Free Travel is always my goal for my family. We use various strategies to get points and miles to make our travel cheap or free. Our main strategies for getting points and status include:
- Maximizing credit card sign ups
- Registering for bonuses at hotels, airlines, etc.
- Tracking deals [I follow a lot of travel related blogs]
- Purchasing gift cards
I want to talk about my new strategy of purchasing gift cards to increase Chase Ultimate Rewards points. These are really valuable points because they offer an opportunity to transfer points to many of my favorite travel partners [Southwest Airlines, United Airlines, Hyatt]. This is not a new strategy – people have been doing this for a long time. I just clued in and I want to share how you too can maximize points without changing your spending habits.
If you have a Chase credit card that gives you bonus points for purchasing in certain categories I suggest that you take a minute and learn how to ‘bank’ a lot of points quickly my maximizing the categories. I do this by using my Chase Ink Plus card to earn Ultimate Rewards points. The Ink Plus offers 5 times the points on purchases at office supply stores.
How To Earn Ultimate Rewards Points
We don’t do a lot of shopping at office supply stores so at first glance this does not seem very interesting, but this is actually where it gets interesting. You can purchase gift cards for things you use already at any office supply store and the purchase is considered an office supply. For my family we shop at Whole Foods and Amazon a lot, so those seemed like low hanging fruit and this is where I started.
I went to our local office supply store and purchased $500 worth of Whole Foods cards. I easily spend this amount each month. For the $500 of Whole Foods gift cards I purchased with my Chase Ink Plus card, I received 2,500 Ultimate Rewards points. This is where some math comes into play to get my excited to continue to add an additional step to my shopping.
Here’s the math on adding one step to my grocery shopping: 30,000 UR points/year
$500/mo. x 5 points/$ = 2,500 UR points/month
2,500 UR points/mo. x 12 mo/yr = 30,000 UR points/year
Without adding any additional spending, I just made 30k very valuable travel points I can use on airlines or hotels. Ultimate Rewards points can be instantly transferred to Southwest Airlines, United Airlines, Hyatt, and many more travel partners at a 1:1 ratio. Learn how 30,000 UR points can just about take a family of 4 on two round trips from Denver to Seattle AND Denver to San Diego on Southwest Airlines – read my post on how you can maximize travel using Southwest points.
If you have questions about how to use this strategy get ahold of me – Email Amanda
