If you’ve ever scrolled through award charts and thought, “Cool, can’t wait to earn 200,000 points sometime in 2043,” let me stop you right there.
You do not need a massive stash of points to book meaningful travel.
You just need a little strategy that’ll squeeze every drop of value from even a modest balance.
With the right tools (transfer bonuses), the right booking system (cash and points), and the right tricks (like stopovers!), a 30,000-point balance can carry you a lot farther than you think.
So, let’s chat through some of the smartest ways to stretch what you have and how to know when it’s actually better to just pay cash.
How to Stretch Your Points
Cash and Points Bookings
One of the easiest ways to make your points go farther is by mixing them with cash instead of burning your entire balance in one go. Many programs, like Hyatt, IHG, Marriott, and even some airlines, let you combine both.
This approach does two things:
Cuts the cash price down significantly
Saves your points so you can book more than one trip instead of blowing it all at once
Cash and points can be especially clutch for last-minute bookings or during peak seasons when full-award rates go way, way up.
🏨 Pro Tip: Hyatt’s Points + Cash often prices at 50% of the standard cash rate and 50% of the points rate, which is a great sweet spot if you’re trying to stretch a small balance into multiple nights.
Leveraging Transfer Bonuses
Transfer bonuses are the closest thing we have to performance-enhancing drugs in the points world (except legal and… encouraged). 🙂
When Chase, American Express, Citi, Bilt, or Capital One runs a 20 to 40% transfer bonus to programs like British Airways, Virgin Atlantic, Air France/KLM, or Avios partners, your points instantly become more powerful.
A 30% bonus means: 30,000 bank points = 39,000 airline miles
That can easily help stretch small points stashes, and if an airline is running an award sale, that could easily cover two round-trip flights for two people.
👀 Another Pro Tip: Transfer bonuses are great, but only transfer when you have a redemption in mind. Once your points are moved, there’s no undo button.
Stopovers and Open Jaws
Stopovers and open jaws are the ultimate loopholes for people who want more trip with fewer points. This is where things get fun. 😌
A stopover lets you spend a few days in a connecting city on the same award ticket. An open jaw lets you fly into one city and out of another without booking a separate award.
Some programs take this to another level:
Alaska Mileage Plan allows one stopover per direction (two for round-trip bookings) when you’re traveling internationally
Aeroplan sells stopovers for just 5,000 extra points
Some Avios programs let you mix partners and routes in some pretty flexible ways
If you only have enough points for one award flight, adding a stopover can turn it into two destinations for basically the same price.
For Example: Aeroplan’s 5,000-point stopovers are one of the cheapest ways on earth to add an extra city to your trip. You can tack on a second flight for a low as 12.5k points one way (and that’s without considering a potential transfer bonus).
Knowing When to Pay Cash
I love using points as much as the next travel nerd, but sometimes… it’s just not the move.
We’re living in an era where cash fares (especially over to Europe) regularly dip into the $300s and $400s. When that happens, cash almost always wins.
To put it simply:
If you’re redeeming points at less than 1.5 cents per point, you might be better off paying cash and saving your points for a higher-value redemption later.
Many cards (like the Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card/Chase Sapphire Reserve®, Capital One Venture X Rewards Credit Card, and Citi Strata Premier® Card) give strong earnings on travel purchases, which means paying cash can actually help you earn enough points for the next trip faster.
If you hold a card like the Venture X or Sapphire Reserve, run the numbers in their travel portal. Sometimes dynamic pricing works in your favor, especially on low-fare routes.
Bottom Line
The smartest travelers aren’t necessarily the ones with the biggest balances.
Y’all… I still only have a little over 200,000 points to my name, and I flew 76 times last year.
It’s all about knowing exactly when to spend points and when to save them. A little strategy can turn a smaller stash into multiple trips, a multi-city trip, or a premium cabin you thought was out of reach.
And if all else fails, remember: stopovers are basically free vacation sprinkles. Use them often (and thank me later)!
