Points, miles and cards

Long time lurker. I have a long winded question for the mileage/points experts. We’ve done almost all of our purchases the last few years on an Amex gold card and accumulate MR points which we use to purchase airline tickets Through Ames. We live in St. Louis and most our travel is to to visit our daughters who currently live in Philadelphia and Tel Aviv or once a year to Grand Cayman. When we purchase airline tickets with our MR points it looks like 150,000 points roughly buys a $1500 ticket. On the other hand, it appears that if you purchase tickets using points accumulated on the particular airlines mileage programs, your points go much further. For example, my brother in law booked a trip next February to Singapore and got two business class tickets RT for about 150,000 points each on AAadvantage. If you book the tickets paying cash they’re about $6k each. So it appears that points or miles accumulated on the airlines individual mileage programs are worth a good deal more than just purchasing tickets using MR points through Amex. My question boils down to this. I believe we can transfer MR points to various airline mileage programs. So do we get the same advantage doing that compared to using an AA Citibank card to accumulate miles for example? I guess I’m asking if we should switch to an AA Citibank card for our routine daily use. Just got an offer on a AA Ctiibank Executive Card which comes with 60k points. I already have AA Gold status if that make any difference. We do seem to be using USAir for most of our flights the last couple of years.
Hope this makes sense. I’ll try to clarify if not.

Thanks, Jim

Flyertalk.com

If you like Berserkers for wine info and chat, you’ll love Flyertalk for points and miles.

If you find yourself always flying a particular airline, you are best using their CC.

Transferring Amex to the airlines, will definitely go further than paying for flights with points as you are only getting 1 cent per point.
Citibank Exec card has a high annual fee. Have to decide if the points and perks are worth the price.
Diversify is the best advice I can give. So if one airline family doesn’t have availability when you want, you can check on another.
Right now my go to card is Amex Everyday Preferred. Gives 1.5 MR points per dollar once you hit 30 uses per billing period which for me is simple. You earn 3 MR points per dollar at groceries stores which turns to 4.5 MR points after the 50% bonus kicks in after mentioned 30 uses.
I’d rather use this over the AA cards that basically only earn 1 mile/dollar. MR points can be transferred to British Airways who of course is an AA partner. There is often a transfer bonus between MR and BA. I use my BA miles for AA domestic, mexico, Caribbean

My friend knows what she’s talking about.

I’ve never been a fan of Amex and Membership Rewards, although I did have the card for a while (to get the points).
The darling of the credit card game was the Starwood American Express. Besides transferring to multiple domestic and international airlines at 1.25 to 1 (20,000 points = 25,000 miles in most programs (not UA), you can use the points at Starwood hotels. It’s hard to get Starwood points, so the card is valuable. That said, I switched the majority of my cc spend the the Chase Sap Preferred card. Points earned transfer to many airlines and hotel partners. As an example Jim, you can transfer Chase points to the British Airways program (called Avios). Since American is a partner with BA, you can book AA flights using Avios. Chase points also transfer to multiple hotel chains (not Starwood). Even though they have fewer properties than other chains, Hyatt sems to be the up and coming darling. I recently transferred Chase points to Hyatt for a stay in Tokyo.

Here’s a list of their partners > Chase Online
Have more questions, please ask. This is why Todd French keeps folks like Mai, Jordan, and me, and others around.

Yes, you can transfer Amex points to DL and AA, and you get a much better exchange rate. I’ve always used the Amex card rather than a one-airline card because it gave me more flexibility (I have orphan UA miles from a card I no longer use; I’ll have to find a way to use them). But living in DC, I can access a number of different airlines; if I lived in or always used St Louis, I imagine that I might well be using an AA card

Dan is the man on this subject.

I have gone to flyertalk before but found it almost impossible to find what I needed to know. I am sure it is much easier for regulars to find their way around

I’ve been on Flyertalk longer than I’ve been on WineBerserkers. It’s a big place to navigate. They have a forum for Credit Card spend, as well as individual airline and hotel sections. Another place to get your feet wet is by reading some of the travel blogs out there.

I’ll recommend these two to start http://millionmilesecrets.com/ and http://viewfromthewing.boardingarea.com/
All of the bloggers are pushing credit cards, and want you to sign up for one (or more) using their links. That’s how they make money.
That said, the information provided is valuable. As an example, when I wanted to know about the Southwest Airlines program when I stopped flying UA, MMS had a tutorial on everything you wanted to know about Southwest. Both bloggers still provide an interesting read, even for oldtimers that ‘know’ or think they know everything.

Wrong, wrong, wrong (usually) . It might make sense to have their cc for other reasons (free bags, lounge access, priority boarding, access to better miles inventory), but for EARNING miles, there are usually much better options. Indeed, even for redeeming miles it might make a lot more sense to use a partner (for example, if you fly AA around North America/caribbean a lot you will get a ton more value out of earning on a Chase Sapphire or Amex Plat and then transfering to British Airways).

Amex points don’t transfer to AA, though they do to some Oneworld partners - notably BA and Cathay.

You used to be able to transfer them to US Airways whose points are now becoming AA points but if you don’t already have a US Airways mileage account you can’t open a new one (I tried).

In the end I decided to add Arnold to my card so I can transfer my Amex points to his Cathay Pacific account.

Yeah, sorry I should have made that clear. Long time US program member

If you’re a true points junkie, the principle is simple re: credit cards.

You should never be spending money on a credit card where you’re not meeting the spend requirement to earn some bonus.
Once you’ve hit that spend requirement, you should already have other cards in hand that requires spend to hit other bonuses.

Any $ spent on a CC that’s non bonus earning is $ lost.

something like that… i don’t follow it as closely as i’m not a guru like Dan, but i’d say 75% of my annual CC spend is bonus earning… young apprentice level really…

Thanks so much for all of the replies. I’ve looked at Flyertalk but find it overwhelming which why I thought to post here first.

Thanks again. Jim

it is overwhelming at first… but so is wine right
take your time… read it one forum at a time… read the first 2 pages of each major forum… and it’ll be a good start

Important to compare amex transfer partner transfer and redemption rates as they can be drastically different.

Definitely agree that most spend throughout the year is done to earn signup as well as various spend bonuses. That’s where the “real” earnings take place.

But if you fly to/through LHR, which my wife and I do several times a year, you are better off on AA metal than BA, as BA’s LHR taxes and fees can be up to 4x AA’s…

Is there a running site or blog that lists all the current best Amex points transfer bonuses, since Membership Rewards points on their own are rather a low value?

so many variables even just with one airline like BA. Which is now completely useless for International premium class redemptions.

example redemption for San Francisco to Hong Kong R/T in business as well as first class on Cathay. So same exact flights just using different airline’s points(BA did just devalue their award chart)

BA miles
biz 210k
first 280k

Cathay miles
biz 120k
first 180k

People actually pay the $450 fee on these?

I love the citi exec. Churn and cancel to avoid the annual fee. Citi doesn’t seem to mind, cancel within 37days of AF posting to have it refunded. Although the sign up bonus is 50K it’s an easy way to print points. There are reports of people doing this once a month and are already on card #20+.

Was even sweeter early last year when the bonus was 100K, between the wife and I we minted damn near 1 million AA miles.

But if you get and cancel these cards, what does that do to your credit score? I thought canceling accounts did a number on the score