When is it time to expand into a second or third transferrable points currency?

Last week, I saw a question in our Frequent Miler Insiders Facebook group that comes up pretty frequently: Does it make sense to get a card in a new ecosystem if you’re already heavily invested in another transferable currency system? When is it time to branch out into a second set of transferable points?  I’d argue that the answer to the first question is “yes” and the answer to the second question is “Whenever there is a compelling offer”.

Mastering one ecosystem

While some readers constantly open new credit cards, the average consumer doesn’t. There are many people who are content to have one set of cards that play well together to maximize category bonuses. Greg has written about the best credit card combinations many times before (See for example Awesome credit card combos w/ transferable points).

Many people refer to the “Chase Trifecta”, though in all honesty I think that there is probably some disagreement as to the best three cards to complete that trifecta. In my opinion, the best combination of three Chase cards would be:

• Chase Sapphire Preferred or Chase Sapphire Reserve (depending on whether or not you can make use of the Reserve’s additional benefits)
• Chase Freedom Unlimited (for a base earning rate of 1.5 Ultimate Rewards points per dollar spent)
• Chase Ink Business Cash Card (for 5x at office supply stores and on Internet / cell phone bills

That combination would make it possible to earn 2x or 3x on travel, 3x on dining, and 5x almost anywhere you want if you’re willing to buy gift cards at office supply stores and deal with partial balances left over on your cards (I’m not willing to do that, but I know a lot of people use that strategy effectively). You may alternatively replace the Chase Ink Cash card with a Chase Freedom Flex card for quarterly rotating 5x categories, particularly if you don’t think you have a business (though if that’s the reason, I encourage you to re-think things and find a business like reselling items on Facebook marketplace or eBay from time to time or writing a blog or some other occasional side hustle — it doesn’t need to be regular or earn much money to qualify for business credit cards).

You could have a similar set up with Amex, Citi, or Capital One — again, we’ve written about the best combinations with each major transferable currency before.

If you have a setup like that and it works, is there sense in branching out to a new currency? I’d argue that there certainly is.

Consider the overlapping partners

The following airline programs are transfer partners with at least two transferrable currencies as per our Transfer Partner Master List.

• Air Canada Aeroplan
• Air France KLM Flying Blue
• Avianca LifeMiles
• Cathay Pacific Asia Miles
• Avios (Aer Lingus, British Airways, Iberia, Qatar Airways)
• AeroMexico ClubPremier
• Emirates Skywards
• Etihad Guest
• Qantas Frequent Flyer
• Singapore KrisFlyer
• Turkish Miles & Smiles
• Virgin Atlantic Flying Club

Note: World of Hyatt and United Mileage Plus are both partners with two programs (Chase Ultimate Rewards and Bilt Rewards), but given the lack of a welcome bonus on the Bilt card, I am excluding it here. I also excluded EVA because, while they partner with two programs, the ratio from Capital One to EVA is not 1:1.

You probably don’t use some of the programs above — but I bet that if you consider things mathematically, you’ll find that you should consider using more of them.

The specific question from Frequent Miler Insiders that inspired this post was something to the effect of this: “I’m already in the Chase ecosystem, so it probably doesn’t make sense to get a card in a different ecosystem because a balance of “only 100,000 points” is unlikely to be useful…..right?”

I’d argue that you are spinning your wheels and wasting an opportunity if you don’t strike while the iron is hot on a great offer — even in a secondary transferable currency.

Let’s imagine that you’re in the Chase Ultimate Rewards ecosystem with your Chase Trifecta. If you see an offer that yields 100,000 American Express Membership Rewards points or Capital One Miles or Citi ThankYou points. I think this type of situation is exactly why you need to learn about foreign transfer partner programs if they are not yet part of your arsenal.

Let’s draw a single transfer partner out of the list of airline programs that partner with two or more transferable currencies: Singapore Krisflyer. I choose Singapore for this example for several reasons:

1. They are a Star Alliance airline, so they have many partner airlines
2. They partner with all of the major transferable currencies.
3. They have stiff competition for the best award chart sweet spots (and in fact, I intentionally choose Singapore because they don’t have the best deal via Star Alliance in many instances)

Let’s assume that under ordinary circumstances, as someone invested in the Chase ecosystem, your primary airline transfer partner is United Mileage Plus and you like to travel to Europe. With United, you have the chance to book economy class for 40,000 miles one-way or business class for 80,000 miles on United metal or 43,900 miles on partners in economy or 88,000 miles in business on partners (until the next unannounced devaluation). Singapore Krisflyer charges 30,500 miles in economy class (8.5K miles cheaper than United!) or at 81,500 miles one-way in business class on Star Alliance partners with no surcharges.

In a situation like that, it would absolutely make sense to take advantage of a new 100K point offer with a secondary transferable currency and combine forces with your Chase Ultimate Rewards points by transferring from both programs into your Chase Ultimate Rewards . Deplete the currency you don’t use often first (in this case, the Amex points or Capital One miles or Citi points) and then fill in the gap with your Ultimate Rewards points. If you were to skip that offer, you would need to do $20,000 in purchases at 5x just to make up for the 100,000 points you missed, eating up most of the capacity for annual 5x spend on an Ink Cash card.

In fact, let’s create an imaginary scenario where you want to fly round trip to Europe in economy class and you intended to generate the points by spending on your Chase Ink Cash card at office supply stores. Let’s further assume that you would like to fly a Star Alliance partner and you would book via United MileagePlus. That would cost 87,800 miles round trip. It would take $17,560 in spend to generate 87,800 miles.

• United charges 43,900 miles each way for partner economy class to Europe. That’s 87,800 miles round trip.
• 87,800 miles / 5x at office supply stores = $17,560 in spend to generate the miles necessary for a round trip economy class ticket.

Given the above scenarios, you would be far better off leveraging the Singapore Krisflyer program given that Singapore charges 61,000 miles round trip for an economy class Star Alliance award to Europe.

• Singapore Krisflyer charges 30,500 miles each way in economy class for a total of 61,000 miles round trip
• 61,000 miles / 5x at office supply stores = $12,200 in spend to generate the miles necessary for a round trip economy class ticket.

That is far less spend than you’d need to do to book via United Mileage Plus, which is an immediate advantage. I should note that there are some disadvantages to booking via Singapore Krisflyer — cancellations aren’t free and miles have a hard expiration policy. Still, the cost savings here makes a truly substantial difference, particularly over multiple passengers.

However, you can do quite a bit better leveraging just some of that $12,200 in spend with a single new card offer. Let’s imagine that you you found an offer for 100K transferable points from Amex, Capital One, or Citi that required $6,000 in spend. Diverting $6K worth of spend would yield 106,000 total points from the new card. Assuming you still intended to do a total of $12,200 worth of spend, you could put the remaining $6,200 worth of spend on your Chase Ink Cash card and it would yield an additional 31,000 points for a grand total of 137,000 points.

• $6K in spend for an imaginary 100K offer yields 106K points
• $6,200 in spend at office supply stores x 5 points per dollar = 31K Ultimate Rewards points
• Total points earned with $12,200 spend = 137K points

Opening that one new card offer nearly doubles your total return on spend.

If you’re watching the numbers closely, you may realize something important: the same amount of spend you’d have previously put on your Chase Ink Cash card to earn enough points for one round trip economy class ticket via United Mileage Plus will yield enough points for two round trip economy class tickets plus some points left over.

More importantly, the same amount of spend you’d have needed to book a single round trip economy class ticket via United Mileage Plus could yield enough points for a round trip business class ticket in one direction via Singapore Krisflyer.

The same type of example could be repeated almost infinitely: the more cards you open, the more tickets you could book (the $12,200 in spend you’d need to do at 5x for a round trip economy class ticket via on your Chase card at 5x would be enough to support a new card or two and still have some leftover 5x spend). You may not want to open 2 or 3 new cards every year. That’s fine. My core point here is that you shouldn’t throw out the baby with the bathwater: just because you don’t want to complicate your life with 2 or 3 or 4 or more new credit cards every year, just opening one new card when a welcome offer is at a high point can yield far more points and open up far more possibilities — and those other transferable currencies can play nicely with your existing cards.

In fact, Singapore Krisflyer wasn’t a cherry-picked example. Consider Virgin Atlantic Flying Club for Delta business class awards to Europe. Those awards are admittedly tough to find, but let’s imagine you found round trip business class availability to Europe on Delta. That would cost 100K total Virgin Atlantic miles. A single new card bonus could potentially buy you a round trip ticket that would otherwise require $20,000 worth of spend at 5x. And the key point here is that Amex points or Capital One points or Citi points or Chase points all transfer 1:1 to Virgin Atlantic (or even better during a point transfer bonus). So pick up the easy 100K offer when it comes around and use it to combine forces with your favored Chase Ultimate Rewards points, saving some of your Ultimate Rewards points for another day (in my case, I highly prefer holding my Chase points for Hyatt redemptions — picking up welcome bonuses in other currencies is what affords me the chance to think of my Chase points as primarily Hyatt points).

Even in cases where an overlapping partner might charge more miles than Chase Ultimate Rewards, you have to consider the chance to add points at what is essentially 15x or greater (my theoretical 100K offer for $6K spend is like 17.6 points per dollar spent). If you would otherwise do that spend at 5x, you’re giving up the chance for an additional 12.6 transferable points per dollar spent. Even if you would ultimately use those points for an award with a common transfer partner that costs 10-15% more than a unique Chase partner, you’re still coming out well ahead with that new card offer.

Let’s put some simple numbers to an example: let’s say that you would have booked an award (perhaps for multiple passengers) via United that costs 250K points or you could book the same award for 20% more via a transfer partner that they share with some other currency (i.e. the award would cost 300K points with a program like Singapore or Virgin Atlantic). Note that I’m using those round numbers just to keep the math easy. You would need $50K spend at 5x on a Chase Ink Cash card to earn the 250K points needed to book via United MileagePlus in this theoretical example (keep in mind that the Chase Ink Cash only offers 5x on up to $25K in spend per cardholder year). If instead you opened just one transferable currency card for that common partner that charges more miles and you could pick up 100K points with $6K in spend, you would need 200K additional points — another $40K in purchases at 5x. In the end, that’s a total of $46K in spend rather than $50K in spend — which could mean an additional 20K points in your pocket assuming you were to complete $50K in total spend either way.

That may not sound like a huge savings, but an extra 20K points in your pocket could easily be an extra $200 in cash or potentially a free night at a Hyatt that might otherwise charge hundreds of dollars per night. I’m happy to make that trade.

This is why, in my opinion, it pays dividends to learn about foreign transfer partners. While most who enter this game are at least somewhat familiar with US-based programs and thus have the greatest level of comfort with them as opposed to foreign partners, the advantage of learning about foreign partners can mean more travel for less spend — even in an example scenario where the foreign partner charges more than the US-based program.

No part of this game is for everyone, including juggling multiple currencies

Some will still find that it just isn’t worth the additional time and hassle to collect points in multiple currencies, even if it could mean a “better” deal. Complicating your life isn’t always worth the savings.

I would certainly argue that a minor complication — like picking up one historically excellent offer when opportunity strikes — can be well worth a little effort. But I can also recognize that chasing every deal isn’t worth it for everyone.

Still, I think it’s worth recognizing that you don’t need to chase every deal while still allowing yourself to chase the occasional outstanding deal to enhance your point collection. That’s my key point with this post: even if you focus your efforts mostly on the single currency that simplifies your life as much as possible, don’t miss the occasional opportunity to enhance that strategy for the fear that you can’t enhance currency #2 to the Nth degree without complicating things beyond your comfort zone.

I do think it can be worth going after a great offer for an extra hundred thousand transferable points now and then specifically because of the quantity of common transfer partners. If you aren’t sure whether you should branch out into another transferable currency, I think it is worth looking at the common transfer partners with your primary currency of choice and asking whether those common transfer partners can meet your award booking needs (or free up more of your primary currency for your preferred uses). In many cases, I think you’ll find that picking up that one new card can indeed be well worth it even without a plan for a full equal “Trifecta” (or super credit card combo) in a second currency.

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