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American Airlines makes Citi Thank You Points Much More Valuable

Posted on August 3, 2025December 28, 2025 by David Cox

In a widely expected move, American Airlines is now a transfer partner from Citi Thank You Points. Rumors have been circulating since it was announced that American Airlines was phasing out its Barclay’s credit cards and signing an exclusive deal with Citibank. Finally, Citibank has added American Airlines to its Thank You Points transfer page, making those points much more valuable.

How This Transfer Partnership Works

People who hold a Citi Strata Premier, Citi Prestige, or Citi Strata Elite credit card can now transfer Citi Thank You Points to American Airlines AAdvantage Miles at a 1:1 ratio. Adding a coveted transfer partner makes any Citi Thank You Points much more valuable, especially since Citi is the only bank that transfers its points to American Airlines.

In addition, this also means that as long as you hold one of those cards, any points earned with a Citi credit card that earns Thank You Points, such as the Double Cash or Custom Cash, can also become AAdvantage Miles. This is because you can combine your Thank You Points and then transfer them to any of 15 airline partners or 5 hotel partners.

The reason why transferring points is so important is that in many cases, you can book hotels and flights with fewer points when you transfer them to a hotel or airline loyalty program. Even better, if what you’re looking for is actually a better deal to book with points through a travel portal, you have that option as well.

Domestic Airlines are (Mostly) Monogamous

Many international airline programs, like Air France/KLM Flying Blue, Avianca Lifemiles, and Air Canada Aeroplan, are polyamorous, allowing transfer partners from multiple bank points programs. For example, Flying Blue allows transfers from Chase, Citibank, American Express, Capital One, Bilt, and Wells Fargo. This is extremely common for international programs. Even Virgin Atlantic, despite its name, is a bit of a swinger.

Airlines based in the United States aren’t the swinging type; by comparison, they’re mostly monogamous. Delta Airlines only allows transfers from American Express Membership Rewards, American Airlines only allows transfers from Citi, and Alaska Airlines allows transfers from Bilt Rewards.

There are three airlines that, however, that aren’t exclusive. Southwest Airlines and United Airlines allow transfers from both Chase and Bilt, while JetBlue allows transfers from Citi, Chase, and American Express.

Your Airline Preferences Matter

Because of several factors, such as route networks, hub locations, award pricing, or just which airline you prefer, you should earn points that transfer to the airline that works best for you. For example, I know people who absolutely love Southwest Airlines. They fly a ton of flights out of Midway Airport in Chicago, which is an airport that isn’t far from where we live. Unfortunately, we do a lot of our flying to Europe, and Southwest Airlines doesn’t fly to Europe. We’re just not going to use it.

United Airlines flies to Europe and has a great network there, but generally, I find that it takes a lot of United miles to book a flight to Europe. Also, even though they fly out of my small home airport in Moline, the point prices for United flights out of Moline are extremely high.

Delta Skymiles is probably the most popular airline award currency in the world, but I struggle to find good value with Delta. They overcharge for one-way flights, and usually it’s difficult to find competitive pricing for round-trip tickets as well. That being said, I do occasionally find a great deal, and did recently book round-trip tickets in the summer for a little over 40,000 points each to Berlin. Unfortunately, those deals are not the easiest to find, and I don’t consistently find good value with Delta.

American Airlines, however, has a lot of great flights out of our local airport to Europe and some for extremely low prices, in points. In September, we are flying to Nice, France, from our local airport for only 19,000 AAdvantage miles each, and we were able to find a flight home from Dublin for only 19,000 miles as well. I have also seen several flights to Italy, Spain, and England for only 19,000 miles. Overall, it’s just a program that works well for us.

Those airline miles aren’t created equal either. The Points Guy does valuations each month, which look at the price of flights in miles and compare it to the price in cash for the same flights. In July 2025, the values of those domestic airline miles are:

Delta Skymiles- 1.15 cents per point
United Mileage Plus- 1.3 cents per point
Southwest Rapid Rewards- 1.4 cents per point
JetBlue TrueBlue – 1.45 cents per point
Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan- 1.5 cents per point
American Airlines AAdvantage – 1.55 cents per point

As you can see, according to the Points Guy, AAdvantage miles are the most valuable of the domestic airline currencies, so having an additional way to earn those miles is a very good thing.

This Will Shift My Focus to Citi

Lately, I’ve been concentrating on earning American Express Membership Reward Points and Chase Ultimate Rewards. That’s because they have excellent ways of earning points, and they have great transfer partners. Both have great ways of accumulating points through sign up bonuses and cards with great earning rates.

For example, we put all our internet and cell phone charges on our Chase Ink Cash card because it earns 5x in those categories. Also, as much as possible, we use our Amex Gold Card for restaurants and grocery stores because they earn 4x in those categories. Those are both great ways to accumulate a lot of points without sign up bonuses.

However, with Citi, I have a Custom Cash card which earns 5x on all spending in your top category, up to $500 in a billing cycle. This means that if you pick a category that you can come close to spending $500 on each month and only use it in that category, you can accumulate 2,500 Citi Thank You points each month without a lot of spending. I haven’t been doing that, however, because I just wasn’t that excited about accumulating Citi Thank You Points.

The partnership with American Airlines changes that. Because AAdvantage miles are very valuable to me, I will be going out of my way to earn Citi Thank You Points so I have points available to transfer to American Airlines.

Current Citi Strata Travel Credit Cards

Now that Citibank has revamped its travel cards, they are currently offering three different credit cards that all earn Citi Thank You Points: one is an entry-level card, one is a travel card, and one is a premium travel card.

Citi Strata Card

This is the entry-level travel card, and it is a pretty good starter card. It has no annual fee and is currently offering a 30,000-point welcome offer if you spend $1,000 in 3 months. For being a no annual fee card, it has tremendous bonus categories including 5x on travel through the Citi Travel Portal, 3x at supermarkets, 3x on gas and EV stations, 3x on a self-selected category, 2x on dining, and 1x everywhere else.

The downside is that it has a limited number of transfer partners (Does not allow transfers to AAdvantage), and those points transfer at a worse ratio. You could however, hold onto those points until you get a Citi credit card with a better transfer ratio, or perhaps transfer those points to a family member who holds a Citi credit card with better transfer options and have them book flights or hotels for you.

Citi Strata Premier

The Citi Strata Premier is a great travel credit card. It has a $95 annual fee and is currently offering a 60,000-point bonus if you spend $4,000 in the first 3 months. It offers 10x on hotels, attractions, and car rentals booked through the Citi Travel Portal, 3x on other air and hotel purchases, 3x on supermarkets, 3x on restaurants, 3x on gas and EV Charging stations, and 1x on everything else.

Unlike the Citi Strata Card, the Citi Strata Premier transfers to all of Citi’s partners at the best transfer rate that Citi offers. This also includes the 1:1 ratio to American Airlines. In addition, the Citi Strata Premier also offers a variety of benefits, including trip delay coverage, trip cancellation, and protection insurance, lost and damaged luggage coverage, and some car rental coverage.

Citi Strata Elite

The Citi Strata Elite is a brand-new premium credit card offering from Citibank with a $595 annual fee. It is currently offering an 80,000 point bonus when you spend $4,000 on the card in the first 3 months. It earns 12x on hotels, car rentals, and attractions booked through the Citi Travel Portal, 6x on air travel through the Citi Travel Portal, 6x on dining on Friday and Saturday nights, 3x on dining other nights, as well as 1.5x on all other purchases.

To compensate for the high annual fee, it offers $300 per year in hotel credits, $200 on an annual splurge credit, $200 Blacklane credit, a Priority Pass Select Membership, 4 American Airlines Admirals Club Lounge passes, as well as a $120 Global Entry or TSA pre-check credit.

My Favorite Strata Card

In my opinion, the Citi Strata Premier Card is the best of this group. The 3x categories of groceries, dining, and gas can help users accumulate a lot of points quickly. It has access to all of the transfer partners that the Citi Strata Elite card does, but with a $95 annual fee instead of a $595 annual fee. Also, I don’t find the credits on the Strata Elite to be enticing enough to pay an extra $500 on an annual fee. The only reason I would consider the Strata Elite is if I were a very frequent flyer, and I used those lounge passes a lot.

Being Strategic about Your Credit Card Choices

The points and miles world is extremely complicated. There are multiple banks with multiple cards, and each comes with different earning rates, benefits, and transfer partners. If you wish to turn all of your everyday purchases into great vacations, it’s important to try to be as strategic as possible.

For travel hackers who are using points to supercharge their travel, they must use the points programs that fit their travel plans the best. That really means working backwards from the destinations that you would like to visit, figuring out the best airlines that service those destinations from where they live, and then trying to figure out the best way to earn points to use with that airline. If American Airlines miles are a good fit for your travel plans, then this new partnership with Citi is a very exciting development.

Points Check June 2025

Posted on July 8, 2025December 28, 2025 by David Cox

We’re getting ready to embark on another European adventure, although this time we will be on separate vacations. Jenn is visiting Munich and Dublin with our daughter, her sister, and our niece. That was planned as a girls’ trip to celebrate our niece graduating from High School.

Meanwhile, my son Alex and I will be visiting Dresden and Berlin, and spending a significant amount of time hiking in Saxon Switzerland National Park on the border of Germany and the Czech Republic.

It’s getting a little weird, this being our fourth trip to Europe in three years, since I thought that a European vacation was out of reach for us a decade ago. Knowing how and where we can save money on these trips makes all the difference.

For instance, for Alex and me to go on our trip, the round-trip flight cost $264 in taxes and fuel charges on top of the 81,600 Delta Skymiles. We will be taking Flixbus from the airport to Dresden and then from Dresden to Berlin the following week. Those bus tickets will cost a total of $80. We will spend about $140 for two Deutschland tickets, which will cover all of our public transportation while we are there. That means that our transportation costs are a total of $484.

Knowing that we would spend only a little time in our Airbnb, we rented a small apartment near a train stop in Dresden for $490 for 6 nights. We also have two nights in the Holiday Inn Express Alexanderplatz, where we will use two IHG free night certificates.

That means that, outside of food and activities, we will spend less than $1,000 on the trip. I get a lot of odd looks from people who can’t believe that we can afford to keep going to Europe, but it’s absolutely possible if you know what you’re doing.

IHG Bonus

Jenn earned the first of her bonuses on the IHG One Rewards Premier Business Card. She signed up for the card when there was a 140,000 point bonus after $4,000 in 3 months and an additional 60,000 points after $9,000 spent in 6 months.

IHG isn’t a luxury brand, but it offers many affordable options and has locations worldwide. I’ve especially been pleased with its footprint in Europe. Plenty of hotels are available wherever I look in Europe on the IHG app. Having a stash of IHG points will be nice to have when planning trips in the future.

On to the Point Check!

Most of our spending was done on the two cards for which we are working on signup bonuses. That would be my Chase Sapphire Preferred and Jenn’s IHG Business Card. There was some spending done on cards that we use for recurring billing. We’ve optimized them so that we earn 5x on utilities and 8x on gas with the Wyndham Business Earner card as well as 5x on streaming services and cell phone plans on the Ink Cash. All of that means that for these cards we earned 8.3% back on all spend on the cards listed below – not too bad.

Card Used	Spend	Points Earned	Point Value	Points Per $	Return on Spend
Ink Cash	$502	2,510	$51.46	5.0	10.2%
Wyndham Business Earner	$407	2,234	$24.57	5.5	6.0%
Amex Gold	$165	660	$13.20	4.0	8.0%
Total	1,074	5,404	$89.23	5.0	8.3%

This month’s spending not devoted to earning a signup bonus

In addition to the spending listed above, I also spent a little less than $3,000 on my Chase Sapphire Preferred Card, earning around 4,700 Chase Ultimate Reward points. Jenn spent over $3,100 on her IHG, earning 11,900 IHG points as well as the 140,000 point bonus for spending $4,000 in the first 3 months. If she ends up spending an additional $5,000 over the next 4 months, she will earn an additional 60,000 point bonus.

At the end of the month, we had a grand total of:

185,000 IHG points
161,800 Chase Ultimate Rewards Points
124,600 Amex Membership Rewards Points
93,000 American Airlines Miles
81,100 Wyndham Points
79,100 Alaska Miles
32,300 Citi Thank You Points
16,700 United Miles
15,900 Marriott Bonvoy Points
9,300 Hyatt Points
1,500 Delta Miles
$132 in Cash Back

According to the Points Guy’s valuations, the grand total of those points, miles, and cash back is a little less than $11,600. That is an increase of around $800 from the previous month, as our point totals finally start to recover from the massive amount of point redemptions we made at the end of last year and the beginning of this year. Of course, the most important thing is that we get to enjoy another wonderful vacation.

Points Check May 2025

Posted on June 19, 2025December 28, 2025 by David Cox

May wasn’t terribly exciting, but Jenn did join me on a business trip to San Antonio. While I’m not a huge fan of being in Texas during the warmer months, I love the River Walk. What is unique about the River Walk is that San Antonio built a giant flood tunnel and a lock and dam system along the San Antonio River to ensure that the river stays at the same level, regardless of the amount of rain they receive. That allows for the walkway to be only a few inches above the water level, and all of the shops and restaurants can be extremely close to the river. It makes for a unique and beautiful experience, especially at night.

While much of my time was spent at a convention, the evenings allowed us to check out many of the breweries and restaurants in the area. While I love walking around the main commercial area on the River Walk, the restaurants and bars there are expensive and underwhelming. When you get off the main area of River Walk, the food and drink seems to improve dramatically. We had the opportunity to visit my favorite place in San Antonio, Dos Sirenos Brewing, a couple of times when we were there, which made me and my belly, very happy.

Some Hotel Redemptions

My son Alex and I are going to Berlin and Dresden for a week this July. We hope to do a little hiking at Saxon Switzerland National Park and explore both cities. I waited maybe a little too long to book our lodging, but I was able to find a cheap Airbnb along the main train line in Dresden that should mean quick transit to the national park as well as Downtown Dresden. We also used the last two of Jenn’s IHG free-night certificates to book a Holiday Inn in Downtown Berlin.

In addition, we used Jenn’s Marriott free-night certificate, which was about to expire, to book a hotel in Peoria for a quick weekend getaway with our friends Bill and Theresa. While I hate that we almost had a certificate expire, using it for a quick getaway with some good friends is never a bad use of a certificate.

Slow and Steady

I’ve been a pretty big fan of the Wyndham program for a while. One reason is that Jenn’s Wyndham Business Earner card earns 8 points per dollar spent at gas stations and 5 points per dollar on utilities. That means that we are typically earning a couple of thousand Wyndham points per month on those categories. In addition, it gives any cardholder a 10% discount when those points are used.

Also, when the $95 annual fee is paid each year, the cardholder receives a 15,000-point bonus. Since those points are valued at 1.1 cents per dollar, we receive $165 in Wyndham points, and if you figure in the 10% point redemption discount, it’s closer to $180. That’s a pretty good reason to hold the card by itself.

Over the last 21 months, our Wyndham points balance has gone up by 78,000 points by doing nothing but using it for utilities and gas, and earning the annual bonus. This demonstrates how slow and steady growth can lead to a meaningful number of points.

At 81,000 points, we will have enough points to book a 1-bedroom Vacasa vacation rental for 6 days that is priced up to $250 per night. Since we really love to use vacation rentals, the ability to book one with points is fantastic. Also, the ability to get a free vacation rental worth up to $1,500 for just 81,000 points is pretty nice. There just happen to be quite a few Vacasas in Tulum, Puerto Vallarta, and Cabo San Lucas that fit that category, so there is a good chance I’ll be booking a trip to Mexico at some point.

On To The Point Check!

Once again, our spending not committed to earning a signup bonus was spent strategically. We earned 6.9% on that spending, and I’m generally happy when we earn over 5%.

Card Used	Spend	Points Earned	Point Value	Points Per $	Return on Spend
Wyndham Business Earner	$918	4,879	$53.67	5.3	5.9%
Ink Cash	$724	3.622	$74.25	5.0	10.2%
Venture	$455	910	$18.20	2.0	3.7%
Amex Gold	$421	1,684	$33.68	4.0	8.0%
Sapphire Preferred	$157	247	$5.06	1.6	3.2%
Total	$2,675	11,342	$184.86	4.2	6.9%

This month’s spending not devoted to earning a signup bonus

Besides the spending on the credit cards listed above, Jenn spent almost $1,600 on her IHG card, earning over 5,000 IHG points. I spent almost $1,500 on my Chase Sapphire Preferred card, earning me over 3,800 Chase Ultimate Reward points and getting me closer to my 100,000 point bonus. At the end of the month we were left with:

154,600 Chase Ultimate Rewards Points
124,500 Amex Membership Rewards Points
93,000 American Airlines Miles
79,100 Alaska Miles
78,800 Wyndham Points
60,000 Marriott Bonvoy Points
33,200 IHG points
32,100 Citi Thank You Points
16,700 United Miles
9,300 Hyatt Points
1,500 Delta Miles
$132 in Cash Back

When you add up all of those points, according to the valuations published by the Points Guy, they are worth a grand total of $10,700. That is slightly higher than the previous month, but still well below our all-time high of $16,500. Given the fact that we have some signup bonuses that we are working on and the fact that I don’t have to much to redeem our points on soon, I think we might top that this year. We’ll have to wait and see how that plays out though. Either way, I have a trip to Germany to get ready for!

Points Check April 2025

Posted on June 5, 2025December 28, 2025 by David Cox

April was about the only breather we could take for a while. March consisted of a trip to Spain and Portugal to do a week on the Camino de Santiago. In July, Jenn is taking our daughter Emma, as well as her sister and niece, to Munich and Dublin. Meanwhile, I will be taking our Son Alex to Berlin and Dresden as well as doing a little hiking in Bohemian Switzerland National Park. In September, we will be going to Nice, France, to participate in the UTMB Nice Côte d’Azur. It’s almost a little too much traveling in too short a time, but I’m willing to take this challenge head-on.

A Decent Deal on a Delta Flight?

I had been looking for months for a decent price on a flight for Alex and me to go to Europe, preferably Germany. For a while, I was getting frustrated because I could get flights to Europe for a decent number of points, but the prices for getting home were more than I wanted to spend. I was patient, and finally, Delta came through with round-trip flights for 40,800 Delta miles and $132 each. The price was 48,000, but Jenn has a Delta Gold Card, so the redemption was 15% off.

That meant Alex and I were set to go to Berlin in July for 81,600 Delta Miles and $264. That’s a pretty good price, but the downside was that it was the price for Basic Economy. In other words, we don’t get to choose our seats, so Alex and I may not be sitting together. I’m sure he’ll survive; he is 16 after all.

Those points came from a small amount of Delta miles that Jenn had, but she also had to transfer 76,000 American Express Membership Rewards points to Delta to cover the rest. Those flights would have cost around $1,000 each, so the redemption came to around 2.1 cents per point, which isn’t bad.

This was the last of the redemptions that we have planned for flights this year. It’s honestly difficult for me to believe it, but we booked 12 flights to Europe this year on points as well as a flight to San Antonio. Those flights weren’t “free” because they always come with taxes and sometimes come with fuel surcharges, but they have always been at severely discounted prices.

There is no way I would have paid cash for all of those flights, so I’m glad that we were able to use points to get to these amazing destinations. This year alone, I will have visited Portugal, Spain, France, Monaco, Ireland, Germany, and the Czech Republic. That’s pretty amazing, and I’m very thankful that I’m able to take these trips.

Sign Up Bonuses

In January, I signed up for the Alaska Airlines Visa Signature Card, which had a signup bonus of 75,000 Alaska miles and a companion fare after $3,000 spend in 3 months. In April, I finally completed my spending and received the bonus. The companion fare is essentially a $122 fare that you can use on any Alaskan flight if you purchase a second flight. It’s only good for a year, and I don’t think I’ll get an opportunity to use it. The Alaska Air miles, though, will definitely come in handy, especially when there are a lot of chances to use 4,500 Alaska miles to fly American Airlines on short flights. For us, they are especially useful for flying from our home airport in Moline to Chicago O’Hare.

Jenn got her 75,000 Membership Reward Points bonus for spending $6,000 in 6 months on her American Express Gold Card. That came just in time to replenish the points I used to book the Berlin flights for Alex and me. Membership Reward points are very valuable, and it’s always nice to have a little stash of those.

100K on Chase Sapphire Preferred

It doesn’t happen very often, but Chase occasionally offers a 100,000 point bonus on the Chase Sapphire Preferred card. When it does happen, every points and miles enthusiast checks to see if they’re eligible to receive the bonus. The basic requirements are that you have signed up for less than five personal credit cards in the last 24 months, you haven’t received the bonus in the last 48 months, and you currently don’t have a Sapphire Card.

Chase Ultimate Rewards points are the most coveted points in travel rewards outside of Bilt points. Getting 100,000 Ultimate Rewards points with one signup bonus is phenomenal, but the card itself is an excellent travel credit card. This card earns 5x on travel through the Chase Travel portal and 2x on all other travel purchases. It also earns 3x on dining, online groceries, and streaming services, and 1x on everything else. There is also a $50 hotel credit per year that you can receive if you book a hotel through the Chase Travel Portal.

What makes the points valuable, however, is their transfer partners. They have some great Airline transfer partners such as United, Southwest, Air France/KLM Flying Blue, Aer Lingus/Iberia/British Airways Avios, Air Canada, and Virgin Atlantic. A lot of people, however, love their Chase Ultimate Rewards points because they transfer to Hyatt at a 1:1 ratio. Hyatt has the most valuable hotel points, with most people valuing their points at around twice the value of Marriott points and about triple the value of Hilton points.

Jenn referred me to the Chase Sapphire Preferred card, so she will receive 10,000 points, and I will receive 100,000 points. I need to spend $5,000 in three months to receive the bonus. She also referred another friend, so she will be getting an additional 10,000 for that signup. I think I know five people who jumped on this deal, because it was so good.

On to the Point Check!

Most of our spending in April was on cards for which we were working on signup bonuses, so the spending below is almost entirely recurring charges. That being said, a 7.1 percent return on those charges is phenomenal, so I feel good about how I have our recurring charges set up.

Card Used	Spend	Points Earned	Point Value	Points Per $	Return on Spend
Amex Gold	$552	2,130	$42.60	3.9	7.7%
Ink Cash	$445	2,224	$45.59	5.0	10.2%
Wyndham Business Earner	$347	1,736	$19.10	5.0	5.5%
Venture	$345	690	$12.77	2.0	3.7%
Total	$1,689	6,780	$120.05	4.0	7.1%

This month’s spending not devoted to earning a signup bonus

On top of the spending listed above, I spent a little over $1,000 on my Alaska Airlines Card, earning over 1,500 Alaska miles as well as the 75,000 Alaska mile bonus. Jenn spent a whopping $8,500, a good portion of which was our annual taxes, nailing down her 75,000 point bonus as well as an additional 12,000 Membership Reward points. After all of that, we ended the month with:

126,900 Chase Ultimate Rewards Points
122,600 Amex Membership Rewards Points
93,000 American Airlines Miles
85,000 IHG points
79,100 Alaska Miles
60,000 Marriott Bonvoy Points
58,900 Wyndham Points
32,100 Citi Thank You Points
15,900 United Miles
6,500 Hyatt Points
1,100 Delta Miles
$109 in Cash Back

When you add everything up, the total value of points and miles, using the valuations from The Points Guy, comes to over $10,400. That is a $1,300 increase over last month. I don’t anticipate us booking very much for a while, since our trips for the year are pretty much planned. That means our point totals should be growing for the rest of the year and hopefully leave us with enough points to make some fun decisions for trips in 2026.

Points Check February 2025

Posted on March 3, 2025December 28, 2025 by David Cox

Looking forward to the Camino

We’ve spent a good deal of time in February planning our spring break trip to Portugal and Spain as well as booking some parts of a summer trip to Europe.

“Planning” is an odd way to put how we’re approaching our spring break trip. We’re doing a week on the Portuguese route of the Camino de Santiago de Compostela, a thousand year old tradition of folks, primarily Spanish Catholics, taking a pilgrimage to the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela to visit the final resting place of Saint James. The fact of the matter is that planning, other than making sure you have the correct gear, is unnecessary and maybe counterproductive for the Camino. It’s probably best to do the Camino with spontaneity, and this is driving me crazy because I want to plan SOMETHING!

This will be our first opportunity to do participate in something in Europe, instead of just being a tourist. While Americans certainly are welcome on the Camino only about 8 percent of pilgrims are Americans. Pilgrims come from around the world, but the majority are Europeans and hence this is primarily a European phenomenon. Knowing that the stops along the Camino are primarily to cater to the needs of them and not just Americans hopefully will mean that this will seem more authentic and not altered to appeal to American tourists.

We will be spending an evening in Porto on the day we arrive and a night in Madrid the day we leave. We booked a room in Porto at a hotel not affiliated with any major program using Jenn’s Delta Business Gold Card and the Delta Stays site, because her Delta Gold card has a $150 hotel credit which was immediately credited to her account.

We also used two IHG certificates to book a night at The Intercontinental Madrid. We had to book 2 rooms because, as usual, booking any room in Europe with 4 people is next to impossible, especially with points. Those rooms cost us a 60,000 point certificate each, but the cash rate for those rooms are $273 per night, which is right at about the maximum value you can expect to get for a 60,000 point IHG certificate.

American Express Gold

I referred Jenn to the American Express Gold Card and she was approved. I immediately received a 15,000 point referral bonus and Jenn will receive a 75,000 Membership Rewards point bonus when she completes $6,000 in spend in 6 months. It has a pretty steep $325 annual fee.

Despite the high annual fee, it’s actually one of my favorite credit cards for families. The reason is that it earns 4x on groceries and 4x on dining. Those are two categories where people tend to spend a lot of money, so it has the ability to accumulate points very quickly.

The 4x bonus categories wouldn’t be good enough to offset the $325 annual fee, but if you are able to use some of the credits available on the Amex Gold card, you should be able to get all or most of the annual fee back. Those credits include $100 per year at Resy restaurants, $120 per year Uber credit, $120 per year dining credit and a $84 per year credit at Dunkin.

Amex points are extremely flexible since the transfer to 18 airline reward programs and 3 hotel programs. I’ve had no problem finding good use for Amex points but I do have a problem keeping them around, so earning a few more is always good.

Booking Jenn’s Summer Trip

We booked the main legs of Jenn’s trip this summer with her sister, our niece and our daughter. The four of them will be flying from Chicago to Munich on a direct flight on United that we booked using Singapore Krisflyer miles. We transferred 87,000 Citi Thank You points and 35,000 American Express Membership Reward points to get the 122,000 points needed. Booking using Krisflyer miles meant that the flight was 30,500 points per ticket and $5.60 instead of 40,000 United miles and $5.60 each.

We also booked the flight home, a direct flight on Aer Lingus from Dublin to Chicago. That cost 20,000 Aer Lingus Avios and $155 each. We transferred the 80,000 points from American Express to book that flight.

I’m waiting to book the flight from Munich to Dublin until they decide on what day they want to travel. They might even want to take a train or bus to another nearby city like Vienna or Zurich, spend a day and fly out of those cities. They need to hash out those details before I book anything else.

On to the Point Check

Jenn didn’t have a welcome offer to work on, so her default credit card was her Amex Business Gold card, which she earned a surprising 2.4 points per dollar spent on. We almost never use my World of Hyatt card because it’s just not good for earning points. However, they had an offer of 5x on groceries for up to $1,000 spent this quarter, so we started to use it for our groceries. I’ll take 5x Hyatt points any day of the week. So for all of our credit card spending not going towards a welcome bonus, we earned a 6.2% return. That means that we were doing a good job of taking advantage of the bonus categories on our credit cards to maximize point accumulation.

Card Used	Spend	Points Earned	Point Value	Points Per $	Return on Spend
Amex Business Gold	$1,059	2,591	51.82	2.4	4.9%
Ink Cash	$445	2,224	$45.59	5.0	10.3%
World of Hyatt	$356	1,783	$30.31	5.0	8.5%
Venture	$345	690	$12.77	2.0	3.7%
Wyndham Business Earner	$306	2,253	$24.78	7.4	8.1%
Blue Business Plus	$234	468	$9.36	2.0	4.0%
Citi Premier	$206	271	$4.88	1.3	2.4%
Amex Gold	$127	508	$10.16	4.0	8.0%
Total	$3,078	10,788	$189.67	3.5	6.2%

This month’s spending not devoted to earning a signup bonus

Besides that, I spent a little over $1,500 on my Alaska Airlines card and earned around 1,500 Alaska miles. With the redemptions for the summer trip, that leaves us with:

170,000 Chase Ultimate Reward Points
105,000 Amex Membership Reward Points
99,700 American Airlines Miles
83,800 IHG Points
71,900 Marriott Bonvoy Points
54,300 Wyndham Points
32,000 Citi Thank You Points
12,400 Hyatt Points
6,300 Delta Miles
2,800 United Miles
1,500 Alaska Airlines Miles
$109 in Cash Back

It feels like lately we’ve been absolutely bleeding points, but we are getting to the end of most of the points redemptions, at least for flights, that we will need for 2025. That means that we should be able to concentrate more on enjoying our trips and accumulating more points to get ready for whatever we have plan for 2026. In October our points, according to the Point Guy, was worth $16,500. With all of the redemptions that we’ve made since October, we are down to $9,900. Time to earn some more points!

Points Check December 2024

Posted on January 16, 2025January 16, 2025 by David Cox

December is always a month to get together with family and friends to celebrate the holidays. For a lot of people there is holiday travel, but this has always been a time for us to stay home. Now that we’ve been traveling more, this is time that I get a chance to slow down and think about next year’s travels.

While children dreamed of Christmas morning, I was dreaming about where we are going in 2025. Over the last few years, we have done a great job of building up our point balances in a variety of programs, and that opens up a lot of possibilities for our 2025 travels.

It has been tempting to think of places in South America or Asia, but right now, we really love going to Europe. Even though it can be a challenging distance to fly, it’s still close enough that a seven to ten day trip isn’t dominated by flights and the accompanying jet lag. The infrastructure of subways, high speed rail and airports makes getting around in Europe without renting a car easy.

Europe is beginning to feel like an easy destination, where I don’t have to worry too much about how to get around, where to stay or for that matter the language barrier, since so many Europeans speak English well. Plus, we have so much left to see in Europe. Because of that, we have three trips to Europe in 2025 in various stages of planning.

Redemptions Galore

I went on a bit of a booking spree in December. It started with me noticing a great deal on an American Airlines flight to Nice at the perfect time for the UTMB Nice Cote d’Azur Ultramarathons. I wanted to do the 54 kilometer trail race, but I also wanted to make sure that I could get a decent price on a flight before I committed to it. We booked the way there from Moline for only 19,000 American Airlines miles and $11 each. Getting home wasn’t quite as affordable as going to Nice, so I ended up booking a flight out of Dublin, Ireland instead for 19,000 American Airlines miles and $47 in taxes.

That meant we needed to book a flight from Nice to Dublin which we were able to secure on Aer Lingus for a 6,500 Aer Lingus Avios and $37 each. We transferred Amex Membership Rewards points to Aer Lingus Avios at a 1:1 ratio to acquire the necessary Avios. So in the end, for Jenn and I to fly to Nice from Moline and then on to Dublin for a couple days and then back to Moline, cost us 76,000 American Airlines miles, 13,000 Amex Membership Reward points and $190 in cash.

In November, we had booked a flight for Jenn and I and our two kids Alex and Emma from Chicago to Porto, Portugal for 48,000 Virgin Atlantic miles transferred from 35,000 Chase Ultimate Reward points and $702 in taxes and fees.

We did however, need to get back so we booked 4 flights from Madrid to Chicago for 88,000 Iberia Avios and $512 dollars in taxes and fees. Those points were transferred from American Express Membership Reward points and we used 50,700 Capital One Venture miles at one cent per point to wipe out all but $5 of the taxes and fees.

So in two months we booked four flights from Chicago to Porto, four flights from Madrid to Chicago, two flights from Moline to Nice, two flights from Nice to Dublin and two flights from Dublin to Moline. These flights in total cost us 101,000 Amex Membership Reward points, 76,000 American Airlines miles, 50,700 Capital One Venture miles, 35,000 Chase Ultimate Reward points and $897 in cash. I was able to redeem $875 in cash back to help out with the cash for taxes and fees, so out of pocket these flights cost us a grand total of $23. I’m not mad about that at all.

The cash value for the flights from Chicago to Porto were $433 each on KLM. The cash value for the flights from Madrid to Chicago on Iberia was a shockingly high $901 each. The whole Moline to Nice to Dublin to Moline itinerary had a cash value of $1,253 each. The grand total for all of that would have been $7,842 so to only fork over $23 isn’t bad. The 262,700 points and miles we used ended up netting us over 2.6 cents per point in value which is way above what they are actually valued at, so we did a tremendous job of redeeming those points.

A Couple of Bonuses

The $875 in cash back didn’t appear out of thin air. I happened to finally get my $750 sign up bonus for hitting the required $6,000 in spend in the first five months of opening my US Bank Triple Cash card. I actually spent a little over $6,400 and the total cash back was over $850. That meant I got around 13.3% cash back for all of that spend on the Triple Cash over the first 4 months. That’s pretty good, I’ll take it.

Jenn also hit the signup bonus that she was working on. She signed up for the Citi Strata Premier card, which had a 75,000 Thank You point bonus after spending $4,000 in the first 3 months.

This leaves us with no current credit card signup bonuses we are working on, so I’ll have to make a decision about how I’m going to go about building up our points balances after using so many in the last couple of months.

Never Forget Those Credits

I’m supposed to be an “expert”, right? Well, I was listening to a podcast (It was probably Frequent Miler on the Air), and they mentioned that you need to make sure to use up the credits that were expiring at the end of the year. One of the credits that they mentioned was that many Delta Airlines credit cards have hotel credits that can be used once a year. I knew Jenn had a Delta Airlines Business Gold card and so I checked out the credit. Sure enough, there is a $150 annual hotel credit if you book the hotel though Delta Stays.

We used the credit to do a short trip to Iowa City for an Iowa Hawkeye Women’s Basketball game – Go Hawks! We also use this as an opportunity to use up the $50 semi-annual Resy credit that comes with my American Express Gold card.

This was a huge reminder to me to make sure that I not only understand all of the benefits of the credit cards we have, but to actually use them. Most travel credit cards with annual fees will have some benefits or credits that will expire if you don’t use them. It’s important to remember to use those, or you’re not getting the full benefit of a card you’re paying for.

On to THe POint Check!

We didn’t stray too much from the cards that we were working on for a bonus this month. Most of the spending that we did on cards not earning a signup bonus was on recurring charges like utilities, insurance, streaming services, etc. The good news is that you can get a pretty good return on that spend and we were able to get a fairly impressive 7.1% return on all of those recurring charges last month. I’ll take it.

Card Used	Spend	Points Earned	Point Value	Points Per $	Return on Spend
Ink Cash	$463	2,317	$47.50	5.0	10.3%
Wyndham Business Earner	$450	2,591	$28.50	5.8	6.3%
Venture	$345	690	$12.77	2.0	3.7%
Total	$1,258	5,598	$88.76	4.4	7.1%

This month’s spending not devoted to earning a signup bonus

Besides the spending listed above, I also spent a little over $2,200 on my US Bank Triple Cash card earning $37 in cash back as well as the $750 sign up bonus. Jenn spent a little over $2,800 on her Citi Strata Premier card and earned almost 5,600 Citi Thank You points as well as the 75,000 point bonus on that card.

After earning two bonuses and having a whole lot of points redeemed for flights, we were left with:

199,600 American Express Membership Rewards Points
176,700 Chase Ultimate Reward Points
142,300 IHG Points
113,900 Citi Thank You Points
99,700 American Airlines Miles
71,900 Marriott Bonvoy Points
49,700 Wyndham Points
19,600 Hyatt Points
5,100 Delta Miles
2,700 United Miles
$105 in Cash Back

According to the valuations published by The Points Guy, the total value of our points, miles and cash back is $12,950. That is a significant drop from November when the total was worth $15,600, but that’s fine. We are using those points wisely and have all of the flights for two trips to Europe out of the way. I just need to book a summer trip and all of our plans are ready for 2025. It’s going to be a fun year.

Points Check October 2024

Posted on November 23, 2024 by David Cox

Much of our time in October was spent preparing for our trip to Italy. Our trip included our good friends Bill and Theresa and Jenn’s Parents. None of them had been to Italy before and we wanted to make sure that they had a great time. I spent a decent amount of time researching places to visit, things to eat, train tickets, etc.

Meanwhile, Jenn spent a good deal of the month making ensuring that our kids had everything they needed to survive while we were gone. Emma and Alex are 19 and 15, respectively and they are definitely at the age where leaving them for another continent is questionable. I am, however, a firm believer that giving children challenges is a great way to turn them into functioning adults.

I can tell you that Emma passed this challenge with flying colors. She was not only responsible for taking care of Alex while she was gone, but she also was working, going to school and taking care of Jenn’s Parents’ dog. On top of that, she was coaching a youth basketball team. She took care of all of that and made sure that our house didn’t turn into a scene from Lord of the Flies. We couldn’t be prouder of her.

Citi Strata Premier Card

Right before we left for Italy, Jenn applied for, and her application was accepted for the Citi Strata Premier card. This is Citibank’s premier card and it’s a pretty good one. It has a $95 annual fee and has some pretty good bonus categories.

10x on Hotels, Rental Cars, and Attractions booked through the CitiTravel.com
3x on Groceries
3x on Restaurants
3x on Gas and EV Charging stations
3x on Flights and Other Hotel Purchases
1x on Everything Else

Getting 3x on groceries, restaurants and gas means means the cardholder can get 3x on a large portion of their spending without worrying about using one card for dining, and one card for gas, etc. It is a great credit card for people who don’t want to think too hard about points and miles.

This card currently has a 75,000 point welcome offer when the cardholder spends $4,000 within 3 months. Citi points are valued at 1.8 cents per point by The Points Guy, so that bonus is worth $1,350. In order to get that 1.8 cents per point value, you would need to use one of Citi’s transfer partners, including some of my favorites like Air France/KLM flying blue and Avianca Lifemiles.

It has a $100 credit on a hotel purchase of $500 or more using the Citi Travel site. It also has some trip protections and no foreign transaction fees. Overall, it’s a really solid travel credit card and especially good for people who don’t want to manage multiple cards.

Ok, On to the Point Check

This was not a great month for spending on non-bonus cards. We’ve gotten a little lazy about what card to use. For the vast majority of the month, Jenn didn’t have a card where she was working on a signup bonus. She is usually the one yelling at me that we need to sign up for a new card, because she can’t stand not working towards a signup bonus. Because she didn’t have a signup bonus to work towards, she just used her IHG Premier and her Amex Business Gold, neither of which were particularly great choices.

Card Used	Spend	Points Earned	Point Value	Points Per $	Return on Spend
Amex Business Gold	$1,143	1,310	$26.20	1.1	2.3%
IHG Premier	$814	2,695	$13.48	3.3	1.7%
Ink Cash	$561	2,783	$57..05	5.0	10.2%
Venture	$372	745	$13.78	2.0	3.7%
Wyndham Business	$284	1,588	$17.47	5.6	6.2%
Total	$3,174	9,121	$127.98	2.9	4.0%

This month’s spending not devoted to earning a signup bonus

Because of that, the return on spend on cards where there wasn’t a signup bonus was 4%. I like to keep that number above 5% and lately we’ve been over 6%. Note to self – make sure Jenn has a signup bonus to work on.

Besides the spending on the above chart, I spent over $3,200 on my US Bank Triple Cash card, earning a little under $50 in cash back. That puts me more than halfway to the $6,000 in required spend to earn the $750 bonus on that card.

That meant that we finished the month with:

296,700 Amex Membership Reward Points
217,000 Chase Ultimate Reward Points
141,700 IHG Points
104,800 American Airlines Miles
85,400 Capital One Venture Miles
71,900 Marriott Bonvoy Points
30,400 Citi Thank You Points
11,300 Hyatt Points
5,000 Delta Miles
2,700 United Miles
$220 Cash Back

Using the Points Guy’s valuations, all of this totals to an all-time high for us of $15,800 in points, miles and cash back. We have some pretty big travel plans for 2025, so we’re going to need a big stash of points available. Hopefully I see some Black Friday deals so I can lock in some plane tickets!

Points Check September 2024

Posted on October 14, 2024 by David Cox

September was a fairly normal month for us. No traveling this month other than Jenn and I did spend a night in fabulous Cedar Rapids, Iowa at the luxurious Residence Inn. I know that sounds funny, but we had an expiring Marriott hotel certificate. Unfortunately, we just didn’t find a use for it until it was close to expiring.

The funny thing was we just didn’t want to drive too far for a one night stay, and the only places that seemed interesting enough to drive to within a couple of hours was Cedar Rapids and Iowa City. It was the day of the annual Iowa Hawkeyes/Iowa State Cyclone football game so finding a good use for that hotel certificate anywhere near Iowa City on that weekend was tricky, since the hotels were pretty full.

We ended up staying in a hotel that frankly was a little run down, but it was fine and we had a little night out in Cedar Rapids. It was fun to visit a city nearby that we hadn’t had a chance to experience yet. It was also a good reminder to stay on top of those free night certificates.

Rebooking a Positioning Flight

We had a couple of flights booked to go to and from Chicago O’Hare from Moline at the beginning and end of our trip to Italy. With the new ability to transfer points to Alaskan Airlines through Hawaiian Airlines from American Express, we rebooked the exact same American Airlines flights we had already booked. I know that sounds nuts, but I swear it’s all perfectly logical, and I explained my reasoning and the method in a previous post.

The flights now cost a grand total of 18,000 Amex Membership Reward points and $72 instead of the original 30,000 American Airlines miles and $22. Since I really value American Airlines miles, I was glad to have those returned.

Keeping It Loosey-Goosey

I’ve been spending a decent amount of my time getting ready for our trip to Italy. When we went to Europe last summer, I made sure to book all of our train tickets, museums and tours in advance. That was necessary, in my opinion, during high season. This time we’re going during November, which I’m hoping means that we can be a little bit more relaxed about our schedule. It is a bit of a gamble, but I think it will pay off.

The way I see it, if we plan to visit the Colosseum one day and the Vatican a different day, and it rains on the day we go to the Colosseum, that’s not great. By keeping it open, we can watch the weather forecast and visit the Vatican on the day it rains and the Colosseum on the day it doesn’t. Unfortunately, by not buying skip-the-line tickets ahead of time, it might mean that we’re waiting in line. With it being off-peak, however, I don’t think it will be too bad. That being said, I’m not certain what off-peak season is like so I’ll just cross my fingers that we’re not making a horrible mistake.

Instead of tediously planning out a bunch of activities, I’m just keeping a list of things we can do, with the thought that we can make those decisions on a day to day basis. Hopefully that will turn out to be the best approach.

What’s The Value of a Hotel Certificate?

Jenn earned her bonus for her IHG Premier card this month which was 5 free night certificates worth up to 60,000 IHG points each. What does that really mean?

Free night certificates are hard to value. As noted earlier in this post, they’re usually only good for one year and they expire. They also have a maximum value that cannot be exceeded. One thing is almost assured, and that is that we will never redeem any of those certificates for a stay at an IHG property that is charging exactly 60,000 points for a stay. Finding that one hotel room that you need at maximum value is very close to impossible.

So what is the actual value for those certificates? For some people, they would try to maximize the value of those certificates by searching for the best hotel and if they have to go out of their way to maximize the value of that certificate, they will. We really use certificates because we need to stay somewhere, often for just one night, and that might mean on a stopover on a long flight. The most important thing to me is location and Jenn likes a free breakfast. Considering how we use certificates, the chances of us getting full value out of our certificates is basically zero.

That being said, we already used one of these certificates to book the Kimpton De Witt in Amsterdam. We have a 25 hour stopover in Amsterdam on our way to Rome and this checked a lot of boxes for us. It was a short train ride from the airport, right by the train station and downtown by the canals. We were going to have to leave for the airport too early for breakfast, so the fact that they didn’t have free breakfast is irrelevant. This hotel is going for 47,000 points per night, so we used almost 80% of the full value of the certificate. Honestly, that is about as good as you can reasonably expect. The cash value of the hotel room was $302, so I’m not mad about the free night.

For the sake of simplicity, I just value certificates at half of their maximum value. So if I can get a hotel room worth more than 30,000 IHG points with one of these certificates, I’ll be happy. With IHG points being worth around half a cent each, I would say the sign up bonus that Jenn earned was 150,000 points at .5 cents or $750. Considering the first certificate we used saved us $300, I think we’re already ahead.

US Bank Triple Cash

I signed up for the US Bank Triple Cash Rewards Business Card. This is a card with no annual fee. It earns 3% cash back on gas, EV charging stations, office supply stores, cell phone providers and restaurants. It earns 1% cash back on everything else. There is also a $100 per year credit for recurring software purchases, like Quickbooks.

The signup bonus is $750 after spending $6,000 in 6 months. I’m always a big fan of having some extra time to complete a spending requirement, so 6 months is great. This bonus will give us a little cash back to pay for some of those annoying taxes and surcharges when booking award flights.

American Airlines Aviator Red

I also signed up for the American Airlines Aviator Red card, under the assumption that it was going to disappear and this was my last chance to get the 70,000 American Airlines miles bonus for just one purchase and a paying the $99 annual fee. It’s just too easy to pass up. I already met the requirements now and I’m just waiting for those sweet, sweet AA miles to show up in my account. For more information about that card, read my post.

On To The Point Check

We did a pretty good job this last month continuing to use the bonus categories on some of our existing credit cards which led to a total of 6.3% return on all of our spend not devoted to earning a signup bonus.

Card Used	Spend	Points Earned	Point Value	Points Per $	Return on Spend
Amex Gold	$592	1,862	$37.28	3.1	6.3%
Ink Cash	$558	2,772	$56.83	5.0	10.2%
Venture	$547	1,094	$20.24	2.0	3.7%
Wyndham Business	$352	1,955	$21.51	5.6	6.1%
Citi	$297	667	$12.01	2.2	4.0%
Amex Business Gold	$190	546	$10.92	2.9	5.8%
Total	$2,536	8,898	$158.78	3.5	6.3%

This month’s spending not devoted to earning a signup bonus

Aside from the spending in the above chart, Jenn spent around $4,300 on her IHG Premier card earning her 19,000 IHG points and the signup bonus of 5 free night certificates worth up to 60,000 points per night. I spent a little over $500 on my US Bank Triple Cash card earning around $13 in cash back. At the end of the month, we were left with:

293,000 Amex Membership Rewards Points
214,000 Chase Ultimate Reward Points
139,000 IHG Points (includes 4 free night certificates)
104,800 American Airlines Miles
84,700 Capital One Venture Miles
71,900 Marriott Bonvoy Points (Includes 2 free night certificates)
43,000 Wyndham Points
30,400 Citi Thank You Points
11,300 Hyatt Points (includes a free night certificate)
5,000 Delta Skymiles
1,900 United Miles
$170 in cash back

Using the valuations from the Points Guy, those points are worth a grand total of nearly $15,600. We’re going to need them, because we have big plans for 2025.

Last Call for the American Airlines Aviator Red card?

Posted on September 29, 2024September 29, 2024 by David Cox

Last week an article by CNBC indicated that Citigroup was in heavy negotiations with American Airlines to be the exclusive card issuer for American Airlines credit cards. These negotiations are immensely important for American Airlines because the revenue that comes from airline loyalty programs are now a huge portion of their income. It’s become so important, in fact, that it’s sometimes joked that airlines are credit card companies that fly planes. According to Delta CEO Ed Bastian, nearly 1% of the entire US economy is charged to Delta credit cards. The revenue from selling loyalty points to banks is a multi-billion dollar industry for airlines, and its a revenue stream they take very seriously.

American Airlines is in a strange situation because they have cobranded credit cards issued by two different banks. There are four credit cards issued by Citigroup which include three personal credit cards and one business card. Barclays technically has two personal American Airlines cards, but one is only available through upgrade, the AAdvantage Aviator Silver. The only Barclays American Airlines card with a current sign up bonus is the AAdvantage Aviator Red.

The fact that American Airlines has two banks issuing their credit cards is because of an American Airlines merger with US Airways over a decade ago. US Airways had a relationship with Barclays and after the merger US Airways credit cards issued by Barclays became American Airlines cards. American Airlines kept that relationship going, even as people began to forget about US Airways.

It makes sense for American Airlines and Citigroup to form an exclusive relationship. It would make the AAdvantage program more straightforward by reducing the complexity of having multiple card issuers. In the end, I think it’s highly likely that American Airlines will end their relationship with Barclays and form an exclusive relationship with Citigroup.

AAdvantage Aviator Red Card

If Barclays is going to get dropped from the AAdvantage program, it’s safe to say the Barclays AAdvantage Aviator Red card is going to go away. In some respects, good riddance, it’s not a very interesting card. It earns 2 miles per dollar spent on American Airlines purchases and 1 mile on everything else. You do get a free checked bag and preferred boarding but the annual fee is $99.

The thing that does make it interesting is that the signup bonus is incredibly easy to earn. Right now, there is a 70,000 mile signup bonus available through Frequent Miler’s website. What is the spending requirement? Signup and use it once. Literally, pay the $99 annual fee, activate the card and buy a pack of gum using the credit card and 70,000 AAdvantage miles are yours for the taking.

70,000 AAdvantage miles is a pretty decent haul. We took recently our family of four to Costa Rica from our small regional airport during Spring Break for a total of 120,000 AAdvantage miles and around $340 in taxes. Also, I have noticed, anecdotally, that flights out of smaller airports that are serviced by American Airlines don’t pay significantly higher amounts of points than flights out of larger airports. That it is definitely not the case for United Airlines, for example.

In addition, I’ve been eyeballing some deals to Portugal for spring break that are running around 22,500 AAdvantage miles one way per person. Having an extra 70,000 miles would top off our accounts enough to book the flights there, even though it wouldn’t be enough to get home.

Fear of Missing Out

I think that this is the last chance I have of taking advantage of one of the biggest no-brainers in points and miles. It’s legitimately buying 70,000 miles for $99. It’s not the best signup bonus the card has offered. Jenn got this card about a year ago when it offered 60,000 points for one charge and 15,000 for an authorized user and an additional charge to the authorized user card. However, it is definitely a solid deal, and waiting for a better deal at this point could mean that I miss out completely.

In the middle of writing this post, I actually did apply for this card and was approved. That’s fantastic and I will happily take my shiny new 70,000 miles from American Airlines. As a matter of fact, after I was approved, my daughter walked downstairs and I convinced her to apply for it as well and she was approved.

In all fairness, when I told her there was an annual fee she balked, but I told her if she would use her miles to pay for her ticket to Portugal, I would pay for her annual fee and she jumped on it.

Potentially Good News From the Exclusive Deal with Citigroup

Knowing that Barclays will likely be cut out of the American Airlines credit card business, it means that there will be less choices, and less available signup bonuses in the future. Still, it does raise the possibility of American Airlines becoming a transfer partner for Citi Thank You points.

American Airlines currently doesn’t have a transfer partner. Most major airlines have transfer partners, with Delta Airlines being a partner from American Express Membership Rewards points and United Airlines and Southwest Airlines being partners from Chase Ultimate Reward points. American Airlines was briefly a transfer partner of Citi Thank You points a few years ago, and was a transfer partner of Bilt Rewards very recently. A few months ago Bilt Rewards and American Airlines ended that partnership, and maybe that has to do with their negotiations with Citigroup.

With no current transfer partner, and with American Airlines negotiating a deal with Citigroup, there is a fairly good possibility that Citi Thank You points will become transferable to American Airlines. If that becomes a reality, I will definitely be attempting to earn more Citi Thank You points, because I find a lot of value in American Airlines miles.

In the end, I hope the changes that American Airlines makes to their credit card business with Citigroup works out to be beneficial to both them and their cardholders. Knowing how important that loyalty points are to the business of airlines puts a lot of pressure on them to have a good and profitable loyalty program. In the meantime, I need to figure out how I’m going to use these shiny new American Airlines miles.

Working Backwards – How To Use Points for Spain

Posted on July 9, 2024December 28, 2025 by David Cox

Once people learn that I save a lot of money on vacations by using miles and points, I often get asked “What credit card should I get?” The fact of the matter is that it depends on the type and location of the vacation. Where you want to go on vacation, when, and what style of vacation matters when deciding which card to choose.

Making a rational decision really matters when you’re making these plans because earning a bunch of points that are irrelevant to your plans can be extremely frustrating and counterproductive. Also, earning points in programs that require you to use more points than other programs means that you’re working harder than necessary to achieve your goals.

What about Spain?

Spain has been on our minds lately. Jenn and I have discussed going to Spain multiple times and we just haven’t pulled the trigger. We’ve discussed doing a beach vacation to the Canary Islands or a city trip to Madrid, but lately we’ve been discussing doing a week of a pilgrimage on the Camino de Santiago de Compostela. It hasn’t worked out for us yet, but those tapas are calling me and I’m going to make it happen at some point.

Economy Flights

I’m an economy flyer. It’s not that I don’t want to fly business or first class, it’s just not that important to me. I really treat flights as a means to an end – just get me there. Look, I’d love to be more comfortable, but right now I’m trying to get a family of four across an ocean, and I don’t really feel like draining my points balances to do it. I’m not saying I won’t fly business or first class in the future, but right now it’s just not something I’m thinking about.

That being said, there are quite a few good options for economy flights to Spain. Using the Daydream Explorer feature by Pointsyeah.com, I see quite a few good choices.

Points Program	Point Range	Typical Tax Range	Notes
Iberia	17,000 to 40,000 one-way	$100-$130	17,000 point is the typical off-peak price. Iberia’s hub is Madrid.
Flying Blue	20,000 to 40,000 one-way	$100-$170	20,000 points is fairly normal, some sales go as low as 11,500 points. Hubs in Amsterdam and Paris.
Virgin Atlantic	12,000 to 40,000 one-way	$170-$180	High fees, but 12,000 points are fairly easy to find, flights are usually KLM, Air France or Delta flights
Avianca Lifemiles	20,000-30,000 one way	$20-$70 (+25 booking fee)	Low fees and reasonable redemption prices. Avianca is usually good for United flights. Not as frequently available as Flying Blue and Iberia.
American Airlines	20,000-35,000 one-way	$5-$25	Low fees and reasonable redemption prices. Some flights that route through London have high taxes.
United Airlines	30,000-40,000 one-way	$5-$15	Low fees and high redemption prices, always check Avianca first before booking a United flight.

Award availability and pricing varies wildly, these prices may not be available when you want to book a flight.

The biggest problem here is that just because pricing for award flights are good and available in certain programs right now doesn’t mean that they will be available and good later. That’s why it is best to have the ability to use points with a variety of programs. Using a credit card with the ability to transfer points to a multiple programs is a good way to help you have the most options when it’s time to redeem those points.

Airline Award Program Transfer Partners

Point Program	Citibank	Chase	Amex	Capital One	Wells Fargo	Bilt
Iberia (Avios)	1:1	1:1	1:1	1:1	1:1	1:1
Flying Blue	1:1	1:1	1:1	1:1	1:1	1:1
Virgin Atlantic	1:1	1:1	1:1	1:1		1:1
Avianca Lifemiles	1:1		1:1	1:1	1:1	1:1
American Airlines
United Airlines		1:1				1:1

Transferring points from Capital One to Iberia Avios requires another step of first transferring points from Capital One to British Airways Avios and then to Iberia Avios. Transferring Citi Thank You Points requires a transfer to Qatar Avios, then to British Airways Avios and then to Iberia Avios.

I prefer to fly non-stop, if at all possible, and Chicago is our closest major airport. Most of the non-stop flights from Chicago to Madrid are on Iberia. That’s going to be my first choice. All major programs transfer to Avios, but Citi and Capital One don’t transfer directly to Iberia Avios, they both require transferring to a different Avios program and then to Iberia. That could create other annoyances that I might not want to deal with.

KLM/Air France Flying Blue is another great option, because they have a lot of flights that leave Chicago and fly to Spain with layovers in either Amsterdam (on KLM) or through Paris (on Air France). Virgin Atlantic and Avianca Lifemiles are great, but for Spain they are mostly booking partner awards, so they won’t be operating any flights to Spain. Their availability is going to be dependent on whether another airline allows them to book their flights. In other words, I would check for availability, but I wouldn’t count on them.

American Airlines sometimes has some amazing prices, but they don’t have any transfer partners so you would need to have an American Airlines card to earn those points. United Airlines usually has fairly expensive award prices, but their taxes are low and availability is good. It’s nice to have United as a backup option.

Hotels in Spain

For most hotel groups, I typically don’t consider transfer partners. The reason for this is because the transfer rates don’t make up for the fact that the points aren’t worth much. Most programs with the exception of Hyatt just aren’t worth transferring points to from one of the major bank programs.

Hotel Loyalty Program Transfer Ratios

	Citibank	Chase	Amex	Capital One	Wells Fargo	Bilt
Hyatt		1:1				1:1
IHG		1:1				1:1
Hilton			1:2
Choice	1:2		1:1	1:1	1:2
Marriott		1:1	1:1			1:1
Wyndham	1:1			1:1

Transfer ratios of points from major bank travel award programs to hotel loyalty programs. For example Citibank transfers 1:2 to Choice Privileges, meaning 1,000 Citi Thank You Points can be converted to 2,000 Choice Privileges points.

If you are looking at a program besides Hyatt, you’ll probably want to get a cobranded hotel credit card if you want to build up free nights and points. The list of those cards and the pros and cons of each of those cards is too exhaustive to get into in this post, but I do think its important to be thinking about those cobranded cards when considering programs other than Hyatt.

The reason why Hyatt is different, is because their points are worth more than other programs. According to the Points Guy, Hyatt points are worth 1.7 cents per point. By contrast, Wyndham is worth 1.1, Marriott Bonvoy is .85, Hilton is .6, Choice is .6 and IHG is .5 cents per point. For example, Chase Ultimate Rewards points transfer to Hyatt, Marriott and IHG at a 1:1 ratio. However, on average, you’ll spend more than three times as many Ultimate reward points booking an IHG hotel than a comparable Hyatt hotel when transferring Ultimate Reward points to those programs.

Hotels in Spanish Tourist Locations

	Madrid	Balearic Islands	Barcelona	Canary Islands
Hyatt	6	35	3	11
IHG	14	5	9	8
Hilton	6	4	5	0
Choice	7	0	9	3
Marriott	23	11	17	6
Wyndham	2	0	0	3

Number of hotels in/near various locations in Spain. Counts are across all brands in a program’s portfolio.

When looking at Spain specifically, the good news is that Hyatt has a lot of hotels in Spain. They especially have a large all-inclusive hotel presence in the Balearic Islands, which is a huge hot spot for Europeans to enjoy a beach vacation. Marriott also has a large number of hotels in Spain. A lot of those are in Barcelona and Madrid, which would make them a good program to use if you were looking for a more urban trip.

Potential Strategies for Earning Points for a Trip to Spain

There are a million different ways to accomplish the goal of earning points and miles to go on a vacation to Spain. I think its helpful here to explain what I would do, and why I would do it in a certain way. It doesn’t necessarily mean that this would be the optimal strategy, but I think it’s indicative of how someone should approach it.

All-Inclusive couple’s beach vacation to Mallorca

There are numerous Hyatt All-Inclusive resorts in Mallorca. Of the ones that showed up on the search that I did, there are a number of Category A resorts (15,000 points normally, 12,000 for off-peak and 18,000 for peak) and the most expensive was the Secrets Mallorca which is a Category D resort (30,000 points normally, 25,000 for off-peak, 35,000 points peak).

The best bets for available flights to Mallorca for a low amount of points is probably going to be Iberia Airlines (Avios) or KLM/Air France (Flying Blue). You can move points from Citibank, Capital One, Chase, American Express, Wells Fargo or Bilt to Iberia or KLM/Air France. This means you have a lot of choices on which credit cards you might want to sign up for.

The good news here, is that there is overlap between acquiring points for Hyatt and acquiring points for those two airline programs. Both Bilt and Chase offer transfers to all of these programs. Bilt never really offers signup bonuses, which is a big negative in this case, but they do allow you to earn points paying for rent, which nobody else allows, so if you are a renter, the Bilt card is a no-brainer. However, regardless of whether the Bilt card makes sense in your case, you’ll still probably want to sign up for a Chase card that allows you to transfer Ultimate Reward points.

In order to unlock the ability to transfer any Ultimate Reward points to partner programs you will need one of these three cards:

Chase Sapphire Preferred ($95 annual fee, 3x on dining, 3x online groceries, 3x on streaming services, 2x on travel)
Chase Sapphire Reserve ($550 annual fee, 3x on dining, 3x travel, $300 annual travel credit, Priority Pass membership)
Ink Business Preferred ($95 annual fee, 3x on shipping, internet, phone, cable and travel)

The typical signup bonuses for these cards are 60,000 each for the Sapphire cards and 100,000 points for the Ink Business Preferred. Once you have signed up and earned the welcome offer bonus you can refer your spouse or significant other and earn a referral bonus while they also earn a signup bonus for themselves. Once you’ve done that, then it’s just a matter of filling in the gaps with either some other cards that earn Ultimate Reward points or by getting cobranded cards. Here are some examples:

Ink Business Cash ($0 annual fee, $750 cash back which can also be used as 75,000 Ultimate Reward points, 5x internet, cable, phone and office supply stores)
Ink Business Unlimited ($0 annual fee, $750 cash back which can be used as 75,000 Ultimate Reward points, 1.5x on everything)
Ink Business Premier ($195 annual fee, $1,000 cash back which can be used as 100,000 Ultimate Reward points, 2x on everything)
World of Hyatt ($95 annual fee, 30,000 Hyatt point bonus, category 1-4 free night certificate each year on anniversary date)
World of Hyatt Business ($199 annual fee, 60,000 Hyatt point bonus, up to $100 off stays each year)
Iberia Airlines card ($95 annual fee, 75,000 Avios bonus)
Air France KLM World Elite Mastercard ($89 annual fee, 50,000 Flying Blue point bonus, 1.5x on everything)

I think it should be feasible to book a vacation like this for around 50,000 points round-trip per person in economy and if you wanted 6 nights in an all-inclusive, it could be another 90,000 to 180,000 points. That would mean the totals here would be 190,000 to 280,000 points. Just doing the minimum spend on two Chase Sapphire Preferred cards, with a referral bonus between spouses or significant others, would probably earn somewhere in the ballpark of 150,000 Ultimate Reward points, so it’s not too hard to pick a card or two that fills in the gaps here.

Family of four to Madrid for Spring Break

For this example, the information about the flights would basically be the same. You’ll probably find that Iberia or Air France/KLM will be the best programs to serve the Madrid Airport. From Chicago, you are likely to be able be able to book those round-trip economy flights for 50,000 points each (probably less if off peak). You would probably need to earn somewhere in the 200,000 point range just for the flights.

Instead of going with Chase as is in the first example, I would probably go with the Capital One Venture Card. Instead of a 60,000 point bonus, the Venture Card comes with a 75,000 point bonus. It also earns 2x on everything and has a 20,000 point referral bonus. Therefore, if you sign up for the Venture Card and refer your significant other and do the minimum spend, you will end up with a combined 186,000 points. An additional $7,000 in spending would get you to 200,000 points. If you need to transfer those points to Iberia, however, you will need to transfer them to British Airways Avios and then from British Airways Avios to Iberia Avios.

As far as lodging is concerned, European hotels typically don’t like to allow people to sleep four to a room so you would probably need to get two rooms. That’s not ideal, not only because it becomes twice the cost to get hotels, but also depending on the age of your kids, your sleeping arrangements might not be what your used to.

Personally, because of the two room problem, I would just get an Airbnb instead of a hotel. However, if you would like to stay at a hotel on points, I would probably be considering Marriott hotels. They have a lot of hotels in the Madrid area. In order to earn points/free nights for the stay I would go for the Marriott Bonvoy Boundless card. Most of the time they offer three free night certificates as a sign up bonus. However, it seems like about once a year they offer five free night certificates, so if you time it right and your significant other also signs up at the same time, you could end up with ten free night certificates, and that would get you five nights of two rooms per night.

Conclusion

For the most part, whenever you want to fly somewhere, looking first at an airline based in that area better is always a good choice. In this case Iberia is a perfect example. It’s hub is in Madrid and they have very good award prices to Madrid. Luckily for the points and miles hobbyist, you can pretty much transfer any of the major bank programs’ points and miles to Iberia Avios. The second best option is Air France/KLM Flying Blue which also transfers from every major program.

This gives an incredible amount of flexibility when deciding which credit cards to use, however, if you are also looking at Hyatt simultaneously, you probably want to go with a Chase credit card because it also transfers to Hyatt. I think Capital One is a better choice for the Family trip to Madrid, even with the extra headache of having to transfer the points through British Airways to Iberia. While I would do an Airbnb in Madrid, if you do actually want to split your family into two rooms at a hotel in Madrid, the Marriott Bonvoy Boundless card can be a great choice for racking up a lot of free nights quickly.

Whenever you are trying to determine the best credit card to sign up for to help out with the cost of vacation, it is always important to think about the desired destination first. Doing a little bit of analysis should help guide you to pick the right credit cards to help you get there. Once you’ve done that, it’s just a matter of executing your plan and enjoying your vacation.