Frequent Miler on the Air - 1 Million Miles in 2 Weeks or Less | Frequent Miler on the air Ep280 | 11-8-24 | Podcast

Episode Date: November 8, 2024

The SAS EuroBonus Millionaire promotion may turn out to be 2024's Deal of the Year. We just have to fly 15 SkyTeam airlines before the end of the year to earn 1 million miles. However, if for some reason SAS doesn't honor the promotion, they'll make it to our 2024 naughty list for sure. As you listen to this, Nick, Greg, and Stephen are in the air somewhere in the world trying to complete this promotion in 2 weeks or less. Learn all about the promotion and how we're going about tackling it in today's main event. (02:43) - A reader has a tip about the US Bank Travel Portal allowing AR point redemptions at 1.5c for Disney theme park tickets, at the Disney retail pricing... (04:34) - Trick for finding Finnair Avios award availability Read more about our solution for finding Finnair award availability here. (06:44) - Opportunities to buy miles cheaply (can be great for people who can't get USA credit cards) (07:27) - Read more about Flying Blue's subscriptions to buy miles here. (07:50) - Alaska/Hawaiian for 1.25c per mile Read more about buying Alaska / Hawaiian miles for 1.25 c per mile here. (09:01) -What is Million Mile Madness? Follow the Million Mile Madness challenge here. ​​(15:39) - Hi FM Team, do you have any backup or contingency plans in place if one of your flights is cancelled or severely delayed? Good luck on your adventure! (19:12) - Departing soon? Best wishes to all the contestants (24:07) - Will there be a live wrap up show for the challenge? (26:50) - What have you done ahead of time for tight connections during your challenge? Like buying seats in the front of plane, familiarize the airport layout, etc… (31:11) - ​​Which airline are you most and least looking forward to flying as part of the challenge? (37:11) - What is each contestant most confident they'll be the "best" at? (44:29) - ​​I was trying to book a flight on AA using Alaska taking off in 2 days, and their website said that the itinerary is "too close to departure." Is this phantom award space? (46:05) - You know “player 2” is a common topic among the hobby. Would anyone here consider having their spouse joint one podcast explaining their thoughts of their significant other engaging in the hobby? (48:06) - ​​My Hyatt globalist expires soon. Can/should I make bookings after expiration and guest of honor myself? (51:33) - ​​Hawaiian biz card only offers 50k after $4k spend now (used to be 80k after $2k spend) Considering it may go away, should we jump on it now? (53:41) - Greg, Delta Amex companion certificates terms are very restrictive. Any best practices to find eligible fare class for non-holiday weekends far in advance? (54:58) - ​​Is their a resource for which Hilton Resorts accept pre-payments? (55:47) - What is each contestant's personal mission? (1:00:44) - Does booking yourself a Hyatt GOH earning an additional elite night? (1:01:59) - Did you get confirmation that SAS will allow you to award the miles to the helpful readers? (1:02:41) - Do you think you'll run into each other during the challenge? (1:005:46) - The Amex Platinum card offer requires a lot of spend so one reader made an $11K estimated tax payment to meet that spend, but an agent later told them that kind of expense is not eligible for meeting spend requirement, outlining a few other ineligible expenses as well. Is this true?

Let's get into the giant mailbag. What crazy thing did City do this week? It's time for Mattress Running the Numbers. Ready for the main event? The main event. Frequent Liler on the Air starts now. Today's main event, 1 million miles in two weeks or less. The Scandinavian Airlines Euro bonus millionaire promotion may turn out to be 2024's deal of the year.

All we have to do is fly 15 SkyTeam Airlines before the end of this year during 1 million miles. Of course, if something happens and they don't end up, if they don't end up honoring the promotion as written, or at least as we understand it, it might not make our best of 2024 list. It might make our Bonvoy of the year list and go on the naughty list if that happens. Anyway, as you're listening to this, Nick, Stephen, and I are in the air somewhere in the world trying to complete this challenge in two weeks or less. And so, you know, today's main event, what we're going to do is actually play the Ask Us Anything livestream that we recorded on Wednesday before we took off. And, uh, so as this is publishing, we've literally just left on our trips. So anyway, uh, that's what's up for today's main event.

Yeah, it's exciting. We'll see what's going on. And if you want to see what's going on, then you should be on Instagram. So you can feel free to pause this right now and just go over to Instagram, follow frequent miler on Instagram, because that's where the video updates are going to be and the stories and whatnot. It's just far easier to tell a travel story that way. We'll obviously be constantly updating the blog also.

But I think if you really want to kind of come along on the trip, Instagram is the place to follow for this type of challenge. So that's what you want to do. Get over there on Instagram and follow us there for all of the madness that is no doubt ensuing. Hopefully none of us have missed a flight yet as we're, you know, as you're listening to this, but I'm thinking something's going to go wrong somewhere somehow. So you're going to want to fly 15 airlines as fast as you can. There's nothing that can go wrong there. So yeah, check it out on Instagram. But let's move forward. Oh, by the way, remember, if you want to jump ahead to something or jump back to something later on, don't forget that the timestamps are in the show notes. So expand the description box if you want to do that. Wherever you're watching or listening, don't forget to like this. Give it a thumbs up. We always appreciate that. All right, Greg, drag out this week's giant mailbag. All right. Today's giant mail comes from an anonymous reader who said, recently, I looked for a way to redeem altitude reserve points at one and a half cents value for Disney World theme park tickets, but learned that OTAs, meaning online travel agencies like undercover tourists, do not trigger real-time

mobile rewards. So real-time mobile rewards are a way of getting 1.5 cents per point value from your altitude reserve points, by the way. But they go on to say, I was pleasantly surprised the US Bank travel portal does allow point redemptions at 1.5 cents per point for Disney theme park tickets at the Disney retail pricing. I verified only for multi-day single park tickets. Since online travel agencies will give a small discount, it's technically less than 1.5 cent redemption, but it's not much less. And so they're right. But hey, it's not much less. And so they write, but hey, it's free. I received the tickets right away via email

and added the tickets to my Disney experience. That's a great tip. That's a fantastic tip. Years ago, it used to be possible to use Chase Points, I think, in order to buy Disney tickets, but that's been dead for years now. And so I know you can use built points

at 1.25 cents each, but if you've got the altitude reserve, this is one and a half cents per point. Or like she said, I guess a little less if you look at you know, comparison shopping, maybe it's 1.45 cents per point. It's pretty darn good for buying your Disney tickets. I had no idea that was an option in the US Bank travel portal. So now I got to go through the US Bank travel portal and see what else is there. Because I'm somewhere in the sky right now trying to figure out how I'm going to beat Greg and Steven on this Million Mile Madness Challenge. And I bet there's something in the U.S. Bank Portal that's going to help me do it. So thank you very much for that tip. That was a great anonymous tip. Awards, points, and more. So we got a whole bunch

of, well, not a whole bunch, several pieces of news this week to talk about. First up is tricks for finding Finnair Avios availability. What's the trick, Greg? How do I find availability with Finnair Avios? Yeah, this one's kind of a weird one, but a real easy trick. When you go to finnair.com or whatever the URL is and try to use your points, you know, they use Avios as their points. So even if you don't have Finnair points, if you have like British Airways points or Iberia points or whatever, you can, it's possible to move them over to Finnair so you could get your points that way. But the problem is if you're in the US and you try searching for awards, often nothing will show up.

And what a cool thing that One Mile at a Time apparently uncovered is that simply by changing your location like there's a box to change your location on their website change your location uh to you know helsinki uh and all of a sudden awards show up you don't have to change you could still show the you know uh everything in u.s dollars and in English and everything, but just change your location and stuff shows up. So it's weird, but true. Weird, but true. Great little tip. You know, I think it's always worth playing with stuff like that. I hadn't with this and hadn't discovered this, but it's a good tip that sometimes just clicking around on the website can yield different results. I know I've probably talked about before how years ago I got far better pricing through an airline website by changing

the language into the local language, which I mean, is a trick I haven't used in a long time and probably should have used on our Million Mile Madness booking here, but in hindsight. But anyway, it's worth playing around with that kind of stuff because sometimes you might see something different. You could also get sometimes get better cash pricing by changing your location. So I've seen people report that in Google Flights, even there's a little box way at the bottom where you could change your location and keep keep showing results in US dollars. But you might see lower prices just by changing your location there. So that's pretty cool. Great tip. Great tip. All right. Let's talk about a few quick opportunities to buy miles cheaply. And this can be particularly useful if you can't get us credit cards. If you're not from the United States, we do have some readers and listeners from

abroad. And so there's some good opportunities to buy here for you. And also even if you are located in the U S these are pretty cheap prices. So if you need a whole bunch and you need them quickly, this might be a good deal. First up, we got Finnair Avios. You can buy those right now as low as 1.14 cents per point. That's a really good deal for Avios. That's among the better deals we've ever seen, I think, for buying Avios. It really is excellent. We've seen lower where you have to kind of jump through various hoops, like buy through some Groupon portal in Spain or something. But this is pretty good for just a straightforward sale on the points. We also got Flying Blue Miles as low as through some Groupon portal in Spain or something. Yeah, but this is pretty good for just a straightforward sale on the points.

We also got Flying Blue Miles as low as 1.34 cents per mile. And we'll link to our posts about these things in the show notes so you can expand the description box if you're looking for Flying Blue Miles and you want to find out more about that one. Again, 1.34 cents per mile. And Alaska or Hawaiian Miles for 1.25 cents per mile. I think that one's only through November 15th. So you'll have to hop on that one pretty quickly after this publishes.

If you want to buy those, of course you buy Hawaiian miles at 1.25 or really, I guess, 1.27 cents each because there's a little bit of tax that gets added. But the reason you might be interested in that, even if you didn't think you were interested in Hawaiian miles is because of course you can transfer those to Alaska one-to right now. So so that could be an amazing deal. I would I'm tempted to buy at one point two five cents each and then keep my transferable points for other stuff because I was already considering transferring some AMX membership rewards to Hawaiian. And so I'm thinking about buying these at one point two five cents each anyway. I'll have to make that decision pretty quickly because I got a big trip coming up here. And Alaska allows a stopover on a one-way award.

So you can really make multiple flights out of a single award with Alaska Miles. So there are opportunities to get really great value. And 1.25 cents to get Alaska Miles is a great bargain. It is. It is. All right. That, my friends, brings us to this week's main event. this, but a few days before publication of this podcast. And so on the Ask Us Anything, we focused a lot on our Million Mile Madness Challenge, where Nick, Stephen, and I are

competing to complete the Scandinavian Airlines or SAS Euro Bonus Millionaire challenge in two weeks or less. And we'll each earn a million miles if we complete that. And you may earn miles and free nights if you help us complete this all successfully. So listen to the Ask Us Anything recording and come to our site to check out our blog posts all about it. And as Nick said earlier, follow us on Instagram. That's where the really fun stuff will be. Once a month, the Frequent Miler team gets together live on YouTube to answer your questions. Ask us questions about points, miles, credit cards,

airline and hotel loyalty programs. We don't know what's coming next and neither do you. Enjoy. And maybe, Nick, you can give a quick overview of what the challenge is. Yeah, so we decided that three of us are going to go after the million miles and fly at least 15 of the qualifying Sky Team carriers. But we wanted to make it a little bit more difficult. We didn't want to just complete the challenge. We wanted to complete the challenge with SAS.

So SAS, of course, you may have seen them written as SAS before, and I always pronounce that SAS, but apparently they are pronounced SAS. So we decided to take advantage of the acronym and use it to judge our challenge. So we're going to see who can complete the 15 airlines they need with the most speed, affordability, and style. So speed, whoever can complete it the fastest, spend the least amount of time in the air flying around the world. So fewest number of days, least amount of time in the air. Affordability, who can do it the cheapest, who's able to find the best deals in order to complete the 15 airlines to make it the most worth it in terms

of earning the million miles. And style style who can do it comfortably or at least add elements of comfort and fun and excitement to the trip to turn it into something where you're not only seeing airplanes and airports but maybe at least airport lounges and maybe comfortable flights or maybe cool things to do in places that you go and so that's kind of subjective it's open to a lot of interpretation so we're going to see which of us can do it with those three things. And Tim and Carrie are judging us. So they're going to be giving us scores. And maybe they'll talk a little bit more about the judging, but they'll be giving us scores in those categories. And then so will you, the audience. And where it gets, I think, particularly exciting is that audience members have a chance to win a little something. So we each have our own journal posts that explain what it is we're doing and what we're trying to do and what we need help with. And we've been paying attention to all the reader comments. And each one of us is going to choose the reader who has been most helpful throughout this process. And that most helpful reader for each of us will

earn 100,000 miles. And then the one who helps the one of us who wins this thing is going to earn an additional 300,000 miles and five Hilton Be My Guest certificates. Those Hilton Be My Guest certificates can be used at any Hilton brand worldwide. So you could stay someplace like the Waldorf Astoria in the Maldives or the Conrad Bora Bora if they've got standard room availability anyway for five nights. So that'll be a pretty awesome prize to win. So that's in a nutshell what we're doing. And I guess we probably have to talk a little bit about where we are and how we're judging it.

But that's the overview. Now, I know I've been booked on my flights for a bit, but I talked to Greg this afternoon and I know that a couple of us are taking, well, three of us are all taking off in the next couple of days. And Greg, as of this afternoon, didn't have all of his flights booked yet. So Greg, you're like,

what? Less than 48 hours away from taking off for this thing, right? You have your flights booked. I have a, I have a question, Greg, did you actually think you,

we were still doing fine by the CDR points? It was just wanting the same thing which is actually a different challenge now yeah i mean that last the last minute travel challenge that we called flying by the seat of our points really was super helpful to me in the last few days because whenever i i thought oh i might not have all this booked until you know know, we're actually in the air. You know, I thought, well, I did that before. I can do this. I've got this. It's okay.

After I talked to Nick this afternoon, I did go through and I booked almost all my flights. So I have almost everything booked now. Yeah, I did run into some weird stuff happening like one thing i told nick about was that one of the airlines through the otas online travel agencies it showed i'm gonna make up the times because i don't remember exactly but it showed like the flight leaving at like 10 30 but on the airline's website it showed the same flight leaving at like 11 15 and i couldn't i couldn't figure out why i was seeing two different departure times for what appeared to be the same flight so i don't know i crossed my fingers and booked with the airline i figure like hopefully the airline knows what time the flight's actually going you have enough time maybe they don't what'd you say steven do you have enough

time to make your connection if um that's a different time yeah uh either of those times actually work for me um i would have preferred the earlier time but uh i booked the later time because that's the one the airline showed and But yeah, there's a good amount of... It'll be that third unadvertised time. It might be. I have plenty... This one isn't it, but I have plenty of connections that I've lined up that are going to be risky. Oh, man.

This is going to be a repeat of Nick flying in by the seat of his pants before our live stream. I hope not for you, Greg. I'll hope not. Well, thank you. I'm not going to Morocco. I do have a few questions related to the challenge, if you don't mind us kicking things off here. Let's go.

So, hi, FM team. Do you have any backup or contingency plans in place if one of your flights is canceled or severely delayed? Good luck, by the way, on your adventure. What are your contingency plans? Yes, I'll hop in. We'll start with Nick. Yeah.

Yeah. So I ran into this in a situation where I'm not relying on an airplane to get me to the next point that I need to be at. But I'm not sure that I'm going to be able to do it without an airplane. And so depending on what happens, I may need one of those flying machines. And so I booked a backup flight with Miles that is fully refundable if I end up not needing it. So we'll find out that night whether I need it or not. And that's not the

only one I've had intentions these last few days to plug a few others. Because of course, with American Airlines miles or United miles, you can book an award ticket and there's no fee to cancel right up until shortly before departure. So in places where that would save me, I'm going to book a couple of awards like that. Now keep in mind, obviously, if I book an award with miles like that, it's not going to be anything qualifying in terms of flying a SkyTeam carrier, number one, or number two, flying a SkyTeam carrier in a way that counts. So even if it were an award on a SkyTeam carrier, somehow it wouldn't count because you need to either earn SAS miles or redeem SAS miles on your flight in order for it to count for the purposes of the challenge. But so that I don't

have the domino effect of missing everything else down the line, in a couple of places, I'm going to book refundable awards like that. And I think each one of us has probably planned in such a way that I know for me, for instance, I'm not flying one carrier that would be relatively easy for me to pick up after everything is over. So if I miss one flight and I use one of these backup award flights to skip ahead, so to speak, to the next place, and so I end up short one airline, I'll be able to save that without too much headache at the end. It's if I miss two that things get dicey all right uh steven how about you contingency plans similar kind of situation to nick where i have a spare

airline that i can pick up fairly easily at the end of the trip if i need it um i have been planning on booking a few backup flights particularly for my asia portions um because those are the ones that have riskier connections. I haven't gone around to doing that yet. So I'm hoping that by the time I end up getting to Europe, that I'll have a spare hour or two to sit down and have a look at a few options. But if I do need those, then I would need them at the last minute. So I'm just hoping that there would be last minute award availability if I do end up needing those and haven't had a chance to book anything in advance. So that's where I am at the moment.

And Greg, how about you? Yeah, for me, I mean, I intend to book some backups, you know, freely cancelable backup flights like Nick described, but that's like way down the list of other things I need to get done. You know, I need to, I need to book hotels. I need to make sure visas are in place and things like that, that are more critical than having backup plans in my mind. So I may be flying by the seat of my points when, when, when things hit the fan.

I predict we'll be hearing that a lot from you with these next upcoming questions then, Greg. People have all kinds of plans they want you to be making already. But first things first, let's have you each state when your departure time is. This person says departing soon. So I'm going to start with Stephen. When is your departure? I depart at midday tomorrow on the dot. So Thursday. Thursday, yes. I depart at midday tomorrow on the dot so Thursday

Thursday yes Thursday November 7th if you're listening to this after oh yeah that's a good point yes so that will be in 15 hours time so I'm going to get everything together so I'm pretty much packed I do need

to double check what my carry-on situation is because I know what the carry do need to double check what my carry-on situation is because I know what the carry-on limits are for the actual carry-on bag. I need to double check if I can have a personal item too because if I can't also have a personal item, I might be a little bit hosed because at the moment I really need, I'm kind of like a hiking backpack and a big backpack kind of thing. Wow, okay.

A little bit less clothing or something like that and just end up being a little bit more stinky along the way. I do have some laundry detergent sheets that are nice and flat and don't take up any space. So if I do need to do any laundry in a hotel sink or something like that, then that's a possibility. So you have to fly 15 sky team carriers. You do not have to do it showered or clothed. You might need to be.

I think it's kind of flounder part if you don't. Well, you might have more room and economy if you smell really bad. Steven had a whole row to himself the entire last half. This might earn you some bonus points. We'll see. When is your departure, Nick? I'm leaving Friday night, so less than 48 hours from now. And so that means I'll have to leave home actually sooner. So I'll leave home Friday morning, probably. So I've got to get ready. I've got to get packed up. To Steven's point, actually, I know that some of the flights I booked only allow for personal items. So it's got to fit

under the seat in front of me. So I'm bringing my backpack and my backpack only. I was intending to do a packing video on Instagram today, but I'm waiting on things that I ordered that I need in order to be that compact that have not yet arrived. So I am hoping tomorrow everything that I need will arrive. But I'm trying to stay small. I have my wintery sort of a coat, which fits into this bag here. And, and I, I ordered today, a reader gave me a tip today on my post about a collapsible backpack that collapses into a bag that's even smaller than that, like palm size. And so that way I could have that second thing that Steven's talking about. If I need some extra space or I need some stuff to go out for the day, I'm going to

hopefully, hopefully jam that in there, but I'm getting a little nervous because it is less than 48 hours away and I don't even have all the stuff i need forget about how it packed yeah i saw i saw that reader tip about the backpack and coincidentally i have that exact same back exact same one i thought i've seen that but what i need before yours is orange right um no the orange one was the one that was in my backpack in santiago that so someone's doing that one too soon the current one I have is blue I hate it where are you gonna put your uh where are you gonna put your spare monitor yes you really are gonna bring it so is that going with you we'll see we'll see I don't somehow your tiny bag is gonna weigh like 125 pounds. All right. So, Greg, when do you leave? My first flight is Friday morning.

So I have tomorrow to button everything down and figure out what I'm going to pack. I do think I've gone back and forth about this, but I do think I'm going to have to take a small, like, you know, roll on bag. bag i mean i have a really tiny bag but there's there's one situation where i'm pretty sure i'm gonna have to check a bag towards the end of the trip if all goes well and yeah so i need a bag for doing that of course i could buy one along the way if i need to so maybe i'll do that so you're flying denwood's first class back and you want to have like a giant bag so or enough space so that you can pile everything from the like minibar and all the steal everything off that plane yeah that sounds good if you guys don't care about being clean but only about smelling good one hack that somebody told me about once that i thought was genius

is just take like two or three dryer sheets and throw those in your backpack and everything smells like dryer sheets for at least two weeks so none of you are gone for longer than that I had totally forgotten about that tip until Stephen mentioned the like you mentioned like detergent sheets or something before I was like oh dryer sheets those are going in my bag tonight so I don't forget great Great idea. It's a good idea. I forget who gave me that tip. So next question here. This person wants to know, will there be a live wrap-up show for the challenge? And I'm going to

add to that, what do we have planned for live check-ins? For our last challenge, for those who don't know, we had various live checkpoints that we did with our contestants. So what do we have in store for that? Tim, I'm going to toss this question to you. Yeah, so we are, it's a little tricky this time, of course, because the three contestants are going to be in various places throughout the world.

And we don't necessarily know, they don't know where each other's time zones are going to be, all that sort of stuff. What we're going to do is we're going to do some individual check-ins with each one at times that are convenient for them. We will then post those on YouTube or Instagram or both. Then we'll have two live check-ins throughout the challenge. The first one is this Sunday at 6 p.m. Eastern, I believe. And that is when all three of them will be available. They will not be in the same place, but they will be available. So we can kind of check and see how tired they are, if they can all keep, if they're all still standing straight after

32 hours in economy, all that sort of stuff. And we'll have an opportunity to sort of revisit their affordability style and speed rankings so far. And then we will have a wrap up show at the end where we give the final results of the scoring. We're going to hand out some awards. There'll be confetti. It'll be a nice time. And I think is that correct me guys. When, when are we, is that when we're, you're going to announce which people were most helpful to you for the prizes or will that be later when the points are awarded? I can't remember what we decided.

I think it'll be later. Later. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Everything about this challenge is kind of. Flying by the seat of our pants. Well,

it's waiting in the wings of, ofass a little bit too because you know we got to find out do people win million miles we actually got the million points yeah they actually succeed so yeah there's a chance that we're gonna need um you know readers help in getting our points if if anyone has tips if we end up not getting them credited there might be tricks that people have learned that can help us as well so that would put you in the running if if that happens kind of hoping it doesn't yeah we'll see this uh this challenge has uh more odds than our previous challenges of kind of like spilling out over the travel time itself um so you'll want to stay tuned for a long time, I guess. All right. So

a few more questions here, challenge related. This person wants to know, I'm going to start with Nick. What have you done ahead of time for tight connections during your challenge? For instance, buying seats in the front of the plane, familiarizing yourself with the airport layout, things like that. Nick, any tricks like that? Yeah, so I have one flight where I did pay an extra $10 for a seat relatively close to the front of the plane, not all the way up at the front, those would have been more expensive. But I strategically picked the middle seat that was cheaper, that was pretty close to the front. So I did pick one where that was the case because of a tight connection. And also had found looking around online that you can buy through sites like Viator or Get Your Guide or things like that. You can buy fast track immigration

at Bangkok airport and you'll get somebody who is waiting for you with a sign with your name at the jet bridge when you get off the plane and they'll take you through a fast track at immigration. So that could save me because I read readers saying that they had waited in recent times anywhere from an hour and a half to three hours to get through immigration. So hopefully that's going to speed me through so that I don't miss that connection. So hopefully it'll be money well spent. I actually found a pretty good deal on it and stacked it with Capital One Shopping Cashback. So I'm pretty happy about how that worked out. So that's one thing that I did for a tight connection to kind of hopefully minimize

my issues there. I actually, my connections are not probably as tight as Stephen's, I think, just from what he said. We haven't, by the way, we haven't shared the details of our itineraries with each other. So we all knew when everybody was leaving, but we don't know the details of our itineraries with each other so we all knew when everybody was leaving but we don't know the details of each other's trips so that's why i say i think from what steven said it sounds like his connections are tighter than mine so i'm curious to hear what he's doing so i would just like to thank you for that tip about bangkok airport because that's where one of my tightest connections is you're're welcome. Where I'm most concerned about being able to make my next flight. Take your nomination for most helpful reader. Yeah.

And so you very may well be. So at the very least, I might have to buy you a beer or something sometime. But yeah, I'm definitely going to have to look into that. I had done a similar thing with buying a seat towards the front of the plane or like a little bit further forward, just where I've got a not horrible connection but just where um getting through transit might take a little bit longer and so that was i think 18 and a half bucks or something like that so not terrible but it was worth it what was a little weird about that flight is that it didn't seem like there had been any seat assignments on that plane at all yet

um and so i don't know if i'm going to have the entire plane to myself in which case paying an extra 18 bucks was moot because then i could just move as far forward or if it's just purely that everyone else on the flight is just waiting to be assigned seats and that it's going to be a completely packed one um so i'm hoping it's the former so that way um i'm less concerned about having it be a packed flight and more just being able to get off the plane pretty quickly because it's a fairly sizable plane and so if i'm like too far back it could take a little while disembarking i'm concerned for you about option number three you booked greg's phantom flight that existed on the ota but not the airline website

i think we had a flight recently where it looked like no one was there, but it's because it only shows the people who paid in advance to assign a seat. So I wouldn't be too worried. That's probably it. Greg, have you spent any time thinking about how to speed up your connections or have you had time for that?

I've spent time thinking about how to cross my fingers and hope now this this is really helpful uh conversation for me i'm i'm soaking it in and thinking about what i need to do tomorrow attending the ask us anything as a listener this time um all right uh next question we asked this one in a former one and none of you had anything booked enough to really have an answer but now now that most things are booked uh we'll try it again um starting with greg which airline are you most and least looking forward to flying as part of this challenge okay

um well so you know with this challenge there's of, the 15 airlines we have to fly. And then there are other airlines that we're probably each flying in order to get to, to connect the dots, basically. And two of the flights I am most looking forward to are that other kind that are not qualifying flights. And I'm very excited about them. But I'm not going to tell you yet because we're going to unveil our trips as we go and uh i think we'll have a few uh fun moments in all that uh of the 15 qualifying ones i'm looking forward to uh doing uh what is it shaman air um because to get a qualifying fair it was the easiest thing to do was book a cheap business class. And it looks like it might be a nice, I mean, it's not a very long flight,

but a nice little flight. All right, Nick. I don't have a worst. All right, not yet. Okay, Nick. One thing that Greg just mentioned that I meant to mention before, and I think is worth mentioning,

is that if you're excited about this and interested in this and you're curious about how it all shakes out, you definitely want to make sure you follow us on Instagram, follow frequent miler on Instagram, because that's going to be where if you want to find out what's going on as it's going on and see the story unfold, that's where the videos are going to be in the clips and the snippets and the reels and the stories. And you'll want to keep checking the story for updates, because I'm sure Greg and Stephen and I will keep sending video footage over to Carrie and she'll

keep getting it up there on Instagram so that you can see what's happening. Where are we? What are we doing? Did we fly one of those flights we're really excited about? Did Stephen get stuck in line in immigration? Or was he on the Phantom flight that didn't exist? Like, you'll find that stuff out on Instagram. So of course, we'll obviously also update the blog but i think it's more fun to watch on instagram frankly so so i recommend that anybody who has followed our previous challenges can chime in in the comments here and probably tell you that i'm not just making that up instagram is the fun place to watch the story so so that out of the way what am i most looking forward to at least looking forward to flight wise at least looking forward to flight wise, at least looking forward to?

I don't know. I mean, I kind of expect similar experiences from almost all the airlines. I mean, economy class is pretty standard most of the way. I mean, service, food, everything I expect to be fine, you know, great, but fine. And so so there's not one that I'm particularly excited about. There is one airline I'm flying where I'm flying through a hub that is perhaps, I don't know, I think more interesting. And so I'm excited about that because of the stop in the middle more so than the airline itself. And I don't want to reveal that just yet. So so yeah, I'm kind of on all of it in terms of excitement of the airlines themselves. I'm kind

of excited about some of the places I'll end up getting to see. All right. Stephen, how about you? Well, I'm just going to make a couple of very quick predictions that next exciting hub will be Taipei. But I might be wrong about that. And one of Greg's flights will be a Singapore Suites flight. Look at you and your predictions. That's just as a guess.

I'm probably going to be completely wrong. But yeah, in terms of what I'm looking forward to my, I think my best flight is going to be my flight tomorrow. And that's one that's not officially part of the challenge just because it's a positioning flight. And it's going to be pretty much my only proper comfortable flight. I do have actually, I do have that like two hour flight in china that's going to be in business class at some point um but other than that yeah this is going to be my only kind of proper style flight and so that's the one i think i'm most looking forward to before um a couple of weeks of flying around the world and economy um in terms of ones that i'm least

looking forward to i don't think there's anything that I'm dreading necessarily other than not in terms of the experience anyway other than the stress of being able to get off the plane in time to be able to make my next flight that's what I'm more concerned about with one of the airlines in particular I should mention shaman by the way because I don't think I've written about this yet and I probably should have I'll probably try and schedule a post about it. But the conventional wisdom has been that business class is the easiest thing to book with them because many of their economy class fairs aren't qualifying. And so if you're looking through Expedia or something or trip.com, you're probably looking at a lot of non qualifying economy class fairs. And there are some incredible

business class fairs. I mean, I saw a business class as cheap as $149 one way within China. So there are some really, really good fares on Shaman. But if you are looking at doing this yourself, quick tip, if you go to the Shaman Airlines website, when you're doing a search, when it defaults on economy, if you look just above the like economy business thing and a little bit to the right, there's a little link that says more price, more prices. And if you click that, it shows you all the fair codes and it shows you how much more to pay for each of the various fair classes. So I actually, I'll reveal this. I booked economy class because I was able to book a Q economy class fair. I didn't see that through any of the OTAs, but I was able to book it directly through the Shaman Airlines website. Not necessarily a better deal. I probably paid more than Greg and Steven, but I did it for a

flight that I wanted to connect some dots anyway. And so rather than book a separate positioning flight, I just went ahead and booked the Q economy class fare. Nice. Greg, have you already booked your Shaman Air flight yet? Have I? Yes. He mentioned it. That's the only reason why i know now he tells me well i have so i have i have a quick question before before we kind of as a kind of a tail end to some of this stuff but before i ask the question i want to remind everybody to please like this video um if you're watching on uh youtube please like if you are listening on

some other format please like or heart or or whatever your symbol is for showing us some love. But so over the last couple of weeks, I've noticed Nick has been very keen of making assumptions about Greg's flights and about Greg's trip. And Greg's gotten a little prickly over the time, a couple of times. He doesn't understand why Nick seems to think that Greg is going to be flying in luxury. It's going to take him a month. And he's never, Nick is going to beat him all over the globe.

And Greg is just going to be picking up the pieces, but he's going to be doing it in very expensive business class. That's what I'm getting from Nick. Now Greg's kind of, he's kind of, he's, what can I say? He's pushed back on that a little bit. And so what I would like, I would like all three of you to hear what's one thing that you're confident you're going to do better than anyone else. Now, this doesn't necessarily mean I'm going to do the most affordable.

It doesn't necessarily mean, but just are you going to get to Europe fastest? Are you going to make everybody drool at how comfortable your flights are? I'd love to hear one thing that you think, and Nick, don't talk about Greg's flights anymore because it's just going to piss him off. So what's one thing that you think you're going to do better than the other two contestants or faster or cheaper? Permission to gloat.

Start with Nick. Time well spent on the ground. I think I've got some pretty interesting things planned, or at least planned is a strong word, intended. I've got some pretty interesting things intended. And so I think my time spent on the ground is going to be pretty good. And really, to be honest, if I were to pick the thing that I think i'm most confident about at this point in terms of the various you know judging aspects it's audience choice i think i can win your hearts i think i can win your hearts santa again maybe you're not gonna see santa twice all right next one next one trip

without an airplane is where he's gonna to be on a sleigh with reindeer pulling. He's going to make a ground connection on a sleigh. He's definitely going to lose it for speed. You're going to have to take that until December 24th. True. All right, Stephen, we want to hear you gloat a little bit. What's your brag? I'm feeling pretty confident about my speed. I'm feeling fairly confident about my affordability compared to these guys but I think my speed I'm not sure I could have put together an itinerary that would have been much faster. In theory I could have I could have shortened the beginning of my trip by about 18 hours potentially but then that would have included a couple of possible risky elements. And so I just decided to play it a little bit safer and go with what I currently have, which is still, I think, timing wise, pretty good. And I'm not convinced that the other guys will end up beating that. So I'm hoping I'll finish first in at least one category. And if I can both speed and affordability, I'm hoping that I can possibly rival Nick for audience choice, even though he's going to have a much better time on the ground.

Well, you know that you really that's the secret. As I thought about it more, I realized that Stephen's nailed it in that you need to finish first in two categories. If you can finish first in two categories, then you can make it really hard on everybody else. So I think Steven's going to have me on affordability for sure. I think you might both have me on speed. Actually, I didn't initially. Greg made me nervous when I realized, oh, he just booked the expensive flights that get him from point A to B the fastest. So I was thinking luxury, not that he could use the advantage of not worrying about affordability for speed.

So I think Steven's got affordability. And I think Greg's going to have a good shot at speed if Steven doesn't beat him. So if I can take style and audience participation, I think I can get you guys. Man, so much strategy. Steven, I want to follow. So you're leaving about, so much strategy. Stephen, I want to follow up. So you're leaving about 20 hours before grade. You're leaving about a day, about a full day, 24 hours. So I'm assuming since you think you're going to be the fastest that you think you're going to

touch back down in your departure before, well before both of them, because you're going to have effectively a full day headstart. So my question is is this how many days do you think you are going to beat them by okay for hours okay for one of them i'm gonna i'm not too sure which way around this well you can just say just both like you can use them both one number like whoever's going to be okay um it has to be at least 24 hours okay i'm gonna say my best result will be beating one of them by four days and i'm gonna guess i'm gonna be confident and then i'm gonna guess that i'm gonna be one of the others by two days Wow. Man, that's the opposite of his days. Forticated far away where he didn't come home for like two weeks.

It's possible that something that's been shared has been misleading, though. And so I could be completely wrong about that. I'm just going base, like trying to pick up what someone else may have accidentally thrown down at one point. I might have, I might be able to guess like how long they're going to be on their trip for. But that might be entirely incorrect. I might get, oh, it might be that they're leaving after me and they still get back before me. And then I'm going to be eating a whole lot of humble pie. Yes, but we're forcing you to gloat right now, Stephen.

That's right. No disclaimers needed. All right, Greg, your turn. I think I'm going to win on speed. Boy! Stephen has me a little nervous, but I'm blazing through. And so I think it's very likely. Where I would really bet is that I'd be the fastest to at

least have achieved 15 airlines assuming everything goes okay as opposed to being the person as opposed to also getting back home yeah because that part you know how I said there's one piece not yet booked and that piece i'm waiting for something to fall together yeah you're gonna do this so i so i'm not willing to bet on that that one being fast yet wow getting interesting nervous now wow it's gonna be interesting it's gonna be very interesting to see how this shakes out that is getting interesting all right um, I've got one other thing I'm going to beat everyone on.

I bet I'm going to spend more money than the other guys. Okay. I'm not sure I would call it a brag, but maybe a humble brag. So I think I'm going to transition us into non-challenge questions here. But I did want to say a quick note

to our contestants. Make sure and read. Our viewers are giving tips for the various things you're bringing up, but they're not questions. So I'm not going to share them here publicly to everybody, but make sure you go rewatch this, Greg, Nick, and Steven, so you can read the various tips that apply to you in case they're useful um all right diving into non-millennial madness stuff here this person says i was trying to book a flight on aa using alaska taking off in two days and their website said that the itinerary is too close to departure is this phantom a word space i'm gonna send that one to Nick. I don't know. I've not seen that before.

I've booked same day with a lot. I've booked an American Airlines flight for departure same day with Alaska miles before. And that's not been a problem. So I don't, I haven't seen this. Anyone else have any insights on that before we move on? I've never seen that before either my assumption is that it's either a website uh clinkety clink or that it's maybe some sort of like certain there are certain routes in certain parts of the world where they do actually have like a close-in booking rule usually it's not two days

uh but that would be my only other guess i've never seen that before either oh and i would ask did you try the app? Because I wrote about that recently in something. It's kind of buried in another post. But we've had various reports from people about apps being more useful sometimes than airline websites. And so that's a situation where if I got that error on the website, I would try the Alaska Airlines app and see if I get the same error or something different. Or maybe it works. And if I'm failing that, maybe try giving them a call because it might be

that a phone agent can push something through that you can't unlock. Great point. Just to put a bow on it, I've booked AA flights within hours of departure before. Same. So something funny going on for sure.

Okay, I'm actually going to answer this one you know player two is a common topic among the hobby would anyone here consider having their spouse join one podcast explaining their thoughts on their significant other engaging the hobby i'm going to answer this because i am more of a player too than an actual player um and my thoughts were that this is insane. When we first started it, I felt super uncomfortable, very Midwestern. I don't like breaking rules. So I was very paranoid. This is like not allowed.

Like if we booked something with points, I thought like the flight attendants are going to know. They're going to be mad at us. But it didn't take long to realize it's very normal to pay for flights with points and miles. And it's not a big deal. Anyone else have gems that they've heard from their spouses that you want to share before we move on? I want to share because I actually I'd love started working for FM or not, but my wife and I were driving in the car, and she hates listening to any Points and Miles podcasts, absolutely hates it. So occasionally I would put one on just for fun. I'm like, hey, I have one you're really going to enjoy, and she never enjoys them. and Nick were talking about the Wyndham business earner card,

which earns 8X on gas. And we all like it because of you can use the points for the cost of vacation rentals, blah, blah, blah. But so I just turned there in the middle of going through this when Card Talk was a part of FM on the air and they were going through that card. And my wife heard it and she listened to it for about 30 seconds. She's like, no more, please. I said, okay, fine.

I shut it off. And she said, you know what that sounds like and she did the charlie brown adult voice here's what i hear here's what player two here that's true that that is an existing format on TikTok. I've seen it. All right. So globalist question here. I'm going to kick it to Stephen. My height globalist expires soon. Can slash should I make bookings after expiration and guest of honor myself? So the globalist status will expire on February 28 28th and so you'll still have it for a couple of months into the new year so if you're concerned about not having it like just after december you will still have it for a couple of months um in terms of being able to use um guest

of honor i guess it depends on how long you've had um globalist status because you've you should at the moment have five guest of honor awards but if you've used all of those up you should in theory still be able to make some bookings for next year I forget exactly whether you can book anything beyond your expiry date in theory you can't but I feel like there was someone who had mentioned like a year or two ago that they did have success booking for someone else like that. I could be completely wrong though. So I'd be a little bit wary about booking something where someone's going to

count on guest of honor and then they're going to end up showing, like showing up to the hotel and then discovering that they don't have free breakfast or free parking on an awards day and things like that. I'm pretty sure it's just based on the expiration date of the guest of honor certificate itself these days. Because since they changed them to be transferable, you know, they're not expected to necessarily be used with people who have globalist status. So I would expect it to work. Well, I'm just thinking that if you've redeemed all of those, then Hire will still let you do additional guest of honor bookings through the end of this year. Right. You can't do that. And so I figured at that stage, it might be

possible that those are still being done under some different method to the existing, like the new version. Oh, okay. Now I see what you're saying. Yeah, that's just kind of the only scenario where I can picture it possibly working. If you're just using regular Guest of Honor bookings, then yeah, those will expire February 28th. And so those ones wouldn't be possible. Yeah, I know the legacy Guest of Honor bookings can still be made right now, whether or not you'd be able to make one for a time after your status expires. I've heard people have been able to do that in the past.

I had pushback with it once, but I've heard other people have been successful in the past. Now, I just don't know because it's changing. So I don't know what agents will allow or not allow or what they've been told to allow or not allow. So I don't know. Is anybody able to book themselves using that old method? Or is it always...

Because what I remember. Yeah, I've not heard of that. Speaking of player two, that they would book their spouse in a guest of honor reservation. Right, right, right.

So where I thought this question was going is you could be earning guest of honor, new guest of honor certificates, even without earning globalist status. Cause you start getting them at what? 40 nights. And so you could say, say well i'm not going to go all the way to 60 nights but i'll have this certificate in my account still and i can use

it later and i don't see any reason why you can't do that no that you yeah yeah that you would definitely be able to do because that would only have an expiration of february of the following like 2026 so those would obviously still be good for quite a while uh but yeah i don't know about booking yourself guest of honor with the legacy system i think that probably would be a no-no all right uh you heard it here okay next um i'm gonna ask this one of tim uh hawaiian biz card only offers 50k after four thousand dollars of spend now used to be 80k after 2000 spend. Considering it may go away, should we jump on it? Personally, I would, I don't believe that the card is going to go away until they actually join the two loyalty programs. It seems like that's kind of what's been telegraphed from Alaska. And based on what they've said so far,

they're not actually, because right now you can transfer miles between Hawaiian and Alaska, but they're not actually the same loyalty program. Hawaiian miles are still Hawaiian miles and you redeem them with Hawaiian. Alaska miles are Alaska miles. You redeem them with Alaska. You can just transfer them free. Eventually that will change and it will all be one loyalty program, you know, Hawaiian Alaska mileage plan or whatever it is. I, so I can't imagine that I would think we'll at least have a few more months of the business card or both of those cards being available, whether or not a better offer comes around. I, you know, It's hard to say, but you could at least, I would say, be safe with

say three to six months of waiting just to see if it actually improves before then. We have no idea if they're going to give us notice. My assumption is that they will because from our understanding,

all of those old Barclays cards that are Hawaiian cards are actually going to be purchased. Effectively, what they call their back book or their cardholders are going to be purchased by Bank of America. And they're going to become Alaska cards or part of whatever the shared program is. So my assumption is that we'll have some notice. But regardless, I don't know that there's any reason to like jump on anything right now, because the Alaska, the Hawaiian cards, in my humble opinion, won't be going away in a matter of weeks. It'll be a matter of like, I would guess six to 12 months. All right. Now we have a Greg question here. Greg,

Delta Amex companion certificates terms are very restrictive. Any best practices to find eligible fair class for non-holiday weekends far in advance? So yeah, what they're talking about is the Delta Platinum and Delta Reserve cards come with a companion ticket each year upon renewal of those cards. And they only allow booking a companion when discount fare classes are available. So once a flight is mostly full and all that's left is the more expensive fare classes, then you can't use a certificate for those flights that are like that. So, I mean, my best practice is to try to do it far in advance is the thing. Farther in advance, the easier it is because there's other reasons why um the discount fairs may have

been gobbled up sooner like trying to go to a popular location like hawaii in the winter time even not around holidays can be tough uh to find those fair classes all right um so i'm gonna give this one to stephen is there a resource for which hilton resorts accept pre-payment i don't think there's a resource um that lists those as far as i'm aware um i know that some vegas properties um will do that and so that might just be a little bit of trial and error but i haven't i don't remember seeing anything online that anyone's put together where that like specifically lists that and to be honest it might be good if it doesn't exist just because if it did then I imagine that that might end up um going away fairly sharpish and so um yeah all right um now I'm gonna tentatively hand the mic to tim unless this is the secret thing that we're doing tim do we

announce personal missions or are we telling you guys you guys want to find out don't you well so you're gonna have to when you when you say we're gonna find out i really don't even know you guys want to know now sure five minutes let's do Let's go. Let's rip the band-aid right off. The carry in my post for how we're going to strictly judge each of the three contestants over these next grueling days of economy class travel will be out tomorrow. And effectively, Nick already said there's four different main point main things we're going to judge them on speed, affordability, style, and then audience choice, which we're not going to judge, that's going to be the audience. And effectively, if everybody were to win all four of those, it'd end up with 100 points. Okay, so the maximum you can get from each one is 25 points.

Now, we're also going to have a couple little extra credit things that they can pick up some points along the way. And we're going to be offering some best of awards at the end that are things like best flight, best local food experience, things like that, that will allow them to get some extra points as well. The last thing is each one of them has a personal mission, a quest of sorts that they if they complete this quest within their own individual trip, they'll get an additional three points. Three is a three. So now they're going to be intrigued to find out how we came up with these personal. And now if you,

if you'll, we'll, we'll decide later, but so let's start with Greg, your secret mission. No longer choose to accept it, whether you accept it or not, you're going to be your, you, you have stated that you're going to be the fastest to hit 15 carriers.

So that is your personal mission. If you indeed hit 15 qualifying carriers faster than the other two, you get three points. Awesome. Steven? I'll bank them right now. Stephen, your personal mission is that if you beat Greg and Nick, both of them, by 48 hours, you get three points. Nick, unfortunately, you talked a lot when you were bragging. I got a long three-pointer here. So your personal mission has two components.

You're going to say that not only are you going to win the audience choice, but you're also going to win the most cities, the award for most cities visited outside of an airport. Yes. If you get both of those things, not one, there's no 1.5 here. You will get three additional points. Three additional points three additional points and as a part of this before we move this away somebody brought up yesterday they asked us

there's actually a journalist asked us what do we do if we tie if everybody ties i think it's unlikely that there's a tie but i want to really quickly do a tiebreaker so that we know who's going to win in case of tiebreaker now the tiebreaker will be in the form of a Jeopardy question. You have to answer what is, and you can beep in by saying your name. So if Greg wants to answer, he says, Greg, if you lose, if you give the wrong answer, you go to the bottom. If you give the top answer, you go to the right answer. Is this happening now?

Yep, right now. Right now. So what happens if I ring in with Greg's name? You both seem to go to the bottom. The first qualification is you have to know your own name. Okay. Just checking for a rules check. So the question is, you guys are all flying a promotion for Scandinavian Airlines or SAS. But what does that second S stand for?

Stephen. No, no, no. Okay. Stephen. I feel like you had mentioned this at some point. I think. Oh, Nick's Googling. Yeah, no Googling.

Okay, I didn't do it yet i'm impressed that you were the first person to to just click in but unfortunately you are not in a form of a question go to number three oh no no no no no no what is it nick great either of you nick nick what is scandinavia unfortunately nick you are now in second place in a tiebreaker so in the event of a tiebreaker greg now wins because he did not say anything i don't know if anybody i can't see the youtube comments right now there might have been people trying to give advice but the s actually stands for the system uh canadian airlines system all right i should have looked it up how did i not you are now that you now have the tiebreaker advantage so go forth and conquer i will go forth and conquer um all right we'll do one or two more um This one goes to Steven.

Does booking yourself a Hyatt GOA... Guest of Honor. Guest of Honor earn an additional Elite Knight? I haven't tested this out for myself, and I haven't really heard any data points either way about this, so I'm going to throw it out to the other three guys in case you know what the answer is. Sure, it was not intended to but whether it does somehow i don't know if somebody's listening to this in like audio form after the fact and

you're like oh what are you talking about so the hyatt guest of honor certificate if you if you earn those their milestone benefits then when you give that that's a giftable award so you can give it to somebody else and they can apply it to their stay and get globalist benefits. And when they stay, the giver of that. So if I have one and I give it to Greg and he stays and enjoys globalist benefits, I get an elite night when Greg uses the gift. And so the question here is, what if I give it to myself? Will I get an elite night for staying and an elite night for giving yeah i don't know not sure it's probably like greg says probably not intended to work that way whether or not it does i don't know all right i actually do have two more um challenge related questions which i think

we'll do instead of the other ones i queued up here this person wants to know um did you get confirmation that sass will allow you to award the miles to the helpful readers? Going to ask that question of Greg. We did not get any kind of confirmation like that. But SAS does have the ability to basically pay a small fee to transfer miles to other people. So our plan is to just do that as like a worst case if we can't, um, it, we're still trying to get ahold of somebody on the SAS team to get more clarity on, on what's going to happen there, but that's our backup plan. So we do feel pretty confident.

We'll be able to award SAS miles. All right. Uh, next question, which is I'm going to toss to Tim. Do you think anyone will run into each other? Do I think anyone will run into each other? Yeah. Will they overlap and run into each other? I mean, we all pretty clumsy. If anybody is going to run into another contestant, I'm going to guess that it's Nick. And it's probably because he'll be trying to keep his external monitor into his collapsible as he runs around. I'm worried that my airplane's going to run into Nick's flying reindeer.

Actually, I'll flip it around. I'll ask the contestants instead. Do you guys think you're going to overlap with each other? Starting with Nick. We're flying the same airlines, essentially. I mean, obviously there could like a one difference or something. But basically, we're flying the same airlines and they have the same hubs.

So there's a good chance, though. I think the way I've planned my trip, it's relatively unlikely that I'll run into these guys much, but not necessarily impossible. So we'll see. I mean, I don't know know it's hard to say first couple days it's more likely than anything beyond the first couple of days but of course the way greg's talking he's going to be done in three days so maybe he'll just move fly by so fast i don't even see him yeah well i'm just gonna say i'm gonna finish like two or four days before you guys and so later on

there'll definitely be less opportunity for me to stephen's already done yeah yeah in europe there's definitely the chance that um that will like somehow run into each other i think but like nick said earlier on in the trip i imagine just because i think we're all flying across the atlantic in a similar way because that's basically the only way to easily get Virgin Atlantic. But after that, we could all be doing different. We could all be taking even like exactly the same flight schedule for the different airlines,

but just on different days or something, depending on how it all ends up panning out. So yeah, it'll be interesting to see like if we end up bumping into each other. That'll be fun. So I think we're out of questions, but I did want to double check. I think we do have a confirmed live check-in scheduled.

Is that right? We still need to put it on the calendar, but anyone remember off the top of their heads when we had that scheduled, Tim? 6 p.m. Sunday night, I believe. 6 p.m. Eastern. Eastern believe 6 p.m eastern eastern time sunday night sunday night we miraculously found a time when all of these guys will sort of be awake or something and so um we're gonna try to do a live check-in of some kind um so tune in and if you haven't already subscribed to youtube so you get notifications

for when those live streams happen because this time around they may happen a little more spontaneously so you'll want to get those notifications all right so that wraps up Ask Us Anything and brings us into this week's question of the week. This week's question of the week has come in in multiple places already, and I think it's worth just a brief discussion here. So an email came in, for example, said, good afternoon. I recently signed up for the Amex Platinum card offer, which requires a lot of spend, $20,000 spent in 90 days to earn 250,000 points. That's a targeted offer that some people have been eligible for, not everybody. So anyway, this person says that they made an $11,000 income

tax payment as part of the welcome bonus spending, which was made about 45 days after receiving the card. Two weeks after reaching the spend, I reached out to Amex to inquire about when the points are going to post to my account. The representative informed me that estimated tax payments don't count towards the eligible spend for this offer, so I would need to spend that additional money elsewhere. And in fact, they provided a list of things that are not eligible for spend for the purposes of earning a welcome bonus on an Amex card. Now, there are things in there, the usual suspects that you might expect, like cash advances don't count, balance transfers

don't count. We know those things don't count towards minimum spend. But there were a couple of things that stood out. One of them, of course, was tax payments. Another was insurance. A third that stood out to me was, what was it, the fee to reinstate miles, point and mile reinstatement fees. So they had this clearly copy and pasted list. So what's the word, Greg? Are taxes dead for meeting welcome bonus spend? What do you make of this list? Have you seen this list? A number of people have reported now being given this list, same exact copy and paste list from chat representatives. Yeah, it's all nonsense. I don't know where that list came from,

but those specific things that Nick mentioned, it's not true. You will earn points on that spend. You will, it will count towards your minimum spend requirements. Just give it time. Once you've met the minimum spend requirements, including tax payments and insurance payments, and I don't know what the other things were, but those things will count and just give it time and your welcome bonus should post automatically. It's true that if there's some quirk in the system where you don't get the welcome bonus for other reasons, it's going to be a challenge because there are these misinformed reps that will look at your spend and say, oh, you didn't qualify

because of this or that. That's unfortunate. And so you have to just keep escalating the issue until you get someone who knows what they're doing, basically, if that happens. But first and foremost, just give it time. I bet you those points will post. Yeah. I mean, I wouldn't even start to get worried until it's been a month or two. Just relax. Take a few deep breaths. Wait, because it's probably going to post.

And the chat rep is just copying and pasting a list that somebody else gave them to copy and paste. The average chat representative has probably never made a tax payment with a credit card, no less an Amex card, no less an Amex card during the minimum spending requirement. So they just don't know. They're just copying and pasting something. So I wouldn't even expect them to know the correct answer to this. So just wait. I recently met a minimum spending requirement and it was 14 days exactly when I finally got the welcome bonus points. Usually it happens in three or four days. This time it took 14. I hadn't even broken a sweat yet because I knew it was going to come through

eventually. So relax. Your points are coming. Don't trust what a chat representative has to say. They're probably wrong 80% of the time. So good luck with that. All right. Thank you very much for that great question.

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