Frequent Miler on the Air - Credit Card Power-Ups | Coffee Break Ep54 | 4-29-25

Episode Date: April 29, 2025

There are credit cards that help make your points actually more valuable, just by having the credit card on hand. You can find all of the cards discussed on this show on our Best Offers page.  Coffee Break: Credit Card Power-Ups (00:40) - United: Discounted awards, ability to upgrade (01:38) - Delta: 15% discount (01:54) - JetBlue 10% rebate (02:20) - Aeroplan: 1.25 PYB, better award pricing (02:55) - Avianca Lifemiles Elite: Comes with Lifemiles+ Lite (10% discount on awards) (04:09) - Spirit points pooling (04:58) - IHG: 4th night free (& 10% back old card) (06:00) - Wyndham 10% discount (06:50) - Hilton 5th Night Free (07:33) - Amex Membership Rewards: Business Platinum card 35% rebate (08:49) - Chase: make the points on your cash back card transferrable, 1.25/1.5 (10:32) - Capital One: make cash back points transferrable (11:49) - Citi: make cash back points transferrable, 10% rebate (14:54) - Wells: make cash Transferrable Visit https://frequentmiler.com/subscribe to get updated on in-depth points and miles content like this, and don’t forget to like and follow us on social media. Music Credit – Beach Walk by Unicorn Heads

Welcome to Coffee Break, where we focus on a single topic related to miles and points. And each Coffee Break is limited to 20 minutes or less for your money back. Today's Coffee Break, credit card power-ups. It turns out there are a lot of credit cards that will make your points more valuable just by having those credit cards. So we're going to go through a whole bunch of them, probably not all. I doubt we've thought of all the examples, but there's some really good ones in here.

So we're just gonna dive in, go through a bunch of ways in which you can make your points more valuable. Yep, I heard the Super Mario Brothers music, the power-up music going as you were saying that. I'm sure everybody did. Everybody did, good. We're gonna start with United first. So all of the cards that have an annual fee give you discounted award pricing on select

flights. So when you run an award search, sometimes you'll find like a card holder discount. But that's not all. You also with most of the cards that have annual fees, except for the Explorer card, you get complimentary upgrades on award flights if you have elite status. Another way of saying that is getting elite status with United, you don't automatically qualify for free upgrades when you book an award on United. You have to also have select credit cards like the Quest card, the United Business card,

or either of the club cards. Very good, all right, so you can get a better award price potentially with the right United credit cards. That'll power up your points for sure, but United isn't the only airline to offer something like that. What does Delta do? Yeah, Delta's is much simpler.

If you have any of the Delta cards that have annual fees, you get a 15% discount on Delta flights when you're booking an award. So right off the bat, it just makes your points more valuable. Very good. JetBlue offers something similar. They offer a 10% rebate if you get the JetBlue Plus card or business card, I believe. But it's, I said, similar and not the same, because this is a rebate rather than a discount,

which means you'll need to have enough points initially to book the award, and then you'll get 10% back afterwards. So it's not quite as good as getting the discount up front, but still you can get more value out of your points that way. Yep, yep. Air Canada AeroPlan, they've got something very different. If you like to use your points for other kinds of travel, besides redeeming for awards, the credit card gives you the ability to erase statement charges

where you've paid for travel with your Air Canada Aero plan card and you get 1.25 cents per point value. Yeah, very good. All right. And I think you also get access to better award pricing on Air Canada flights in some situations. So you might do a little bit better when you're redeeming your points for Canada flights than a non card holder. Yeah. Next up, we've got the Avianca LifeMiles Elite Amex card. This is a cardless actually issued card, but it runs on American Express. And this card comes with

lifemiles plus light. That's the cheapest version of a lifemiles plus subscription, but that gives you a 10% discount on an award. So just by having the lifemiles elite card, you'll get lifemiles plus light and a 10% discount on awards. That's not just on avianca metal. That's all of your avianca life milesiles Redemptions. So that's pretty awesome. Now, to put it in perspective, this is a $249 a year card.

And LifeMiles Plus, the Lite version that's included, costs $20 a month. So you pay $240 a year if you wanted to subscribe to LifeMiles Plus. It'll cost you $9 more if you have this credit card. But then, of course, obviously, you also have the credit card, but then of course, obviously you also have the credit card, whether or not that's worth it, it's going to be up to you. Also worth noting that alternatively, this credit card will give you $20 off of any of the other subscription options. There are multiple other subscription options for LifeMiles Plus and the next level up,

the basic level, that includes free award ticket changes and cancellations. So if that's something you're interested in, you'll get a slight discount on that too with the Life Miles Elite card. That sounds good. Tell us about the Spirit points pooling. Yeah, next up Spirit. The Free Spirit MasterCard offers card holders

the ability to pool their points. So this doesn't directly make your points more valuable, but in a way it might make your points more useful if you travel as a family Because it means that if you have this credit card you can pull points with your all your family members And so for instance, I travel with a family of four and if we would have each earned just a couple thousand miles on a flight It might not have been terribly useful But when you can pull all four of those people together Then suddenly you might have earned enough miles on a single flight to book

Another award ticket at some point So that's a nice feature that most airlines don't offer in a points pulling is not something that's very common There are a few airlines that offer it but spirit offers it for cardholders. Yep Next up we've got IHG the IHG premiere or Premier business card both offer fourth night free on award bookings. So just by having the card, your points can be worth more as long as you're booking four nights at a time. Now if someone has the old IHG Rewards Select Card, that one offers additionally a 10% rebate on all award bookings. So if you have both one of the new and current premier cards

and the old select card, you get both Fortnite free and 10% back. But it's worth noting that if you've got the old select card and you don't yet have the premier card, you can no longer get both. You had to have gotten both during a window in the past when both were available. So you know, you have to sort of true, but you can still get the business card. You can still get the Premier business card if you have the old select. So that's what I would recommend if you want both. Excellent. Great tip. All right. Next up, we got the Wyndham rewards earner cards. These offer a 10 percent discount on awards.

And again, we like discounts rather than rebates. Discounts are better than rebates because it means you only need the discounted amount of points to make the booking. So whereas, for instance, a hotel might cost 15000 points per night, you'll only need to pay 13.5 if you have the Wyndham earner credit card or eight rather, excuse me, if you you have the Windham earner credit card or eight rather excuse me if you have a Windham earner credit card now also worth mentioning here is that this benefit extends to the cost of vacation Reynolds and the partnership with cottages.com you'll get

a 10% discount on those also of course the casa costs either 15 or 30 000 points per bedroom per night depending on the cost of the place you're booking. So you'd get a 10% discount on that either way and that can be really nice. Absolutely. Hilton sort of gives you a discount in a roundabout way. Most Hilton cards give you some level of elite status with Hilton. Maybe all of them do. And with Hilton in order order to get Fifth Night Free awards, you need to have some level of Elite status. So very indirectly, those cards, as well as Amex Platinum cards that give you Hilton Gold status, they all kind of make your points more valuable indirectly in that way. Yeah, I'd certainly say that they do. I think that's a pretty noteworthy perk, because even the No Annual Fee

Hilton card comes with Silver status, and that's a pretty noteworthy perk because even the no annual fee Hilton card comes with silver status and that's all you need in order to get your fourth night free or fifth night free rather, fifth night free on Hilton. So, yep, definitely. Speaking of Amex Platinum, Greg mentioned a moment ago, the business version, the Amex Business Platinum offers a 35% rebate when you use your points,

your membership rewards points that is, to book a flight on your chosen airline. So the airline that you've picked for your incidental fee credits or any airline in business or first class, that can be really valuable sometimes because there are times when a cash ticket might be priced such that the 35% rebate ends up costing you fewer points than an award ticket would. So I've used that one quite a few times myself to get a great deal. Makes your points worth a little over one and a half cents per point

towards booking flights, which is the best deal going for using your Amex membership rewards points directly to book a flight. Yeah, one gotcha with that feature is you do have to book through Amex travel, and sometimes they don't have the best flight prices that you could find elsewhere. On the other hand, I've found randomly, sometimes I have better flight prices than I've found elsewhere.

So if you're lucky, then you sort of in a weird way, get more than that 1.55 cents because you would have never thought to book through them if it wasn't for looking for that discount or that rebate, I mean, for sure. All right. So next up is chase with chase. You can make your cash transferable. And when I say make your cash transferable, I don't mean the cash in your bank account, but rather the points on your cash back card can become transferable.

So, for instance, if you've got a chase freedom card or Freedom Unlimited card that earns quote unquote cash back, that's actually earned as ultimate rewards points that you could then combine with the ultimate rewards points you've earned from your Sapphire Preferred or Sapphire Reserve and transfer them onto partners or use them to book travel through Chase Travel. So again, if I've got a bunch of points I've earned on my Freedom card, I

could move them over to my Sapphire Preferred card and book travel through Chase at 1.25 cents per point or my wife's Sapphire Reserve card and book travel at 1.5 cents per point. So you can make your points more valuable pretty easily that way with Chase. Yeah, one clarification or addition, I guess,

of detail is that this also works on business cards. So if you have a Chase Inc. Business Cash card or a Chase Inc. Business Unlimited card, both of those are advertisers earning cash back, but they have points that can be moved, just like Nick said, to another card that makes them transferable. However, there's the Chase Inc. Business Premier card, which sounds just like the preferred but it's different, which earns cash back that cannot be moved to another one. So just watch out for that card. Yeah, and then actually, the final thing we should mention

on that, because it's a distinction over others that we'll talk about in a moment, is that Chase allows you to combine points with one additional member of your household or a business co-owner. So you can't transfer these to just anybody. It has to be somebody who lives within your household or co-owns a business with you. Right, right. Unlike Capital One.

So Capital One, you can make your cash back cards, the rewards from those more valuable, just like with Chase, by moving the rewards to a card that earns Capital One miles, which are transferable. And with Capital One, I believe you can remove your rewards to anybody, right? Yeah, any other Capital One card holder that's got an eligible card anyway. Yeah, so my wife, for instance, has a Spark Cash card, a business Capital One card that earns cash back and she's called and moved her points from that card to my Venture One card, which earns Capital One miles at a very poor rate, by the way. I don't have that card because I use it. I have it for an old benefit.

But at any rate, it's possible to make your points transferable that way. Now she also has a Venture X card. So within her Capital One login, she can manually move cash back from her Spark card has a Venture X card so within her capital one login she can manually move cash back from her spark card to her Venture X. Again that's all self service within the capital one site within the login there but if you want to transfer to another card holder, she wants to transfer to me or to Greg or to anybody out there who's got a capital one card then she would not have to call the

number on the back of her capital one card and have the the card number of the person to which she's transferring. Yep. Yep. Cool. Next up is Citi. So Citi has a few things. They also, like these others that we were just talking about, you can make your sort of cash back rewards more valuable by making them transferable with the right combination. So for example, if you have the double cash card or the custom cash card, you can, if you also have the Strata Premier card, you can combine your points in Citi's Thank You rewards portal. And once you combine your points there, all those points become transferable.

Now, the ability to move from one person to another is really complicated with Citibank, because for one thing, you can do that with most of the cards, except for the double cash. You're not allowed to move them from one person to another with double cash. With any of the other ones, you can move them to another person.

So if I had the city double cashed and didn't have like a Strato Premier, I could move my points to Nick's Strato Premier if he had that and ask him to then transfer to an airline or hotel program and make a booking for me. But he's on the clock. Once you move the points to another person, they expire in, what is it, 90 days? I haven't forgotten off the top of my head. 90 days. Yeah, 90 days. So be careful if you do that.

The other thing Citi's got is if you have the no longer available rewards plus card, that makes all your points more valuable because when you combine your points in the thank you rewards portal, then just having a rewards plus card in there, when you go to redeem points, you get 10% of them back up to a total of 10,000 points back every single year, just for having the fee free rewards plus card, which again, unfortunately is no longer available. Yeah, and a point we probably should have made

near the beginning, maybe it's too late to make this point, is that we consider your points more valuable when they move from cash to becoming transferable because it gives you more options. You can often redeem your transferable points for far more in terms of value by transferring to partners. Now, you can also sometimes combine forces with all of this.

So the city example Greg just gave, perhaps you've got points on your double cash card and you move them over to your Strata Premier card or pull them with your Strata Premier card and then transfer those onto Avianca LifeMiles. And then maybe you also have an Avianca Elite credit card. And so you can redeem those points with Avianca LifeMiles and get a 10% discount.

And so, you know, your cash probably would not have bought as much as the value of your points could in a situation or scenario like that. Oh, that's a great point. We almost thought I'd do a whole coffee break on when you can double up these power-ups like that. I love that example. So finally, we have Wells Fargo, which is similar to the last three programs we just

talked about in that you can earn cash back from a number of Wells Fargo cards. So you can move your cash back to one of the point earning cards like the autograph or autograph journey card and then those points become transferable. So again Chase, Capital One, Citi and Wells Fargo all have that similar situation where you can earn cash back on some cards and then either pool them with other cards or transfer the rewards to other cards to make them, to make those points then transferable to airline and hotel programs. Excellent.

So you got a lot of different ways to power up your miles and points thanks to the credit cards we talked about today. What's your favorite? What is my favorite? I'm reviewing the list here to see if I can come up with what is my favorite. Probably the chase, the ability to make chase points transferable because I often earn, for example, five points per dollar with my Chase Inc. business cash card, move them to a card that makes them transferable, and then I get like, you know, five, I'm indirectly getting, for example, five Hyatt points per dollar

because I transfer to Hyatt. What about you? Yeah, I think in general, the ability to turn cash back rewards into airline miles is super powerful. So for me, if I weren't to pick the same one you did, it would be capital one for the same feature because you can move them to any card holders that makes them super flexible and powerful. And so in my household, for instance, we like to use my wife's capital one spark cash card rather than a venture venture X card, because then it gives us the flexibility of either moving those over

to a miles earning card when we want to transfer to a partner your ex card because then it gives us the flexibility of either moving those over to a miles earning card when we want to transfer to a partner or redeeming them as cash back, similar to what Greg was talking about with Jason. Second, you know, let's be clear, you can do the same with that combination. But we've got that for a base level of 2% or 2x earnings. And then with a saver card, you could have 3x at restaurants and grocery stores on top of that and so I think that makes for a potentially powerful combination for a lot of people though really that applies to many of the cards that we talked about today that can turn your cash back rewards into transferable points.