When less is more: Why I’m shifting spending away from a card I love

29.07.2024 - 20:20 / thepointsguy.com

For the last few years, most of my everyday spending has gone toward one main goal: unlocking World of Hyatt Globalist elite status via spending on my World of Hyatt Credit Card.

Everything from monthly insurance payments and doctor visits to home repairs and daily expenses (that aren't already high bonus categories on other cards) has pretty much been funneled to my Hyatt credit card.

The reason I've been doing this is two-fold: to unlock World of Hyatt points and to make progress toward earning Hyatt elite status at a rate of two elite nights for every $5,000 charged on the card.

To unlock Hyatt Globalist status and its valuable perks, you need to earn 60 elite nights per calendar year. The perks that Hyatt Globalist status grants you include free breakfast, suite upgrades, bonus points on stays, late checkout and early check-in. While I earn a fair amount of those nights through both paid and award Hyatt stays, I use the nights earned from credit card spending to close the gap.

Only this year, there's a problem. It's causing me to dramatically slow down spending on this card even though it had been a powerhouse in my wallet.

You see, when you hit 60 Hyatt nights in a calendar year and officially earn Globalist status for the subsequent calendar year, you also get a number of other Hyatt Milestone Rewards. Rewards are things like two Suite Upgrade Awards, two Guest of Honor awards and a Category 1-7 award certificate that allows you a "free" stay in any Hyatt up to those in its second-highest award category.

That all sounds great, but there's a wrinkle.

Unlike most parts of Hyatt elite status, which are valid the rest of the year you earn them and all of the following calendar year, the high-value Category 1-7 award is only valid for six months after you earn it. Unlike some of the Milestone Rewards that don't fully activate until you select them, the clock starts ticking as soon as you earn it.

Typically, I don't hit 60 nights and unlock Globalist status until December, but this year, I'm running (way) ahead of schedule. This is thanks to some pretty large expenses hitting that card earlier in the year, some Hyatt double elite status promos and some longer-than-expected Hyatt stays due to weather, illness and the like.

As I write this in late July, I'm already sitting at 51 eligible nights in my account for 2024, with seven more eligible nights of planned stays happening in August (counting another double elite night stay in Florida).

That means I will be knocking loudly on the door of Globalist status in August or September instead of in December like usual.

On the one hand, that's good news, as it means it's over and done with (and I need to shift spending to my United card, as I'm really running