What Would I Do With 100k Points?

Plan a Trip With Me

Chase recently announced a new limited-time offer on their Sapphire Preferred credit card-a whopping 100k point bonus if you spend $5,000 within 3 months. That is an incredible offer from the normal bonus offer of 60k points for spending $4,000 within 3 months. That got me thinking-what would I do with 100k points?

Points can be stretched pretty far, as long as you look. You can 100% redeem your points for $1,000 cash back as a statement credit if that’s what you really want to do. You could also redeem your points for $1,250 in travel by booking flights and hotels within the Chase Travel Portal. But Chase has a large number of airline and hotel partners where you’re able to transfer your points, usually at a 1:1 rate, so 1 Chase Ultimate Rewards point to 1 hotel point or airline mile.

By transferring your points out of the portal to a partner airline or hotel, you’re stretching your points to get you the most value for your points. This allows you to travel more, stay longer, whatever it is you want to do.

So where would I book a trip if I had 100k points to work with? I’ll show you! Since we live in eastern Pennsylvania, we have a few airports that I’m willing to position to to get that cheaper flight. That includes Philadelphia, Newark, JFK and Baltimore. We have quite the selection! But living within 2-2.5 hours of major airports makes it easy to travel to so many places. But, here’s my suggestion for a trip for a family of 5 this summer 😅.

New York City to Fort Lauderdale

I found a flight using seats.aero from New York City (JFK) to Fort Lauderdale (FLL) on June 7th with JetBlue, a transfer partner of Chase. That flight is 4,200 points one-way, so for 5 people, that would be 21,000 points. It was actually the same number of points on the one-way flight back on June 11th, so round trip it is 42,000 points. Not bad!

For a family of 5, our hotels are a bit more limited because not all hotels allow 5 people to a room, nor do they all have sofabeds with their 2 double/queen beds. But I can usually count on Hyatt Place and Hyatt House hotels to squeeze us all into a room and prevent us from having to book 2 rooms. So I found the Hyatt Place Delray Beach hotel that could accomodate 5 people to a room for 12,000 points per night, totaling 48,000 points total for the hotel.

So 42,000 points for flights and 48,000 points for a hotel for 4 nights for free for a family of 5! And I even have 10,000 points leftover to use towards a future trip or for a rental car. Of course, if your family is smaller, you can have more flexibility with hotels and you wouldn’t need to spend as many points on flights. But I wanted to show that it is totally possible to book a free trip even with a larger family.

If I were to book these flights and hotel within the Chase Travel Portal, the total would have been $1170 for flights and $666 for the hotel. So by transferring those Chase points to JetBlue and to Hyatt to book instead of within the portal, I essentially got more than $500 extra to work with than the $1,250 the 100k points would have gotten us within the portal.

Many Ways to Use Points

Beyond this domestic example of using points for flights and a hotel, another way you could use those 100k points is to fly your family to and from Europe for as little as 6,000 points one way. At the time of this writing, here are some great point redemptions for Europe this summer, booking through Virgin Atlantic:

• JFK to London (LHR): 6,000 points
• JFK to Amsterdam (AMS): 12,000 points
• JFK to Rome (FCO): 12,000 points
• JFK to Paris (CDG): 12,000 points
• JFK to Barcelona (BCN): 12,000 points
• JFK to Lisbon (LIS): 12,000 points
• JFK to Edinburgh (EDI): 10,000 points

Virgin Atlantic is a transfer partner of many banks including Chase, Capital One, American Express, Citi, Wells Fargo and Bilt and I feel like they’re here to make our European dreams come alive with these point values. While I would need 120,000 points round trip to go to some other European cities with my family of 5, we could easily book a trip to the United Kingdom and explore from there with the 100k from the Chase Sapphire Preferred card.

There are many ways to use points and these are just a few suggestions. I’ll put together another blog post about more ways to redeem those credit card points but hopefully this gets the wheels turning and helps you realize that there’s so many possibilities!

Larger Family-No Problem

Traveling with a family of 5-even flying and staying in a hotel-doesn’t have to be hard. If all you want to do is get that cash back from the bank as a credit, by all means-go for it! If you simply want to book travel within the Chase Travel Portal and get a little extra for your money, that’s okay too! We did that for years and occasionally it still makes sense to do that depending on the circumstance. The point (pun intended!) I want to get across is that it isn’t scary to transfer those points and book. Just do your research and find where you want to stay or when you want to fly, and transfer right before booking.

Booking flights directly with the airline offers better customer service, more flexibility for changes or cancellations, and potentially exclusive deals or rewards, while portals offer ease of use and the ability to earn additional miles, but with less control over your booking. 

So if you’re looking for a family getaway, a couples getaway or just something fun, consider applying for the Chase Sapphire Preferred card that can get you 100k points towards that trip. This is a limited-time offer and there’s no telling when the offer will end. So I wouldn’t sit on it too long!

And lastly, using a credit card doesn’t mean you have to spend money you don’t have. Definitely don’t do that! Spend what you normally would spend, just put it on a credit card to earn those extra points. It all adds up! And if you’re thinking you wouldn’t be able to spend $5,000 within 3 months, take a closer look at your expenses and what you’re spending money on. Chances are, you’re at least spending $1,666 each month between groceries, utilities, services, gas and anything in between.

Let me know if you need help thinking of ways to use your points or strategizing. I love talking travel and would love to help!

The world is waiting-go explore it ✈️

Lauren