There wasn’t much going on for us in October. We were recovering from our trip to Nice and Dublin. For me, it was literal recovery. I had finished my first ultramarathon in Nice, a 50K which was a part of the UTMB World Series. The combination of training and the actual race had left my right knee and my left foot pretty sore so other than some low impact gym visits, I did nothing. It was nice to finally take it easy for a little while.
There wasn’t much going on for us as far as travel this month, and that’s fine. Over the last year, we had taken four trips to Europe. That’s utterly insane and we would never have thought that was possible prior to getting into points and miles. We’re now at the point where we almost have to talk ourselves out of taking trips, because with points, it’s always really tempting when you see a great deal.
Ink Business Unlimited
I signed up and was approved for the Chase Ink Business Unlimited. They were running an elevated signup bonus of 90,000 Chase Ultimate Reward points for $6,000 in spending in 3 months. This deal comes up occasionally and, in my experience, is typically offered in the fall. The normal signup bonus for the Ink Business Unlimited is 75,000.
The Ink Business Unlimited is a no annual fee business card that earns 1.5x on all spending. It’s an extremely simple card, no extra bonus categories. I think it makes for a pretty good card for someone who has a lot of spend in categories that aren’t typical bonus categories. For example, if you spent a lot of money on gasoline, it’s pretty easy to find a credit card that earns 3x or better on gas. But if you are spending a lot of money at hardware stores, it’s going to be difficult to find more than 1x in that category.
There are a couple of business cards that earn 2x everywhere, like the Amex Blue Business Plus or the Venture X for Business. However, if you want to earn Chase Ultimate Reward points (perhaps because you want to transfer those points to Hyatt), the Ink Business Unlimited is a great choice.`
In addition to the 90,000 points, Jenn was able to refer me, which means that she will earn the 20,000 point referral bonus as well. If you count the points I will earn from the 1.5x plus the 90,000 points for my bonus and 20,000 points for her bonus, we will earn a minimum of 119,000 Ultimate Reward points on this card in 3 months on just $6,000 in spend. When you consider that Chase Ultimate Reward points are generally valued at 2 cents per point, that means that the total return on spend is just less than 40%. That’s a pretty amazing return.
Hyatt Brand Explorer Certificate
One of my favorite little loyalty program perks is the Hyatt Brand Explorer. Hyatt currently has 37 different hotel brands and you are rewarded for exploring those brands. For every 5 brands that you visit in your lifetime, you will earn a category 1-4 free night certificate. It’s not something that I would necessarily go out of my way for, but when we were in Dublin, we stayed at the Hyatt Centric in Dublin which turned out to be the 5th brand on my Hyatt account.
That earned us a free night certificate. While I wouldn’t pick a hotel just to get a free night certificate, I would consider booking a hotel under Jenn’s account instead of mine if she didn’t have that brand and I did. Either way, it’s a fun little perk that Hyatt can put out there to encourage people to book with them rather than another hotel program.
Also, it’s the kind of perk that could be missed, so if you have a Hyatt account that you use regularly, you should check out the Brand Explorer tab in your Hyatt account. I could imagine quite a few of those free night certificates go unused simply because people might not be aware they earned one.
On to the Point Check
When I do the accounting on these points and our spending, it’s not really a calendar month, it’s based on when the statement closes. I bring this up, because our spending was a little high this month, but some of that was because that spending was from our trip to Nice and Dublin, especially the spend on my Sapphire Preferred card, which was my go-to card when we were overseas. That trip was in September instead of October, but many of those charges showed up on the October statement.
All in all, the return on spend was okay this last month, with it being 5.3% on the spend not dedicated to earning a signup bonus.
| Card Used | Spend | Points Earned | Point Value | Points Per $ | Return on Spend |
| Sapphire Preferred | $1,152 | 2,332 | $47.81 | 2.0 | 4.2% |
| Amex Gold | $990 | 3,206 | $64.12 | 3.2 | 6.5% |
| IHG Premier | $551 | 1,652 | $8.26 | 3.0 | 1.5% |
| Ink Cash | $451 | 2,251 | $46.15 | 5.0 | 10.2% |
| Wyndham Business Earner | $402 | 2,196 | $24.16 | 5.5 | 6.0% |
| Amex Blue Business Plus | $277 | 554 | $11.08 | 2.0 | 4.0% |
| Total | $3,823 | 12,191 | $201.57 | 3.2 | 5.3% |
In addition to the spend not devoted to earning a signup bonus, Jenn spent over $2,400 on her American Airlines AAdvantage Platinum Select card. That earned her almost 3,300 AAdvantage miles and put her over the amount for her 80,000 AAdvantage mile bonus. We’ve been waiting on this bonus, because the best award prices we’ve seen to get us back from our half-booked Spring Break trip to Tenerife are on American Airlines, but we didn’t have enough AAdvantage miles. Now we should be ready to book that flight.
After the American Airlines bonus and all of the other points earned this month, we were left with:
- 266,000 IHG Points
- 236,100 Chase Ultimate Reward Points
- 136,400 Amex Membership Rewards Points
- 121,000 American Airlines Miles
- 92,800 Wyndham Points
- 79,100 Alaska Miles
- 33,400 Marriott Bonvoy Points
- 33,300 Citi Thank You Points
- 18,300 Hyatt Points
- 16,700 United Miles
- 1,500 Delta Miles
- $133 Cash Back
According to the Points Guy’s valuations, all of these points and miles are worth a grand total of just under $14,000. It’s about time to use some of these points to finish booking our trip to Tenerife. It’s going to be a great trip!
Newby to Expert Traveler 