A Little Bit Like Forrest Gump

I was driving in the car the other day thinking about all the stuff that I love or am somewhat obsessed with.  Then I started thinking about how I could do a mini-series on the blog about my favorite things.  I was going to take the week and each day highlight a "favorite" but then I realized that would not work.  There are other things going on that I want to write about (and now Brad wants to write about) so I couldn't make the series go just how I would like.  I also considered making one day a week a "favorite" day but I didn't know how long that would really last and there are certain things I wanted to share on certain days.  So, I decided I would just randomly share.

Today's favorite - our Starwood American Express.  I know you are thinking, "what?  you are sharing about a credit card?".  Yes, a credit card.  I completely obsessed with our credit cards, the Starwood American Express (AE) especially.

We are those people who put everything, I mean everything, on our credit cards and then pay it off at the end of the month - no carrying a balance for us!  We first use our AE and then we go to our Visa.  I am all about some points!! 

Here is why I like the Starwood so much -

* The hotels are nice and are in most large cities, places where we would like to vacation.

*You earn 1 point for every dollar you spend with the card.

* You can transfer the points from the hotel to airlines.  If you transfer 20,000 you get a 5,000 point bonus.

* Starwood hotels have good redemption rates.  1 night at the Shearton in Kauai is only 10,000 points (compare that with Hilton).

* There is a fee, $45, but it is waived for the first year and if you redeem points once a year you can look at it is as you are paying $45 for your hotel.

We have used our points twice, when we went to Key West and when we went to Destin.    It was so nice when we went to Key West to not worry about the hotel.  We used the money we would have spent on the hotel on other fun things that we probably would not have done otherwise.  We also received an awesome upgrade once we got there to an awesome oceanview room.

Ok, there you have it, my thoughts on my one of my favorite things, my Starwood credit card, and that's all I have to say about that.