Points Basics

Here’s our ultra-condensed guide to traveling on points. 

Any decent points strategy can pay big dividends.

We did the math. By paying with any old credit card instead of a debit card, a median spender will earn a few hundred dollars in cash back or travel perks. A renter with a Bilt card could easily earn $550 worth of travel. Optimized strategies can do even better. That’s not counting sign-up bonuses, which could get you an international flight or two all on their own. 

Just be sure to be responsible and protect your credit.

Make sure you know the credit implications of credit card use and never carry a balance.

Time your applications wisely.

Signing up when a card is advertising an increased bonus can net you hundreds of dollars, likely much more than you could get by marginally increasing the earning rate on your spending.

Calculate point values reasonably. 

A common mistake is to calculate the “face value” of points: the number of points used in relation to the price of the redemption. That is, if you use 30,000 points to book a $600 flight or hotel stay, those points would be “worth” 2¢ each ($600/30,000=.02). But if a comparable flight or hotel was available for $300 that you would have booked otherwise if paying in cash, then the “real value” of the points is just 1¢ each. Calculating for the real value ensures you get the most bang for your points buck. 

Use easy redemptions as your landmark.

The big issuers have simple options to turn your points into travel at decent rates. You definitely don’t want to get less value than this, but rest assured that if you don’t want to hype-optimize your redemptions (more on that below) you can get solid value through your issuer.

View luxury travel responsibly.

It’s possible to use points to book luxury hotels and business- or first-class flights, and the face value of these redemptions can look pretty good. But instead focus on whether the cost to upgrade, usually hundreds of dollars worth of travel, is worth the fancy seat. (It might be! It’s a personal decision.)

Look for value by transferring points.

If your cards transfer to domestic airlines like American, Delta, Southwest, or United, you are likely going to be able to redeem them for solid value on those airlines, and it will be easy to find a flight to redeem them on.

Points will also be very easy to redeem when transferred to hotels, but the value is usually poor, so do so with caution. The exception is Hyatt points, which is one of the best programs for high-value redemptions. 

Although there is great value to be found by transferring miles to programs like Turkish Airlines or Virgin Atlantic, the booking process is extremely complicated and only for the dedicated.

FlyingBlue tends to offer the best way to get high value from your points, as their booking engines have improved lately, and you can usually find a good deal to go somewhere in the world. These can become great deals when FlyingBlue releases their monthly promo deals or when–as is often the case–you can transfer your credit card points in your FlyingBlue account with a bonus.

Japanese airline ANA also offers a very reliable and easy-to-use booking engine that makes it fairly easy to find good deals on international flights.

Air Canada and British Airways have imperfect booking engines and rarer deals, but can be valuable in some cases. Avianca has a terrible booking platform, but I have found good deals on their site as well.

My values. 

Because redemption options are so unpredictable and the real value of points depends on complex market conditions, it is impossible to offer “accurate” points valuations. But I can share the values I have typically seen (flying out of the Bay Area):

Amex: 1.5

Bilt: 1.6

Capital One: 1.1

AA: 1.4

Delta: 1.4

Hyatt: 1.6

Hilton: 0.5¢

IHG: 0.7¢

Marriott: 0.8¢