Best use of Chase Sapphire rewards points to maximize value??

[FrugalSaver]

I have over 100,000 points and use this card for tradelines as well.

1) what's the best way to maximize the value of these points?

2) does using this card as a tradeline jeopardize the Chase Reserve card I have (not used as a tradeline)?

[FrugalSaver]

Apologies for the triple post. No idea how that happen. Maybe the mods can help delete other 2

[FrugalSaver]

Any thoughts?  May just convert them to cash

[Catbert]

Are you interested in international travel?  Transferring to an airline can be a good use.  Or book travel through their portal and CSR points are worth 1.5 cents vs 1 cent if you just cash out.

[seattlecyclone]

I've been slowly using up my stash of points on hotel rooms and car rentals when we travel. The prices on the Chase portal tend to be pretty competitive with other sites I check, and the 1.5x bonus makes that an easy way to get a better deal out of the points than converting to cash.

I'd love to see if anyone has done a deeper analysis to see if there are some especially good deals available by transferring points elsewhere or something like that.

[Meowmalade]

If you book through the Chase portal, you also earn miles on those flights.  We recently earned 11K miles each (though ended up having to jump through some hoops and ask the airlines for the missing miles) flying to India.

[secondcor521]

I have over 100,000 points and use this card for tradelines as well.

1) what's the best way to maximize the value of these points?

2) does using this card as a tradeline jeopardize the Chase Reserve card I have (not used as a tradeline)?

1.  As others have said, using them on travel through the Chase portal is almost always a superior value.  Transferring them 1:1 to an airline, depending on the specific airline and redemption, can also be very good value.  Cashing them out is usually least valuable, but still better than losing them or forgetting about them.

2.  My understanding is yes.  Chase closes down all of your accounts when they close down people for tradelines.  I don't know if this extends to checking/savings accounts, but it would be easy for them to close down all of your CC accounts and not just the one on which you're selling tradelines.

[bacchi]

Transfer them to United and get a Polaris class ticket to Europe. That's probably the maximum value.

[katsiki]

Transferring to United is a great value.  You can find 30K point fares each way to Europe.

[seattlecyclone]

Transfer them to United and get a Polaris class ticket to Europe. That's probably the maximum value.

In terms of retail price per point, sure. I'll take your word for it. Seems like all the "travel hacking" blogs mention how you can get some ridiculous "value" by redeeming points for first-class airline tickets or four-star hotels.

However you're still paying significantly more points for a business class ticket than you would for a regular coach ticket. How many coach tickets can you buy for the number of points you could spend on one business class ticket? Is the bigger chair worth it? I personally tend to lean toward no.

Transferring to United is a great value.  You can find 30K point fares each way to Europe.

I just did a search on the Chase travel portal for tickets from SEA to LHR on arbitrary dates in March. The cheapest itinerary was 41.8k points round trip, 20.9 points each way: nonstop on the way there, connecting in Amsterdam on the way back. I could definitely see there being certain dates and city pairs where an airline could give a better deal than the Chase portal. It probably pays to check United mileage redemption availability before booking through Chase directly, but I wouldn't preemptively transfer to United on the assumption that it would be cheapest.

[katsiki]

Yep, definitely check and compare.  In my recent use, United was the winner by a significant margin.  I also found awardhacker.com useful to determine the best airlines, points systems, etc for a trip or region.