The Annual Year End Bonus Points and Miles Push: Should You Bite?
This is the time of year when credit card holders start getting offered points and miles bonuses if they meet a spending threshold for the year’s last quarter. Historically, these have arrived in my email (and occasionally in the mailbox) toward the end of September and offer a bonus (usually 5,000 points or miles) if I spend at least $3,000 before the end of the year. In my experience, the cards offering these bonuses tend to be the ones I use less frequently and tend to be cards that offer specific miles or points (airline and hotel co-branded cards) rather than flexible points.
Perhaps the credit card issuers are trying to entice you to incorporate the card into your holiday shopping and other end of year spending when use might be higher. Maybe the banks have internal benchmarks they need to meet, and this is a last gasp push to pump up their revenues before December 31st.
While the bonus is nice and can get you closer to a free flight or night in a hotel, it may or may not be useful for you depending on your circumstances and near-term travel plans. As an example, I will walk you through an offer I received last week.
Chase offered me a bonus of 5,000 points if I spend $3,000 on my IHG co-branded card in the next three months. (IHG is the hotel group including Holiday Inn, InterContinental, Kimpton, Crowne Plaza, and others.) For any routine, non-bonus spending, this card gives you three points per dollar spent so, if I took the offer and met the spending threshold, I would get at least 14,000 IHG points. (3 points x $3,000 + 5,000-point bonus)
This offer would give a quick boost to my IHG points total but, I might need 25,000 points or more for one night in a Holiday Inn Express. Currently, I have about 2,000 points in my IHG account so, despite this bonus offer, even a modestly priced room is out of range for me. Those points might sit unused for some time. However, for someone who already has a larger balance in their IHG account, this might be an efficient means of getting a free room faster.
In general, I view these offers the way I view the occasional “sales” for points and miles. They might be useful if you are trying to “top off” an account to have enough miles for a room or flight AND you have a plan to use them in the near future (within months and certainly within one year). If these conditions do not apply, although these bonus miles or points might have value in theory, they will be “stranded” and of little or no use. Again, these offers might be worthwhile for you, but you should have a clear plan for utilizing the bonus points before you change your spending patterns.
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