Travel & Holidays 50K Qantas points. Any good?

I have racked up 50K qantas points so far. (congratulate me?)

What is the best I can do with it ? Or they are not enough ?

 

Flight upgrade. I think 50k will be enough for a business class upgrade to LA one way.

 

I got 50K in May when I switched my loan to Macquarie with another 25K to come on both the 3 and 5 year anniversary of the loan .

Sitting on 160K balance at the moment, hoping to get this way way up by the time I retire in 9 years time so we can use it to fund a 6 month european vacation without tapping into any savings .

My view on them is I will not use them until they are a significant amount, no point wasting them on something small and meaningless.

 

Don't wait too long, you never know if and when they may get rid of the program?
We're using ours to book the hotel end of our week long holiday.
Work out approximately how much a point is worth. I think 3000 points =20 dollars (i.e. if you had to buy points)

 

If you're CC card accrues points (ours does) there are so many ways to accumulate them again.

 

Any chance you could explain this further?

 

Certain credit cards allow you to accrue points
example: NAB Qantas Rewards Card.
We don't pay annual rates, as we signed up when we set-up our mortgage. Use it to pay for your monthly expenses and pay off before the due date as other cards, and you pay no interest and accrue points.Win win.

 

There will be plenty of warning if it ever goes away but I personally doubt they will, it's become a beast of its own now .

 

Ok sorry I was aware of that. I thought you meant more with your statement "If you're CC card accrues points (ours does) there are so many ways to accumulate them again."

 

Same, and where possible I use the Amex as it's more points, only worth it when there is no extra surcharge

 

Also, if you really want to get more points, there are a number of people who sign up for a new CC each month and just do the minimum they need to to get the bonus, compare cards here: https://www.qantaspoints.com/earn-points/cards-banking/card-selector

Personally I don't do this, I can't be bothered changing card numbers all the time and I don't think it looks particularly good on investment loan applications if you change your CC every 6 months.

 

I do something similar with Velocity. I use the Virgin credit card (got me 5,000 bonus points), when I went to renew my car insurance I swapped to Virgin car insurance (5,000 bonus), swapped my energy to Lumo (10,000 bonus), I've been paying expenses on the card and paying it off before the interest free period. It's a great rewards program IMO, and has been rated best flights rewards service in Australia a few years in a row now I believe.

Not to mention when you fill up at BP you get double points for every litre of fuel (plus paying for your fuel with the credit card gives you points for every dollar as well, effectively tripling your points when you fill up at the pump).

I've accrued 70k points in 1 yr and 3 months. A return trip to japan is roughly 56k points (plus $80 dollars last time I checked).

Of course whenever I did these things I made sure the company I was switching to offered the same or better rates than I was paying before.

 

20,000 points gets me a business class upgrade from Perth to Sydney

 

Also I want to add, the points didn't feature in my decision for that mortgage, It would be nuts to even consider it as a factor, it's just a nice side effect of the loan that was the best choice for my situation . I wouldn't recommend making financial decisions around something that may get you a $300 flight at some point in a few years.

In all honesty I didn't know about that benefit until i was filling in the final form and it had a spot for my FF number .

 

Use the points for flights, it's beter value than most things in the Qantas shop. Gift cards aren't too bad but fights are usually better.

For dosmestic travel the slightly longer sectors seem better value.
For example a economy Cairns- Brisbane sector is 12,000 points yet I've seen Cairns-Melbourne for 14,400 ponits.
For international travel look for classic reward specials, I think there was one recently for Sydney to LA?
International travel on points isn't anywhere near as generous as it was previously.
The points on any sector outside of classic rewards is a waste of points and poor value for money IMO.

I would be inclined to use some points as changes over the years have always to the detriment of consumers. I think this is likely to continue.
If it wasn't for a NAB Qantas CC as part of a banking package and traveling on Qantas a lot for work I would otherwise struggle to accumulate significant points quickly anymore especially with Woolworths ditching there previous scheme.

 

New scheme on it's way soon, trade 10 woolies dollars for 870 FF points. You will be able to set it to automatically do it every time you get 10 woolies dollars............ I still don't bloody know how I get woolies dollars though, even the staff I have asked when shopping can't answer definitively .

 

I haven't looked into it but some items are ticketed saying earn xx Woolwortha dollars?
I don't do the shopping that often.

 

Current and proposed scheme is crap as nothing I buy ever has the magical ticket. I might get 50c of woolies dollars on a $200 shop which is ridic. Last scheme I was raking them in

 

To be honest, we have started shopping at Coles, we rated them similar, in the old days but the old woolies card tipped them into first position, without that we would sooner go to Coles

 

Tell that to the people who lost literally millions of points when Ansett went under.....