AMEX "Pay With Points"

When booking travel, one should always consider American Express Travel if you hold an AMEX card and are accumulating Membership Reward..  Their "Pay With Points" system can be very rewarding in certain situations.

The basics is that for every dollar we spend on our AMEX card, we get one Membership Reward point.  Not the best value when it's all said and done, but I am early in my "extreme points" earning business.  I say "not the best value" since there are other credit cards (from varying financial institutions) that give you bonus points depending on the "type" (i.e. airline, gas, car rental, groceries) of expense you incur.  For our sake, Jenn has always had an Amex and accumulated points at a small speed.  It kicked into high gear this year when she added me to her program and we basically used the AMEX card for my work expense that were reimbursed to me.  This meant a constant stream of points earning.  We also charged Costco and high ticket purchases (since Amex provides an additional 1 year warranty on purchases).  Our personal regular daily spend is on a different point earning credit card.

Fast forward to yesterday when Jenn and I had to book 3 round trip flights during the Xmas/NYE holiday period, which, as of right now, seems to be a premium for fares.  Being based in Dallas (and American Airlines hub), we are pretty much stuck with AA as our airline carrier.  Other carriers are available, but layovers are required.  Plus, we both have Elite Status on AA which make for a more tolerable travel experience (priority boarding, upgrades, no fee baggage check and more).  Each of our round trip tickets cost over $400 with the high being $550 (and these were only flights to either coast).  Given the distances of the flights, those prices made for a pretty lame cost per mile (even with the current AA double points promotion).  

So the immediate thought is to use our supply of AA frequent flier points.  I'm currently around 300K and Jenn around 140K.  We obvioiusly have plenty for many tickets.  For each of these flights, if we were to use points it would be 50K per round trip.  In addition, we get NO miles for the actual flying.  

Enter American Express Travel and American Express.  A quick look at flights through AMEX Travel and our flights are available for the same cost as directly on AA (dollar wise) or we can pay the entire flights (or part) with our stock of Meembership Rewards points.  CHA CHING!  So the 3 flights cost us 141K in AMEX Membership Reward points (all obtained from my work refund expenses and some regular daily spending from us).  And the kicker is that on each of those flights we WILL be getting the miles flown AND bonus miles (some 25K miles which is one free round trip on AA during non-peak times).  Our cost on this = $0.  OK, so you can say the cost is the cost of the AMEX card membership, but that cost needs to be spread out over all the other benefits gained too.  In my opinion, we saved A LOT and gained A LOT.

The lesson here: You should be charging all your expense to a rewarding credit card (and paying balances off every month).  When you book travel, remember to look at every possible way to get a ticket or hotel.

I am still a rookie at this points earning business, but things will change and you will see a lot more success stories.  Some "Points Pro's" may determine that my redemption means was not "optimal", but considering my current capabilities, this was the best use.