Many months ago I came to the realization that I was going to put anything not bonus category on either my Fidelity Amex or now my Barclay Arrival card for 2%/2.2% cash back respectively (the latter on travel redemptions only).

When I talk about bonus categories I'm referring to:

- Ultimate Rewards 2X & 5X
- Membership Rewards 2X+
- Any airline credit card's multiple for spending with the airline directly
- Any hotel brand credit card's multiple for spending with the hotel directly
- Hyatt credit card 2X on restaurant purchases

All of these points at 1x are worth more than $0.01 (except some hotels but when you're earning 10x, 5x, etc it's always greater than $0.022). So come up with a value yourself, but in general I think anyone really giving a value for tons of spend at greater than 2 cents per point/mile is foolish. What I mean by that is that it makes sense to try and get 10,000 miles/points to get to your next award redemption of 100K miles, but to spend 100,000 to earn 100,000 miles is somewhat silly when you could earn $2,222 on that. Given devaluations, I've changed my tune on this issue.