Are Credit Card Points Still Worth it in 2026?

In this video, I want to address whether credit card transferable points are still worth it in 2026. Throughout 2025, we've seen devaluations of airline and loyalty programs. We've seen Chase switch up its redemption rate through the travel portal. US Bank also lowered its redemption rate on the Altitude Reserve. And premium credit cards are all raising their annual fees, making you jump through hoops, collecting credits to claw that value back. And on top of that, there is the constant battle of whether you can actually find award availability on the loyalty partner that you want to use. I have found myself leaning much more towards cashback redemptions in 2025. And this trend will probably continue in 2026. And in this video, I'm going to go through it all. Hey credit warriors, welcome to the show. My name is Ben Hedges, aka the credit shifu. And on this channel, I cover US credit cards, personal finance, and luxury travel. If you like the sound of that, please subscribe. But let's get into it. Oh, and this video is brought to you by Silo, but more on that later. Okay, so let's talk about the first topic, devaluations. At the beginning of 2025, we saw a devaluation of Marriott points. Now, Marriott doesn't publish an award chart anymore since quite a while ago, which makes things even more opaque. But there is an unpublished cap on what a night at each property costs. In early 2025, it seems that this cap was lifted. So even with dynamic pricing for peak and off- peak nights, all nights at many properties are now more expensive. The most expensive properties used to be capped at 150,000 points per night, but Ben Schlappig of One Mile at a Time notes, "Unfortunately, that cap now seems to be well over 200,000 points per night." For example, the JW Marriott Masimara, you'll find nightly rates of up to 224,000 points per night. And Marriott hotels in all ranges have changed. The cap has increased by up to 15% in some categories. View from the wing came out with a chart that they researched themselves since, like we said, Marriott no longer publishes an award chart. This has caused the points guy to lower the value of Marriott points from 0.84 84 cents, which it was for quite a long time, down to 0.7 cents per point. So, when you see Marriott cards giving higher and higher bonuses, it's kind of a smoke screen for lower points values. Gary Le from View from the Wing wrote this about Marriott. The series of devaluations since the Bonvoy program first launched is hard to fathom. I've struggled to think of a positive thing that Bonvoy has done to make the program better since then. About a year ago, I asked Marriott to give me some examples. They promised to do so, but ultimately chose not to. Quite sad, really. So, he actually asked Marriott, give an example of what you've done that's actually good. It's kind of funny. And they didn't get back to him. And this is kind of like some other currencies uh that I could think of. All right. With this devaluation, okay, of the US dollar. All right. Let's now talk about another devaluation that hits really close to home. British Airways Business Cast was the first really big points redemption that I did and it was also, I think, the last ever flight that I did on a 747, too. While these seats are kind of lame compared to what we have now, at the time, this really meant a lot to me. I felt like I'd made it. All right, this was back in 2018. That flight cost me 50,000 BA AIOS per person one way, and I found a ward availability for two adults, and we had just one baby under 2 years old who could sit in one of our seats. But later on, the redemption level for that flight increased to 80,000 AIS, okay, New York to London, in addition to the ridiculously high taxes and fees that BA hits you with. That put it at the same price in points as United Polaris, which devalued a year earlier from 60,000 all the way up to 80,000 for transatlantic business class. I took one of the last ever flights sold at 60,000 points in 2023. But now, as of December 15th, BA has devalued even more with transatlantic business class now costing 88,000 AIOS plus $400 in taxes. So, this devaluation has really hit home for me because New York to London has been my most frequent business class points redemption, and it's been getting harder and harder to do, making me question whether it is worth it anymore. and would I be better off flying economy and redeeming my Chase or Annex points for cash back instead of transferring them to British Airways? Let's now take a look at a couple more pieces of bad news and then I will talk about how my personal reasons have also become a factor in me leaning towards cashback redemptions rather than points and then I'll give you a conclusion. But first, I know that you are a credit card enthusiast. >> Credit card, Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Discover Card. You love rewards points and cash back. >> I bought credit cards only for broke people. >> No, not at all. Actually, I make thousands doing it this way, as I earn points that I can exchange for free flights and cash back. >> But your bedroom perhaps looks like this because you're also spending a lot of your time investing. And perhaps you always wished that you could get more from those investments. Perhaps rewards on your investing balances like you can earn points on credit card transactions. Well, now you can. You may have heard me talk about Silo in previous videos. Silo is an investing app where you can buy US stocks, ETFs, and both corporate and government bonds. Silo is working with Interactive Brokers to bring in their first ever credit card star rewards program for brokerage accounts. You can earn up to one point per dollar up to 500,000 points per year on your portfolio balance paid out monthly. for the launch of this program only until the end of the month. They're offering an insane 300,000 point welcome bonus for new members. Right now, these points are redeemable for cash back at a 1 cent per point rate, but Silo is currently working to bring on a suite of transfer partners. Think Hyatt Points, Delta Sky Miles, etc. This launch offer is only available until the end of the month. So, if you want to get a 300,000 point welcome bonus and earn up to 500,000 points every year, go to silomarket.com/ben or click the link below. All right, so we've looked at devaluations from airlines and hotels. Now, let's look at devaluation through travel portals. So, you probably all know about Chase's new points boost system. All right, Sapphire Reserve points are no longer worth 1.5 cents per point. Instead, they are worth up to 2 cents per point, depending on which airline or hotel and what class of travel you want to book. Now, there seemed to be a lot of points boost eligible fairs right at the beginning, even in business class. Okay? But now, it's a different story. I searched for a flight from New York to London and I was only finding points boost with United in premium economy. All right, just that one airline and just in premium economy. And to be honest, who's going to waste their points on premium economy anyway? All right, I either go for the most value down in economy or the most comfort in business class. Premium economy has never really made sense to me to actually book with either money or points. Okay, maybe if you can get an upgrade, it's great. like I've done that before except like a last minute upgrade for $100 the night before. But I wouldn't normally search for premium economy tickets and buy them. Okay. And I think a lot of people are the same and that's probably why points boost is available on premium economy and nothing else to entice people to book it. Meaning that for just booking economy, which is the most common booking through the travel portal, you are only getting 1 cent per point. That's a 33% devaluation if you have the Chase Sapphire Reserve and a 20% devaluation if you have the Sapphire Preferred or Inc. Preferred. Another bank that has done this recently is US Bank, which devalued Altitude Reserve points from 1.5 cents per point to 1 cent per point on December 15th. It's actually the same day as the British Airways devaluation. That card isn't available to new members anymore, but many people still have it. Both of these things, the travel portal devaluations and the transfer partner devaluations are basically inflation. It now costs more points to book the same ticket. So, the value of the points has gone down. It's basically what the US government has been doing to the US dollar for decades. You could get a nice house for $11,000 back in 1950, but that would be like 400 grand now or a million if you live in California. And all the while this is going on, bonuses have been rising. I got a 175,000 point bonus on the MX Business Platinum a few years ago and I thought that was a lot, but recently I received AMX Junk mail offering me 250,000 points, but in reality with airline and hotel devaluations, the value may be similar. At least with AMX, they haven't devalued their points through the portal. All right, knock on wood. All right, now I want to talk about one more factor of why I personally am kind of leaning towards being on team cashback. now and that is my personal factors. So my kids 7 and 9 years old now they are both in private school which costs money. They have a load of after school activities which also cost money. And back in the day when I used to do those business class redemptions to the UK, the whole trip would cost like $16,000 if id paid in cash. And I would normally save about half that by exchanging points. So, I'd end up still paying around $8,000. Why is that? Well, there were taxes and fees which would probably take up about half that, right? $4,000 or so. But I also couldn't always find award availability for four people. So, often I would only find award availability for three people, and I would pay for one more ticket in cash, which would be like $4,000 or more. As time's gone on, I see how much money I've been spending on my kids' education and I think, do I really want to spend extra money on top of that on luxuries? If instead I invested that money, I would produce X amount of dividends per year and I can put that towards supporting my family in the future. And as inflation has made the amount of points you need for something increase, the opportunity cost for not doing a cashback redemption has increased too. Like say I wanted to transfer MX points to BA for a business class flight. In the past it was 50,000 points one way which would have a value of $550 if I use the Charles Schwab MX Platinum to redeem as cash back for 1.1 cents per point. But now at 88,000 points on BA New York to London, it has a value of $968 at 1.1 cents per point through the Charles Platinum. So that's almost $1,000 in value. Do I really want to waste that on a fleeting experience that I've had before anyway? Or do I want to rough it in economy like I'm going to do tomorrow on my flight to the UK and use that $1,000 to buy two more shares of Tesla or buy more Bitcoin or something or something else that's going to appreciate in value or pay me a dividend? Recently, I have been choosing the latter option. In addition, award availability is becoming harder and harder to find as my kids have grown and require their own seat. Thus, it is even less likely that I can do all of the tickets with points and often I have to pay out of pocket at least if I'm booking business class. Doing those aspirational awards is not convenient at all. Right? It's not like on social media where someone posts, you know, I was in Emirates first class and it only cost me $100. Right? What you don't see is that that person had to fly from like say Boston to New York to get on that Emirates first class flight to fly to Dubai and then they were actually going on vacation to London. So they had to then take a flight back to London in economy and you know they just show you the Emirates bit but actually they had to jump through a load of hoops to get it right. Often it is like that. You basically need to be a young guy with no family who's just doing it for the experience and has super flexible dates. Like even when last time I did the United Polaris award ticket, I flew to the UK on JetBlue Mint, which was paid for by a client. They offered either roundtrip premium economy or business class one way and I make my own way home. Then after the conference that I was speaking at finished, I should have gone home on the Sunday, but I extended my trip by two more days or maybe it was three more days, I can't remember, all the way to Tuesday or Wednesday so that I could get award availability and United Polaris for my way home. On that particular trip, I just went and visited my parents because it was in my home country. All right. Well, not my home, my previous home country. Um, but if you were in a location where you didn't know anyone, you'd have to spend two more nights in a hotel at your expense. And then add on if your family members are traveling with you, you'd have all their expenses like hotels and meals, etc. And suddenly waiting two more days for award availability isn't worth it anymore cuz you're just going to be spending so much money on staying in that place for longer. And so this is the reason that I'm leaning towards cash back for most of my redemptions these days. I love using the Charles Schwab MX Platinum to cash out my MX points at 1.1 cents per point. I almost max it out. All right, they give you a million points per year allowance at that rate. And I also cash out Chase points at 1 cent per point, too. Next year, I'm considering making one trip to the UK, maybe in spring, on my own using, say, 200,000 points and being really flexible with it. But that's really only so I can probably make some videos about my business class flight experiences. All right? It probably wouldn't be worth it if I didn't have a YouTube channel and uh you know I could sell the video to a client. All right? And that's only really doable cuz when I get there I can stay with my parents for free and it just doesn't cost extra if I have to stay a few more days to wait until there's business class availability. Now in 2026 there are some tools that can really help finding award availability. For example, point.me me is great and anyone who has an Ammex account on a card that earns membership rewards has complimentary access. You just go to point.mme/amx and use your annex password and email to sign in. There are also some other AI based award fair finders that you can look into as well. But for me, even with all those tools, it remains really hard with a family of four to really take advantage of all this. And the opportunity cost versus just getting cash is pretty high. Like let's say I exchange 300,000 points. Well, the cash value of that is $3,300. All right, you invest that over the years, that really grows and it can really help you build your future. All right, guys, that is the video for today. What do you think? Leave your comments down below. And don't forget, if you want to start earning more points than you know what to do with, check out Silo Markets and their limited 300,000 point bonus while it still lasts. Those points can be redeemed as cash back or in the future they will be able to be transferred to partners. But by what I've said in this video, cash back might be a better option. Please subscribe if you're new. We'll see you in the next video. Bye-bye.