In the
interest of making sure that readers understand how their credit card points
function, I will start spotlighting different programs and how they allow you
to purchase travel.
Chase
Sapphire Preferred earns Ultimate Rewards points. Every dollar spent earns one
UR point, and every dollar spent on travel and dining earns two UR points.
These Ultimate Rewards points can be used in one of two ways:
1. Spent
as cash on airline tickets and hotel nights
2.
Transferred
to an airline or hotel
Using Ultimate Rewards like cash
Like nearly
all non-affiliated cards, Ultimate Rewards points can be spent like cash. If
you have a Chase Sapphire Preferred or Ink card, they can be spent at ~1.2
cents apiece. Any fare or hotel rate you can find on the Ultimate Rewards
travel site can be purchase with your points. The site offers a similar fare
and rate searching service to Kayak. A $250 ticket should cost about 21,000 UR
points.
One perk to
this option is if tickets are cheap, the cost of using points as cash would be
low. Another perk specifically with Ultimate Rewards is that if you don’t have
enough points, you can use the points you do have and pay for the rest of the
ticket in cash.
The final
perk of using points like cash is that you’re basically having Chase purchase a
ticket or hotel night for you, meaning you’ll earn points on the flight or stay
just as if you had bought it yourself. This isn’t true when you use airline
miles or hotel points.
Transferring Ultimate Rewards points
to an airline or hotel (or Amtrak)
Every time
you fly you earn “miles” with your airline. Every time you stay in a hotel, you
earn “points” with your hotel. These miles and points sit in your frequent
flyer program or frequent guest program. For instance, United Airlines has
MileagePlus. If you go to www.united.com
and log in, you can see the number of MileagePlus miles you have.
Ultimate
Rewards points can be turned into MileagePlus miles, being added to your
balance just like if you flew a flight on United. All you do is log into the
Chase website, click your Ultimate Rewards, and choose to transfer to a partner.
You enter your airline or hotel account number, and the UR points turn into
that airline or hotel’s points currency.
The option
to transfer UR points to an airline or hotel is what truly sets it apart from
nearly all other points-earning credit cards. With something like Barclaycard
Arrival or Capital One Venture, you can only use your points like cash. That
lack of flexibility can really hurt you, especially on complicated itineraries.
The
transferring miles option is great for if you want to travel internationally,
where fares are very high but mileage costs are not as bad. You can add in a
stopover on United for free with miles, whereas if you paid for the ticket in
cash or points-as-cash, you’d have to pay for two separate tickets. It’s also
great if you have almost enough points for a flight or hotel and want to top
off an account, or if it’s last minute and fares are very expensive. These are
the partners Ultimate Rewards transfer to:
· Southwest
Airlines
·
United
Airlines
·
British
Airways
·
Korean
Air
·
Amtrak
·
Hyatt
·
Marriott
·
Priority
Club
·
Ritz
Carlton
·
Virgin
Atlantic
Personally I
use UR points on Southwest and United all the time. I’ve even transferred to
Hyatt because they have such an amazing points program.
Key takeaways
Ultimate
Rewards points from Chase are one of the most flexible currencies out there and
should be strongly considered. It is actually a straight-up better card to put
spend on than United, Southwest, or If you currently have a Southwest, United, Marriott,
Hyatt, and Amtrak’s credit cards because it earns at the same or better rate in
almost every category of spend as those cards, but you’re not locked into one
airline or even one kind of points program with Ultimate Rewards, and you can
always transfer Ultimate Rewards points into one of these programs if you want.
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