Originally Posted by
wtg_miro
Apologies if this has been previously posted.
For those into the churning game who wish to cancel and reapply every 6+ months, it seems like there's optimally there's going to be a balance of 250 points (assuming you've redeemed it for $25 previously) remaining when you go to close the card. Alternatively, one could downgrade to the Arrival version and keep that balance, but doing so risks the acceptance when reapplying for the A+. Is that right?
Also, it seems prudent to just redeem points ASAP (assuming one would make future travel expenses) instead of saving them up.
ie. I just bought cruise tickets for $1k. I currently have 50k points. Better to redeem them all now, get back 5k points for future redemptions instead of trying to hoard up until i have 100k points to redeem the cruise in one shot.
Does that sound about right?
250 pts = $2.50 so no biggy. Bigger is that the points can be redeemed ONLY in $25 increments (sneaky and non-disclosed as far as I could find), so you could actually have up to 2,499 points not redeemable and lose those (or transfer but lose sign up bonus) when account is closed.
The consideration for when to redeem is:
Each travel purchase, regardless of amount spent or points redeemed against, can only be used once, and only travel purchases in last 120 days qualify for redemption.
So, redeem as much as you can as soon as you can AFTER you have generated the maximum points you expect to within 120 days of travel purchase. Less advantageous to redeem small amount of points against large purchase and thus consume all of that purchase eligibility and have to have another travel purchase in 120 day window to redeem more points (including the 10% redemption bonus).
Only being able to redeem in 2,500 ($1250 spend) increments is a [undisclosed?!?] pain, especially if you have very few travel purchases to redeem against in the 120 day window or your AF is coming up and you want to cancel to get the sign up bonus in the future.