also, if you have a co-branded credit card with an airline or hotel, you can use transferable points to "top-off" your account, taking you from a good balance, to a great one.

I focus the majority of my earnings on transferable points, and if you are looking to get into this game, these are the best kinds of points to earn as they give you flexibility if you are not yet quite sure what your travel goals are.

So for today's post, I will cover some important questions on each program, such as how you can earn each type of point, who their transfer partners are, and how you can maximize your earnings.

American Express Membership Rewards

MR's can be earned by these Amex cards:

EveryDay (both regular and preferred)
Platinum
Gold
Green
Black
Corporate

You can transfer to these airlines:



Often, there are transfer bonuses, which will temporarily increase the value of your miles, such as a promo for a 40% bonus when you transfer your miles to British Airways.

The sucky part is that they charge you $0.60 per 1,000 miles you transfer to programs that are based in the US. This is the only program that charges this fee. It usually only amount to a few bucks, but still annoying nonetheless.

MR can be transferred to any loyalty account that has your name on it. If you want to use your MR to book someone else an award, transfer them to your airline account and book your friend an award from there using the airlines' website.

Here are some of my favorite bookings possible by MR:

Singapore: 60k miles gets you first class round trip to Hawaii on United. These are also the only miles where you can book a dream redemption--the Singapore Suite.

Double Beds!!! Gives a new meaning to mile high club.

ANA: distance based award chart meaning the miles needed are based on distance between two points, or the sum of all segments of your itinerary. Best deal is business class to Europe from East Coast. You can get to Newark to London for only 63k round trip.

British Airways: another distance based award chart. Best for redeeming short hop domestic flights. Can get West Coast to Hawaii for only 25k roundtrip in economy.

Frontier: 10k miles each way to Alaska, and only 15k to Mexico, Costa Rica and the Caribbean. Beware of extra fees though for carry ons, etc.

Delta: ok award chart, good availability on partners. But it is terrible award space on its own aircraft, and you cannot book first class international redemption. It also collects fuel surcharges on some redemptions too.

MR can be frustrating if you want premium international travel because Delta has the worst award space of any major US carrier, and most other airline transfer programs charge fuel surcharges on redemptions. There are ways around these frustrations, depending on where you want to go, but you are more likely to need my award booking service to redeem Membership Rewards in the most cost-effective way possible, than it is to redeem Ultimate Rewards or Starpoints.

Chase Ultimate Rewards

Can be earned using these cards:

Sapphire Preferred
Ink Bold (business)
Ink Plus (business)
Corporate Flex Card
JP Morgan Palladium
JP Morgan Select

If you have a Chase Freedom card, you can transfer those points to either your Sapphire or Ink cards and combine their balances. You can also transfer between Ink and Sapphire cards too. 1:1 ratio on points transferred.

Here are your transfer partners:



Chase does not offer sporadic bonuses. But, they also don't charge you anything to transfer.

My favorite redemptions:

Southwest is our favorite for domestic travel, because we have a companion pass allowing Dale to fly free on any of my reservations. Keep in mind that these points you transfer to Southwest do not count towards accruing enough points to qualify for companion pass. More on this in a future post.

British Airways: combine your MR with UR and you got plenty of points to travel domestically!

United: Sydney to Bangkok in Thai first class is only 45k miles each way. Or, stopover in Africa, with final destination in Japan for only 70k miles.

Hyatt Gold Passport: my favorite for hotel bookings. Their hotels are much better priced (and nicer inside) than comparable hotels with Marriott and Hilton. Park Hyatt Vendome in Paris is 30k points per night, and rooms go for $1000 USD on the market. They're also cheap on the low end too. Dale and I just spent a long weekend on the west coast of Florida for only 10k points total. Most hotels run between 8-15k per night.

Starwood Preferred Guest Starpoints

Only one card earns points here: the SPG card from American Express, in both the personal and business versions.

The other programs are 1:1 normally unless transfer bonuses arise, but SPG is only program that offers high value transfer to airlines. For every 20,000 points you transfer, you get a bonus of 5,000. So if you transfer in exactly 20,000 point increments, your ratio is really 1:1.25.

SPG also has over 30 airline transfer partners. This equates to 118 unique airlines based on alliances, and sub-alliance partners. 17 of SPG’s 31 direct airline transfer partners allow one-way awards in all circumstances, four in some cases (usually just their own flights), and the ten other airlines require roundtrip awards, or just require the same number of miles as a round trip in order to redeem a one way award.



You don't want to transfer to the ones I've highlighted because they are worse than 1:1. Also, US Airways Dividend Miles does not exist anymore, so we can strike that from the list.

They have only offered one transfer bonus ever in the past, and that was a 20k to 30k bonus on American/US Airways.

I also very much enjoy SPG's hotels: Westin, Sheraton, W, Le Meridien and more. They are also the cheapest redemptions too, with the lowest SPG hotels only needing 2,000 points for a free night.

SPG points are also the only transfer partner to American miles besides their own co-branded Citi cards. AA has great partner airlines such as Cathay Pacific, Etihad, and other OneWorld carriers.

Other great redemptions are transferring to Alaska, where you can book on other partners just as Emirates, Cathay, and Fiji. For example, it is only 100,000 Alaska miles (or 80,000 SPG) for a return-award to Asia from the US in business class on Cathay Pacific.  And it is only 140,000 (or 115,000 SPG) for the same trip in first.

Getting sudsy in the sky!

If you want to fly on Emirates and have an in-flight shower, it costs only 90,000 miles (75,000 SPG) to go to the Middle East or India in first class on Emirates.  This is the same amount of miles as a first class award on AA.

Couple things to keep in mind...

• Keep your points in the transferable points program until you have your award in mind, then transfer.
• You retain their value until you transfer. Once you transfer, you can't reverse the process.
• Exception: if you are closing your last Chase UR or Amex MR card, then transfer all your points out so you do not forfeit them.
• Make sure the award you are thinking about booking, is worth more than your other options. 
• If you are looking to fly from Seattle to Las Vegas, you will get there using 12.5k Alaska miles one way (25k roundtrip), but if you checked Southwest, you can get to Vegas using only 6-7k points each way.
• The best use of a transferable program is to top off an account that is just short of an award.
• If you have 100,000 United miles and want to book roundtrip business class, then your miles are useless. But if you transfer in 15,000 UR's, you can have that ticket in hand!
• This is often the best way to think about these programs. Don’t get the Sapphire thinking it’s 50,000 more United miles or 50,000 more Southwest points. Instead, pursue strategies to get huge amounts of United and Southwest miles other ways, and use your 50,000 Ultimate Rewards when you’re just short of the miles needed for an award in one of its partner programs. Then you can retain the leftover points for other uses.

In conclusion, transferable points are totally awesome, and a very important strategy in the game of mile collection. They can be used to really maximize your redemption strategies, and are a great currency to earn by every day spend. If you have any questions about your personal situation, or best options, let me know in the comments!


Peace, love, and an extra pack of peanuts,

LC