Earning A Hyatt Free Night While Sitting Home In My Underwear

Earning A Hyatt Free Night While Sitting Home In My Underwear

I am going to tell you that this is a pretty specific instance so it won’t work for most people. The reason I am writing it is up is to show you that it is worth taking taking advantage of opportunities when they arise. You will also need to have a World of Hyatt credit card to make this work. But this will work for other cards with a spending bonus. So now that we got that out of the way let’s get into the details on how I racked up a Hyatt free night while sitting home.

Refinancing My Vehicles Leads To An Opportunity

I recently looked into consolidating my vehicle payments into one and getting a lower interest rate.  During the process I ended up going with Light Stream who we have used in the past.  Instead of paying off the cars for me like some lenders will do they deposited the money into my account for me to pay them off.  My opportunity bells started ringing and I wanted to turn this into a value making opportunity.  That is when I turned to my World of Hyatt card and Plastiq.

Plastiq allows you to pay bills you normally can’t pay with a credit card and car payments are one of the options.  By doing this I would be able to rack up Hyatt points but more importantly I could knock off the $15,000 in spend needed to earn a category 1-4 free night.  That is one of my favorite perks of the card and something I try to do every year.  This would allow me to do it quickly and get it knocked off so I can use the free night on my trip to Kyiv.

Crunching The Numbers

This sounds great and all but Plastiq comes with a fee.  They charge 2.5% to use a credit card to make payments.  That cost is higher than the value of 1 Hyatt point per dollar I would earn but there are some other things to consider that made this worth it for me.

The Cost

If I spent the full $15,000 on Plastiq it would cost me $375 at the 2.5% rate.  But there are ways to reduce that cost that we can look at below.

Fee Free Dollars

When you sign up for Plastiq you get $500 in fee free dollars after spending $500.  That means you avoid the 2.5% payment on your second $500 sent out.  Then if you refer someone you get $1000 in fee free dollars for each person that signs up and makes a $500 payment (they also get the $500 in fee free dollars).

If you sign up and then refer a spouse that is like getting $2000 in fee free payments which saves you $50 overall. If you are just starting out with Plastiq you will save you $12.50 from the $500 in fee free dollars so let’s use that as our baseline.

1% Fee Offers

There are targeted offers sent out by Plastiq almost monthly that drop the fee to 1%-1.5%.  If you get one of these offers then this becomes a much better deal since you are essentially paying a penny per point using Plastiq.

The Free Night

All of this value really hinges on the free night though.  I would never pay $300 plus for 15,000 Hyatt points but when you throw in the free night the numbers change a little bit and it makes it more acceptable.

The Final Tally

So let’s finally look at the numbers.  I value the free night at 12,000-15,000 Hyatt points since I will use it at a category 3 or 4. I am going to value it at the full 15,000 points since I know I will use it at a category 4 hotel (Kyiv). That is a total of 30,000 Hyatt points for a cost of $362.50 (taking the $500 fee free dollars bonus into account).

That is essentially me buying 30,000 Hyatt points for 1.2 cents each.  That isn’t a great deal but there is value there. It also allows me to drop my World of Hyatt card spend from my list of things to do.

But it gets better.  The other reason I considered doing this and why I wanted to get it done before the year ends is because you get 2 elite night credits for every $5,000 in spend with the World of Hyatt card.  And I so happened to be 6 nights short of 40 nights with Hyatt for the year.  I would earn those 6 nights by spending the $15K before the end of the year. That unlocks a bonus that will net me another 5,000 points (or $100 gift card).

Now I am looking at earning 35,000 points for $362.50 or a cost of essentially 1 cent per point.  I think most people would buy Hyatt points at one cent a piece.

Final Thoughts

Is this the best deal ever? Nope.  But it shows you what you can do with a little bit of creativity and when you jump on an unexpected opportunity.  It allows me to rack up points and a free night at a discounted rate.  I know it is possible to do it cheaper via other methods, even on Plastiq, but I wanted to make this simple and be able to do it in my underwear at home if I wanted to.  Mission accomplished!

Update: Pam shared a good link in the comments of what will and will not work because of changes this year (Link).  I made sure to keep my transactions under 20% of my credit limit and all purchases coded as regular purchases and I earned points and incurred no cash advance fees etc.

Disclosure: Miles to Memories has partnered with CardRatings for our coverage of credit card products. Miles to Memories and CardRatings may receive a commission from card issuers.

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