Article: How I Redeemed Points for $36,000 of Travel Last Year

[kangarooflyer88]

Very interesting article, and might I suggest a great main topic to have in a future AFF on the Air podcast sharing your experiences booking these classic awards as well as maybe speaking to members who have redeemed their points for outsized value be it on Qantas or other airlines.

-RooFlyer88

 

[oz_boater]

I've written over 3,000 articles on AFF, and many of those do indeed explain how to make this work. That just wasn't the purpose of this particular article.

If you've subscribed to the Gazette or have a look at our home page, you'll hopefully find lots of tricks and ideas. These articles might be a good place to start:

…


We are also working on adding more ways to teach members how to take advantage of the various tricks, so keep an eye out

Thanks
Looks like I have plenty of reading to do

 

[azza007]

Just had a quick look at some of the travel I undertook for the period 1 July 22 - 30 June 23.
A few Syd-Bne/Mel in economy/business with Velocity points for Mum
Some Syd-Bne/Mel in economy using Qantas points for myself
Syd-Per return in Business on Qantas using 60K Finnair points - equivalent airfare $5K (when not on sale)
My main trip over this period was Paris in November 2022 for my 40th.

My points use for that trip:

Flights
Syd-Lhr-Cdg Qf/AF Business 164,600 Qantas points taxes-$545 Equivalent Airfare - $5K
Cdg-Hnd-Syd JAL First/Business 115,000 Asiamiles taxes-$500 Equivalent Airfare - $13K

Hotels
Paris Marriott Champs Elysees 5nights 240,000 Marriott points with the Equivalent room price $4,200
Park Hyatt Paris-Vendome 2nights 55,000 Hyatt points with the Equivalent room price $4,500

Qantas points - various including credit card signups, health insurance, optus, qantas wine, shopping
Asiamiles - credit card signups
Marriott Points – Amex transfer bonus as well as some purchased
Hyatt – all purchased for roughly $1,350

I have booked flights to Europe & back for April 2024

Syd-Sin-Lhr SQ First 183,500 KF miles taxes-$100 Equivalent Airfare - $9K
Cph-Doh-Adl QR Business 139,000 Velocity points taxes-$750 Equivalent Airfare - $5.5K
KF & velocity – credit card signups

In late December I'm using my Ambassador weekend Certificate at the IC Melbourne.
Getting a really good deal for this booking

 

[woomp001]

I have well over 20,000,000 points across all manner of airlines/credit card programs.
Sometimes I feel like I might as well have none.
Redeeming them is difficult.

Further more: the redemption's available are more often than not the coughpy alternatives... long layovers, horrible departure times, and older aircraft.

For example: yes, you can find first class redemption's on SQ from SYD to LHR, but only ever on their 777's and NEVER on the prime 380 suite...

Secondly, finding a single seat is usual okayish: bad luck however if you are married or have a family!!

I think point promoters often over cook one side of the equation.

Here's the other side...

Flight taxes
Costs involved in points acquisition (including making poor purchasing decisions, like overpriced qantas wine for example...) like credit card surcharges (AMEX in particular) and annual fees
Possible tax benefits
Status credits usually not earned
Points not earned
Often accepting sub prime flight times and aircraft
Accepting dates that are sub prime (good luck using points in school holidays.. Oh wait, that's the ONLY time we can actually go anywhere as a family..) I do wonder if any points promoters have families? lol


More and more I am forming the view that we have been sold a bit of a pup.. lottery mentality and clever marketing amongst other things..

In Matt's above example, its not difficult to see it almost as a break even scenario, if you said it cost 1c to acquire each point, and assumed that you could have probably bought these flights/hotels for 20% less than cited above (AMEX back end 10% off straight off the bat for example) and then earned SC and points on those purchased flights, and created a tax benefit possibly also (another 25-40% effectively off the real cost...)

Last thought... Its probably cost me $200,000 over the last 10 years in surcharges to acquire my points stash. (I told myself paying a 1% AMEX fee was rational, because I could redeem at more than 1c per point).

Would I have been better of investing that 20K per year into an index fund?

Today I would have well over 300k.

And then could use that 300k to fund travel into perpetuity..

Buying good flights when I actually want to go somewhere.

Vs 20,000,000 points that get devalued every year.

I think I have done it all wrong!!!


Ok, so I have covered a lot of ground.

Of course points can sometimes be useful.

I just think that what we are presented with by all of these points promoters is one sided, and heavily biased to promoting their agenda....

 

[azza007]

For example: yes, you can find first class redemption's on SQ from SYD to LHR, but only ever on their 777's and NEVER on the prime 380 suite...

Secondly, finding a single seat is usual okayish: bad luck however if you are married or have a family!!

Definitely much easier if looking for a single seat.
I had a SQ Syd to Lhr redemption in Suites admittedly at the advantage rate of 282 KF miles.
2 days after booking there were saver redemptions available for the days before my suites booking.
While I would love to fly SQ Suites I am happy save the miles flying SQ 777 F for the first time.
The saved miles will likely go towards a long haul booking in J for mum who has always flown economy (apart from the odd J domestic booking lately) and will probably only have 1 more long haul overseas trip.

 

[ozflier]

Matt, Thank you for that .
Re your reference to United Mileage Plus , they are a pretty good program to access reward seats .
Certainly in Europe with plenty of airlines in the star alliance and certainly in Canada and the USA when compared with what you can get from Qantas.
To be fair , Air Canada is part of Star so plenty of available reward flights but the only intra Canada option via QFF is Westjet and I have yet to see premium award seats on offer from them.

 

[levelnine]

Last thought... Its probably cost me $200,000 over the last 10 years in surcharges to acquire my points stash. (I told myself paying a 1% AMEX fee was rational, because I could redeem at more than 1c per point).

This is an excellent and important point.

Too often, people forget that most points cost money to acquire in the form of credit card surcharges, credit card annual fees & cash equivalents (eg cashing out your WW points for cash back rather than QFF points).

I keep scrupulous records of how much my points cost to acquire to make sure I'm getting substantial value from them when redeeming. On the whole, I generally try to acquire points for no more than $0.003 per point and redeem for no less than $0.015 per point, given me a minimum of 5x return on spend. Anything less than that and I don't consider it worthwhile.

Also, it is very unwise to hold on to 20 mil points. The only way to win at this game is to earn and burn. If you're hoarding large number of points over multiple years, you're subjecting yourself to multiple rounds of points devaluations.

 

[oz_boater]

One thing to keep in mind is that selling points is income for QANTAS, while providing rewards are a cost.

Their accountants want to maximize their return, so they will try and provide only "sufficient" seats to keep people buying points.

This is why an 'any flight' reward is so expensive in points, and why international classic rewards are rare (esp premium seats) and made deliberately hard to find.

It is to maximize income / expense ratio.

and thus there becomes a need (market) for forums and articles such as this to help people find these artificially rare products.

 

[luxury-lizard]

All the above posts tell me is that the party's well and truly over - gone are the days of US Air and Life Miles (for those of us who buy points). (Does anyone but me, remember CP Air (a long gone Canadian airline) - wow were those the days !!!). As far as credit card points go - there was a time when AmEx (and other cc providers) did not surcharge - long gone. I'm running all my points down to zero - will purchase J fares moving forward - always looking for good deals.

 

[RooFlyer]

I keep scrupulous records of how much my points cost to acquire to make sure I'm getting substantial value from them when redeeming. On the whole, I generally try to acquire points for no more than $0.003 per point and redeem for no less than $0.015 per point, given me a minimum of 5x return on spend. Anything less than that and I don't consider it worthwhile.

Wow - I admire that discipline (and record keeping)! For many, many years (mostly company international J flying & lots of it) I simply regarded points as a bonus - never thought of chasing them. As I approached retirement, and since, I have been a bit more mercenary and CC-earn focussed, aided by AFF. I don't have an AMEX. # I also buy points both when they seem excellent value but also when I need to plug a points hole and then it may be decent, but not excellent value.

Sometimes I have bought points with a specific trip in mind, and in those cases it seems to be a 2.5x return, and I'm very happy! Never done the cost-as-you go calc, but given my aversion to costs "just to maximise earn", I think (hope) it would be OK.

Part of the mental equation when redeeming international flights that I try to avoid is the additional cost of hotels when there are overnight stays on poor connections (like $700 on my next trip - late arrival and morning departure, so airport hotels) and even the stress of worrying that a points flight might be cancelled, and the next flight not immediately apparent!

# Tragic timing miscalculation on churning - cancelled and couldn't get one back!

I'm running all my points down to zero - will purchase J fares moving forward - always looking for good deals.

Historically, I've comfortable with about 250K balance in QFF or Velocity; 150K in Avios or KrisFlyer, although like you, I have run them down a bit this year.

 

[kpc]

All the above posts tell me is that the party's well and truly over - gone are the days of US Air and Life Miles (for those of us who buy points). (Does anyone but me, remember CP Air (a long gone Canadian airline) - wow were those the days !!!). As far as credit card points go - there was a time when AmEx (and other cc providers) did not surcharge - long gone. I'm running all my points down to zero - will purchase J fares moving forward - always looking for good deals.

I started playing this FF game (I hate the word "hack") around 20+ years ago, initially to help get +1 to the pointy end after we did a RTW in Y!!!) as work paid for my J fares....the game has changed (for the worse) so much over that time....once upon a time there were NO surcharges, no credit card surcharges and buying US Airways and Avianca Life miles (i bought millions of the latter and the US$ was not as strong as it is now) were game changes at the time allowing one to fly F / J at the cost of Y....airline surcharges crept in, great routes became more expensive pts wise ( I remember flying with +1 Syd-Sin(overnight)- Hkg in Sq new F suites for 62.5 K pts + <$100 in surcharges each)...the demand for these award seats has increased exponentially and I think that the bloggers have contributed to this significantly as well by publisiing the tricks (sorry Matt). I predict the FF game will be very soon not very financially rewarding for many except for those with the experience and knowledge to tease out the few good awards still available. The recent devaluation of Amex and St George TFs to KrisFlyer pts also does not help. Unless you have large business expenses, points via credit card spend are only getting harder and more expensive with credit card surchages! That only leaves the black, secretive art of Manufactured Spending which is so secret that no one hardly ever posts about it on public fora.....my 2.5 cents as a long time FF gamer not hacker!!

 

[MEL_Traveller]

All the above posts tell me is that the party's well and truly over - gone are the days of US Air and Life Miles (for those of us who buy points). (Does anyone but me, remember CP Air (a long gone Canadian airline) - wow were those the days !!!). As far as credit card points go - there was a time when AmEx (and other cc providers) did not surcharge - long gone. I'm running all my points down to zero - will purchase J fares moving forward - always looking for good deals.

Well… Aeroplan is still there!

 

[levelnine]

Well… Aeroplan is still there!

Which is currently a complete dud. No Etihad, no Oman, no ANA (though it appears to have returned) ...

 

[Matt_01]

Bookings made over the past 18-20 months, some flights have been taken others are still to be flown over the next 10 months.
QFF points redeemed 1,4M - fees and taxes $4800
SQ points redeemed 634K - fees and taxes $740
Total value of travel if using cash - $100K+
I have not included hotel points as I just use them as they accumulate.

I have been playing the FF game for many years and still working on reducing my points balance.

 

[edwardf]

One thing that you are not going to read in any of these sort or articles, but I realised a while ago is that there is a great deal of luck in actually being able to get redemptions which are a) remotely close to anything you want and b) involve less than a million points.

Having spent an extraordinary amount of time and a significant amount of money on multiple frequent flyer programs over the last 15 years, I've managed to book a grand total of one overseas flight on points and get one international upgrade (to/from NZ). Yes, I have managed to get some domestic flights on points and I have used some points for hotels in the US pre-COVID, but I would seriously struggle to convince myself that the time and cost was worth it.

The last few times I looked into what redemptions were available, I gave up. Trying to find redemptions is an absolutely excruciating experience, it is something I would have wasted several weeks of my life on for zero result. What is incredibly obvious that Australia has just been at an huge disadvantage in terms of redemption flight availability for a long time, and it doesn't look like that is going to change any time soon, because there is a serious lack of competition.

No doubt the airlines and credit card companies will continue to come up with ingenious new schemes to devalue existing points and further frustrate attempts to redeem them.

 

[Rich]

Its probably cost me $200,000 over the last 10 years in surcharges to acquire my points stash. (I told myself paying a 1% AMEX fee was rational, because I could redeem at more than 1c per point).

Surely you haven't had to pay a surcharge on every transaction. Or have you paid a higher surcharge on some transactions?

 

[MEL_Traveller]

One thing that you are not going to read in any of these sort or articles, but I realised a while ago is that there is a great deal of luck in actually being able to get redemptions which are a) remotely close to anything you want and b) involve less than a million points.

Having spent an extraordinary amount of time and a significant amount of money on multiple frequent flyer programs over the last 15 years, I've managed to book a grand total of one overseas flight on points and get one international upgrade (to/from NZ). Yes, I have managed to get some domestic flights on points and I have used some points for hotels in the US pre-COVID, but I would seriously struggle to convince myself that the time and cost was worth it.

The last few times I looked into what redemptions were available, I gave up. Trying to find redemptions is an absolutely excruciating experience, it is something I would have wasted several weeks of my life on for zero result. What is incredibly obvious that Australia has just been at an huge disadvantage in terms of redemption flight availability for a long time, and it doesn't look like that is going to change any time soon, because there is a serious lack of competition.

No doubt the airlines and credit card companies will continue to come up with ingenious new schemes to devalue existing points and further frustrate attempts to redeem them.

But there are tricks of the trade, like using month-long calendar views to find the needle in the haystack. You could search a year of availability to multiple European destinations in less than half an hour.

 

[blackcat20]

We've made a couple of high value redemptions over the last two years.
Last year, 3 seats in QF F MEL-SYD-LAX which is approx. $37,000
This year we've used VA points to book MEL-SIN-HKT in J, 4 seats. Value approx $19,000
We've also been using QF points to fly Y MEL-CHC because fares remain unreasonably high on that route.

 

[freqflyer77]

The demand for these award seats has increased exponentially and I think that the bloggers have contributed to this significantly as well by publisiing the tricks (sorry Matt). I predict the FF game will be very soon not very financially rewarding for many except for those with the experience and knowledge to tease out the few good awards still available

I totally agree with this. Whilst Points and the odd good redemption will still exist (theres too much money for the airlines/banks in points!) - they have also now become too main-stream.

The rise of social media and everyone sharing the 'info/secrets' has meant that the competition for these limited seats has only increased. You now have teens and those in there early 20s 'point-hacking' and sharing about it on TikTok and YouTube etc for their own bragging rights & benefits.
I never flew First Class on Points at 20!

The new and ever improving tools for finding reward seats are only making things worse - not better. Once a Google Flights/Skyscanner quality search engine for reward seats comes along it will probably spell the true end of the party as airlines will need to release more reward seats to keep people happy since the mainstream populations and Mum/Dad points collectors will be able to search/book with ease. These 'extra seats' will cost more points & fees of course...

 

[SAB]

For me, the best value is to redeem for F seats on SQ or EK. Don't know what the service is like in F on QF these days. I haven't flown the latter for some years.