How to Redeem Amex Points for MAXIMUM Value

hey credit warriors welcome to the show and this is going to be the first in a series of videos on how to redeem different credit card points currencies for maximum value did you like that little effect if so click the like button for the youtube algorithm go on i'm waiting ah thanks so much all right now we can continue now in this video we're going to be talking about redeeming amex points for their maximum value and if you're watching this you probably have some amex points already so i probably don't need to tell you which cards to get to earn them but just for those of you who may be new will quickly recap a few cards you can get that you can earn really good rates uh on amex point so the amex gold earns you four points per dollar at restaurants worldwide and us supermarkets the amex platinum earns you five points per dollar on flights booked directly with airlines and then you've got the blue business plus which is a great non-category card it earns two points per dollar on up to 50 000 worth of spending in any category okay any type of spending so those are a few ideas for you and there are some other good ones as well so now you've got a big stash of points how do you get maximum value out of spending them i'm sure you can't wait to hop on a business class flight stay in a five-star hotel or just spend through a big stash of cash well not so fast because not all redemption options are equal as you are about to find out and we're going to kind of go through the list from the worst to the best and we're going to go through some really specific travel options for huge value later on in the video so do stick around for that now by far the worst way to redeem amex points is to use them to pay off charges on your card so here i'm trying to use points to pay off this hardware store purchase for 24.85 and it's quoting me over 4 000 points which means it's valuing these points at just 0.6 cents each for this method of redemption so don't do it this rule also goes for using amex points to pay for things at amazon.com this amex card has 1 000 points available so that comes to just seven dollars which is zero point seven cents per point in value so also don't do it then we have gift cards now you can sometimes get ripped off with less than one cent per point in value like this apple gift card you can get kind of okay value with one cent per point with this adidas gift card or slightly more than one cent per point with this 1 800 flowers gift card but how often do people buy flowers anyway and how much money do you really spend on them okay do they even cost that much it's often the crappier retailers that give you better value to entice you to use them it's still not a great redemption but at least it's over one cent per point and if you can get over one cent per point in value for your amex points you're not a complete loser alright i wouldn't say i respect you but i'm at least not embarrassed to be breathing the same air as you let's now look at some hotel redemptions oh hotels through the amex travel portal now i made this mistake back when i was new to the points and miles game i paid 23 000 amex points for a courtyard by marriott that would cost around 170 for the night so that's less than one cent per point and if you browse hotels on amex travel they are more like 0.75 cents per point unless you have the amix platinum and you book through fine hotels and resorts collection like look at this search in new york city the number one result that comes up trump hotel it's 575 or 57 500 points that is one cent per point but obviously these are higher tier hotels and if you want to book something cheaper you won't get that value look at this 292 or 41 000 points that's way less than one cent per point then what about air travel through the portal well that works out at about 17.2 take a look at these flights new york to cancun it's lovely in cancun this time of year and it's about 300 or 30 000 points that is exactly one cent per point so you're getting what i would call the absolute minimum acceptable value okay one cent per point however there is an exception to this if you have the business platinum and you book with points through amex travel you actually get a 35 rebate on the points which gives you some extra value so this can be good however it's only if you're booking business or first class flights and there are limits on the airlines you can use it on and stuff like that but it can offer some good value if you can't find a ward availability through transferring to an airline okay transferring out to an airline does normally offer superior value next we have cashback through the charles schwab amex platinum now if you have this schwab co-branded version of the platinum card you can redeem points for 1.1 cents per point in cashback in your charles schwab brokerage account used to be 1.25 cents per point it went down to 1.1 cents per point it's a shame but anyway you can then use that cash back to pay off charges on your card so like literally you could just book any of those hotels or flights that we just talked about with money and then use that cashback to pay off the charges on your card and you'd be getting 1.1 cents in value instead of one cent or 0.75 cents all right now let's look at transfer partners which is where the real value is so amex has 17 transfer partners which is a lot it's more than chase for example which only has 14. now first of all there are two things which you should know about these transfer partners number one is that if you are transferring to a us-based airline there will be a tax added now american express is the only company that adds in this tax all others just sort of they charge it in the back end you don't really see it okay they get rid of it somehow now this tax did go away in 2020 due to the pandemic but that was only until december 31 2020 so it now is back so you can see here on this delta transfer of 20 000 points it's asking you to pay either 2 400 points or 12 excise tax and you can see if i pay with points i'm getting terrible value as well just half a cent per point so i'd pay with money if you have to do this and if you're transferring all your points over obviously you can't pay with points anyway because there'll be no points left so you just have to pay with money but a better strategy would be to transfer your points to non-us airlines where they don't charge this transfer tax and don't worry you can still book u.s flights domestic u.s flights even flights on u.s airlines because all these airlines are in alliances and amex has all the three major airline alliances covered we're going to get into that in just a moment but first the second thing that you need to consider when transferring is transfer bonuses now amex often gives transfer bonuses when transferring over to partners and we have seen up to 40 bonuses for example you transfer 1 000 points you get 1 400 points in your airline account in 4 last year there were actually bonuses on 12 of the partners averaging around 30 and this is another step towards redeeming your amex points for maximum value only transfer when there's a bonus available now with some partners like hilton it really only makes sense to transfer with a bonus and even then it's borderline so hilton it's normally 1 000 amex points to 2000 hilton points but we've seen bonuses sometimes it's one thousand two thousand six hundred or i've even seen one thousand to three thousand hilton points are only worth zero point five cents per point so if it's one thousand to three thousand you'll be getting 1.5 cents per point in value out of your american express points so it's still not great but if you have to do it wait for the bonus and a lot of these bonuses will often come towards the end of the year perhaps amex wants to pay out a load of points and get the tax deduction for them i don't know but anyway look out for them around fall and winter time all right now let's look at some of the best airline partners to get maximum value out of our points so we won't be looking at any u.s airlines because of the transfer tax and the odd us airline for example jetblue doesn't even transfer at one to one it's one to 0.8 so the first option is to transfer our amex points to virgin atlantic flying club now this is a non-us airline it's based in the uk so we don't have that excise tax however flying to the uk you do get hit with big taxes and fuel surcharges so we're not going to do that instead we are going to focus on using virgin atlantic miles to fly to europe to any other country in europe on delta airlines in delta one business class that's a very popular business class suite on delta with a little door that closes now a one-way flight would be 50 000 points plus a very nominal 5.60 in taxes and fees so for example if we were gonna book this itinerary jfk to amsterdam which would normally cost seven thousand two hundred and ten dollars return so that would be a hundred thousand points for a return ticket we would be getting about seven cents per point in value now obviously prices vary throughout the year but those are the prices i'm seeing now then you could also transfer to british airways and with british airways you could book va club suites to the uk okay that's the new very popular business class also with a little door that closes now flying to the uk on british airways you do get hit with massive uh taxes and fuel surcharges uh it could be up to around a thousand dollars per business class ticket however that business class ticket normally costs around four thousand dollars anyway to go across the atlantic so you minus the 1000 year left with 3 000 it's about 100 000 points return so you do end up with 3 cents per point in value which is still a considerably better rate than any of the earlier options we talked about in this video and that is the value we got for getting my mom a business class ticket to come over here for christmas okay on ba club suites three cents per point in value then british airways is also great for booking short haul flights on american airlines here in the us domestically or down to the caribbean routes in economy under 600 miles in length start at just 7 500 british airways miles for a one-way ticket and i've also found amazing award availability on flights down to cancun for example i was able to get four seats for a ward seat in first class from new york to cancun on american airlines using british airways avios then you can also use british airways miles for booking japan airlines flights to japan i did this with a 40 transfer bonus and then i went and booked a flight in business class from taiwan to japan and i got exactly two cents in value after factoring in the transfer bonus okay wouldn't say it's great value uh but that was probably because it was a short whole business class flight if you went from the u.s to japan you're probably getting over three cents in value but it was a great business class product a fully flat bed with your own sweet amazing food and i was able to get three award seats in business class which is actually pretty rare to be able to find that many seats together all right now let's move on to some other airlines now singapore airlines is famous for its first-class suites and if you transfer amex points over to singapore airlines chris flyer program you can book them it's 132 000 miles one way so that's going to be 264 000 miles return and i just did a little search on the singapore airlines website and i found the price from new york to singapore in february is over fourteen thousand dollars so that gives us five cents per point in value on that return booking now obviously there would be some taxes and fees incorporated in that but it's somewhere around five cents in value now i actually did fly on this product on an older singapore airlines a380 it was the old version of the suites but it was still the most comfortable bed i've ever had on an airplane and i'd really like to try it the newer version all right now we'll hit you with a few quick fire ones a few more good uses for singapore airlines chris flyer miles you can book le fans of first class to germany or virgin atlantic upper class to the uk these ones do have fuel surcharges but normally still offer good value or you could book united business class from the us to hawaii and singapore actually charges you less miles than united would for the same ticket then let's look at one more airline for transferring to if you transfer from american express to the japanese airline a a you can book business class to japan for just 75 000 miles return and you can also get some really good bookings on star alliance partners as well because a a is part of style alliance so if you wanted to go from the us to europe for example you can normally get business class tickets for 88 000 miles return that really is maximum value guys i could go on and give you more examples and make this video like 20 minutes long but i think i've kind of given you the gist of it and i'll put some articles and resources in the comments below there's one particular article that's really good it's 59 ways to redeem american express points for maximum value and they're all airlines okay they didn't give you any of the lower level stuff it's all different airline itineraries so i'll put that below in a pin comments really useful so my conclusion guys is that the absolute minimum value you should be getting for amex points is one cent per point in value 1.1 cent per point if you have the charles schwab amex platinum if you transfer to a partner especially an airline partner the absolute minimum should be two cents per point in value but ideally higher than that generally don't transfer to hotels they don't offer very good value also u.s airlines don't offer good value either so focus on foreign airlines but like we've shown you you can still book a lot of us flights because american express does have the three major airline alliances covered lastly guys if you want the amex gold or the amex platinum these are the two cards i talked about where you can earn masses of amex points i will put links to both of them below they both come with really good sign up bonuses so click below to learn more about them and if you want to get into this whole credit card and personal finance thing why not check me out on patreon okay join the inner circle our basic membership tier is five dollars per month and basically what you get for that is a free credit building course to build your credit score up to the level where you can apply for these amazing credit cards that earn you loads of points you'll also get a lot of tips and tricks in your email inbox every couple of days and don't worry if you cancel after a month i don't really care some people might just want to get that credit building course then we have our second tier 15 a month which you get to join a zoom hangout with me every week and then we have a even higher tier than that which is limited to 10 people you get to join a very small scale zoom hangout where you can ask questions and stuff like that so i'll put the link to patreon down below if you are interested as always subscribe to the channel if you're new and we'll see you next time

Channel: Ben Hedges

Views: 119,997

Keywords: the credit shifu, credit card, credit score, ben hedges, amex, american express, amex points, how to use amex points, amex points value, travel hacking, amex platinum, amex gold, best credit cards, best credit cards for free flights, how to get free flights

Id: bsBEQdfZhZs

Length: 14min 0sec (840 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 19 2022