Questions and Answers

So my brother in law has 200,000 MR points and is canceling all of his AMEX cards (Which I convinced him to take out). His wife doesn’t like flying and, outside of hotel stays, he feels like he’ll never use them.

He just wants to put his spend on his Discover cash back card from now on. That wouldn’t be my choice, but it’s his money. He discovered that if he pays his bill with them, he’ll be getting > cent per point. I told him I would check to see if there were any better options. (He wants to get as close to 1 cent/point as possible)

So A: What’s the best hotel option? Hilton? VS to Hilton? Choice?

B: What are the points transfer rules for AMEX? If they could be transferred to my MR account, or one of my Airline FF accounts, I would consider buying them for 1 cent per point.

Any advice will be much appreciated.

Thanks in advance,
James

[USER=1299]@g8trjrb[/USER] MR points cannot be directly transferred to other people but if your BIL adds you to his card as an authorized user, he can then transfer the points into a hotel or airline program of your choice. If you don’t share an address, and out of an abundance of caution, I would probably leave a gap of a few weeks before adding yourself and initiating a transfer as issuers don’t like seeing anything that seems like sales of points.

If he wants cash back, his best options are the Barclays Arrival plus (2.05% with an Annual Fee) and the Citi Double Cash (2% with no Annual Fee). I prefer the latter for the additional flexibility of being able to use cash back how I want it.

There is no “best” hotel option. He’ll have to see what hotels he’s likely to stay at and churn appropriately for sign up bonuses.

Good info. Thanks Gaurav!