How to Maximize Your Hilton Honors Points for Free Nights

We've all seen the ambitional trips that influencers take, whether to the night life of Vegas, the beauty of Rom or an overwater villa, and the Maldives. Well, it might seem like these types of trips are completely out of reach for a normal person. I want to show you how. With a little research, planning and timing, they're a lot more achievable than you might think. Hey everyone, I'm Bradford, the painting president of personal finance.

How to Earn and Redeem Hilton Honors Points

I'm going to break down what are the best ways to earn and then redeem hilton honors points and wrap up with some of the best examples that I've seen here today. When it comes to earning hilton honors points, you really have three options available to you, going in order from best to worst.

The first option available is just by spending a night in the hilton property or resort. 2) is by using a hilton branding credit card for your spending, and then 3) is by just buying those points directly through the hilton honors website. Now, option number one is going to be the best way to racking up those points, the best way to earn points fastest.

How Many Points Do You Earn Per Dollar Spent at a Hilton Property?

But how many points you earn per dollar spent at a hilton property is going to be dependent on what your hilton honors loyalty status is, and the options here are going from member silver status, gold status and diamond status, while there are a lot of benefits that accompany each of the statuses, i'm going to focus specifically on how many points you're going to earn per dollar spent.

Beginning with the member, you're going to earn $10 points per dollar spent. Silver status gives you $20 bonus, so $12 points per dollar spent. Gold status is an 80 bonus, so 18 points per dollar spent, and then diamond status is going to give you 100% bonus, so 20 points per dollar spent.

Now, as you can see, it's quite a high threshold to actually earn these various statuses, which means a lot of separate stays or quite a few individual nights booked, which means a lot of money spent on your part. But probably the fastest way and thecheapest way to actually earn those statuses is by using a credit card that's going to confer those statuses to you automatically.

Hilton Honors Credit Card

Which brings me to option two forracking up those hilton honors points, and that's by using a hilton-branded credit card. Now, hilton Amex- Hilton Honors has partnered with Amex and they have three different options to choose from: Starting out the lowest end, which is going a no annual fee amex, hilton Honors card which is going give you automatic silver status. Next up is going to be the '95 annual fee-aex hilton honors surpass card and then at the highest end, is going to be the '450 annual fee-aex hilton honors aspiration card.

Now each of these cards have various spending category multipliers, all which are going to earn you hilt monitors points. But as with any loyalty branding card, the best way to earn those points is by spending it with that company, and the same thing applies here.

Earning Points Per Dollar Spent at a Hilton Property

So, starting in at the bottom, you're going to earn 7 points per dollar spent at a hilton property and that is going to stack with the silver status it gives you, so giving you a total of 19 points per dollar spent in the middle. With this surpass court, you're going to earn $12 points per dollar spent, which stacks with the gold benefit of $18 points for a total of $30 points per dollar spent. And then the highest end, Aspire, is going to give you 14 points per dollar spent, stacking with the diamond benefit of 20%, which gives you a total of 34 points per dollar spent.

3 Best Ways to Earn Hilton Honors Points

Now, when you use these, if you are staying at hilton properties quite a bit, that is going to mean you're going to easily be able to rack up tens of thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) of points in a single year, which you can use for whatever type of trip you want, and then buy Hilton Honors. last and usually least, is giving me the option of purchasing those points directly through the Hilton Honors website.

Now, normally this is the absolute worst way to actually rack up those points, because you're going to typically get a terrible valuation and you're vastly overpaying for what these points are worth. But sometimes they do run specials like the one they're running now.

It's basically a buy one, get one free, whichequates to evaluation of what you're paying for, of 0.5%s per hill and honors point, and with an average evaluation of 0.6%, that means you're basically getting them at a discount, and I'll talk a little more on the redemption side. But if you can get them at this valuation, or better it's, I wouldn't say no in terms of buying the points, but normally it's really helpful if you just need to top up a little bit extra few thousand points or a few tens of thousands of points to be able to use your existing points for the redemption that you're looking for.

And so that'sgonna be the three best ways to actually earn those hilton honors points. And yes, before I get speared in the comments down below, yes, i know there are some other ways. There are limited time promotions where you can earn additional points, also, as you can use lyft to earn some points when you spend with your credit card, but most of those are really not going to earn you a whole lot of points, and these are going to be the best ones to actually earn you enough points to be able to take the vacations that you want to take.

And now for the fun part, redeeming those points, whether it's for a few more family vacations or for a once-in-a-life trip that you've been eyeing for a while. When it comes to redeeming your health and honors points, while there are a few different options in terms of redeeming those points, don't use a single one of them, other than actually redeeming them for a night to stay at a hotel. Yes, you can cash them in for a gift card or you could transfer them to like another airline partner or something like that, but all those are going to severely devalue your points.

Now, the only way I would ever suggest actually using, that is, if you just weren't going to use the points in the first place, and you just want to use them rather than lose them because they do expire after 15 months of activity. So when choosing whether or not to actually redeem your health and honors points, or rather just pay with cash instead, here's a few rules of thumb that I like to use. The first Hilton Honors Value: One is trying to get as close to one cent per point as possible.

The option to -i'm just going to pay for that state with cash- earn some more points that i can redeem towards something later at a better valuation. Now, obviously, if your only option is to pay with points, even if it's not a good valuation, that's the position you're in.

Booking With All Points - How Do I Know What Kind of Valuation I'm Getting?

How do I figure out what sort of valuation I'm getting? i just take the cost of what it would be in cash for a single night stay, include all the taxes and fees, and then i divide that by how many points it would cost for the same thing?. and the benefit here is, when you book with all points, you don't really have to pay any taxes or fees, which is especially helpful when you stay at a resort.

So let's just say in this example, you have a $200-a-night hotel and it costs $20,000 points. $200, divided by $20, 000, is going to give you a $1 cent per point valuation. Now another thing I like to do when I consider with booking with all points is i try to book in multiples of five. The reasoning for this is if you have silver status or above when you book with all points.

If you book five nights in a row, you're going earn the fifth night completely free, and this offer is valid up to 20 nights total. So if you booked 20 nights all with points, you would get the fifth night, 10th night, 15th and 20 nights free.

Redeeming Your Points - Getting the Best Valuation Per Point

And what this is going to do is give you an instant increase of 25% on your cent-per-point valuation. And then the last thing I try to think about when it comes to actually redeeming those points is typically you're going to get the best valuation at higher-end properties because you're going to get some sort of breakfast, included if you have status, as well as the ability to earn and cover all the resort's fees and all the extra charges that you would normally have to pay if you were paying with cash.

So thinking about Waldorf, Astoria, the conrad, anything that's part of the curio collection. If you're able to book a state that's at a hilton grand vacations property, any of these higher-end properties you're going to typically get the best valuation per point. Now, this isn't always true, and it's going to be dependent on the time of year and the demand and supply. Now this isn't to say, never use your points for a intro or mid-level hitman property.

You can definitely still get some good valuation there, but at least in my experience and the research I've done on this, you're usually going to get the best valuation of those higher-end properties. Examples Now let's take a look at some specific instances that i found in terms of what are going to be the best options to redeem your points for right now. So I pulled up two examples here. One is going to be in park city Utah, and the others should be the maldives in the Indian Ocean.

And what I'm really trying to focus on is if you're able to just change the actual dates of your trip and find a time that's less high in demand, you can significantly increase the valuation that you're getting with a cent-per-point valuation. So the first one here in Park City, Utah i mentioned, normally you're going to get the best valuation of those higher-end hotels. So we come down here. We have the Waldorf Astoria Park City.

How Much Would It Cost To Stay At A Waldorf Astoria Park City?

It's going to be a huge $265 000 points per night when you're actually staying here. But what I want to focus on is this is going to be considered a premium room reward. This is going to be contrasted to a standard reward. So how much would it normally cost if we were going to actually stay for all five nights trying to get that fifth night free with all points at this Waldorf Astoria park city? So, looking at option one, that would normally cost us three thousand, six hundred, ninety-two dollars, and forty-six cents.

Now we compare that to the 256 000 times 4) because we're only going to pay for four nights. basically, what that's going to do is that's going to give us 3692.46 divided by $1 million, and that's going to give us a really bad valuation in terms of per point. We're still getting less than four cents per point, even with that $25 multiplier and the fifth night being free. Now what if we change the dates up and if, instead of doing it in October, we just change it to a slightly different date?

We actually push it back into December? hopefully you can have snow on the ground then, and this is a ski resort, so we look the same place. It's going to only cost $95,000 points per night, and it is now a standard room reward, so you can have the same room. That is going to be a premium room reward on some dates, be downgraded to a standard reward on other dates, and typically you're going to get a much better valuation now with the same one. When we take account all the taxes and fees, you're going to be paying almost the same amount of money, but significantly less points. In this instance, you would pay $3,350, and $6.6 cents, but you'd only be paying $3,380,000 points. You're instead going get almost a 0.9% valuation, which is a solid 50% higher than what the average valuation in terms of cent per point.

So if you can change your dates and when you factor in all the taxes, all the fees, all the resort fees, everything together, you can actually take something that would normally cost you an exponential amount of points per night and drop it down to something that is a lot more affordable and is going to give you a great valuation. And with that example out of the way, I'm actually going to move us over to the Indian Ocean to the Maldives, towards what I think is probably going to be the best valuation that you can hope to get right now when it comes to redeeming your hill and honors points. 1. Considering the fact that this cost you thousands, if not tens of thousands of dollars depending on your flight class, to actually get out to the maldives once you get there, it's certainly not cheap. Looking at the Conrad Maltese, the Rengaldi island, this is normally going to cost you $120,000 points per night.

They might think that's a pretty steep fee, but when you actually look at how much it costs, if you were to pay with all cash, it's probably going to take your breath away. So we look at this five nights, it would cost you $8.00, thirty dollars, and twenty-five cents. That's just for a five-night stay. That means you'reveraging well over twelve hundred dollars per night, but if you decide to pay with all points instead, you're actually going to be getting a pretty amazing valuation. So we look in here.

Hilton Honors Points - You're Only Out

We say 6-25 cents divided by 480 000 points. We're getting a cent-per-point valuation for our honor and honors points. That is more than double what the standard valuation is, and that means instead of spending $6,800, you're only going to be spending less than half a million points now.

When you compare that to what it would cost right now, if you went out and bought the points on the Hilton Honors website, you can get $33,000,000 right now for right around 8,000 dollars. That gets you most of the way there towards actually having to stay. You just need to open, like the surpass card or something. Make the minimum spend. You would have half a million points and you're only out at this point.

What like? We'll call it two thousand dollars. When you include the annual fee for the surpass card, that means you would be spending $2 thousand dollars but getting almost $7 thousand dollars in valuation for that same amount. If you can actually afford to get to the mall leaves and you have enough hill and honors points, you can save thousands, if not tens of thousands of dollars in points by using them wisely.

Maldives Credit Card Rates - What's Next?

And I can tell you with that last option when it comes to the maldives, that's been one of my wife's bucket list items for quite a while now. So hopefully in the next couple years we're going to be able to take advantage of those awesome rates i was showing you and hopefully if they're still in play, we'll be taking a nice 10-day vacation out there, taking advantage of the fifth and tenth high free.

Now, if you're interested in if any of those credit cards (i mentioned earlier) are going to be any value for you, i highly recommend checking out the first one, the Amex Hilt and Honors card, right there. I want to thank you for watching with me today and until next time. Just remember, we're here to help from your first penny to your first million.

Conclusion

The best way to earn hilton honors points is to spend time in a hotel or resort. The best way is to use a hilton branding credit card for your spending. The most popular way to redeem points is by buying them through the hilton website. The easiest way is by using a credit card that can be used to spend cash. The highest way is by paying for points through the hotel's website. Click through the video to see some of the best examples of how to earn points. The video will be updated with new information as we get closer to the end of the trip.