Focus on QFF only or QFF + Amex MR

[dumadiscount]

Hi, pretty new to rewards schemes and was seeking people's experiences about which rewards scheme to focus their spend.

1. Currently I have about 250k QFF accumulated in 2 years. Approximately 100k from work flights 2x a year and cc spend and 150k from cc signon bonuses. .
2. Current card is ANZ Black, no Amex. Just churned off Westpac Black.
3. Family of 4 living in Sydney, 2 young kids, annual cc spend roughly $40k with 1/3 on groceries/fuel
4. No immediate plans for travel but in the next decade suspect rough breakdown for family holidays will be 2-3x to San Francisco 2-3x to Asia 1x Europe (FYI Realise I wont spend enough to use points for all of these trips but wanted to illustrate bulk of flights would be to San francisco or Asia)

The two options I see are as follows:
- Keep churning bank cards for QFF bonuses + signup to Amex, get signon bonuses (ie Explorer) and start focusing spend on Amex so I have pool of both QFF & MR points for flexibility
- Keeping churning bank cards of QFF bonuses + signup to Amex Ultimatw Qantas for bonus and use this for majority of cc spend. only collect QFF points.

My main concern is from what I've read is that its quite hard to find availability on Qantas for classic award redemptions + taxes are high. I was originally saving up for 2 x RTW in J for me and wife as a once in a lifetime thing, but its probably unlikely in the next 4-5 years with work + kids.

Just want to see what members experiences are in just focusing spend on QFF vs Amex. Thanks!

 

[Mattg]

It's a no brainer in my opinion - start building Amex MR points! Not only does this give you the flexibility to transfer to any of 9 programs as you need them (giving you access to more award availability) but several of Amex's transfer partners have much better value redemptions than QF!

Case in point: It costs 256,000 Qantas points and around $1,000+ in taxes to fly business class from Australia to Europe return - and that's assuming you can find availability, which often you can't. By contrast, it costs 210,000 KrisFlyer miles + around $2-300 in taxes round-trip to fly Singapore Airlines business class from Australia to Europe, and award availability is way better than Qantas. Why would you even bother with Qantas points?

 

[coriander]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think you can churn your MR-earning Amex cards without losing the points. I believe you can hold MR points indefinitely (I've held about 200,000 points for 7-8 years before I got into serious points earning/redeeming) as long as you keep your Amex card active..

You could transfer MR points to Krisflyer before churning an Amex card, but then a three year countdown clock to using them starts running.
With QF points, they sit happily in your QF account indefinitely as long as you make a points earning/redeeming transaction every 18 months.

 

[dumadiscount]

Apologies, yes not intending to churn Amex cards, just bank VISA/MC for QFF. So my only way to building up Amex MR is via initial signon bonus then spend.

 

[NoName]

Definitely worth earning so MR pts because of the flexibility. I have only redeemed a few KrisFlyer awards (me in new and old suites + MrsNoName & NoName Jnr in new J) after transferring from MR but that was more than enough to show me the benefit of having pts in other currencies.