March was a month where we didn’t finish any of our spending requirements to hit bonuses, but we did apply for a few cards. Jenn’s focus has been on diversifying our points and mine has been to accumulate some cash back to help with our spending for our July trip to Europe. With diversifying our points, the idea was that we would try to accumulate transferable points when possible as well as get some points in specific programs so that we would have the most flexibility to take advantage of any flash sales or sweet spots when they become available.
Jenn has been racking up Ultimate Reward Points and has been within striking distance of her 90,000 point bonus on her Ink Cash Card, so she decided to go for a Delta Business Gold Card. Delta is an interesting choice for us, since their main hub is in Atlanta and our closest main airport is Chicago, but I do think we will find a use for these points. The welcome offer when she signed up was 75,000 Delta Miles after we spent 3,000 in 3 months. This card recently added the benefit of a 15% discount on reward travel if you hold this card which makes those points worth a little bit more. It’s not a great card to rack up points on spend, however, with just 2x on Delta purchases, restaurants, shipping and advertising, and 1x points on everything else. It has a $95 annual fee, waived for the first year.
Jenn also signed up for the Wyndham Earner Business Card. This is an oddly interesting card. So Wyndham isn’t really known for their top of the line hotels, and it certainly doesn’t seem like a super sexy choice, but it is a weirdly good credit card. The bonus is 45,000 after a spend of $2,000 in the first 3 months, which isn’t super interesting, but I’ve heard an awful lot about Vacasa which allows you to book a vacation rental with Wyndham points. It’s not easy to book vacation rentals with points, so if Wyndham has figured it out, I’m on board. The pricing on these rentals is weird too, where any 1 bedroom is 15,000 points per night, a 2 bedroom is 30,000, so if you are choosy, you can get some pretty good value for those points, since there are some pretty nice rentals going for just 15,000 points per night. Also, there is a goofy status match situation where you automatically earn Wyndham Diamond Status with this card and you can match it to Ceasars Diamond Status. Then you can match to Carnival with their Carnival Players Club Fun Match Program and get a free cruise, apparently. Upgraded Points gives some details. I’ll give it a shot, why not? On top of all of that, it offers really high returns on some categories. The highlights are 8x on gas stations and 5x on utilities. I did the math on this, and if we just used this card for our gas station visits and our gas and electric bill we would earn over 45,000 points per year, that’s enough for 3 nights in a one bedroom Vacasa, not including the signup bonus. The card has a $95 annual fee, but you get 15,000 points every year when you pay that fee, meaning you are buying those points for a little over .6 cents per point, and a lot of people are reporting that they are getting value of up to 3 cents per point when they redeem with Vacasa. I’m strangely excited about racking up some Wyndham points.
I signed up for the US Bank Altitude Connect Card. Technically this is a travel points card, but there doesn’t appear to be any reason to redeem the points for travel directly, so my plan was to use it as a cash back card since the points are worth 1 cent per point as cash back. This card offers a 50,000 point bonus when you spend $2,000 in the first 4 months. It has a $95 annual fee, waived for the first year. It also offers fairly solid cash back in certain categories – 5x hotels and car rentals booked through the rewards center, 4x on gas stations, travel and EV stations, and 2x on groceries, dining and streaming services.
This actually left us with 5 open cards that we were working on bonuses for, which seems like a bit much. That being said, by the end of the month 2 were almost completed and the other 3 meant that we were going to need to spend about $7,000 over about 3 months, and I don’t see that as a problem. I’m expecting those bonuses will balloon our point totals over the next few months.
Anyway, on to the points check!
I spent around $900 on my Bank of the West card and earned $20 in cash back. I also spent around $100 on my Citi Premier Card and earned around 300 Thank You points. Jenn spent a little over $300 on her Ink Unlimited card and earned around 500 Ultimate Reward points. I spent $600 on my US Bank Altitude Connect card earning $13 cash back. Jenn spent around $2,700 on her Chase Ink Cash card earning 3,600 points.
That left us, at the end of the month with 24,000 Citi Thank You Points, 40,700 United Miles, 51,300 Marriott Bonvoy points, 1,500 Hyatt Points and 176,700 Ultimate Reward points. Using the valuations published by The Points Guy at https://thepointsguy.com/guide/monthly-valuations/, these points and miles are worth over $4,900.
Newby to Expert Traveler 