Tag Archives: American Express Membership Rewards Points

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Should I Transfer All My AMEX Points to Hawaiian Airlines?

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Good afternoon everyone, I hope you had a great weekend.  I am excited to share that Laura and I are having a baby girl in August.  With our upcoming Player 3 little bundle of joy, our travel plans will be on pause for a while, but I wanted to build up a big Alaska Airlines mileage balance so that when we take to the skies once more, we will have plenty of miles available.

As of May 2025, I have 1.3 million Alaska Airlines miles in my account.  We built up this balance in the last year by transferring lots of AMEX Membership Rewards Points to our Hawaiian Airlines accounts, applying for Barclays Hawaiian Airlines credit cards, and then by consolidating all our miles into my Alaska Airlines account.  For a step by step guide on how to do that, please read How to Transfer, Combine, or Move Alaska Airlines and Hawaiian Airlines Miles (with Direct Links).

With all that said… Should I transfer all my AMEX Membership Rewards Points to Hawaiian Airlines?  After reading this post, please let me know your thoughts.

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How to Transfer, Combine, or Move Alaska Airlines and Hawaiian Airlines Miles (with Direct Links)

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Republished on 5/18/25 since AMEX announced that American Express Membership Rewards Point transfers to Hawaii Airlines will end on June 30, 2025.

Good afternoon everyone, I hope your week is going well. In this post, I will show you how we moved Alaska Airlines Miles into Hawaiian Airlines Miles, transferred those miles between Hawaiian Airlines accounts, and then transferred those miles to Alaska Airlines.  We wanted all of our miles to be in a single account (my Alaska Airlines account) to make award booking easier since we would book all of our award tickets from a single account.  Transfers between Alaska Airlines and Hawaiian Airlines were free and instant.  Here are the steps we did…

A few weeks ago, Laura and I transferred large chunks of American Express Membership Rewards Points into Hawaiian Airlines Miles when AMEX had a 20% transfer bonus to Hawaiian Airlines.  I transferred 417K AMEX MR Points into 500K Hawaiian Airlines Miles on August 29.

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Keep, Cancel or Convert? Laura’s American Express Gold Card ($325 Annual Fee)

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Good afternoon everyone, I hope your week is going well.  A few days ago, I was reviewing our recent credit card statements and saw that the $325 annual fee posted to Laura’s American Express Gold Card.  We discussed the card benefits and decided it wasn’t worth prepaying $325 in order to jump through all of these hoops to earn back the $325 annual fee.  As a reminder, here are the coupons statement credits on this card:

  • $10 Uber / Uber Eats credit each month ($120 total)
  • $10 Grubhub credit each month ($120 total)
  • $7 Dunkin credit each month ($84 total)
  • $50 Resy credit every 6 months (launched in July 2024, so only $50 total in 2024)

Even though we did receive all of these credits in 2024, I would not value them close to $374.  In order to receive all of those credits, we had to jump through 37 hoops throughout the year.  We are still sitting on $28 of Dunkin credit (the nearest Dunkin in about 40 miles away) and we have a $50 restaurant gift card for a nearby Resy restaurant that we bought at the end of December.

Also, we were not using the card for 4x at restaurants and 4x on groceries.  I have plenty of AMEX MR Points, so we were using 2 Citi Custom Cash Credit Cards for 5x at restaurants and 5x on groceries.  Then in 2025, we switched to using the Chase Freedom Flex Credit Card for 5x on groceries ($1,500 quarterly max) and the Discover It Credit Card for 5x at restaurants ($1,500 quarterly max).

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In addition, we decided to transfer all 150,000 of Laura’s AMEX MR Points to her Hawaiian Airlines account, then she transferred them to my Hawaiian Airlines account and then I moved them to my Alaska Airlines account (read more about that process here).  The next step was to contact AMEX via Online Chat to close the card…

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The 7 Miles & Points Tools / Services that I Pay For

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Good afternoon everyone, happy Friday!  I love free stuff as much as the next person, but there are a few miles and points tools and services that are so incredibly useful, they’re definitely worth paying for. Keep in mind, this isn’t a complete list, so there may be other fantastic tools out there that I haven’t discovered or used yet.

AwardWallet Plus – $49.99 / year

I can’t imagine a world without AwardWallet.  They track all my credit card programs, airline programs, hotel programs, shopping portal balances, dining rewards, and much more.  I love that they constantly check my accounts, display the current balances, and display expiration dates for all my rewards.  The flight schedule change notifications (which sometimes come days / weeks / months before official airline notifications) and upcoming expiration alerts are well worth the cost to me.  If you are interested in trying it out, here is my AwardWallet referral link.

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3 Upcoming American Express Endings: Redeeming Membership Rewards Points at Newegg & Staples, ShopRunner Benefit & AMEX Auto Purchasing Program

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Good afternoon everyone, I hope you had a great weekend.  Yesterday, I was reviewing my recent American Express statements and saw a few upcoming changes that I wanted you to be aware of.  Thankfully, none of these changes are huge.  Without further ado, here are the 3 changes.

Bye bye AMEX MR Redemptions at Newegg.com and Staples.com

Effective March 31, 2025, Card Members will no longer be able to redeem Membership Rewards points on www.newegg.com and www.staples.com.

I have made several purchases at Newegg.com and Staples.com over the years, but have never used my AMEX MR Points to pay for my orders since I assumed it was a bad deal.  My assumption was correct!  On both websites, you can redeem 14,286 AMEX MR Points to offset $100, which is a terrible redemption at 0.7 CPP.  Good riddance to this redemption option!

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