AMEX Membership Rewards Points Saved Me 31,500 Miles (and $900!) on 3 Round-Trip Award Tickets This Christmas, Here’s How You Can Do It Too

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I love collecting American Express Membership Rewards points because they provide me and my family tons of flexibility.  They’re especially valuable because my mom holds The Business Platinum® Card from American Express, that offers a 35% rebate on award tickets booked using AMEX Pay With Points on your selected airline.

We’ve used this perk dozens of times, and on this particular occasion, it saved us ~10,000 miles per award ticket on 3 round-trip coach flights over Christmas week!  That’s pretty incredible because that’s more than enough miles for yet another round-trip coach ticket within the US.  And it’s a great example of why earning flexible rewards should be a part of everyone’s travel and credit card strategy.

I’ll explain my own booking strategy and how you can make flexible points and credit card perks like this one work for you, too!

I’m Excited to Enjoy the Lights Along Denver’s Popular 16th Street Mall (and Maybe to a Little Shopping While I’m at It!) Thanks to AMEX Points

When booking domestic coach award travel, I always start with a quick search on Google Flights to check the cash price of tickets.  I was admittedly a little surprised to see the tickets were so affordable for somewhat last-minute travel over Christmas week.  Round-trip coach flights were only ~$300 a piece.

I’d originally planned on using United Airlines miles for our tickets.  But given the fact that flights were so cheap, I realized that using the 35% rebate from the AMEX Business Platinum card would save us boatloads of points.

United Airlines usually charges 25,000 miles for domestic round-trip coach tickets, but the flights I wanted were actually going for 30,000 United Airlines miles round-trip.  So it was clearly a better deal book using AMEX Pay With Points and the rewards my mom had earned using her AMEX Business Platinum card.

Using AMEX Pay With Points, the tickets were ~30,000 AMEX Membership Rewards points each (you get 1 cent a piece using this method).  But with the 35% rebate, I paid just ~19,500 AMEX Membership Rewards points per ticket.

That’s a savings of 10,500 miles per ticket, or 31,500 miles total accounting for all 3 tickets!

Again, I can’t stress enough the value of collecting flexible rewards.  With a stash of flexible points like AMEX Membership Rewards points (or any other rewards currency, like Chase Ultimate Rewards points!), you’ll always have options.  Not having to mess with blackout dates and award seat availability can make the process of finding award tickets a lot less painful.  And with the right travel rewards credit cards, you always make the most of your hard-earned miles & points!

Meghan Hunter is an editor for Million Mile Secrets. She covers points, miles, credit cards, airlines, hotels and general travel. Her work has also appeared in The Points Guy.

Editorial Note: We're the Million Mile Secrets team. And we're proud of our content, opinions and analysis, and of our reader's comments. These haven’t been reviewed, approved or endorsed by any of the airlines, hotels, or credit card issuers which we often write about. And that’s just how we like it! :)

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