Free Travel: Redeeming My 70,000 Miles from the Barclaycard Arrival Plus Card

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ate last year, the Barclaycard Arrival PlusÂ® World Elite MastercardÂ® increased their welcome offer to 70,000 miles! This is the best ever weâ€™ve seen for this card and a card offer I did not want to miss out on. Shortly after the offer was announced, I pulled the trigger on applying and was approved immediately. I have a surplus of traditional hotel and airline miles, but am actually lacking in the “fixed” point area.

Key Link: Barclaycard Arrival PlusÂ® World Elite MastercardÂ® â€” Enjoy 70,000 bonus miles after spending $5,000 on purchases in the first 90 days.Â $89 annual fee waived for the first year. *Terms Apply.

With this card, you can redeem your points on anything that is coded as “travel”. You also redeem at a fixed 1 mile = 1 cent per travel. That means the 70,000 miles I earned solely from the welcome offer is worth exactly $700 towards travel. No need to worry about the best value or being pigeon holed into a certain airline or hotel.

About 6 months later I have fully redeemed my 70,000 miles and am $700 richer….

Redemption No. 1: Skiing in New Hampshire

For those who are skiers in New Hampshire, you already know that there are limited point hotels available right near the mountains. We are a big ski family and living outside of Boston makes East Coast skiing very easy for us. This past winter, I was able to book a weekend getaway to New Hampshire and stay just a half a mile from the mountain. Expedia was having a ridiculous promotion and I was able to stay for about $163 in total. For a 2-bedroom suite may I add. After the charge hit my stay, I was able to wipe away the charge by redeeming 16,300 points

a woman and child on skis — Staying close to the hotel (for free) thanks to Barclaycard miles!

Redemption No. 2: Uber Gift Card

One of the issues with using the miles from this card is that your charge must be at least $100 to redeem your miles. This clearly doesn’t work well with typical Uber charges as they typically run around $8-$25 in my world. In a recent trip to New York City I knew I’d be taking Uber quite often. In advance, I purchased a $100 Uber gift card and then applied it directly to my Uber account. I was then able to use the credits to pay for my Uber rides. While I definitely didn’t spend even close to $100 in Uber rides while in New York City, I have a few more upcoming trips that will probably deplete my account.

a gift card in a box — (Image courtesy of Uber.com)

This is a great work around for purchases that are less then $100. Buy a $100+ gift card directly from the merchants and then redeem your miles for that single purchase. In my experience this absolutely works with Uber and American. Just make sure to purchase the gift card directly from the merchants website and not through a 3rd party merchant (such as Staples, Target or through Barclaycard direct). With this work around, I was able to redeem 10,000 of my miles for my Uber rides

Redemption No. 3: American Airlines Flight

Last month I had a trip to Dallas and the American Airline flights were ridiculously inexpensive. Of course I could have redeemed my AA miles, but it was a horrible value. My $123 roundtrip flight was costing 17,500 AAdvantage miles. No thank you. I paid for my flight with my Barclaycard and then redeemed 12,300 miles for my flight. Definitely a worthwhile redemption.

Redemption No. 4: Daily Getaways Purchase

Earlier this week, the Daily Getaways promotion was selling IHG points for .5 cents per point. Although this this is by no means a once in a lifetime deal since IHG typically sells points for this same price, a family member had a need right away for some IHG points. They asked me to purchase the points for them and they’d pay me back with cash. I purchased one of the 60,000 point packages for $300. This will then allow me to redeem 30,000 miles for my purchase. Although using my Chase Sapphire Reserve card would have given me a higher value due to the 3x points, I preferred to get rid of my miles and get cash instead. A win-win in my book.

a swimming pool with palm trees and a beach — Using IHG points to stay in Aruba (photo from Holiday Inn Resort Aruba)

Overall…

Thus far I’ve redeemed a total of 68,600 Arrival miles, so I still have some left. And remember, with this card you earn a 5% rebate on all miles used. So I’ve earned an extra 3,430 miles back into my account. While I still have a few more miles to redeem, I am confident they will be used up quickly.Â I did not make one extra purchase that I wasn’t going to make anyways and got close to $700 in free travel. Definitely a worthwhile sign up offer for my travel purchases these past few months.

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