40000 Points = 2 Domestic Flights with AmEx Starwood Preferrred Guest

My all time favorite travel rewards card is the Starwood Preferred Guest Credit Card from American Express. Some people just want an easy 10000 bonus points to convert it to $100 in gift card for signing up. However, I think it’s best to use the points for 2 free domestic flight tickets. Before I got into the how-to details, here is a quick summary with their rewards program:

1. Convert a few miles so they won’t expire and top off to get to the reward ticket level
2. Get 1.25 miles per dollar spent which is 25% more than most other airlines cards.
3. Points can be converted to gift cards, hotel nights, and airline tickets.

Top Reasons Why Starwood Preferred Guest Credit Card from American Express is the best Airline Travel Card:

1) Starwood points can be easily converted to frequent flier miles

• The Starwood points convert on a 1:1 (1 Starwood point = 1 frequent flier mile) basis on major domestic airlines include Alaska, American, Delta, Hawaiian, Northwest and US Airways/America West.

2) Get that free flight ticket by topping it off or keep your miles from expiring

• Say you want to fly free and you have only 23K delta flier miles, and you need to 2K more to make a free flight. With Starwood points, you can transfer your already earned points to Delta frequent flier program and get your free ticket. Hence, you don’t need to earn the points by doing other spending methods.
• In order to keep your miles from expiring, simply convert a few hundred miles every now and then so your account would be active with other airlines. If not, you could lose your miles for being inactive.

3) Great hotel card reward card

Don’t like gift cards or airline ticket? How about hotel stay for as little as 2000 points per night. There is no blackout date and all taxes are covered. Choose from Hotels such as Sheraton, W hotels, Westin, and St. Regis.

4) Get 25% more miles extra

• Other airline credit cards such Delta and American give out great bonuses but all give you 1 mile per dollar spent. The Starwood does the same with 1 Starwood point for $1 spent. This changes whenever you convert 20000 points, you get an additional 5000 bonus points or 20000 Starwood points = 25000 miles on all airlines flier program. This resulted in an extra 25% more miles per dollar spent.

5) Free 10000 bonus points, another 15000 possible bonus points, and first year membership fee is waived

• If you sign up now, Starwood Preferred Guest Credit Card from American Express is giving away 10000 Starwood bonus points after first purchase. Your membership fee is waived for the 1st year, and $45 annual fee after that.
• Another current promotion is an additional 15000 bonus points for spending $15K in the first 6 months on top of the 1 dollar per point spent.

All together is 40000 Starwood points which can be converted to 50000 flier miles since they give out an extra 5000 points for every 20000 converted points. For every 25000 miles, you will get a free domestic flight ticket in the Continental U.S.

Say what?!! $15K in spending? You are crazy man! Of course, don’t forget you are on Hustlermoneyblog. Here are a few ways you can get to that $15K in spending in six months.

• Open a new Bank of America account every month and fund your account with up to $1000 from a credit card. Opening and closing BOA account doesn’t hurt your credit score as long as you keep one account open. There is no fee to close and try to sign up to those BOA bonuses. Hmmm…so 6 months = 6 accounts = $6K. **You might try your luck with funding a Citibank account with a credit card too.**
• Make sure you pay everything in your personal daily life with your Starwood Preferred Guest Credit Card from American Express. By doing so, you would roughly spend around $1K a month for 6 months = $6K.
• Buying gift cards you know you will use. E.G. Walmart gift cards, popular store gift cards for the holidays shopping, Home depot or Lowe’s, etc etc
• Look for high cost items such as laptops and resell it on Ebay to make a profit or at least break even and ask family members to let you pay and give you cash in return.