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MMMondayMemo: Yes, buying points can make sense
Each Monday Miles has decided to drop a tip, hint, tutorial, trick that maybe you’ve missed or haven’t heard before. If you’re an expert in this field, some of these may be things you already know, but there are a lot of beginners out there who are just getting their feet wet. This week the Monkey Miles Monday Memo: Yes, buying points can make sense.
Here are the 3 biggest reasons why I have purchased points.
Just to get this out of the way…I’m NOT advocating speculative purchases here at all. I’m just recommending alternative ways of valuing and approaching the points you have. You want to keep their worth high, your expense low, and often times this can be achieved through a points purchase.
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Shore up account to get a FANTASTIC award.
- You see an award you’d like to get, but you don’t have enough points in the account or a partner to transfer from. You can buy points to make up the difference.
- In the below example I’ve priced out an Austrian Air business class flight using United miles and I’m short by 2418. They’ve given me the choice of buying the remaining points for $112.88. Personally, I have Ultimate Rewards and could shore up the account, but if I was in the position whereby I couldn’t transfer in, I’d probably spend the $112.88 to fly on a several thousand dollar flight.
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Keep points alive!
- A lot of points expire unless there is activity. You can read this previous MonkeyMilesMondayMemo to see a chart detailing many programs and their expiration policy. An easy way to extend the life of your points is to buy some.
- Using United as an example again…Unless you have activity or carry a co-branded credit card your miles will expire after 18 months. You could keep your points alive buy just buying 1000 points for $35 + 7.5% excise tax.
- This is a horrible price to pay per point, but if you realize your points are going to expire unless you do something, it’s a good option to have.
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Buying points is cheaper than paying a cash rate
- Many times it’s far cheaper to just buy points for a hotel night or flight than it is to pay out of pocket. Usually when you use points you’ll end up with far greater flexibility than paid fares as well. For instance, AA allows you to change the date of your award ticket as many times as you want as long as there is award availability on the day you want to change it to.
- Let’s look at the current Alaska Airlines 40% promotion on purchased points.
- We can see that 84k points would cost $1773.75 or $0.021 per point.
- A one way business class ticket on Cathay Pacific from Chicago to Bangkok booked with Alaska Miles costs 50k points. Or $1055 if you were to use this promo to buy the points for the ticket. You’d also be able to bake in a stopover in Hong Kong if you wanted because Alaska allows stopovers on their award tickets. Last minute tickets in coach are often times more expensive than this, and biz tickets are regularly several thousand.
Cathay Biz 
This is also true of hotels. I recently showed an example of how buying points for $0.00575 with the recent IHG 100% bonus promotion would be far cheaper than paying for it outright. I used the Intercontinental Cleveland as an example.
These are 3 of the biggest reasons I have purchased points or would recommend considering the practice.
Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed or approved by any of these entities.
Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card
Welcome Offer
60k Points after $4k spend in 3 months
Annual Fee
$95
Points Earned
Transferrable Chase Ultimate Rewards
- 60k points after $4k spend in 3 months
- Worth $750 in Chase Travel℠ and way more if you maximize transfer partners
- 5x on all travel purchased through Chase Travel℠
- 3x on dining, including eligible delivery services for takeout & dining out
- 3x on select streaming services
- 3x on online grocery purchases
- (excluding Target, Walmart and wholesale clubs)
- $50 Annual Chase Travel Hotel Credit via Chase Travel℠
- The begins immediately for new cardmembers and after your account anniversary for existing cardmembers
- 2x on all other travel
- 10% Anniversary Bonus
- Every year you keep the card, your total spend will yield a 10% points bonus. If you spend $10k in a year, you’ll get 1k bonus points
- Chase Sapphire Preferred continues to redeem at 1.25c in the Chase Travel℠ and the slew of other benefits remain in tact including Auto Rental Collision Damage Waiver ( primary ), purchase protections, etc.
- Points are transferrable to 14 Ultimate Rewards partners
- Redeem in Chase Travel℠ for 1.25 cents per point
- No foreign transaction fees
- Suite of Travel and Purchase Coverage
- Auto Rental Collision Damage Waiver is my favorite
- Get complimentary access to DashPass which unlocks $0 delivery fees and lower service fees for a minimum of one year when you activate by December 31, 2024
- $95 Annual Fee
We keep an up to date spreadsheet that lists the best ever offers: You can find that spreadsheet here.
Historically 80k is a very, very good offer and hit in both 2022 and 2023. In 2021, we saw the offer hit an all time high of 100k. Who knows if that will ever come back.
Main Cast:
Cards that earn flexible points and should be used on the bulk of your purchases.
Supporting Cast:
Cards that earn fixed points in the currency of the airline/hotel and can not be transferred at attractive rates. These cards yield benefits that make it worth keeping, but not necessarily worth putting a lot of your everyday spend on.
The Chase Sapphire Preferred® is exceptional starter card and offers transferrable Ultimate Rewards, and pairs well with other Chase cards.
If you carry this card alongside Chase’s cashback cards like the Chase Freedom Flex℠and Chase Freedom Unlimited® or the business versions: Ink Business Cash® , Ink Business Unlimited® you can combine the points into Preferred account and transfer into hotel and airline partners
Annual fee is quite low at $95 a year + you get a 10% anniversary bonus on points + $50 hotel credit in Chase travel.
The responses below are not provided or commissioned by the bank advertiser. Responses have not been reviewed, approved, or otherwise endorsed by the bank advertiser. It is not the bank advertiser's responsibility to ensure all posts and/or questions are answered.