The Complete Guide to Miles Earning from Credit Cards

There are three types of earning currencies we’ll talk about:

• Airline miles
• Hotel points
• Bank (or credit card) points

The difference between airline miles and hotel points is pretty simple, but what about the difference between these and credit card points? We’ll explain the difference in a bit…

These are frequent flyer miles for a specific airline as a rewards or loyalty program.

For example, if you have the American Airlines credit card, the United Airlines credit card, British Airways credit card, etc… then when you spend on that card you earn that airline’s miles. The sign up bonus and the miles from spending go right into your frequent flyer account for that airline. And if you don’t have a frequent flyer account don’t worry, they’ll create one for you when you sign up for the credit card.

It’s the exact same concept as airline miles. These points are specific to each hotel chain and when you have a hotel branded credit card, the hotel points go straight into your account.

The banks and credit card companies also have their own rewards programs.

For example, Chase has Chase Ultimate Rewards and American Express has Membership Rewards. Therefore they also have credit cards to earn those points. So not only does Chase partner with airlines and hotels to create credit cards for those rewards programs, they also have credit cards to earn Chase points- their own points.

Chase has the Chase Sapphire Preferred, Chase Ink Bold, Chase Ink Plus, etc… Each of these cards earn Chase points.

American Express similarly has the Platinum Card and Gold Card, both which earn Amex Membership Rewards Points.

With these cards you are earning bank points instead of miles but you can often transfer them over to airline miles. Be aware though, if you don’t transfer them over to miles, the bank rewards program may try to get you to use their own “travel” shopping portal to redeem your points for about 1 cent a point.

Please, whatever you do, don’t use your bank points to buy travel on the bank’s own website! Please, instead transfer your points to miles first. Instead of getting a fixed value of 1 cent a point that the bank reimburses, you can get much better value out of miles. I’ve gotten as much value as 25 cents per mile (although that’s the higher end).

For instance in this post you can read about the Pacific Hopper that gave us a value of at least 25 cents per mile.

So turn those points into miles first, then book your travel outside of the bank’s travel-booking portal.

One odd thing to note is that Chase’s lower cards like the Chase Freedom and the Chase Sapphire regular/non-preferred card earn Ultimate Rewards points but they don’t transfer to airlines. However, you can transfer points from the Freedom card to a card that does transfer to airlines, which we’ll talk more about below.

There are three main currencies to transfer from:

1.) Chase Ultimate Rewards Points
2.) American Express Membership Rewards Points
3.) Starwood Preferred Guest Starpoints

Chase and American Express are banks, while Starwood is unique because it is a hotel chain/rewards program that transfers to frequent flyer miles at a very generous rate. When you transfer 20,000 Starwood Preferred Guest Starpoints to a mileage program, Starwood will give you a bonus 5,000 miles.

But how do these transfers happen?

Chase gives you the option to redeem points for travel through their own booking portal, as mentioned above, but the real value is in transferring to miles. However, you can only do this with certain Chase cards. Namely the Chase Sapphire Preferred card, Ink Bold card, or Ink Plus card. Each of these cards offers the ability to transfer Chase Ultimate rewards points to a mileage program.



If you have the Chase Freedom card, a more introductory no annual fee card, you can still earn Ultimate Rewards points, but you would need to transfer these points to one of the aforementioned cards in order to then transfer them into miles.

How to combine points:

1.) Log onto your Chase account online.
2.) At the right hand side of the screen, click “Go to Ultimate Rewards”.
3.) This will bring you to a screen detailing your various cards. Click “Combine Points”.

4.) Use the selection tools to identify that you would like to transfer points from your Chase Freedom to your Chase Sapphire Preferred, Ink Bold, or Ink Plus.



How to transfer:

How to transfer

There are a few programs that I can always depend on to not have fuel surcharges. Some airlines have good reward prices but to redeem those miles, you pay $600+ in fees!

My favorite no-fuel-surcharge-fee airlines are: United Airlines, American Airlines and US Airways (now merging with American Airlines).

United – United card, United Business card, Chase Sapphire Preferred, Ink Bold, Ink Plus
American – American AAdvantage visa, American AAdvantage American Express, American AAdvantage MasterCard, Starwood (SPG)
US Airways – US Airways card, Starwood (SPG)

Other airline miles I enjoy: Air Canada, British Airways, ANA

However, those latter airlines do have fuel surcharges. But there are ways to avoid paying fuel surcharges even when using those miles.

Let me explain three things.

1) When you have miles with an airline, you can redeem them for any airline within the alliance.

2) The price in miles will be determined by the program whose miles you are using, not by which airline you’re redeeming with.

3) Not all airlines have fuel surcharges built into their pricing model in the first place. In other words, you can redeem your miles for flights on some airlines within the alliance that don’t have fuel surcharges to pay for.