Which credit card for me?

Re: Which credit card for me?

• hoffse member

  

  August 2015 edited August 2015

  1) Yes, but redeeming points this way is probably their worst use.  If you want cash back, there are other cash back cards you should look at that give you much better rewards.

  
  

  2) No, Sapphire has no black-out dates, but that's because you're booking through Chase as a travel agent... just as you would book through Expedia or Orbitz or whatever.  Using those points to pay for travel directly through Chase is also not their highest and best use.

  
  

  The reason Chase ultimate reward points are so valuable is you can transfer them to travel partners.  An example I provided in that thread earlier:  H and I are going to Belgium and Germany over Christmas.  United had economy seats for 30,000 points each way.  So for both of us going two directions, that's 120,000 points.  We transferred 120,000 Chase points to United to get those flights for free.

  
  

  If we had cashed out those 120,000 points we would have gotten $1,200 dollars. 

  
  

  If we had used the points to book through Chase they would have been worth $1,440 because you get a 20% "boost" when booking through Chase.

  
  

  But by transferring those points directly to United, we got about $3,200 of value out of them because those flights were $1600/each the day we booked.

  
  

  If your travel dates are very limited, then you may be out of luck because once you transfer points to the airlines you ARE subject to their blackout dates.  But as you can see, the points are so much more valuable when transferred to the travel partners, I personally take that chance and accumulate points to redeem them efficiently whenever we can.  If we can't redeem them through a travel partner, I hold onto them for the next trip and pay cash.  Most of the airlines allow you to search their reward flights even if you don't have any points in your account.  So it's not like you're just sending points to the airlines in the hopes that something will be available.

  
  

  I have also learned that if I can't be flexible with dates, I may need to be flexible with location.  For instance, H and I are flying into Frankfurt even though the primary point of this trip is to visit his family in Belgium.  We're going over Christmas week, and there wasn't reward travel available flying IN to Brussels (though we got reward travel flying OUT of Brussels).  We decided to check airports in nearby countries, and we discovered we could fly to Frankfurt on the date we needed at the economy rate.  So instead of spending all our time in Belgium, we're going to spend a few days in Germany too, and we will visit the Christmas markets while we slowly make our way to Belgium. The Germany bit was actually an add-on of our original plan (100% driven by rewards availability), but it's now the part we're most excited about.  Being flexible with travel is important anyway, but it's especially useful if you are using points.

  
  

  3) I have no idea if Freedom has travel insurance or not.  I always buy separate policies but that's because our travel recently has been overseas.  Our medical insurance doesn't cover us over there, so I buy a full-coverage travel insurance policy that takes care of everything.

  

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