I'm a sucker for status

Is hotel status worth it? For most, the answer is always “it depends”

For me? Yes, but… it probably shouldn’t be.

With Hyatt’s top hotel status you get some cool perks at their stays:

• Free breakfast - sometimes $100 credit/day or more for a nice restaurant meal

• Early check-in (we’ve gone as early as 9am) and late check-out (4pm)

• Club lounge access for free happy hour and food at some locations

• Complimentary upgrade to a suite - in 2025 80% of our stays were upgraded to a suite, 90% to a room with a better view

• Free parking on points stays

But to get there, I have to put a lot of spend on my credit cards since I wouldn’t be able to reach the 60 night threshold with real stays. You can see below, I spent $80,000 on my two Hyatt credit cards in 2025 so I could pull in 42 qualifying nights (70% of the required nights) towards Globalist status.

Also check the blog post for details and how I might have violated the T&C’s to get some extra nights.

Now, a huge chunk of that spend was through manufactured spending where I bought and sold things for buying groups, but even then, there is a still a huge opportunity cost of putting spend on these 1x return Hyatt cards instead of a 10x return through credit card sign-up bonuses.

So that’s a lot of time, energy, and money to get some nice bonuses at only a few Hyatt stays.

But loss aversion is real. There is an inherent fear of losing the status and not getting those perks anymore for future trips that keeps me from not caring. Even though I’ve traveled just fine before having status. On top of that - Hyatt’s program is so great, I could always get Club Access Awards, Suite Upgrade Awards, and Guest of Honor Awards for trips I really wanted those perks for.

At the end of the day, the “Thank you for being a Globalist members” convinces me to make irrational strategic decisions to keep Globalist status instead of chasing points. (kidding - though the intent is true)

Read more in the blog post to see how I achieved status + more.

Finally, to give myself some credit, putting more spend on the Hyatt cards might be the way moving forward since Chase is cracking down on the Ink train - meaning less sign-up bonuses to go around. Finally, slowing down the number of new credit cards opened probably allows me to get even more cards in the future.

What’s In our Wallets (Newsletter Exclusive)

Our lineup for this week is below. See our rationale here just for newsletter subscribers like you.

Matthew: Sarah’s American Express Platinum | Capital One Venture X

Sarah: American Express Platinum | Capital One Venture X

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