Welcome Back!

Hope everyone is having a great week 😊 

The slightly extended break moving from Tuesday to Thursday now was very needed, and I’m all freshened up and ready to go! June is also a big travel month for me, with many trips lined up (Europe and Asia coming up this month!), so I’ll have lots of stories and tips on how I used my points for them! 💸 

Let’s dive right into it!

In today’s edition:

• ⌚️ Points for Last Minute Travel 🧳

• 🏦 Transfer Bonuses ✈️

• 🇫🇷 Flying Blue Promo Rewards 🥖

• 📰 Other Stories and Deals 💰️

⌚️ Points for Last Minute Travel 🧳

Has anyone ever had to book last-minute travel with cash and knew they were paying much more than they would have if they booked earlier?

Whether it be due to an unexpected circumstance, or just a spontaneous trip, I’m here to let you know that points can be really valuable for booking travel last minute! 💲 

Airline mileage and hotel programs that have a standard award chart are the go-to option in these situations. These programs will charge the same amount of points for a given flight or hotel room, whether you book a year before, a month before, or even a week before. I’ll share an example below! 👇️ 

The point of this example is that Qatar Airways would have charged me 6k Avios regardless of how close or far from the flight date I booked. So when cash prices start going up closer to the date of travel, the points price does not, and its these instances that make a great opportunity to get better value with your points! 🪙 

Best of all, I’ll have a great weekend in DC (that’s why the photo for this section is Reagan airport!), knowing my points saved me time and cash 😀 

My goal with this newsletter is to make your points work harder for you, and your points work pretty well in cases where you need to arrange last-minute travel 👍️ 

Do keep this in mind if you are ever in this situation! ✈️ 

🏦➡️✈️ Transfer Bonuses

¹ New transfer bonuses that were not present the week before are in bold.

🇫🇷 Flying Blue Promo Rewards 🥖

This has usually lived in the Other Stories or Tips & Deals section of the newsletter, but I wanted to talk more about these monthly promotions today, so that more people can take advantage!

So on the first of every month, Flying Blue (mileage program of Air France and KLM) releases Flying Blue Promo Rewards, which are monthly promotions where select routes are offered for 25% off the original mileage price. Every month!!

For this month, the US destinations receiving discounts are:

You might notice that the image above doesn’t only say Paris or Amsterdam to the cities shown, but Europe. Despite Air France and KLM having Paris and Amsterdam as their hubs, these deals make it so that you can get to anywhere in Europe using these offers (the layover will be through one of those two cities though)! 🛫 

The taxes and fees on these awards are less than ideal, but the 25% can make it worth it. Nothing wrong with at least looking through the discounted flights to help you make the best choice, right?

The real sweetener here is if there is a transfer bonus on top of all this from a bank. The promo this month already has New York to Europe flights at 15k each way, but if there was say a 25% transfer bonus on top? Then that would only require 12k miles to book. These chances to double dip (take advantage of multiple offers/deals at once) are the sweetest! 🍬 

Flying Blue also price their business class flights relatively reasonably (among many sweet spots), with rates around 50-60k points occurring at times. Even if not part of the monthly offers, flying across the Atlantic in lie-flat business for around 50-60k points is a pretty good deal 👍️ 

I’ve definitely take advantage of Promo Rewards before, and I do recommend checking it out if you are looking at a Europe trip! ✈️ 

📰 Other Stories 📰

• 😮 eBay is no longer accepting Amex payments in August 2024 - maybe the Amex fees too high, or maybe eBay couldn’t handle how good Amex’s purchase protections were?? Or both?!

• 💳️ Wells Fargo released a new card, the Wells Fargo Attune World Elite Mastercard® - a pass for me personally, but it does have a bunch of 4% cash back categories that could be interesting for others!

💰️ Tips & Deals 💰️

• 💳️ If you have a Chase Ink card and refer someone, the referral bonus is a whopping 40k points - this will go down to 20k in September, so do take advantage if people in your circle are looking for business cards!

• ✈️ All three Chase Southwest cards have an all-time high 85,000 points signup bonus!

📤️ Spread the Word! 📤️

Thank you so much for subscribing! This newsletter is committed to providing you all with helpful info and tips to maximize your points and rewards, at no direct cost to you! (appreciate you using any of my referral links, though!)

Being that I don’t use social media, it’s been a bit harder to gain subscribers, but I can do it with your help - 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 day and week ❤️ 

- Sean Kim

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