@dukerau Thanks for your awesome response! I am located in NYC (closest to LGA). I see what you mean with the transaction fee. However, my only issue with buying points is that I don't have much extra income to use, so I want to utilize my existing expenses as much as possible without adding on additional expenses. How I see it is, if I only have $1350 as a non category purchase (in this case rent) that i'm going to pay every month regardless, how can I get a return on that in the best way possible for my goals?
I know that limits my options, and thanks to your analysis I decided to run some spreadsheet math comparing how much it would cost and how long it would take to do an award night between IHG, Hilton and SPG, and Hilton has more value in this situation (takes 3 months to earn a free Category 2 night just like SPG, but added bonus of no annual fee option, higher redemption with other categories, and other perks like Gold status, priority pass, lower AF etc. between the Citi and Amex versions).
However with Hilton, the places I want to visit don't have much presence, surprisingly (NOLA, Orlando/Miami, Albuquerque for White sands). I'm using the travelisfree maps and comparing the two to look at the general concentration.
I'll be rotating which card will pay rent depending on min spend, but if I'm not meeting min spend then SPG seems like the best for me.
I just need to figure out how to get rid of that 3% fee. I think I found a way but will have to test it out to make sure!
For companion pass, I would apply but I'm paying off some debt (hence why I want to keep expenses low) and it's with Chase Slate and I was denied a few months ago due to the balance (they wanted to see what I would do with it). I've lowered it quite a bit but I'll be giving it some time, I'll see how things look in November/December.
With BA I took a look at the wandr BA avios map and at least from LGA/JFK there are decent rewards but like you said Southwest could be just as good.
Thanks again for all your help!
Originally Posted by
dukerau
Where are you located? BA Avios are great for domestic travel, but if you're not located in an AA hub (or traveling to an AA hub), their sheen isn't so bright. For example, if you're located in Houston and you want to weekend in New Orleans, with Avios you'd have to go through DFW, which would mean 18k round trip. United would charge 20k round trip for IAH-MSY non-stop. Of course in this particular example, Southwest would dominate, but you get the idea
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There is never a reason to pay a 3.3% transaction fee in order to be able to use a credit card for non-bonus spend. SPG sells points for 3.5 cents each, and you're hardly beating that. SPG also regularly runs sales on points where you can buy them for ~2.5 cents each, and even then there is little interest. Furthermore, consider that domestic 2-star SPG hotels aren't generally expensive, and there are only 4 U.S. category 1 SPG hotels, so you'll be looking mostly at 2-star. For example, Aloft Jacksonville (FL) Tapestry Park is $99/nt for Oct 16-18. Is 3k SPG per night such a deal when you paid $99 to accrue the 3k? (Ok, that first-try example I found just worked too well). So why would you buy for 3.3 cents each? I'm assuming the transaction fee for paying with a check is 0%, so if that's not the case then you can ignore this rant. See Manufactured Spending forum for ideas of how to generate SPG points for MUCH lower cost than 3.3, or even 2.5, cents each. At worst, Plastiq will send a check for you, and they're offering 2% fee for funding by Amex right now.
Perhaps a better program for domestic weekend getaways is IHG. If you stick to the Point Break promo hotels, it's just 5k/night, and the IHG credit card can get you 60k-80k on sign up. Even when you run out of those, you can buy IHG points for 0.7cents each (indirectly, google for details), so 5k/night equates to $35/night.
You don't need to wait for January 50k offers. If they're available in Nov/Dec, that's a great time to jump on them. The 110k points required to earn the companion pass have to be earned in the same calendar year, so if you get the card in November-ish, just wait to hit the minimum spend until the new year (you have 3 months). As long as you hit the $3k required spend in January, the 50k will post in 2016. If you plan this strategically, you could have all 110k post in January, giving you almost 24 full months with companion pass. This puts you up to 3 months ahead of schedule compared to applying for the 50k offers in January, but the bigger advantage is that if the offers are there late this year, better to jump on them and strategically time your spend than to hope they're still around in the new year, as they come and go often. See the Chase forum for more details.