FlyerTalk Forums - View Single Post - Chase retention bonus or fee waiver reports [Archive]
Old May 10, 2013, 8:43 am
  #941  
ricohitman
 
Join Date: Jan 2012
Programs: DL, WoH
Posts: 1,253
Originally Posted by greek2me
Your argument (and the others here) is a very good one. For most people's situations you are certainly correct, and I even debate it for myself constantly! I find a frequent re-evaluation of the best way to play the game very informative, so appreciate the give and take on this as I am always changing my mind of what is best at the moment. But I thought about this decision differently now that I have a lot of points. Here is my thought process. Put yourself in these shoes and see if it makes a little more sense. (It still may not!)

Say you have 150k+ Southwest points (along with millions of UR/MR/TY and other airline points) and are not going to fly enough to use those in more than 2+ years. Do you want to buy another 10k Southwest points for $95 (which is what you are doing)? Even though they are worth $167 toward WGA fares, if you cannot use them in near term and you can buy UR cheaper in other ways for when you can? You could try to trade them or otherwise monetize them but that takes time and effort, which may not be best use of either for you.

And say you have 150k+ Hyatt points, millions of UR/MR/TY and other hotels points, 10 free nights at other hotels to use in next year, status elsewhere, etc. Should you buy an incremental 10k Hyatt pts for $95 even if you will not likely be able to use them? Maybe! But again monetizing those would take some time/effort.

Is an incremental 10k UR worth buying for $95? Could be. With fewer points and ability to burn all you had, certainly! For me I decided it was not. Somewhere between 10k UR and 10 million incremental UR there probably is a number that would be worth me paying 0.95cpp and going through the effort to monetize, though not sure exactly what the number is!
Hmm...I don't think I'll ever get to that level because I don't stockpile points. Earn and burn is my motto. If I don't have a hyatt stay coming up and my wife doesn't have time off I'll gift stays to my parents who are older and love taking small vacations. If it were me, I'd take the points and give my parents a nice vacation or something, but entirely your choice. Maybe time to gift some stays/airfare to family?
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