Originally Posted by
WasKnown
A sole proprietorship is not making up a business. If you truly have no side income beyond your primary income whatsoever, you would still be better off putting that spend on sign-up bonuses or even $15K on the WoH personal card. It is even worse now that you clarified it is unbounded spend. In terms of everyday spend, I think most people here will agree the Brilliant is just awful (though the rumored brilliant was great). I would read the other replies you got for your plan to spend $60K on the Brilliant.
There is a value in simplicity but your opportunity cost is very high. I realize some people do not like churning or moving spend across cards. That’s perfectly fine and reasonable but the convenience of going with 1 card has a large and measurable opportunity cost. If you are questioning the value of getting an 85K FNC for $330 (to justify keeping the Brilliant), I can’t understand why you would possibly consider spending $60K to get one… especially when you consider the cost of that spend to be $900…. If spending $60K for an 85K FNC is worth it, why isn’t paying $330 for an 85K FNC worth it? Your thinking is confusing here..
Yeah, I don't quite get this, even if we assign $600 in value to an 85k FNC (which is pushing it IMO but OK), that's like 1% return on 60k of spend, on a card that is only returning 2x Marriott Rewards.
You can literally buy MR for less than a penny a point several times during the year. You have to have a very very fanboy evaluation of MR value to think this is much of a play, which, I mean... sure, I guess, you do you, and I get you can get >1 cpp if you cherry pick redemptions well, but why not just get cashback on a card and buy points then?
Originally Posted by
Polytonic
Pretty much any Hyatt redemption is automatically >2cpp and as much as I enjoy Marriott, I can't argue that the Hyatt program is technically better. If you'd rather put points toward business class awards, I've gotten good (~2.5cpp) value out of transfers to Aeroplan and Krisflyer without trying very hard. Most of the Chase partners overlap with Amex, so I find they're pretty much functionally equivalent in value (slight edge to Chase for Hyatt and United).
Nobody here is advocating dumping Marriott. Quite the opposite, considering everyone responding to you has Titanium or Ambassador status. What we're advocating against is putting spend on the Brilliant because there are other cards that offer a higher (incremental) return on unbonused spend.
Pretty much all of this. I'm recovering from going to LOL/24 because AMEX was a gravy train during the pandemic, and I knew it would take out my Chase options, but I wouldn't forswear them forever. UR to Hyatt is one of the few paths where getting a lot of excess value on a hotel redemption is easy (2+ cpp) and doesn't require delicately cherrypicking value at some exotic boutique hotel.
The times I have put spend on a Brilliant are promos (like the current 6x grocery promo) where it nudges the return up and I've been keeping my powder dry to go back under 5/24. The marginal return of a few hundred on 60k of spend when that could go to a
lot of different SUBs (or Hilton FNCs, or Hyatt FNCs + ENCs, or American status, or... well, you get the idea) doesn't make sense to me.