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(Update: Wyndham just announced some changes to their rewards program effective 9/15/2026 – notably a new 45,000 point top tier that was previously only 30,000 points – likely indicates that many of their properties may cost a lot more than before.)

Cards refreshed. The Wyndham Rewards Earner credit cards have a refreshed line-up with some limited-time sign-up offers as well. However, to get the full sign-up bonus you now need to spend a certain amount at Wyndham Hotels. Free nights start at 7,500 points and go as high as 30,000 points. Reminder that as of 2026, Vacasa home rentals are no longer a partner of Wyndham Rewards.

Wyndham Rewards Earner Card highlights:

• Up to 75,000 total bonus points. 30,000 bonus points after spending $1,000 on purchases in the first 90 days and also earn 45,000 bonus points after spending $500 at Hotels by Wyndham in the first 180 days.
• 5X points per $1 spent on eligible purchases made at Hotels by Wyndham, including hotels through Wyndham Travel Bundles.
• 3X points per $1 spent on eligible Vacation Club, dining and grocery store purchases (excluding Target® and Walmart®), as well as eligible gas and EV charging purchases.
• 1 point per $1 spent on all other purchases (excluding Vacation Club down payments).
• Automatic upgrade to Wyndham Rewards Gold status.
• 10% fewer Wyndham Rewards points required for go free® awards.
• 7,500 bonus points each anniversary year if you spend $15,000 on eligible purchases.
• No annual fee.

Wyndham Rewards Earner Plus Card highlights:

• Up to 100,000 total bonus points. Earn 45,000 bonus points after spending $1,000 on purchases in the first 90 days and also earn 55,000 bonus points after spending $500 at Hotels by Wyndham in the first 180 days.
• 6X points per $1 spent on eligible purchases made at Hotels by Wyndham, including hotels through Wyndham Travel Bundles.
• 4X points per $1 spent on eligible Vacation Club, dining and grocery store purchases (excluding Target® and Walmart®), as well as eligible gas and EV charging purchases.
• 1X point per $1 spent on all other purchases (excluding Vacation Club down payments).
• Automatic upgrade to Wyndham Rewards Platinum status.
• 10% fewer Wyndham Rewards points required for go free® awards.
• 15,000 bonus points each anniversary year after payment of your annual fee.
• $50 Meal Delivery Credit. Enjoy up to $25 in statement credits back every 6 months on eligible meal delivery purchases when you pay with your card—up to $50 each calendar year.
• $95 annual fee.

Wyndham Rewards Earner Premier Card highlights:

• Up to 120,000 total bonus points. Earn 90,000 bonus points after spending $6,000 on purchases and paying the annual fee in full, both within the first 120 days, and also earn 30,000 bonus points after spending $750 at Hotels by Wyndham in the first 180 days.
• 8X points per $1 spent on eligible purchases made at Hotels by Wyndham, including hotels through Wyndham Travel Bundles.
• 4X points per $1 spent on eligible Vacation Club, dining and grocery store purchases (excluding Target® and Walmart®), as well as eligible gas and EV charging purchases.
• 1X point per $1 spent on all other purchases (excluding Vacation Club down payments).
• Automatic upgrade to Wyndham Rewards Diamond status.
• 10% fewer Wyndham Rewards points required for go free® awards.
• 15,000 bonus points each anniversary year after annual fee renewal.
• $100 Wyndham Hotels annual credit. You are eligible to receive a single statement credit of $100 back after spending $100 or more in the aggregate at Wyndham® hotels, Wyndham Grand® hotels, Dolce Hotels and Resorts® by Wyndham, Trademark Collection® by Wyndham and/or Registry Collection Hotels® each calendar year.
• $65 Wholesale Club annual credit. Receive a $65 statement credit back each calendar year after making qualifying wholesale club membership purchases with your card.
• $120 in Meal Delivery credits annually. Enjoy up to $10 in statement credits back each month–up to $120 each calendar year–after making qualifying meal delivery purchases with your card.
• $100 in Streaming annual credits. Receive statement credits on qualifying streaming subscriptions—stream more of what you love.
• $120 TSA PreCheck/Global Entry credit, once every 4 years.
• Free Wyndham Insider membership ($95/year value).
• $395 annual fee.

Wyndham hotels have a relatively simple system that charges 7,500, 15,000, or 30,000 points for a “Go Free” award hotel night with no blackout dates (as long as a standard room is available for cash, you can book it with points). You can also redeem toward a discounted “Go Fast” cash and points rate. Resort fees may apply and cannot be paid with points. Note that when you have one of these credit cards, you get a 10% discount, so for example the 15,000 points tier would be actually be reduced down to 13,500 points.

Wyndham points expiration – Important!

• Wyndham Rewards points will expire if you have no activity on your account for a period of 18 months.
• In addition, all Wyndham Rewards points expire 4 years after being earned — regardless of account activity.
• NEW: The only exception to this is if you are a Wyndham Rewards Earner® Premier Card Cardmember.

From the official Terms & Conditions:

Except as may otherwise be required under applicable law or set forth herein with respect to Wyndham Rewards Earner® Premier Cardmembers, Wyndham Rewards points expire four (4) years after the date on which the applicable points are posted to the Member’s account (the “Four Year Rule”), unless the points are forfeited or cancelled earlier due to membership inactivity (as more particularly described below), or otherwise in accordance with these Terms and Conditions. For clarity, posting dates vary based on the type of activity for which they were earned. Except as may otherwise be set forth herein with respect to Wyndham Rewards Earner® Premier Cardmembers, all accrued points in a Member’s Wyndham Rewards account may be cancelled or forfeited if the Member has no Account Activity (as defined below) for a period of approximately, but never less than, eighteen (18) consecutive months. For purposes of these Terms and Conditions, “Account Activity” means any (i) point earning, and (ii) redemption or transfer activity involving a change in the Member’s Wyndham Rewards point balance, in each case, conducted in accordance with these Terms and Conditions.

Without limiting any other section of these Terms and Conditions, points earned by a Wyndham Rewards Earner® Premier Card Cardmember do not expire under this Section I(14) as long as Cardmember’s account is open and in good standing.

For example, earning points via this credit card will only reset the 18-month inactivity clock. Look for the exact date in your online account page. Again, there is a new exception for the top-tier Premier credit card.

Wyndham Rewards includes over 9,000 hotels worldwide – from Days Inn motels to Wyndham Grand hotels. You can use this link to filter locations easily by country, state, and/or point level. Participating hotel chains include:

• AmericInn by Wyndham®
• Dolce Hotels and Resorts® by Wyndham
• Hawthorn Suites by Wyndham®
• Howard Johnson by Wyndham®
• La Quinta by Wyndham®
• Ramada by Wyndham®
• Days Inn by Wyndham®
• Super 8 by Wyndham®
• Travelodge by Wyndham®
• Wingate by Wyndham®
• Wyndham Grand®
• Wyndham Hotels and Resorts®
• Wyndham Garden®

I don’t like that the sign-up bonuses now include a requirement for a paid stay at a Wyndham hotel first, so I will probably be skipping this card.

The World Cup is in Boston, and I live in the middle of the city, so I spent two weeks surrounded by Scottish people. Boston has a literal law against happy hour and a nightlife notorious for being lame. So it made sense that the Scots, who go to bars the way we go to Starbucks, drank all the beer in the city. There were beer delivery trucks lining the streets to keep up.

The Scotts so clearly love their country and their team and each other, and they were having the time of their lives. I watched them wave their flag and wear their flag. And every day they wore kilts that encoded their Scottish family lineage — except for the drinking kilts, which are the ones it’s okay to spill on.

I was in my own city, enjoying their bagpipes, and drinking songs, and endless energy for fun.

But I felt like an outsider watching people who knew exactly where they were from, and I don’t feel that myself, even in my own city.

In the US you’re expected to say where your family is from. It’s a national pastime — everyone is from somewhere else and proud to name it. I remember when my kids first ran into this. I told them we’re Jewish, that after the Spanish Inquisition my family went to Eastern Europe and their dad’s family went to South America. “But what country?” they kept asking. “You have to say a country!”

There isn’t one. I can trace my DNA almost entirely to a small area where Poland and Latvia and Ukraine meet, and my family moved from shtetl to shtetl across it for generations. But those are all places that hated Jews. You can’t say you’re from a place that spent centuries trying to be rid of you.

And I’ll never feel from the US either. Every Jewish person I know has a passport and knows, somewhere in the back of their mind, that the people who didn’t get out of Germany in time were the ones who assumed they were safe. Every Jewish person I know is also exhausted and stressed by what Netanyahu is doing in Israel, which means the one place that was supposed to be the answer to all of this is its own source of dread. It is hard to feel part of something when belonging in one direction makes you precarious in every other.

So I watched the Scots and understood, with more force than I expected, that I could never be that, but also that I don’t actually want to be. The Scottish joy is the joy of the class clown: this will be fine, everyone will laugh, nothing bad happens to me. You can only move through the world that way if the world has agreed in advance to find you charming. If those same men had been Black, drunk in the street at 10:30 in the morning, they would have been arrested.

Their ease is not available to everyone, and I am not built for it. Jews can barely manage a party on Purim, when getting drunk is the instruction. It’s not our style. We are restrained where the Scots are gregarious, careful where they are careless. But I think it’s okay. What I was actually feeling amidst the fun, was how strongly I belong to something after all.

Not a country. A diaspora. I belong to a people defined precisely by not being from anywhere — held together not by a flag or a hillside but by the shared knowledge of having been moved along, over and over, and having carried the thing with us anyway. I feel it every time I can tell someone is Jewish: a small click of recognition, a guess at the family behind them, a culture I already know the shape of.

I didn’t know how much I felt this until I stood next to people who are not from the US — where everyone is displaced – but from Scotland where their tie to their place is everything.

Belonging means saying who you’re with and who you’re not. The Scots draw that line around a country. I draw it around a people scattered across all of them. I loved watching the Scots but I would not trade. One of the best things I did with two decades of raising my kids was try to give them this — not a country to be from, but a people to be of, so that wherever they end up standing, a few feet from someone else’s flag, they’ll know exactly who they are.

The post In my neighborhood the Scots started the party at 10:30am. Every day. appeared first on Penelope Trunk Careers Blog.