Why Churn?
Welcome! I wanted to create a space for family and friends to learn about this hobby/(side hustle?) that has allowed us to have so many wonderful experiences over the years. From flying Qatar Airways Qsuites business class to staying at amazing Hyatts, Hilton, etc. worldwide, to allowing us to take so many vacations that are basically 95% subsidized, the credit card game continues to create many amazing memories for us. I doubt we’ll ever stop playing this game🙂
In this blog, I hope to share easy examples for our loved ones to have similar experiences if they are interested. This is not meant as a bragging/professional/whatever blog. Simply, our thoughts and experiences and how we did them, all while paying with points.
The First Example - Lima, Peru
Because we’ve been attending so many weddings lately, the costs can add up. However, this game has allowed us to attend most events without worrying about how fast expenses can build up. I wanted to share this first example as an extremely easy way of saving on hotel costs.
We are attending a wedding in Lima, Peru in September, 2026. First, I started off by researching what Hiltons, Marriots, Hyatts, Wyndhams, etc. are in Lima that I can book at at reasonable rate using points. For me, since I have the highest tier of status with Hyatt, it was obvious that booking with Hyatt would be the best solution.
The Booking - Hyatt Centric San Isidro Lima
Chase points transfer to Hyatt. So if you have any Chase points, do a quick search on Hyatt.com and see what hotels are there. It is obvious that the only hotel that makes sense is the Hyatt Centric San Isidro Lima. This hotel is a Category 2 Hyatt hotel which means it’s usually bookable for 8,000 points a night. Most hotel chains have different types of categories so, for example, Hyatt has categories ranging from 1 to 8 with each category costing a certain amount of points. For my dates, I ended up booking for 3 nights for only 21,000 points!
The cash value of these 3 nights would have been $539 which if I’m valuing 1 point to 1 cents, it would have been 54,000 points. So we are getting a really good deal here because we are only using 21,000 points. We’ll talk about the value of a point in a future post 🙂
How to Get Chase Points
Now you may ask, where do I get 21,000 points? Well, to earn Chase points, you can sign up for a very simple credit card such as the Chase Freedom card that earns you 20,000 points after spending $500 in 3 months. Or, if you already have a basic Chase card, go for a Chase Sapphire Preferred card. I wouldn’t recommend the Chase Sapphire Reserve (CSR) right now since the annual fee is so high. But even the Chase Sapphire Preferred card earns you 75,000 points for spending $5,000 in 3 months with an annual fee of $95.
I would appreciate it if you could use my referrals if you are interested in applying for any of these cards.
So if you think about it like this, you are only paying $95 for this 3 night hotel stay and you’ll have about 60,000 points leftover. And once you do this for multiple people in your family over multiple cards, that’s where it gets more fun🙂
En Conclusion
So, to keep it very simple, this example hopefully shows how you can save your hard-earned dollars while experiencing a nice hotel at an extremely discounted rate.
Feel free to leave any comments or questions. I will show an easy example of how I booked my flights for the next article so stay tuned!