Do you have a favorite point and miles currency? I do. It wasn’t always my favorite but, as I have continued in my points and miles journey, I have found that I am always wanting more Ultimate Rewards. Let’s look at some ways we can accumulate more Ultimate Rewards.

 

How to Accumulate Ultimate Rewards

There are several personal cards that will give you Ultimate Rewards. Our favorite is the Chase Sapphire Preferred. It is a great beginner card with a reasonable annual fee of $95. When used in the Chase travel portal, you get 1.25 cents per point. We don’t usually use the portal to book our travel because we usually transfer our points to travel partners where we can generally get more value. It is always a good idea to check both areas to see where you will save the most though. When you find cheap cash flights, the portal can work really well!

 

New Credit Card Signups

You can go to this post to read about all the different cards that will give you Ultimate Rewards. If you have a side gig or business, you can get business cards which really help you accumulate more points. Before we had a real business with this hobby, we were able to get business cards by just selling things on eBay and little side hustles.

 

 

 

 

Use Their Shopping Portal

If you are like me, you do a lot of online shopping. If you use the Chase shopping portal, you can get rewarded with more Ultimate Rewards for things you are buying anyway. To be honest, I forget to do this a lot. I need to change my ways!

Here’s how to use the shopping portal. Once you sign in to your Chase account, click under “Rewards” next to your balance. Then scroll until you see “Shop Through Chase” and click. You can then check out the deals for the different stores you may want to shop at and earn extra Ultimate Rewards.

 

Earn on Quarterly Bonus Categories with the Freedom Flex Card

The Freedom Flex Card is a great card to have if you are looking at ways to accumulate more Ultimate Rewards. Just by using this card on the quarterly bonus categories, you can earn 5 points per dollar spent. I love to get those extra points by normal spending! You can check out the quarterly spending categories here for 2024.

 

How I Use My Ultimate Rewards

Hyatt Hotels

First of all, why do I love them so much? Hyatt! My favorite way to use them is probably for Hyatt hotels. Why? I get such outsized value for my stays in Hyatt Hotels. It is normal for me to spend 25K Hyatt points and stay at a hotel that costs $600+.  Here are some of my favorite stays that fall in that category:

 

Maui Hyatt Residence Club

You can read all about our stay in Maui and how Alex spent 48K/night for a two-bedroom condo. You can also stay in a one-bedroom condo for 25K/night if you book off-peak. It is a great location and great use of 25K points for a room that would normally cost $1,000 a night! Talk about oversized value!!

 

Grand Hotel Victoria Concept Spa and Resort

My trip to Italy and specifically, to Lake Como, was made even more special by our stay at the Grand Hotel Victoria Concept Spa and Resort. The room was valued at $735 and came with the most delightful breakfast buffet and impeccable service. I would return in a heartbeat to stay there for 25K/night!

 

Hyatt Ziva All-Inclusive

35K per night for 2 people and all your food and beverages?? Yes, really! We loved our stay at the Hyatt Ziva Cancun so much that we returned again and brought the rest of our family. Food, entertainment, and lodging for just 35K/night? Need I say more? There are more Hyatt all-inclusives available and I can’t wait to try out more of them!

When it comes to Hyatt stays, there are some luxurious and super-sized values out there. That is probably the number one reason that I look for more Ultimate Rewards. Sure, there are Hyatt credit cards and I have the personal card but the welcome offer is just so-so. I prefer the welcome offer on the business card from Hyatt. But if I had only those two cards to get my Hyatt points, they’d go pretty fast.

 

United Miles

Because I live near Denver and it is a United hub, I am always looking at ways to accumulate more Ultimate Rewards to transfer to United. I have had great success booking business class seats to Europe with United. I can usually get them for about 90K one way. United also has good award availability, no waitlists, and good business class lounges (love Polaris lounges!) and so it just works for me. Sometimes I need more miles for a flight and I will turn to my Ultimate Rewards to top off what I have from my United cards.

 

Other Ultimate Reward Uses

Do you love Southwest Airlines? They are a partner of Chase Ultimate Rewards so that is a great way to supplement your valuable Rapid Rewards for more Southwest flights.

Chase travel partners include:

• Aer Lingus
• Air Canada/Aeroplan
• British Airways
• Emirates
• Flying Blue (KLM/Air France)
• Hyatt
• Iberia
• IHG
• JetBlue
• Marriott
• Ritz-Carlton
• Singapore Airlines
• Southwest
• United
• Virgin Atlantic

If you are continually looking for more miles/points on any of these partners, you need to use one of our ways to accumulate more Ultimate Rewards.

 

Bottom Line

We realize that your favorite points and miles currency may not be ours and that’s perfectly fine. But if you are looking for ways to accumulate more Ultimate Rewards, here are some ideas. Additionally, here is our free guide to more Hyatt points.