Let's see: $5,000 buys 10,000 SPG points for a fee of $124.50 and maybe you lose (not loose) $50 interest (you can always prepay the $5,000 on your credit card to stop the interest). For that you can get a Category 2 hotel room for 3 nights at the Sheraton Phoenix Airport Hotel Tempe next weekend. The very cheapest Internet rate including tax would be about $152 per night, or $454 total. So you would pay less than $175 to get a benefit of $454. That's a return of 159% on your money. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to see the value in this transaction, do you? And that is just one example. There are many others that yield similar results.