Chase Sapphire Reserve: How will you use your 100,000 points??

[EconDiva]

I have the card and planned on using it for a flight or two.

I must admit I am not sure of the best value (which airline I should go with) as I haven't done research on that yet but I wanted to put it towards an international flight.  I always fly United due to previous work travel but I'm finally out of miles with United and work travel is pretty much slim to nil now so I don't have much incentive to transfer the points over to them for use.

I'd like to know how others plan on using their points??  Or for those that have already used them, what did you use them for?

[renata ricotta]

I use them for regular trips to visit my family, a short flight away. The face value of those tickets is around $180 round-trip for non-holidays, so the bonus is getting me 8 of them or so! My husband also signed up for the CSR, so we can go together.

I usually pick a flight that works for me, and then check to see what's the best use of my points. If you fly United, check how many United points it would take to buy the flight, and compare to buying it directly through the UR portal. Depending on the time/reward seat availability, one could be cheaper than the other. When I fly Alaska for my short-distance flights, I usually check to see if there is a British Airways reward seat available; if there is, sometimes that's fewer points than the UR portal and I'll transfer the right amount of points to BA. Lately though, it's almost always been cheapest to use points directly from UR. Plus, there aren't any of those dumb fuel surcharges or other fees in the UR portal, because the points spend like cash. Another benefit is you get the butt-in-seat miles on your frequent flyer account - if I book an American Airlines flight through UR, I get AA points for the flight because to AA, it looks like a flight I bought with cash. If I transfer to AA, it's a reward flight and I don't earn any miles for the trip.

[EconDiva]

I use them for regular trips to visit my family, a short flight away. The face value of those tickets is around $180 round-trip for non-holidays, so the bonus is getting me 8 of them or so! My husband also signed up for the CSR, so we can go together.

I usually pick a flight that works for me, and then check to see what's the best use of my points. If you fly United, check how many United points it would take to buy the flight, and compare to buying it directly through the UR portal. Depending on the time/reward seat availability, one could be cheaper than the other. When I fly Alaska for my short-distance flights, I usually check to see if there is a British Airways reward seat available; if there is, sometimes that's fewer points than the UR portal and I'll transfer the right amount of points to BA. Lately though, it's almost always been cheapest to use points directly from UR. Plus, there aren't any of those dumb fuel surcharges or other fees in the UR portal, because the points spend like cash. Another benefit is you get the butt-in-seat miles on your frequent flyer account - if I book an American Airlines flight through UR, I get AA points for the flight because to AA, it looks like a flight I bought with cash. If I transfer to AA, it's a reward flight and I don't earn any miles for the trip.

So I understand this correctly (and yes, I did get the card without understand much about UR!), I have 2 choices when using the points for flights:

1-Book the flight directly through the UR portal, or,
2-Transfer the points to an airline carrier for rewards redemption with the carrier

A few questions:

Let's say I go option 2 and transfer the points to United.  Do the points become United miles?

Let's say I go option 1 - If I book through the UR portal, does it apply a certain amount of money towards a flight then?

I'm going to spend some time doing research on this today.  I need to start booking some things for 2017 and I want to get the absolute best value for my points that I can....

[TravelStache]

It all depends on where you want to go and how you want to get there.  A simple Google search will show several articles by travel hackers that discuss the options that are available.  Some choose to use them all up on a fancy first class ticket for an international flight, while other will use them to for multiple domestic coach flights.  I think one of the best values is four round trip flights from Boston to Dublin using Avios points to book on Aer Lingus, but that's just me.  In full disclosure, I've also heard it can be a difficult to book these because the British Airways/Avios employees don't always know how to do it and you can be on hold for several hours or have to call multiple times until you get the right person.

[MEJG]

We specifically started CC churning with the CSR for a planned trip to Australia late in 2017.  We're under 5/24 so we're adding the CRP next for both of us and *should* be able to get 4 round trip tickets to Oz on points.  I've been meaning to start accumulating points for the past 2 years, but the upcoming trip made me pull the trigger and luckily it was right when the CSR came around :)

[EconDiva]

We specifically started CC churning with the CSR for a planned trip to Australia late in 2017.  We're under 5/24 so we're adding the CRP next for both of us and *should* be able to get 4 round trip tickets to Oz on points.  I've been meaning to start accumulating points for the past 2 years, but the upcoming trip made me pull the trigger and luckily it was right when the CSR came around :)

Lucky for you!

What is the CRP by the way?  Assuming another Chase card but am not familiar with it...

4 round tip tix?  How many points are you having to accumulate for this and on what airline will you by flying?

[ender]

We might go to Europe.  Or just slowly spend them on the hotels/travel we otherwise would use. Or cash them out.

Not sure yet.

[katsiki]

Going to Europe also.  DW got the points.  I can apply in about 9 months but who's counting :)

[aspiringnomad]

We specifically started CC churning with the CSR for a planned trip to Australia late in 2017.  We're under 5/24 so we're adding the CRP next for both of us and *should* be able to get 4 round trip tickets to Oz on points.  I've been meaning to start accumulating points for the past 2 years, but the upcoming trip made me pull the trigger and luckily it was right when the CSR came around :)

Lucky for you!

What is the CRP by the way?  Assuming another Chase card but am not familiar with it...

4 round tip tix?  How many points are you having to accumulate for this and on what airline will you by flying?

I'm guessing the poster meant CSP, or Chase Sapphire Preferred, my former favorite card. Can't wait to dip under 5/24 (should happen in April) to get the CSR myself. It'll be especially useful for transferring miles to Southwest since I have the Companion Pass through next year and have burned through 120k RR points this year.

[EconDiva]

For those who are specifically going to Europe, would you mind elaborating on:

What country you plan to visit, what airline you plan to fly with and how many points the roundtrip flight is costing you?

I will likely use my points to fly to Europe as well...

[HAPPYINAZ]

You might want to take this travel hacking online class.  it's free and super helpful.  They cover alot about manufactured spending to increase rewards, but you don't have to do that.  But the part that would be very useful for you is that they go over examples of how to best use reward points, especially chase UR.  They also have a facebook page that is very active and full of people asking for advice and getting advice on best way to cash in points. 

http://www.travelmiles101.com/

[exige]

we are planning to use ours for a trip to hawaii even if we go first class it will only be 90k for the two of us using the Korean air loophole. Ideally we will hit the minimum spend on this one next month and then apply for a second under my wife and hit that before. We have bought 1 Air bnb gift card for 300 spend 2016 and plan on a second of 300 in january for 2017 spend.

Only thing we have not done or decided on is the global entry.

[tarheeldan]

MHT-BKK

[EconDiva]

You might want to take this travel hacking online class.  it's free and super helpful.  They cover alot about manufactured spending to increase rewards, but you don't have to do that.  But the part that would be very useful for you is that they go over examples of how to best use reward points, especially chase UR.  They also have a facebook page that is very active and full of people asking for advice and getting advice on best way to cash in points. 

http://www.travelmiles101.com/

Thank you!  This seems right up my alley.  Will definitely check it out...

[EconDiva]

we are planning to use ours for a trip to hawaii even if we go first class it will only be 90k for the two of us using the Korean air loophole. Ideally we will hit the minimum spend on this one next month and then apply for a second under my wife and hit that before. We have bought 1 Air bnb gift card for 300 spend 2016 and plan on a second of 300 in january for 2017 spend.

Only thing we have not done or decided on is the global entry.

Oh my...I didn't even know AirBnB had gift cards!  Thanks for sharing that info which will DEFINITELY come in handy for me soon!

(Just returned from staying in an AirBnB in Hawaii...)

[renata ricotta]

I use them for regular trips to visit my family, a short flight away. The face value of those tickets is around $180 round-trip for non-holidays, so the bonus is getting me 8 of them or so! My husband also signed up for the CSR, so we can go together.

I usually pick a flight that works for me, and then check to see what's the best use of my points. If you fly United, check how many United points it would take to buy the flight, and compare to buying it directly through the UR portal. Depending on the time/reward seat availability, one could be cheaper than the other. When I fly Alaska for my short-distance flights, I usually check to see if there is a British Airways reward seat available; if there is, sometimes that's fewer points than the UR portal and I'll transfer the right amount of points to BA. Lately though, it's almost always been cheapest to use points directly from UR. Plus, there aren't any of those dumb fuel surcharges or other fees in the UR portal, because the points spend like cash. Another benefit is you get the butt-in-seat miles on your frequent flyer account - if I book an American Airlines flight through UR, I get AA points for the flight because to AA, it looks like a flight I bought with cash. If I transfer to AA, it's a reward flight and I don't earn any miles for the trip.

So I understand this correctly (and yes, I did get the card without understand much about UR!), I have 2 choices when using the points for flights:

1-Book the flight directly through the UR portal, or,
2-Transfer the points to an airline carrier for rewards redemption with the carrier

A few questions:

Let's say I go option 2 and transfer the points to United.  Do the points become United miles?

Let's say I go option 1 - If I book through the UR portal, does it apply a certain amount of money towards a flight then?

I'm going to spend some time doing research on this today.  I need to start booking some things for 2017 and I want to get the absolute best value for my points that I can....

You're correct on all points. You have the two options. Transferring the points converts them to the airline's proprietary currency, and you then use the airline's rules and rates to book the flight. If you book through the portal, the points spend as cash. With a CSR, they spend at a rate of 1.5 cents per point. So 100k points is $1500 in flights. Another nice thing about UR is that because it's calibrated to the price of the flight, there aren't a limited number of reward seats, you just pay more if the flight is more expensive. If you can't cover the whole flight with points, you can make up the difference in cash. So if you have 10,000 points worth $150, and a flight is $180, you clean out your points and pay $30.

I flew to Greece with my CSP points a few months ago. If I had booked an unpopular United flight (red-eye, long layover), I could have booked it for 40k United Points (via transfer). A more convenient flight was $750. I used about 60,000 UR points to cover all but $5 of the flight (in the UR portal). I'm likely going to use my CSR points to fly to Moscow in the fall. Looks like there are flights for about $600, which will be about 40k flights if I book through UR (which I probably will; it's just so damn convenient). 

[MEJG]

We specifically started CC churning with the CSR for a planned trip to Australia late in 2017.  We're under 5/24 so we're adding the CRP next for both of us and *should* be able to get 4 round trip tickets to Oz on points.  I've been meaning to start accumulating points for the past 2 years, but the upcoming trip made me pull the trigger and luckily it was right when the CSR came around :)

Lucky for you!

What is the CRP by the way?  Assuming another Chase card but am not familiar with it...

4 round tip tix?  How many points are you having to accumulate for this and on what airline will you by flying?

I'm guessing the poster meant CSP, or Chase Sapphire Preferred, my former favorite card. Can't wait to dip under 5/24 (should happen in April) to get the CSR myself. It'll be especially useful for transferring miles to Southwest since I have the Companion Pass through next year and have burned through 120k RR points this year.

Indeed, I meant the Chase Sapphire Preferred (CSP), and didn't check before I posted!  There are two of us so we should  have 150,000+ each and right now the tickets are looking like 65-80k per ticket when booking through Chase UR.  Once we accumulate the points I'll do a more in-depth cost analysis for booking through Chase UR vs. transferring points.

You might want to take this travel hacking online class.  it's free and super helpful.  They cover alot about manufactured spending to increase rewards, but you don't have to do that.  But the part that would be very useful for you is that they go over examples of how to best use reward points, especially chase UR.  They also have a facebook page that is very active and full of people asking for advice and getting advice on best way to cash in points. 

http://www.travelmiles101.com/

+1 - I learned a lot taking this online class.

[EconDiva]

I use them for regular trips to visit my family, a short flight away. The face value of those tickets is around $180 round-trip for non-holidays, so the bonus is getting me 8 of them or so! My husband also signed up for the CSR, so we can go together.

I usually pick a flight that works for me, and then check to see what's the best use of my points. If you fly United, check how many United points it would take to buy the flight, and compare to buying it directly through the UR portal. Depending on the time/reward seat availability, one could be cheaper than the other. When I fly Alaska for my short-distance flights, I usually check to see if there is a British Airways reward seat available; if there is, sometimes that's fewer points than the UR portal and I'll transfer the right amount of points to BA. Lately though, it's almost always been cheapest to use points directly from UR. Plus, there aren't any of those dumb fuel surcharges or other fees in the UR portal, because the points spend like cash. Another benefit is you get the butt-in-seat miles on your frequent flyer account - if I book an American Airlines flight through UR, I get AA points for the flight because to AA, it looks like a flight I bought with cash. If I transfer to AA, it's a reward flight and I don't earn any miles for the trip.

So I understand this correctly (and yes, I did get the card without understand much about UR!), I have 2 choices when using the points for flights:

1-Book the flight directly through the UR portal, or,
2-Transfer the points to an airline carrier for rewards redemption with the carrier

A few questions:

Let's say I go option 2 and transfer the points to United.  Do the points become United miles?

Let's say I go option 1 - If I book through the UR portal, does it apply a certain amount of money towards a flight then?

I'm going to spend some time doing research on this today.  I need to start booking some things for 2017 and I want to get the absolute best value for my points that I can....

You're correct on all points. You have the two options. Transferring the points converts them to the airline's proprietary currency, and you then use the airline's rules and rates to book the flight. If you book through the portal, the points spend as cash. With a CSR, they spend at a rate of 1.5 cents per point. So 100k points is $1500 in flights. Another nice thing about UR is that because it's calibrated to the price of the flight, there aren't a limited number of reward seats, you just pay more if the flight is more expensive. If you can't cover the whole flight with points, you can make up the difference in cash. So if you have 10,000 points worth $150, and a flight is $180, you clean out your points and pay $30.

I flew to Greece with my CSP points a few months ago. If I had booked an unpopular United flight (red-eye, long layover), I could have booked it for 40k United Points (via transfer). A more convenient flight was $750. I used about 60,000 UR points to cover all but $5 of the flight (in the UR portal). I'm likely going to use my CSR points to fly to Moscow in the fall. Looks like there are flights for about $600, which will be about 40k flights if I book through UR (which I probably will; it's just so damn convenient).

If you book using the 40K points through the UR portal, do you still accrue mileage on the flight once taken?

[EconDiva]

I have a question for anyone here who also happens to hold a United MileagePlus (Chase) card as well....

Once you reach the $4K spend and get your 100K points, would you recommend deferring back to putting all purchases on the United MileagePlus card instead for any reasons?

I only use one credit card to put all of my purchases on, and I just got the 100k points with this card so I'm trying to determine if I want to continue using this one as my primary card.

[missundecided]

I have a question for anyone here who also happens to hold a United MileagePlus (Chase) card as well....

Once you reach the $4K spend and get your 100K points, would you recommend deferring back to putting all purchases on the United MileagePlus card instead for any reasons?

I only use one credit card to put all of my purchases on, and I just got the 100k points with this card so I'm trying to determine if I want to continue using this one as my primary card.

The CSR will give you 3x UR on travel and dining, while the United card will only get you 2x for United purchases and 1x for everything else. So between the two, I'd personally keep using the CSR.

[EconDiva]

I have a question for anyone here who also happens to hold a United MileagePlus (Chase) card as well....

Once you reach the $4K spend and get your 100K points, would you recommend deferring back to putting all purchases on the United MileagePlus card instead for any reasons?

I only use one credit card to put all of my purchases on, and I just got the 100k points with this card so I'm trying to determine if I want to continue using this one as my primary card.

The CSR will give you 3x UR on travel and dining, while the United card will only get you 2x for United purchases and 1x for everything else. So between the two, I'd personally keep using the CSR.

Welp.  That's why I love this forum.

Thanks for saving me the time of looking this up today!  I needed to compare to see which was going to get me the better value so I'm glad I recently got the CSR.

[missundecided]

There IS a bonus if you spend $12k (??--honestly, I can't remember the number) a year on the United card, they give you an extra 10,000 miles on top of the miles you'd be earning for spend. Don't know if that muddies up your calculations, though.

[renata ricotta]

If you book using the 40K points through the UR portal, do you still accrue mileage on the flight once taken?

No, you do not. As a caveat, I don't actually fly United very often so I'm only 98% sure about this, but I have not heard of any airline that awards you butt-in-seat miles for flights you redeemed with rewards. So if it's a long international flight where you can rack up a lot of miles, I would definitely give the tie to the UR portal, which does let you accrue mileage.

Edit: I just realized I read your question wrong! You DO accrue miles if you booked the flight through the UR portal (which in my case was 60k points). You do NOT accrue miles if you booked the flight with airline miles you transferred from UR (which in my case would have been 40k points). Sorry for any confusion!

[missundecided]

Booking through the portal using UR is different than transferring the UR to the airline. The former counts toward earning miles, the latter (aka the redemption) does not.

[EconDiva]

There IS a bonus if you spend $12k (??--honestly, I can't remember the number) a year on the United card, they give you an extra 10,000 miles on top of the miles you'd be earning for spend. Don't know if that muddies up your calculations, though.

I think it's much higher than $12k spend (can't remember the exact number right now though). 

[EconDiva]

If you book using the 40K points through the UR portal, do you still accrue mileage on the flight once taken?

No, you do not. As a caveat, I don't actually fly United very often so I'm only 98% sure about this, but I have not heard of any airline that awards you butt-in-seat miles for flights you redeemed with rewards. So if it's a long international flight where you can rack up a lot of miles, I would definitely give the tie to the UR portal, which does let you accrue mileage.

Edit: I just realized I read your question wrong! You DO accrue miles if you booked the flight through the UR portal (which in my case was 60k points). You do NOT accrue miles if you booked the flight with airline miles you transferred from UR (which in my case would have been 40k points). Sorry for any confusion!

Ok got it.  You clarified just what I was thinking.  Thanks!

[EconDiva]

Booking through the portal using UR is different than transferring the UR to the airline. The former counts toward earning miles, the latter (aka the redemption) does not.

Got it...thanks!

[katsiki]

For those who are specifically going to Europe, would you mind elaborating on:

What country you plan to visit, what airline you plan to fly with and how many points the roundtrip flight is costing you?

I will likely use my points to fly to Europe as well...

Greece

British Airways

Not sure yet on points but a few date ranges look promising.

[JoJo]

I'm seriously thinking about going to Iran next year if the political situation is still OK.

[mikefixac]

Besides the CSR, I also earned a Southwest companion pass. The CSR along with SW is worth ~210,000 points (count in minimum spend). I did transfer all my Ultimate Reward points over to Southwest. (Don't think that was a good idea, but that's what I did).

So living in SoCal we can fly together RT Vegas for as little as 6000 pts total. Also, when my companion pass expires, wife will get it, and we can use my points to buy her ticket and I can fly for free as her companion.

We'll see how it works out, but so far, it's been fun.

[golfreak12]

I usually just transfer all my points to Hyatt cause they have one of the best point value among all hotels beside SPG. I have plenty of United and American points so hotels points are a priority for me.

[aspiringnomad]

Besides the CSR, I also earned a Southwest companion pass. The CSR along with SW is worth ~210,000 points (count in minimum spend). I did transfer all my Ultimate Reward points over to Southwest. (Don't think that was a good idea, but that's what I did).

So living in SoCal we can fly together RT Vegas for as little as 6000 pts total. Also, when my companion pass expires, wife will get it, and we can use my points to buy her ticket and I can fly for free as her companion.

We'll see how it works out, but so far, it's been fun.

Since getting the companion pass early this year, I've used UR points almost exclusively with SW. So this is probably not a big deal for you, as SW is likely the most valuable destination for your UR points while you have the pass, but in case others read this: you really don't need to transfer UR points until you decide you want to use the points. It registers in seconds. And it makes sense to keep your options open, even if you're just using UR points to keep miles from expiring in other programs. For example, I also just transferred 1k UR points to British Airways to keep my seldom used Avios points from expiring (there are other ways to forestall miles expiration, but I find transferring the minimum UR to be the easiest).

[cavewoman]

Posting to follow for ideas

[Nothlit]

Earned my 100k points from the CSR a month or so ago. Just made my first redemption through the UR portal for a trip to Italy next May/June. Open jaw itinerary: BOS-LHR-VCE, LIN-LHR-BOS. Caught a nice British Airways sale, so it was $468 or approx. 31k UR points. And I get to fly on the A380 on the way over, and 747 on the way home! :)

I used Google Flights to find the itinerary first, then went searching for it on the UR portal. Couldn't find the matching flights. So I called the UR toll-free number and an agent there very doggedly chased them down and booked them for me. Great customer service!

The only downside was she was unable to select seats for me, and I later found out that British Airways charges for advance seat assignment. So I may end up stuck in a less-than-ideal seat. But for $0 spent, I suppose I can't complain too much. Or maybe I will decide to fork over the fee at least for the two transatlantic segments - I could cash out some UR points at 1 cpp to cover that, just to make myself feel slightly better. :)

After all that, I still have about 80k points left in my account, plus another 50k points from my CSP posting next month. Not sure what I'll spend it all on yet!

[Rural]

My card just arrived today, and the printed materials don't make any reference to the signup bonus at all. Anyone else notice this?


 On a bright note, I called the hotel I checked out of two days ago after a business trip and politely asked if they could change my (already processed) method of payment to this card – and they did! I'll get the travel reimbursement this way,  I don't feel bad about it because Chase apparently forgot to ship it out for several days after approving it – they only realized something was wrong when I called to see where it was.

[Cork]

Headed to Porto Portugal for 10 days of food and friend-reunion :) :) :)

[ender]

My card just arrived today, and the printed materials don't make any reference to the signup bonus at all. Anyone else notice this?


 On a bright note, I called the hotel I checked out of two days ago after a business trip and politely asked if they could change my (already processed) method of payment to this card – and they did! I'll get the travel reimbursement this way,  I don't feel bad about it because Chase apparently forgot to ship it out for several days after approving it – they only realized something was wrong when I called to see where it was.

I looked through all the paperwork when I got the card and never saw the bonus listed, either.

Check if your reimbursement was for the 2016 calendar year or 2017. If you just opened it your credit might have hit 2017's credit, based on statement close date.

[EscapeVelocity2020]

I spent my points when booking airfare to Hawaii (Honolulu, Oahu actually) this summer through Delta.  Wanted a direct flight and got a 'discount' by spending my UR points.

[Rural]

My card just arrived today, and the printed materials don't make any reference to the signup bonus at all. Anyone else notice this?


 On a bright note, I called the hotel I checked out of two days ago after a business trip and politely asked if they could change my (already processed) method of payment to this card – and they did! I'll get the travel reimbursement this way,  I don't feel bad about it because Chase apparently forgot to ship it out for several days after approving it – they only realized something was wrong when I called to see where it was.

I looked through all the paperwork when I got the card and never saw the bonus listed, either.

Check if your reimbursement was for the 2016 calendar year or 2017. If you just opened it your credit might have hit 2017's credit, based on statement close date.

 Thanks for the reassurance on the bonus.




 I called in, and the CSR said my close date "should" be in December, but he couldn't confirm for sure, and I can't find the information anywhere online or in my paperwork. Any tips?  Payment due date is January 24 if that helps.

[Tick-Tock]

Payment date of January 24 should mean close date of December 27.  My Chase cards all have three days' difference.

[Rural]

Payment date of January 24 should mean close date of December 27.  My Chase cards all have three days' difference.

Thanks, Tick-Tock!