By now most readers know I’m a huge fan of my Chase Sapphire Preferred credit card. By combining it with two other cards that earn Chase Ultimate Reward points, I have the Chase Trifecta. Not only did I earn a lot of Chase points with the spending bonus for the Chase Sapphire Preferred card, I can continually maximize points earned for my daily spend using all of my Chase cards (see my related post Travel for Free in Six Easy Steps for more information).
But I find many people who are new to the travel hacking game have difficulty knowing what to do with the points once they are earned. Don’t let those points pile up! Starting using them to take great trips, or even to help maximize your life in other ways. Read on for 5 ways to use Chase Ultimate Reward points.
Note: If you apply for a credit card on any of the links provided in this article, I may receive a referral bonus.
Transfer Points to Partners for Free Travel
Transferring your points to Chase’s travel partners is the absolute best way to use your Chase Ultimate Reward points. Most transfers happen instantly. So all you have to do is locate the flight or hotel you want, transfer over your points to that travel partner, and then make the booking!
And Chase has the best travel partners! I have access to American Express Membership Rewards Points as well as Capitol One Rewards Miles. But their travel partners are not as useful to me as Chase’s partners.
My Favorite Chase Travel Partners
Airlines
For example, Chase partners with Southwest Airlines. I routinely transfer my Chase Ultimate Reward points to Southwest to fly for free. In fact, I haven’t paid for a Southwest flight for any member of my family since 2018! We have taken flights to Florida, Texas, California, Illinois, Montana, Nevada, and Hawaii – all for free! I estimate that the value of the Chase points for these flights at about 1.5 cents each. Professional travel hackers would never accept such a low rate of return on their points. But for my family, it has allowed us to take trips we would not have been able to take without free flights. And that’s priceless! (Read more about maximizing Southwest points in my post How To Fly Yourself and Your +1 Free on Southwest.)
Another airline partner that I value is United. I booked free flights out of Paris using a combination of United miles and Chase Ultimate Rewards in the summer of 2023. These flights cost $1,900 each, but I booked each ticket with 33,000 United miles, some transferred from Chase Ultimate Rewards. This makes my Chase/United points worth 5.75 cents each!
On the same trip to Europe in the summer of 2023, we flew to London on Virgin Atlantic. Chase had a 20% transfer bonus to Virgin Atlantic, and we were able to take a direct flight to London for only 12,000 Chase points each. The cost of those tickets would have been $1,165, so these Chase points were worth a whopping 9.7 cents each!
To be fair, I would have booked a round-trip flight instead of two one way flights. This would have been less expensive. I estimate a round-trip flight would have cost about 1,500 per person. Since we used 45,000 Chase/United points per person, this is a points value of 3.33 cents. Not bad!
Hotels
There are also three hotel chains that Chase partners with: IHG, Marriott and Hyatt. I routinely transfer points to Hyatt as they have the best points prices, and I routinely get at least 2 cents per point value. In the summer of 2024, we are going to New York and Washington, D.C. and staying in Hyatt Places. Our points value for our DC hotel is 5 cents and for our New York hotel is 3 cents.
I’ve also transferred points to Marriott. We booked a one night stay at the Walt Disney World Dolphin Hotel during my epic 4 Disney parks in 1 day trip with my daughter. I already had some Marriott points accrued, and Chase was offering a 25% transfer bonus at the time. So I only had to transfer a small amount of points to Marriott to make that stay happen. While the value of the points is probably only .07 cents for this stay, it was worth it for us to have a hotel within walking distance of the parks at the end of that long day!
Full List of Chase Ultimate Rewards Partners
- Aer Lingus AerClub (great for flights between the US and Dublin!)
- Air Canada Aeroplan (part of Star Alliance so you can book United and Lufthansa flights as well)
- Air France – KLM Flying Blue (flights to Europe as well as Africa and Asia)
- British Airways Executive Club (part of OneWorld Alliance so you can book flights with partner airlines, but watch for high fuel surcharges and fees)
- Iberia Plus (not as valuable due to an award chart that has more peak times than most)
- Emirates Skywards (flights to the Middle East, Asia, and Australia)
- JetBlue TrueBlue (great option for domestic travel)
- Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer (great for flights into Singapore making it easy to travel to the rest of Asia)
- Southwest Airlines Rapid Rewards (super easy to use, great for families, travel throughout the US, Caribbean and Latin America)
- United MileagePlus (another easy one to use, good for families who are willing to fly abroad in economy class)
- Virgin Atlantic Flying Club (partners with Delta, watch for high taxes and fees)
- IHG Rewards Club (big footprint with hotels all over the world, look for Holiday Inn or InterContinental hotels)
- Marriott Bonvoy (also has a big footprint but redemption values are not great)
- World of Hyatt (smaller footprint but excellent redemption rates starting at 5,000 for hotels like Hyatt Place and Hyatt House)
Book Travel Through the Chase Portal
Chase also has its very own travel portal. Those who have a Chase Sapphire Preferred credit card can use their points or cash to book flights, hotels, rental cars, activities, and even cruises on the travel portal. The beauty of this is that each Chase point is worth 1.25 cents when using the portal. So it’s usually not as good as transferring the points to a travel partner. But it’s super easy to book things through the portal and you can usually find the hotel, rental car, or flight itinerary you are looking for. It’s a great option for when you can’t find award space with Chase’s travel partners as well.
A few caveats. First, you must pay in full (either points or cash) when booking. If you like to reserve hotels ahead of time but not pay in advance, the Chase portal might not be the best option. Second, cancelling bookings can be difficult. Sometimes there is a cancel button available, and other times you have to cancel through chat or a phone call to Chase. Finally, there have been times when the price I’m shown initially changes by the time I’m ready to check out. So be sure to double check that the cost is still acceptable.
Pay Yourself Back
Chase offers the option to “Pay Yourself Back” for charging items from specified categories to your card. Currently, you can get a credit of 1.25 cents per dollar spent on charities and 1 cent per dollar spent on gas stations and groceries. Previous categories have included dining, internet, cable and phone services. You simply use the card to pay for the product or service. Then once the charge hits your statement, you can go to the Ultimate Rewards website and select any eligible transactions. Chase will turn your Ultimate Rewards points into a statement credit for the amount of that expense plus an additional .25 cents per dollar if it was a donation to a charity.
Trade Points for Cash
Experts will tell you that this is the absolute worst way to use Chase Ultimate Reward points. And they are correct. You can get far more value for your points in other ways. But cash is cash, and sometimes having a stash of available coin is more important!
You can trade your Chase Ultimate Rewards points at a 1:1 ratio. So each Chase point is worth $0.01. Not too shabby considering Chase gives you a pile of points for simply spending a certain amount on the card when you first get it. That 60,000 points for meeting a spending minimum translates to $600!
Buy Stuff
The final way to use Chase Ultimate Rewards points is through a variety of programs that allow you to exchange points for items you want. If you are in the market for an Apple product, you can use points to purchase it. Most items cost 1 Ultimate Reward point per cent. So that iPhone 15 Pro will set you back 99,900 points! It’s the same as cashing out the points, but you might be able to find the Apple products cheaper elsewhere, so buyer beware! But sometimes, Chase will offer a promotion where you can transfer 1 point for 1.25 cents. If you are going to cash out points to purchase an Apple product anyway, it makes sense to crunch the numbers to see if using points in this way is a better deal.
Another option is to register your Amazon and PayPal accounts to pay for purchases with points. Your points only have a .08 cent value used this way, so this is not the best redemption value. However, there is sometimes a promotion where you can get 50% off of purchases on Amazon when redeeming at least one Chase Ultimate Reward for it. So it’s worth registering your accounts to do this and watching for this promotion to pop up (likely during Prime Day).
Finally, you can purchase gift cards from a variety of places with points. Most follow the 1:1 ratio of points to cents. But there are always gift cards on sale. If you are going to use your points for gift cards, make sure there’s a sale! Otherwise, just redeem your points for cash so you are not tied to a particular vendor.
The Bottom Line
Chase Ultimate Rewards points are valued in the industry at 2 cents each. As you can see through all of the examples I gave here, the only thing that comes remotely close to a 2 cent value per point is transferring to travel partners. But sometimes it’s a struggle to get to the 2 cents per point. Figuring out transfer partners can be difficult and time consuming. Plus, my travel style isn’t super flexible and I often can’t take advantage of the best deals. Finally, you have to be booking business or first class flights to get the absolute best points redemption values, but those cost double the points or more. Since I’m usually flying with my family, it just doesn’t make sense for me to drop so many points on an upgraded flight experience for four people. I would rather take another trip!
Best Practices
But to make the most of your points, you should at least try to transfer to a travel partner. Start with an investigation of the amount of points that flight or hotel stay will cost you, and figure out availability with the travel partner. Make sure you have joined that travel partner’s loyalty club as well. Once you know what’s available and how many points it will cost, you can easily launch the transfer process from the Chase Ultimate Rewards website. Most transfers are instant, so you will see the points show up in your travel partner’s loyalty account immediately. Then you can proceed with booking.
For flights, there’s a great online tool called point.me that will show you award pricing and availability for every partner of Chase Ultimate Rewards as well as other credit card reward points. You can buy a 24 hour subscription for $5. I highly recommend that all beginner travel hackers buy a day or two to explore how to use points most effectively for flights. This small investment can make maximizing your financial return on points so much easier!
But even if you can’t reach the 2 cents per point threshold, it’s OK. Remember, these points are FREE to you! So relax and a just use the points to do things that make you happy. That’s what I do, and it has opened up a world of personal travel for me that I could not justify before.
How do you use your reward points?
Tell us in the comments section below. Also be sure to check out my other travel hacking posts. And sign up for our newsletter so you never miss a post!
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