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Buy Marriott Points
We have seen all sorts of deals this year when it comes to buying points throughout the pandemic. Marriott has a deal, which if used strategically, could be quite advantageous for future travel. I’m a big fan of purchasing any kind of point as long as you have a redemption in mind, and can save money by doing so. With that said, Marriott has put forth a great offer until April 3rd.
Remember that Marriott uses dynamic pricing so rates will heavily fluctuate from night to night.
Last year we saw a 30% discount as well as a 40 to 50% bonus so keep that in mind when assessing the value of this offer.
Buy Marriott points with a 40% bonus
Normally I’m not a huge advocate of purchasing Marriott points because they traditionally limit the maximum per year to just 50k. Besides shoring up for an award night, there isn’t a lot of potential for arbitrage. Earlier this year, Marriott increased that max to 100k not including any bonus. With this offer, you could accumulate 140k Marriott Bonvoy points for $1250, or a $0.00893 a point.
$0.00893 per point
This opens up a lot of potential in my mind to seize some great opportunities on high priced properties around the world. Particularly when you hit them during off peak and the point pricing is low comparative to the cash value.
You can transfer between Marriott accounts
You can read all about it here, but this is the long and short
- If your account has activity in it…it has to be at least 30 days old to send or receive
- If there is no activity it has to be at least 90 days old
- You can TRANSFER a max of 100k points
- you can RECEIVE a max of 500k points
Where could this make sense?
5 nights in Hawaii
Hawaii is always a hot spot and if you can pop down in shoulder season you can get a pretty darn good deal. Remember, all Marriott members get a 5th night free, so you could stay 5 nights for the price of 4. Let’s take a look at how buying points could save you tons of cash.
The Royal Hawaiian:
Two people could buy points and combine them to get a discount over the cash rate. If one person bought 140k miles and the other bought 73k miles you’d pay $1900 for 5 nights. Not cheap, but it’s Hawaii and a famed resort.
The same dates if booked with cash would be over $2800
Couple of things to remember
- You need to have had a Marriott account for 30 days with activity
- If you have no activity…90 days
- It can take up to 7 days for the points to populate…
Overall
Certainly you need to crunch the numbers and make sure it works FOR YOU. But if you have that special redemption in mind this could be a way to make it work for much, much less.
Go here to Buy
The Chase Sapphire Preferred is a great starter card that earns Premium Ultimate Rewards that can be transferred into over a dozen partners many of which are US based.
Welcome Offer
60k Points after $4k spend in 3 months
80k offer in branch currently – I think this should be online soon
Annual Fee
$95
Points Earned
Transferrable Chase Ultimate Rewards
Super solid welcome offer.
If you carry this card alongside Chase’s cashback cards like the Chase Freedom Flex℠and Chase Freedom Unlimited® or the business versions: Ink Business Cash , Ink Business Unlimited you can combine the points into Preferred account and transfer into hotel and airline partners
Annual fee is quite low at $95 a year + you get a 10% anniversary bonus on points + $50 hotel credit in Chase travel.
- 3x on dining
- including eligible delivery services for takeout
- 3x on select streaming services
- 3x on online grocery purchases
- (excluding Target, Walmart and wholesale clubs)
- 5x on all travel purchased through Chase Ultimate Rewards – Chase Travel Portal
- $50 Annual Credit on hotel stays purchased via Ultimate Rewards/Chase Travel
- The begins immediately for new cardmembers and after your account anniversary for existing cardmembers
- 10% Anniversary Bonus
- Every year you keep the card, your total spend will yield a 10% points bonus. If you spend $10k in a year, you’ll get 1k bonus points
- Chase Sapphire Preferred® continues to redeem at 1.25c in the Chase Travel Portal and the slew of other benefits remain in tact including primary rental car insurance, purchase protections, etc.
- Points are transferrable to 13 Ultimate Rewards partners
- Redeem in the Chase Travel center for 1.25 cents per point
- No foreign transaction fees
- Suite of Travel and Purchase Coverage
- Primary rental car coverage is my favorite
There is currently an 80k offer after $4k spend in 3 months available in branch, and up to 90k after $6k spend in 6 months. I suspect some version of this will be online soon if you don’t want the hassle of going into a branch.
We keep an up to date spreadsheet that lists the best ever offers: You can find that spreadsheet here.
Historically 60k is a very, very good offer. In 2021, we saw the offer hit an all time high of 100k. Who knows if that will ever come back. .
Main Cast:
Cards that earn flexible points and should be used on the bulk of your purchases.
Supporting Cast:
Cards that earn fixed points in the currency of the airline/hotel and can not be transferred at attractive rates. These cards yield benefits that make it worth keeping, but not necessarily worth putting a lot of your everyday spend on.
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