Offering analysis and information about how to maximize the earning and optimize the spending of credit cards points has become quite an internet industry. The big names are Nerdwallet and Thepointsguy, but a simple search returns a solid twenty more websites with opinions.
I am not an expert and I do not want to put the time in to become one. I wanted to find a relatively simple way to generate lots of valuable points, and have a couple of easy ways to spend them wisely.
As discussed on this page, the Chase Sapphire Reserve credit card is really the obvious choice for full time travelers. Every day I earn 3 points on every dollar spent on hotels, meals, drinks, tours, flights. Which is the vast majority of my annual spending. Most of my other charges go on my Chase Freedom Flex card for a 1.5+ point return per dollar, and sundry specialized charges go on United Club card (United charges, etc) and Amex Platinum.
Between the Chase and the AmexPoints I have stashes of points that are transferable to most airlines.
How to spend all these points? The simplest way is to apply them to existing credit card charges that are travel related as a statement credit. When redeemed this way Chase adds a (now reduced) vig, so the actual return is 3.75% on nearly every dollar spent. (Working out as 1.25cents per point earned). That is on the low end of the desired redemption return, but still a pretty great return for essentially zero effort.
Redeeming points for flights and hotel stays requires some education and effort. I like Awardlogic and point.me (I use the latter), both subscription services that more than pay for themselves. They are powerful search services to find options for award flights and, as point costs can vary widely from program to program, help narrow down which airline is optimal to transfer my credit card points to. You can spend an entire weekend figuring out how best to use these, but simple searches have helped me considerably.
I keep an eye open for regular ‘transfer bonuses’. I subscribe to The Points Guy ‘Daily Drop’ that alerts to these, and has saved me a ton of money in other ways. Here Avianca, Virgin, KLM etc add a 20-30% vig for transfers of credit card points to their loyalty programs. These are airlines I regularly fly so take advantage of these value multipliers, whether I am currently looking for a flight or not. A caution is that some programs still use an old model of setting expiration dates on points.
A couple of hours of research found that some airline ‘deals of the week’ (eg on FlyBlue alliance), ‘offers’ (regularly on United) can return higher rewards. Very occasionally, when staying in one place for a few nights, I will do some credit card rewards. research. I have found a few really good hotel deals payable in transfer points, but I usually have a stash of Marriott and IHG points on hand anyway.
There are plenty of experts out there who show amazing returns on points. Many of the strategies involve subscribing to alert emails, checking routes daily, flying at sub optimal times, and/or staying in resorty places. This page is so short because I do not want to invest this kind of effort, nor stay in the most often shown destinations.
But, in summary. With really little effort my credit cards have, net of fees, given me $16,000 of flights and hotels in the last three years. I average around a 7% payback. To put this another way: I have found that the search sites for hotels and flights and booking platforms have consistently saved me a significant amount of money over just using a random search/book combination. With a little bit of effort redemption of credit card points is making essentially EVERYTHING that I purchase effectively a further 7% cheaper. I am perfectly content with that.