How I Earned 50X Points Per Dollar With This Promotion

by joeheg

I frequently receive emails or mailers from credit cards offering bonus points in one category or another. Some of them are worthwhile, such as when I can get 5% back for online purchases, including Amazon. Others aren’t as useful, like when I’ll get an offer for a bonus on shipping services or from a wireless provider that I don’t use.

I’ll also admit that sometimes I see an offer that looks good but I’ll get lazy and forget about it.

In December, Chase replaced our IHG Rewards credit cards (we have two Select and one Premier) with ones that have contactless technology. Chase also sent out an offer for bonus points to get people to try out the new technology. Hey, Chase! Contactless technology isn’t new.

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I’ll redeem IHG points for anything over 0.5 cents, which is the price at which you can purchase them during a points sale, but I’ll often get more value for them.

The 1,000 points from this promotion are worth at least $5.  Not the most lucrative of promotions but I’m not one to turn down $5 for making three transactions. My goal was to try to minimize the spending needed to get the bonus.

If you’re able to spend exactly $3.50 for each contactless transaction, it would only take $10.50 to fulfill the terms of the offer. I didn’t do that well, since I spent $21 over my three transactions. The bonus points hit my account the same day as the charges.

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I earned 1,021 IHG points for $21 in spending, so about 48 points per dollar. I’m going to scale this offer two more times with our other two IHG cards but that’s about the max I can take it. I’ll see how much less I can spend to maximize my reward.

You gotta take the points where you can get them, right?

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This post first appeared on Your Mileage May Vary

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