M is for Money

It’s been about 6 months since I first got the Starwood Preferred Guest (SPG) card from American Express. My plan was to use the card for home improvement and wedding expenses and cash in the points for hotel stays during our honeymoon. I’m happy to say my mission was a success, I’ve booked 5 nights at the Westin on Kauai, all paid for with points.

Unfortunately it takes a lot of points to stay at any Starwood hotel in Hawaii and this one didn’t come cheap either. Those five free nights required 48,000 points, which is a lot of points if you consider one dollar spent equals one point! Fortunately, we didn’t have to fork over that much in cash. Thanks to new cardholder incentives we accrued 25,000 bonus points, the other 23,000 came from our spending on the house, wedding and also everyday items like food and gas. As far as credit card rewards go, I think we did really well.

Most cash-back cards pay around 1%, so $23,000 in spending would result in a $230 check. Since I am paying for a 6th night at the Westin, I know the value of those free nights - $188 each. $940 in free hotel rooms on $23,000 worth of spending is a little over 4% in rewards, much higher than a cash back card and better than the other hotel rewards cards.

But, now that our honeymoon is booked I have no more use for the SPG card. I plan to cancel it once we return from our trip, there is an annual fee after the first year and we don’t travel enough to justify keeping it. I’m now shopping for a new Amex card to take its place, probably a cash back card since they are a better fit for our lifestyle. The SPG card was perfect for our purpose and well worth using.