When you're shut out from the majority of Chase cards, you loose access to tons of rewards and reward earning opportunities due to what everyone calls the Chase 5/24 rule. If you've opened more than five credit cards from any bank (with the exception of most business cards) in the last 24 months, then Chase will deny you for almost all of their cards (with the exception of these).

The latest card I applied (and was approved) for was the Starwood Preferred Guest Credit Card from American Express.

The last two credit cards I signed up for were the Barclaycard AAdvantage Aviator Red World Elite MasterCard and the Business Gold Rewards Card from American Express.

The Starwood Preferred Guest personal and business credit cards from American Express come with 35,000 bonus Starpoints for spending $5,000 and $8,000 respectively in the first six months of card membership. These offers end tomorrow, April 5, 2017.

Credit card links have been removed from posts and added to the menu bar at the top of every page of MileValue under the heading Top Travel Credit Cards.

The normal sign up bonus is 25,000 points per card.

The 35,000 point bonuses on the SPG personal and business cards end Wednesday (April 5, 2017.) This is the highest sign up bonus we’ve ever seen on the cards, tied with the same bonus that was offered last year at this time.

Credit card links have been removed from posts and added to the menu bar at the top of every page of MileValue under the heading Top Travel Credit Cards.

Meet the spending requirements on both the personal and business SPG cards, and you'll have 83,000 SPG points, which can be transferred to 249,000 Marriott points

Thanks to Starwood Preferred Guest and Marriott's merger, SPG members can choose to link their account to either Marriott Rewards or Ritz Carlton Rewards.

Last September when this shift occurred, One Mile at a Time wrote a post about which account to link your SPG account to. It depends on your preferences.

The Starwood Preferred Guest personal and business credit cards from American Express come with 35,000 bonus Starpoints for spending $5,000 and $8,000 respectively in the first six months of card membership. These offers end this coming Wednesday, April 5, 2017.

Credit card links have been removed from posts and added to the menu bar at the top of every page of MileValue under the heading Top Travel Credit Cards.

The normal sign up bonus is 25,000 points per card.

You have two more days (including today) to transfer hotel points to Southwest for the purposes of earning a Southwest Companion Pass. Friday, March 31 is the cutoff. After Friday, any points transferred to Southwest will not count as "qualifying" towards the Companion Pass. That includes Marriott Travel Packages.

The Southwest Companion Pass, if you're unaware, is one of the best deals in travel. If you have the Southwest Companion pass, you can designate a companion who flies for just the taxes on every Southwest flight you fly.

Since award space can be a scarce resource, it is important to note that not all transferrable points transfer to their partners instantaneously.

This is the third post of a four part series going over how long it takes each type of transferrable point to transfer to its partners.

Last month, Starwood Preferred Guest and Marriott announced category changes for their hotels. Marriott hotels on average got more expensive, but there were actually more SPG hotels that dropped in price than increased.

Last week the Hilton no annual fee credit card increased its sign up bonus to 75,000 points and the Starwood Preferred Guest personal and business cards increased their sign up bonuses to 35,000 points.

Credit card links have been removed from posts and added to the menu bar at the top of every page of MileValue under the heading Top Travel Credit Cards.

So which offer is better?

I use Hilton points for free hotel nights at not-fancy hotels--categories 1, 2, and 3 (out of 10.) I use SPG points for free hotel nights, to transfer to airline