Why You Shouldn’t Stress Over Transfer Bonuses

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The biggest advantage of earning transferrable credit card points is the flexibility when you need to redeem them for travel. You never know which airline program will have availability on the flights you want to take. It’s impossible to put a value on being able to move points into whichever program you need at the exact moment you need them.

As a reminder, here are the transferrable point currencies from the major banks:

• American Express Membership Rewards.
• Bilt Rewards
• Capital One Venture Rewards or Spark Miles
• Citi ThankYou points
• Chase Ultimate Rewards

You can also transfer points from Marriott Bonvoy to airline programs.

Occasionally, banks offer bonuses to transfer points into a specific program. These offers used to last for 1 to 2 months. However, we’re starting to see more “flash” bonuses. Currently, four of the major transferrable point programs are offering some bonus, except for Bilt, which typically only offers a transfer bonus as part of one of its Rent Day promotions.

Capital One

American Express Membership Rewards

Citi Thank You

Chase Ultimate Rewards

While these promotions offer great value if you’re planning on transferring points anyway, speculative usage of transfer bonuses isn’t a good idea for the average traveler.

You’ll always find a use for these miles

I hate it when I read a statement like that online. No, not everyone will always find a use for miles in any program, regardless of how good of a deal it is. Stop telling people that they will.

The benefit of earning points with a transferrable card is flexibility. You can transfer points to ANA to book a trip to Indonesia, to Hyatt for a hotel in Sedona or to JetBlue for a flight to New York City. Maybe you need to combine points from three different programs to book tickets on Singapore Airlines to Germany.

Once you transfer points from your bank to another program, they’re locked in that program. Is a 10% to 33% transfer bonus worth losing flexibility?

Don’t get me wrong—I love transfer bonuses and wish there were more of them. It’s just that for the majority of travelers, they are a happy coincidence instead of something to plan trips around.

I wouldn’t suggest making a transfer just because there’s a bonus available. Doing so might result in you having points trapped in a program for years before you’re ever able to use them.

Transfer Bonuses

It’s hard to keep track of all the bonuses available. This page on Frequent Miler is an excellent reference for current offers. If you need to transfer points to a program for a booking, you might as well transfer points from a bank offering a bonus, if one is available. When searching for award tickets on Point.me, their engine will factor in when there’s a transfer bonus when showing you how many points you’ll need to book a ticket.

We don’t travel enough, so I can never say that I’m sure I’ll be able to use points in any program. The closest I’d ever be able to say is transferring points to JetBlue or Southwest since they are fixed-value programs, and we fly both airlines regularly.

However, I’m earning points to upgrade our travel, and I don’t want to burn points with those airlines. That means I’ll take advantage of transfer bonuses if they work with a redemption I’m actively working on, but prospectively transferring points is something I just won’t do.

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This post first appeared on Your Mileage May Vary