Originally Posted by gregorygrady
The Starwood offer is the best one out there. You actually only need to open an account with $25K (not $50K like the airline offers) to get the full 20,000 SPG points. And the good thing with Starwood is that you can transfer those 20,000 SPG points into 25,000 miles on most airlines. So if you go the SPG route, you are basically getting the same thing (with slightly more flexibility as you can transfer to different airline choices) for half the initial investment. ^
And with the Starwood deal, if you have more than $25,000 to invest, you can open separate accounts for others who share your address, and then combine all the points into a single account. I've also read that with any of the Ameritrade offers, you can open one account in your own name, a joint account, and several other types of accounts and direct the points/miles earnings to a single airline/hotel account.