It really depends on when you plan to book your travel.
Airlines and hotels often run sales on their points and miles, offering discounts ranging from 20% to 165%. The main reason why they sell their points and miles is because their loyalty programs are the most profitable part of their companies. They hope the points or miles stay in your account or expire before you get a chance to redeem them.
There are only a few situations when it makes sense to purchase points and miles. In most cases applying for a credit card with a welcome bonus offer is the best way to add points or miles to your account.
How It Works
Once you create an airline or hotel loyalty account, you will be eligible to receive emails offering new promotional discounts on your points and miles. Although points and miles can be purchased anytime, it is advised to purchase with a promotional discount to get an even better deal.
Only purchase points and miles directly from the airline, hotel, or Points.com. It is against the terms and conditions to buy and sell their points and miles to other members or third-party sites (excluding Points.com). Doing so can put you at risk of having your account shut down and losing all of your points, miles, free night certificates, and status.
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When You Should Buy Points and Miles
It only makes sense to purchase points and miles to book an immediate flight or hotel redemption. Airlines and hotels regularly devalue their points and miles by raising the amount of a redemption–and they often do this without warning. If you speculatively purchase miles to use at a future time, they will be worth less once a devaluation happens.
If you need to add additional points or miles to your account to book a certain award, it would make sense to purchase if you don’t have another method to earn them. Last year, I needed an additional 5,000 Alaska miles for a business class award on Singapore Airlines. I purchased 4,000 miles plus a 40% bonus, which gave me a total of 5,600 miles. The miles were available for use in my account right away, and I immediately booked a flight from Singapore to San Francisco.
I do recommend purchasing points or miles if the purchase would cost less than the cash price of a certain flight or hotel. For certain loyalty programs that have points or miles that can expire, purchasing additional points or miles can extend the expiration date of the existing miles in your account.
The Best Programs to Purchase Points and Miles
The best types of points and miles to purchase are from programs that offer fixed-value pricing. This means that they have an award chart with set prices for flights to certain regions. Fixed-value programs can help avoid devaluations. Points and miles have a value ranging from 0.5 cents to 2 cents per point. When purchasing at a discount, they may be valued at higher than the normal cent-per-point value.
Some loyalty programs that offer great discounts are Air Canada Aeroplan, American Airlines, Avianca Lifemiles, Southwest Airlines, Jetblue, and Air France. If you purchase hotel points, the discounts tend to be lower than the discounts offered for airline miles. I only recommend buying hotel points if you need to top off your account to book a certain award.
Which Credit Card Should I Use?
If you are currently working on a credit card welcome offer, I would recommend using that card for all transactions until you meet the requirements to receive the bonus. Next, it depends if you are making the points purchase from Points.com or the airline or hotel directly.
If you are not working on a welcome offer and are purchasing from Points.com, I would recommend using a card such as Citi Double Cash, Capital One Venture, or Venture X, which all earn 2 points per dollar on all transactions. If you are purchasing from an airline or hotel site directly, I recommend using their respective co-brand credit card or a transferable rewards card that earns multiple points per dollar on airline or hotel transactions.
An Alternative to Purchasing Points and Miles
If you don’t need additional points right away, another way to earn additional points is by shopping online through a shopping portal. Shopping portals work by giving you an incentive for clicking a link from sites such as Rakuten, Be Frugal, Top Cashback, and several airline and hotel portal sites. These sites also offer special discount codes not found anywhere else. It does not cost anything to use a shopping portal, and is easy to earn extra points and miles just for shopping online.
Start from a site called Cashback Monitor, an aggregator that maintains a database of the deals offered by the shopping portals. Search for the merchant you would like to shop with, and it will list every portal that offers an incentive for clicking their link. Start by creating an account with the shopping portal and click the link to the site you would like to purchase from. You can essentially double dip and earn additional points if you use a travel rewards credit card for the purchase.
INSIDER TIPMost airlines will let you put awards on hold for 2 to 5 days. If you see an award that requires you to purchase additional miles, call the airline and request to have the award placed on hold for you, then purchase the remaining miles that you need. It may take 2 to 3 days for the miles to show in your account.
You will not earn any portal rewards if you use a discount code not found on the shopping portal site. If you receive a pop-up when you go to your retailer’s website with a special promo code, that will result in the purchase not earning portal rewards. Retailers do this because they would rather give you a discount than pay another company.