How to navigate the Hyatt problem

Good morning from beautiful Tanzania! Today is full of exciting tips and one game-changing new deal that just dropped.

Enjoy:

• 🏨 How to navigate the new Hyatt problem

• 💰 Get $100 of free money… on all of your cards

• 🛳️ A Wider Mediterranean by Yacht

🏨 How to navigate the new Hyatt problem

As you know, this credit card has been in every headline for the past week, for a couple of reasons:

1. It is offering 100,000 UR points when you meet the minimum spend after opening the card (with just an annual fee of $95)

2. It just revamped its benefits and earning rates

One component of that “revamp” was to decrease the transfer ratio to World of Hyatt, which is now 4:3 rather than 1:1.

So today, let’s talk about who should even care about this change and, more importantly, how to navigate around it to keep the 1:1 transfer ratio alive and well.

Even with the bad ratio, it’s still pretty good

Let’s be real… Hyatt’s award rates are still better than all of the competition. Even with Hyatt’s new award chart, hotels start at just 3,000 points per night.

So even though that now means having to transfer 4,000 UR points from this card, that’s still better than you’ll find from basically any other bank or transfer partner.

Heck, even some nicer hotels that cost a bit more would still be worth booking with this transfer ratio.

Not every card changed the transfer ratio

The card’s big brother (the one with a high annual fee but much bigger benefits) still retains the 1:1 transfer ratio to Hyatt.

This means you have a couple of options:

1. You could open the low-fee card, earn a ton of UR points, and upgrade to the premium version after a year. Then, all those points you earned on the low-fee card can transfer to Hyatt 1:1.

2. You can technically open both cards and hold them at the same time. And in fact, you can earn welcome offers on both cards… If you do, you can pool ALL of your UR points to the card with the 1:1 ratio, and voila – you’re all set.

So really, there are plenty of ways to keep that ratio intact.

Given the different benefits and earning rates in different categories, holding both cards actually makes sense anyway.

Just… don’t transfer points to Hyatt

This is probably the most important one to consider… For a lot of you, I suspect you value points for airfare.

And if that’s true, just… transfer your UR points to the fantastic airline partners like Virgin Atlantic, United, JetBlue, Air Canada, and more.

If you think of this low-fee card as a high-earning card for flights, it’s honestly a pretty good setup.

Plus, you can pair it with a card from Bilt, all of which still let you transfer Bilt points to Hyatt at a 1:1 ratio.

Bilt also transfers to IHG, Marriott, Hilton, and Accor Live Limitless… so you can even have a 2-card setup where this card is your airline card and one of the Bilt cards is your hotel card.

The bottom line

Personally, I hold the premium version of the card, so my Hyatt ratio is safe for now.

But whether or not you even care about Hyatt, hopefully these tips help you pick a path toward leveraging the card’s insane new welcome offer while still getting the value you need from the points.

💰 Get $100 of free money… on all of your cards

Recently, I told you about how cards from this bank can earn 10x EXTRA points when checking out with Paze.

Paze is basically a payment system that partners with a small list of merchants in the U.S.

And right now, they’re offering a kind of insane promotion to earn $10 back after spending at least $10… and you can do it ten times… on all of your cards.

You can see exactly which banks it partners with, but it’s not just the cards that earn UR points. Even cards from Capital One and Bank of America will also be eligible.

In other words, you can get $100 of free money on all of these cards, though it must be broken up into $10 increments.

Ideally, you’ll also want each purchase to be around $10 if you really want to maximize it.

For example, one of Paze’s partners is Dunkin’ Donuts. When you place an order online for delivery or pickup, you’ll see Paze as an option.

In the example above, I could just order $10 worth of food and get $10 back. And I can do that every single day for 10 days.

Then, I could do it for another ten days using a different card.

It’s actually…. Insane.

The promo is valid through September 10, so there’s a good long time to take advantage of it.

Oh, and if you think of getting creative and buying gift cards through various merchants, don’t bother – they’ve already shut that option down. 😉

As I mentioned in the beginning, this stacks with the other promo to earn 10x extra points through Paze.

So if you signed up for the new 100,000-point welcome offer I mentioned, that card would earn you 3x UR points at Dunkin’ Donuts, another 10x UR points from the promo, and get $10 back multiple times.

That’s a solid haul.

Anyway, here’s the bottom line:

This is by far the EASIEST way to earn some cash back on your annual fees on a bunch of cards from different banks.

Have fun!

That’s all for today, friends. Take care and see you tomorrow.

Byeeeeeeeeeee

3.3869° S, 36.6830° E

With contributions by Sam Anthony and Katie Begnoche.