Chase Ultimate Rewards are one of my favorite types of miles and points. One reason that I think they’re so valuable is the wide variety of ways that you can use your points. Like several other types of flexible bank currencies (Citi ThankYou points, American Express Membership Rewards points or Capital One Venture miles), you can use them either directly toward travel or transfer them to hotel or airline travel partners.

(SEE ALSO: The difference between points-points and cash-points (and why it’s important))

(SEE ALSO: Credit Card Rewards: Points versus Miles)

Where Chase Ultimate Rewards really shines is that, unlike some of the other bank currencies, both options are often viable. Membership Rewards and ThankYou points are often not great for redeeming directly for travel, while Capital One’s transfer partners (with one exception?) aren’t that great of an option.

How To Get 100,000 Ultimate Rewards points

For most people, the best way by far to get a significant amount of Ultimate Rewards points is by applying for credit cards. With careful attention to detail and conscientious use of welcome bonuses on credit cards, you can rack up hundreds of thousands or even millions of credit card points. While you can get credit card points with your everyday spending, it’s just so hard to get any kind of appreciable amount when you earn 1 or 2 points per dollar spent, unless you have a LOT of credit card spending.

Here are a few cards that are currently offering a healthy amount of Chase Ultimate Rewards points.

Personal cards

• Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card – Earn 60,000 bonus points after $4,000 in purchases in your first 3 months from account opening. $95 annual fee. Read our full review here.
• Chase Freedom Flex® – Earn a $200 Bonus after you spend $500 on purchases in your first 3 months from account opening. $0 annual fee
• Chase Sapphire Reserve® – Earn 60,000 bonus points after you spend $4,000 on purchases in the first 3 months from account opening. That’s $900 toward travel when you redeem through Chase Travel℠. $550 annual fee
• Chase Freedom Unlimited® – Earn an extra 1.5% on everything you buy (on up to $20,000 spent in the first year) — worth up to $300 cash back. That’s 6.5% on travel purchased through Chase Travel℠, 4.5% on dining and drugstores, and 3% on all other purchases. $0 annual fee

(SEE ALSO: 5 reasons I keep recommending the Chase Sapphire Preferred for people starting out)

Business cards

• Chase Ink Business Unlimited® Credit Card – Earn $750 bonus cash back after you spend $6,000 on purchases in the first 3 months from account opening. $0 annual fee. Read our full review here.
• Chase Ink Business Cash® Credit Card – Earn $350 when you spend $3,000 on purchases in the first three months and an additional $400 when you spend $6,000 on purchases in the first six months after account opening. $0 annual fee. Read our full review here.
• Chase Ink Business Preferred® Credit Card – Earn 90,000 bonus points after you spend $8,000 on purchases in the first 3 months from account opening. $95 annual fee. Read our full review here.

(SEE ALSO: Which Chase Ink card is best? (Up to 100,000 points or $1,000))

(SEE ALSO: Business credit cards even if you don’t (really) have a business)

As I always say, don’t apply for a credit card just because some guy on the Internet says that you should, but these are pretty good deals if you’re eligible for the card. If you have any questions, feel free to email me or leave a comment and I’ll be happy to talk you through what might be right in your specific situation.

Use them for $1,250 in travel (or pay yourself back!)

100,000 Ultimate Rewards points is worth at least $1,250, if you have a premium Chase card and use it for travel or via Chase Pay Yourself Back. And if you or a spouse with a Chase Sapphire Reserve card, it could be worth up to $1,500. And even better, you can often get even more value by transferring to Chase’s travel partners. Like the time I turned 100,000 Ultimate Rewards points into a $6,500 train trip. This $1,250 can be used for just about any kind of travel – airfare, hotels, car rentals. You can even pay for tours and activities with Ultimate Rewards points. When my son and I were in Morocco, we used Ultimate Rewards points to book a camel ride as well as a Moroccan cooking class.

20 nights (or more?) at a Hyatt hotel

$1,250 should be the baseline in value that you should expect from the card, but you can often get even more value by transferring to hotel or airline partners. Hyatt Category 1 hotels cost 5,000 Hyatt points per night. So by transferring your Chase Ultimate Rewards points 1:1 to Hyatt, you can get up to 20 nights at a Hyatt hotel. I’ve stayed at my share of Category 1 Hyatt hotels and generally find them to be exceptional value (except when the fire alarm goes off in the middle of the night). If you’d rather spice it up a bit, you can still get multiple nights at a more luxurious Hyatt like the Hyatt Zilara Rose Hall Montego Bay Jamaica (pictured below). You can potentially get even more value if you book a Category 1 off-peak, since those only cost 3,500 Hyatt (or Chase) points per night.

Book a week at a Marriott

Chase is also 1:1 partners with Marriott hotels (and IHG), so you have other options if you’re looking to use your Ultimate Rewards points for hotels. Remember that Marriott gives you the 5th night free on award bookings of five nights or more, and you get the fourth night free if you have the IHG credit card. How many nights you can get for your 100,000 Ultimate Rewards points will depend on the hotel you book. We used 100,000 Ultimate Rewards points a couple of years ago to stay for five nights at the Residence Inn by Marriott Sacramento Airport Natomas and found it to be great value.

It’s a bit harder to get value by transferring your points to Marriott or IHG than it is with Hyatt, just because the number of points that you need is usually higher. Remember to check the Chase Travel℠ portal before you transfer your points. It may cost fewer Ultimate Rewards to book that way.

Fly with United or Southwest or other airline partners

Chase also has a wide variety of airline transfer partners. Which one you want to use will depend on where you want to go, but you have a variety of options. Transferring to Southwest Airlines can make sense if you are flying domestically, but again, it might make sense to pay for Southwest flights using Ultimate Rewards, especially if you have access to a Sapphire Reserve card. Transferring to British Airways Avios can make sense for short-haul domestic flights on American or Alaska, though it’s not as great of a deal as it once was.

United Airlines is another option if you can find a route where it makes sense. I have used United Airlines to fly my parents to Dublin and Scotland as well as used them to fly Aer Lingus myself.

(SEE ALSO: Aer Lingus Business Class review IAD-DUB )

The Bottom Line

If you’re eligible to get the welcome bonus on one of these Chase credit cards, you should highly consider it. As we can see here, 100,000 Ultimate Rewards is a gigantic bonus that can be used in a variety of ways. No matter how you want to travel, that big of a bonus will make a big dent in helping you make it happen.

If you have any questions about this offer or want to talk over how it might work for you, please email me at superdoubledan at gmail dot com. I am more than happy to talk to anyone about this or any other offer and how it might work for you.

What would you do with a 100,000 Ultimate Rewards points? Leave a note in the comments.

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