Calculating the Value of Your Miles

Knowing the value of your miles can help you in deciding whether a miles-earning credit card is for you.

I’ve been talking about how my credit cards and their usage are all about maximizing the miles they earn. However, I haven’t explained why I am prioritizing these over reward points or cashback. 

The main reason is simple really. I could never convince myself to purchase business, first, or suite class flights using cash. As much as I want it for the experience, spending PHP 340,000.00 for a first/suites class flight from Manila to Singapore to Sydney and back via Singapore Airlines just isn’t practical. The other reason is because you can get better value through miles than other rewards system, granted you are not redeeming the miles at budget airlines. You will find out why in a bit. Moreover, this isn’t easy and would usually require spending a lot or maximizing promos and benefits. If you aren’t a heavy user of credit cards, then it might be wiser to stick with cashback or rewards points.

Now, let’s move on to the computations!

Covering the Basics

The formula is simple:

Value of a Mile = Cost of the Flight in PHP / Cost of the Flight in Miles

Let’s use a Cebu Pacific flight as an example. 

The total cost (including check-in baggage paid with miles) of a one-way trip to Sydney from Manila is 23,530 GetGo points. For a roundtrip, this brings the cost to 47,060 GetGo points. The same trip, when booked and paid with cash, costs PHP 19,875.04. 

Dividing 19,875.04 with 47,060, we get roughly 0.42. This means that for this booking, your miles are worth PHP 0.42 each. Does this seem like a good deal to you? Read on!

Note: In order for your computation to be accurate, it’s best that you bring the scenarios of booking as close to one another. Include all the taxes and fees, baggage costs if any, in-flight meals, etc. 

Using Mabuhay Miles

This time, let’s take a look at some Mabuhay Miles flights. 

Since Philippine Airline flights are charged in USD, we’ll temporarily use PHP 50.00 as the exchange rate to get the cost in PHP. Once you have the cost in PHP, do the same computations and we’ll get the value of your miles.

Note: There might be additional costs when booking Mabuhay Miles flight but I’m unable to simulate a booking procedure right now since the website isn’t showing me available flights after searching.

As you can see, the value of your miles will differ for each airline you are going to fly with. Not only that, these will also change depending on the flight class.

Generally, the fancier airline and class you fly with, the better the value for your miles. This, however, comes with the trade-off that you will usually have to spend more miles.

Note: In the examples above, flying MNL-SYD via Mabuhay Miles seems to be less expensive than flying via GetGo Points. You can actually make the GetGo Points cheaper but this means giving up on the 20kg checked-in baggage allowance.

Using KrisFlyer Miles

Now, let’s check out KrisFlyer Miles.

Aside from the miles, there are sometimes additional costs in USD when redeeming flights. This should be added to the flight’s cost. Everything else remains the same and you’ll arrive at a value of PHP 2.00 per mile!

Using Citibank’s PremierMiles as reference, this brings the “cashback” to roughly 6%! Higher than any cashback credit cards available in the market!

Now, it doesn’t end here as there are actually a few more things to talk about. So please do check out the next page!