MR Points - Dilemma

[Anonymous]

So, I have managed to accumulate 90k in MR points. The issue is, while we travel, we only usually use US Airways due to availability of non-stop flights to our usual destination of FLL. MR does not have US Airways as a partner, so really our MR points are useless in terms of miles  My thought it to just cash them out currently for $500 worth of amex giftcards and just use them for a rainy day. What do you think, or is there a better way for me to use them considering I probably won't gaining much more of them in the future? I mean, I could save them, but I don't see me being able to use them for anything in the near future.  I really plan on using my BCE/Freedom now for a majority of the purchasing we do, but I will still use the PRG once in a while for certain things. 

[Anonymous]

If you don't want to transfer them, then I'd recommend atleast using them to pay for travel purchases with "pay with points".  90K MR points would be $900 towards airfare, so buy your US Airways tickets using that, then save $900 cash for a rainy day.  That's better than $500 in Amex gift cards.

[jamesdwi]

non AMEX gift cards are a much better deal, they redeem for a penny a point, sometimes better.  $900 in resturant gift cards.

[Anonymous]

I see thanks for the insight guys! Forgot you could "pay with points" for other airlines. 

[cardslayer]

If you want to be creative, you can wait a few months. They usually have a transfer bonus to some airlines, most notably Delta. If you can get 150% of the MR points you transfer (they've done as high as 100% bonus for Delta in the past), then you would have 135k Delta Skymiles.

With those skymiles, you can also redeem at a rate of $0.01/mile, but thanks to the bonus you now have $1350 worth of miles.

One place to check out / redeem them is DeltaVacations.com they allow 1cent / mile conversion, although they have max limits depending on where you're going.

That's just one example. I believe they recently had a transfer bonus to British Airways Avios that was 100% if I'm not mistaken.

Also, sometimes they have specials on gift cards, like 20% off for a particular store. My advice is that if you don't need something right away, just sit on them until you see a bonus offer.

[stan_the_man]

If you want to invest a little bit more time to see what kind of value you can get, you can research these Star Alliance partners of U.S. Airways to see if you can get more value by transfering the points into their programs:

• Air Canada
• ANA
• Singapore

You'd need to know how their U.S. rewards are structured, their U.S. Airways award availability, whether you can put rewards on hold, and how long MR points take to transfer (I know some airlines this is instant).