I did it! Last I wrote, I had mentioned I was close. Over $30,000 has been “spent” on my American Express Starwood Preferred Guest card. I applied for this card in March and averaged about $3500 per month with the bulk of it being gift card churning.
My November statement closed and we are looking at $3508 of qualified spend:
I have almost $4,000 worth of spend on the card, and it should push me over to hit SPG Gold status.
Was it worth it? Totally not. I can say I earned SPG status without setting foot into any SPG property, but that could easily be accomplished if you are an American Express Platinum card holder.
I think with $30,000 spend, I would put it either on the American Express Premier Rewards Gold for an extra 15,000 Membership Rewards or on the Chase British Airways card for the companion pass.
How long will you have SPG Gold status? Also, if you put it on the bonus categories with the SPG you would have 75,000 MR points, not 45,000.
I will have SPG Gold through all of 2014. In fact, I just received an email this morning stating that I became a gold member. Had I finished the spend earlier, I believe I would have had the rest of 2013 and 2014 Gold.
At the time, when I opened the SPG, I had no card that would offer me anything extra for the high spend, so I put everything on the SPG for the extra perk. Was it worth it? Totally not, because you mentioned, I would have had the extra spend bonus for more MR points for the same amount of spend
Sorry I meant spend on bonus categories with the PRG, not SPG.
Also in order to actually benefit from having the gold status, you would need to step into an SPG property at some point 🙂
lol yup, I plan to take advantage of it in 2014 – the problem with many of their redemptions are the high amount of points, even with the cash + points option
I think SPG sweet spot is the mid-range properties. As an avid-skier, places like the Westins at Beaver Creek, Whistler, Aspen/Snowmass etc can be good value if you do the five nights for price of four. There are also some odd hidden gems if you call in and ask about suite redemption rates …. for example the executive suites at the Disney Swan property for 20k a night (or 80k for five nights) gets you a massive two bedroom suite. Like all the other gigs just need to find the sweet spots
Thanks for the tip I’ll have to take a closer look