Why You Should Put Your Airline Cards In a Drawer
If you’ve been following me at all, you know how much I love
flexible points like Chase Bank’s Ultimate Rewards (UR).
Chase has most of the great point earning bonus
cards out there, so once in a while it’s nice to see a great card product that
isn’t Chase.
You can’t have all the
cards in your arsenal from one bank.
At
some point Chase will not extend you any more credit.
However, Chase is pretty generous about
moving around lines of credit from one card to another.
They may even allow you to mix business lines
and personal lines.
Since I’ve already discussed
UR
points in a
previous post, today let’s talk about another two of my other
favorite cards; the Amex Starwood Preferred Personal and Business Cards. Starwood
Hotels are among some of the nicest hotels in the World.
If you aren’t familiar with the Starwood
chain, they have the Sheraton brand, as well as the Westin, W, St. Regis, The
Luxury Collection and several other brands.
Their award chart is very reasonable with redemptions starting at 2000
points per night.
Starwood has a 5
th
night free option as well.
In other
words, for each 4 night stay you book whether you pay cash, or redeem points,
you get a 5
th night free!
My wife and I are taking advantage of that early next year with a 6 night stay at the St. Regis Punta Mita. Another great benefit of Starwood is their Cash and Points option.
Simply put, for a small amount of cash you
can use fewer points to book than the typical award stay.
This is a great way to stretch your
Starpoints. You just need to make sure the math works for you.
I will discuss the Cash and Points Option in
more detail in another post.
Starpoints like
UR
points are also tremendously flexible They have the most
transfer partners of
any card.
For example, there are 31
different airline
transfer partners! Why is this important?
You never know which airline is going to have
the best deal at the time you are booking.
Having flexibility allows you the freedom you don’t get with a specific
airline card.
With your specific airline
miles earning card, you earn miles at a 1:1 ratio of dollars spent to miles
earned for everyday purchases.
With the
Starwood card you will also earn points at a 1:1 ratio. But,
when you transfer Starpoints to almost any
one of it’s 31 transfer partners, you get a 25% bonus when you transfer in
increments of 20,000 points. For each 20,000 points transferred, you get
25,000 miles.
Not only are you beating the earning rate of
your airline specific card on everyday spending, but you can use the miles on
any of the 31
partner airlines!
How’s
that for flexibility?
I’m not saying
that you shouldn’t hold an airline specific card, but put it in the drawer for
everyday spending.
Get yourself a
Starwood personal and business card today! The sign up bonus is currently 25,000 Starpoints.
Disclaimer: I do receive a small compensation from American Express if
you allow me to send you a link to sign up for the Starwood cards. If you liked what you’ve learned here on my
blog, I would appreciate the use of one of my links. You can email me @
ThePointsDoctor@comcast.net. to receive links for both cards. Thank you.
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About THE POINTS DOCTOR
THE POINTS DOCTOR is Bruce J. Wilderman DDS of Artistic Expressions Dentistry. Dr. Wilderman has a practice limited to Cosmetic Dentistry, serving patients of the Philadelphia Area since 1986. He and wife of 40 years have enjoyed traveling the world in first class since 2012 for little or no money with the points and miles they have earned from the credit card companies. Dr. Wilderman with his 10+ years of experience in the field of miles and points would love to teach you how to do the same. You may reach him at ThePointsDoctor@gmail.com.
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