Welcome Back!

Hope everyone is doing well 😊 

It’s a new month and a new quarter! In the credit card world, that means a bunch of recurring benefits and credits have reset - those include:

• Monthly Lyft/Uber/DoorDash/Grubhub/Seamless credits from various cards (Chase Sapphire Reserve, Amex Platinum, a bunch of other Chase cards, etc.)

• Lululemon $75 credit from the Amex Platinum

• $20 Entertainment credit from Amex Platinum

• More that I’ve probably forgotten about!

It does get chore-ish at times, but the credits do work for me, so it makes it worth the hassle! Hopefully they work for anyone that has these cards with recurring credits, and if not, well, there’s always options like 1) cancel, 2) ask for a retention offer, 3) downgrade to a no annual fee option 👍️

With that, here are your stories!

In today’s edition:

• ✈️ 25% Off to Europe, April Edition 📆

• 🏦 Transfer Bonuses ✈️

• 🌐 Do I have to get a United Card? 🌐 

• 📰 Other Stories & Deals 💰️

• 💳️ Best Card Signup Bonuses 💳️ 

✈️ 25% Off to Europe, April Edition 📆

It’s the first newsletter of April, so as per usual, Flying Blue’s monthly Promo Rewards are back!

If you are not familiar: Flying Blue (mileage program of Air France and KLM) releases Flying Blue Promo Rewards, which are monthly promotions where routes between Europe and select destinations globally are offered for 25% off the original mileage price. Every month!

For this month, the US cities selected for this discount are New York, Los Angeles, Seattle, Miami, Detroit, Boston, Atlanta, San Diego, Austin, Orlando, San Francisco, Las Vegas and Portland! ✈️

They’ve got deals across the globe for this month as usual, with business class deals from Europe to Africa as well as Central and South America! Lots of exciting flight routes in the offers for the month! Portland also has business class deals to Europe!!

So without these promo rewards, economy flights from North America to Europe start at 25k miles each way + taxes & fees. With the 25% off from these deals, that now goes down to 18.75k miles each way (same taxes & fees). I’ve used these deals to travel to Europe and back before too! Business class deals start at 45k each way as well!

Remember, just because these deals come from Air France and KLM does not mean you have to go to France or the Netherlands! Their intra-European network is far and wide, and as long as your origin or destination is a city selected for this month’s discounts, you’ll get 25% off, no matter the European airport involved. 🇪🇺 

The Air France-KLM World Elite Mastercard also currently has an elevated bonus of 70k miles and 100 XP (60 on approval, 40 after hitting minimum spend) after spending $3k in 3 months. The card also gives you 5k points if you spend $50 on it in a year, which definitely helps to offset the $89 annual fee! XP, by the way, are points to get Flying Blue status, and 100 XP immediately gets you Flying Blue Silver status. Worth a look if you have a use for the miles or the XP for Flying Blue status 💳️

Exciting stuff from Flying Blue for April - happy travels if you find and book something that works for you!

🏦➡️✈️ Transfer Bonuses

A chart of transfer partners by bank, along with other information, can be found here! New transfer bonuses not present the week before are in bold. Two notes: 1) that any transfers to Avios essentially include British Airways, Iberia, Aer Lingus, Finnair, and Qatar, and 2) that if you have the Chase Aeroplan credit card, any Aeroplan transfer bonuses are 10% extra!

🌐 Do I have to get a United Card? 🌐 

United previously announced big changes to their rewards program to not only incentivize, but essentially force members to get one of their credit cards to maintain some benefits and points earning. Those changes are now live…

For reference, the old earning rates were:

And the new earning rates:

There are also earning changes when paying with a United card vs. not:

On top of all this, if you don’t have a United credit card, you no longer earn any points when flying in Basic economy. Oh, by the way, United’s debit card and no-annual fee cards don’t count for these requirements without spending $10k in a year!! Authorized user cards also don’t count - members need to be primary cardholders. Sorry, international residents and any underage kids not old enough for a United card yet 🤷

So now what? Well, if you don’t normally or frequently fly United, then this doesn’t really matter to you, so don’t worry about it! And for anyone not loyal to United, also don’t worry about it! I imagine that most of us are collecting transferable currencies (Chase UR, Amex MR, etc.) and not specific airline miles. So I don’t think this is a massive blow to anyone’s points earning strategies.

But for anyone else that this significantly impacts, I have to imagine the United Explorer or the United Business card makes the most sense. It’s the lowest annual fee options that don’t require any spend thresholds 👍️

For better or for worse, this is the way the industry is headed - airlines make way more money via their rewards programs than actually flying. With that comes a big emphasis on their credit cards, value of points, etc. As this eventually comes to impact the redemption value when booking award flights, be advised and always diversify your points assets!

United flyers, hope this is not too bad. Everyone else, just enjoy your points and miles journeys as usual!

📰 Other Stories & Deals 💰️

• 🛄 JetBlue recently increased baggage fees by around $5-9…

• 🏦 The Chase Sapphire Reserve Pay Yourself Back Categories for Q2 are (1.25 cents per point):

  • Grocery Stores

  • Pet stores & Vet services

  • Annual Fee

  • Select Charities (1.5 cents per point)

• 💳️ The Chase Sapphire Reserve added Hyatt Explorist status as a benefit to cardholders who spend more than 75k per calendar year!

• 💸 Rakuten has back with its best deal! Spend $50, get $50 back.

• You can get 15% off Award stays at new or revamped IHG properties!

• 🤷 Etihad will no longer be an Amex transfer partner as of 6/30.

💳️ Best Card Signup Bonuses 💳️ 

Again, the usual solid cards:

• Chase Sapphire Preferred^® / Reserve®

• Chase Freedom Unlimited^®/Flex^®

• Amex Gold & Plat

• Capital One Venture X

Do search for public links for the above cards to compare signup bonuses to make sure you get the highest one (incognito mode, Resy, etc.).

For cards with elevated signup bonuses (targeted bonuses are not included), I’ve got:

📤️ Spread the Word! 📤️

Thanks for subscribing! This newsletter is committed to helping you maximize your points and rewards, at no direct cost to you! (appreciate you using any of my referral links, though!)

If you do find this newsletter informative, helpful, or entertaining, I’d greatly appreciate you spreading the word about it! If not, please do give me feedback on how I can improve your Sense per Point experience.

Also, if my newsletter helps you to book travel using points, let me know! It’ll make me so happy 😄 

Hope that all makes sense! That’s all for this week’s edition of Sense per Point.

Wishing everyone a wonderful rest of your day and week 😊 

- Sean Kim

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