@CreditScholar wrote:
@HiLine wrote:Frequent flyer miles are worth more than 1 cent. General travel rewards miles are worth 1 cent or less; they are redeemable at a value of 1 cent per mile, but the condition that they can only be redeemed for travels makes them worth less than cash back.
You can get at least 1.5 mile per dollar spent with the Bankamericard Travel Rewards card. It's 1.65 miles if you have a checking account with them.
+1.
1.25 is pretty mediocre given that there are better options out there. Neither CapOne Venture nor BofA Travel Rewards are real mileage earning cards. They call them "miles" but they're essentially nothing more than cash back cards. You redeem the "miles" against travel related charges, but otherwise they're identical.
True mileage cards fall into one of two categories:
1. They earn miles and deposit them directly into a frequent flier's account. This is most common with co-branded cards.
2. They earn points that can be transferred directly into a mileage account. UR, SPG and MR are examples of this.
Real miles are worth much more than 1 cpm, and they're primarily worth it if you plan to fly business or first class. If all you're looking for is domestic coach flights, I wouldn't bother with mile cards. A high-end cash back card would be much better in most of these cases. Domestic coach tickets are pretty cheap as it is, and you don't have to worry about availability and a multi-tiered redemption cost found in some programs like Delta.
+1 back
I would also add that frequent flyer miles are especially valuable for international travels where redemption rates are very favorable. Another case is when you need tickets for prime travel seasons when tickets are very expensive, but the availability of reward tickets then depend on each airline's policy. For example, Delta Airline's Skymiles are also known as Skypesos because you can never book reward tickets with them.
