Traveling with Ultimate Rewards Points

Part 1: Where will your points take you?

After finding out that Chase increased the signing-bonus of the Chase Ink card to 70,000 Ultimate Rewards points, I encouraged all my family and friends to sign-up for the card. Chase Ultimate Reward points are some of these most valuable travel points you can accumulate, making this a HUGE offer.

Since a lot of you have applied or are going to apply for the card, I’m putting together a quick series on maximizing the value you receive from your points.

Before we get into that, though, let’s do a quick run through of the benefits of this card:

• 70,000 points after you hit the minimum spend of $5000 in 3 months
• 5 points for every $1 spent at office supply stores and on cellular phone, landline, internet and cable TV services
• 2 points for every $1 spent at gas stations and on hotel accommodations
• 1 point for every $1 spent on everything else
• Points can be transferred to United (Star Alliance), British Airways (Oneworld), Korean Airlines (SkyTeam), Southwest, Virgin Atlantic, Hyatt, Marriott, IHG, Ritz-Carlton, Amtrak, and a few other partners
• No foreign transaction fee
• Savings through the Visa Savings Edge discount program (make sure you register your card)
• Free lounge club membership in their network + 2 free out-of-network passes / year

So the big question is: Where can 75,000 points send you on your next holiday?

• 3 roundtrip flights in the United States (e.g. San Francisco to New York, San Francisco to Hawaii)
• A roundtrip flight from anywhere in the US to Europe, with a couple nights at a Hyatt thrown in
• Almost enough for a one-way ticket on Singapore Airlines’ First Class Suites (these tickets usually go for $9000 +)
• 17 one-way tickets between SF and LA
• 17 one-way tickets between Tokyo and almost anywhere in Japan (these tickets usually go for $200+)
• 17 one-way tickets between Sydney and Melbourne (these tickets usually go for $200+)
• Enough intra-Latin America flights to cover nearly every country on that continent

The next post will go over how to transfer your Chase Ultimate Rewards points to different programs to book these flights.

In the meantime, be sure to check out my Intro to Travel Hacking and tweet at me or my travel hacking friend @haontran with any questions!

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