[DE] Considering moving some savings into the Points Pocket
I have searched online for some opinions and I did find some threads in reddit but some are old and some have out of date information, so I would like to clear my mind on this idea.
I am considering moving the money that I have in XEON to Revolut to farm Revolut Points. Some questions that I have:
- Is Revolut an actual bank now?
>From what I understand, they have a license in the EU, but they also need a license on each country they're offering services. At the moment I am resident in Germany, and from what I understand it is an official bank here. What about Italy? I am interested to know if I move back there in the future.
- Is the Points Pocket a safe deposit?
>Is it insured up to 100k€ like the normal deposits or not? Assuming again that Revolut is an actual licensed bank in the country.
- How to safely transfer the money?
>I have had Revolut since 2018, but I always used it when traveling abroad to a country with different currency. Didn't have more than 1000€ in it at a single time probably. I would probably transfer between 30k€ and 50k€ to Revolut directly from my broker and I wonder if this can cause an issue and what I have to do to prepare myself. I do not want to have my account blocked and I am willing to send all the documents needed before the transfer.
- Is it worth to keep Metal plan then?
>Since I would get most of the points through the Points Pocket, is it worth to keep the Metal plan to get points with the payments too? Probably it is more useful then to use my Amex for payments and save up MR (that do not expire).
- Is it actually worth it?
>Take 50k€ in XEON. with 2% ECB rates, you will get around 1000€ of gains each year, taxed at 25% it will be 750€ net. Put 50k€ in the Points Pocket, you will get 126000 points each year. There are untaxed. Looks like they're worth 2520€ of discounts, or 126000 miles. Say that I waste the points for a Lufthansa gift card to get a ticket (I use Lufthansa a lot), that is already around 1000€ worth of discount (what you get with XEON gross in a year). So we already match the returns of XEON (or a deposit account anyway). Transfer these points in miles they could be worth it even more. Correct me if I am wrong, but I feel like these points are worth it around 2 return trips outside of EU in Economy (so 4 tickets), or I could even manage to get 1 return trip in Business (so 2 tickets in total). Since I travel for vacation at least once a year, I would make use of that.
- How long does it take to transfer points to miles?
>I have never done it, even with my Amex. I know that Amex the first time could take a lot, and then later times it will be faster but could still be a few days. What about Revolut? Does it change between the various rewards programs?
- Points and miles expires. How to optimize?
>Points expire every 3 years. If I am late and I don't know how to spend them, I could transfer them in miles (say Flying Blue) and then I would have another 2 (or 3?) years before the expiration of the miles. So basically I would have a total of 6 years to spend my points. Am I right?