I’m not new, new but I registered to watch. Thanks!
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I last updated in November and had just hit a few bonuses paying for our Desert Landscaping (aka new septic system.) As we moved into winter and paid DD’s tuition, I hit an Amex Gold Business SUB and continued working my way through them Hilton Cards.
| I finally caught up with my monthly tallies spreadsheet, and the CoLoRs… |  |
| Those Hilton points especially juiced up the old balance - but have to remember that transferable currencies like Amex MR, Chase UR, and Cap One Miles tend to be worth far more per point than locked in ones. |
Still I nice boost in points and $Value since last round - even after using a bunch for college visits and the Charlotte wedding.
Summary Highlights
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A trip down to Charlotte and a stay at a Hyatt brand I had not used before earned up a Brand Explorer free night certificate, which was nice. (Pro Tip: Points stays count for those.)
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The Chase Sapphire Preferred rental car coverage came in super handy when a friendly sort of person smashed the window in our rental car, so remember: this game ain’t all about points. Much of it is, but not all.
Keep track 'o them card benefits and use them! -
My Hilton plan came along bee-autifully - and now the free night certificates (FNC) are rolling in. After earning the one from the Surpass bonus and the Aspire’s annual cert, we shifted our normal grocery and dining spend over to the Surpass at the start of the year earn another FNC after $15K spend. Since those categories earn 6x points, we should also end up with an additional 90K Hilton Honors, which is essentially another free night at a bougier hotel - or a couple of nights at a regular location.
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Speaking of FNCs: My Marriott Boundless also comes with an annual 35K cert, which just kicked in as well: the takeaway here is: FNCs usually expire after 1 year, so you need a plan to use them! If possible, especially when playing Two Player Game, try to line up your own P1 and P2 certificates on the calendar as much as possible. That will make tracking and using them MUCH easier. Mine, sadly are kind of spread out, but I didn’t have too much of a choice with my spend patterns, but hope to do more better in the future.
Upcoming
We waited out the winter to allow our front yard to settle before rebuilding the retaining walls and front path so are about to sign with a contractor to get that project started.
We also have some additional steps that need to be rebuilt and hope to make the whole thing more uniform with a new paver front porch to replace a less than optimal wood deck - so should be a pretty significant amount of spend.
We’re already working on a Cap One Venture card SUB, but regular spend will likely cover 90% of that.
At this point, I would prefer to boost my Chase UR balance, so we could go for some Inks.
But - even though our Amex MR balance is larger than our Chase UR, I’m also thinking of going for an Amex Business Platinum since it is rare that we could cover the super high bonus spend for that card in a short 3 months unless we were starting something like our yard project. So, I’m keeping my eyes open for one of those crazy 250K MR bonuses from last year to pop back up.
I’ll have to make a decision soon!
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Check your Amex cards - some interesting new offers dropping this week.
I saw mention of a 10% cash back for Exxon Mobil, but hasn’t appeared on mine yet - but, I love this Walmart.com offer on my Amex Platinum: Spend $60, earn $20 back up to two times!
In the past I’ve used similar Walmart offers to buy Starbucks gift cards to earn the credit, so should be good to go for GCs.
DON’T FORGET YOU NEED TO ADD THIS OFFER TO YOUR CARD BEFORE THE PURCHASE.
Also, if you are lucky enough to have it show up on more than one Amex card, use something like Cardpointers to have it added to all of them to maximize.
I’ll usually stick to physical gift cards just in case (and I get free shipping via Walmart+) - but have done eCards in the past too and the credit worked.
Disney GC denominations online are $25, $50, $100, so the most efficient play is likely a total of $75 if just focusing on Disney.
I’m probably going to do a $50 Disney and a $15 Starbucks in two separate purchases to get the credit twice.
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Yeah. I don’t think I’ll make anymore big purchases without working toward a SUB goal 
So, yesterday afternoon I placed a Walmart order for 2 physical $25 Disney GCs and a $15 Starbucks eGift card - about 11 seconds later order was cancelled and a flurry of messages came through including a request to reset my password.
After that fraud alerted and cancelled my order last night, I went in to chat this morning to see if anything needs to be reset before I try another order. He told me the auto fraud system had kicked in verified I had not changed any of my contact info on the account. (Had not for over a year.)
I believe I also need to face to the east while wearing a fez cap and sacrificing a chicken.
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$200 Fine Hotels credit is just ok because, like you mentioned, tricky get good value ($200 off an $200 inflated price is nil). However, I have consistently found a good use for it at Universal’s Portofino Bay Hotel. While the room price is high (even with the $200 FHR credit), you do get 2 free breakfast, $100 hotel credit and, because it is a Universal Signature Hotel, two days of Universal Express Unlimited (UE) pass for everyone in your party. As a family of four, that’s a value of of over $800 ($100 per person, per day). So for booking one night through FHR, you can easily cover that hotel cost with two days of at UE at UO and IOA. Of course, Epic Universe will change the math for your 3rd (and 4th?) days…
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I didn’t realize this was possible… Thanks for the tip, I’ll have to run some numbers for a possible trip later this summer
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That is a terrific use of the FHR credit - I’m hoping to use it myself one day.
One thing I read online was it was difficult to use the breakfast credit if rope dropping because it didn’t start serving early enough - was that your experience? (Not a huge deal either way for me, but nice to get breakfast for two.)
I think it might depend on the time of the year whether you can make it to breakfast (for free) and also rope drop. Checking on today’s date, looks like breakfast starts at 7AM and parks open at 9AM (early admission at 8AM). It’s about a 15 minute walk to the Parks so it depends which rope drop you plan to do and whether you’ll be able to pull that off. All that said, with Universal Express Unlimited (UE) passes, do you even need to rope drop at all? 
Based on our last two trips in 2019 and 2023, we didn’t need to rope drop when we had UE, but YMMV (Epic Universe will surely require rope drop)
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Thanks!
Crazily enough, I haven’t been to Universal in more than 20 years! I need to start reading up on it and drag my family there.
Welp, I guess his instructions worked - I waited until after 4:30PM, ordered the same exact things using the same credit card and it all went through without canceling. I even received the Sbux eGift already.
Problem though is that Amex already sent me a SECOND notice that I used my $20 back offer, so I’m going to need to place another similar order soon to make sure they don’t claw back one of them.