We have a 2 week break this coming December and we chose Singapore as this year’s destination. I messed up a bit in that I didn’t know that flights on Singapore Airlines opened 355 days in advance. By the time I started looking, many of the biz class seats were booked or limited in quantity, we need 5 seats! However, based on what I saw, I am pretty confident that I would not have had enough KrisFlyer Miles anyway. As it stood, I pooled miles from a number of different sources to accumulate the 730,000 miles that I needed for our Premium Economy (think like Delta comfort) flights. Each flight required 146,000 points.
Instead of depleting mine and Rob’s entire American Express Membership Rewards balance, I decided to transfer points to Singapore from some other sources first.
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- Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer is a transfer partner of Chase Ultimate Rewards and I depleted the 50,000 plus point balance from Rob’s Ultimate Rewards account and transferred them. Remember, he had gotten a 50,000 point bonus back in November when he got the Chase Ink Business Unlimited and this was a great use of those points. Note, I was able to transfer Rob’s Chase Ultimate Rewards points to MY KrisFlyer account.
- Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer is also a transfer partner of Citi ThankYou Rewards. I depleted the 60,000 plus point balance from my ThankYou Rewards account and transferred them to my KrisFlyer account. Recall I had gotten the Citi ThankYou Premier card at the end of last year with a 60,000 point bonus.
- Finally, Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer is a transfer partner of American Express Memerbship Rewards. For the balance of 620,000, I depleted Rob’s very big balance of Membership Rewards and much of mine too. We are always quite flush with American Express points because we consistently spend on our American Express Blue Business Cards, Rob’s American Express Business Gold Card and my American Express Gold Card (4x points on dining and groceries!). Note, I was able to transfer Rob’s American Express Membership Rewards points to MY KrisFlyer account.
So how much did we save using these many many points from these three sources? Well had we paid each flight would have cost 1774, so five flights would have been $8870. So in my mind, not wanting to shell out close to $9,000 for flights, that is what we saved.
Now for that pesky value calculation which will not turn out well….
Chase Ultimate Rewards points are valued at about 2 cents per points. So 50,000 Chase points are valued at about $1,000. Citi ThankYou points are valued at about 1.7 cents per point. So 60,000 ThankYou points are valued at about $1020. Finally, American Express Membership Rewards points are valued at about 2.0 cents per point. So 620,000 points is valued at about 12,400. Ugh so the value of the points that I used is $1000 plus $1,020 plus $12,400 for a total value of 14,420. Objectively speaking, I lost a lot of value here…$5550 to be exact. Subjectively, I want us to go to Singapore and I don’t want to pay! That is enough value TO ME!
Now read about our $4,000 savings on Singapore hotels.