American Express Points (refund, expenses, credit card, buy)

[SlowMotionApocalypse]

I have like a million and change. They added up quick while putting business expenses on the card.


Took one international vacation, a domestic round trip flight and bought a new computer.


Meant to keep using for travel.



Should I save in the event I may be able to travel again some day or start blowing on Amazon trinkets or sell or anything else?

[beachmouse]

Amazon is a pretty horrible value when it comes to MR point redemption. Same likely goes for any of the other store credits options.

If you're under about the age of 70, I'd just hold tight on the points and wait for the world to get healthy again. At this point, you're better off keeping them as a pseudo-currency with multiple travel transfer partner options rather than put them into a travel program that may hugely change terms & conditions or go under altogether (Virgin Atlantic is pretty iffy to survive right now) If you ever want to get rid of the business card, you can keep the MR points transferrable to travel partners with a no annual fee AmEx Everyday card.

Going forward, do some research and brush up on strengths and weaknesses of their transfer programs so you can jump on good deals later in 2021 and beyond. There are some sweet spots in different airline award charts and combined with AmEx's irregular but frequent transfer partner bonuses (BA and Iberia will typically have a 40% bonus offer once or twice a year; Air France/KLM Flying Blue are usually good for a 25% bonus once a year) you can get yourself a lot of fun for a million MR reward points, especially if you have some date flexibility.

'Selling points' or airline award tickets goes against the terms and service of card or travel reward program, no matter what a mileage broker will tell you, and fraud departments at airlines are often very aggressive and very good at weeding out those who engage in such activities and then blacklisting them from programs.

If you're willing to get an AmEx Charles Schwab card for a year, you can turn the MR points into cash via Schwab:

https://thepointsguy.com/guide/cash-...um-for-schwab/

[SlowMotionApocalypse]

Originally Posted by beachmouse

Amazon is a pretty horrible value when it comes to MR point redemption. Same likely goes for any of the other store credits options.

If you're under about the age of 70, I'd just hold tight on the points and wait for the world to get healthy again. At this point, you're better off keeping them as a pseudo-currency with multiple travel transfer partner options rather than put them into a travel program that may hugely change terms & conditions or go under altogether (Virgin Atlantic is pretty iffy to survive right now) If you ever want to get rid of the business card, you can keep the MR points transferrable to travel partners with a no annual fee AmEx Everyday card.

Going forward, do some research and brush up on strengths and weaknesses of their transfer programs so you can jump on good deals later in 2021 and beyond. There are some sweet spots in different airline award charts and combined with AmEx's irregular but frequent transfer partner bonuses (BA and Iberia will typically have a 40% bonus offer once or twice a year; Air France/KLM Flying Blue are usually good for a 25% bonus once a year) you can get yourself a lot of fun for a million MR reward points, especially if you have some date flexibility.

'Selling points' or airline award tickets goes against the terms and service of card or travel reward program, no matter what a mileage broker will tell you, and fraud departments at airlines are often very aggressive and very good at weeding out those who engage in such activities and then blacklisting them from programs.

If you're willing to get an AmEx Charles Schwab card for a year, you can turn the MR points into cash via Schwab:

https://thepointsguy.com/guide/cash-...um-for-schwab/

Thanks for the info.


This is actually my first and only credit card.


It's not actually a business card, I just had a pricing arbitrage scheme for extra spending money that blew up into something huge before completely evaporating with the plague. Also not really sure to what degree I can rebuild especially since all the pricing differences I was exploiting were fast disappearing.


And I had to undergo a vigorous account review a few months ago including sending all banking information under threat of account cancellation due to the amount of refunds hitting the card (a lot of what I do is experience based) which makes me wonder if I should just start "spending" the points now lest I lose them.


Also until a few years ago I was making under 20k a year with little in the way of job or people skills so not really sure if I will be traveling at all in the future. Was supposed to do quite a bit this year but we all know what happened.


Sure was awesome spending a week in Ireland for almost "free," until I did it I never really thought I would be able to do something like that.


The American Dream was real, I lived it for 5 years.

[beachmouse]

Travel hacking is addicting, and even during The Great Pause I'm still trying to build up my loyalty point balances.

If you're worried about account closure you can move the points to another program and I don't think AmEx really has a way of clawing them back at that point. Delta miles never expire, and British Airways are on a 3 year expiration loop where you can push out the expiry day another three years by literally using the BA shopping portal to buy a couple fo songs from iTunes.