Loyalty Points and Your Travels: If You Got ‘Em, Use ‘Em

by Robert McGarvey

One number in the recent Expedia 2022 Travel Value Index, where some 5500 adults across eight countries offered up their thoughts and feelings about travel in this year, caught my eye: “Travelers are…keen to lean on loyalty programs, with two in five (40%) of respondents saying they plan to use loyalty points for at least part of a trip in 2022.”

Why isn’t that number 100%?

I have a six figure stash of Amex miles and my plan is to burn most of them this year. If I use them all, that’s fine because nowadays miles are a highly unstable currency. Some carriers don’t even publish rewards charts – mileage fees are instead dynamic, meaning the carrier charges what it believes the market will bear.

JoeSentMe has often featured broadside attacks on airline miles by Will Allen and Fred Abatemarco and others – and they are spot on. Miles, as Joe Brancatelli has commented, are for frequent flying suckers.

That’s all the truer today because it gets ever easier to accumulate miles. Cards that offer six figure mileage bonuses for enrolling are increasingly common and many of us now use cards at grocers, restaurants, department stores that shovel miles at us with every purchase.

If I need a fast 100,000 miles I’ll sign up for Capital One Venture X Rewards Card and, whoosh, there are the miles.

Or I could go in cheaper and get the Citi Premier Card ($95 annually) and get 60,000 miles.

Or the Delta SkyMiles Gold Amex Card (free in year one, then $99) and get 40,000 miles plus a bundle of Delta perks (free checked bag, priority boarding).

Miles are there to be grabbed when you want them.

Miles also kind of grow on trees – for instance Rakuten, the shopping service, even allows users to take their perks in Amex miles. I have 4000+ miles that I earned for doing what, I don’t recall, but they will transfer to Amex eventually. Install the program and when you surf to a site that’s a Rakuten participant, up pops a reminder about Rakuten and you are about to get more free miles.

It is damn near impossible to avoid accumulating miles, even in the pandemic era of little or no flying.

I keep earning miles even though I have consciously shifted significant spend to cash back cards – Amazon and Discover in particular – and I also do some spending on a Venmo card that is set up to reward me with Bitcoin so I now an an owner of a tiny fraction of a Bitcoin

Right there is the big wake up moment. I had been mentally stuck in a mindset where to earn miles I had to actually fly and the more miles I wanted, the more I had to fly – which often I did not actually enjoy doing. Talk about yesteryear’s headlines.

I hoarded miles because I remembered how hard I had worked to accumulate them.

Now miles just about jump out at me.

In the instant I realized that I also grasped that a wise man uses miles as they come in. The airlines are busy printing new miles that they sell, typically to credit card companies, and the more they print, the more devalued miles become. There really seems no end to that plunge.

Remember when it took 10 x-country round trips to accumulate 50,000 miles? And now I can double that just by signing up for the new Capital One elite card, which would take me about one minute to apply for. I know how fast it is because a few days ago I applied for an REI card that offers 5% back on many REI purchases (on top of the member’s 10% back) and most of my clothes shopping now is there. And if I make a purchase within 60 days I get a $100 REI gift card. Yep, more cashback.

That’s where my head presently is at – if only because I know I can always score miles if I need ’em. If you have ’em, use ’em because a refill is as easy as filling out a short form.

How great is that?