{"id":10031,"date":"2024-07-25T04:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-07-25T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/?p=10031"},"modified":"2024-07-25T02:54:42","modified_gmt":"2024-07-25T08:54:42","slug":"thursday-diversion-establishing-a-baseline","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/2024\/07\/25\/thursday-diversion-establishing-a-baseline\/","title":{"rendered":"Thursday Diversion: Establishing a Baseline"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Last week we had a brief interlude about how an unredeemed point is worth nothing<\/a>. It’s definitely true, but there’s a corollary for travel hackers:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Outsized Value Requires a Baseline Stash of Points<\/p>\nChapter 6 Title from MEAB’s fictitious book, “Churning, Travel Hacking, and Selected Croissant Recipes”<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Most bank points can be converted to cash for around 1 to 1.5 cents each, and most airline points have a baseline value in the same ballpark too. With that metric it’s easy to say that a credit card sign-up bonus of 90,000 points is worth somewhere around $900 to $1,450.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When you get a stash of points, it’s almost never a bad idea to cash out, invest that cash or use it in your velocity roll<\/a>, and start earning a new stash. Then the value of your cashed out points grows with other investments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You can take cashing out too far though. What if, for example, you’re in Germany on vacation and looking to fly home in the nose of a 747-800 in Lufthansa First? You could buy a ticket for over $10,000, or if you’re lucky you can grab a First Class award ticket for about 90,000 points with Avianca Lifemiles; but only if you haven’t cashed out all of your points<\/em>. That redemption is rather outsized at more than 10 cents per point in replacement cost value, obviously more than the 1 to 1.5 cents value on a cashing-out basis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s easy to see a strategy emerge: Keep a baseline of points big enough to meet your short term travel needs, and cash out the rest. What does short term mean? That depends on how quickly you earn points I suppose.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Happy Thursday!<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

A sample recipe from “Churning, Travel Hacking, and Selected Croissant Recipes”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week we had a brief interlude about how an unredeemed point is worth nothing. It’s definitely true, but there’s a corollary for travel hackers:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_editorskit_title_hidden":false,"_editorskit_reading_time":0,"_editorskit_is_block_options_detached":false,"_editorskit_block_options_position":"{}","footnotes":""},"categories":[25,56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10031","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-travel-hacking","category-wisdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10031","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10031"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10031\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10034,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10031\/revisions\/10034"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10031"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10031"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10031"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}