Frequent Miler on the Air - 10 point-ish things we're most looking forward to | Frequent Miler on the Air Ep288 | 1-3-25

Episode Date: January 3, 2025

(00:00) - It's a new year and we're excited about all the "point-y" things happening for us in 2025! Give this episode a listen to find out what we're looking forward to. (01:07) - One reader's interesting experience disbanding a United miles pool highlights a possible hack and brings up a few questions.... Learn more about miles-pooling here: https://www.united.com/en/us/mileageplus/miles-pooling/ (04:17) - Can a pool leader leave a miles pool? (04:35) - Can I leave a miles pool after joining? (07:25) - Chase United card devaluation: TravelBank credits instead of statement credits (11:10) - Chase Aeroplan PYB (Pay Yourself Back) Travel limited to 200K (13:51) - Marriott Choice Benefit 40 night selection expiry Read more about this update here: https://frequentmiler.com/marriott-bonvoy-choice-benefits/  (16:27) - IHG Ends Annual Lounge Pass Loophole In 2025 (19:52) - Pay taxes via credit card slightly cheaper (starts at 1.75%) but down to 2 processors PayUSATax gone ("We are no longer processing federal tax payments on behalf of the IRS.") Learn more about paying taxes with a credit card here: https://frequentmiler.com/pay-taxes-via-credit-card/ (25:21) - Greg and Nick’s "Bonvoyed" pick: Hyatt breaks our hearts with Mr & Mrs Smith Read our "Bonvoyed of the year" post here: https://frequentmiler.com/frequent-milers-peoples-choice-bonvoyed-awards-2024-edition/ (26:47) - Readers' "Bonvoyed" picks... (28:10) - Our picks for for Deal of the Year Read our "Deal of the Year" post here: https://frequentmiler.com/2024-deal-of-the-year-and-readers-choice-vote/ (29:02) - Readers' picks for Deal of the Year (31:01) - Small Luxury Hotels SLH (33:07) - Preferred hotels & Resorts (35:30) - Alaska Mileage Plan mixed partner awards (40:13) - Earning Alaska elite status through award bookings (42:51) - Alaska premium card (45:00) - Digging into SAS awards (47:17) - Finding a great Vacasa redemption (I bought points) (49:17) - Finding great Capital One Miles deals See the "Deal of the Year" episode here: https://frequentmiler.com/deal-of-the-year-2024-frequent-miler-on-the-air-ep287-12-27-24-podcast/ (52:09) - Getting back into the swing of bank account bonuses (54:05) - Trying out the AA bus from PHL-ACY. (58:57) - Would a Delta Gold status be useful for a Korean Air flight booked via Delta miles?

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 Miler on the air starts now. Today's main event, 10 point-ish things we're most looking forward to. As we kick off the year 2025, Nick and I are looking forward to as we kick off the year 2025 Nick and I are looking forward

to various things having to do with earning points and miles using points and miles and adjacent things elite status free whatever's so we're gonna get into the things that are kind of on our mind as we kick off the year as the things we're most looking forward to yeah very good I'm looking forward to that and if you want to come back and revisit some of this later on, or you want to skip ahead to something, don't forget that you'll always find the timestamps in the show notes. Just expand the show description. And that's also where you'll find links to more information about at least some of the things that we're talking about today. And wherever you're watching or listening,

don't forget to like this, give us a thumbs up, leave us a review. We appreciate that. All right, let's drag out this week's Giant Mailbag. Today's Giant Mail comes from Jeremy. Jeremy talks about United Airlines mileage pooling. Jeremy wrote, we were going to book United flights to Portugal next summer with our kids, but I had 100,000 United miles and my wife had 220,000, which neither one was enough to book everyone together. We wanted to book them at the same time and from the same account. So from what I learned from you all, United allows pooling of miles.

Great. So we did it. And before long, we had 320,000 pooled miles. Went to book. And as you know, and we didn't, you can't use pooled miles to book partner airlines, which was the case with getting roundtrip to Portugal. I felt sick. I read that we could disband the pool and the miles would be split evenly, and at that point used like normal. When I called customer support to do this, the agent said, yes, we could do that,

but they could also just move all the miles to my account. Minutes later, I had 320,000 United miles and we booked our flights through United with partner airlines. Transferring points to United is limited to 100,000 per year. I think what he means is moving points from one person to another. You can pay United to do that. So even transferring my miles to her account would have cost $1,500. Using the pool, it cost nothing. So that was a great story about customer support really helping Jeremy out, and he was able to get what he wanted done done, despite this really major limitation with United's points pooling.

Yeah, it is a major limitation, and it's so unintuitive, I would think, for most people. Well, let me take that back. I guess most people probably assume that you can only use your miles, your United miles to fly United. But anybody that understands or that searches on the website for an award would probably reasonably assume that once you pull the miles, you can use the miles to book the award that you see available on the website. But that's just not the case. Pulled miles, as has been insinuated here, can only be used for United Metal, only to book an award on United. So yeah, this was really cool to hear that customer service was able to do this.

Now, if customer service wasn't able to just move the miles for free, what would have been the move? What would have been the way to handle this? So, you know, I was wondering, was this like a one-off exception that an agent did? Or is there some way that we can in general use United pooling to move miles like what happened with Jeremy? And you know what? I think you can actually do it. So I looked up their website,

the United's website about mileage pooling. And first in the FAQ, the first question tells me where Jeremy got the idea that miles would be split evenly when they cancel the pool. So the question here in the FAQ was, can a pool leader leave a miles pool? The answer is yes. If the pool leader leaves the miles pool, the pool is dissolved and any remaining miles in the pool will be distributed equally amongst the remaining members' accounts in the pool at the time it was dissolved, including the pool leader. Okay, so that's probably where he got that idea from. But what if his wife had left the pool first? So there's a question on there that says,

can I leave a Miles pool after joining? Yes, a Miles pool member can leave the pool at any time. However, Miles contributed by any member who leaves the pool will be forfeited by that member and will stay with the pool to be shared among remaining members. So it seems to me, I haven't tried this, but if you want to give your points to someone else you have them start a pool you put in however many points you want you leave the pool and then they're free to disband the pool after that and they should get all the all the miles i think yeah i think i think and we talked about this i think back when this feature debuted that we i think because we

we had looked at that and said oh well that seems like it would be kind of a backdoor way to get this done or maybe it came up from a reader question at some point long ago so yeah i think that should work and maybe that's why the customer service agent was willing to just transfer them over because they realized well i mean the alternative is going to get them there anyway. So what's the difference? Or maybe you just got a friendly customer service agent that was willing to do it for nothing. Because a lot of those things that cost something to do with customer service agents on the phone with airlines, like those fees can be waived. In most cases, it's not like something hard coded into the system. Obviously, you have to pay the award taxes and fees if you book an award.

But when it comes to stuff like this, they probably do have the power to do it without charging a fee. So great that they did that. But yeah, I think that's kind of the backdoor way to do it, the way that Greg just described should presumably work. It's just a matter of disbanding the pool so that then the miles can be used for anything you want. It's kind of a silly system, I feel like, to make you have to jump through these hoops. Right, right. And the way I described it, it sounds like you're kind of cheating them to do that on purpose. But at the same time, it's how they wrote it up.

It doesn't take a genius to figure that out. So, yeah, i don't know they should just get rid of that limitation so that people would use points pooling the way it's intended and right right you wouldn't need to you wouldn't need to like uh kind of trick the system to move the points from one person to another yeah i think the scary wording in that sentence is that the points of the member who leaves the pool be forfeited by the member. But if you read the rest of the sentence, as Greg did, it says, and we'll stay with the pool. So you're not going to lose the miles.

It's just you lose your claim to those miles because you've left the pool. So whoever the pool leader is has the power to do what they want with the miles. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So good tip anyway to come out of that. So thank you for sharing that one with us. All right. Let's talk about card news.

This week's card news, we got a devaluation to the Chase United Quest card, I guess. So the Quest card used to come with a statement credit for United purchases, but they've changed that, right? Yeah, there's actually a couple of United cards that were affected here. There's also United Business card had a way of getting a statement credit after something like seven United purchases. But the Quest card is the one that more people would likely have used, which is that it offers $125 statement credit today for United purchases. So, you know, very easy to earn $125 back. But starting March 24th, with both of these cards, instead of a statement credit, you get a United, you get United Travel Bank cash, which, you know, is fine if you fly United enough, I'm sure you can use it. But I mean, it has

limitations. Even if you are flying United a lot, I know that, I can't remember the details, but I know you can't always mix and match United travel cash with like other things like credit from a flight that hasn't been used or things like that. I'm not sure exactly, but anyway, it's definitely nowhere near as good as cashback. Right, right. And off the top of my head, I don't know whether the statement of credit from the Quest card as is the case today, whether that can be used booking through United for travel on another airline. I don't know whether, for instance, the example we just talked about where you book a trip

to Portugal and maybe there's a leg on tap air Portugal. Can you use your Quest card and get the statement statement credit as long as you're booking through United? I'm not sure. But in the future with travel bank cash, you can't do that. You can't book on a partner airline. You're going to be limited to United Metal. And then, of course, you have, I don't know, the United travel bank cash is valid for X amount of time. And so I guess these will be valid for less time than the standard with United

Travel Bank if you buy it is that it's valid for five years. But with, for instance, the IHG Premier card, you get travel bank cash that's valid for six months. So presumably this will be the same. And I feel like that starts to get confusing if you have other travel bank credits with multiple expiration policies, it just... Yeah, I don't know if this is limited in the expiration the way the IHG one is. I didn't hear that, if that's the case. Well, it's an annual benefit. So at the very least, it's valid for a year rather than five years as your other travel bank cash.

No, I think you're misunderstanding. So here's what's going on here. There's two separate things. There's earning the credit, which is an annual thing. So you have to spend up to $125 through United to earn the credit. And what you used to get was statement credit, which meant you're basically getting $125 back. And I don't think it matters whether when you're doing that United spend, whether you're booking a partner or United itself, as long as the charge comes through as a United charge, it should be fine. And that

should be the same going forward. The difference is now instead of getting the $125 as a statement credit, you're getting it as United Travel Bank cash, which then has to be spent on United Flights. And whether that has a different expiration date than normal travel bank cash, I don't know. I don't think it does, but I could be wrong. Okay. All right. Fair. Fair. Very good. Okay. So there's the first piece of travel or card news rather. The next piece of

card news is the Chase Aeroplan card is out with some news this year now that pay yourself back, which is a feature that is offered with the Aeroplan card that's pretty unique in terms of the airline cards. You can actually use your Aeroplan miles to book any kind of travel and pay yourself back at 1.25 cents per point or per mile. And that had been initially when they announced it limited to 60,000 miles per year, I think, or somewhere $600, I can't remember, something like that. And then they removed the cap entirely for a little bit. And then now they're back with a cap that it's limited to 200,000 miles per year that you can use to pay yourself back. Yeah.

Yeah. So they still allow unlimited pay yourself back if you want to do the other categories like grocery and I can't remember, dining or something. But in those categories, your miles are worth less than a penny each. So don't do that. But when you redeem your aeroplan miles for travel, you know, 1.25 cents is not a bad deal at all. And so now for the very heavy hitters that were doing a lot of this, yeah, you're going to be limited to 200,000 of it per year. So, you know, it'll affect some people, but I don't think all that many of our listeners probably will be hitting that cap. Well, right, right. But I'm glad to see some sort of a speed limit introduced,

because this is something I mentioned, I complained about, I'll say, several times when I've spoken with Aeroplan to say, hey, listen, it would just be nice to be able to tell people because saying it's unlimited was, I knew not really true because I knew that people who really went super hard got shut down. So I didn't know where to tell people the limit was. And so then it's really hard for me to even talk about it because I can't really say that it's unlimited, but I also can't say where the limit is. And I would think if you're going to redeem 50 or 100,000 miles, it'd probably be fine. But like 200, I didn't know.

Is that OK? Is it not OK? Where are they going to stop things? So I think it's really nice to have that speed limit in there. So I appreciate that. Also worth noting, though, I think anyway, and again, I don't have many recent data points on this, but my understanding all along was that if you've transferred a lot of your arrow plan points from another program, like we transfer 200,000 from Amex and then try to pay yourself back using your Chase arrow plan benefit.

I don't think they take kindly to that. So I think that you're likely to run into a problem if most of your arrow plan points are transferred from someone other than Chase or from a place other than your aeroplane card so caution that's all all right yeah that wraps up card news next awards points and more what's up with awards points and more we have some marriott news in here yeah so you know each year with marriott when you earn 50 nights or and again, at 75 nights, you get to select a choice benefit. This particular news affects only 75 nights, because one of the choices, one of the choice benefits you can pick once you've reached 75 nights within a calendar year with Marriott

is you can pick a 40,000 point free night award. And in the past, the trick has been to, so if you picked that 40K free night award before the end of December, then it was good until the end of the following year. So if you picked it like in December of 2024, it would have been good till the end of 2025. But the trick before was like, wait until January, and then pick it, and it'll be good last month that showed that when you pick the 40-night choice benefit, it said that it would be good for a year from the date of issue so you know basically it seemed like there was no way to kind of game it to be work to be good for two years because uh it'd only be good for exactly one year from when you choose it and so it didn't really matter then um whether you did in december or january if you needed it you know within the year then uh it would be fine anyway so the news here is that people tried it uh in december and instead of being good for a year it was good for a year plus a few days or whatever depending on when in december they picked

it and the bigger news is that those who picked it in January got the full two years out of it. And so that's good news for those that are picking it and haven't picked yet. Yeah, which you need to get on pretty soon, right? Because that needs to be selected in the first couple of weeks of January, right? They move the expiration date. So it used to be like January 6th. I think it's now end of January that you have until to pick it, something like that. Okay. Pick wisely, pick soon.

All right. So the next news is very, very similar. And hopefully the loophole is still there, but it doesn't appear to be. So IHG has same kind of thing. You can earn these choice benefits with certain number of nights each year. And one of those choice benefits is an annual lounge pass, which means for a year you get, you know, anytime you're at an IHG hotel that has a lounge, you get free access to that lounge. So the way it's written is you get that access for the rest of the current year and all of the next. So the loophole has been that when you complete your, let's say, 40 nights to get this choice benefit, you wait until January of the following year if you can.

You have something like 90 days, I think, or 60 days. I forget the exact amount. I think 90, yeah. Before you actually pick it. So the idea was if you reach the 40 nights near the end of the year and can wait until January to pick it, then you do that. And then it's good for the rest of, you know, let's say 2025 and all of 2026. So it's basically just like that Marriott thing. It's a way of keeping it for two years instead of one year. But even better, I mean, it's good for all your visits to hd hotels that have lounges not just once right so it could be

a very very valuable thing under the right circumstances um they have changed the terms now to say that it's um it's for the rest of the current year and all of the next based on when you have the when you're offered the award, not when you pick the award. So basically, if if they are actually, you know, enforcing this new language, then it means that loophole is closed. Sort of. I mean, how soon after your 40th night is complete, do you get offered the lounge access? Like if you complete your 40th night on December 30th, then you're probably okay. Yeah, probably going to get it for two years. So I mean, that's surely not what they're intending, especially because then it would discourage you from hitting the 40th night until the end of the year. So it discourage you from staying at IHG properties until like the last day of the year in order to do that. But I would think

that if it is enforced that way, that would be your new way to game it is to just stay at 39 nights until the end of the year. And I say December 30th or 31st. I can't recall how IHG handles December 31st stays. I never think of this until it's too late in the year to think about it. But different programs handle that differently. Like Hyatt, I know if you check out, or Elite Nights are earned based on checkout dates. So if I checked into a Hyatt on December 31st and checked out January 1st, then I would earn Elite Nights this year, not last year.

And I don't know how it works with IHG. So you either need to be staying December 30th or 31st, I'm not sure which, in order to push it as late as possible, but maybe that could be done. Yeah, maybe. I guess we'll have to see whether the language is about really when it's offered

versus when you complete your 40th night. I'm not sure what the exact language is. I just know it wasn't based anymore on waiting for you to pick it. So that's the main difference. All right. Well, we'll see. And then finally, in awards points and more, we have some news on taxes.

I know everybody's favorite topic, but it's first of the year or second of the year as we record this, third or fourth by the time you hear it, I suppose. So early in the year, we're getting towards tax time. And there's good news about taxes, right, Greg? Mostly good. Yeah. So we've long had the ability to pay taxes online by credit card for a fee. And the good news here is that the fee has gone down. Now, I think the previous lowest price was 1.8 something percent maybe yeah one maybe 1.87 percent i don't remember exactly it's down now to 1.75 percent um there there are two processors right now one is 1.75 percent to pay with a credit card the other other is 1.85%. So those are both really inexpensive ways to pay your taxes with a credit card and earn points and miles, have spend that works towards your

minimum spend if you have a new welcome bonus, things like that. And so that's really good news. The negative news is that one of the processors, so there used to be three processors. One of them is gone. PayUSA Tax, no longer available. If you go to their website, the first thing you see is, we are no longer processing federal tax payments on behalf of the IRS. And then it basically sends you back to the IRS page that shows the other two. That's a bummer for anyone who is counting on multiple payments through multiple processors.

That stinks. So what do you think happened here? Did they go out of business? I mean, because that's what else could payusatax.com be, right? I mean, that's the only thing you can do with that domain. So it's not like they're pivoting to something else, right? Yeah, I don't know i mean i don't really i don't know how these things work because on the one hand like you know did they do something that the irs didn't like did does irs

do they pay the irs for the rights to do this and if so i can understand uh why they might have pulled out because providing these low rates i don't even know how they can make money at these low rates. So I don't know. The whole thing confuses me because the fact that the other two reduced their prices – actually, maybe the IRS demanded that. And pay your state tax was like, well, we can't make money at that rate right even though i think they were the ones that were lowest before yeah well and maybe they were like this is as low as we could possibly go we can't trim anymore here you know that could be so yeah maybe that's what happened but at any rate for anybody who's listening and it's like wait a

second you pay a 1.75 fee that's probably not worth earning one point per dollar. You're right. It's not worth it at one point per dollar. So every now and then we get somebody who's confused and says, why would I pay my taxes with a card? I'm not earning enough to justify the fee. And that's true if you're using a card that earns one point per dollar or one and a half percent cash back, for instance, you'd be paying more in fees than you'd be earning in rewards. But as Greg just mentioned, if you just open a new credit card and you have a welcome bonus to meet, maybe you thought, oh, I can't meet the spend on that card because it requires $10,000 spend or $15,000 spend. Well, your tax bill could be a way to meet that spend pretty easily at pretty low cost at 1.75%. So that's one use that you might

make of this. If you have a card that earns 2% cash back, you're coming a little bit ahead of the fee, right? A quarter of a percent, which may not be a lot depending on how much you owe in taxes. I mean, if you owe a large sum of taxes, that could add up to be a not insignificant chunk of change, but at least it is a small win nonetheless. You have cards that have big spend bonuses, where if you meet $20,000 spend, you get such and such a benefit. And so again, might be worth paying the 1.75% for really easy spend in that regard. Or then you have some people who have cards like the US Bank Smartly card that we talked about recently, where you could be earning 4% cash back. And if you're earning 4% and paying 1.75%, you're basically just printing money at that point, 2.25% profit on your taxes. Now I say printing money, of course, you're losing money in

the sense that you're paying your taxes, I suppose, but you're earning more than the cost of the fee is the point. So there are a lot of different ways to do that, different options. We have a whole post about the paying taxes with a credit card and why it can make sense. So that's worth mentioning. And then the last thing worth mentioning is it's not going to count as a cash advance. It'll count as a purchase. So don't worry about that. And it's not a cash equivalent.

No matter what Amex agent tries to tell you, that be a chat. It does count towards welcome bonus spend with Amex every now and then, well, not every now and then, more than every now and then, we'll get a report from somebody who says, hey, an Amex person told me that this isn't gonna count towards the minimum spending requirements, but it does. We've done it plenty of times

and lots of other readers have done it plenty of times. So despite what an agent might've told you, that's not true. If you're like, oh man, I met the minimum spend three days ago and I still don't have the welcome bonus points. And Amex chat is telling me it's because these purchases don't count. Again, just chill. Wait. It'll post.

Give it some time. Welcome bonus should post. So anyway, wanted to mention all that. Yes, totally. All right. Next up, People's Choice Bonvoy and Deal of the Year. So on previous shows, we've talked about Nick and I have listed out what we thought were the deal of the year and what we thought was the rewards program Grinch of the year, the program that Bonvoyed us the most. So what we also did is on our blog, we listed polls so that readers could chime in with which ones did they think were best. So what we're going to do here is basically summarize what the People's Choice winners were for each of these categories. So let's start with Bonvoy.

The Bonvoy Awards of 2024. As a reminder, Nick and I both picked Hyatt, Breaking Our Hearts with Mr. and Mrs. Smith. The way they incorporated Mr. and Mrs. Smith as dynamically award pricing meant that we couldn't get outsized value booking those hotels the way we could previously when Hyatt was partnered with Small Luxury Hotels of the World, SLH, and the way we can with regular Hyatt hotels. You can't do that. You can't get outsized value with Mr. and Mrs. Smith bookings. And that's really sad to us. So, all right, Nick, what did the readers say was the Bonvoy of the Year winners?

The people's choice was, Hyatt breaks our heart with Mr. and Mrs. Smith. It seems that Hyatt broke many hearts out there. 268 of you voted for Mr. and Mrs. Smith being the one that broke the most hearts. And then of course, second place was built reducing rent day earnings to 1k. That actually surprised me a little bit that that was, that was a second place vote that they reduced the rent day earnings, because I would have felt like that affected a smaller number of people. But I was surprised

to see that that was number two. And number three was Chase dropping priority pass restaurants. Again, another one that, well, no, that one doesn't really surprise me. Let me back up. I'm not surprised that that was in there.

And that's something that did, did we have that in there? I can't remember if we had that on our original list or not on the, on the reader poll, we added some that people had suggested after, after we did our show. And that might've been one that we added later. Yeah.

Yeah. But, yeah, I think that's a good one. That was a sad day. So, you know, just in case you don't know what we're talking about is some versions of Priority Pass, you can get free meals at certain airport restaurants that accept Priority Pass. But the Chase versions of Priority Pass no longer do that. All right. What about we did the same sort of thing with the deal of the year, right? So those were Bonvoy to the year, the disappointments of the year.

But then we also separately had talked about the deal of the year 2024, the things that we thought were the best deals of 2024. So to recap, Greg and Steven both picked the SAS Eurobonus Millionaire promotion as the deal of the year 2024, since it was so creative and interesting and big. Then I picked Hilton rolling out small luxury hotels of the world because they really surprised us with how well they integrated that. And I thought that that was a really good deal for a lot of people. And Tim disagreed with all of us and said, no, it was the Chase Inc. welcome and referral offers. Because if you stack the two of those, Greg talked on the show about stacking those and within his own family and kind of having a conga line of referrals and picking up a bunch

of points that way. And Tim said that was the deal of the year. What did the readers say? Readers agreed with Tim. So 30% picked the Chase Inc. welcome offers plus referral offers, like the conga line type of thing. So that's a big blowout win because the next biggest percentage on there was 16%. So almost twice as many voted for the Inc. thing as the second place, which was Hilton adding small luxury hotels of the world. And then third place with 12% of the vote was the SAS Euro bonus millionaire promotion. So interestingly, the team picked the exact same set of winners here as the readers did. But, you know, Tim, Tim agreed, or readers agreed with Tim the most overall. Yeah, and I struggled between that and the one I picked. And I know you thought that was a great deal. So it certainly was a very good one. I'm not terribly surprised to see that lots of readers picked that. I think that some people will find that interesting. People who have not really considered business cards might find that interesting,

thinking that, wait, that was the deal of the year for a business card, but only so many people can open business cards. But I think that that just goes to show how relatively widely available business cards can be. We've talked before about how you might not think you have a business, but you probably do. So I think it's interesting to see that more readers picked that than anything else as the deal of the year, something that some readers probably imagine is more niche than it is. Yeah, yeah. There's just so many points available through that, that it was absolutely a great deal. And sorry to see it reduced in several ways. One, Chase has tightened up approvals for Chase Inc. cards since then. And two, they have reduced the referral bonus on the Inc. cards. So both those things kind of hurt that deal going forward. A couple of bummers there. But let's talk instead about bummers about the things we're excited about. It's time for the main event. Main event time. 10 point-ish things we're most looking forward to.

So I'm going to kick it off reading the five that were on my mind, and then Nick will follow up with the five on his mind, and we'll both chime in as we're talking, I think. So first up for me is small luxury hotels of the world. Even though I didn't pick it as deal of the year, it's been on my mind so much. I've been so excited by the way Hilton has implemented this and the way they've onboarded more SLH properties than Hyatt ever did already. In just one year, Hilton, in less than a year actually, Hilton's onboarded more than Hyatt did during their entire partnership with SLH. So they're doing something right, and I'm excited to explore more of them.

I'm excited I have a booking at that one in Lake Como that Nick loves. And I'm also just excited about just searching around and looking for opportunities to try out great hotels that I might never have ever seen or bothered with before. Certainly wouldn't have paid cash for in some cases because they're outrageously expensive in some cases. So all of that. Yeah, I'm excited too. I have reservations at a couple of SLH properties next year that fit exactly into those buckets that Greg was mentioning that there are places that look really cool that are way more expensive than I would ever consider spending the money for. And that I didn't previously notice probably were available. Maybe one of them might've been available with Hyatt, but not all of them. So yeah, I'm excited about SLH stays this year. And that's interesting because

I should re-qualify for Globalist. I'm still waiting for my 60th night to post, but yet I'm almost more excited about Hilton this year than I am about Hyatt, even though I'll have Globalist status again. And it's all because of the small luxury hotels. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Number two up on my list is very similar. So Preferred Hotels and Resorts is a program a lot like Small Luxury Hotels of the World. In this case, Preferred Hotels and Resorts are bookable with points in two ways in which you can get outsized value. One is through the partnership with Choice Privileges. You can book these preferred hotels, not all of them, but a select number of them through Choice. And you can also transfer, if you have a Citi Strata Premier Card, you can transfer

one to two to Choice. So you could get a lot of choice points that way, and book preferred hotels and resorts. I'm actually recording this as we speak from a preferred hotel, which I'll give an update about this next week's show. But a little preview, it worked out, booking with choice points. I didn't know they had your reservation craig that's all i really wanted to know you arrived and they knew who you were the the but so there's that's one way of booking the other way is with preferred hotels own i prefer points and those points you could get you could transfer from city bank one to. So you get four times as many I prefer points as Citi points if you're transferring that way. And so weirdly,

like different hotels are available, depending on like through I prefer or through choice. And even the availability differs, whether awards are available and any given night differs between the two but anyway those are two ways of getting potentially really great in some cases outsized value and in both cases now um you can do that booking online um it's not without its problems but there's a whole world of uh potentially very interesting hotels out there that are probably worth trying out. And so I'm looking forward to seeing what we could find and what kind of gems we can find out there. We'll see. I'm curious also, but I'm cautious. I'm curious to hear about Greg's experiences with preferred hotels. I am not personally looking forward to any preferred

hotels stays this year, but I'm looking forward to hearing about Greg's. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. For better or for worse. Hopefully for better. Next thing I'm looking forward to is Alaska mileage plan is going to be rolling out mixed partner awards. So as things stand today or last year, depending on when you're listening to this, I guess Alaska, when you, when you're listening to this, I guess. Alaska, when you use their miles, they have a lot of great partners. But if you use their miles for a partner award, you can only have one partner in Alaska itself in a single booking. And that's really limits what you can do. Especially if you need an American Airlines flight as a positioning flight to get to, let's say, an international departure airport to fly somewhere, then Alaska's not the best bet until they allow mixed partner awards. And so they're supposed to be rolling that out, starting with awards to Europe. And I think that's going to just make Alaska Miles Plan a lot more valuable once they do.

Yeah, I am excited about this because I think this is going to make Alaska an Aeroplan-like program in many ways. Once you can mix and match partners, they don't have as many partnerships as Aeroplan has, but they do have good award chart sweet spots and the ability to add a stopover for free. And when you can mix different partners and have a stopover, I think that's going to make the program far more exciting

for people with the flexibility to be able to take advantage of that. That's not going to work for everybody. But for those of us that have some flexibility, people that work remotely or retired or have more time, whatever the case might be, I think Alaska mileage plan is going to become a really interesting program for those mixed partner awards this year. So I agree with Greg. I'm excited about that. I transferred over, but put the miles where my mouth is, so to speak. I transferred over some membership rewards points just before midnight on December 31st because I was a little nervous that that could end on January 1st. I'm talking about the ability to transfer from Amex to Hawaiian so that then I could transfer from my Hawaiian account to my Alaska account. I was nervous that that might go away, so I transferred

over some miles while I still could, which goes totally against my typical advice of not speculatively transferring miles. And I did it without any transfer bonus, so it sounds super awful. But I'm pretty confident that when these Mixed Partner Awards come online, I'm going to be excited about them. Yeah, yeah. I'm going to give just one example of where both the free stopover and the Mixed partner thing can be really important. So I fly out of Detroit, and I often find great international award flights out of JFK. There are no – there's no one world. There's no Alaska bookable flights that go from Detroit to JFK.

But there are American Airlines flights that go from Detroit to LaGuardia. But if I'm doing an international flight from JFK, I think I want to fly to LaGuardia, you know, the day before at the very least, or maybe make a weekend out of it in New York and, you know, fly there, spend the weekend. It depends when the international flight is, right? So, with these two things, you know, let's say it's a cutter flight from JFK. So, you know, with these two things in place, I'd be able to book, you know, on a Friday, fly to LaGuardia, have a nice weekend in New York, and then fly onward, let's say on Sunday, on Qatar to wherever I'm going. And so that kind of thing could all be in one award. It wouldn't cost more through Alaska to do that once they allow both the, once they allow the mixed partner award booking, and you can mix that with the free stopovers.

But I'm going to caution that Aeroplan allows a free stopover. No, not a free stopover. Let me back that up. Aeroplan allows a stopover on their awards for an additional 5,000 miles with the caveat that there are no stopovers allowed in North America. So I might bet that Alaska will do something similar once you can do mixed partner awards specifically to avoid people doing what Greg said and doing an American flight and a stopover in the US. I might bet on that, but that's a prediction. And I already made my predictions for 2025. So I guess I'm too late. I don't know for sure that that'll be the

case. So maybe I'm too late on that. But yeah, I mean, it seems to me likely that that'll be the case so so maybe i'm too late on that but yeah i mean it seems to me likely that that would be a it would be a softball uh prediction to to restrict that all right i'm not done with alaska stuff though so my my next thing i'm looking forward to is the ability to earn alaska elite status through award bookings. So, we are now supposedly, any awards that we book and fly in 2025 and beyond should earn elite qualifying miles on Alaska based on how far you fly. And so, if you book a couple of long distance international awards using Alaska miles, it doesn't have to be flying Alaska at all. You will get those elite qualifying miles and it should be pretty easy to get at least

first tier Alaska elite status that way. Yeah, I think that's hot. I think that's going to be huge because some people will use that and fly far away on Alaska's partners and create complicated trips and end up with elite status out of it. And one world elite status is nice to have because you can get lounge access on one world bookings. And so there could be some nice lounges you can visit with your one world elite status. So I think that that's pretty good and also decent benefits even when you're flying American. So I think that'll be really cool. I'm looking forward to that too. I don't have any Alaska award bookings this year, so I don't know if I'm going to take advantage of it this year, maybe next year. Yeah. I don't currently have any bookings, but, and, and for me, it's not even like, oh, I really want Alaska elite status. It's more just

like, how cool is this that we can earn earn elite status from from booking awards because in the past it's you know it it's a relatively new phenomenon for an airline to offer any kind of credit for uh using their own miles but delta started doing that um virgin atlantic started doing it um but i think alaska may be the only one that does it for partner awards. But certainly it's the one with the best mileage program for booking awards. And so it has a lot of potential there. And so I'm just kind of geeking out on the fact that it's even possible to do. Yeah, it's nice to be able to get value.

I mean, obviously, miles are not nothing. They're worth something. And so I think it's nice that an airline is recognizing that you are trading something of value, so to speak, for that flight. Your miles aren't, you know, they aren't zero. They're something. And so you're spending money that, yeah, I think you should get some benefit back from. I'm a little surprised that it's all mileage-based,

you know, like distance-based still, but that's good. I'm happy surprised about that. Yeah, totally. All right, my last one, it's still Alaska. I hate that I stuck on this Alaska thing, but as I said, we were listing things that are kind of on our minds. And so once I started with Alaska

as my third thing on the list, the other things that I'm looking forward to kept popping up. Their premium card. They're supposed to have a premium card coming out this summer. I'm kind of honestly lukewarm on the details that we know so far. But at the same time, anytime there's an interesting new credit card with new features that comes out. I'm very interested. I've talked before and written on the blog about how I'm kind of nerdy when it comes to credit cards. I like collecting them, especially ones that have unique features.

And this one will have unique features. And so I'm geeking out about, Hey, this interesting new premium Alaska card is going to be coming out this summer. I can't wait to see all the details. Yeah. It could be exciting. I'm glad, glad that you're excited about it. Glad to see it coming.

I want to see some more competition in that space. So that's good. And I think, I think maybe what I'm most excited about is that Alaska does want to be competitive. You know, I think that they recognize what everybody else offers and they want to be competitive with it. Whereas I feel like in many cases, you get the sense that airline decision makers must just be existing in a vacuum, right? And only looking at their members. And Alaska is one of the programs that I feel like is paying close attention to both what other people are doing and how frequent flyers are reacting to that and feeling about it.

And then what they want to do differently than others. So I'm interested to see what comes of that, because I think they're attuned to the game, so to speak, and want to do what they can to make it both profitable for them, but also interesting for us. So hopefully we'll see a win-win come there. All right. Now, Greg's excitement was mostly on the redeeming side, right? So there's small luxury hotels, preferred hotels, mixed partner awards, earning status through partner awards, and the premium card more so for the benefits, I think, probably than the spending on it.

I had more excitement when I went to think about this in terms of finding different things. I think maybe the thrill of the hunt in terms of finding ways to earn some stuff. Or I guess to use it too. So number six, the next one up on the list today is digging into the SAS award chart. So SAS, of course, Scandinavian Airlines, we all completed the challenge last year, or at least we think we did, Greg did, but Stephen and I are just still hoping we did, to hopefully earn a million SAS miles when all is said and done, when the dust settles from the SAS Euro Bonus Millionaire Challenge.

And I'm really excited about looking into what can we do with these SAS miles, assuming that I get them, in order to get good value. And I know at the very least, I should be getting 100,000 SAS miles, but I should be getting a million SAS. If you're listening, it'd be nice to get those retroactive mileage claims sorted out so I would know I'm getting a million miles. But anyway, once I hopefully earn the million, I just can't wait to dig into this. We've gotten some tips from various people about some sweet spots and kind of, you know, hiding in plain sight sweet spots in the SAS award chart. And so I'm excited to kind of dig into that further. I have intentionally sort of not looked at it yet, waiting to get the million miles,

and then we'll start doing some planning and taking a look at how we can get great value out of it. I'm excited because I have enjoyed digging into kind of, I'm going to say, unknown programs, programs that don't get so much attention over the years. Obviously, there was Turkish years ago with the Hawaii discovery. But then I also just enjoy looking at these and seeing, well, there must be something somewhere, right? And SAS, it seems like there might be quite a few things.

So I can't wait to figure that out. Yeah. And I can't wait to see what Nick digs up. I mean, Nick is the one that dug up the Turkish sweet spot flying United to Hawaii, which is still there. It's a little bit changed, but, you know, still there. And, you know, I'm expecting Nick to find something not as amazing, but you'll find some good stuff. I'm sure there'll be some other good stuff. It's kind of like Life Miles.

I enjoy the thrill of the hunt there too, right? Trying to figure out, okay, well, where can you get great value out of Life Miles? Because we know there's some hidden stuff in there. Same kind of thing with SAS. So, all right, that's SAS. Next up, finding a great Vacasa redemption. So we talked a lot about Vacasa for a long time using Wyndham Rewards Points to book Vacasa vacation rentals. And so we discussed that at length a couple of years ago. And then last year,

that was one of the things I think that made our bond void list because they sort of devalued the award chart, sort of. They changed the award chart for Vacasa vacation rentals anyway. And I just didn't find any situations where that lined up with my travel plans last year. And so I really have been out of the loop on Vacasa for an enlarged part. Not to say that I don't understand how it works, just that I haven't really looked for a great redemption with Vacasa in a while. But I did buy Wyndham Rewards points in the sale that ended December 31st. So points were available for 0.715 cents each. And I said, you know what, I'm going to go ahead and grab some more points so

that I have a more usable balance than I did and hunt out a really cool Vacasa Redemption. And I don't know what that's going to be or where it's going to be yet. So if you have tips about your favorite Vacasa vacation rentals, let us know in the comments wherever you're watching or listening because uh i definitely want to find a trip that i can kind of fashion around a really cool vacasa redemption yeah yeah yeah and i i think that that vacasa rentals are great for families like you know nick you're traveling often with your family i had great use of it when i um my wife and I traveled with some friends. And so you want to, you know, book something where you're all staying together. Those are awesome. For me, like looking forward, I don't know how much I'm going to be doing that,

but I'm looking forward to seeing what, what Nick finds. But to the extent that I'm traveling with a group, I'll be looking for this too. Yeah, you know, we've got some family trips coming up this year. My wife's parents are retiring soon. And so I'm interested in seeing what I can find in terms of putting together a really cool one. So we'll see. All right, that's number seven. Number eight. This is another thrill of the hunt.

Finding some great Capital One miles deals. And what I mean here is we talked during the Deal of the Year episode about the fact that the Capital One, well, there's Capital One shopping that's available to everyone. I'm not talking about that right now. I'm talking about Capital One offers is really what it's called. So if you have a Capital One credit card and you log into your Capital One account, there are also shopping offers in there that work kind of like a portal. And in the past, those were cash back offers, no matter which card you were using. But at some point over the last few months, they kind of converted that. So now if you're logging in

with a Capital One card that earns miles, you see offers that are in terms of number of miles, 20x miles, 30x miles, whatever the case might be, 5 x miles are not all that big. But we've seen some really cool offers in there. We've had readers report something, I don't know, within the last month that was a crazy deal. You could end up spending like 750 bucks, I think, and end up with more than 100,000 Capital One miles. And a bunch of people did it and successfully got the miles. And so I'm looking forward to digging into some of those and the hunt there because you never know what you're going to find. And Capital One has made it interesting in that way that you never know what you're going to find in there.

And you never know when you're going to find that next big thing that might be exciting. So I'm really excited about just logging in every now and then and checking and seeing, hey, how can we buy miles really cheaply with a really awesome Capital One offers offer? Yeah, yeah. It reminds me of the thrill of the hunt when American First rolled out their loyalty points scheme. And we were digging through the American Airlines portal and the Simply Miles card-linked offers to find great deals where we could earn both American Airlines miles and loyalty points. But now we're seeing, you know, this doesn't help you get elite status, but there are some situations where you can get so many Capital One miles that who cares about elite status? You'd

have so many miles, you can just book first class or whatever with those points and really enjoy those rewards. So yeah, there's a lot of a lot of potential there. Yeah, there is there is and some of these places 20 or 30 x even when you're talking in terms of miles, even just for regular shopping stuff, I'm like, hold off before we go and buy whatever it is that we need to buy, you know, kids grow out of their clothes, need new clothes, or whatever the case might be, let's let's take a look at this first. And that's also interesting to me because cashback monitor had made me pretty lazy in terms of I didn't really need to log in a whole bunch of different places. I can just go to one place and see what all the the offers are. But with these Capital One offers, you have to be logged in here to see

what the offers are. And so it adds a layer of complexity and difficulty that is less convenient, but also kind of exciting because you don't know what you're going to find until you get there. True. All right. So that's that's that one. Next up, getting back into the swing of bank account bonuses. I was for a couple of years really gung ho and doing bank account bonuses. And when I talk about bank account bonuses, what I mean are various bonuses for opening new checking accounts or savings accounts or brokerage accounts. And they often have different requirements, like you need to have X number of direct deposits or you need to bring X amount of money of new money to the bank and leave it there for a certain amount of time.

And so I did quite a bit of that for a few years, certainly during the pandemic. A couple of years of that went pretty hard because there wasn't much else to do. And then I just got busy with other things. And so the last year, last two years, I have kind of like fallen out of practice with that and need to get back into it. And this US Bank business card bonus has me particularly interested, not business card, business checking account bonus has me particularly interested because I think you need to deposit for the best bonus, it's $900, you need to deposit $30,000. Now, that one ends soon. So that'll end a few days after this publishes.

So if you hear this when it first publishes, that'll be valid. If not, that one's probably expired, but there's probably something else out there like it. So at any rate, what I find interesting about this one is you need to deposit the money within 30 days of opening the account, and then the money needs to stay there until the 60th day after you've opened the account. So you need $30,000, you can move to US Bank for 30 days. And that's it. So money only needs to be there for 30 days. So I think I can move some things around to make that happen for 30 days for the $900 bonus. And I said, you know, I got to do more of that and a little bit more of the moving and shaking when I have an opportunity to earn those

kinds of bank account bonuses. So I have a goal in mind for this year, and we'll see how we do. So again, going to try to get back into the swing of that because we wrote a lot about bank account bonuses. We have still continued to write about bank account bonuses, but I haven't done as many of them. So I want to get back into doing those this year. So there's a New Year's resolution. And finally, the last one, this is my one kind of geeky, nerdy, no, I guess they're all kind of geeky and nerdy, aren't they? This is the geekiest and nerdiest of the different things that I'm excited about this year. And that is I want to try out the American Airlines landline bus between Philadelphia and Atlantic City. So if you book an award ticket on American Airlines to or from Atlantic City,

it is, I think, in all cases, I think, going to include a bus between Atlantic City and Philadelphia. So you're not actually flying that leg. It's a luxury bus. And they launched this a couple of years ago. And I just haven't had a reason to take this up, a reason to go to Atlantic City. But I'm hoping to do the match that I said I was going to do. And that is in January match my Caesars diamond status. It's going to expire at the end of January, 2025. I want to get that matched to Bally superstar status so that I can go back to Atlantic City sometime after March 1st and hopefully match my way back to ocean prime and another quote unquote free cruise on MSC. So that involves going to Atlantic City, which is drivable for me, but it's like five plus hours to drive, which yeah, it's not

super convenient to do, especially if I end up going by myself. So instead I could just drive an hour to the airport and fly to Philadelphia and then take the bus from Philadelphia to Atlantic City for like 6,000 American Airlines or 7,000 American Airlines miles each way. So I'm going to give that a shot, I think. I haven't booked anything yet, but I'm excited to do that because it's one of those weird things. You get to Philadelphia and there's like, there's a gate in the airport and you get on a bus at that gate. And so that just seems weird to me and kind of fun. Yeah. Yeah. No, you know, it's just like how I've been looking forward to, you know, trying to find a good Greyhound route to... No, you haven't. No,

you haven't. No, not at all. I'm excited about the American Airlines bus. I want to see how it stacks up. You know, I haven't been on Greyhound in years, but I have done across the country in Greyhound. I went Las Vegas to Albany one time on Greyhound. So I've traveled long distances on Greyhound. I want to traveled long distances on Greyhound. I want to see how American Airlines landline stacks up. Yeah, yeah. So this is different from like, so in Europe, some of the carriers like Air France will let you book a train ride as part of the flight booking, whether it's an award or a cash ticket. That's different though, right?

Because those are regular trains that they're running anyway but this one is is am i right that this one is just for uh american airlines passengers yeah i mean it's painted with americans logo and everything like you're on the american airlines bus there's no you know let there be no doubt about it i think that's really smart of american airlines to have a flight that intentionally doesn't get off the ground. Right. Instead of the types that often can't get off the ground when they're supposed to. Right, right, right. There's some value to be had in that.

So I'm particularly interested in the way back because so the way there from flying from my home, we'll connect and I'll connect in Philadelphia. And so doing that means that, like I said, I'll be going to a gate, like, you know, airside in the airport to go get on my bus to Atlantic City. So that should be really easy. On the way back, I think you don't actually go through security in Atlantic City, because I don't think they can drop you still in the secure area at Philadelphia. So I think you just go to the check-in counter and get on the bus outside the airport. And it takes you to Philadelphia outside the airport.

And then you still have to go through security and stuff. But I'm curious about that process because they obviously have to ensure that the bus gets there early enough that you can make it through security. Or do they have their own security line? I haven't really looked far into this because I haven't had a reason to use it yet, but that's why I'm excited because it's kind of different and new and I can report on my experience how it goes.

Do they have like a first class and economy on the bus? No, they don't. They don't. In fact, according to what I read about it, they don't even assign seating until the day of. So you can't even pick your seat on the bus until the day of. But I think they're all just all the same. But from what I've read and the pictures I've looked at, it looks like it's a reasonably nice bus.

You know, it's probably nicer than their planes, which, you know, of course, the bar isn't too high there. But, you know, probably nicer than being on a plane. Do they have a flight or bus attendant service? Apparently, they do not. No, they don't roll down the cart with drinks or anything? No. No drink cart. No. But then again, I mean, if you were flying from Philadelphia to Atlantic City, they also probably wouldn't. That's true. They'll tell you it's too short of a flight, even though in Asia, if you had the same length flight, they would serve a full meal. Right, right. That's, that's what I figured. So moral of the story, bring your own snacks and drinks, but, but I'll have more, hopefully to report on that sometime in the next month,

because hopefully I'll do that this month. So we'll see. Sounds good. All right. That I think brings us to this week's question of the week. And this week's question of the week is one that came in via email and Greg already answered, but I thought that this already answered it via email, but I thought this was interesting for the show. And this week's question of the week is one that came in via email and Greg already answered, but I thought that this already answered it via email, but I thought this was interesting for the show. And also because I can add a little update if he can't add it himself. So we'll see. Phil writes in and says, hi, I've recently gotten into the credit card game and found your podcast really interesting and informative. My wife and I are traveling to Korea, rather. Yes. My wife and I are traveling to Korea in June. I booked our return flight on

Korean Air and Economy with Virgin Atlantic Miles. I just got an email from Hilton telling me I'm eligible for a match to Delta Gold. That was a targeted offer. Only some people got it, but it's worth mentioning here because sometimes Delta does offer elite status matches. So he has the opportunity to match from Hilton to Delta Gold. Will I be able to give Korean my Delta number in order to get lounge access and any other perks from this status? Thanks for all you do, Phil. So what's the word? Is it worth doing a match in that case? If you have the chance, if you booked a Korean Air flight using your Virgin Atlantic miles, is it worth matching to Delta?

And can you get any benefits? Yeah. Yeah. Doesn't matter how you booked it um you can get your delta number onto that flight because korean and delta are partners and uh then you should be eligible for sky team uh elite benefits um so that's not delta Elite Benefits, not Korean Air Elite Benefits, but specifically whatever SkyTeam offers. And that's limited, but it may be, depending on what level of SkyTeam status you have, it might give you lounge access. like priority check-in and things like that, which I know when I last flew, Corrine was actually very helpful. There were some long lines in the regular line,

but I was able to go to the Sky Priority line and zoom right in. Yeah, yeah. So the small update I have here is I did look it up because I said to myself, Delta Gold, that's sort of mid-tier status with Delta. Is that going to be good enough to get you any useful Sky team benefits so i was curious and i looked it up and yeah delta gold platinum and diamond members all get sky team elite plus status so this is like the high tier so to speak of sky team you know alliance wide status now i should caveat that with saying that the Sky Team benefits aren't as good as like the One World or Star Alliance, Alliance wide benefits. So, you know, temper your enthusiasm,

knowing that the benefits are not as good as they are with some other alliances. However, Greg is absolutely right with your Delta Gold, you get Sky Team Elite Plus status, which yes, gets your priority check in. And that is nice. I've run into that same thing before where I've used Delta status when I was able to get it via a match to skip a huge line at the airport on an international flight. So that certainly was really nice. You'll get additional baggage allowance, which could be useful if you're doing an international trip. Maybe you're checking bags. And, yes, you get lounge access.

As a Delta Gold member, you will get yourself lounge access flying internationally with korean in that case so so yeah you'll be able to access the lounge and i think that's really nice too and then of course you know there's a bunch of other small benefits like priority you know standby and waitlist and stuff that probably isn't going to apply to your trip but anyway i thought that that was really good priority security too it said we're available which may be available depending on where you're departing in the United States, you may have also priority security. So all of those things could come in handy. So it's worth it potentially, to keep your eye out for matches like this. And that's why I wanted to bring it up

because Delta does pretty frequently offer some sort of a match opportunity anyway. And so that's something you might consider if you have an economy class trip coming up on an international partner. Now I mentioned an economy class trip because if you had booked Korean in business class with your Virgin Miles, there's not going to be much benefit with Sky Team Elite Plus benefits because if you're traveling in business class, yeah, there's nothing. You already have all those things that we just mentioned. So this is really most applicable to people who are traveling in economy class you want to keep your eye out for a match like that yep absolutely all right that brings us to the end of this week's

episode if you've enjoyed this and you'd like to get more of this stuff in your email inbox each day or each week you want to go to frequent miler.com slash subscribe again that's frequent miler.com slash subscribe to join our email's frequentmiler.com slash subscribe to join our email list. Follow us on all the various social media. Join our Frequent Miler Insiders Facebook group where you can discuss stuff like this every day. And if you have a question that you'd like to be considered for a future question of the week or a piece of feedback to be considered for our giant mailbag, you can send that too. Send it to mailbag at frequentmiler.com. Bye, everybody.