How to give up airline status

Many of us have given so much loyalty to the airlines and gotten so little in return! If you are considering moving past airline status and getting the most out of your spending and points, read on!

Hi! We have a whole slew of new folks around here (Hi! Welcome!) thanks to the excellent New York Times piece about why trying to obtain airline status may not be worth it anymore…especially after it landed on the cove r of Saturday’s business section in print! Thank you so much to the NYT for featuring my small business in this wonderful piece.

Here’s a little excerpt:

“There’s an opportunity cost to putting all your spending on one airline card. You’re married to that airline. So then if there’s a devaluation with the points or the miles, you’re really vulnerable to that devaluation.” (Rachel Lipson aka me!)

Let’s unpack this and look at some solutions!

First, what does a devaluation mean exactly?

Points are a currency. think of them like a type of money. Each point has a certain dollar (or more like cent) value. Like any currency, over time, the value can go down. For example, today it may be possible to find a flight to Chicago for under 10K points on a certain airline and tomorrow, they could require 25% more points for the exact same flight.

As consumers, we are particularly vulnerable to this when we’ve put all of our eggs in one basket. If most of our spending is going onto what’s called a “co-branded” card (a card that is both a bank — and an airline or hotel) we don’t have many options if that program changes the value of their points.

So, what is the solution?

How can you protect yourself from point devaluations without opening a whole bunch of different co-branded credit cards?

The answer is much simpler than you might think! Tucked away in the corner of the bank’s website is…