Two days ago we posted about a deal SPG was offering on the purchasing of miles. You can get a discount of up to 50% on miles you purchase, if you get the 50% discount then that brings down the cost of each point to 1.75¢ per point (and 1.699¢ per point if you use an SPG card that earns 2x points per $1 spent).
Reader stvr had the following interesting comment:
DoC, please mention that you can earn Topcashback from these purchases. It seems like you’re not using an affiliate link, so I think the only reason you neglected to mention it is because others have neglected to mention it. Now as for THEIR motives…
I thought that since the purchase coded as 2x for the SPG card that a portal wouldn’t work, but I was wrong. The best rate currently seems to be 4% 2.5% cash back through Topcashback (giving assistant is 10% but only for Virgin America). Let’s take a quick look at how this decreases our cost per point:
- 10,000 points costs $175
- Earn an additional 350 points from the purchase (assuming you use the SPG card)
- Earn
4%2.5% cash back or$7Â$4.375 by using a portal - Total points earned = 10,350 for a total cost of $170.625 or 1.649¢ per point (or 0.55¢ per Marriott point)
Realistically I should have remembered that you can get portal cashback for these purchases thanks to this The Deal Mommy post. Apologies to anybody that purchase points without going through a portal. Also if you’re purchasing miles/points, make sure the deal is right for you and don’t just purchase them speculatively because somebody else (that is getting paid for your purchase) recommends it.
