I’m trying to earn bonus airline miles by applying for a new credit card.
The credit card companies seem to be offering “points”.
Can the 40,000 bonus points be converted into 40,000 miles?
I thought that some cards offer points and other cards offer miles. You can sometimes convert the points for air travel (e.g. American Express points) but in that case at least it is on a dollar basis, not on a miles basis. For example, 40,000 points might be $400 in air travel.
Here is a link that lists several credit cards that offer miles.
In any case, watch out for the annual fee. Even if you always pay off your credit card every month, the annual fee means the miles or points are not free.
Roddy
Roderick Femm is correct. Points and miles are similar but two different things. Some types of points are better than miles because you can use them for anything travel related, not just plane tickets. Miles are best used for plane tickets only unless you want to get a terrible rate of return for converting them into something like hotel rooms or gift certificates. I have used points for hotel rooms, plane tickets, and even airport parking without a problem. The most common conversion is 10,000 points = $100 in travel credit and that is in true money terms.
I can say with certainty that this is one of the few cases where something that sounds too good to be true really isn’t as long as you follow their rules and have a good credit score to start it. I have two credit cards (American Express Blue and a Citibank Thank You Mastercard) that don’t even have an annual few and gave me $700 combined for just for signing up and spending a certain amount in a certain time. I did that and paid it off immediately it really was free money. I have a bunch of others that also had similar or better offers but had an annual fee waived for the first year. I take their points or miles and cancel the card as soon as the annual fee hits if they won’t waive it for the next year as well. I travel a lot and I haven’t paid for a plane ticket or hotel room for personal travel for three years now. It works like a charm and is one of the best deals going because there are a lot of very generous introductory points and miles incentives offered today with more being rolled out all the time.
The Chase (Sapphire) Preferred card has a point system, but you can either buy through them or roll the points 1:1 over to United and a few other airlines. Shagnasty is right though. Every year change to a new credit card- I can count on 50k miles just by changing CC every year.
Nerdwallet and creditkarma have great reviews of cards and things to look for in the fine print of reward cards.
I found the points rather than the miles are more flexible and sometimes a better deal. When I cashed in some Chase and Capital One points that had accumulated for quite a while, I used it on gift cards (Home Depot, Target) and it was something like 10000 pts got you a $100 card but 40000 got a $500 card. It was definitely worth waiting to have enough points to take advantage of that. It might have been a special deal they don’t always offer, but it’s worth checking into.
Points can be used for anything, even cash. I also like having the cash instead, because I can usually get flights for dirt cheap-I don’t have to fly Delta or United for three times as much.
Depends what airline you want. Each airline has its own affinity card that offers miles for signups and charges, and then there are also cards that offer points, some of which can be transferred into miles. AAdvantage miles are hard to get that way though.
Amex Membership Rewards Points and Chase Ultimate Rewards probably offer the most transfer partners - both transfer into United Airlines at 1 point: 1 mile, and many other airlines.
Here is a good link for a starting point for the best available offers for most US airlines: