Buy points, fly in business

Good morning and welcome back to Daily Drop, brought to you by DayQuil - the only thing keeping me alive right now. 💪

While I desperately try to stop being sick, here’s some travel stuff:

• 💳 Earning a crap load of UR Points

• ✈️ Save thousands of dollars on business-class flights

• 🤣 Meme

💳 Earning a crap load of UR Points

On Friday, I wrote about Flying Blue’s new Promo Rewards and how you can combine them with a transfer bonus from UR Points to fly to Europe on the cheap.

The newsletter was met with rave reviews. People shouted from the rooftops about how eloquent and life-changing the short editorial was.

But I did get one question a number of times…

And the answer is quite simple: credit cards. And no, I’m not talking about signing up for enough of them to fill up an entire sock drawer.

In fact, you really just need one. And it continues to be the way I personally rack up a TON of points year after year.

When people ask me what my “go-to” card is, I ALWAYS tell them it’s this one.

Here’s why:

First of all, the high annual fee is easily offset by a $300 travel credit that can be used on any merchant and is credited automatically.

It also comes with a Priority Pass membership and really solid travel insurance (which saved me $1,600 this year after I had to cancel a trip because of my surgery).

But none of that gets you UR Points… so here’s what does:

This card earns 3x UR Points per dollar on all travel and dining. That alone is a HUGE return on spend given how valuable UR Points are.

But what’s even better is that you can earn 10x points per dollar on hotels booked through the bank’s portal.

This portal isn’t just flashy luxury hotels, either…

Let’s say you want to book a trip to Japan. After booking your flights, budgeting for food and activities, etc., you might think that hotels will be the most expensive part.

But this hotel right in the heart of Tokyo only costs $55 per night (including all taxes) when booked through the portal with this card.

Not only is that a great rate for a hotel, but you’ll earn 550 UR Points… per night!!

If you spent a week in Tokyo, you’d earn 3,850 UR Points in return.

That’s already enough to transfer points to Hyatt and book a free night at a different hotel in Japan like this one:

Since that hotel costs $144 per night, you’re effectively getting a 37% return on spend from your week in Tokyo.

Not bad, eh?

But it gets better… 😏

Sometimes, you can even get offers from the travel portal. For example, last month, I got an offer to get 10,000 bonus UR Points after spending $400 on hotels with this card.

Let’s break that down…

If I booked a 4-night stay in Los Angeles at this hotel, it would cost $407 after taxes and fees.

Is it super glamorous? Hell naw. Does it give you a place to crash to explore the city? Sure thing.

And after it’s all said and done, I’d earn a total of 14,070 UR Points from the 10x multiplier and offer.

That’s enough to book FOUR MORE NIGHTS at a Hyatt Category 1 hotel like the one I just showed you earlier, or this one in Nashville:

Four free nights after staying four nights… sounds pretty good, right?

As I mentioned earlier, the card also earns 3x on all dining and travel.

So every time I stay in a hotel (which is basically every night of the year), buy lunch and dinner (which I do for every meal of the day), or take a train, bus, subway, book a tour, or any other travel-related expense, I’m earning 3x from a single card.

Now that’s a little extreme, but if you crunch the numbers for how much you spend in these categories, I’m sure you’ll see how powerful that multiplier is.

Finally, I rack up thousands of points every year from referrals. Every time I refer someone to either this card or this card, I get 10,000 UR Points, regardless of which one they sign up for.

I’ll even give a friend $50 if they use my personal link. It offsets some of their annual fee and gives me over $200 worth of points for a quarter of the price. 🤷🏼‍♂️

So if you read Daily Drop and want to rack up a ton of UR Points like I do, consider applying for this card OR upgrading from this card (which I know many of you already have).

✈️ Save thousands of dollars on business-class flights

It might feel like Christmas is over, but not for Aeroplan.

Because just today, they dropped a surprise bonus on purchased points, up to 100%.

While this deal might not appeal to everyone, it’s definitely one of the best deals we’ve seen for buying airline miles.

Let me break it down:

Until January 14th, Aeroplan members will receive tiered bonuses based on the number of points you purchase.

It’s also worth noting that everyone seems to have different offers… some members are targeted with a maximum 85% while others are seeing 100%.

Personally, I was targeted with a maximum of 85% on buying 40,000 or more points… but I recommend you go check your account to see what y’all got.

So. Is it worth it?

Given Aeroplan’s massive list of partners, solid sweet spots, and the ability to add stopovers for 5,000 extra points, it might just be worth it.

Let’s say you want to fly on ANA’s “The Room” business class across the pacific, like I did last year.

You could book this 10-hour flight for just 75,000 Aeroplan points.

If you buy 40,000 points and get an 85% bonus, you’ll end up with 74,000 points for a total cost of $1,400 CAD, or about $975 USD.

You’d need to transfer over another 1,000 points from somewhere to get to 75,000, of course.

Still, for a 10-hour flight in one of the best business-class seats in the world, that might be a GREAT deal for many of you, given the fact that the flight sells for over $3,000 on a good day or upwards of $5,000 or $10,000 dollars on a bad day.

But Aeroplan also has some amazing sweet spots going across the other pond… to Europe.

You can fly on Singapore Airlines from New York to Frankfurt for just 60,000 Aeroplan points in business class.

If you get the 100% bonus from Aeroplan, you could effectively buy this flight for $731, which is a CRAZY deal considering the typical cash rate of anywhere from $3,000 to $6,000 when paying cash.

So here’s the bottom line:

Check out the Aeroplan site and see what you’ve been targeted for.

There are a million other niche ways you can use this offer to save money on flights in business or economy, in North America, or well beyond.

If you’re willing to pay some money in order to book flights that would otherwise cost a LOT more money, this could be a steal.

🤣 Meme

Dang… I don’t speak up often, but I WILL speak up for missed snacks…….

That’s all for today, kiddos. I hope you enjoyed some nitty gritty points talk today, and I look forward to seeing you again tomorrow for some more points and miles strategizing.

Cheers,

52°22'35.4"N 52°15'17.4"W