💸 The best points-buying deal of the year

Estimated read time: 5 minutes and 20 seconds

Good morning and welcome back to Daily Drop, the potato chip of newsletters.

Nobody stops at just one, which works out nicely because there’s a fresh one every morning. 😉

We’ve got a lot to cover today, so let’s skip the pleasantries:

✈️ 30% transfer bonus to 7 airlines

There’s a chonky new set of transfer bonuses that just dropped, and it’s one of the most flexible and versatile ones out there.

Until December 1, you can get a 30% bonus when transferring UR points to British Airways, Iberia, and Aer Lingus (all of which use the same currency, Avios).

The reason this is so awesome is that you can freely transfer Avios between those three airlines, PLUS Finnair, Qatar Airways, Loganair, and Vueling.

That means that transferring points to British Airways with a transfer bonus means transferring points to ANY of the other six airlines also with a transfer bonus.

You can do this by using the Avios online transfer tool, which is intuitive and very easy to use once you link up your accounts.

How to get UR points

Many of you probably already have some UR points lying around.

If you don’t, you can get some by with cards that earn them, including our single most popular card at Daily Drop, which is currently offering 75,000 bonus UR points after meeting the spending requirements.

Anyway, this transfer bonus is very good stuff.

Avios are my favorite airline currency, and I use them ALL the time.

For example, just this morning, I found one of Qatar’s new “Privilege Deals” from Jakarta to Toronto (in Qsuites) on the exact day I happened to need to travel from Jakarta to Toronto… which is wild.

Anyway, 75,000 Avios for 24 hours in Qsuites is just too good to pass up. But with a 30% transfer bonus, that’s just 58,000 UR points.

You can simply transfer 58,000 points to British Airways, then onward to Qatar using the Avios tool.

Even if you’re booking domestic flights in the U.S., you can use the same trick to fly American or Alaska to Hawaii for just 16,000 Qatar Avios.

With this bonus, that’s just 12,300 UR points to fly between the mainland and Hawaii.

The bottom line

I loveeeeeeeeeeeee my Avios. It is the most flexible airline currency in the world, and also one of the most valuable.

If you don’t have UR points, there is another good way to get some Avios, which I’ll tell you about below. 👇

💸 The best points-buying deal of the year

Buying points is usually a bad idea.

Like… genuinely. Most of the time, the math doesn’t work, and you’re better off either paying cash or transferring points from a credit card instead.

But every now and then, a sale comes along where the numbers do make sense.

Right now, Finnair is selling Avios at up to a 50% discount, AND 10% tier points (which can earn status).

Before you go try it, though, there’s one weird rule: You need at least 50 Avios in your Finnair account for the sale to show up.

But here’s the fun part:

As I said earlier, you can freely transfer Avios between airlines that use them, like British Airways, Iberia, Aer Lingus, and Qatar Airways.

I have hundreds of thousands of Avios with Qatar Airways.

So I used the Avios transfer tool to send exactly 50 of them to British Airways, then again to Finnair.

… and suddenly the discounted pricing appeared.

Boom. Now, 85,000 Avios (the minimum needed to unlock the full 50% discount) cost just $969, or about 1.1 cents per point.

So… is this a good deal?

Well, let me illustrate the value with an example of a flight I booked earlier this year.

Back in March, I flew from Helsinki to Shanghai for just 62,500 Finnair Avios and $130 out of pocket. 👇

Now, I didn’t buy points for this – I transferred them from Qatar as I explained earlier.

But it also got me thinking… what if you didn’t have the points?

Well, if you buy Avios at the full 50% discount, you’re paying 1.1 cents each.

To book the same flight I booked, it would cost $688 in Avios.

Even when you add in the $160 in taxes and fees, that’s still $818 total for 13 hours in lie-flat business class.

That’s a deal I’d pay for any day. But when you compare it to the cash price of the same flight on the same day, it’s even crazier. 👇

In this case, strategically buying points would save you over $4,000.

And this isn’t just a Finnair trick.

Remember how you can transfer Avios between airlines?

That means you could buy Finnair Avios, transfer them to Iberia, and book this flight from New York to Madrid using 40,500 Iberia Avios and $126 in business class.

At 1.1 cents per point, that’s $572 total (including the taxes) for a lie-flat flight across the Atlantic.

Just for fun, let me ask you:

And, if all of that wasn’t enough, you’ll also get Tier Points with Finnair when buying these Avios.

If you were to buy the maximum of 200,000 Avios, you’d end up with 20,000 Tier Points, which gives you two things:

• Silver status (which comes with oneworld Ruby status), and

• Two milestone rewards:

  • 3,000 more Avios

  • Two Finnair business lounge passes

Finally, make sure you buy these through the Rove Shopping Portal, which offers you Rove Miles on top of the Avios and credit card rewards.

So here’s the bottom line:

The best way to book business class is still to transfer points from a credit card.

But if you don’t have enough points, or you’re okay spending some cash to unlock a huge discount, this is one of the rare cases where buying points can actually make sense.

One last thing: Buying points doesn’t code as travel or airfare, so use a card that has increased earn rates on everyday spend.

My go-to card for buying points or miles is always the Capital One Venture Rewards Credit Card. With it, you earn 2x miles on every purchase. 💪

💳 How I earn 3.3x on EVERYTHING

Last week, I told you about my favorite airline credit card and why I added it to my wallet.

Specifically, I use it to earn Atmos elite status and 3x Atmos points on EVERYTHING, thanks to the 3x earning category on international purchases.

Well, there’s actually another layer to those cards that you should know about.

Bank of America’s relationship bonus

If you look at the card’s earning rates, you’ll see that in addition to the 3x categories, the card also offers 10% extra rewards on all purchases if you have a Bank of America bank account. 👇

That means that those 3x categories become 3.3x Atmos points per dollar… which is absolutely insane.

Even if you don’t live abroad like me, that’s still 3.3x Atmos points on dining purchases, which rivals this card that we always recommend for dining.

Bank of America also offers bonuses on bank accounts, so you could even score a $500 bonus for opening an account to trigger this 10% bonus.

Anyway, it’s a neat little combo that I think a lot of you will like.

Sometime soon, I’ll tell you about how I’m using this combo in 2027 to earn many hundreds of thousands of Atmos points AND high-tier status. 😉

That’s it for today, friends! Take care and have a great day.

Byeeeeeeeeeee,

43.6532° N, 79.3832° W

With contributions by Sam Anthony and Katie Begnoche.