I’ve recently received offers from several credit cards for bonus points on all purchases. Since the period of these offers overlap, I need to decide which offers I’m going to take advantage of and what one I’m going to use first.
Therefore, I need to determine how lucrative each offer is and if it makes sense to move spending from a card I’d typically use for those expenses.
Here are the three offers:
- JetBlue Plus – 300 bonus points when spending over $300 each month.
- Fidelity Rewards – 50% more rewards points on all purchases over $600 between November 1 and December 31, 2021.
- Southwest Priority – 1,000 bonus points once spending $1,000 per month in November and December 2021.
Since both the JetBlue and Southwest loyalty programs have a “fixed” value for points, it’s easy to put a value on the offers. It’s possible to do better or worse with these points, but I’m using 1.4 CPP for the calculations.
The Fidelity Rewards is a 2% cashback card.
None of the cards have bonus categories that I use so any purchases during the promotional period would be at the base earning level (1X for the airline cards and 2% for Fidelity.)
JetBlue & Southwest
Each of these offers is for an additional point if you meet a spending threshold. By spending $1,000 on the Southwest card, I’d earn 2000 points (1000 base points + 1000 bonus points) worth 2.8 cents.
Fidelity Rewards
The Fidelity Rewards bonus offer is different because you have to spend $600 to trigger the bonus on additional purchases. For the first $600, I’ll earn the usual 2% and then I’ll earn 3% for anything above that.
There’s no limit on the bonus, which means the more you spend, the better the offer becomes.
- $700 in spending = $15 back (2.14%)
- $1000 in spending = $24 back (2.4%)
- $2500 in spending = $69 back (2.76%)
- $5000 in spending = $144 back (2.88%)
Other Options
My usual cards for non-bonused spending are:
- Freedom Unlimited – 1.5 Ultimate Rewards per dollar spent
- Blue Business Plus – 2 Membership Rewards per dollar spent
The minimum I value Ultimate Rewards is 1.5 cents because that’s the value I’ll get when booking travel through the Chase Portal or by using the Pay Yourself Back option. However, by using transfer partners, I’ve gotten up to 4 CPP when transferring points to Hyatt. I never assume that I’ll find a great redemption; therefore I earn 2.25% back (1.5 points x 1.5 CPP) when using my Freedom Unlimited.
My typical rewards booking is worth about 1.3 CPP when using Membership Rewards points, like our recent bookings using HawaiianMiles and Delta SkyMiles. That means I’m earning 2.6% back on purchases using our Blue Business Plus.
I also have an abundance of AMEX points at the moment and have no desire to add to our balances.
Final Thoughts
With both the Southwest and JetBlue offers, I’ll earn 2.8% back. However, it also means I’ll earn points that are locked in a single program. I also have a healthy amount of points with both airlines which will pay for our flights for the next year or two.
That makes the Fidelity Rewards offer the most appealing of the three. Since the return keeps getting closer to 3% the more I spend, it makes sense to maximize that offer instead of spreading expenses over three different cards.
If I didn’t have the offer from Fidelity, I’d be taking advantage of the other two promotions.
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