Originally Posted by DCBob
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.
1. Prepaying the credit card with $5,000 means that you are losing the interest on that money from wherever it came.
2. Our real difference is in how much we will pay for lodging. If I were to stay in Phonix, I would look for a Motel 6 or similar. If I am staying in a foreign country, I prefer guest houses or local family run hotels. I understand that business travelers may need they type of room offered by Starwood, Hilton, and the like. But I am not a business traveler. I travel to experience local cultures when they are different than mine, and local scenery and places of interest outside of my lodging. The only thing I do in my lodgings is sleep and bathe.
3. Also, given the ease of acquiring free or very cheap miles, I always seem to have more than I need for the travel I want to do. So I see no reason to pay much for those miles, when almost all of them are free, or cost no more than around 0.25 cents each.
4. I used to want to be a math major. Then I were one. Now I are a math grad. I can't spell, especially lose, when you consider the spelling of choose.