Quick hit: Hyatt Milestone 2K Next Stay Awards don't stack, but do post on award stays

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I’ve been plugging along earning top-tier Hyatt Globalist status through manufactured spend on the Chase World of Hyatt credit card, and recently hit the 30-night and 40-night milestones in quick succession. With no obvious reason to choose the other options, I selected the 2K Next Stay Award for each milestone.

As long-time readers may remember, I used to live in Madison, WI, and return several times a year to visit old friends there. I usually stay at the Hyatt Place Madison/Downtown, a Category 3 property that costs 9,000-15,000 World of Hyatt points per night. At the lower end of that range, that’s a terrific value for World of Hyatt points transferred from Chase Ultimate Rewards. At the higher end, it’s a great value for Category 1-4 Free Night Certificates earned on the Chase World of Hyatt credit card.

What I didn’t know was whether both my 2K Next Stay Awards would be triggered by a single stay. Fortunately, I had two stays planned (with the week in between spent on Madeline Island, the largest of Lake Superior’s Apostle Islands).

As it turned out, each of the two stays triggered a single 2K Next Stay Award. This ended up working fine for me given my travel plans, but the awards do have expiration policies to be aware of: they have to be selected (the other options at each of the 20-night and 30-night milestones are two club access awards and $25 FIND experience credits) and then used within the specified time periods, so unless you already have plans to visit a Hyatt House or Hyatt Place, or a property with a club, there’s no point in selecting your awards prematurely. Just set a calendar reminder to make sure you pick something!

Finally, note that the 2K Next Stay Awards did post on both my stays, despite being booked entirely with points and free night awards. This wasn’t surprising (Hyatt treats award stays as “eligible stays” for virtually all their promotions) but it was important to me to verify and pass along.

At the 40-night and 50-night Milestone levels I assume I’ll pick the 5,000 bonus point awards unless I see suite availability for an uncoming trip; I can use the free Guest of Honor award at the 40-night level to get club access if an upcoming stay has a club, although that’s not typical for the domestic properties I stay at.

What are Membership Rewards points for?

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It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a travel hacker in possession of Membership Rewards points, must be in want of a way of disposing of them.

This is the main reason that until this year I avoided the American Express Membership Rewards ecosystem. I know what to do with Chase Ultimate Rewards points (transfer them to Hyatt) and Hilton Honors points (book 5-night award reservations) and US Bank Flexperks Travel Rewards points (redeem them for 1.5 cents each on paid airfare).

But for as long as I’ve been travel hacking, the main feeling people have expressed about Membership Rewards points was frustration: yeah, they’re easy to earn, but what the hell do you do with them once you have them?

Now that I’ve got a gazillion of them, I feel that frustration firsthand. Here’s what I’ve gleaned over the years about how people really redeem them.

Cash out through co-branded Platinum cards

One reason Membership Rewards points are so hard to redeem is that their cash value, unlike Ultimate Rewards (which can be redeemed in unlimited quantities for 1 cent each), is discouraging. You can redeem them for statement credits at 0.6 cents each, or for travel through the American Express reservation portal at 1 cent each (or slightly higher for Platinum cardholders, under certain conditions).

“Invest with Rewards” is a feature of the Charles Schwab co-branded Platinum credit card that lets you redeem up to 1,000,000 Membership Rewards points per year at 1.1 cent each for deposits into a Schwab investment account.

This is a popular choice for a lot of people, but it’s also an admission of defeat — and an expensive one, since the Schwab card has a $695 annual fee, not waived the first year. If you’re paying 3% “all-in” to manufacture bonus spend that earns 4 points per dollar, plus a $695 annual fee, you’re only clearing $2,805 per year on $250,000 in manufactured spend.

That’s not for me, but it is a popular choice so I wanted to make sure readers were aware of it.

“Substituting” Ultimate Rewards transfers

The most appealing approach to redeeming Membership Rewards points is to use them as a substitute for Ultimate Rewards transfers. Since transfers to World of Hyatt are so valuable, this is a true “penny saved/penny earned” situation: every point you’re able to redeem from your Membership Rewards account instead of from your Ultimate Rewards account is “worth” whatever value you get from World of Hyatt transfers. It’s not uncommon to get 3 or 4 cents per point in value when redeeming World of Hyatt points, and it’s possible to get much more value if you’re working at it.

This is most obvious when Chase and American Express share a transfer partner. Here are the programs they have in common:

  • Aer Lingus Avios

  • Air Canada Aeroplan

  • Air France KLM Flying Blue

  • British Airways Avios

  • Emirates Skywards

  • Iberia Plus Avios

  • JetBlue trueBlue

  • Marriott Bonvoy

  • Virgin Atlantic Flying Club

Note that all the Avios programs (Aer Lingus, British Airways, Iberia Plus, and Qatar) have miles that can be transferred between the programs, but obviously not everyone has all four programs set up and connected to their credit card rewards accounts, so I mention them separately as well.

Another method of substitution is to transfer “similar enough” miles. For example, Star Alliance partner award availability can be booked with both United Mileage Plus miles (transferred from Chase Ultimate Rewards) or Air Canada Aeroplan miles (transferred from either). Where award space is available in both programs, then saving Ultimate Rewards points by transferring Membership Rewards points to Aeroplan is another way to preserve your Ultimate Rewards balance for higher-value redemptions.

Betting on the Hawaiian-Alaska merger

One interesting alternative that I would consider “low-” but not “no-risk” is preemptively transferring Membership Rewards points to Hawaiian Airlines HawaiianMiles. The merger recently passed the Department of Justice’s review process, so it has a reasonable chance of being finalized at some point. After that happens, I would guess the airlines would take a year or two to align their reservation and award systems, and at some point I’d expect Hawaiian to enter into the oneworld alliance, as Alaska already has.

Once all that has happened, miles might become transferrable between the programs, or used from either program to book oneworld alliance partner flights.

There are a lot of if’s, and’s, and but’s in there, but if you’re sitting on more Membership Rewards points than you have any idea what to do with, then stashing a few hundred thousand in a HawaiianMiles account is one way to hedge the value of your points. You might regret doing it eventually, but the least valuable point will always be the one you don’t redeem.

Quick hit: no, Freedom family product changes don't reset your quarterly bonus spend

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One of my favorite techniques is requesting product changes from Chase personal credit cards where I received a signup bonus to Freedom cards that earn 5 Ultimate Rewards points per dollar in their quarterly bonus categories, on up to $1,500 in spend per account.

This technique doesn’t get written about as much as it used to because most travel hackers prefer to chase signup bonuses, which quickly puts them over Chase’s rules for approving personal credit cards.

As a reminder, you usually can’t get a Chase signup bonus if you already have a specific card, or have received a signup bonus for it in the last 24 or 48 months, depending on the card. One way to start that clock ticking again is to request a product change to another card. My current preference is for the Freedom Flex card, since it combines the quarterly bonus categories of the Freedom (not available for new signups) and the uncapped 3 Ultimate Rewards points per dollar spent at drugstores of the Freedom Unlimited.

I had done this a number of times in the past, so I was sitting on 3 Freedom cards on which I had already reached the quarterly cap when I applied for and completed the minimum spend requirement on my new Freedom Flex. Once that signup bonus posted, I called in and requested product changes from my Freedom cards to Freedom Flex cards. Note that when doing this a new card and card number will be issued, so be sure to keep an eye on any recurring bills that are charged to your cards.

What I was unsure of was whether these product changes would reset my quarterly bonus earning cap, because I had never changed products within the Freedom quarterly bonus family; I had only moved to and from quarterly bonus cards, not between them. If product changes reset the quarterly bonus counter, then during promising quarters you could max out each card twice, as a kind of backdoor “upgrade bonus.”

But, regrettably, the quarterly bonus counter was not reset by my product change, so even though the Freedom Flex cards have new numbers, it appears everything else about the old Freedoms was saved and ported over to the new accounts.

Comparing IHG's 4th-night-free with Marriott and Hilton's 5th-night-free

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I was reading Danny the Deal Guru’s write-up of the latest Chase IHG Rewards signup offers and something jumped out at me: the 4th-night-free benefit offered to cardholders, including those who hold the no-annual-fee IHG Rewards Traveler card. To be clear, this isn’t a new benefit, it’s just one I haven’t had a chance to think about in depth.

Generally speaking, I don’t rate IHG or their rewards program very highly, because while they have an enormous global footprint, they’re rarely competitive compared with the main hotel programs I rely on, Hilton and Hyatt. For example, I regularly visit Portland, OR, which on a sample search turned up two downtown Hyatt properties priced at 12,000 World of Hyatt points, a Hilton priced at 37,000 Hilton Honors points, a Marriott priced at 30,000 Bonvoy points, and a Kimpton priced at 25,000 IHG Rewards Club points (plus a nightly “amenity fee”). For a one-night stay, it would be ridiculous to choose the IHG property unless you’d built up a large orphaned balance through various shenanigans.

Since my framework is manufactured spend, not signup bonuses, it’s easy to make a direct comparison between the options:

  • 12,000 World of Hyatt points transferred from Chase Ultimate Rewards is worth $120 in cash.

  • 37,000 Hilton Honors points earned at 6 points per dollar with the American Express Surpass co-branded card is between $123 (if the same $6,200 in spend had been put on a 2% cashback card) and $185 if the points were purchased for 0.5 cents each, an offer which is regularly available, including now through March 7, 2023.

  • 30,000 Marriott Bonvoy points are worth between $240 (if you bought the points during one of their periodic promotions) and $300 (if you transferred the points from Chase Ultimate Rewards.

  • 25,000 IHG Rewards points are worth between $150 and $175 if you buy them using the “points and cash” trick (purchasing points while making an award reservation, then cancelling the reservation and having the points refunded to your account).

This makes comparing the four sample reservation options, and indeed comparing all reservation options at the four chains, easy, if on average:

  • World of Hyatt points cost 1 cent each;

  • Hilton Honors points cost 0.42 cents each;

  • Marriott Bonvoy points cost 0.9 cents each;

  • and IHG Rewards points cost 0.65 cents each;

then on a one-night stay you can convert the points cost of any property into the cash cost of manufacturing, transferring, or purchasing the required points. In the concrete example above, we saw that Hyatt and Hilton were quite competitive, while Marriott and IHG Rewards were significantly more expensive options.

On four-night stays, the equation changes, but only for IHG Rewards points. On four-night stays at the other three chains, the cost per point remains the same, while the 4th-night-free benefit offered by the IHG Rewards credit cards increases their value by 33% or decreases their cost by 25% to 0.49 cents each — same difference. The four-night IHG Rewards stay now costs just $122 per night, putting it squarely in the middle of the “competitive” pack of Hyatt and Hilton, or even on the cheaper end (ignoring that pesky Kimpton amenity fee, which you obviously shouldn’t in practice).

Moving to a five-night stay, the equation shifts again, but this time against IHG Rewards, since Hilton and Marriott both offer the fifth night free on award stays. The cost per night on the sample five-night stays with Hilton is $123 per night, with Marriott is $216, and with IHG $130. Hyatt doesn’t offer free nights on longer stays so their cost per night remains flat at $120.

Reference Card

I wanted to use a specific example to explain why I personally don’t care for IHG Rewards, but in case you want to bookmark this post or paste the values into your notes app, here are the shortcuts when calculating the cost of stays of various lengths.

Stays of 1-3 nights:

  • World of Hyatt: 1 cent per point

  • Hilton Honors: 0.42 cents per point

  • Marriott Bonvoy: 0.9 cents per point

  • IHG Rewards: 0.65 cents per point

Stays of exactly 4 nights:

  • IHG Rewards: 0.49 cents per point

Stays of exactly 5 nights:

  • World of Haytt: 1 cent per point

  • IHG Rewards: 0.52 cents per point

  • Hilton Honors: 0.34 cents per point

  • Marriott Rewards: 0.72 cents per point

Now you can easily calculate the cost of reward stays of up to 5 nights in length in every city in the world — not just in Portland, Oregon!

Advantages to getting more involved in the travel hacking community

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A few weeks back I wrote about some reasons why most people don’t have much interest in the travel hacking game, and why they’re mostly right: if you don’t have the bug, then it’s mind-bendingly boring to keep track of dozens of credit cards, loyalty programs, booking tricks, routing rules, etc.

Nevertheless, I’m quite involved, and if you’re reading this you probably are as well, so I thought I’d explore some of the obvious advantages of not just playing the game, but getting involved in one or more groups, following folks you respect on Twitter (or Instagram or Facebook, if you’re one of those people), and in general building relationships with other people who share your passion.

The most obvious advantage of making friends with other folks in the community is that it allows you to optimize your earning and redemptions over time. This can sometimes be purely transactional, and there’s nothing wrong with that: when I won a Bose sound system through an IHG sweepstakes, I sold it to a reader for a few hundred bucks lower than the list price, so he got a cheap sound system and I didn’t have to go to the trouble of listing it on Amazon or eBay, or dealing with a stranger through Craigslist or Facebook.

Folks like Vinh at Miles per Day have scaled this up a huge degree, going so far as to connect buyers and sellers of in-demand US Mint coins, but you don’t need to go that far to simply get to know people who might have miles and points you need, or might need the miles and points you have but don’t have immediate plans for.

Swapping referrals and signup bonuses

This option is talked about enough that I don’t think I need to go into it at any length, but when large credit card offers come around you may find that you’re not eligible (for example due to Chase’s 5/24 rule or Bank of America’s 2/3/4 rule) but someone else you know in the community is. Instead of sitting on the sidelines, you can ask your friends if they’d like to swap signup bonuses — maybe they’ve been banned from Citi for money order shenanigans and you haven’t, but you’re over 5/24 and they aren’t.

Expiring or useless free nights

Most folks don’t have too much trouble redeeming the free anniversary night that comes with the Chase World of Hyatt or American Express Hilton Honors Aspire credit cards, but might run into a problem when it comes to free night certificates with worse loyalty programs:

The IHG Rewards Club Premier Credit Card comes with a free reward night (at properties costing up to 40,000 points) on every anniversary, which is certainly worth more than the $89 annual fee to someone, but it might not be worth it to you because of how much more valuable the required Ultimate Rewards points to “fill out” an IHG award redemption would be if transferred to a different partner. Cancelling the card saves you $89, but it also means that no one gets to use the award, while you may be able to sell or trade it to someone who can get hundreds of dollars in value from it.

Likewise the Marriott Bonvoy Boundless (Chase) and Brilliant (American Express) cards come with annual free nights worth up to 35,000 and 50,000 points, respectively. Those aren’t worth their $95 and $450 annual fees to me, but especially in the case of the Brilliant card, you could easily wipe out your annual fee by selling or trading those rewards, when combined with the $300 property credit (Marriott properties used to sell physical gift cards you could resell or trade, although it’s been too long for me to know whether they still do).

Companion tickets

Another annual benefit you might not be able to personally use is airline companion tickets, like those offered by the Bank of America Alaska Airlines credit cards and the American Express Delta Platinum and Reserve cards.

The Alaska Airlines companion fare is the easiest to exchange with comrades because of a curious feature: when booking the companion ticket, any cash component of the reservation has to be paid for with an Alaska Airlines credit card, unless it is covered by funds you already have in your “Wallet.” This provides a simple way to book companion tickets without needing any information from the cardholder: just book a ticket that costs slightly more than the companion ticket, refund it to your Wallet, then pay with that balance.

Meanwhile, the Delta companion tickets have to be paid for in full with the credit card that generated the companion ticket (previously, any American Express card could be used, but that’s now changed in my experience). This makes the ticket slightly less transferable, since you need to place more trust in the person booking the ticket, which is another way of saying it’s good to make friends and connections in the community!

Transferable points and status

Another advantage of having friends in the community, especially ones that do things slightly differently than you, is the ability to pool points and status between programs. My two favorite examples of this are World of Hyatt and Hilton Honors.

World of Hyatt members can send and receive points by filling out the “Point combining request form,” which allows you to make award reservations out of the most advantageous account, and without contaminating either person’s relationship with Chase (there are strict limits on the number and frequency of Ultimate Rewards point transfers to non-household-members). Besides topping up a low balance, the main reason to do this is to make a Guest of Honor booking from an account with Globalist status, giving the guest the potentially valuable benefits like complimentary breakfast, lounge access, and waived parking fees, plus late checkout.

Hilton Honors has an even more streamlined system, with (in my experience) instant transfers after completing the online "transfer points” form. Their terminology is a little bit curious, but you “gift” points when you want to buy someone points with cash, and “transfer” points when you want to reduce your balance and increase their balance. Besides sharing Hilton’s fairly limited status benefits like potential upgrades, late checkout, and the dining credit that replaced their breakfast benefit, combining points in a single account allows you to take advantage of the very valuable 5th-night-free benefit on award stays (for elite members, including Silver elites, so pretty much everybody). This technique recently helped me book 7 nights in Hawaii for the price of 5 by combining 6 award nights and an annual American Express Surpass free night certificate.

Conclusion

Like any community, we’ve got our fair share of jerks, creeps, and affiliate bloggers, but overall I’ve been impressed by how warm and welcoming I’ve found the community to be, both at in-person events and online. There are obvious exceptions to be avoided, but if you’ve got the travel hacking bug, I think the advantages of getting more involved in the community swamp the pain of talking to the occasional jerk. And it always helps to remember that however small fry you think you are (and they don’t get much smaller than me), there’s almost certainly something you know that almost nobody else does, whether it’s a merchant coding error or a bank error in your favor: almost everybody has something to contribute.

The Chase Freedom family of cards: it's (still) all about quantity

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In a case of impeccable timing, at the beginning of this week I was high in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Shenandoah National Park, far from cell service, and so was barely aware of Chase’s announcement of a shakeup of their Freedom credit card lineup until we returned to sea level. This gave me the great fortune of being able to read what everybody else thought before weighing in myself.

The new Chase Freedom lineup

Just so we’re all on the same page, this is what the Chase Freedom credit card lineup will look like after September 15, 2020:

None of the cards has an annual fee, and all earn non-flexible Ultimate Rewards points, which require an annual-fee card (Sapphire Preferred or Reserve, or Ink Bold, Plus, or Preferred) to transfer to travel partners.

Load up on Freedom cards now

Looking at the table above, it’s obvious that the Freedom Flex is strictly superior to the Freedom card: there exist categories where it has a higher earning rate, and no categories where it has a lower earning rate. That’s the very definition of strict superiority: there are no tradeoffs.

And that’s why you should get as many Freedom cards as possible right now, before the card is closed to new applications and, presumably, product changes on September 14.

Since each Freedom (and soon, Freedom Flex) card has its own $1,500 limit on quarterly bonus spend, the best strategy has always been to have as many as possible through product changes. Applying for Chase Slate cards for their $0 balance transfer fees and 0% introductory APR offers and Chase Sapphire Preferred and Reserve cards for their signup bonuses, then requesting a product change to the Freedom, is a popular strategy for accumulating additional Freedom cards and additional bonused spending capacity.

So if you still have any Slate or Sapphire cards you’re been procrastinating on, this is a wake-up call to request your product change as soon as possible.

Nick at Frequent Miler suggests that product changes to the Freedom Flex will be possible despite the fact that the Freedom Flex will be issued as a MasterCard World Elite card and Chase’s existing cards are issued as Visas. If this is true, then you can call in again and request the change once the Freedom Flex goes live. If it turns out not to be the case, waiting in hopes of requesting a product change to the Freedom Flex may leave you trapped in inferior products going forward.

Freedom Flex for new applicants

Moreover, the Freedom Flex is a card that you will want to apply for from scratch, partly because of its $200 (20,000 Ultimate Rewards point) signup bonus, but mainly because of the ability to earn 60,000 Ultimate Rewards points when you spend $12,000 at grocery stores during the first year.

Since the Freedom Flex’s bonused earning on dining and drugstores is unlimited, there’s no reason to carry more than one of the card or prefer it to the Freedom (assuming the cards will share quarterly bonus categories). In that sense, it’s like the Freedom Unlimited: you want to have one, but there’s no particular reason to want more than one.

Conclusion

That’s the strategy I’ll be pursuing: convert my remaining Chase personal credit cards to Freedom cards, which will leave me with a total of 4, then apply for a new Freedom Flex card when the application goes live. Whether that’s the right strategy for you depends on how far above Chase’s limit of 5 total credit card applications in the previous 24 months you are, and whether you ever intend to fall below it.

If you’re so far above “5/24,” or credit card signup bonuses are so essential to your travel hacking strategy, that you decide that the only way you’ll ever get a Freedom Flex is through a product change, I would still recommend not product changing from a Freedom, since those will soon be irreplaceable. Far better to sacrifice a Freedom Unlimited or Sapphire card, as long as you maintain as least one premium Ultimate Rewards card to maintain the flexibility of your points.

Three notes on Chase Sapphire Preferred and Reserve grocery statement credits

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I haven’t had a Chase Sapphire card in a long time, having downgraded my Preferred years ago to a second Freedom card and replacing it with an Ink Plus card to maintain the flexibility of my Ultimate Rewards points and the ability to redeem them for 1.25 cents each towards paid travel through the Ultimate Rewards portal.

Still, I’ve obviously been following with interest the news that Sapphire Preferred and Reserve cards will allow Ultimate Rewards points to be redeem for 1.25 and 1.5 cents each, respectively, for “grocery, home improvement, and dining purchases.” That stacks with the accelerated earning on up to $1,500 in monthly grocery store spend on Sapphire cards through the end of June.

I wanted to share three quick notes on this new opportunity.

If you ever redeem points for paid travel, redeem them for groceries

There are three basic value buckets for Ultimate Rewards point redemptions:

  • bank account direct deposit and credit card statement credits at 1 cent each;

  • paid travel booked through the Ultimate Rewards portal at 1.25 cents (Sapphire Preferred and Ink Bold/Plus/Preferred) or 1.5 cents (Sapphire Reserve);

  • travel partner transfers at higher — potentially much higher — redemption values for premium travel.

If you redeem, or plan to redeem, most or all of your Ultimate Rewards point balance for high-value transfers to Chase’s travel partners, then this opportunity doesn’t affect you at all; save your points, transfer them to high-value partners, and make high value redemptions!

If, on the other hand, you think of Ultimate Rewards points as a useful reserve account for paid domestic airline tickets, and were already happy to redeem them for 1.25 or 1.5 cents each for airfare or hotels when award space wasn’t available, then you should be eager to redeem them for the same value as statement credits against eligible grocery purchases. After all, once you’ve redeemed the points for a statement credit, you can use the same cash to buy the same tickets with a different credit card, and earn miles, points, or statement credits on that card!

A word of warning: statement credits aren’t “payments”

I wanted to flag one issue for folks who are planning to hit this deal especially hard. Most responsible travel hackers will tell you not to carry a balance on your credit cards, in order to avoid interest charges that can easily overwhelm the value of any rewards you earn on purchases. The “statement credit” is one way credit card companies have developed to charge fees regardless of how carefully you monitor your balances: according to the terms and conditions of most, if not all, of my credit cards, statement credits are not treated as payments and do not decrease your minimum payment due.

This doesn’t matter if you diligently pay your credit cards off before each statement closes, but one of the nice benefits of travel hacking and manufacturing spend is having several weeks of float to earn interest, meet minimum spend requirements, and spin up other opportunities. In that case, even if you pay off your entire statement balance with statement credits, you may get hit with a late payment or interest charge on the minimum payment. This shouldn’t apply if you reduce your balance to $0, but if you have made additional purchases during the month, your credit card company may consider those purchases to be subject to interest charges since your remaining previous balance was merged with your new balance.

This isn’t an extremely common situation, but I wanted to flag it for folks seeking to redeem tens or hundreds of thousands of Ultimate Rewards points towards grocery store purchases: go ahead and make your minimum payment in addition to any statement credits you redeem, to make sure Chase doesn’t decide to ding you for missing a credit card payment (and take a closer look at your account activity).

Apply or upgrade to Sapphire for redemptions?

Finally, this new opportunity raises the question whether you should upgrade an existing Freedom, Freedom Unlimited, or Sapphire card to a Sapphire Preferred or Sapphire Reserve card, or apply for a new card, in order to take advantage of these new statement credit redemption opportunities. Here, I don’t have a strong feeling either way.

If your credit history made you eligible for a Sapphire Preferred or Reserve offer prior to the new redemption opportunity, then it was probably already worth applying. It’s unclear to me that the new redemption opportunity should change your application calculus.

On the other hand, for folks with an existing large Ultimate Rewards balance held on Chase Ink cards, the new ability to redeem those points for statement credits may well justify upgrading a Slate, Freedom or Freedom Unlimited card to a Sapphire Reserve in order to cash out that existing Ultimate Rewards balance for grocery statement credits while travel redemptions remains a distant prospect.

Conclusion

I have to had it to Chase in making a fairly crafty calculation with this new redemption option. Existing members with large existing points balances, but who found themselves unable to redeem their points during the pandemic, might be tempted to simply cash out and cancel their accounts. Instead, Chase offered them the opportunity to both earn bonus points on their everyday purchases and redeem their Ultimate Rewards points at their “full” 1.25 or 1.5 cent value against them. That both directs spending towards Chase products and reduces the attrition of their “travel” clients during a period when travel is impossible.

But however clever Chase is, it’s still up to you to make the important decisions about how, when, and where to redeem your points.

Two great, one good, and one marginal grocery store earning boost

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By now you may have heard that starting May 1, 2020, Chase and American Express have enhanced the rate that several of their cards earn miles and points at grocery stores. I was notified by American Express by e-mail on May 1 (subject line “FQF, your Amex Card Member benefits just got better”), but I still haven’t actually received any official communication from Chase.

Here are the four most attractive offers I see, from the no-brainers to the tough call.

12 Hilton Honors points with Surpass and Aspire, plus a lifetime status angle

The American Express Surpass card usually earns 6 Hilton Honors points per dollar spent at grocery stores, and the Aspire card just an unbonused 3 points. Through July, both cards will earn 12 Honors points per dollar spent, with no maximum.

Hilton Honors points are worth about half a cent each, and normally cost about half a cent each when manufactured at grocery stores (since the same spend could be put on a card that earns 3% rewards). During this period, the card earns the equivalent of 6% cash back, which is essentially unheard of for an offer with no limit on the bonused amount.

Additionally, if your travel hacking strategy includes hitting the $15,000 spend threshold for a free weekend night with the Surpass card, or the $60,000 threshold for a second free weekend night with the Aspire, you obviously want to earn as many points as possible along the way, and the next 3 months are going to be a great opportunity to do so. American Express is also extending the expiration date of all certificates earned after May 1 and allowing them to be redeemed any night of the week.

Finally, I want to mention — without putting too much emphasis on it — that there’s a lifetime status angle here as well: all points earned with the Surpass and Aspire cards through December 31, 2020, will be treated as “base points.” Base points are a legacy feature of the Hilton Honors program from when it was a hotel loyalty scheme instead of a credit card loyalty scheme, and are (normally) earned only on your room rate and room charges. If you receive Diamond status by holding the Aspire card or by spending $40,000 on the Surpass, then you have probably never had any reason to think about base points.

The reason you might care about base points now is that Hilton has a “lifetime” elite status program: if you earn 2,000,000 base points, and maintain Diamond status for a total of 10 years (they don’t have to be consecutive), you are awarded “lifetime” Diamond elite status. For those with access to especially plentiful and socially-distanced grocery store spend, this is an opportunity to earn a phenomenal number of base points towards that 2-million-point goal.

If, like me, you believe every deal dies eventually, then you can treat lifetime Diamond status as a kind of long-term insurance policy: American Express can fire you as a customer, grocery stores can refuse to serve you, but Hilton will be stuck honoring your status for years to come.

If you do decide to pursue this angle, contact Hilton and ask them what your current lifetime base point total is and the number of years of Diamond status they’ve credited you with. I don’t know of any way to look up this information online (leave a comment if you do!).

3 and 5 Ultimate Rewards points with Chase Sapphire Preferred and Reserve

Over time every travel hacker should be diligently accumulating as many Chase Freedom cards as possible, which in the second quarter of 2020 are already earning 5 Ultimate Rewards points per dollar spent at grocery stores, on up to $1,500 per card in spend. I personally only have 2, but I know others have many more.

In May and June, 2020, Chase has increased the earning rate on their premium Sapphire Preferred and Reserve cards to 3 and 5 Ultimate Rewards points, respectively, on up to $1,500 per month in grocery store spend. That means after you’ve exhausted your quarterly Freedom bonus categories, you have another $3,000 in bonused grocery store spend to go.

Points earned with the Sapphire Reserve are worth a minimum of 1.5 cents each (when redeemed for paid travel), which makes the spend a no-brainer, but even if you only have the Sapphire Preferred I think the flexibility of Ultimate Rewards points, compared to the relative restrictiveness of Hilton points, suggests you should knock out your capped spend on these cards before going all-in on the Surpass or Aspire cards.

3 World of Hyatt points with Chase Hyatt cards

The two offers above are great, in the sense that my recommendation is: if you have the cards, take advantage of them. The Chase World of Hyatt earning boost is attractive, but doesn’t quite fall into that category: in May and June, 2020, you’ll earn 3 World of Hyatt points per dollar spent at grocery stores, on up to $1,500 per month in grocery store spend.

My perspective here is that if you plan to transfer 9,000 Ultimate Rewards points to Hyatt any time in the near future, these 9,000 World of Hyatt points should be valued the same as Ultimate Rewards points: every point you earn in World of Hyatt is a point you don’t have to transfer from Ultimate Rewards.

But whatever your plans and your level of confidence in those plans, you should almost certainly value World of Hyatt points “somewhat” less than Ultimate Rewards points, which is to say, maximize your Ultimate Rewards earnings first before turning to World of Hyatt.

4 Delta SkyMiles with American Express consumer credit cards

I no longer have an American Express Delta co-branded consumer credit card, having swapped my personal Delta Platinum card out for the business version several years ago (a card I’m planning to cancel, if the increased $250 annual fee ever hits). That means I’m not personally affected by American Express raising the earning rate on consumer cards to 4 Delta SkyMiles per dollar spent at grocery stores through July, 2020.

Let me get the obvious out of the way first: if you value and chase elite status with Delta through the Medallion Qualification Dollar waiver (spending $25,000 per calendar year) and Status Boost (bonus Medallion Qualification Miles when spending $25,000 or $30,000 on the Platinum and Reserve cards, respectively), then you should certainly try to earn as many redeemable miles as possible while doing so! A high, uncapped earning rate at grocery stores makes the next few months a great opportunity to sprint towards those goals.

Likewise, if Delta American Express consumer cards are the only cards you have featuring enhanced earning at grocery stores, they’re the only ones you can use: play the hand you’ve dealt yourself.

But as much as I enjoy the experience of flying on Delta, there’s no escaping the fact that SkyMiles are simply hard to use for high-value redemptions, and I hesitate to value them at more than 1 cent each (their value when used on “Pay with Miles” redemptions). The risk of unredeemed balances, or low-value redemptions, is much higher even than with a program like Hilton, where even break-even redemptions come with a 5th night free, for instance.

That’s what makes this earning boost a “marginal” play: a 4% earning rate in normal circumstances would be great, especially with the potential of accelerated elite status with a good airline. But given the other possibilities available, I would turn to Delta only after meeting Chase’s earning caps and satisfying my need for Hilton points.

Bonus tip: free manufactured spend at Safeway & Co.

I’d been noodling this post for a day or two when I saw Doctor of Credit share a new Safeway deal for $10 off $100 in MasterCard gift cards. The discount reduces the cost of each card below face value, making it a great opportunity to score some early wins this month.

The offer runs through May 16, 2020, but in my experience these offers must be added to your Safeway accounts during the week they launch (after which they remain linked until expiry).

So, get cracking!