This upcoming summer, I am traveling to Europe with my wife and two daughters. At the time of booking, the flights alone for this trip would have cost $11,000 for the four of us. However, I was able to book four round-trip tickets for just $1,200 total using American Express points that I earned this year by using a credit card for my everyday purchases.
The story begins one year ago in January 2023 when I applied for the American Express Gold Card. At the time, American Express was running a promotion that offered new cardholders 75,000 bonus points after spending $4,000 within the first six months. After applying for the card and receiving it in the mail, I used it for everyday expenses like groceries, gas, and dining out, as well as any other regular purchases during that period.
Please make sure that you read to the end of this article as I have included a very special offer for my readers!
The Impact of Welcome Bonus Points.
If your goal is to book free travel, signing up for a credit card that offers a substantial welcome bonus is the fastest way to do it. Many credit card companies offer special promotions from time to time for new customers. It is worth noting that certain credit card companies, including American Express, limit individuals to receiving only one welcome bonus per lifetime for each of their cards. For this reason, if you already own the American Express Gold card (or have owned it in the past), you will not be eligible for any welcome bonus points on this card.
Once you have identified a credit card that suits your needs, I recommend searching for any special promotions they may be offering, or waiting until they have one. The current welcome bonus for the American Express Gold Card is 60,000 Membership Rewards points after spending $6,000 within the initial six months of card ownership.
However, I am excited to share a special offer with readers of this blog. Through my link below, you will be eligible to receive 90,000 American Express Membership Rewards points after being approved and spending $6,000 on eligible purchases within the first six months of owning the card. By the end of this post, I hope you see the value in these points!
Here is the special link to apply: https://americanexpress.com/en-us/referral/gold-card?ref=DAVIdCdid5&xl=cp01.
Welcome bonus points aside, I have yet to find another card that offers the same number of points as the American Express Gold card does on everyday purchases. For instance, the card provides 4X points for every dollar spent at grocery stores and restaurants, which make up a significant portion of my monthly credit card expenses. Every other credit card I own only offers between 1X and 2X points per dollar spent on groceries and restaurants. Additionally, you can earn 3X points for every dollar spent on flights booked directly through airlines.
The Annual Fee
The American Express Gold Card comes with an annual fee of $250, which may seem high at first and scare of some people. However, you will be eligible for up to $240 in statement credits. This means that if you use these credits, the annual fee has the potential to be as low as $10. Here is a breakdown of the statement credits you are eligible to receive:
Monthly Uber credit:
You can earn up to $120 in Uber cash per year by connecting your American Express Gold card to your Uber account. Each month, you will receive $10 in Uber credits which will be automatically deducted from any Uber rides or Uber Eats orders in the United States.
Monthly dining credit:
You are eligible to receive up to $120 in dining credit annually. Each month, you will receive a $10 dining credit for charges at GrubHub, The Cheesecake Factory, Milk Bar, Wine.com, Goldbelly, and participating Shake Shack locations.
How to use Points to Book Travel
When you log into your American Express account, you will notice that your Membership
Rewards points can be used in a variety of ways. You can use these points for shopping, gift cards, statement credit, or to book travel directly through the American Express travel portal.
However, the purpose of this post is to discuss the option of transferring your American Express Membership Rewards points to partner airlines and hotels in order to book free travel.
When you transfer American Express Membership Rewards points to their partners, the points will be converted into the points program of each partner. For example, when you transfer American Express points to Air France, they are converted to Flying Blue Miles. When you convert American Express points to Delta, they are converted to Delta SkyMiles. And so on.
American Express Transfer Partners
Below are the American Express transfer partners as of January 24, 2024, as well as the breakdown of the transfer value. You may notice that almost every scenario involves a 1-to-1 exchange, where one American Express point is equivalent to one point in the transfer partner’s program. The two exceptions are AeroMexico and JetBlue. AeroMexico offers a 1:1.6 exchange rate, which means that for every 1,000 American Express points you transfer, you will receive 1,600 AeroMexico Reward points. Meanwhile, JetBlue only offers a 1:0.8 exchange rate, meaning that for every 1,000 American Express points you transfer over, you will only receive 800 JetBlue TruBlue points. It is important to note that partners offer special promotions from time to time. For example, when I transferred my American Express Membership Rewards points to Virgin Atlantic last month, Virgin Atlantic was offering a 1:1.3 exchange rate. This meant that for every 1,000 American Express points I transferred, I received 1,300 Virgin Points.
AIRLINES:
Air France 1:1
Delta 1:1
Virgin Atlantic 1:1
Aer Lingus 1:1
AeroMexico 1:1.6
AeroPlan 1:1
ANA Mileage Club 1:1
Avianca 1:1
British Airways 1:1
Cathay Pacific 1:1
Emirates 1:1
Etihad Airways 1:1
Hawaiian Airlines 1:1
Iberia 1:1
JetBlue 1:0.8
Quantas 1:1
Qatar Airways 1:1
Singapore Airlines 1:1
HOTELS
Marriot 1:1
Hilton 1:1
Choice Hotels 1:1
How to Transfer Membership Rewards Points:
Transferring your American Express Membership Rewards points is easy!
Before walking through the steps, it is important to note that in order to transfer points to one of the American Express partners, you will need to enroll in their rewards program, or in other words, create an account with the airline or hotel. Otherwise, American Express wouldn’t know where to transfer your points. This process takes less than five minutes and can be completed on the airline or hotel’s website. As you will see in one of the images below, I am enrolled in Air France’s Flying Blue Miles, Delta Skymiles, and the Virgin Atlantic Flying Club. However, I am not enrolled with Aer Lingus or AeroMexico because I have not yet transferred any bonus points to these airlines.
Here are the steps for transferring your American Express membership Rewards points:
1. Log in to your American Express account.
2. Click on the “Rewards & Benefits” tab.
3. Click on the “Transfer Points” tab located approximately halfway down the page.
4. Click on “View All”
5. Click on “Show Details” to choose the number of points you would like to transfer. Please note that this page indicates an estimated transfer time of 48 hours, but in all my experiences, the transfer has occurred instantly.
6. The final step is to the airline or hotel’s website, log into the account you created, and book your flight using the points you just transferred over.
The Process I Used to Book $10,000 in Free Travel
Now for the fun part. How did I manage to book nearly $10,000 in free travel to Europe during peak season by using points that I earned in less than one year, simply by using this card for everyday purchases? Let me walk you through it.
I signed up for the American Express Gold card in January 2023 and have been using it to pay for many of my everyday purchases. From January until the end of the year, I earned 175,000 bonus points, with 75,000 coming from the welcome bonus within two months of owning the card.
When it came time to book my flights, here are the steps I followed:
1. Before booking a flight, I always log onto my American Express portal to see if any of the airline partners are offering additional bonuses for transferring my American Express Membership Reward points into their program.
2. I used Google Flights to identify the nonstop routes from Boston to various European cities within a specific date range that I was interested in. This feature allowed me to click on different cities to identify which airlines offer direct flight and to find any airlines that are American Express transfer partners.
3. After identifying the American Express airline partners with direct flights from Boston to Europe, I visited the airline’s website to check the number of points required to book the flight. I filtered my search to display the prices in points.
4. At this point, you should have a good understanding of which airlines and flights offer the best value for your points. For me, this was a Virgin Atlantic flight from Boston to London. When I logged into my American Express account earlier, I noticed that Virgin Atlantic was running a special transfer offer in December. They were offering 1,300 Virgin points for every 1,000 American Express Membership Reward points transferred. Even better, they offered a direct flight from Boston to London for just 20,000 points per person, which is very reasonable, especially considering that I only had to transfer 15,500 points per person. This is particularly appealing given that the cost of the flight without points was $750 per person.
In total, I transferred 62,000 American Express Membership Reward points, which converted to 80,000 Virgin Points. With these points, I was able to book four tickets to London for my family, paying only $600 in total for taxes. Without using points, the same flight would have cost $3,000 for my family of four.
I used the same system for a flight back to Boston. I was aware that we would be flying home within a specific date range and that we had the flexibility to choose from a few cities. I used Google Flights to identify which cities had American Express partner airlines that offered direct flights to Boston. Then, I searched for the same flight on each airline’s website.
For the return flight to Boston, I noticed that Air France offered a Paris option for just 17,500 points per person. This was an even better value than the flight to London, considering that the cost of this flight without points was $2,028 per person at the time of booking.
I transferred 70,000 American Express points to Air France and managed to book four tickets for my family from Paris to Boston for only $656 in total for taxes. Without using points, the same flight would have cost $8,112 for my family of four.
The total trip, which includes travel from Boston to London and Paris to Boston, cost me 132,000 AMEX points plus $1,263 for taxes. Without these points, the same flights would have cost me $11,000! Even the most affordable direct flights on or around these specific dates would have cost me approximately $6,500 for a round trip.
Although this may sound complex at first, I promise that it’s very intuitive once you get the hang of these websites. I am fairly new to this and have never been the most tech-savvy person, so if I can do it, anyone can!
My Offer to You
I mentioned this earlier in the article, but if you missed it skimming to the end, here it is again. I am excited to share a special offer with my readers: you can receive 90,000 American Express Membership Rewards points after being approved and spending $6,000 on eligible purchases within the first six months of owning the card.
Here is the special link to apply: https://americanexpress.com/en-us/referral/gold-card?ref=DAVIdCdid5&xl=cp01.
UPDATE:
Since booking this European trip, I have discovered a tool that can help make this process even more efficient. The company is called SeatSpy (https://www.seatspy.com/). The tool provided enables you to search for reward flights for an entire year and filter by the number of passengers, cabin type (economy, premium, business, etc.), and the number of points you have available to spend. I will delve deeper into this tool in an upcoming post.
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