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| Leverage transfer partners for more value |
| by Summer Hull, Senior director of content |
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As you may have already seen, a number of higher Chase welcome bonuses are ending soon on cards with no annual fees. As a refresher, that list includes:
- Ink Business Cash Credit Card: Best-ever 90,000-point (or $900) bonus after you spend $6,000 in the first three months.
- Ink Business Unlimited Credit Card: Best-ever 90,000-point (or $900) bonus after you spend $6,000 in the first three months.
- Chase Freedom Unlimited: Double all the rewards you earn in the first year with no limit. So, while the card normally earns 1.5% cash back on everyday expenses, 3% on dining and at drugstores, and 5% on travel booked via Chase Ultimate Rewards, those amounts will double for a whole year via this offer.
When it comes to using those points, one of the questions we get a lot is how we come up with a valuation of just over 2 cents per Chase Ultimate Rewards point, when if you log in to the Chase travel portal to redeem them, you just get 1-1.5 cents per point in value, depending on which Chase card you have. (Pro tip: It’s the Chase Sapphire Reserve that gives the higher 1.5-cent value.)
The answer is that while booking through the Chase travel portal is a useful and logical way to use your Chase points, it’s not always the most lucrative redemption mathematically.
Ramping up your return beyond that 1.5-cents-per-point threshold requires that you transfer your Chase points to hotel and airline partners such as United Airlines, Hyatt, Singapore Airlines, etc., to use them via those programs instead of redeeming them at a fixed value through the Chase travel portal.
For example, if I wanted to book a stay at the fabulous Grand Hyatt Kauai, it could easily cost $1,000 per night for a standard room. Even at that highest value of 1.5 cents per point, that would cost at least 66,666 points per night if booked through the Chase travel portal. However, by instead transferring those points to Hyatt, I could book the room starting at 30,000 points per night — and that would also exempt me from the $55-per-night resort fee thanks to Hyatt’s award rules.
At those rates, I’m actually getting 3.3 cents in value per redeemed Chase point ($1,000 per night divided by 30,000 points used per night) by transferring them to Hyatt instead of redeeming at a fixed value.
If you want to kick off 2024 by learning more about how to maximize your points — and getting these hot bonuses while they are available — here are some places to head next:
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| Photo Credit: Chris Dong/The Points Guy. |
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