What's in your wallet?

So far this year I've gotten 7 days of hotels for free, totaling over $3500 in savings. On one the stays I booked 4 days on points and got the 5th night free. (5 nights for 4 nights worth of points). Hilton and Marriott allow you to do this if you are a Hilton Elite Member or Marriott Bonvoy member.

My plan next year is to try to book 11 nights of hotels on points and free night certificates on our European trip. I have 2 Hilton and 1 Hyatt free night certificate already, and 1 more Hyatt free night should show up in my account in March. My Hilton Honors points and Hyatt/Chase Ultimate Rewards points should be enough to cover the rest.
 
pcbuck said:
So far this year I've gotten 7 days of hotels for free, totaling over $3500 in savings. On one the stays I booked 4 days on points and got the 5th night free. (5 nights for 4 nights worth of points). Hilton and Marriott allow you to do this if you are a Hilton Elite Member or Marriott Bonvoy member.

My plan next year is to try to book 11 nights of hotels on points and free night certificates on our European trip. I have 2 Hilton and 1 Hyatt free night certificate already, and 1 more Hyatt free night should show up in my account in March. My Hilton Honors points and Hyatt/Chase Ultimate Rewards points should be enough to cover the rest.
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?. So you're paying $500/night for hotel?

think I got a room at Trump Towers in Chicago for less than that a few yearsa go....
 
Thavoice said:
?. So you're paying $500/night for hotel?

think I got a room at Trump Towers in Chicago for less than that a few yearsa go....
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Technically I didn’t pay for any of it. I did use 176,000 American Express membership rewards points and 25,000 Hyatt points.
One of the hotels was a Waldorf Astoria and another was a historic hotel in London in a great location steps from Trafalgar Square.

I typically don’t pay that much for a hotel. The last one I stayed at and paid was about $270 per night.
 
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Just wanted to update my credit card points and miles data for calendar year 2024.
I spent a total of $1,543 in annual fees (up $267 from last year)
I got $10,116 in benefits (up from $4,806 last year).
The break down looks like this:
Free hotel nights $3,670
Credit card perks $2,741
Free flights $1,694
Cash back $1,379 (includes $250 sign up bonus)
Credit card offers $632

I'll post the points data next week.
 
pcbuck said:
Just wanted to update my credit card points and miles data for calendar year 2024.
I spent a total of $1,543 in annual fees (up $267 from last year)
I got $10,116 in benefits (up from $4,806 last year).
The break down looks like this:
Free hotel nights $3,670
Credit card perks $2,741
Free flights $1,694
Cash back $1,379 (includes $250 sign up bonus)
Credit card offers $632

I'll post the points data next week.
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This was the monetary benefits that I got from my credit card usage in 2024.
There were a couple benefits that I received that I didn't really factor in for various reasons.
I rented a car in Scotland and used my Chase Sapphire Preferred card. That card offers primary rental car insurance so I didn't have to pay for that at Hertz. You actually have to decline that coverage at Hertz to get this benefit. Most US car insurance coverage doesn't apply abroad except for Canada and Mexico, so this was definitely useful.
I also went to the Centurion Lounge in Heathrow Airport with my wife. This one wasn't crowded with no wait time at all. The food and beverages, including a full service bar, were all complementary. There were also shower rooms and a wellness room.
 
I closed out the year with 565,954 points left.
This is up from 324,106 points at the end of 2023.

The Top 4 Ecosystems I have points in:
Hilton: 225,165
Chase Ultimate Rewards: 98,385
Southwest: 72,604
Hyatt: 68,668

I also redeemed 176,000 American Express Membership Rewards points, 122,282 Southwest points, and 25,000 Hyatt points in 2024.
 
pcbuck said:
This was the monetary benefits that I got from my credit card usage in 2024.
There were a couple benefits that I received that I didn't really factor in for various reasons.
I rented a car in Scotland and used my Chase Sapphire Preferred card. That card offers primary rental car insurance so I didn't have to pay for that at Hertz. You actually have to decline that coverage at Hertz to get this benefit. Most US car insurance coverage doesn't apply abroad except for Canada and Mexico, so this was definitely useful.
I also went to the Centurion Lounge in Heathrow Airport with my wife. This one wasn't crowded with no wait time at all. The food and beverages, including a full service bar, were all complementary. There were also shower rooms and a wellness room.
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One other credit card related benefit I forgot to mention was booking a stay at a Hilton hotel on points or free night awards. If that hotel has resort fees, those fees are waived. That saved me $225 in resort fees last year.

Hilton and Hyatt waive resort fees on points or free night award stays. However, Marriott, Choice Hotels, and IHG all charge resort fees on award stays.
 
As long as you have one of the Chase Sapphire cards one of the best ways to rev up your Chase Ultimate Rewards points total is by signing up for the no annual fee Freedom cards (Freedom Flex and Freedom Unlimited). This card offers a $200 sign up bonus for $500 spend in the first 3 months. That $200 can be converted to 20,000 Chase UR points.
People can often get over 2 cents per point when transferring those UR points to travel partners like Hyatt. In this scenario for your $500 in spend you can get over $400 in value back.
 
pcbuck said:
As long as you have one of the Chase Sapphire cards one of the best ways to rev up your Chase Ultimate Rewards points total is by signing up for the no annual fee Freedom cards (Freedom Flex and Freedom Unlimited). This card offers a $200 sign up bonus for $500 spend in the first 3 months. That $200 can be converted to 20,000 Chase UR points.
People can often get over 2 cents per point when transferring those UR points to travel partners like Hyatt. In this scenario for your $500 in spend you can get over $400 in value back.
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Someone looks upset they can't get a credit card. 😿
 
PantherProud said:
What’s the best rewards card going that doesn’t come with an annual fee?
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The quick answer to this without knowing any other information is probably the Citi Double Cash or the Wells Fargo Active Cash.
They both offer 2% back on everything with a $200 sign up bonus. They both do have foreign transaction fees though.
 
pcbuck said:
The quick answer to this without knowing any other information is probably the Citi Double Cash or the Wells Fargo Active Cash.
They both offer 2% back on everything with a $200 sign up bonus. They both do have foreign transaction fees though.
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Essentially just have a big purchase coming up. Want to put it on a card that comes with good perks that I’ll pay off immediately.
 
PantherProud said:
Essentially just have a big purchase coming up. Want to put it on a card that comes with good perks that I’ll pay off immediately.
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Amex has elevated sign up bonuses on their Marriott and Hilton cards right now that may interest you. The Marriott cards have an annual fee. One of the Hilton cards doesn’t have an AF.
 
Chase Sapphire Preferred currently has a historically high sign up bonus (SUB). The deal is for 100,000K Chase Ultimate Rewards (UR) points if you spend $5K in 3 months. The usually bonus is 60,000K points with $4K spend in 3 months. Chase UR points are valued around 2 cents per point making this sign up bonus worth about $2K. I've gotten about 2.4 cents per point transferring my UR points to Hyatt.

I already have this card so I'm not eligible for the SUB but my wife will apply for this next week when the referral links become active on 04/08. She'll get the 100,000 UR points and I'll get 10,000 UR points for referring her.
 
pcbuck said:
Chase Sapphire Preferred currently has a historically high sign up bonus (SUB). The deal is for 100,000K Chase Ultimate Rewards (UR) points if you spend $5K in 3 months. The usually bonus is 60,000K points with $4K spend in 3 months. Chase UR points are valued around 2 cents per point making this sign up bonus worth about $2K. I've gotten about 2.4 cents per point transferring my UR points to Hyatt.

I already have this card so I'm not eligible for the SUB but my wife will apply for this next week when the referral links become active on 04/08. She'll get the 100,000 UR points and I'll get 10,000 UR points for referring her.
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Annual fee?
 
pcbuck said:
Did you get this card? The elevated bonus is still available.
If you can hit the $5,000 spend in 3 months, it's a great deal. You can simply cash in the 100K SUB at 1 cent per point to get $1,000 and cancel after 1 year and pocket the cash ($1,000-$95=$905).
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Thanks, I’ll have to look at this more. I’ve got a $6000 purchase coming up later this year.
 
I just put the finishing touches on a 12 day trip overseas. I got all the days at Hyatt and Hilton hotels with credit card points and 3 free night awards. It wasn’t easy based on points stay and free night award availability as well as travel logistics, but it is something that anyone could do.
 
PantherProud said:
Thanks, I’ll have to look at this more. I’ve got a $6000 purchase coming up later this year.
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If you haven’t signed up for the Chase Sapphire Preferred, the huge elevated bonus is still available. AND here’s another reason to sign up. If you sign up through Rakuten you can get another $300 in addition to the 100K bonus.
If you don’t have Rakuten but know someone that does, have them send you a referral link and you both get $40 if you buy something using Rakuten.

This is an amazing deal.
 
pcbuck said:
If you haven’t signed up for the Chase Sapphire Preferred, the huge elevated bonus is still available. AND here’s another reason to sign up. If you sign up through Rakuten you can get another $300 in addition to the 100K bonus.
If you don’t have Rakuten but know someone that does, have them send you a referral link and you both get $40 if you buy something using Rakuten.

This is an amazing deal.
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Thanks. Plan to do it at the end of this month. My purchase is in August, so waiting to get into that “spend $6000 in the first 3 months” window.
 
Still a good deal. Just so you know many people that have this card transfer their posts to Hyatt. It’s one of the best transfer partners across all the credit card systems. You can easily get 2-2.5 cents per point without really trying hard, which would be over $1,200-$1,500 dollars in value in your case.
 
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There hasn't really been much to post recently. I'll be posting my Mid Year Summary in the next 2 weeks.

At least once a year you should check your cards to see if any benefits have changed, especially the cards with annual fees.
Companies are frequently getting rid of benefits, increasing annual fees, changing partners so it makes sense to periodically evaluate to make sure that the credit cards you hold continue to make sense.
For example, Chase Sapphire Reserve recently announced increasing the annual fee to $795 dollars, up from $550. There are a lot of added benefits but they don't apply to everyone. Many credit cards have changed their airport lounge benefits as well, and it's not for the good.
 
Since we've just finished the half way point on the year, I wanted to give an update on how my credit card points and miles journey is going.
So far I've spent $1,080 in annual fees with another $585 to be charged for the rest of the year.
I've gotten $8,251 in benefits back so far. I'm not going to go into all the details until the end of the year but by far the largest single category was free hotel nights which accounted for $4,949 of the total. That was for 13 nights all together.

Thanks to sign up bonuses (3 total thus far) we have over 200,000 more points than we did to start the year.
 
pcbuck said:
If you don't have the Chase Sapphire Reserve anymore and haven't received the Sign Up Bonus in the last 4 years, you could sign up again and get the SUB again. The usual bonus is 60K Ultimate Rewards points if you spend 4K in 3 months. Or you could wait until the spring possibly for an elevated bonus. This last one was 75K points for the same spend.
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Chase made some recent changes to the Sapphire cards. They did away with the language that you can get a Chase Sapphire Sign Up Bonus (SUB) if you haven't received one in the last 4 years. Now they use proprietary data to decide when or if you can get another SUB. You may never be eligible. If you apply for the card, a pop up may come up saying you aren't eligible for the bonus.

Another change that Chase made recently is that they now allow customers to have BOTH the Chase Sapphire Reserve and Preferred cards at the same time. The Reserve card recently had an large increase in their annual fee from $550 to $795, which is the highest in the industry right now. Expect Amex to follow suit with their premium American Express Platinum card.
 
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