Advice about my Chase Sapphire card

[Mandy923]

A few months ago, I signed up for this CC to take advantage of the 50,000 bonus points.

Fast forward 4 months, and now I have sitting in my account 66,400 points with the Chase Sapphire card. That's all good, except I'm a little confused as to best utilize these points!

 

We (my family of 5) have a Cruise planned for Jan. 2014 and will need:

5 airline tickets

1 hotel suite for 2 nights

Rental car

 

I see with Southwest it is a point for point transfer. So I could have 66,400 miles- which would probably get us 4 of the 5 RT ticekts we need. We will be flying from Norfolk, VA (orf) to Ft. Lauderdale (FLL). SW is running a pretty good sale right now. About $220 RT for my needed dates and airports.

 

So i'm thinking that this would be the best use of the points, but maybe using it on a hotel, or a different airline would be better?!

 

I'm also not quite sure what about booking directly through chase and saving "up to 20% on travel"

As anyone found this to be true, and worth it?

 

Please! Anyone who is a seasoned Chase Sapphire card user, please enlighten me :)

 

I'll also add, that I carry no balance on this card- pay whatever I spend within the same month.

[nolatravelgirl]

I looked up some random dates in December and it looks like it is about $250 round trip for Wanna Get Away fares ORF-FLL which translates to 15,000 points per ticket ($250*60=15000) . So 4 tickets will cost you $1000 if you pay out of pocket. Most frequent flyers value a point at 2 cents. So you are "spending" 60000 * .02 = $1,200 for something that is worth $1,000. If you have no other use for the points then by all means use them in this manner. You just have figure out how YOU value a point.

 

I personally save my points for trans-Atlantic travel in first or business, but you may not value that so consider any future travel. 60,000 points would get you 1 ticket in economy to Europe which can easily cost $1,600 which represents a much better value for points. A business class ticket to Europe is easily $5000 but would only "cost" 120,000 points.