Reference

The Points & Miles Glossary, In Plain Language

Every term you'll meet in points and miles, defined the way we'd explain it to a friend — with the family angle the other glossaries skip.

The Basics

Points vs. miles: Interchangeable in casual use. Strictly, banks and hotels issue points, airlines issue miles — but everyone says both and means the same thing: a currency you earn and spend on travel.
Flexible (transferable) points: Bank points — Chase Ultimate Rewards, Amex Membership Rewards, Capital One Miles, Citi ThankYou, Bilt — that can move into many different airline and hotel programs. The most valuable kind, because you keep your options open.
Co-branded card: A card tied to one airline or hotel that earns only that program's currency. Useful once you know you're loyal; limiting as a first card.
SUB (sign-up bonus): The points-and-miles community's name for a welcome offer. Melissa's shorthand throughout the guide — get used to hearing it.
5/24 rule: Chase's unwritten-but-real rule: if you've opened 5 or more cards from any bank in the past 24 months, Chase will usually deny you. It's why card order matters, and why business cards — which don't appear on your personal report — are so valuable.
Player 2 (P2): Your partner in the game — usually a spouse. Refer them to a card you hold, earn a referral bonus, and they earn the full welcome offer on the same household spending. The fastest legitimate way to double a points balance.
Downgrade: Converting a card to a no-annual-fee version instead of closing it. Keeps the account and its credit history alive — and starts the clock toward being eligible for that card's welcome offer again.
Welcome offer: The large points bonus for opening a card and meeting a spending requirement — also called a sign-up bonus or SUB. Welcome offers do more for your balance than years of everyday earning, which is why the order you open cards in matters — the 101 guide covers the sequence.
Minimum spend: The amount you must charge to a new card, in a set window, to trigger the welcome offer. The only good way to hit it is spending you'd have done anyway.
Annual fee breakeven: The point at which a card's credits and perks, as you actually use them, cover its fee. Marketing math assumes 100% usage; real households land far lower. Our breakeven calculator does the honest version.

Moving Points Around

Transfer partner: An airline or hotel program a bank currency can move into. Which partners a bank has decides what its points are really worth — see every partner, mapped.
Transfer ratio: How many partner points you receive per bank point. Most are 1:1; some are better (Amex to Hilton is 1:2) and some worse (Amex to JetBlue is 250:200). Always check before moving anything.
Transfer bonus: A limited-time boost — 20–40% is typical — when moving points to a specific partner. We track active bonuses here. A bonus is only a reason to transfer if you were transferring anyway.
One-way transfer: The rule that makes transfers scary: points that leave a bank for an airline can never come back. Find the award seat first, confirm it's bookable, then transfer.
Points pooling: Combining points across a household. Rules vary widely: some programs allow free pooling between family members, some banks let you share between your own cards, some forbid it entirely. Check before you plan around it.
Expiration: Bank points generally live as long as the card does. Airline miles often expire after 18–24 months of inactivity — any earning activity usually resets the clock.

Booking Flights

Award ticket: A seat paid for with miles plus taxes and fees, as opposed to a revenue (cash) ticket. Same plane, same seat, different currency.
Award availability (saver space): Airlines release only some seats at the good award prices. This — not your points balance — is the real constraint, and it's why families book at the calendar's edges.
Award chart: A published table of what a route costs in miles. Increasingly replaced by dynamic pricing, where the miles price floats with the cash price. Programs that keep charts are more predictable to plan around.
Sweet spot: A route or redemption a program prices unusually well — often booking one airline's flights through a partner's program. The same seat can cost half as much booked through the right partner.
Carrier surcharges (YQ): Cash fees some airlines pile onto award tickets — the reason a "free" flight can cost $700. Which program you book through changes the surcharge, so compare before transferring.
Open jaw: Flying into one city and home from another — into Rome, out of Milan. Often the same price in miles, and it saves a family a backtracking travel day.
Stopover: A stop of more than 24 hours built into one award ticket. Some programs allow them free — two destinations for one award. With kids, a two-day stopover can also just make a long journey survivable.
Lap infant fee: Under-twos can fly on a parent's lap, but on international award tickets most airlines charge roughly 10% of the adult cash fare, not the miles price. It surprises almost everyone — budget for it.

Hotels

Award night: A hotel night paid in points. Usually cancellable until close to arrival — which is why we book hotels early and improve later, the reverse of the flights approach.
Free night certificate: An annual voucher from a hotel credit card, good for one night up to a category or points cap. For a family, one certificate at the right property routinely outvalues the card's fee.
Fifth night free: Some programs (Marriott, Hilton) charge four nights' points for a five-night award stay. It quietly changes the math on week-long family trips.
Occupancy limit: The maximum guests a room officially sleeps — the constraint that shapes family hotel planning, since much of Europe and Asia caps standard rooms at three. Check it before falling for a property.
Elite status: A loyalty tier granting upgrades, breakfast, late checkout. Worth more with kids than without: free breakfast for four is real money, and late checkout matters when naps are involved.
Cents per point: The universal value measure: what each point returned on a specific booking. Cash price minus fees, divided by points, times 100. Our calculator does it and tells you whether the answer is good for that currency.