With many of us sheltering in place during the COVID-19 pandemic there has been a large shift in counsmer spending. People are no longer spending money on airfare, hotels, and travel and are instead spending on groceries and other random impulse purchases from the internet. With that change, many of the card benefits offered from rewards credit cards are largely going unused.
Unused benefits make paying an annual fee a much harder decision when the fee posts to your credit card statement. Why would you pay an annual fee on a airport lounge credit card when you can’t travel?
As a result, card issuers are scrambling to add, change, or enhance benefits offered from popular credit cards to promote card retention. Brands seem to be following that lead as well by making changes to their entire lineups of co-branded credit cards.
Marriott Temporarily Adding 6X Points For Grocery Store Spend
A few days ago I received an email from Marriott which notified me of the expanded benefit. The email began with a simple image of some groceries and large text which read “6X Points.” As I scrolled down the email I learned more about the temporarily expanded benefits offered from Marriott Bonvoy cards.
Beginning May 1 through July 31, 2020, Marriott Bonvoy card holders can earn 6X Marriott points on all grocery store purchases. Additionally, there is no need to enroll in this benefit. Instead, simply swipe your Marriott Bonvoy co-branded credit card at grocery store locations. You’ll earn 6X Marriott points on the first $5,000 in qualifying purchases or up to 30,000 bonus points.
The email from Marriott continued with a brief message about future travel and the hope that things will return to normal soon.
You Can Earn 6X Points, But Should You?
For starters, this is a fantastic opportunity to earn bonus points on grocery store spend. This is an especially great deal considering grocery store spend typically only earns 2X Marriott points. So, if you maximize this benefit you’ll earn 20,000 more points than you would otherwise.
However, there is an opportunity cost associated with moving some or all of your grocery store spend to a Marriott Bonvoy card. Personally, I tend to value Marriott Bonvoy points at around $0.006/each. The low points value is because Marriott redemption rates are usually tied to nightly cash prices. I’ve found that those values tend to hover between $0.007 and $0.005 each. Given this assigned value, you can get about $180 of value from this expanded benefit (30,000 * $0.006).
Instead, you could put your first $1,500 of grocery store spend on the Chase Freedom card. Chase is currently offering 5% Cash Back from the Chase Freedom quarterly cash back benefit. By maximizing this benefit you could earn up to $75 in cash back. Furthermore, if you also carry an Ultimate Rewards card, you could transfer that Cash Back to Ultimate Rewards which would be worth at least $112.
If you then put the remaining $3,500 of spend on the Citi Double Cash card, you would earn up to $70 of cash back. However, as with Chase, you can transfer Double Cash back to Thank You points which are worth about $0.15/each, or $105.
As you can quickly see, when using the Citi Double Cash and Chase Freedom cards, you can receive at least $217 of value back instead of just $180 from the Marriott card.
Final Thoughts
Overall, I’m impressed by the expanded benefits currently offered from the Marriott Bonvoy credit cards. Traditionally, the Marriott Bonvoy card from Chase only offers 6X points on Marriott spend. However, since we are all staying home and not spending at hotels, this expanded benefit will surly help card holders to justify paying the annual fee.
Even without this expanded benefit I still think it’s worth carrying the Marriott Bonvoy Boundless credit credit. I personally put virtually no spend on my Marriott Boundless card annually. The reason I carry the card is because of the 15 Elite Nights and Free Night Certificate awarded annually. I personally find that those benefits easily justify the $95/annual fee.
