When Is it Okay to Share Points with Friends?

Do your friends or family ever ask you to share your points? Or, do you volunteer to share the wealth?

For some reason, I feel like I am always handing out points to family and friends. Sometimes it’s for their benefit, and other times, it’s for mine.

But, how do you decide when sharing is a good idea? Here are my thoughts on the issue.

 

When It Makes Sense to Share Points

One of the most frequent situations where I’m willing to share points is when someone is traveling with me. This is especially true if the person is serving some purpose within my travel plans.

Case in point: I took my brother on a three-week trip to Italy, Germany, and Switzerland last year. Since he served as a third set of adult eyes on the kids – and since he did some babysitting for us so we could go out at night – I used Membership Rewards from my Platinum Card from American Express for his flight after transferring to Air France/Flying Blue. We also paid for all our hotels and condos and for some of his food (when he didn’t object, that is).

I also gifted my parents one of my free Hyatt night certificates for Spring break next year. My parents are going with us for three nights at the Hyatt Ziva all-inclusive resort and four nights at the Holiday Inn Resort in Montego Bay, but my parents were short on Hyatt points. Fortunately, Hyatt let me use one of my certificates on their reservation, covering their entire three-night stay completely. In this case, this was beneficial since they’re traveling with us and, well, they’re my parents.

 

When It Doesn’t Make Sense to Share Points

Then there are those times when you don’t want to share but you are willing to strike a deal. We’re taking a three-week trip to Italy, Croatia, and Greece with our kids this summer and my brother wanted to come with us. The thing is, we don’t need a babysitter this time because part of our trip is a seven-night Mediterranean cruise and there is no chance I would book and pay for a second cruise cabin because he wants to see where Star Wars was filmed in Dubrovnik.

But I struck a deal with him. I would pay for his flight to come up for the second leg of our trip – a few nights in Naples and five-nights in a villa I rented in Praino, just down the street from Positano on the Amalfi Coast. So, I transferred another 50,000 Membership Rewards to Flying Blue and paid for his flight. He’ll come to Naples by himself for a few days, then meet up with us and spend five nights in Praino. We might also take a day trip to Capri.

The trade-off was, he agreed to sign up for the Chase Sapphire Preferred card, meet his minimum spending requirement, then let me spend his points. This is made possible because I am going to use his Chase points to book hotels for the earlier leg of our trip. And fortunately, the Chase travel portal lets you book hotel rooms in anyone’s name unlike some loyalty programs.

Now let’s talk about when it doesn’t make sense to share points. I have to be honest; I really despise it when people don’t make an effort to earn their own points and miles but feel they have a claim to yours. This really irks me, mostly because points aren’t free. They take time to earn and, when you spend them on someone else, you are forgoing free travel for your own family.

In those cases, I am more than happy to advise people on how to earn their own points and miles. Instead of using mine, they can use their time and resources to rack up points through regular spending and earn signup bonuses. And if they won’t, well, that’s their problem.

The Bottom Line

When does it make sense to share points and miles? In my mind, it only makes sense if it benefits me and my family. If it doesn’t, then I am more than happy to tell people “no” or help them craft a credit card rewards strategy of their own. And sometimes, that really works. I’ve had people go from being perplexed about rewards to earning a ton of hotel points and airline miles that same year.

If you have people in your life who have their eye on your stash of rewards, my advice is to teach them how to earn their own or learn how to firmly say “no.” Sharing with people is a nice thing to do, but it’s never required and it shouldn’t be expected.

 

When do you share points and miles? Do you ever tell people “no?”