Welcome Back!

Hope everyone is doing well 😊 

So I actually went away for the weekend, to Costa Rica 🌴

So warm, and the resort (Andaz Peninsula Papagayo Resort) was amazing!! I actually booked the resort with points a year ago, so I got super excited when I realized it was coming up 🙂 

In fact, after I booked the resort, the points cost per night of that hotel went up, so I caught it before a devaluation. A reminder, again, to use your points before they lose value!

And in pursuit of helping people travel better, here are today’s stories!

In today’s edition:

• 🇸🇬 Singapore & Alaska Deals 🏔️

• 🏦 Transfer Bonuses ✈️

• 🇺🇸 Bank of America Nerfs 📉

• 📰 Other Stories & Deals 💰️

• 💳️ Best Card Signup Bonuses 💳️ 

🇸🇬 Singapore & Alaska Deals 🏔️

Both Singapore and Alaska dropped their recurring award flight deals recently! So I’ll go through them both 👍️

Starting with Singapore - as usual, Singapore released this month’s Krisflyer Spontaneous Escapes! All deals released are 30% off 💰️ 

The details to keep note of are that:

• You must complete your booking by February 28th 📆

• Travel booked through this can take place between March 1st and February 31st, 2026 📆

• Awards are non-refundable and non-changeable (so be careful)

This month’s discounted routes from the US are:

• Business from JFK to FRA (and vice versa) for 19.25k in economy each way, or 39.9k in premium economy

• Economy from LAX, SFO and SEA to SIN (and vice versa) for 30.8k points each way

  • Or 55,300 points each way in Premium Economy (for SFO and SEA)

• Premium economy from EWR to SIN for 59.15k miles each way

As a reminder: Amex, Capital One, Chase, and Citi points all transfer to Singapore at a 1:1 ratio! ✈️ 

Now, for the Alaska deals - Alaska runs a quarterly award sale (a quarterly version of Flying Blue Promo Rewards and Singapore Spontaneous Escapes). Their Global Getaways is now up and running until February 27th, for flights from February 27th and May 12th, 2026!

For this time around, the selected destinations are:

Some of these deals are quite solid, and these are deals for anywhere in the US to these destinations. So New York to Hokkaido will cost the same through this deal as Los Angeles to Hokkaido, which is cool!

Happy travels 😊 

🏦➡️✈️ 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.

🇺🇸 Bank of America Nerfs 📉

Bank of America announced changes to their rewards program - BofA doesn’t have any transfer partners, which is why I don’t often discuss them for travel uses, etc., but for team cash back, BofA is actually quite lucrative!

BofA and Merrill has this program where if you have a certain amount of money in their accounts, you get bonus rewards on your cash back. Currently, those levels are:

• No tier: $0-$19,999 (10% with active checking account)

• Gold – $20k-$49.99k (25%)

• Platinum – $50k-$99.99k (50%)

• Platinum Honors – $100k-$999.99k (75%)

• Diamond – $1m+ (75%)

So what that means is if you have $50k in a Merrill brokerage account, you get 50% more cash back that you normally would for spend. So if you were getting 3% cash back for your spend before, that 50% goes on top and you’d get 4.5% cash back! Pretty sweet deal for team cash back 💸

Well, however, Bank of America switched things up. Outside of the actual rewards, the name changed from “Bank of America Rewards” to “BofA Rewards”. How much did McKinsey get paid in consulting fees for that name change?? 😂

Anyway, once the changes go into effect in May 2026 (implementation won’t be all at once, depending on your anniversary date), the levels will be:

• Member – $0-$29.99k (10%)

• Preferred Plus – $30k-$99.99k (25%)

• Preferred Honors – $100k-$999.99k (50%)

• Premier – $1m+ (75%)

So basically, you previously needed to keep $100k parked in BofA accounts to get 75% bonus cash back, but now that number has gone up significantly, to $1M. What even 🤯

There is some subscription credit being added for some users:

• Preferred Honors – $100k-$999.99k ($8 monthly credit)

• Premier – $1m+ ($15 monthly credit)

But wow these changes are a bit rough for the Platinum users and up. I’m thinking that these changes may convince some users to pull their money out entirely, if they care about the cash back. Of course, any people with over a million in deposits, and anyone that doesn’t care about the cash back will be largely unaffected, but still. A blow for team cash back, without a doubt…

📰 Other Stories & Deals 💰️

• 🏨 Hilton is expected to release some higher signup bonuses on their cards soon again - will be on the lookout for that and update here!

• ✈️ Spirit is launching a debit card - not for me personally, but could work for someone 🤷

• ✈️ United is really incentivizing having its credit cards in its new changes, by:

  • Increasing points earnings for cardholders

  • Restricting earnings on basic economy flights for non-cardholders

  • Offering award discounts to cardholders

  • Increasing award availability to cardholders

• 🤝 You can now redeem Virgin miles for flights on WestJet!

💳️ 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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