Redeem MR's for cash / gift card?

[nayrb3]

Ok, so hear me out, I read a post somewhere by @PedroNY where he posted that he used Amex MR's for Home depot gift cards and bought a new stackable washer and dryer for the house. It got me thinking about my situation...

I recently signed up for the Biz Plat 150k and now have 170k after meeting spend. I have about 200k avios which we use for our year family trip to Maui or Kauai on AS, but that's two years worth of Hawaiian vacations from the west coast (with 2016 already booked) and about as many Avios as I want to keep in that program. We don't travel internationally yet, since my kids are both under the age of 5 and wife doesn't want to be that far from them. We travel a bunch domestic, almost exclusively on WN, have tons of avios, and two CP's on WN for the four of us that expire in 2016. Likely wont fly delta or jet blue due to CP on WN and with my oldest starting school this year, am anticipating less travel / trips.

I have about 80k UR (which I only transfer to Hyatt for Hyatt House / Place stays with the family, wife and 2 kids under the age of 5 (free breakfast)). With the recent credit card changes with Chase bank cards, I would like to stretch these 80k points with cash and points bookings and was thinking about...wait for it...cashing in my MR's for Hyatt Gift cards or Car Rental gift cards so that we can stretch my Hyatt points and not have to pay out of pocket for car rentals.

I just picked up a Citi Premier for me and SO (100k TYP) and an A+ for the wife (her second) and am working on the min spend on those, which I was going to use for car rentals. I also have some alamo certs from the daily getaways deal this year, so was leaning toward using 150k MR for $1500 in Hyatt GC's. Please don't flog or excommunicate me, but don't see a ton of value in MR outside of avios and gc's. Am I the only one?

I am happy to field questions or thoughts if you have any. Am I missing something or is this what's best for my situation? Pedro? Bueller?

 

[smittytabb]

Ok, so hear me out, I read a post somewhere by @PedroNY where he posted that he used Amex MR's for Home depot gift cards and bought a new stackable washer and dryer for the house. It got me thinking about my situation...

I recently signed up for the Biz Plat 150k and now have 170k after meeting spend. I have about 200k avios which we use for our year family trip to Maui or Kauai on AS, but that's two years worth of Hawaiian vacations from the west coast (with 2016 already booked) and about as many Avios as I want to keep in that program. We don't travel internationally yet, since my kids are both under the age of 5 and wife doesn't want to be that far from them. We travel a bunch domestic, almost exclusively on WN, have tons of avios, and two CP's on WN for the four of us that expire in 2016. Likely wont fly delta or jet blue due to CP on WN and with my oldest starting school this year, am anticipating less travel / trips.

I have about 80k UR (which I only transfer to Hyatt for Hyatt House / Place stays with the family, wife and 2 kids under the age of 5 (free breakfast)). With the recent credit card changes with Chase bank cards, I would like to stretch these 80k points with cash and points bookings and was thinking about...wait for it...cashing in my MR's for Hyatt Gift cards or Car Rental gift cards so that we can stretch my Hyatt points and not have to pay out of pocket for car rentals.

I just picked up a Citi Premier for me and SO (100k TYP) and an A+ for the wife (her second) and am working on the min spend on those, which I was going to use for car rentals. I also have some alamo certs from the daily getaways deal this year, so was leaning toward using 150k MR for $1500 in Hyatt GC's. Please don't flog or excommunicate me, but don't see a ton of value in MR outside of avios and gc's. Am I the only one?

I am happy to field questions or thoughts if you have any. Am I missing something or is this what's best for my situation? Pedro? Bueller?

I think that it is important for you to use them for what you think is the best value. Neither my SO or I have used any of our MR. I am not sure why, but it is just one of those programs that I haven't sorted out well yet. I have a daughter in NYC that uses her MR to pay for taxis. For me, that makes no sense, but for her, it does. Just make sure you consider all the possibilities (including possible devaluation) before you jump. Better to use them if you are happy with your choice.

 

[pstravels]

Depends on the person tbh. Just make sure you can't get more value elsewhere in a soon ish time frame. Only points that are redeemed are actually worth anything. If they just sit there in your account, they are just a depreciating.

If you have high balances in the usual culprits, then its fine to spend the points somewhere else. Even if you only get 1c value, I still think its fine, if you otherwise were not going to use those points for an extended period of time otherwise. Saving money in your pocket now is sometimes more valuable than speculatively keeping points for a long period of time.

Varies on your travel habits too, but if you are someone who churns a lot, just use the points now. You probably will have enough in the future for whatever travel you need to do anyways.

 

[raenye]

Depends on the person tbh. Just make sure you can't get more value elsewhere in a soon ish time frame. Only points that are redeemed are actually worth anything. If they just sit there in your account, they are just a depreciating.

Not sure how MR redemptions actually work, but assuming you get the same value, statement credit is ALWAYS superior to full-price GC just as you could buy said GC with your card and get points for the purchase.

 

[billatq]

If you can get a Morgan Stanley AMEX, you can cash out into an asset management account at one cent per point, which is typically a better deal than a straight-up statement credit, since you would only get 0.6 cents per point with a statement credit.

 

[Andrew Beall]

I guess I'm curious why you accumulated so many MR points in the first place if you don't plan on traveling internationally and have more than enough miles for domestic flights? I would cringe at the thought of redeeming MR points for less than 2cpp, but it sounds like there isn't a better option for you.

 

[Matt]

I guess I'm curious why you accumulated so many MR points in the first place if you don't plan on traveling internationally and have more than enough miles for domestic flights? I would cringe at the thought of redeeming MR points for less than 2cpp, but it sounds like there isn't a better option for you.

Some might have an approach of locking in 150K pts ASAP and figuring out what to do with it later. It's a clear profit however you look at it.

 

[Andrew Beall]

Some might have an approach of locking in 150K pts ASAP and figuring out what to do with it later. It's a clear profit however you look at it.

True, I suppose 150k MR is as good as it gets.

 

[freezerstacks]

Last August there was a gift card sale. I ended up getting Home Depot gift cards for 1.4 cents a point (7000MR for $100.) I think some transfers to travel programs might offer better value, but I used the cards to buy an appliance.

 

[Hanaleiradio]

Things change. Kids will get older soon and International travel will be right around the corner. IMHO, I would risk hanging onto MR for transfer to ANA or (gasp) Aeroplan for travel to Europe (on United) in another year. Or, transfer to Singapore for cheapest J family travel to Hawaii. I just did that for sons and grandkids next spring.

 

[Alansauce]

Discover IT has a promo for 5% back at hardware stores and another 5% as a new signup promo for the first year. If you have just moved too there are 10% off coupons that stack. So in that situation for Pedro I wouldn't have used my points. Honestly last year we redeemed some points for amazon merch and I regret it ever since, but situation is different every time for everyone.

 

[pstravels]

I would never redeem for a statement credit or a gift card. If I was going to do any unorthodox redemption it probably would just be selling the points to a broker. There are many reputable brokers that will buy MR. Some give rates of around 1.3c per point.

While there is shutdown risk the method that is used by the better one's eliminates all the risk. I personally have no experience with these guys but know of those who have used various ones.

The way they do it is have you make a loyalty acct in say SQ using your info. You then just transfer over the MR points into SQ.

They then use your acct to book flights for others. There's basically 0 risk on the Amex finding out side. However, you could get in trouble for the airline, if they found out your miles were being used too book other folks (not you friends or acquintances) on trips in exchange for money.

Overall...while I don't recommend doing this...as its easy to get more value yourself redeeming these, just wanted to throw this out there.