You probably already know that airlines and hotel groups have loyalty programs. If you earn a certain number of points or miles within their programs, you’ll earn free award flights or free award nights you can book through those programs. People who travel a lot tend to earn miles and points by actually flying or staying in hotels. But people who love miles and points tend to earn most of our airline and hotel points through credit-card welcome bonus offers instead of flights or hotel stays.

So how do you earn the miles and points in the loyalty programs you want? And what do you do with the miles and points once you have them? Let’s get into it!

Earning points and miles with credit cards

There are two types of credit cards that you can use to travel with miles and points: (1) cards that earn transferable points and (2) “cobranded” cards—cards that earn one airline or hotel program’s miles or points. Here are some examples of each kind of card.

Examples

If you want to earn miles or points in a specific loyalty program, you have two options. One, you can open a cobranded card that earns that specific type of miles or points. Or two, you can open a card that earns transferable points and then transfer those points later on to the program you have in mind, if your desired program is a transfer partner with that card’s bank.

What most people do

A lot of people often start dipping their toes into miles and points by opening up a cobranded credit card for the airline they fly the most, trying to get some of the benefits associated with being a cardholder, such as free checked bags. I started by doing that, too—my first travel-oriented credit cards were the British Airways Visa, and then the United MileagePlus Explorer Visa. But opening up cobranded cards is not what I’d advise if you’re just getting started with miles and points, and here’s why.

When you open a credit card that earns an airline (or hotel program’s) points, you’re earning points that can usually only be redeemed within that particular program. So for example, if you have a United Explorer Visa card, you earn United MileagePlus miles for your spending on that card. You can use those miles within United’s loyalty program, but you can’t transfer your United miles to, say, American Airlines. They’re United miles forever and ever. So when you’re ready to book a trip, you have to hope that United’s program has a good deal available on the days you can fly, because United miles are all you have. That limits your possibilities and can be really discouraging if they don’t happen to have good options during your travel window. (This is also why a lot of people mistakenly think using miles for award flights doesn’t work—this is all they’ve ever tried, there weren’t good award options the days they wanted to fly, and then they gave up.)

What you should do

You can probably guess what I’m going to say here: open cards that earn transferable points! When you open a card that earns transferable points, it’s like you’re earning multiple airlines’ points all at once. Or at least the option of multiple airlines’ points all at once. Because having transferable points means you can search your bank’s transfer partners’ loyalty programs one by one until you find one that definitely has award seats that will work for you and then transfer your points to that program and book them.

Let’s say we’re talking about Chase Ultimate Rewards points. It’s like your Chase points are Schrödinger’s cat—the points are stuck in the box (the bank) and as long as they’re still in the box (the bank), they can be United miles or Air France miles or Air Canada miles (alive or dead) all at the same time, until you observe them (transfer them).

They don’t turn into a particular type of miles (alive or dead) until you open the box (transfer the points). And at that point they are what they are and you can’t change them back.

Ok, that was a fairly nerdy and not entirely on-point metaphor (the original thought experiment is way more complicated and nuanced and involves radioactivity and poison), but you get what I mean, right? Transferable points allow you to think of the points flexibly. (Cats are flexible, so that’s a good way to remember this terribly attenuated metaphor going forward. Flexible points = cats. I think. Now I’ve completely lost my train of thought.)

Ok, but what if I know I want one particular type of miles? How do I get them?

Let’s stick with our example of United miles. If you want to earn United miles by getting a card that earns transferable points, you’d need to know which cards have United as a transfer partner and then apply for one of those cards, or just get one of United cobranded cards. In this example, the only bank that has United MileagePlus as a transfer partner is Chase, so if you wanted the possibility of earning United miles but also keep the points transferable just in case United doesn’t work out for your travel plans, you’d need to get a Chase card that earns transferable points—e.g., Chase Sapphire Preferred, Chase Sapphire Reserve, Chase Freedom Flex.

But if you specifically want Avianca miles, having a Chase card will not help you a bit, because Avianca is not a transfer partner with Chase. Instead, you’d want to consider getting a Capital One, Citi, or American Express card, because those banks have Avianca as a transfer partner.

My transfer chart lays out which airlines are transfer partners with which banks, and what the airline alliances are. (If you want to download a free copy, subscribe to my free email newsletter to get the password!) It also lists which airlines have cobranded cards, in case you want to go that route.

The best kind of situation is when your chosen airline program is a transfer partner of three or four of the banks—then you can transfer points from all those banks into your one airline loyalty account and have a ton of points at your disposal to use in the one airline program.

If I have one airline’s miles, do I have to fly on that airline?

Nope! All it means when you have one airline’s miles is that you have to book your travel through their program. But their program probably partners with several other airlines, meaning that you could theoretically use Virgin Atlantic miles to fly on a Delta plane, because they’re both SkyTeam partners.

Here’s what something like that looks like in a search:

You’ll book this flight using Virgin Atlantic miles, but you’ll fly on a Delta plane.

If you were to use Delta SkyMiles to fly on this exact same flight, in “Main Cabin” (not basic economy), it’d cost 24,000 SkyMiles. So you can see why it’d be smarter to book with Virgin Atlantic!

Great, so how do I know what kind of miles will be best for the trip I have in mind?

That is a whole ‘nother post (or two, or seven) in itself! I’ll cover that next time.

Other Important Things to Know So Far

• When you open a credit card that earns transferable points, once you’ve earned points from your spending, those points live in the bank’s account associated with your credit card. If you were to close that account, the points would disappear. And that would be horrifying. So rule #1 is never close an account for a card with transferable points without doing something with those points first.

• When you transfer your bank’s points out of your credit-card points account and into a loyalty program, the account you’re transferring them to has to match up, name-wise. So for example, if you and your spouse both have Ultimate Rewards points and you want to transfer some of those points into your Air Canada Aeroplan account, you would need to make sure the points come from your Ultimate Rewards account, not your spouse’s. There are ways to pool/share your credit-card points with your spouse, though, so that’s only a minor issue to be aware of. Sharing actual airline miles between household members is entirely dependent on which airline you’re talking about, because some allow it with no associated cost and some don’t.

Read on for the next installment in the intro series!

Questions? Let me know in the comments!