People tend to ask me when I know to use points for a particular flight booking instead of paying for it with cash outright. My standard answer is that you should do whatever you want with your points to ensure you get what you want out of a trip. Traveling is a wonderful privilege and if it would give you joy to pay $0 and 400k points for the flights and spend your money on food, lodging, and experiences instead – go for it.
That being said – I like to get as much value out of my points as possible. Many credit cards try to convince you that getting a value of 1 cent per point is great. While it is definitely not the worst thing in the world to use 10,000 points to get $100 off a flight, you can do way better if you do your research. Take my honeymoon for example – the first flight we booked would have cost over $9,000 each and instead we used 60k American/Alaska miles for it. That’s a value of over 15 cents per point!
To me, it comes down to what value you want to get out of your points. If you have the Chase Sapphire Preferred, you can use the Chase Travel Portal to get at least 1.25 cents per point. If you have the Chase Sapphire Reserve, that’s 1.5 cents per point. So, if your flight would cost more points to transfer than it would to book directly, then book directly. Additionally, since you are technically paying ‘cash’ for the flight on the Chase Travel Portal, you earn points for the flight!
In the case below, the price of the ticket would have been $362 in cash or, with miles, 30.5k. If you subtract the taxes ($5.60) from the price and divide by the number of miles ($356.40/30,500) you get 1.16 cents per point. That’s why when looking at the Chase Travel Portal, even though the ticket price is $18 more, it uses fewer points. With the Chase Sapphire Reserve, you are guaranteed 1.5 cents per point on any given booking.
Generally-speaking, most domestic economy flights are not going to be better than 1.5 cents per point in value. It is when you start looking internationally in economy and especially business class where you are going to see amazing value. When wondering if you should use points or cash, think about what you want to get from your points and decide accordingly. Feel free to do the math and calculate how many cents per point of value you are getting to determine if it’s ‘worth it’ for you. Then, make a decision and book your trip: traveling is so fun and interesting – go do it!
