Ultimate Rewards
Chase Points are one of the best values in the points and values games. A variety of cards can be used to earn these valuable points. The Chase Sapphire Preferred card is currently offering an 80,000 point sign-up bonus. If you and a partner both sign up, you could have even more points. Once you’ve earned your points through sign-up bonuses and spending, the next step is to figure out what to redeem them for.
Chase calls their points Ultimate Rewards points. Follow these steps to access your points!
- Sign in to the credit card payment site
- Look for the Rewards area – “Ultimate Rewards points.” You can also go directly from here.
- To combine points with your spouse or between cards, click the menu and go to “Combine Points.” This might be important because most of the travel partners only allow you to transfer points to yourself
There may need to be some back and forth miles transfers. Luckily, these transfers are quick and credit the accounts immediately.
Transfer to Hyatt for Hotel Stays
One of my favorite travel partners for great value in using and transferring rewards points is Hyatt. There are tons of hotels in the US with different price points, as well as a few international destinations. You can explore the map here
For example, you can get a stay for as low as 3,500 a night at more than 100 hotels in the US. Hyatt Place and Hyatt House are usually the included brands at these prices. These are mid-range hotels but one of our favorites as they come with breakfast, suite space with a pull-out, and they’re generally located slightly out of the city but still close. You can stay in Huntsville, St Louis, Chicago suburbs, Raleigh, and tons of other places, including international options such as Thailand and Mexico.
If you received the 80,000 Chase bonus, you could spend a full month for free at one of these hotels. There are also a fantastic number of other options in the mid 15k to 25k range. Some of these hotels are amazing with water slides and/or other excellent perks. Some of the places we’ve stayed include Hyatt Regency Grand Cypress near Disney World (12k) Pinon Pointe in Sedona (15k) and Maui Regency (25k) These hotels regularly cost upwards of $400 a night and using points in this way is a great value.
Transfer to United for International Trips
This is the highest value we’ve received from our points. In 2017, we had 210k Chase points from our original Chase Reserve sign-ups. We transferred these points to United to pay for a 70k RT Tokyo trip that would have cost $3000 cash. We have also used Chase points for United flights to Italy and other trips to Europe. We recently booked a trip to Paris this Christmas! (if they’ll let us in🤞) Round trips can be found for 60k miles per person instead of $1500 cash prices.
Transfer to United for Hawaii Trips
Another redemption we’ve regularly done is transferring to United and booking 45k RT tickets to Hawaii. We don’t usually have 180k for everyone but if we have a surplus of Chase points, we like to spend 90k to book 4 one-ways at 22.5k each. Booking the whole group one-way instead of 2 round-trip with cash and 2 with points allows us to stay on one reservation. Since we do this trip annually, we are always looking for ways to reduce this cost. While cash prices can range from $600-$800, and this might not be the highest possible redemption value, it does always feel great to pay less for this trip.
Use the Travel Portal to Book Flights
If you can’t find any of these places to transfer points to, there are always options to purchase flights and hotels from the travel portal. Generally the points price corresponds with the cash price, so if there’s a good deal on a flight, you can use a corresponding cheap amount of points instead. If you have the Chase Sapphire Reserve, you can book flights and hotels on the travel portal for 1.5 cents per point. (Sapphire Preferred=1.25 cents per point). Many flights can be bought online directly, but Southwest flights have to be bought by calling the Chase Travel Center at (855) 233-9462. A perk of doing it this way is that Southwest views this purchase as cash, so you can still earn points and credits for these. If you’re looking for a simpler option, transfer Chase points to Southwest and buy on Southwest. Keep in mind, points are worth slightly less this way (1.3x).
Pay Yourself Back and Other Options
For a limited time, Chase has an option to redeem points with a bonus as a statement credit. On the Ultimate Rewards menu, you can find statements from a few months ago and check off purchases to “pay off” with points. This could be useful for the categories such as big purchases at home improvement stores. Finally, there’s a whole bunch of other travel partners and ways to use points to get value. We haven’t yet explored redemptions for British Airways or the West Coast to Hawaii on Singapore trips. Iberia could also be an option if Spain is your destination of choice. Explore the travel portal, and Google is always your friend when figuring out how to maximize your points. Whatever you do, don’t redeem it as cash when there are better ways to spend points.
