104. Expert Answers to Your Top Award Travel Questions: Listener Q&A

Welcome to Point Me to First Class, the only show for employed professionals, entrepreneurs, and business owners who are looking to optimize their higher-than-average expenses to travel the world. I'm your host, Devon Gimbel, and I believe that your expenses are your greatest untapped asset if you know how to leverage them. Ready to dive into the world of credit card points and miles so you can travel more, travel better, and travel often? Let's get started.

Hello everyone and welcome back to the Point Me To First Class podcast. Today's episode is going to be a listener Q&A episode. You've sent me questions and I've got some answers. These Q&A episodes are a bit of a departure from my usual podcast episodes in that instead of doing a deep dive on one specific topic, I like to give you my just off the top of my head answers to a variety of credit card and award travel questions.

And when I recently did an analysis looking at the stats from my first 100 podcast episodes, the listener Q&A episodes were some of the most popular and most downloaded. So I'm going to include at least a few of these throughout the year moving forward.

Now if you have questions that you would love to be considered for inclusion in a future listener Q&A episode, please send them to me. I love hearing about what Points and Miles questions you have, and I know that if you're wondering about something, chances are many other podcast listeners are too. So anytime you have a points question, please email them to me at [email protected]. I keep a running list of questions that are sent to me and then pull from those for these Q&A episodes.

Today's questions are a little bit of everything from specific credit card questions to more broad travel planning questions and I hope you enjoy the mix of listener questions and take away some tips or insights to help you on your points journey. So let's dive in.

This first question is about a specific credit card and a podcast listener asked, can I downgrade my United Quest card before the first annual fee comes up or would I sacrifice the welcome bonus? I think this is such a great question. This is sort of a foundational kind of points and miles topic. So it doesn't matter if you also hold this very specific credit card. This is going to apply to all of your rewards credit cards, which is why I think it is so great to cover just to reinforce those basics, those foundations for you, whether you've been in this hobby for two months or for 20 years.

So one of the things that you always want to be aware of is anytime you open up a new rewards credit card, you always want to hold it for at least 12 months. So what that means is you will end up having two annual fees post on that credit card.

Usually an annual fee posts almost immediately when you open up a new rewards credit card and then 12 months after you've held the card then your next annual fee will come up. Now I know especially for some of these more premium credit cards that can have an annual fee of $500, $600 or more, especially if this is a card that you don't want to, you don't intend to hold, you don't think you're gonna get continued value out of year after year. Usually it's right before that 12 month, you know, 12.5 month annual fee post is when you start thinking, well, I don't know if I want to hang onto this. I don't know if I want to pay this, but you absolutely still want to hold the card for at least 12 months.

This is because if you completely cancel a rewards credit card that you have held for less than 12 months, credit card issuers can become very, very unhappy about this. Credit card issuers don't want us to sign up for rewards cards simply so that we can earn the welcome bonus and then never use the card again and then walk away from it in less than 12 months.

While it's not absolutely guaranteed that this can happen, if you do cancel reward credit cards prior to holding them for 12 months, it is possible for a couple of negative outcomes to happen. Number one, the credit card issuer can rescind or claw back the welcome bonus offer that you earned. That would be I think very detrimental to most of us because we do value those initial welcome bonus offers.

Now the second thing which I think is just as bad if not worse is that if you do this, if the credit card issuer gets upset with the way that you are handling your account, they can outright cancel other credit cards that they have issued you. They can decide to no longer issue you new credit cards. And so I think the potential long term problem of canceling rewards credit cards prior to holding them for 12 months is one that we should take into consideration because most of us in this hobby are not looking to just sign up for a single rewards credit card and then be done.

Even if you don't consider yourself to have a very high velocity, like let's say you just plan to open up two rewards credit cards every year, you still want to be cognizant of maintaining a healthy relationship with your credit card issuers.

So here's what you can do instead. Number one, like I said, always hold all of your new rewards cards for at least 12 months. Now, in the case that you know you don't wanna hold that card long-term, that's okay. Wait for that first annual fee to post after you've held it for 12 months, and then within 30 days, contact that credit card issuer and do one of a couple things.

Number one, you can ask if you can product change or trade that credit card in for a low or no fee annual credit card that's also issued by the same issuer, or you can still outright cancel that card if you want. Many credit card issuers will either completely refund or at least prorate the annual fee if you have closed it. So if you're closing a card within 30 days of that annual fee posting, ideally you are not going to be on the hook for that entire annual fee, again, for the upcoming year.

So these are just some ideas for you, but bottom line is please don't close or cancel new rewards credit cards if they are less than 12 months old.

All right, we're moving on to another kind of specific credit card question, but this idea, this topic can still be applicable even if this credit card is not specifically one that you are looking at. So someone wrote in and said, upon looking more closely, I realized that I have a considerable amount of non-category spending.

So for those of you a little bit newer to the podcast, non-category or non-bonus spending is basically any expenses that you have that is not going to fall into a bonus category on one of your existing credit cards. So an example is if you hold the personal Amex gold card, that has bonus categories like groceries and dining out. So if that's your only personal credit card and you want to go spend money on something that's not groceries or dining out, that's going to be considered non category or non bonus spending.

So this person, like many of us, realized that they have a considerable amount of non-category spend. They said, I was initially thinking my next card should be the Chase Freedom Unlimited card so that I can earn 1.5 times points on that non-category spend, but after looking at a credit card guide, I see that the IHG Premier offers three times points for non-category spending with a relatively low annual fee.

Are there other factors that I should consider? And the answer is absolutely yes. I am so glad that somebody submitted this question because I think that it highlights, again, another sort of key foundational idea in the world of points and miles, and that is not every single type of points or miles is equal to another, both in terms of their flexibility and in terms of their potential value. So let me talk about what this looks like a little bit deeper.

This person is comparing potentially earning 1.5 times points on all their non-category spend with the Chase Freedom Unlimited card versus earning 3x points for all their non-category spend with a different Chase card, the Chase IHG Premier card, which is a hotel-specific card. Now on the surface, if we're only looking at the bonus multiplier, 1.5 times points versus 3 times points, I think every single one of us would agree that we would always prefer to earn 3 times points for non-category spend versus earning 1.5 times points, right? This is very straightforward math. We'd rather earn at a much more accelerated rate.

But this is where understanding some of the nuances of points and miles can really come into play into making a decision that is right for you. And this is the critical piece of information that you wanna look at whenever you are comparing your next kind of credit card move. Anytime you're thinking about bringing a new credit card into your rewards portfolio, especially if you have a couple of different contenders that look appealing to you, one of the things that you want to make sure that you understand is what type of points or miles does this specific credit card earn.

So for this scenario, the Chase Freedom Unlimited card earns Chase Ultimate Rewards points. Now this card is marketed as a cash-back card, but if you hold a Chase Sapphire Preferred card, a Chase Sapphire Reserve card, or a Chase Ink Business Preferred card, then the Chase Freedom Unlimited card essentially earns 1.5x chase points for all spend. I've gone into much more detail about how this actually works on a prior episode. So I'm not gonna get into those granular details here, but assuming that you hold one of those three other chase cards, the Chase Freedom Unlimited card is going to earn 1.5 times points on all spend no matter what it is and those chase points are going to be transferable to Chase Airline and Hotel Transfer Partners.

Now this is very, very different compared to the second credit card that this person is asking about. So the Chase IHG Premier Card is a hotel-specific card. So what that means is that any time this person puts any spend on the IHG Premier Card, the points that they are earning are IHG-specific points.

Why does that matter? This matters because anytime you have an airline specific or a hotel specific credit card, when you earn points on that card, you earn them to be used within that program only. So what that means is that let's say you spend $100,000 on non-category spend on the IHG Premier card. You earn 3 times points for that spend. So you've got 300,000 IHG points. Now you want to go and use them. That is totally fine as long as you want to use them to book a hotel stay through IHG. That is the only way that you're going to be able to use them compared to the Chase Freedom Unlimited Chase Ultimate rewards points.

Chase Ultimate Rewards points are transferable points. What that means is that you are not limited to using them on only one airline or only one hotel program. In fact, Chase has a fantastic menu of transfer partners, meaning you can move your Chase Ultimate Rewards points to one of several airlines or one of several hotel programs including IHG.

Now it is not a bad thing to have hotel specific or airline specific credit cards or points. What I think is really important to highlight in this question though is understanding when you are deciding which credit card do I want next, making sure that you understand the difference between how you could potentially use transferable points like Chase Points versus the limitations and the constraints of using hotel or airline specific points like IHG points.

So if you are familiar with an airline program or a hotel program and you want to get a hotel or airline specific credit cards that you can earn that one very specific type of points currency, I think that's fine. That can be very, very useful and valuable. For most people, I don't think that it makes sense to hold an airline or hotel specific credit card for their non-category spend unless they already know what they are saving those points for. Say an aspirational hotel stay that they know they want to book at an IHG property maybe in a year or in 18 months and so they're comfortable preferentially earning some of these fixed or more constrained hotel specific points. But for many people, especially more in the beginning of their points journey, I think it is preferable to get your transferable, your flexible transferable points earning credit cards first and not have something as limiting as a hotel or airline specific credit card for your non-category spend.

Now as your credit card portfolio expands after you already have a couple of your foundational transferable points earning cards again there can be really great specific scenarios in which bringing on a hotel specific card or an airline specific card can make a ton of sense. But usually, if you don't have that very specific use for that card in mind, that means that you would probably be better off getting something that earns transferable points instead.

So you can apply this again to any scenario. You don't have to be looking specifically at the IHG Premier card, but anytime you're bringing on a new card and one of your card considerations is an airline or hotel co-branded card? I want you to first just take a minute, pause, make sure that you are not losing the forest through the trees. Make sure that you are not just looking at a bonus category points multiplier as kind of the end all be all for making that decision. Make sure you understand what type of points are these. Are they transferable or not? Do I have a level of comfort using this specific type of points if they are fixed hotel or airline points? And if you do, then that can still be a good move for you going forward.

Alright, I want to follow that up with another kind of airline or hotel specific credit card question because I think these are the types of questions that you begin to consider again as you get more comfortable in points and miles as you expand your credit card portfolio and you start to see that you're not always comparing apples to apples. And so let's talk about another scenario with airline and hotel specific credit cards.

So this person asks why use airline or hotel specific credit cards when they are all usually one times points for everything other than their brand. An elite status would require such unbelievably high spend it's not achievable for most. It seems like just throwing away points in my mind.

For example, even the Chase Ink Business Preferred card does better on flights in terms of points earning than all of the Chase credit cards on their own brands in terms of airline specific Chase credit cards. I can't wrap my mind around it, maybe someone else is struggling with this too. Yes, I'm sure somebody else is struggling with this.

So let's kind of talk about again the basic framework and then some points that you can consider when you think about making decisions about what credit cards to bring into your portfolio. So at baseline, I think this is one of the reasons why so many people in the points education space, including me, really advocate for holding, again, those transferable, flexible transferable points earning credit cards versus only holding airliner hotel specific credit cards.

This is the thing that does not seem like it should make sense, but at least right now, this is how it works. Many airline and hotel specific credit cards are not strong points earning credit cards. What I mean by that is usually their only bonus category is when you're paying cash for stays at a specific hotel brand or you're paying cash for flights through that specific airline. So an example, American Airlines credit card, Delta Airlines credit card.

Now, these will have multiple different credit cards that you can pick from, but let's just kind of talk about the basic idea, which is that if you have an American airlines credit card, I do think it can make sense sometimes to buy cash flights on American airlines using that credit card. You'll get a little bit of a bonus multiplier bump.

Now let's look at this scenario for Chase. Chase also offers airline credit cards like Southwest, British Airways, Aeroplan, United, even more than that. When you have a United credit card, depending on which specific one you have, even if you're paying cash for a United flight and paying with United credit card, you might still only be earning around two United miles for every dollar you spend.

Interestingly, Chase has other credit cards that bonus travel, including airline flights, at a higher level. So if you have something like the Chase Sapphire reserve card, or in this question example, the chasing business preferred card, anytime you purchase a flight in cash directly through an airline with one of those cards, you're going to earn three times chase points. And so in this scenario, it's kind of like the inverse of what we were just looking at with the IHG Premier versus the Chase Freedom Unlimited scenario. In this current scenario, you can earn three times transferable chase points by booking airfare with a card like the Chase Sapphire Reserve or the chasing business preferred, or you can earn fewer airline specific miles by holding an airline specific credit card.

So the question is kind of number one, why would anyone ever do that? Right? Aren't you better off earning not only more points for that same exact expense, but you're earning transferable points. So you can earn three times chase points for all of your airline spend. And then if you wanted to, you could still transfer all those chase points to certain airlines, like to United Airlines or to Southwest Airlines.

And so from that perspective, I don't think it makes sense for people to hold airline specific credit cards when chances are, especially now with just the plethora of rewards cards that exist, you probably can earn a higher rate of bonus points using a transferable points earning card versus an airliner hotel specific credit card. So again, just comparing points earning rate, you probably will do better most of the time with a transferable points earning card.

So this question I think really brings up a good point, which is then, okay, given that, basically why would anybody hold one of these airliner hotel specific cards? Why would they use one of them? And I think there's a couple of different reasons.

Number one, I think if you do really highly value earning status in a specific hotel or airline program, it can make sense for you to hold one of these credit cards and to deliberately allocate spend to that credit card in order to hit thresholds for earning status. It is very important to understand that this is a cost benefit kind of analysis. You are "losing out" on potential points earning because these are very poor points earning credit cards.

The airline and hotel specific cards in general can be very poor points earning compared to your flexible transferable points earning credit cards. And so you have to use them very sort of intelligently and knowingly that when you're allocating spend to an airline or hotel credit card specifically so that you can help earn status in that program, that is spend that you are sacrificing some potential points earning on by using that card. Now that can still be worth it for you.

You know, if you preferentially fly one airline many, many times a year, or you preferentially stay in a hotel chain for your travel and you utilize the benefits of your status enough, it can still be worth it for you to sacrifice that points earning by allocating spend to an airline or hotel specific credit card. But for this specific person, they're saying that elite status usually requires such unbelievably high spend, it's not achievable for most. So what about if you're sitting kind of in that place where you know you're not actually trying to chase airline or hotel status with credit card spend.

Beyond that, is there really any reason to hold one of these cards? And I do think there can be. Again, this is one of those beautiful areas of points where I feel like there's no real wrong answer. It's more about understanding what's going to be the most beneficial and the most high value for you.

I think that there are people out there who could live their entire lives never ever ever holding a hotel or airline specific credit card and do amazingly well in this hobby simply by focusing on transferable points currencies. However, I think there are scenarios where it can be really beneficial to consider getting an airline or hotel specific credit card. And here's some of the reasons that I'm thinking it could be useful for that.

Number one, there are going to be some airline programs or hotel programs, mostly airline programs though, where it is more difficult to accrue points in them than other programs. Usually these are airlines that are not a direct transfer partner of any points currency or they're a direct transfer partner of only one or two of the transferable points currencies versus four or five.

So I'm thinking specifically right now something like EVA Airlines, right? EVA Airlines is an amazing airline based in Taiwan. They currently are a transfer partner of Citi and Capital One Points. So you can't move Bilt or Amex or Chase Points over to EVA. It could make sense to hold an airline specific credit card when signing up for that card is going to get you some welcome bonus points. And if you know you want to fly on that airline, then you can sometimes accrue points through credit card spend. Again, you're going to have to put a decent amount of spend on this, but it can be a way to earn points or miles that otherwise are much more challenging to access. Now the other reason that I think it could make sense to hold an airline or hotel specific credit card, let's talk about hotel cards and then we'll get to airline cards. There are a few hotel credit cards where just by holding a specific version of their hotel card you are automatically conferred either the highest level of status in that program or one of the highest levels of status in that program.

So this can be a very very smart play again if you are preferentially planning a trip where you know you want to stay in one specific hotel brand and you want to benefit from having really high status in that program without having to stay X number of nights a year or without having to spend X tens of thousands of dollars on a co-branded card in order to achieve status.

So one example that I'm thinking of off the top of my head is Hilton has several different credit cards that you can get through American Express. So there's more entry level cards all the way up to premium cards. The premium Hilton credit card, you automatically get diamond status in their program, the highest level of status with Hilton just by holding that card.

So you don't have to do anything else. You don't have to stay a certain number of nights in Hilton properties. You're not required to put a certain amount of spend on that credit card. Just by holding that credit card and paying the annual fee on it, which is again not insignificant, it's a premium level credit card, you automatically get the highest level of status.

So this can be a very, very smart play, especially if you have like a milestone trip coming up where you want to stay, especially in one of the higher category hotel properties for that specific hotel chain, because the benefit of that status is going to be probably pretty significant for you.

So I know people who will sign up again for this Hilton card because they know in a year they want to stay at one of the higher end Hilton properties in the Maldives or in Bora Bora and they're really going to benefit from having that status. So I think that is one reason why even if you don't expect to allocate a ton of spend to a hotel-specific credit card, it could potentially benefit you to have a hotel-specific card.

Now on the airline side, one of the other reasons I think it can be very helpful to consider getting an airline-specific credit card is especially if you do not have status in an airline program. We have seen over the years this just complete compartmentalization in terms of airlines breaking out so many different services and charging extra for them. Right. And I think as a consumer that really, really stinks. It is not fun to basically have to pay what I think is still a reasonable, sometimes substantial amount of cash for just a seat on an airplane. And then you're going to get charged if you want to check bags. You're going to get charged if you want one of multiple other services. And I think that can be really irritating.

Also, most people who travel for leisure, for vacation, we're never going to earn airline status specifically from flying. We are never going to fly often enough. We're probably not spending enough money on our airline flights where we are going to organically qualify for status. And so having an airline specific credit card can actually confer on you some of the benefits of status, again, without having to fly 100 days a year, without having to spend tens or $100,000 either on cash flights or through credit card spend or other mechanisms in order to get status.

And I actually think this is one of the most overlooked benefits in the rewards card space. There are some really, really lovely more entry level, so not crazy high annual fee credit cards that confer on you enough of some of the benefits of status that I think can make them really, really worthwhile. For many years I had one of the more entry-level American Airlines credit cards that gave me a free checked bag. American Airlines tends to be more generous with this than some of the other airlines, including allowing a certain number of free checked bags up to a limit of companions on the same itinerary traveling with you.

One of the things that I love about the American Airlines credit card that I held and that I think is something that never gets talked about and is at least for me so beneficial when I travel is that some of the airline specific credit cards, look at the benefits, read them on the credit card application page. Okay, look past that where it tells you the bonus points earning, which again is probably very low for most things. Look past the free checked bags, even though that's great.

Look for the specific benefit that says something like priority lane access. Okay. I don't know what kind of airports you all travel through. My home airport is an international hub. I tend to travel through other international hubs. And if your airport is anything like mine, having a stand in just the regular line to check in your bags, that alone can be ridiculous.

I remember my family flying through Miami on one of our vacations, needing to check bags to go home. We were flying economy and we had to wait in line for an hour and a half just to check our bags. Okay. This can be a huge hassle and be very, very stressful. Even if you're neurotic like me and you show up to an airport very early on time, being able to skip lines when you're not flying first class, when you don't otherwise have status with an airline, I think is such an underrated benefit.

So look for credit cards for airlines that confer priority lane access. That means you can essentially just go to the first class check-in lane to check in or to check your bags or just if you need help with something on your reservation. It is such a huge time saver. And again, oftentimes there are airline specific credit cards that are not the premium level ones that are going to charge 5 or $600 a year that confer that benefit.

So those are some of the reasons why I think it could still make sense to have an airline or hotel specific credit card, even if you're not gonna be putting a ton of spend on that card.

All right. Let's move away from more kind of credit card specific questions. Now we're going to get into some more travel type questions and also more points redemption or points travel planning types of questions. So somebody had asked, do I need to open up frequent flyer accounts in all of the airline programs for each of my kids? So I think this is a great question because so many of us in this hobby are in it so that we can travel with our families, with our partners, with more than one person. But how exactly does this work?

So I think there are kind of two different scenarios that you want to be aware of. So scenario number one is anytime you are going to be booking cash paid flights. So you go to an airline website and you plan to book your flights and you're going to pay cash for them.

In that scenario, you do want every single member of your itinerary to have their own frequent flyer account because when you fly a cash paid flights, you're going to be earning points or miles with that airline through your designated frequent flyer account. So even if you have younger children, if you pay for a cash paid flight, let them earn points or miles for that flight. They can sit in your kids' accounts. Over time, if you have more cash paid flights, then you can go ahead and earn more points and miles.

Some frequent flyer programs allow family pooling of miles. So if your kids have frequent flyer accounts and they're earning points and miles, you can actually combine theirs with yours. But I think anytime you're going to pay for a cash paid flight, it really makes sense for every single person on your itinerary to have their own frequent flyer account so they can earn points or miles for those flights.

Now, this is a different scenario when you are booking points, excuse me, when you're booking award flights. So you are booking a flight using your points. Many frequent flyer programs allow you as a primary account holder to use your points and miles to book award flights for yourself and also for other people. Some of them don't even require that you actually be traveling on the itinerary. You can just outright book an award flight using your points and miles for someone else. So for your partner or for one of your children.

So when you are talking specifically about booking award flights with your points and miles, no, other people on your reservation itinerary, they do not necessarily need to have frequent flyer accounts in their names.

So what this looks like is, I tend to do most of the travel planning for my family of four. If I know I'm going to book an award flight for myself and my family, and give you an example on Air France Flying Blue, my children do not have Air France Flying Blue frequent flyer accounts because we have never booked cash paid flights through Air France. I've only ever booked award flights through Air France using points.

So in that scenario, I have an Air France Flying Blue frequent flyer account. I don't even think my husband has an Air France Flying Blue account because even if he were to travel solo, I tend to do the points bookings anyway. So I would use the points in my account to make his booking.

But for an award booking, you want the primary person who has the points and who's going to do the travel booking. You want that person to have a frequent flyer account in whatever airline you intend to book your award flight through, but you don't have to separately create frequent flyer accounts for everyone in your party. You as the primary person, you can book for your entire family or for your entire party from your own frequent flyer account.

All right, let's talk about some travel planning and things that come up. This is a question about positioning. So let me first define what that is in case you haven't heard that term before. Positioning is a term that we talk about in the award travel hobby, which means that sometimes in order to find the best deals on points flights, you may not be able to leave from your home or your local airport, or you may not be able to return directly to your home or local airport.

This is more usually true for folks whose local airport is maybe a smaller or more regional airport. This less likely comes up for folks whose local airport is a big international airport, but it still can.

So what this looks like is let's say that you are based in Portland, Oregon. Okay. So your local airport has some international flights, but it likely doesn't have as many international flights as maybe Seattle or San Francisco does. And so in your travel planning, you may find that there's a great award flight option. Let's say you're trying to get from Portland to Singapore.

So you probably don't have a direct flight option that goes from Portland to Singapore, or maybe you don't have as many options as if you search for an award flight from San Francisco to Singapore. So let's say you find a great deal using points to fly San Francisco to Singapore. Well, you still need to get yourself from your home airport, maybe to that international airport. And that's called a positioning flight. You position yourself from where you are to the hub airport that you actually need to be or booked your flight out of.

So this question is about positioning and this person says, when people position to an airport by flying to that airport, I'm assuming that flight is purchased separately from the long haul or desired flight. So the two tickets are not connected, correct? So let's take this part of the question first, and then I'll tell you the rest of the question. So yes, that can be true. Now, if you are flying an itinerary where there is an option to book your entire itinerary that includes that first kind of connecting flight, again, let's pretend Portland to San Francisco, and then San Francisco to Singapore, that is clearly preferable, right? Anytime we can book an entire inclusive itinerary I think that's preferable but let's pretend that the only way that you could book that itinerary is to book your San Francisco to Singapore leg and then entirely separately, you have to get yourself from Portland to San Francisco.

In that case, yes, you need to purchase that positioning flight, the Portland to San Francisco leg, totally separately. So you can do this in cash or you can do this in points. If you can find a separate award flight that gets you from Portland to San Francisco that works for you, you can still use points to purchase that flight. But the key thing to understand here is that if you book your positioning flight and then kind of your main award flight separately, those two itineraries are not connected.

Okay, so this person then says, if checking bags, that would mean going back out through security, picking up the bags, and checking back in at the ticket counter. Am I thinking about this right? It makes me worried about flight delays and missing the big flight and having no protection from the airline since the tickets aren't connected. Do people just hope for the best, fly in a day early?

So yes, I think this is such an important thing to consider when you are travel planning. So if you are in a position where for whatever reason you have an itinerary that has completely disconnected flight reservations, either you couldn't book it all, you know, start to finish through one award program, that's usually why this happens. But if you have two flights on itinerary that are not connected, there are a couple of logistical things you need to keep in mind.

One of them is the checking bags thing. If these airlines are not partners, then chances are you are not going to be able to check your bag all the way from your starting point A to your destination point B. And so you will be required when you are kind of laying over in between those two flights to go get your checked bags from baggage claim, recheck them in for what is usually then a long haul flight or the second portion of your flight. And what this means is that you want to be really, really careful with your timing.

It obviously takes time, you know, to go out of security, wait for bags, especially if you're in O'Hare, that could take forever, and then go back in, you know, recheck in, re-go through security. So you do want to take that into consideration. The other thing that you want to take into consideration is the fact that in case your first flight is delayed and you miss your second flight, chances are that airlines aren't going to do anything to help you because these are not a connected itinerary. That second airline has no obligation, no responsibility to make sure that you get where you're going if you had a totally different itinerary coming into your connection city.

So here's a couple of things to think about. If you are someone who needs to position in order to get the flight deals that you're looking for, number one, always err on the side of caution in terms of that connection time. I know that there are some people have a minimum amount of time that they want to build in if they are booking two separate itineraries in order to take, you know, like one way flight somewhere. So some people don't want to have a layover of any less than maybe six hours or eight hours because that will then help compensate either for a delayed flight or again, help compensate for the time that may be required to go out to baggage claim, get your bags, recheck them in and you don't want to be doing this in a really hurried way.

I know there are other folks who when they have to position their preference is to actually get to the positioning airport the night before. So again, let's say you fly from Portland to SFO on a Thursday night for an international flight that leaves SFO on Friday. This is something that my family has done when we've gone places where one, it actually is more beneficial to my family and my kids to have a night to rest or sleep in an actual hotel rather than have a really, really extended kind of travel journey. But I think this works really well for positioning as well. Now, you have to take into account, you know, what does your travel schedule look like. I know some of you folks are on really, really constrained vacation days where you may only have six or seven days total and so building and positioning on the front end and the back end might then be so onerous that you end up losing too much of your vacation time. But I do think that it can be really, really prudent to make sure that you're building in enough time if you do have to position so that you're in a good position to not miss flights.

And this is also a scenario where if it is at all possible for you to travel carry on only, it eliminates that entire issue of needing to go out, find checked bags, and then go back through security again. I know that's not always possible for folks, but it does make your travel so much easier and it does open up then the potential that you can kind of mix and match different award flights and you can construct kind of this jigsaw puzzle of an itinerary where you don't need to be on one inclusive itinerary from point A to point B. So I hope that some of those ideas will help you all when you're thinking about positioning.

All right, this next question is also about travel planning and this person says, I know you suggest checking one-way flights for award tickets, but if we are going to and from the same airports, could we do a round trip search or would that limit my options?

Okay, so this is specific to when you are actually running a search looking for award flights. So let's say like this person is saying, you essentially want to book a round trip itinerary. Let's say that you are flying from Miami to Santiago, Chile, and you're going to visit Santiago and come back to Miami. So this person is saying, when I know that I'm just going from point A to point B and back to point A, when I'm running my initial award search, is there any reason to run that award search just looking for two one-way flights versus running the award search for a round-trip flight?

Now in general, it is my recommendation when you run award searches to always run them initially as one-way searches, meaning I will not search for a round-trip award ticket from Miami to Santiago back to Miami. I would run one search looking for an award flight from Miami to Santiago and then I would run a totally separate search looking for award flights from Santiago to Miami. There's a couple of reasons why I suggest doing this.

Number 1, chances are you are going to expand the potential award options available to you when you run one-way award searches versus round-trip award searches. When you run a round-trip award search, both legs of that itinerary have to have availability in order for you to get a search result.

So let's say there's tons of award availability from Miami to Santiago, but there's nothing from Santiago back to Miami. If you run that as a round trip search, you're just gonna come up completely empty handed.

Now, when you run a one-way search, I think it is preferential because what that would show you is, let's say you have 20 options of award flights from Miami to Santiago. Then you are not limited to looking for return options on that one specific airline program only. And again, this comes back to that benefit, especially having flexible or transferable points currencies.

Let's say that you've got tons of options to book Miami to Santiago using your Chase Points through a transfer partner like Air Canada Aeroplan. Okay, I'm just making this up. So please don't write that down as an official tip. I'm just making up some scenarios so you can understand the point of what I'm talking about.

So let's say that you use your Chase Points through Air Canada Aeroplan, you're able to book a great award flight from Miami to Santiago. Now if you only, again, were searching Aeroplan, maybe there's no return options from Santiago back to Miami when you run this as a round trip search. So you think, oh, I don't have anything available to me.

But if you break up that round trip award search into two one ways, maybe what you'll find is that there are no award flights to return Santiago to Miami specifically through Air Canada Aeroplan, but an entirely different frequent flyer award program may have options that appeal to you. And as long as you have a points currency that transfers to that second different frequent flyer program, then you can go ahead and you can book that.

So I think doing one-way searches opens up a lot more possibilities for you, especially if you are someone who has access to multiple different airline miles or transferable points currencies. You don't wanna limit yourself in terms of the potential options you're going to be able to find only by searching doing round trip searches. Now I think a follow up question to this that wasn't actually asked but I think is very reasonable to wonder about is, okay, let's say I actually do my one-way searches. I know I just want to travel round trip and let's say that I actually did find award flight options all through the same frequent flyer program.

So let's just take this same example. Let's say you run an award search from Miami to Santiago. One way you find award options through Air Canada Aeroplan. Say you do the return trip home award search from Santiago to Miami, and you also find award options through Air Canada Aeroplan.

The question usually becomes, okay then, is there any benefit in terms of booking? Should I book a round trip award ticket when I can through one frequent flyer program, or is there any reason to still book these flights as separate one ways?

For the most part, I think it's better to book award tickets as one ways, even if it is entirely otherwise going to be a round trip trip in the way that you fly it. And here are reasons why.

The vast majority of airlines are not going to charge you extra in terms of your points to book two one-way flights versus a round trip flight. There are some exceptions to this. Emirates is a notable exception. Sometimes American Airlines is an exception, but the vast majority of airlines are going to charge you just half the points price of a round trip ticket for a one-way ticket. So from a pricing perspective, most of the time there isn't a huge benefit to booking a round trip award flight.

But beyond that, I think that it is more convenient to book one-way flights for your award flights, even on a round trip itinerary, because of the flexibility that it confers. What I mean by that is, if your travel plans wiggle a little and change a little, if you have a round trip itinerary and you need to change one of those flights, most airlines are not going to give you the option to just alter one of those legs. They're going to say you have to cancel the entire reservation and start from scratch.

That can be really, really challenging, especially if you're someone who has booked your itinerary far in advance and then you need to change that itinerary in relatively little time prior to your travel. There may not be any good options anymore for round trip tickets.

So I like to book even my round trip itineraries as one way award tickets because then if I do need to consider changing one of those legs, one of those one ways, the other one is totally safe. You don't have to entirely cancel your full itinerary. You can first look for a different award options for that one specific leg of your journey. And then if you find it, you can cancel one reservation instead of two. And so I personally have found that to be much, much, much more beneficial.

All right, I'm going to answer one last very specific question before wrapping up today's listener Q&A episode. And this person asked, do you have any tips for what to do with Visa gift cards that have a small balance left over? Now, I'm going to kind of explain the context of this question in case it's not something that you've encountered before, and then I'm going to give you my two very specific tips about what to do in this scenario.

So many, many people like to buy Visa gift cards or MasterCard gift cards, but this one is specifically asking about Visa gift cards with a Chase Ink Business cash credit card. The reason for this is because the Chase Ink Business cash card earns five times points at office supply stores. And many, many times throughout the year, office supply stores like Staples or OfficeMax, Office Depot will run promotions where you can essentially purchase $200 Visa gift cards without having to pay the activation fee. So it ends up being cost neutral. You end up spending $1,000, you get $1,000 worth of Visa gift cards, you earn 5 times points for that purchase with your chasing business cash card, and then you can go and use those Visa gift cards to make purchases that otherwise would not earn you five times points with any of your current rewards cards.

Okay, so people use these Visa gift cards for all sorts of things. I know people love to use these to pay for like braces at the orthodontics or any sort of medical or healthcare type of service. People like to use these again, for basically any kind of non-category spend that otherwise they're not gonna be able to earn five times chase points with.

But this is the conundrum that so many people are left with is that these $200 increment Visa gift cards, most of the time you are not making $200 purchases with them, right? Maybe you're making a bunch of smaller purchases with them, or you make one large purchase for $198, right? And you've got $2 left on this thing. And especially for folks who tend to acquire a lot of Visa gift cards, you could be in the scenario where you have 10 or 20 or 30 or more Visa gift cards that all have these random little increments of a balance left on them, right? Anywhere between like 17 cents, $4, $9, right? These increments that otherwise would be challenging for you to go out and make a purchase with.

So what do you do so that you don't lose the value that is left on those Visa gift cards? I have two suggestions for you. Number one of them is that you likely have an Amazon account online. You can load the balance of your Visa gift cards onto your Amazon account. It used to be that you could do this for any balance, including 7 cents or $1.29. Now I think you need to have at least a $5 balance on your Visa gift card. But if you have a handful of Visa gift cards that have $5 or higher balance on them, you can take that Visa gift card and you can load the balance of it directly onto your Amazon account online.

So what this means is that you can go ahead, again, let's say across 17 Visa gift cards, you have an overall balance of $198. Great, you can add each one of those Visa gift cards to your Amazon account. Now you've got $198 just sitting in your Amazon account than you can use to draw down for your future Amazon purchases. So that is one approach that you can do.

Now, if you happen to have Visa gift cards that have smaller than $5 balances on them, or if you just want a different way to utilize your Visa gift cards with just leftover baby balances, here's what I like to do. So if you're a Costco shopper, you're probably familiar with the fact that if you shop in-store at Costco, Costco accepts Visa, but they're not going to accept Amex cards, right?

And they're also not going to accept MasterCards, at least in-store for in-store purchases. And so if you want to be able to again kind of boost your Costco shopping balance that you have available to you, one of the things that you can do that is so convenient is collect up all of your Visa gift cards, make sure that you check the exact balances on them. It's very easy to do this online. And I usually just take a Sharpie and I will write out the exact balance on the front of each of my Visa gift cards.

Now, once that balance of all of those little leftover balances gets to be, I don't know, at least $50, but I've waited an entire year before until that balance across all of these Visa gift cards is a couple hundred dollars. You can go inside of your Costco store, bring all your little Visa gift cards with you, make sure again that you've written on every single one of them the exact balance you have on it, and add it all up together so that you know exactly what the balance of all of those Visa gift cards are.

You can go to the checkout register at Costco. Tell them that you want to purchase a Costco shop card. A Costco shop card is essentially a gift card to Costco. You can load it with funds and then you can use that Costco shop card to make in-store purchases at Costco. But my favorite thing is you can also use the Costco shop card at the Costco gas station to fill up your car with gas.

Okay, So you take all of your little Visa gift cards, you walk up to the register, you say, I want to buy a Costco shop card and you have to tell them the exact balance you want on that card. So that's why you need to have added this up beforehand. And then they will say, okay, and you pull out all your Visa gift cards and you swipe them one by one by one through the register.

This sounds like it should be aggravating and tedious. It's actually not because you don't have to enter in a pin code. All you have to do is swipe the Visa gift card and the register will automatically take the balance from that Visa gift card and then put it against the total value of the shop card that you wanted to buy.

So you can just swipe through one by one by one all of your Visa gift cards, all of those balances get added up, you walk out of Costco with your Costco shop card. I have done this before with literally, I mean not a few, let's say at least 30 Visa gift cards. It took all of two minutes. Then you have a Costco shop card. You can use it to shop inside at Costco or again to fill up with gas at Costco. And so I think this is such a great way so that you utilize every single cent that's on those Visa gift cards that you bought, and it consolidates all of these together.

I don't like carrying around a bunch of Visa gift cards with tiny balances in my wallet, but I do love carrying around a Costco shop card that has one big combined balance on it. So I hope that gives you some ideas for those of you who have been sitting looking at a stack of Visa gift cards with baby balances and wondering what you're supposed to do with them.

All right, everybody, that is it for today. I have loved diving into your questions and helping you navigate the world of credit card rewards. These Q&A episodes always remind me what I love so much about helping people transform their everyday spending into incredible travel experiences. But I also know that many of you probably have specific situations that you would love to get an expert take on.

Maybe you're wondering which card is perfect for your business, how to maximize your upcoming home renovation purchases, or the best strategy for you to book your dream trip, whether that includes getting a hotel or an airline specific credit card or what points currency is going to be the most valuable for you. Whatever and wherever that looks like because award travel is personal and this is exactly why I created Points Made Easy, my comprehensive online course that is launching again for new members soon.

And here's one thing that I want you to know about. It's one of the aspects of the Points Made Easy course that I love offering to course members. So all course members have access to an exclusive Ask Me Anything Q&A section where you can submit your specific questions anytime and get personalized answers directly from me. There's no more wondering if you're making the right choice or leaving points on the table, no more wandering around the internet looking for answers that may or may not actually apply to your specific situation, and no more guessing. You'll have a points expert in your corner ready to help you make the most of every dollar you spend and every point you redeem. So if you've enjoyed today's Q&A and you would love to have this kind of personal guidance available to you whenever you need it, I'd love to have you join me in the points made easy course.

The course is gonna be opening up soon for new students, but you can go ahead and get on the wait list now. Just head on over to https://pointmetofirstclass.com/pointsmadeeasy to secure your spot on the wait list.

Wait list members are gonna be the first to know when the course launches and opens for enrollment. And they also get exclusive access to some incredible bonuses that I can't wait to share with you.

So until next time, keep turning those expenses into experiences and I will see you next week. Again, back here at Point Me To First Class. 

Thank you for joining me for this week's episode of Point Me to First Class. If you want more tips on turning your expenses into travel, visit pointmetofirstclass.com to learn more. See you next week.