Ok, so hear me out, I read a post somewhere by @PedroNY where he posted that he used Amex MR's for Home depot gift cards and bought a new stackable washer and dryer for the house. It got me thinking about my situation...
I recently signed up for the Biz Plat 150k and now have 170k after meeting spend. I have about 200k avios which we use for our year family trip to Maui or Kauai on AS, but that's two years worth of Hawaiian vacations from the west coast (with 2016 already booked) and about as many Avios as I want to keep in that program. We don't travel internationally yet, since my kids are both under the age of 5 and wife doesn't want to be that far from them. We travel a bunch domestic, almost exclusively on WN, have tons of avios, and two CP's on WN for the four of us that expire in 2016. Likely wont fly delta or jet blue due to CP on WN and with my oldest starting school this year, am anticipating less travel / trips.
I have about 80k UR (which I only transfer to Hyatt for Hyatt House / Place stays with the family, wife and 2 kids under the age of 5 (free breakfast)). With the recent credit card changes with Chase bank cards, I would like to stretch these 80k points with cash and points bookings and was thinking about...wait for it...cashing in my MR's for Hyatt Gift cards or Car Rental gift cards so that we can stretch my Hyatt points and not have to pay out of pocket for car rentals.
I just picked up a Citi Premier for me and SO (100k TYP) and an A+ for the wife (her second) and am working on the min spend on those, which I was going to use for car rentals. I also have some alamo certs from the daily getaways deal this year, so was leaning toward using 150k MR for $1500 in Hyatt GC's. Please don't flog or excommunicate me, but don't see a ton of value in MR outside of avios and gc's. Am I the only one?
I am happy to field questions or thoughts if you have any. Am I missing something or is this what's best for my situation? Pedro? Bueller?
I recently signed up for the Biz Plat 150k and now have 170k after meeting spend. I have about 200k avios which we use for our year family trip to Maui or Kauai on AS, but that's two years worth of Hawaiian vacations from the west coast (with 2016 already booked) and about as many Avios as I want to keep in that program. We don't travel internationally yet, since my kids are both under the age of 5 and wife doesn't want to be that far from them. We travel a bunch domestic, almost exclusively on WN, have tons of avios, and two CP's on WN for the four of us that expire in 2016. Likely wont fly delta or jet blue due to CP on WN and with my oldest starting school this year, am anticipating less travel / trips.
I have about 80k UR (which I only transfer to Hyatt for Hyatt House / Place stays with the family, wife and 2 kids under the age of 5 (free breakfast)). With the recent credit card changes with Chase bank cards, I would like to stretch these 80k points with cash and points bookings and was thinking about...wait for it...cashing in my MR's for Hyatt Gift cards or Car Rental gift cards so that we can stretch my Hyatt points and not have to pay out of pocket for car rentals.
I just picked up a Citi Premier for me and SO (100k TYP) and an A+ for the wife (her second) and am working on the min spend on those, which I was going to use for car rentals. I also have some alamo certs from the daily getaways deal this year, so was leaning toward using 150k MR for $1500 in Hyatt GC's. Please don't flog or excommunicate me, but don't see a ton of value in MR outside of avios and gc's. Am I the only one?
I am happy to field questions or thoughts if you have any. Am I missing something or is this what's best for my situation? Pedro? Bueller?