Get 15% Back on Starbucks

I made it through college and graduate school without ever drinking coffee, but full-time employment and my 30’s caught up with me, and eventually I found myself frequenting the green mermaid by my home and office more often than I’d like to admit. In a perfect world we’d get enough sleep and build wealth without the latte factor… but as long as you’re making Starbucks runs, you might as well make the most of it. And if you’re paying for your Starbucks at the counter, perhaps with a debit card, you’re overpaying. By a lot. Here’s a few simple steps to rack up rewards on your Starbucks purchases:

Step 1: Download the App and set up a Starbucks Card

By using a Starbucks Card within the app, you’ll start earning 2 “stars” (Starbucks’ reward currency) for every dollar you spend.

Step 2: Link your Skymiles and Starbucks accounts

Simply go to this website, link your two accounts together, and you’ll start earning 1 Delta Skymile for every dollar you spend at Starbucks through your linked account. (You’ll also earn double Stars on days you fly Delta.)

Step 3: Use a dining rewards card

Use a credit card with bonus points for dining purchases to fund your Starbucks card. The American Express Gold Card gets 4x on dining, while the Citi Premier, Chase Sapphire, Bilt Mastercard, and many others earn 3x. The best of all, however, is the Bilt card on “rent day” (the first of the month), when Bilt offers double points, allowing you to load your Starbucks card at an incredible 6x rate.

Result: Savings

Thus, with a few simple steps, you can earn one Skymile, two Stars, and 6 Bilt points for each dollar you spend at Starbucks. That comes out to at least 13% back in value.

Delta points are worth at least one cent each, at least if you have enough to use (and it’s not hard to get enough to use… a subject for a future post). Nerdwallet values them at 1.5 cents.

Bilt points are worth a minimum of 1.25 cents each, because you can redeem them at that rate through the Bilt travel portal, so we’ll use that number. But it’s possible to get more. For instance, our tickets to Japan could have been booked with Bilt points at a value of at least 1.5 cents each.

The value of Stars depends on what you use them on. Using 100 stars for a free $3.65 coffee cake earns you about 3.7 cents of value, while using 200 on a $5.75 latte earns about 2.9 cents of value.

That’s 13% back in rewards if you lowball the Skymile, redeem the Bilt points through the portal, and trade the Stars for coffee. It’s 18% if you get more value for your points and miles and redeem the Stars for pastries. You can save even more by checking the Starbucks Rewards offers in your email, which regularly offer opportunities to get bonus Stars on your everyday coffee spending (and also regularly offer opportunities to dramatically increase your coffee spending, so be careful). As long as you’re going to pay for overpriced coffee, you might as well get some rewards back for it.