Value of using FF vs purchase?
 

Not exactly sure where to post this...but can someone please tell me how to figure out the value of FF pts? I have two different trips and I'm trying to decide if I should use points or just purchase. One is trip is 30,000 pts or $390 to purchase and the other is 45,000 ff pts or $545.
Thanks for any help.

The easiest way: divide the cost of the ticket by the number of miles it would take.

390/30000 = 1.3 cents per mile

545/45000 = 1.2111 cents per mile

This is always an individual decision. You have to decide what you can do with the miles instead. For example, I NEVER use miles to pay for domestic tickets. I much rather use for buying upgraded seats or free tickets internationally. Last week I used 30,000 miles to upgrade a LAX-SYD flight from business to first. Worth so much more than what I could get for those same miles domestically.

Plus, if you use points to buy the ticket, you do not earn miles.... so there is an opportunity cost there.

William

The Value of a Mile is probably the most frequently discussed topic on Flyertalk. Try using the "Search this Forum" feature to locate previous discussions, such as these...

http://flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=678668
http://flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=665791
http://flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=644006

In general I would add the miles redeemed plus the miles not earned by the amount I would otherwise pay for the same trip. For example, if the redemption requires 30,000 miles but I would earn 5,000 miles if I paid $390 for the ticket, I would consider that I had spent 35,000 miles to save $390.

I get it and so basically they have about the same point value. I R a college graduate! Just seemed to struggle with this.
Thanks for your quick responses and help!

I agree with wharvey. Using miles for a domestic ticket is generally poor value--a few exceptions such as very short term emergency ticket may exist.

The value is in overseas upgrades and "free" biz and F tickets.

Whenever I have used my miles for domestic travel I have regrets. When I use them for C or F travel abroad I feel as though I got a very good deal. :)

I use miles for tickets when it's either too expensive to buy or I have no money.....

i'd personally take the advice regarding upgrades with a grain of salt. many people here are very pampered and will pay big bucks for business. Also I think that the average flyertalker is well above average income and therefore has less use for money.

It is true that you will get much more value for our money if you would have actually paid 7K for a business ticket to europe. If like many americans you are struggling for money and business class is an unnecessary luxury than domestic tickets can make plenty of sense. A ticket is only worth what you would pay for it, not what they charge for it.

As others have said, its an individual choice. I normally value my miles at about 1 cent apiece. A little more if they are AA miles. This is primarily because I really don't care about flying buisiness class. If you had only one free ticket, I'd probably value them a little higher because there is a good likelihood of needing one very expensive ticket at some point. I do not think most of us will need 12 emergency tickets.

The seats are both on flights from ATL to St Thomas. The normal fare is around $683. Just happens that both times I'm travelling (June & again in July) the fares just went on sale. But seats for next April will probably be 60k as no Skysaver will ever be available out of ATL on spring break week. So seems like that would be a better one to purchase. $683/60,000.

My husband is DL Plat. I just want to be sure I use his miles wisely. Sorry to be asking such a basic questions! Believe it or not, I'm a Travel Maven in all of my friends eyes!! Thanks again, I appreciate all of your help!

No problem...many of us struggle with buy vs. redeem decisions.

There are two common ways to approach it:

(1) Some folks look at raw cents-per-mile achieved. Real cash in pocket. What ticket would you have bought if miles didn't exist? How many miles will that cost? For most of us, it's a discounted coach ticket, and we're generally happy if we can find a redemption that gets into the 2 cents per mile range. I just got one I'm happy with: four tickets to Bermuda, 20,000 FF miles each, would've been $520-ish per person. Subtract out $53 pp. in taxes I had to pay on the FF tickets...it's a little over 2.3 cpm. On the "real cash in pocket" method, it's a great redemption.

(2) Other folks use miles to get seats they wouldn't otherwise buy out of their own pocket. In these cases, forget about cents-per-mile - the numbers are meaningless. Recently we did a J award trip to Europe for 90,000 miles per seat. Loved it - had a wonderful time. ^ But I wouldn't have really paid $6000 each for the tickets - using the "real cash in pocket" method, I would have bought $800 coach seats. I got less than a penny per mile using that measure. But...I figure this whole game needs to be more fun than simply clipping coupons or pinching pennies, right? So I did it anyway - and I'll do it again.

I figure over time I'm about half in each category. A mix of "real" and "fun" redemptions. Having a family with 2 kids is shifting me more into the "real" category - the kids don't get a big bang out of business class, and at this point I'd rather have more free trips.

I cannot remember the last time I paid for a ticket. (only kidding. I have but not a lot and not lately)

^ to promos, ^ to credit cards, ^ to tips and tricks and schemes found in places like FT !

I would pay for a domestic ticket if it were say $250 or less to fly from Bos-LAX or an international one if it were say $350-400 to fly BOS-AMS, but generally I use miles when I fly.

I would say it depends on your money situation and how much you do to get new miles to make it easier to work with them. If it's hard, then paying may be easier.

Personally, I think that using miles on domestic or short haul international ticket is not a good value of money. I would save them and use them on long haul transpac flight possibly on SQ F.

Would I ever buy transpac F ticket? Not anytime soon (unless you cound those ex-CMB fare), but I do think that it's the best 120K miles I've spent.

If anyone is doing this, also remember to account for the taxes you will have to pay on the award ticket. If there are $50 in taxes that you have to still pay when redeeming miles, then this case would become 35,000 miles to save $340.

some domestic tickets are worth using 25k miles for.

ski areas like flying to ASPEN or WHISTLER/BC can be high cost tickets in mid winter. I saved $700 flying to CO and $500 flying to BC. No, wait, make that $1,000. I used a UA account with 50k in it to get us both 25k tickets and he in turn paid for my ski pass for the entire trip out there. While there are taxes, they are often very low and in these two cases, it was far worth using miles over CASH.
:)MM

I think that there are other factors as well. First of all how many miles do you have in the ban? If very few - how you might use them (sparingly) might be different if you flew a lot for business and they came in faster than you could spend them. That being said, in spite of my having a lot of miles in the bank, (no business travel - all on my dime) I don't use a domestic ticket if there is a cheap ticket with LOTS of miles to gain. Flights to California for $200 are not worth using miles UNLESS, you need some flexibility and may be changing your dates, or there is a reduced mileage award availabile OR you want to make a stopover which would up the cost of a paid ticket. So you could some bang for your buck of $25K if you made a stopover. i also use reduced award tickets to Toronto which comes up frequently because Canadian destinations tend to me expensive for the number of miles you get. On the other hand, if there is a really cheap ticket, I spend the money. Used reduced award tickets to Bangor for my daughter - tickets to Bangor tend to be expensive, and we need the flexibility. We used 2 for 17,500 each. I used a 25K ticket departing from Bangor back to Chicago as I thought I might need flexibiilty and I was able to do a stopover in New York on my way to Chicago. If you have to change your dates or postpone your trip you won't be socked with a $100 fee.