Maximizing points from miscellaneous travel expenses

When you travel a lot, the obvious ways to save money and/or earn points are on the flight and the hotel. But there are ways to get points from all the miscellaneous expenses as well.

Rental cars: if you need to rent a car, going directly to the rental company's website will earn you nothing. But clicking through the Ultimate Rewards Mall will get you an extra 3x UR points for booking at Avis and 2x UR points through Hotwire.

Booking hotels: Most of the time, I use my Starwood Preferred Guest points to pay for hotels, but if there isn't one nearby or with low availability, I have to pay for hotels sometimes. Shopping hotels.com through Ultimate Rewards nets you a bonus 4X for every dollar you spend.. a $200 hotel nets you 1000 Ultimate Rewards points!  Of course, you should check American Express Travel also, to compare who's offering more points for spend.

Taxis and transport: Little costs like this add up over time. A $15 taxi here, $7 metro fare there. Use a card like the Chase Sapphire Preferred card, and you'll get 2X bonus points for these types of charges.

Make every charge count. Rather than using cash when you're traveling for anything, put everything on a card, and earn points while you're at it!

Using Membership Rewards on flights

When running through my options on my early NYC trip, I decided to use American Express Membership Rewards points to purchase the trip. Here is my rationale.

When booking through the American Express Travel site, I get an extra Membership Reward (MR) point for every dollar spent. When using MR points to pay for a flight, the charge is placed on an AMEX card of your choice, and the amount is credited within a day or two. I always place the charge on my AMEX Premier Rewards Card, because I get 3x MR points for every dollar spent on airfare. Lastly, because of my membership in the Membership Rewards First program thanks to my AMEX Platinum card, I get 20% MR points rebate every time.

Doing the math for this $195 flight,
AMEX Travel bonus points: +195 MR points
AMEX Premier Rewards Gold 3X airfare bonus: +585 MR points
Membership Rewards points spent: - 19,500 MR points
Membership Rewards points rebate: +3,900 MR points

Total: 14,820 Membership Rewards points spent, no money spent

To Delta, this looks like any other flight purchased with a credit card, and so I get a Delta Medallion Qualifying Segment (MQS) as well as 2,600 Medallion Qualifying Miles (MQM).