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Earning A Hyatt Free Night While Sitting Home In My Underwear

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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. Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed or approved by any of these entities. Links in this post may provide us with a commission.

Hyatt Free Night While Sitting Home

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.

Hyatt Free Night While Sitting Home

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.

Hyatt Free Night While Sitting Home

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.

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.

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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Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed or approved by any of these entities.
Mark Ostermann
Mark Ostermann
Mark Ostermann is a father, husband and miles/points fanatic. He left the corporate world after starting a family in order to be a stay at home dad. Mark is constantly looking at ways to save money and stay within budget while also taking awesome vacations with his family. When he isn't caring for his family or taking a weekend trip, Mark is working towards his goal of visiting every Major League Baseball ballpark.

Responses are not provided or commissioned by the bank advertiser. Responses have not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by the bank advertiser. It is not the bank advertiser's responsibility to ensure all posts and/or questions are answered.

13 COMMENTS

  1. Chase WOH card is blocked and you may find other VISA cards also blocked but nothing off the top of my head. Right now the economy is good so they can exist. At any point, if the card issuers have problems they may dump Plastiq. At 2.5% its a pretty stiff costs merely for points.

    • Robert as I have made multiple payments with my World of Hyatt card over the last few weeks I don’t know what to tell you on that front – works fine for me.

      • I use my Hyatt card to pay taxes for my business every month but I began to use it late last year with Plastiq as well to renew my Globalist status when I saw the way things were moving with Bonvoy. It’s worked fine for me since, although I haven’t done a whole lot of Plastiq this year.

  2. Last July (as you already know), Plastiq opened up 4 cats to VISA: 1. Rent 2. Utilities 3. Tuition 4. Taxes.

    But also in the process car payments, medical pmts, insurance, & everything else outside those 4 cats now processes as a cash advance (was a real bummer, too, cos I was racking up serious points at a nice spread when my CFU was 3x unlimited, or 4.5x, & the cats were broad).

    Regardless of all that, though, the WOH card isn’t even a recognized VISA by Plastiq for any of the above 4 allowed categories. See this link for info direct from Plastiq they emailed to users back in July:

    https://help.plastiq.com/hc/en-us/articles/360005215254-Visa-Personal-Card-Changes

    • BTW, payments outside the 4 cats to AMEX, MC, & Discover ALSO process as cash advances. They receive full rewards and not incur any additional fees, but they still have to be under 20% of your total credit limit. Payments over 20% of your total line of credit could trigger the Cash Advance limit established by the card issuer.

      It was fun while it lasted at least for the payments I typically made!

      • (if you try & schedule a pmt outside the 4 cats on VISA, Plastiq blocks it as a cash advance so knowing the above rules in advance saves that aggravation!)

        • I have been paying with my World of Hyatt Visa on my car payment without issue. Has been coding as a regular purchase, I earned points and spend credit.

          • I make sure I don’t go over 20% and haven’t had an issue with 2 different lenders for my vehicles.

          • The old Hyatt cc is on the list but the WOH isn’t – must be including it, too. My CFU is on the same list as the Hyatt VISA & was blocked in July from further payments (that had already been scheduled months out) for any pmts outside the 4 categories. I followed up with Plastiq & the explanation given was the Visa personal card network had updated its policy (of which the WOH card would be a member). Anyways, glad your’s wasn’t blocked!

  3. Just got an offer for a a Hyatt card 3000 spend in 3 months for 25000 points. Then another 3000 in the next 3 months for the other 25000 points. Here’s the question, is Hyatt okay with ms?

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