I have written about this card a little bit before, but I thought I would go into some more detail now to give you a sense of how valuable this card is.

Here are some of the details about what you get with this card:

• 10,000 SPG points after first purchase
• 15,000 SPG points after spending $5,000 in 6 months
• 5 nights/2 stays credit towards elite status
• $65 annual fee waived the first year

This card is actually one of the favorites of travel experts across the country. You may look at what the card has to offer and ask why – really, 25,000 points does not seem that big when you compare that to 50,000 Ultimate Reward points with the Chase INK Bold card or 55,000 miles with the United card. Also, this card only offers 1 point per dollar spent (except at SPG properties where it nets you 2 points per dollar spent). So, why is this card so loved?

The secret to that comes in how valuable each of those SPG points actually is. Most travelers that use this card can leverage those points for between 3 and 6 cents per point, where the United card miles will get some of the same people 2-3 cents per miles. In addition to their value, their options for use are very vast. Consider the following:

• SPG points (or Starpoints) can be used to redeem for flights (which allows the traveler to accrue mileage as well)
• Starpoints can be used to bid on unique experiences and events
• Starpoints can be used for gift cards and products at a good rate (better than the Delta Marketplace anyway). One of those examples is $150 Amazon gift card for 14,000 points.  Not the best use for your points, but still not a bad option.
• Can be transferred to any of 29 airlines, most at a 1:1 ratio – plus, for every 20,000 miles you transfer, you receive a 5,000 mile bonus
• Can be converted to Amtrak Guest Rewards
• Can be used for in-hotel products – massages, dinners, and more depending on the hotel
• Can be transferred between members (providing that the members share the same address for 30 days first)

The room redemption options are where the program really begins to shine. Here are the different options available:

• Free Award Nights
• Fifth Night Free (at category 3 – 7 hotels)
• Cash and Points (one of the most lucrative methods of points redemption – it is fixed rate of points and cash for each category of hotel)
• Upgrade Room and Suites
• 1,000 Starpoints for a 50% off rack rate for a stay up to 5 nights (good for last minute reservations)
• Nights and Flights (another great option – you can redeem 60,000 Starpoints for 50,000 airline miles and five free nights at a category 3 hotel or resorts)
• Nights and Flights II (you can redeem 70,000 Starpoints for 50,000 airline miles and five free nights at a category 4 hotel or resort)

So, you can see there are a host of options for how you can use your Starpoints. With your SPG Amex credit card, you would receive the 25,000 bonus points (plus the 5,000 points due to the spending threshold) – and you can have a personal and business card! This gives you a total of 60,000 Starpoints! Imagine if you and someone else in your family did this – it could give you a combined total of 120,000 Starpoints (remember, members of the same household can transfer points). With that many points, there are a host of options for your travel planning. For example, if you wanted to transfer all of them to your favorite airline (let’s say Delta), you would wind up with 150,000 Skymiles. Or you could use them for free nights, cash and points, Nights and Flights, etc. If you used them for Nights and Flights, you two could take a trip with your miles anywhere in the US or Canada (depending on the program you transferred them to) and get 5 nights in a category 3 hotel (a pretty good value) – TWICE!

Let’s break down some of the hotel redemption offers a little more to give you more of a sense of how this card and program could work for you.

Free Nights

Category Award Levels

Like any hotel awards program, you can use your hotel points for free nights. Something great about SPG is that if there is a standard room available, you can use points for it. Very helpful in contrast to some programs that have different inventory for award nights. There are many great deals available in SPG family while there are some deals that are not as great (comparing price with points).

Here is a way to determine what may be a good deal (your mileage may vary – chiefly based on whether you can afford to pay for the room out of pocket). I would value the SPG points at no fewer than 2 cents per point (in most circumstances). That being said, if a Category 7 is costing $500 and a Cat 7 costs 30,000 points, personally, I would have to use points for that stay even though it is less than my 2 cpp valuation.

Category Award Levels

The $500 would be too much for me to spend on a room for one night. So, there may be some circumstances where you do something similar. So, here is an example: St. Regis in Aspen, Colorado costs $329 for the advance purchase rate or costs 30,000 points for a free night. To me, that is not a good value. Since that hotel costs a lot more in season, I would either search for a better value someplace else or just go back during peak season to get the best value for my stay (remember, unless you are planning on staying in the room for 24 hours, some of the value placed on a property may be the season in which you would be traveling – what hotel amenities or options are available during the right seaons, etc).

St. Regis, Aspen, Colorado

Cash and Points

Another redemption method is the Cash and Points. This allows you to use a mixture of points and fixed cash levels that change based on the category of hotel. There can be some real values with this option, but you need to do your research on some of the hotels that you may choose. For example, a category 4 hotel that I was looking at was going for $89 per night. To use cash and points, it would cost me 4,800 points and $60 cash. That is not a good way to use this redemption method – I am basically valuing those points at .6 cents per point (when you can typically redeem Starpoints at values greater than 3 cents per point). So, just do your homework before you choose your redemption method. SPG makes it easy in that they give you the breakdown of the outright cash cost, free night redemption rate, and cash and points rate, so you can make the calculations at a glance.

Cash and Points Redemption Chart

If you plan wisely, this is definitely one of the best ways to get the most value out of your Starpoints. For example, for select dates, the Westin San Diego (a Category 4) costs $409 a night. Since it is a category 4, that requires 4,000 Starpoints and $60 per night. That brings the actual value of your Starpoints to 8.75 cents per point! A fabulous redemption option. So, there is a lot of value to be had with this option.

Westin San Diego - A Great Candidate for Cash and Points

We will look at some of the other great benefits of this program in future posts. Just know this – you need to get some Starpoints! Below are two of the SPG credit cards (I do get a commission if you use these links and are approved). If you have a small business, you can take advantage of the business card as well. If you do not, read this post about the advantages if you set one up (here)!

Disclaimer: This content is not provided or commissioned by American Express. Opinions expressed here are author’s alone, not those of American Express, and have not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by American Express. This site may be compensated through American Express Affiliate Program.

A travel blogger (Frequent Miler) recently blogged about a great way to turn the 5x points from the Chase INK Bold (at office supply stores) into a real point earning opportunity. To break it down quickly, it involves buying the new American Express Prepaid cards for $500 and reloading them through cards available at Office Depot. You can then use these cards for all of your day to day purchases. If you would do this with $1000 a month, you would earn 60,000 Ultimate Reward points a year JUST WITH THIS! This is an amazing deal! Make sure you check it out here and see if you can turn this into your advantage – link (I do not currently receive commission for the INK Bold card, so if you would like to sign up for it, please do so throughFrequent Miler’s link – thanks!)

As I mentioned the other day, there is a fabulous new offer out for the United MileagePlus Credit card from Chase – 50,000 miles after 1st purchase, an additional 5,000 miles after adding an authorized user, 10,000 more miles after spending $25,000 in one year, AND a $50 statement credit. Normally, Chase will match your current card to any public offer that is available providing you request it within 90 days. Even though I was slightly outside of the 90 days, I thought I would try anyway. So, I sent a secure message through my Chase Online Control Panel. After three days, I receive a very positive response! The $50 credit had been issed to my account and as soon as I replied with my authorized user, I would receive an additional 5,000 miles!

In my reply, I was very careful to be very thankful to the customer service agent who had handled my request. I try to be courteous with everyone, so it was pretty much the normal thing for me to do. Just keep in mind when you make requests like this that it is an actual human being on the other side of the computer. Be courteous and polite (as you should be anyway) since these people have the power to help you greatly with your accounts.

Today, I received my new Chase INK card. This card is the business counterpart to the Sapphire Preferred in that it also uses the Ultimate Rewards program. In addition to that great pool of points, there are some other very nice aspects of the card.

Chase INK Bold for Business Card

I had applied for the card just before the minimum spending requirements jumped up, so I need to spend $5,000 in 3 months to receive the 50,000 point bonus. I applied for the card and, after not hearing anything for a week, picked up the phone to call the Chase reconsideration line (for business accounts) at 800-453-9719. The lady was very polite and professional and, after asking me some questions about my personal finances as well as the organization’s finances and financial needs, told me that she would be able to approve me. However, for her to approve me, she wondered if I wanted this card in addition to my Southwest Business card or instead of. This is one of the reasons that you never close your accounts with Chase unless you absolutely have to – it gives you more to play with in terms of credit lines and open accounts. I told her it would be fine if she just transferred the credit over from the Southwest business card and closed that one out. So, instead of canceling, I was pretty much upgrading the card (even though it was a different product) and now I did not have to call in 8 months and try to cancel the Southwest card. It worked out very well!

So, here are some of the things that I am really looking forward to taking advantage of with this card:

• 5x points per dollar spent at office supply stores, and cable, internet, landline, and wireless bills (up to the first $50,000 per year)
• 2x points per dollar spent on gas and hotel accommodations (up to the first $50,000 per year)
• 1 point per dollar spent on everything else with no limit on the points that can be earned
• The annual fee ($95) is waived for the first year
• Ability to add employee cards with different numbers to protect the account and provide for easy sorting of transactions
• No foreign transaction fee (typically 3%)

So this is a pretty good card! Keep in mind, it is a charge card, not a credit card, so the balance needs to be paid off in full every month. There are many great ways to make this card work for you the best. Office supply stores typically sell gift cards to a variety of places, so if you have other places you would like to shop instead of at those stores (or if they do not have the products you need), purchase a gift card to take advantage of the 5x points per dollar. Do not do this at high amounts as you do not  want to risk Chase shutting you down for using this excessively. However, in moderate amounts should be fine.

So, let’s look at the possible points that could be earned with this card per year. These numbers are based on averages for a small business such as a person selling on ebay (and are monthly amounts).

• Cable, internet, phone bundle – $120
• Cell phone bills – $250
• Gas – $300
• Hotel – $100
• Misc. – $500

If you were to purchase gas station gift cards at your office supply store, you would be able to get a total of over 48,000 Ultimate Reward points per year. That is just shy of two tickets any place in America (if transferred to United) or 2 nights at the most expensive Hyatts in the world (and still having 4,000 left over). See what a nice card this is?

Now, the current sign-up bonus (which is here) is for 25,000 bonus points after first purchase and an additional 25,000 after spending $10,000 in 3 months. This has changed from spending $5,000 in 3 months to get all 50,000. Is this a bad thing? It can be for someone who would like to get all 50,000 but can’t swing the $10K of spending in 3 months. However, it makes for a great card to get in the midst of applying for other cards with high spending thresholds since you get 25,000 points after your first purchase. If it doesn’t bother you to see the other 25,000 not make it to you (because you can’t spend $10K in 3 months), then this new promotion works out great for you. I still think this is a fabulous card to get. *I do NOT receive any commission for the link above*

United and Chase have now bumped up their own offer and it is a great one – 50,000 miles after 1st purchase, an additional 5,000 miles for adding an authorized user within the first two months of opening the account, and 10,000 more for spending $25,000 in a year. So, realistically, you will actually get 55,000 miles for getting this card and there is no minimum spending threshold!

But, wait – there’s more! With the application link below, you will be able to get a $50 statement credit after your first purchase with the card (credit will appear 6-8 weeks after the transaction). Since the annual fee is waived for the first year, this is a great deal!

Ok, here is the trick with this one – you have to be signed in to your United account before you click this link (I do not receive a commission for this link). Once you are, you should see it pop up with the offer. Good luck! This is, in my estimation, the best value out there right now. This will almost get you a free ticket to Europe (60,000 miles), the annual fee is waived for the first year, you get $50 back, and you can make a $1 charge – no minimum spending.

United 65,000 Mile offer - Chase card

If you have already applied for the card under the old method I wrote about before, you can send a secure message through your online Chase account to ask if they will give you the increase in miles if you add an AU (authorized user) and if they will give you the statement credit. I am slightly outside of the 90 days in which they normally match offers, but I sent them a note anyway to see if they will honor it for me. You have nothing to lose for trying!

I received an “offer” in my e-mail today that I thought I would share with you and then cover some of the marketing missives that you will receive. You will definitely receive them as you start applying for cards and signing up for various loyalty programs. This little guide should help you realize what you need to look for and what might be best to stay away from.

Delta's E-mail Offer

The Purpose of Marketing

Believe it or not, the purpose of marketing is to make the company money. Pretty simple! So, how do frequent flyer communications make the companies money? In order to generate more revenue on their part, they need to offer you something that will seem appealing enough to have you sign up for it. What you may miss sometimes is that the “deal” they are offering you is generally less than the market value of your miles or points.

Here is an example: Airlines have a massive amount of frequent flyer miles on their books. At any given time, there are millions of miles that are out there in people’s accounts. Many times, an airline may run a large number of promotions to attract customers in exchange for those miles. The problems start to rise when they have given out more miles than those being redeemed. Those are debts on their books since they do have a dollar value assigned. As such, they will do what they can to get people to trade them in. Some of the “deals” they throw out there are terrible!

Back to the e-mail I just got. It was from Delta and was encouraging me to use my miles to go to Australia. Not a bad start – using Skymiles for a business seat redemption to Australia is probably as good as it gets. However, what drew my attention was the amount of miles they said I should use for Australia – 100,000. I thought – great! They are offering a promotion on business class seats to Australia (not that they need to, that route has very slim business availability). Nope, what it turned out to be was basically an announcement that I could use up to 100,000 miles to pay down (with Pay With Miles) my ticket to Australia by taking off $1,000.

Is that a good deal? To me, that is one of the worst things that one could do in the area of mile redemption. Why? Well, if I did not have any status with Delta, I would receive around 21,000 miles by purchasing that ticket to Australia and NOT using Pay With Miles. (When you use pay with miles, it voids any mile earning opportunities you would otherwise have on the trip – even if you only used 10,000 to reduce it by $100) If I flew to Australia as a Diamond Medallion member, I would actually receive about 46,000 miles! That is almost enough for a ticket to Europe in coach! The value of that many miles would be between $600 – over $1500 for me. So, smart move on Delta’s part to “offer” this and try to get people to use their miles in this fashion. In effect, they are collecting 100,000 miles and saving on another 21,000 – 46,000 miles that would have to be paid out otherwise for a total of close to 150,000 miles they save on. Very smart – for them. Is that a good move for the traveler? NO!

Now, some marketing e-mails can be very helpful. I receive many good offers from all card companies and airlines – including Delta and American Express. The best way to approach them is to take all the ones you can get but read through carefully to determine if the offer is helpful to YOU. This is one of the reasons it is important to learn the different programs’ redemption offers. It helps you understand the value of your points. Don’t ever give your points away for less than your target redemption is. If the e-mail is offering you a chance to use your miles on something, probably not going to be a good deal for you. If the e-mail is offering you miles or points in exchange for something, chances are that will be a good deal for you.

*Disclaimer – I’m not 100% sure that this deal will work, but I am pretty sure it will. This would be best for those looking to purchase a computer anyway.*

Today only, Delta Skymiles Shopping (the Delta shopping portal) is giving 10 Skymiles per $1 spent at Dell Home after getting there by using their link.

Shopping portals work on referral basis – in other words, you are getting the same deal you would get if you went to the online store’s website directly, but by using a referral link, the referring party gets a percentage of the sale or a flat payout based on purchases made through the site. So, you are not losing anything by using their link.

A little while ago, Dell just sent their Dell Home Outlet coupon out – 20% off of any of their laptops or desktops. Since this is under the Home site, this should work for getting the mile bonus. So, if you need a new computer, you have a great opportunity to get a good PC at a greatly discounted price (outlet PCs are already marked down – the 20% coupon comes off of that price) PLUS earn some easy miles for a purchase you were going to make anyway!

For instance, if you were to purchase a high-end Dell XPS laptop (like the one below), it would cost you over $1500 new. You can get from the outlet any day of the week for $1169. Through April 18 (but only today with the Delta deal), you can get it for $935 (plus tax)! If you use the Delta shopping link, you could net a total of 10,000 miles (which is, at worst, $100 off of a Delta flight using Pay With Miles). That is a pretty good deal!

A Dell Outlet XPS 15

Steps to Follow:

1. If you don’t already have one, get a Delta Skymiles number (you should have this for sure by now!) – Link
2. Go to the Dell Home page through the Delta Skymiles Shopping Link (which I have here for you) – Link
3. Go to the top of the page on the right and you will see the link for the Dell Outlet – click that (important, do not close your browser at this point – you need to stay in that page to get the bonus offer from Delta)
4. Start searching for your preferred Dell Laptop or Desktop! Add it to your cart.
5. In the coupon field, add this coupon 3$G5F870$KB6LL
6. Place your order (preferably with a miles or point earning card!) – You are done!

Per the terms from Skymiles Shopping, your miles should post to your account within 45 days. Again, I am not 100% sure that this deal will work with the Dell Home Outlet, but since you are still on Dell Home, I am reasonably sure that it will work. That’s it!

I do not receive any compensation of any kind for any of the links provided in this post. These are all public links for products and offers.

Yesterday, I received (via e-mail) an offer to upgrade to the American Express Business Platinum card from my Business Rewards Gold card. Here are the details:

• $450 annual fee not waived
• 25,000 membership reward points after first purchase
• $200 in airline expenses (not tickets) per calendar year
• Global entry reimbursed ($100 value)
• Lounge access around the world

The $450 fee is very discouraging – in exchange, I would only get 25,000 points for it. However, I can potentially squeeze another $500 of possible charges out of also, so it would actually be very helpful. The normal American Express Business Platinum offer (link) is also for 25,000 points, but after spending $2,000 in 3 months. So, if I was going to get that card, this might be the time to do it. I would personally like to hold out for a better offer, but not sure if that will materialize. There was an offer last week (one-day offer) for 50,000 points after spending $10,000 in 3 months. That is not going to happen. Since card issuers seem to be requiring more and more spend to meet the bonus requirements, this might be the best the offer gets for a while. Not only that, but it would more than likely be a soft credit pull – which wouldn’t show up as a credit inquiry on my report.

So, if you currently have the Business Rewards Gold card from American Express, check those e-mail inboxes for an invite similar to the one below. If you are going to spend money on baggage fees, flight change fees, and other airline fees in the next year, you will get all of that back with this card (up to $200 per calendar year). Think about it!

E-mail invite to upgrade to the Business American Express Platinum card

Disclaimer: This content is not provided or commissioned by American Express. Opinions expressed here are author’s alone, not those of American Express, and have not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by American Express. This site may be compensated through American Express Affiliate Program.

People have asked me about the most difficult travel itineraries I have ever put together. I have done itineraries for many, many people over the years. I am not a travel agent – I just enjoy finding the best deal for people. Especially when they are able to bring another family member because the savings were so significant that the other person got to basically go for free. No, I never charge for this – I am not that good at it! However, when people find out that I enjoy helping, many times they forsake any research on their own and just ask me to put something together for them. Many times, their expectations supersede reality – something they would have known had they done another 3 minutes of research before giving up I try my best to put together the most cost-efficient itinerary, but it can be difficult sometimes!

In spite of all that, the most difficult itinerary I ever assembled was actually for me. Over the next few weeks, I will have different installments of my attempt to run 6 marathon (distances) on 6 continents in 5 days. Today, I will give an overview of what it was and how it came to pass.

In early 2009, I began to wonder if someone had ever run a marathon distance (not an actual, sanctioned event) on every continent in 7 days. I had done a few fundraising runs before and I thought that would make a fabulous fundraising event. I also thought there would be no way I could do it, but it did sit in my mind for a bit. Well, not a week later, I saw some headlines that an Irish ultrarunner had just finished running a marathon on all seven continents – in under 6 days! That just blew me away and it did make me wonder again if I could do it. About 6 weeks later, two more runners completed a 50k on each continent in 7 days. Now it was just really starting to make me wonder!

Three months later, I began putting the pieces together to do something similar. Due to cost, I knew I was going to have to leave Antarctica off the route this time, so I was just going to hit six continents. Not nearly as neat sounding as seven, but it was something that I thought would still help raise money for the charity I was running for. I had some people that had helped me out with the finances for the run and a multitude of naysayers – my favorite were the ones that accused me of trying to “enjoy” a trip around the world at the expense of my friends. I knew before I even started that there would not be “enjoyment” occurring on this trip. I was working out an itinerary that would have me flying almost 40,000 miles, running 26.2 miles on six continents and doing it all in under 6 days – where was my sightseeing supposed to take place?

I knew that there many things that had to come together before I could actually accomplish it. These were some of the things on my checklist:

• Pick destination cities that were easily serviced by non-stop flights to minimize delays and cancellations
• Pick cities/countries with easy entry/exit (the exit is very important to!) requirements
• Try to get tickets that were with reputable airlines
• Get the absolute cheapest price for the tickets (This should actually have been number 1 – if it wasn’t low enough, I wasn’t going anywhere!)

The cities chosen for the Dash

So, just the initial planning phase took a while. There are a lot of cities out there that fit my little list of requirements. The final list (in order of travel) was:

• Sydney, Australia
• Los Angeles, California
• Sao Paulo, Brazil
• London, UK
• Cairo, Egypt
• Jerusalem, Israel

Just assembling that list made many more lists appear – many of those being because of the amount of time zones I would be in. During the course of 6 days, I traveled in and through 18 time zones! I obviously had to make sure that I had enough time to get from the airport to my starting line, run the 26.2 miles, and get back in plenty of time to catch my next flight. It was a massive headache! It did come together, however! More of the details of that will be in a future post. Trust me, even if you don’t learn anything from this blog series, it should be a little entertaining to read about my discomforts along the way!

Over the last week, the Chase Sapphire Preferred has dropped to 40,000 bonus points instead of the 50,000 point total that had been around for about a year. Now, the business card, the Chase INK Bold, is beginning to follow suit. Here is where things stand now:

Chase Sapphire Preferred

The current sign-up bonus is at 40,000 bonus points (after spending $3,000 in the first 3 months). It has come down from 50,000 points. This was a somewhat expected change that was talked about a couple of months ago, although no one knew at the time what the change was going to be. There is no temporary language in the current publicly available offer, so this might be the regular offer. 40,000 is still great – if you took it as a statement credit on your bill, it is $400! If you use it to purchase travel, it counts as $500. If you transfer it to United, that is enough for two round-trip, short-haul award tickets (sometimes the most expensive domestic tickets to purchase). To give you an example, I looked at a one-day trip to Chicago and found wide open availability for 20,000 miles. That one ticket, if purchased with cash, is $1100! That is using just half off the bonus of this card. So, this is still a great value card and one I would suggest you get. You can apply here (I do NOT earn a commission off of this card)

The current bonus offer for the Sapphire Preferred

Chase INK Bold

This is the small business card from Chase. It has had a higher spend amount than the Sapphire Preferred – $5,000 spend in the first 3 months. There are many great things about this card:

• 5x points per $1 spent at office supply stores and on cellular, landline, internet, and cable TV services
• 2x points per $1 spent at gas stations and hotels
• No foreign transaction fees
• Points feed into the valuable Ultimate Rewards program

So, this is a great card to have alongside your Chase Sapphire Preferred. However, Chase has changed the publicly available offers to where you now receive 25,000 points after your first purchase and the additional 25,000 points after $10,000 spend in 3 months. That is a huge bump (a 100% increase, actually) for the required spend to get the points. Does this rule this card out as a card to get? No – especially if you are in the middle of trying to meet your spend requirements on your other cards. You now can get 25,000 points after just one purchase! However, it is that much harder to get the full 50,000 points. This seems to be a trend of business cards as of late – a higher spending requirement to receive the bonus points. It is still entirely possible to meet the spend, it just means that your outlay of cash to receive it may go up. For example, you can purchase gift cards and turn them into cash paying a small fee plus the small fee on the purchase of the card. That may add up to around $350 if you only use that method to reach the spending total. Does that negate the worth of this card? It depends on how you plan to use the points. I can get anywhere from $.03 per point to $.15 per point, so I would consider doing that. Your mileage may vary. Here is the link to the current, public offer (I do NOT receive a commission from this card)

The new offer page for the Chase INK Bold

HOWEVER, this card’s original bonus is not gone completely! Chase affiliates still have the offer. I am not currently an affiliate, so I cannot give you that better offer, but I will steer you to a blogger who I generally use for my card applications. Darius @ Million Mile Secrets still has links that will give you the bonus under the original offer.

The offer page from Million Mile Secrets