Booking my 1st big points redemption with the Amex Platinum Card
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Welcome to the fourth installment of a yearlong series where Tarah Chieffi, TPG's family travel reporter, shares her experience using various points, benefits, credits and access from her first premium rewards credit card, The Platinum Card® from American Express.
Previous installments:
- Is the Amex Platinum worth it for a points and miles newbie? I booked a trip to find out
- 8 tips from a newbie on maximizing the Amex Platinum's benefits
- I'm an Amex Platinum newbie — here's why lounge access is surprisingly my favorite perk
When I signed up for The Platinum Card® from American Express, I knew next to nothing about premium travel rewards cards. The one thing I did know was that a 80,000-point Amex Membership Rewards welcome bonus was on its way to my account after hitting the $8,000 minimum spending requirement during my first six months of card membership.
To ensure I didn't miss out, I immediately switched all spending to my new Amex Platinum Card and, without going into too much detail about my spending habits, earned the 80,000-point bonus a few months later. (Here's a look at some everyday expenses you can shift to your card to get you there sooner than you may think.)
When you add that bonus to the points I racked up while working toward the bonus, I had built up quite the points balance. On one hand, I felt like the points were burning a hole in my proverbial pocket, but on the other, my time at TPG has taught me that it's much smarter to take my time and find a way to squeeze the most value out of those points than rush to blow them on the first idea I think of.
At first, the options seemed limitless. I researched all-inclusive resorts, beachfront hotels in Hawaii and points hotels near Disney World that I've yet to stay in and more. These all surely would have been fun for my family of five, but I thought it best to be strategic and use the points instead to maximize an overseas trip my husband and I have been planning for years.
When we got married, we made a decision that every five years, one of us would get to choose an international destination to celebrate our anniversary.
I chose Italy for our fifth anniversary (ladies first!) and my husband then chose Germany.
The Platinum Card from American Express: Earn 80,000 Membership Rewards Points after you spend $8,000 on purchases within the first six months of card membership.
That trip was delayed a couple of years because of the pandemic, but now that travel restrictions have eased, we have plans to visit this fall during Oktoberfest.
I've flown internationally many times, but I've never quite been able to part with the amount of cash necessary to book business-class seats. Now that I am well into the planning phase of this trip, I began to wonder just what kind of seats those Amex points could get me.
I had no idea where to start, but a perk of working at TPG is that I had an entire team of points and miles experts I could turn to. Points and miles reporter Kyle Olsen graciously devoted some time (and many Zoom calls) to showing me the ropes of points redemption strategies.
We started by walking through how to calculate a points redemption. Luckily, TPG has an up-to-date chart on points and miles valuations and a story from Kyle himself on how to do the math when you are calculating points and miles redemption values.
Related: 9 of our favorite ways to use Amex Membership Rewards points
After I had the basics down, Kyle shared details on Amex transfer partners. I learned you can typically get a better redemption value by transferring your points instead of booking directly through the Amex travel portal. He even went so far as to recommend which airlines to search for and which aircraft have the best business-class products that I could book with my Amex points.
With my newfound knowledge in hand, I got to work.
The timing worked out that Amex was offering a 25% bonus when transferring points to Flying Blue, the reward program for Air France and KLM Royal Dutch Airlines. I transferred 281,000 American Express Membership Rewards points to Flying Blue, which earned me 351,250 Flying Blue Miles.
The first lesson I learned was that you have to be flexible with your dates if you want to get the maximum value for your points.
Just looking at dates in late September between John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK) and Munich International Airport (MUC), the cost for two one-way business-class tickets (we will be flying home from a different airport) ranged from the 168,000 miles that I paid to 420,000 miles.
I had to look at multiple dates before securing this price on KLM's Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner with lie-flat seats, seatback entertainment, a KLM-branded amenity kit, gourmet inflight service and predeparture lounge access. I'm looking forward to having a comfortable place to sleep during our overnight flight, but I will probably be too giddy and too busy playing with all the gadgets at my seat to get much sleep.
Unless the current chaos further disintegrates flight schedules, we will be flying home out of Amsterdam Airport Schiphol (AMS) after traveling across Germany. Prices were more reasonable flying into Boston Logan International Airport (BOS) than JFK and I booked our seats in an older Delta business-class product via Flying Blue for 169,000 miles.
Although it's not as new and luxurious as our outbound flight, as a travel writer, I'm grateful for the chance to experience two different products and the ability to compare them. And I'll still get that sweet, sweet amenity kit. It doesn't take much more than lip balm and hand lotion in cute packaging to make me happy.
In total, we paid 337,000 miles and, sadly, also $1,044.74 in taxes, fees and fuel surcharges. There are airlines that don't pass on fuel surcharges if you want to give preference to those in your own searches.
Even so, we came out ahead if you do the math. TPG currently values Flying Blue miles at 1.2 cents per mile. We would have paid $16,697 in cash for these same flights and, according to TPG's points and miles calculator, the points and cash we spent total only $4,044 in value, a savings of more than $11,000 over the cash price.
Essentially, we got 4.6 cents in value from each Flying Blue Mile, which is much higher than the current TPG valuation of 1.2 cents per mile. I'm still figuring all this out, but I know I'd rather part with 337,000 miles than $16,697 any day, even though I'd never really spend that much cash on flights so that math gets funny at a certain point.
I'm off to a good start, but I still have a long way to go.
We know how we are getting to Europe and how we are getting home. Up next, there are hotels to book, short hops and train rides between destinations to reserve and activities to plan. And I plan on using my continuing points and miles education to do as much of it as I can.
Finding the best means of booking all of these can be overwhelming, but there's nothing like diving right into the deep end of the points and miles pool to fully immerse yourself and continue on the path from "newbie" to "traveling pro."