Looking back: Nick’s 2025 rewards plans and end results

At the beginning of the year, I wrote a post taking stock of my miles and points and laying out plans to focus a bit more on earning cash back in 2025 (See: Cashing in on 2025 opportunities). As we approach the end of the year, I thought it made sense to look back and provide an update.

Opening vs closing points balances in 2025

As we approach the end of 2025, my points balances have shifted, which is no surprise as we traveled extensively in 2025. However, I’ve had a heavy shift in points balances toward specific airline programs, in large part due to big promotions. Here were the balances I cited in my January 2025 post as compared to my end-of-year balances:

It is important to note that we have used more miles and points than the changes may suggest. For instance, we used far more than 300K hotel points this year, but we also earned hotel points. Frankly, I was surprised when I took stock of our year-end numbers given the points we used, though we did take advantage of some good opportunities to beef up our balances.

Some additional notes about the ending balances:

• About 1.4 million of our airline miles are JetBlue points thanks to 25 for 25. Another 750K miles are remaining from the SAS EuroBonus Millionaire promotion (I didn’t actually receive those miles until March 2025). Taken together, well over half of our current stash of airline miles is due to those two promotions. That’s awesome, but neither currency is as versatile as some airline programs.
• About 70% of our hotel points are with Marriott (most of which were earned from credit card referrals) and Wyndham (most of which were earned from the 8x gas category bonus on the Wyndham Earner Business credit card).
• We purchased (and used) some Hilton points, so our “net” hotel points loss doesn’t account for that
• Our cash back rewards are mostly in Capital One cash back on my wife’s Spark Cash card, which could be converted to miles at $0.01 = 1 mile (in other words, we could get around 200,000 transferable Capital One miles with this cash back if we wanted more transferable miles)
• We used our Marriott gift card money over the course of the year. The Hotels.com gift card in our year-end totals came from redeeming Capital One Shopping rewards.

My main point of frustration has been that I have many fewer Hyatt points than I’d like, and our Ultimate Rewards balance has not been replenished at the pace to which we had been accustomed for years (while we have a healthy total number of transferable points, keep in mind that total is split among all of the major transferable currencies between both my wife and I, so the individual currency balances are not as plentiful as the total figure suggests). I have been very excited about the Bilt partnership with Rakuten, as that provides a way to earn points that are transferable to programs like Hyatt and Alaska, which can not be earned at a rapid clip otherwise.

However, I stated nearly a year ago that I would focus more acutely on cash back in 2025. How did I do on that front?

I did an awful job with bank bonuses in 2025

I am really disappointed with my failures on the bank bonus front in 2025.

In the post I published a year ago, I noted that I would be going after a $900 business checking bonus from US Bank. I did indeed go after that. I did not anticipate being charged a fee to receive a wire transfer (as part of the account funding process), which put me under the required minimum balance. I had funded right before the deadline to do so within 30 days of account funding, and the fee didn’t hit until a month later, by which time it would be too late to maintain the daily minimum balance. I literally face-palmed.

I had some choice words for myself on that fail. I did call the bank to plead my case on not expecting the fees, and they agreed to waive them as a one-time courtesy, but I didn’t expect that to matter for the bonus. The bonus was expected to post in April, but it didn’t, so I intended to close the account. Ever the procrastinator, I failed at that, too. Then, in July, my procrastination paid off when I very unexpectedly received the $900 bonus.

Score! I did not see that coming. I thought for sure I had messed this one up and would be out of luck. In the end, I was one lucky duck.

Unfortunately, that’s where the good news began and ended.

I opened a TD Bank business checking account early in the year and transferred the funds required to be held in the account. Earning the bank bonus also required making some transactions with the account. Unfortunately, I couldn’t log into the account. I’ll spare you the full story, but suffice it to say that I called numerous times and they couldn’t help me get logged in online. I’d have needed to go to a branch, and there aren’t any nearby, so I eventually just gave up on the TD account and transferred my money back out, without having earned the checking account bonus.

In a separate fail, I was targeted with the ability to earn a $300 bonus for receiving three months of direct deposit in my long-existing First Tech Federal Credit Union account. Direct deposit requirements can often be met with ACH transfers, but I didn’t immediately jump on setting that up. However, after doing some product resale and receiving an ACH transfer payment, I got an email indicating that I had triggered the first of three months for the bonus. I therefore figured that it would be really easy to complete that bonus. Unfortunately, future such payments did not seem to trigger the bonus, so I missed out on this one, too.

Sadly, I didn’t pursue any other checking account bonuses in 2025. I really need to get back on that bandwagon in 2026! Back in 2021, we took advantage of far more bank bonuses; I’d like to challenge myself to go after more of these in 2026, with an eye toward adding to long-term education savings for my kids.

In terms of credit card rewards, we dropped Bank of America Platinum Honors early in the year. We did move to using my wife’s Capital One Spark Cash card quite a bit for a while to earn cash back that could alternatively become miles, and we transitioned to more and more purchases on the Citi Double Cash card. We’ve continued using our US Bank Altitude Reserve card as well in anticipation of US Bank adding a transfer partner program. However, that hasn’t yet materialized, so for the time being, I’m looking at the Altitude Reserve card as a 3% cash back card with tap to pay (since mobile wallet purchases earn 3x and the rewards can be redeemed to a US Bank checking account at 1 point = $0.01).

I cashed out some Amex Membership Rewards points

I mentioned in the year-beginning post that I had redeemed around 400,000 Amex Membership Rewards points for a Schwab brokerage deposit several years ago (I did that back when the rate was 1.25c per point, so I had received $5,000). I’ve been able to watch that investment grow without ever missing the points. That makes me realize that it probably makes sense to cash out now and again.

Earlier this year, my wife opened a Business Gold card because of a good bonus offer (a targeted offer of 175,000 points after $10,000 in purchases at the time). We ended up with more than 200,000 Amex Membership Rewards points from that bonus.

I ultimately decided to redeem 200,000 points this year for cash deposits in a Schwab brokerage account. With a Schwab Platinum card, that meant we got 1.1c per point for a total of $2,200 out of the points earned from that card. That’s not a redemption that I generally recommend: it is far below our Reasonable Redemption Value of Amex points. I generally prefer to transfer my Amex points to airline partners for business and first class flights. However, cashing out 200K Amex points has not impacted my ability to redeem miles for international travel in 2025. I therefore decided to cash out the rewards from that bonus to cover some of our ancillary travel expenses (which were not insignificant this year). I probably wouldn’t have done that if not for the large stash of points we have overall; with millions of points on hand, it seemed reasonable to redeem some amount to cover cash costs.

I should note that I chose to redeem my Amex points for cash instead of redeeming cash back from my wife’s Capital One Spark Cash card for cash. Here’s why: each penny of Capital One cash back rewards can either become $0.01 or 1 transferable point (and ultimately 1 airline mile). On the flip side, each Amex point can become 1 airline mile (when transferred to most partners), but each Amex point can alternatively become $0.011 (10% more valuable than Capital One cash back pennies). I therefore redeemed 200,000 Amex points for $2,200, and I held onto $2,000 worth of Capital One cash back rewards that I could redeem for 200,000 miles in the future (or redeem for $2,000 if I end up wanting cash).

Deals we took advantage of in 2025

In terms of earning rewards, here are some great deals we took advantage of in 2025:

• We opened a Business Gold card under a great offer (175K after $10K in purchases at the time)
• We strategically upgraded a Business Green to Business Platinum (which worked out not only for the reasons in that post, but also because it renewed at $695 despite getting the new benefits in September)
• We helped a family member open the Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card under the 100K offer (long ago expired) and stack it with 30K Membership Rewards via Rakuten, which saved us some points on our recent trip to Europe since she was able to use some of her own points as well.
• My wife opened the Citi Strata Elite card and got caught in the botched launch, which ended up in getting the first year’s annual fee refunded (which is an amazing deal)
• We opened 3 total Hawaiian Airlines cards in my household while those were still available
• We took advantage of many terrific Capital One Shopping deals, which yielded rewards that we redeemed for Marriott gift cards (that helped pay for food & drink at Marriott properties in Bora Bora) and Hotels.com gift cards
• We did a fair amount of resale, which made it possible to hit big spend bonuses like the Companion Certificate and bonus Loyalty Points on my AAdvantage Aviator Silver card and extra Hyatt elite nights
• We pursued JetBlue’s 25 for 25 promotion, with the rest of my family reaching their 25th destination this past Saturday (they all got their Mosaic status and 350,000 points each on Monday). I am beyond excited that my kids now have airline elite status that is scheduled to last into their 30s! Nobody knows what the future holds for JetBlue, but if it continues for that long, I’ll be pretty excited to have laid the groundwork for that.

Bottom line

While I use Award Wallet to keep track of points balances in general (so that I would notice any sudden changes), I don’t often take a step back to look at totals the way I did here. I wouldn’t have guessed that we’d have ended the year with more transferable points than last year given the amount of travel we did this year, but I’m not surprised that our airline-specific miles have jumped up significantly, thanks to the JetBlue and SAS promotions. In 2026, we need to focus on building up some more transferable points, particularly those transferable to Hyatt, as we’ve been running up against the bottom of the barrel in terms of our Hyatt points or points transferable to Hyatt. Having recently requalified for Globalist status in 2026, I want to have plenty of points on hand to be able to take advantage of more great Hyatt deals. Overall, I am incredibly thankful to enjoy a hobby that creates the opportunity for such rich rewards that can unlock incredible travel experiences for my family. There is no doubt that earning, redeeming, and tracking all of the components of this hobby takes up brain space on a daily basis, but the payoff is huge in terms of the opportunities it provides. I look forward to 2026 with excitement for the new opportunities we unlock and our continued focus on a hobby that has given us so much.

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