Don’t miss these increased bonuses on the Marriott and United cards

For a limited time offer you can get an increased bonus on two great Chase credit cards.  It seems like they only do these things but once a year, so if you’ve been looking at either the Chase United MileagePlus Explorer card or the Marriott Premier Rewards credit card.

Chase United MileagePlus Explorer for 50,000

Link: Chase United MileagePlus Explorer

Offer ends September 2nd 2014

This card usually comes with a 30,000 bonus, which isn’t worth the application in my book.  The bump to 50k is an awesome push, and easily worth an application.  Here are the key points to this offer:

• 50,000 bonus after spending $2000 within the first 3 months of opening the account
• 5,000 bonus miles for adding an authorized user and they make a purchase within the first 3 months
• Free checked bag on United flights
• No foreign transaction fees
• $50 statement credit after your first purchase
• $95 annual fee is waived the first year
• 2 United Club Passes (United airport lounge)

When all is said and done you’ll have roughly 57,000 MileagePlus miles in your account.  That puts you rather close to 60,000, so I figured I should show you what you can do with 60,000 miles.

• 2 coach roundtrip tickets (50k) within the USA (if you have lots of flexibility booking the trip)
• 1 coach roundtrip ticket to Europe (60k)
• 1 coach roundtrip ticket to Hawaii (45k)
• 1 coach roundtrip ticket to Southern South America (Brazil, Argentina, or Chile)
• 1 one-way ticket to Australia, New Zealand (40k)
• 1 one-way ticket to Oceania (35k)

Remember that you can always add more United miles to your AwardWallet by picking up a card that offers Ultimate Rewards.  This makes an easy way for you to constantly add more United miles to your account that can pick up enough miles to complete the roundtrip ticket to the destination of your choice.  Cards that offer Ultimate Rewards are:

• Chase Sapphire Preferred
• Chase Ink Bold (business)
• Chase Ink Plus (business)

This offer ends on September 2nd, so make sure that you don’t miss it if you’ve been looking at adding the United card to your portfolio!

Marriott Rewards Premier Credit Card for 70,000

Link: Marriott Rewards Premier Credit Card

This card is AWESOME.  It is arguably the best hotel credit card offer that is currently out there.  Check out the awesome benefits of this card:

• 70,000 bonus points after spending $1000 on your new card within 3 months
• One free night at a category 1-4 for the first year(must be booked within the first 6 months of getting the card)
• One free night at a category 1-5 hotel ever year on your anniversary
• $0 introductory annual fee, then $85
• No foreign transaction fees

With over 4000 hotels in their portfolio, you can guarantee that Marriott will have a hotel in your destination. The key is finding a hotel in the lower award categories.  This is crucial to not burning all of the Marriott points in one swing.

This is the Marriott Award Chart

You can see that the 70,000 Marriott Reward bonus from this card would offer:

• 9 nights in a category 1
• 7 nights in a category 2
• 4 nights in a category 3
• 3 nights in a category 4
• 2 nights in a category 5,6, or 7

By staying in the lower categories you’re able to make the points last longer, stay more nights, eat more free breakfast, and sit in more hot tubs.  Finding the lower category hotels can be difficult, and will definitely require diligence, but also result in more value for each card you get.

Check out the properties and in which category they sit by using this property search.  You’ll notice that their categories are distributed on a bell curve.  They have few in the beginning, then it increases and the number of properties begins to decrease again at tier 6.

We’ve always preached diversity among hotel chains.  You need to have Marriott points, Starwood points, Club Carlson, IHG rewards, etc.  Now is the time to pick up this big offer on Marriott.

What do you think of these increased offers?  Do you have any questions about them?  Will you be getting either of these cards?