May Velocity Points bonus incoming....

[Harthagan]

You can't just apply for infinite cards because of a lack of banks in Aus and it will also hurt your credit rating for every application. The simple answer to your question is - why not do both?

Yup that's exactly what I was thinking. I already get the most I can out of credit card sign up bonuses

 

[lovetravellingoz]

Through pretty much any credit card sign up offer. For example, the Virgin Money Velocity Card is currently offering 100,000VFF for $65 annual fee in the first year: 65c per 1,000VFF.

So unless one has unlimited CC sign up offers that one would also be accepted for it is not really an either or choice.
You can do both. Or at least those of us that who like to often redeem J/F flights would.


And many of us would not stop at both methods, as we would also garner additional points in many other varied ways.

 

[Harthagan]

Through pretty much any credit card sign up offer. For example, the Virgin Money Velocity Card is currently offering 100,000VFF for $65 annual fee in the first year: 65c per 1,000VFF.

And there's no minimum spend to qualify for the points? Even so there's a limit to how many cards they will let one person have at once!

 

[glasszon]

Is there a way to check whether I have used auto transfer function previously for Flybuys to Velocity? I want to take advantage of the 10% bonus, but I can't remember whether I used the auto-transfer function before as the account was linked in 2016.....

 

[levelnine]

You can't just apply for infinite cards because of a lack of banks in Aus and it will also hurt your credit rating for every application. The simple answer to your question is - why not do both?

You can do both.

I've already answered that upthread. Feel free to have a look if you're interested in my answer to the question 'why not both?'.

I'm sorry to hear you are unable to churn credit cards at a sufficient pace to meet your redemption needs. Fortunately not everyone is in that situation.

 

[SCM]

I've already answered that upthread. Feel free to have a look if you're interested in my answer to the question 'why not both?'.

I'm sorry to hear you are unable to churn credit cards at a sufficient pace to meet your redemption needs. Fortunately not everyone is in that situation.

I don't really agree with your answer, as to me the value of points is much higher than 1p = 1c, you can redeem at much better rates, and especially VFF to Europe is much better than QFF. It will depend on your personal requirements of where you wan to go, as to how valuable the points may be, given the partners of whatever program.

In any case, disregarding the above, you haven't addressed the fact that there is a finite number of banks, all of which have 12-24 month limits on how often you can churn points card.

To the question of why, my answer is why not - more points are always better, and the points are far more valuable than the dollars with flybuys.

 

[MooTime]

I've already answered that upthread. Feel free to have a look if you're interested in my answer to the question 'why not both?'.

I'm sorry to hear you are unable to churn credit cards at a sufficient pace to meet your redemption needs. Fortunately not everyone is in that situation.

You need to spend 3k or 4k to get that 100k points.

You've left that out of your .65c argument.

$10 off for 2000 points is a terrible use of points, soup tins!

 

[levelnine]

I don't really agree with your answer, as to me the value of points is much higher than 1p = 1c, you can redeem at much better rates, and especially VFF to Europe is much better than QFF.

Only if you would pay full fare for business class, which I never would for personal, non-tax-deductible travel.

In any case, disregarding the above, you haven't addressed the fact that there is a finite number of banks, all of which have 12-24 month limits on how often you can churn points card.

My partner and I can easily earn 1 million points per year churning, so I guess it depends on your personal situation.

You need to spend 3k or 4k to get that 100k points.

You've left that out of your .65c argument.

No I haven't. You spend that money anyway. There is no opportunity cost.

There is an opportunity cost for converting FB to VFF because you can redeem FB for cash as an alternative.

 

[kangarooflyer88]

Why do people transfer FB to VFF? 2,000FB = $10 real currency ($10 off shop) or 1,100VFF (with 10% bonus). This means you are essentially purchasing VFF at $0.009 per point.

You can generally purchase VFF at a much lower rate with credit card sign up offers. Eg Virgin Money's $65 for 100,000VFF comes out at ~$0.00065 per point.

That strikes me as a huge opportunity cost. You are foregoing real currency (which is way more preferable to loyalty program points) to purchase VFF at 14x the cost of credit card sign up offers.

Because the value of a Virgin Frequent Flyer point is approximately 2 cents per point. To give you a concrete example, right now you can buy a Choice fare for $99 one-way to a number of short haul destinations on the East Coast like Sydney to Gold Coast or Sydney to Brisbane. You can then use 10,000 points to upgrade into business class (fare would ordinarily sell for $300 one-way). $200/10,000 points = $0.02/point. And this isn't even going into short haul domestic destinations that are ordinarily expensive on Virign but cheap using points to say nothing of long haul business class fares with partners. Heck, I redeemed 42,000 Virgin points to buy three one-ways from Saint John to Toronto on Air Canada thereby saving me about $900 on fares.

To your second point, not everyone in Australia can get a credit card. This came as a shock to me as I was expecting no issues getting AmEx to open up an account for me over here as they did in the UK and elsewhere. Apparently you need to be a citizen or permanent resident (whatever that is). In which case our earning opportunities are limited to what we can get on our BankWest QF card, QFF offers, and of course Woolies and Coles everyday rewards. I would also point out that you'd have to be pretty crazy to use transferable points like AmEx to transfer to a program like Virgin. Don't get me wrong, there are sweet spots, but compared to other airlines AmEx has partnered with like Air Canada or British Airways, it would certainly be lower on my list.

-RooFlyer88

 

[Mr H]

My partner and I can easily earn 1 million points per year churning, so I guess it depends on your personal situation.

Each? And all in Velocity? I would be very interested to see the list of a year's worth of churned credit cards and their points haul to believe that.

 

[kangarooflyer88]

You need to spend 3k or 4k to get that 100k points.

You've left that out of your .65c argument.

$10 off for 2000 points is a terrible use of points, soup tins!

I would reserve judgement on that remark. After all, how many Virgin Frequent Flyers amongst us haven't redeemed points for a toaster before? Oh it's just me?! I'll see myself out!

-RooFlyer88

 

[SCM]

Only if you would pay full fare for business class, which I never would for personal, non-tax-deductible travel.

I am comparing to discount business which I paid for just recently.

My partner and I can easily earn 1 million points per year churning, so I guess it depends on your personal situation.

In other words, 500k per person per year, maybe one card per quarter. It's not bad, but it's only 2 J return trips to Europe. Can you not imagine people wanting to travel more than that?

And what is your credit score with Illion?

I could spend even 10 million points a year, there is simply no such thing as too many points - so why would I take lower yielding cash from flybuys rather than exchange for points? Doesn't really make any sense to me.

 

[lovetravellingoz]

I'm sorry to hear you are unable to churn credit cards at a sufficient pace to meet your redemption needs. Fortunately not everyone is in that situation.

Well fortunately as I have not relied just on CC churning I still have 4 million points in various programs to redeem and I have almost another million points worth of flights already redeemed to enjoy from June to November this year.

I have been collecting FF points for almost 4 decades now. The FF game keeps changing in both earning and redeeming. Opportunities come and go, and so what works for myself is to grab all the good opportunities that I can when they are current. Some are not worth my time, but many are.

Yes in some years I have earnt a million or more from churning credit cards to multiple airlines and bank points programs. But I have also in some years earnt more than 4 million, and often earnt over a million, from non-churning and non-business activities. So why would I have wanted to have limited myself to just churning?



If you are adequately served by just churning then that is all well and good for you.
However I still maintain that one can churn and gain points by other means as the sign on fees for credit cards are not that large that it would be an either/or situation to other opportunities. So for many of us the multi-pronged approach is what is best.

 

[Cryptarcadian]

Good discussion, I for one appreciate the different viewpoints! Made me think more about about both acquisition cost and redemption value for each point together

Seems to me like what's best for each person really has to depend on the crucial comparison of how fast you can earn vs. how fast you can redeem (+ how much you want to save up for later, if you expect your earn rate to change). There can't be a one-size-fits-all answer.

In my case, I currently have more VFF than I can reasonably redeem for my 2022 schedule, so I'm going to sit on my flybuys stash and neither spend as cash nor convert to VFF at 10% bonus — will decide in the future, since I don't think a devaluation at the flybuys end is likely.

 

[MooTime]

After weighing it up, I opted for 10% offer.
Says upto 48 hours, previously the manual transfer of FB to VFF was instant as I did it a few times during Millionaire promo recently.
(Within the FB's website it said my 343k points was worth ~$1700, can get hellova lot more value than that on VA & it's partners in J cabin that's for sure with 170k VA points.

Anyhow see how long it take & when the 10% drops. Will report back.

 

[Mr H]

After weighing it up, I opted for 10% offer.

Ah, you have almost the same FB balance as me. I have 341,000 but expecting another 20,000 at the weekend if I spend $180. I have almost decided to turn on auto-transfer but thought I would wait until the end of May in case bonus offers come through for a few thousand extra points. There's something psychological about being able to increase my Velocity balance by 200,000 points in one fell swoop.

 

[burmans]

Good discussion, I for one appreciate the different viewpoints! Made me think more about about both acquisition cost and redemption value for each point together

Seems to me like what's best for each person really has to depend on the crucial comparison of how fast you can earn vs. how fast you can redeem (+ how much you want to save up for later, if you expect your earn rate to change). There can't be a one-size-fits-all answer.

In my case, I currently have more VFF than I can reasonably redeem for my 2022 schedule, so I'm going to sit on my flybuys stash and neither spend as cash nor convert to VFF at 10% bonus — will decide in the future, since I don't think a devaluation at the flybuys end is likely.

Yeah it is a good discussion though it seems to be one we have had a large number of times and in this case probably went on for twice as long as it needed to.

Key lessons we all need to learn in this game:

1) We all have different ideas of how much a point is worth, the OP thinks they are worth less than 1c but plenty here would disagree. Ultimately you need to have your own view of value, you can't just take the view of someone else.

2) We all have different needs and hence how many points is enough is also different between individuals. For the OP he feels he can get enough points from CC signups, that's fine for him but largely irrelevant for many others who have differing needs, you all need to make your own decisions! For myself and many others this forum (and others similar) have increased our desire for frequent flying (it is the forum name after all) in J or F, to get that level of points you take points wherever you can as longs as cost of acquisition (point 1) is less than the value to yourself.

It's a simple theory but does require some thinking rather than just taking the opinion of others.

I'd also note that while I am generally somewhat in agreement with the earn and burn theory (due to potential value downgrades) I also think that good offers aren't always there and you just need to jump on them while you can. I once got 2M points from CC referrals and at the time I thought I'd have trouble redeeming but believe me they went faster than you (or I) would expect.

 

[Harthagan]

For the OP he feels he can get enough points from CC signups, that's fine for him but largely irrelevant for many others who have differing needs, you all need to make your own decisions!

I think you are meaning levelnine, not the OP?

 

[levelnine]

I'll make this my last post in this thread, as I feel I have dragged it off topic and now we're going in circles. All I wanted to know is if I were missing something in the calculation of the value of a FB to VFF transfer. It appears I haven't.

Almost all the replies boil down to one of two points:

1. 'It is worth it for me because I redeem at greater than the acquisition cost of 1c per point.' In which case, fantastic. Though I think a lot of these valuations are based on comparisons to an inflated cash price where you could get a similar product (perhaps on a different airline) for a lot less. Indeed, this is a major trap with loyalty programs that it seems a lot of people fall into.

2. 'I cannot earn enough points through credit cards to meet my redemption needs.' In which case, fair enough. I acknowledged that from the start.

As for the concerns with my credit score, thank you kindly. I am doing more than fine .

 

[MooTime]

Ah, you have almost the same FB balance as me. I have 341,000 but expecting another 20,000 at the weekend if I spend $180. I have almost decided to turn on auto-transfer but thought I would wait until the end of May in case bonus offers come through for a few thousand extra points. There's something psychological about being able to increase my Velocity balance by 200,000 points in one fell swoop.

haha the old 00 zero psychological theory, yes, I understand, see it a lot in stock market trades. I'm guilty of it too at times.

I wasn't fussed waiting till end of May as just collected a 4 weeker Coles offer & will just start accumulating FB's from scratch anyway.