5. Bonus: How to Book Flights Using Points!
Disclaimer: We apologize in advance for any grammatical and spelling errors in the slides.
About this bonus video
In this video, i show you how to book a flight using credit card points. I show the difference between American Express MR (Membership Rewards) points and Chase UR (Ultimate RewardS) Points. The Chase business Ink card is a Tier 3 business credit card and the American Express Platinum is a Tier 5 business card.
- American Express Travel
- Chase Travel
- MR Points
- UR Points
- Flight booking
- Deciding which points to usee
Resources
Full Video Transcript
Hello. Hello, and welcome to this video. So I want to show you how I use my points to book travel and I use American Express and Chase quite a bit. Um, but in this video, I’m going to show you the power of using points and then how many it’s going to make my decision, uh, between whether I want to use my American Express points or my Chase points. So I have about a hundred and I have 190,000 points with my Chase card, and I want to start aggressively using this card. Quite a bit more. You can see right here is saying I have another 27,000 points. It’s going to be added to my statement, um, for the next thing. And then I have my American Express account, which my American Express account has about 193,000 points. So I’m flying to Cancun from Atlanta for four, for four days.
I’m leaving Friday coming back the following Tuesday. And this is the flight that I’ll be using flying Delta. Now both of these options are giving me the price is the same for the flight. So I’m not really showing you this from a point from a standpoint of getting cheaper flights. I’m more so showing you this, this to show you how you can leverage points with your credit cards to get cheaper bookings. Now, this is my American Express one. I’m going to go over to Chase and get to this particular place and show you how this would work. And when I say go to this, what I’m referencing is to show you how I would book travel using Chase ultimate rewards points. So UR points is what Chase uses. It’s called UR points or ultimate rewards points, and then American Express uses, um, American Express points.
And I’m not really sure what the terminology is outside of it’s being American express points. So, um, I would just show you how a book. This hit Atlanta, and we’re going to be flying into Cancun, Mexico, nice and easy. And we’re leaving on the 24th and we’ll be back on the 28th. And we’re going to say tool to adults when it hit search. And right when we hit search, all the options are going to pop up for flights I’m available. Now, I personally like to fly Delta, so I’m going to be looking exclusively at a Delta flight so I can have an apples to apples comparison so we can see the apples to apples comparison would be here. So leaving at 12:24 on Friday. So I would select that option. And then now it’s going to have me select my departure option and the departure option would be leaving at 4:52 PM on that Friday.
And we can see right here that that’s the same exact opportunity that I have with American Express. Again, it’s the same flight, 12:24 arriving 1:55, leave at 4:42 on Tuesday and arrive at 8:22 PM. Now, if we go back over to the chase, we can see that literally the price is the same. So it’s 1411 here. And I want to say it’s 1411 here. So the price doesn’t change. However, notice that they both give you the options to say, look, you can use your card only, or you can use points plus card. So if I wanted to say, Hey, look, I’m gonna use points plus card. If I wanted to use, if I just wanted to pay for this flight fully, I could do that. And if I just put down 140,000 points, probably 141,000 points here, um, hit apply. Um, I literally would just, you know, it’d be 141,018 points, right?
So if I hit apply, I would pay $1 for this flight. Now I’m not going to do that because I don’t want to use all these points on this one flight. So what I would do is just put down 70,018 points. So 70,018 points here. So that gets me at my flight total using just the points will be $711. So I’m literally getting a 50% discount on this flight because I’m going to use 70,000 of my points that are acquired by just using my American Express card and paying it back. Now, if we go back over to Chase the same exact thing, literally is going to give me the opportunity to say, continue to booking. And before I actually proceed with putting in the passenger information, it’s going to let me get clear on how I want to pay. So let me go over here and see right here.
So it says I can use my, my business inc unlimited points, 141,000. If I use 141,118 points, which is slightly a little bit more points, but roughly the same, um, I would wouldn’t have to pay anything for this flight. Now, if I want to just say, Hey, look, I’m going to specify the amount of points. So let’s just say in this example, 70,018 points here, um, that’s going to give me a total of $700. So I would literally pay $711. So you can see both of these options are competitively priced, basically the same when it comes to point. So now the question is Kenny, which one did you use? Or which one? Which one should you use? Well, if I’m looking at my Chase points and I’m looking at my American Express points, I’m starting to use my Chase card heavier a lot more than my American Express card, but I use them both quite a bit for my business.
If I’m making a decision in terms of which points I’d go with to book this flight, I’m going to go with American Express. And let me tell you why, because I’d rather just continue to accumulate all my points with my Chase card, because right now I have, I have 191,000, but if I just continue to use my card the same exact way I’ve been using it, I’d be able to accumulate probably 500, maybe 600,000 points by the end of the year, which will be equivalent to about 5 or $6,000 in cash that I use that, I mean that I could use either for a trip or I can use that for Christmas gifts or bonuses or whatever I want to do. Um, at the end of the year. Now, the other reason why I’m not going to use my American.. my Chase rewards points now is because with American Express Platinum, because this is the, my American Express Platinum card that I would with this one specifically when I use any amount of points. So let’s just say it’s 70,000 points and you, and you, and you pay with your American Express card. Number one, I’m going to get five times the rewards points for this purchase. So 711 times 5 is what I’m going to get added to my account balance and points. So I think that’s like 36,000 points. I’m going to I’m at 36,000.
We just do a Google calculator, Google calculator, access, Google calendar, Google calculator. Yeah, Take me all this time. I probably should just, I just created this seven, Seven times, whereas my old button five, um, 3,500 points. So I’m going to get 3,555 points to, to use when I use my card and then what I want to do for that purchase. And then I’m going to get 35% of these points back. So it was almost like I’m, I’m, I’m getting a chance to continue to, you want to use my points? So 35%, let me just go and do that. So do 70,018 times .35%. That means I’m going to get 24,000 points back plus, and another 3555 for this trip, I’m going to get 28,000 points back, even though I’m using 28,000 points, which is roughly whatever that is 280 bucks back just to use the points with American express. So that’s why I’m going to go ahead and use my American express points, but that kind of gives you the philosophy, what I’m showing you the power of this, but it kind of really makes you understand why you would move forward and use, um, use, uh, use points with this particular, use your points and how to decipher, which points to use. Hope this makes sense. I’ll see you in the next video.