As I mentioned, the public information is very ambiguous on point value and unless I know for certain I am going to get better than 2 %
on unbonused spending, I am not going to be putting too much spending on it.
Still, 2 % is a perfectly reasonable return
on unbonused manufactured spend, so the card still has its uses to me.
At roughly 1 cent per point, that would give you a roughly 3 % return
on your unbonused Starwood Preferred Guest American Express purchases.
Not exact matches
That means the most expensive Ritz - Carlton property in the world requires just $ 23,333 in
unbonused spend
on the Starwood Preferred Guest American Express, or $ 18,667 in spend for stays of exactly 5 nights.
Currently if you spend more than $ 120K in a year
on a FlexPerks card the
unbonused earning rate drops from 1 point per dollar to 1 point per every 2 dollars.
I generally know at the beginning of each month what my goals are in terms of both bonused and
unbonused spend: I'm going to spend a certain amount of money at grocery stores, gas stations, drug stores, office supply stores, etc., and put a certain amount of bonused spend
on certain cards.
For example, you could earn 1.5 points per dollar
on a Freedom Unlimited card and transfer them to a Sapphire Reserve account to take advantage of the higher redemption value, but that would be identical to simply earning the points at 1 point per dollar via
unbonused spend
on the Sapphire Reserve card in the first place.
How much
unbonused spend would you really put
on the MileagePlus Club card?
I use my card for any
unbonused spend I have as, with my valuation of Starpoints (around 2.2 cents each), that gives me the best return
on my spend.
And finally, if you're moving heaven and earth to earn as many Hilton Honors points as possible for a big upcoming aspirational redemption, then earning a bunch of them through
unbonused spend may offer an advantage over grinding out bonused spend
on a Hilton Honors Surpass American Express.
At that ratio, $ 25,000 in
unbonused spend
on a new «Black» Bank of America Virgin Atlantic credit card would earn 191,250 Honors points, or 7.65 Honors points per dollar of
unbonused spend.
As indicated above, it's possible to earn Asiana Miles with a Starwood Preferred Guest card earning 1.25 Asiana Miles per dollar spent
on otherwise
unbonused spend.
If you need to top up your account, you'll get a better earning ratio transferring Starpoints in 20,000 - Starpoint increments and earning 5,000 bonus Miles & More miles than you will putting additional
unbonused spend
on their Barclaycard credit card.
Not great, but not bad for a category of
unbonused spend that was previously impossible to generate points
on in a cost effective manner outside of meeting a sign up bonus (spend that could be put elsewhere to get the bonus).