Frequent Miler on the Air - 100K Offers here, there, and everywhere | Ep93 | 4-10-21

Episode Date: April 10, 2021

00:34 Giant Mailbag: Greg asks for advice 8:04 What crazy thing....double header! First: What crazy thing...did Greg do this week? https://frequentmiler.com/going-for-wyndhams-124x-offer/ Note that the increased payouts have ended: https://frequentmiler.com/wyndham-rewards-shopping-portal-offering-up-to-quintuple-base-points-great-rates-on-offer/ 14:04 What crazy thing....did Radisson do this week? https://frequentmiler.com/radisson-rewards-splitting-operations-between-the-americas-rest-of-the-world/ 21:46 Mattress Running the Numbers: Should you transfer to Singapore for Star Alliance Gold status? https://frequentmiler.com/earn-krisflyer-star-alliance-silver-or-gold-when-transferring-125k-or-250k-points-to-singapore-airlines/ 35:57 Main Event: 100K Offers here, there, and everywhere https://frequentmiler.com/wow-get-100000-bonus-united-miles-with-new-offer/ https://frequentmiler.com/big-130k-business-platinum-85k-business-gold-targeted-offers/ https://frequentmiler.com/100k-capital-one-venture-rewards-credit-card-bonus-after-20k-in-purchases/ 1:07:33 Post Roast 1:09:03 Question of the Week: Is the Lowes Preload card worth a look?

frequent miler on the air starts now today's main event 100k offers here there everywhere everywhere you look they're all over the place where you look is this a new normal crazy what do you think we'll get into it we'll get into it and we're going to talk about what it means for our frequent flyer future because all these miles coming out means we're grabbing them now but what does it mean when we're all trying to redeem them we'll see first we have the giant mailbag but i'm using i'm using my uh one get out of jail free card to do something different today okay i'm doing the giant mailbag today we're doing ask nick i get it i get to ask nick for advice today for free he's not even going to charge me because he's put on the spot having right to answer so all right well i do earn a

salary so you're kind of paying for this anyway greg but i knew this was going to backfire on me. All right. All right. So here's, here's the dilemma. I, I just realized this today, which is kind of extraordinary given how much research I've done into this. So you might remember, I have 269,000 ANA miles expiring end of September. I've heard about this once or twice because you've been planning this epic round the world journey that you've written a few posts about using your miles, right? Right, right. And as a little side Right. So at the end of March, my miles expired. But back last summer, I had I had registered or maybe it was last fall registered in an A&A promotion to extend miles that are about to expire. And that didn't happen yet. So I went back to that promo to see the terms and it said, we can expect them. Basically you can expect the miles to disappear and they'll come back by the

end of the month. Wow. So that's just kind of bizarre. Yeah. Yeah. A little scary, but I trust ANA. I think,

I think it'll do it. I just can't figure out why. Why do they have to go away? Like they get put in a penalty box somewhere and you're like, Oh, they're there somewhere. I could understand if this was like a last minute thing, they were like, Oh, we need to extend them. You know, then maybe they wouldn't be ready technically, but they've had many,

many months to prepare for this. That makes sense. But they've had years and years and years to bring their website up to date from like 1986 Nintendo style. And they haven't. We're expecting too much for a highly technological solution. Yeah. Good point.

Anyway. So they're gone, but they're coming back. Assuming my miles come back. I was thinking about, okay, it's finally at the point now where there might be enough award space available next year, you know, because most award space doesn't open until 11 to 12 months ahead, depending on which airline you're looking to fly. And that it might be about time for me to book this thing you know just just figure it out and book it then i figured out a logistical challenge which is you might remember that the uh awards

are going to be priced differently well you know this depending on how far I end up flying and whatever I do, I'm likely to need to transfer some more Amex points into ANA to just round it out to the right level. So here's the dilemma is that let's say I figure it all out. Let's say, you you know my miles are back in my account i see all the award space and then i call ana to price it and i find out okay i need to transfer in i'll make something up because i remember the numbers 25 000 more points well it's not any any transfers to any are not instant they take a few days. They do. And so I could lose some of that award space. And then probably there'd be other award space,

but it might have involved different connections that might be longer or shorter. And it might reprice to a different amount. Right, right. So I was trying to figure, so do I transfer in kind of my expected miles before I even figure this out? And then, and then if for some reason this doesn't happen at all, I'm like in a worse position, more ANA miles. Yeah. Yeah. What do I do? Oh, I'm going to hand you a shovel until you

go ahead and dig it a little bit deeper because yeah, I mean, you're going to want to preemptively transfer over the miles. You don't want to lose the award space if you find the ability to connect the dots, which really these A&A around the world awards sound terrific and they make me really excited. But on the flip side, they are difficult because you do have to be able to plan probably a fair time in advance, like you are right now, and then connect the dots with award space and make sure that you have the points that you need ahead of time. And like you said, that's not as easy as like, okay, this is how far I'm going to go because you don't know what the availability is going to be the day you call. So yeah, I think you need to have the points in advance.

And then how many do I transfer in? Do I transfer in enough for the mileage band that requires me to do the, let orphan any miles in ANA, but like, are we talking about 10,000, 20,000, 80,000? Like how many, how many miles is it? Yeah. I don't, I don't remember off the top of my head that the difference varies at different levels. And remember, we're talking about for two people. So I think, I think it's often around uh 20 000 or 30 000 more so we're talking about double that yeah for the two

big difference yeah well i mean then the worst case scenario you end up with almost enough miles for a round trip business class flight to europe or something so you know you have to find another use for those and then transfer more miles so are you arguing to transfer in the higher amount? No, I guess not. Yeah, that might be what I was arguing for. But I guess in hindsight, no, just transfer over for your best case scenario, because you know, you're going to sit there at the computer again and again until you thread the needle. You're not going to just settle for the good enough. You're going to keep watching until the stars align. So transfer over for what you expect to need for the award flights that you reasonably expect to be available. Because some of that stuff you can pretty readily count on. Ethiopian is pretty much going to have

whatever they have available is typically available. It's not really hard to find Ethiopian award space. Your trouble is going to be like United. If you find some magical award space to South Africa or, or something from Japan to Hawaii might be kind of tough. That might be a little hairy, but I would say you transfer it over. You cross your fingers, you close your eyes and you hope for the best. All right. Do it. Do it. Done. Done. All right. Just for the Hawaii trick. Yeah. I would say the Hawaii trick amount No, no more than that. Don't go crazy. Okay. All right. That is a pain with a and a though. That is definitely a pain because then you end up with these miles. They're going to expire in a few years. And then, you know, they tell you, no, we'll extend them. We'll just make them disappear

first. So, right. Right. Anyway. All right. So that, my friends, brings us to what crazy thing. And I think. Wait, before I even say what crazy thing, I think we have a crazy thing. Double header this week. Do we not? We do. We've got two crazy things. Two crazy things. All right. Crazy things. So the first crazy thing is what crazy thing did remind me? What was the first? I know the second one. Greg do this week. What crazy thing did Greg do? What was the first? I know the second one. Greg do this week. What crazy thing did Greg do? Greg, what'd you do? What I did was I looked at that Wyndham shopping portal deal.

You did. 124 points per dollar spent at Things Remembered. They're basically paying you to shop at Things Remembered. Like here, take our stuff please take our stuff we'll give you more value in points depending on how much you value those window points then you're spending i mean it's it's close to that good right close to that good the the reason it's crazy that i spent like over a hundred dollars on things remembered stuff that I kind of would mildly like to have, but otherwise wouldn't, wouldn't have bought is, is, is the reason it's crazy is that we already had a number of readers report that it wasn't tracking. The portal wasn't

tracking at 124 points per dollar. They get an email saying, Hey, yay, you, you, uh, you know, we're are going to get awarded this many points in it. And that calculated at only 30 points per dollar. That's a lot as far, far shy of one 24. They're not paying you anymore to take their stuff. No, no, I would not do it for 30 X. No. So I decided to do it anyway. I thought it was worth fighting the good fight and going for it.

So I put a reminder. After I wrote a post about going for it, a reader wrote that he or she went through the portal and didn't get any kind of tracking email. And so email support. And then the next day got a, Hey, it's tracked at one 24. Uh, so, so they actually had success. So I put a, yeah, I put a reminder on my calendar because the website says to wait, I think it was five business days to get that, you know, your, your purchase track kind of email and then report it if it doesn't. So if I don't get one, I'm kind of now hoping I don't, right. I'll email and, and, uh, see what happens. So, so the, the, so the thing that Greg remembered was to see what I did there was to take screenshots. I took screenshots like crazy, like a madman. My mouse moved a

little at screenshot. I've been doing the same thing the last couple of days because I very suddenly found a use, like a vacation rental place that I would like to be able to book, but I don't have enough Wyndham points. So I've been doing a little shop in the last couple of days myself. Not anything that things remembered yet. Although I say yet, because maybe I will. There's two issues. First, yes. Like you just like I was just saying there, I have taken screenshots of everything. I've taken screenshots with like my name and Wyndham number included in there as I click through. I use the little points calculator. You know how they have a little points calculator, like you put in how much you're going to spend and it calculates how many I've done that and taking the screenshot so that nobody

can be like you wouldn't get that many points so so anyway I've done all that stuff taking copious screenshots that I'll have to weed through when something doesn't track properly right but I'm I'm hopeful that it's going to come through my problem now is I don't know how long it takes for these shopping portal points to actually post like yeah i know it could be quite a while i get no surprise me at all to be a few months right right right which there's some portals that post right away but yeah yeah i was i was hopeful it'd be soon but it's pretty clear already that windham is not that no it's not not that unfortunately which i was hoping i was like oh maybe these will just post in a few weeks and I'll be able to use them for one of those Vacasa properties. But yeah, not, not yet.

Not, not happening yet. Yeah. But we can hope. All right. So you did the things remember thing. I think, I think actually by the time this publishes, supposedly the five X deal is going to be done. Like Wyndham's got this advertised 5X promotion where you're supposed to earn five times the number of points, but we've already talked about how it's not five times anything. I don't know where they're coming up with their marketing.

The other thing is that a bunch of these increased rates say that they expire April 30th. So I have no idea what's going on. It makes no sense. Yeah. Oh, quick update from Nick. Actually, it did end on the 8th.

So these rates are total. That whole Wyndham portal thing is completely nuts. Completely nuts. Oh, quick update from Nick. Actually, it did end on the 8th. So these rates are total. That whole window portal thing is completely nuts. Completely nuts. Which is part of the reason it's crazy to invest in it. But at the other hand, it's one of those, it's so good. It's so good. I mean, so many of these stores are 30, 40 points per dollar. And so my wife doesn't actually do that much shopping, but I know every now and then she'll go on a little burst. And I was like, listen, honey, you want to do some shopping? Now's the time. I don't want to hear you shoes next month. To be clear, we're not

talking about just like the usual suspects, like flower, you know, shopping where you get, where you get 30 X. We're talking about things like Bloomingdale's was like 30 something X. And, you know, like major, major retailers are on there. Right. So many of them at 20, 30, 40 points per dollar. And it's like at that rate, then you're getting a significant discount. And there's other things that are bulk miles, too. I mean, we talked about the Disney Plus subscription, but Blue Aprons at like 5,800 points.

It's some weird number, like 5,841. You get a cheap box for like i think 30 bucks shipped so it's you know might be worth buying points with something like that if you haven't done blue apron before anyway take a look at it we'll put a link in the show notes so that's what crazy thing greg did and and there are many more of us out there getting crazy with that but since we're talking about hotels we got to talk about the other crazy hotel thing this week and say, what crazy thing did Radisson do? Radisson. Radisson, what are you doing? This is so crazy.

Even my wife noticed it. She got an email from Radisson. Is this important? Is this something? And she was like, did Citi take over Radisson? Are they buying the Radisson portfolio? Because something doesn't add up. Oh, boy.

Yeah. So Radisson sent us all emails saying that in order to deliver a more localized experience, they're splitting into two separate programs and are going to confuse everybody. They need flow charts to show you which of the two programs you should be in and which of the two you like earn points from in different situations and and whatnot um basically it's like the if you're if you primarily book hotels and or live in the americas then you'll be in the radisson americas, then you'll be in the Radisson Americas program. Otherwise, you'll be in the everything else Radisson program.

What? Why? Why would you have two programs, Radisson? Like, what sense does that make? So, yeah, I mean, not only will you be in separate programs, they do say that you'll still be able to earn and redeem points in both programs and move them back and forth. But they hinted the fact that there will be some proactive something you're going to have to do to like transfer your Radice in America's points to like Radice in Europe, Maldives and the rest of the world. Right. Right. So they're definitely making it a bonkers complicated for the, for anyone. So who would ever get that? I mean, apart, apart from people who blog about it and one or two people out there listening to this, like who would,

who would find any sense in having two separate programs? Like, you know, whatever, isn't the whole value of having a worldwide chain, that it's like a seamless experience for the customers? You know, I mean, that is what it should be. And the U.S. is not allowing Chinese companies to collect the kind of information that they collect as part of the rewards program. So I guess they spun off the Radisson Americas to a non-Chinese company. I mean, that's all I have. I was wondering if perhaps they were looking to have two separate ownership groups of some sort, you know, or be able to sell a piece of it. I mean, Radisson rest of the world is only a bit so valuable. There are some nice Radisson properties in Europe, but there's only like

some, there's only a few, right? And then, and then apart from that, you've got this new Radisson Maldives that, you know, was rumored for like 10 years, I think, and finally opened. And then beyond that, like, I don't know. I mean, you know what else is out there? There's like a Radisson in Japan, I think, by the airport in Tokyo, I think. And like, not very much else. I mean, there's some resorts sprinkled around Europe. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've been interested in that one that's in Crete that I don't even know if it's still part of Radisson. I mean, there used to be, there was a really nice one that I stayed at in Croatia at some point, but that stopped being a Radisson. So it seems like they wised up.

So, yeah, that's, I don't understand. And I'm a little nervous. So what are you doing with your Radisson points? I mean, I know you got some Radisson points. Yeah. Book stuff, speculatively, or what? No, I mean, Radisson has always been for me. Well, once, once I stopped offering the, the sort of buy one, get one credit card deal where, where you could

book an awards, you could book two nights of, of awards for, for the price of one award night. Uh, ever since I stopped doing that, I've thought of the Radisson points as like a backup to the backup. Like IHG is sort of my backup, one of my backup hotel programs. And Radisson is when I think of even after that, like just in case I happen to be somewhere where, where there's a Radisson that, where I can use my points, that'd be great. And it does happen every now and then, but it's funny. It's funny. Continuing to look at it that way. Cause, cause I, so we've got a tentative camping trip planned for the end of next month into the beginning of June. And so we've got this camping thing, glamping, and, and I'm not real confident. We stink at camping. I'm not real

confident that this is going to go well, especially we were terrible at it when we didn't have any kids. And now that we have two kids, I'm like much less confident in our ability to do it. So I was relieved when I saw that there is a country and in suites three and a half miles from the campground. I was like, okay, perfect. Because I got a place where I can finally use my free night certificates or use some Madison point. If I need a shower. You know what I mean? Right, right. So yeah, that's, I totally, it is the backup to the backup to the backup. So it's like, you know, if I got a bill.

That's so funny. Did I ever tell you my camping story with my son? You didn't. I don't think so. We, my wife had given us a set of like, you know, tents and sleeping bags and all the stuff you need for camping when he was really young, when he was about, and we'd never used them when he was about, I think, I want to say 17, maybe 16. I don't know. We were like, we should break these out and go camping. And so we planned a, a three night weekend.

And when we, and up, up North in Michigan, we realized that like by the time we drove up there, it'd be getting, it'd be getting late. So we decided to do what you're talking about, book a points hotel near the campground for the first night and then set up the camp in the morning. And so that made it a two night camping trip. And then after one night we were like, you know what? I still have got some free night shirts at the Marriott down the road. Let's go. Bailed after one night. That's funny because

I was already like, I just haven't had time today. But I said yesterday, you know, I'm going to book that hotel for the second night because we got four nights booked at the campgrounds. And I'm like, I don't know about that. I was already going to book it for the second night, just in case. Figured that, you know, make sure we get that locked in, you know, just in case I, you know, we love the idea of camping. Like it seems like a great idea. We like the outdoors. We like to hike. We like to, you know, but the actual camping itself, we're not particularly good at. So, yeah. Yeah. That's, that's me too. I,

I just, I just can't sleep. So yeah. Yeah. So, all right. So that's the crazy thing this week, Radisson, that's, that's what you've reduced me to Radisson. And I'm like excited about a country and in suites in the middle of nowhere. Cause it happens to be close to the campground that I might need to escape from. That's where you are, Radisson. So, escape up. Poor Radisson. They're crying now. Poor Radisson. I am probably good.

I think I'm going to speculatively use a bunch of my points, though. I think I'm going to book some places in Europe figuring, I don't know, maybe that's going to keep the points in the Europe side or something, and maybe that'll be good. I don't know. Oh, interesting.

That's an interesting idea. Yeah, I wonder. They might get lost in limbo. Like if you cancel those, if you're somebody from a work, it becomes a Radisson America's account. Oh my goodness. Oh wow. Yeah. The headaches I'm in for. I have no idea what will happen. Who knows? All right, my friends that brings us, I think to this week's main event. I don't think it does. No, I skipped. I skipped Mattress Running the Numbers.

Mattress Running the Numbers. How did I forget? We've got a juicy topic. We've got an exciting one, yeah. Yes, we do. We do. So, Singapore Airlines has a new promo where if you transfer points in or earn

points from certain partners, then for every five miles, like redeemable miles you get, you get one elite mile. And that means, so you can earn silver status by transferring in 125,000 points into 25,000 miles, or you could earn gold status with Singapore by transferring in 250,000 points into 250,000 miles, which becomes 50,000 elite miles. To be clear, if you transfer over the 125 or the or the 250 you keep that many redeemable miles we're just how many status miles you get so you keep them for 36 months and then and then they

rip them away from you and there's none of this a and a disappearing reappearing business it just disappears right uh well right i mean unless there's a new pandemic going on 36 months from when you go. Let's hope not. Right, exactly. So, yeah. So you could transfer over 250,000 points and you would end up with 250,000

Singapore miles and Star Alliance gold status. Right, right. So that's the question for today's Match Us Running the Numbers. Is it worth doing that? Should we grab United right right so that's that's the question for today is match us running the numbers is it worth doing that should we grab uh united gold status by transferring in 250 000 points and just a little more information you can transfer in one-to-one from what is it amex chase city brex i think is one of them i think think so. Yeah, I think I saw that.

And I was like, oh, wow, that's right. Brex? Brex? Is it? Yeah. What? Okay. And also you can transfer from Capital One.

You probably don't want to, but you could transfer from Capital One. That's two to one, though, I think. I think it is. That's one of their not quite as good transfer partners. Yeah. So I wouldn't recommend that. You could also do Marriott, which you could do to pretty much any at that 60 K Marriott points to 25 K airline miles ratio. Right. And so, and that's also possible, but you probably don't want to

transfer over a quarter of a million Singapore miles worth. You just may want to top up an account if you need to, if whatever small amount you need at the end. So, okay. So, yeah, I mean, there's a lot of sources. Singapore is definitely one of the easiest programs to amass miles in because you can transfer from so many sources. So what do you get if you get to gold status? If you get to Star Alliance gold status, what is that even good for? What does that get you? Well well first of all let me say that at least according to one mile a time the singapore gold status doesn't really get you much of anything because they also have this other pfs club or something i forget what it's called

that you have to belong to to get the kind of perks that we're used to talking about when you have elite status so So let's just talk about Star Alliance Gold, which you do get if you do this. Star Alliance Gold gives you benefits when traveling on a Star Alliance carrier. So you can be traveling United or Lufthansa or anyone, and you'll get Star Alliance club-like access to their business class lounges. You get priority, you know, check in and boarding and this and that kind of thing like that. Um, I don't remember. I think there's a handful of other things, but those are, I believe the main things there might, Oh, free check bag. I think you can get as well. Yeah. So it's actually decent.

I mean, that's decent. If you're a United flyer, then I mean, you would get United Club Lounge access, which I mean, even if you have United elite status, you don't get in the United States. That's right. So you would get Club Lounge access at United and a free bag. You wouldn't need the United credit card to get your free bag. Or if you downgraded it to the fee freefree card, you'd still get your free bag. So, I mean, that's not bad. That's pretty good. Of course, you'd have to put your Singapore number on whatever reservations you have in order to get those benefits, I believe. Yes. Now, I did that.

40K to far away, I flew, you know, I was using United Miles to get as far away as possible with 40,000 points. Uh, and I used a lot of United miles for that trip. And so I was often flying Star Alliance carriers. I didn't, the Singapore thing didn't exist at the time, but what I did was I did a United, uh, status challenge match thing where I got status with United for 90 days that gave me Star Alliance gold status it didn't give me lounge access in the U.S. but I didn't need it here because I had priority pass access right but it was super helpful in my layovers in ethiopia i was i was there for quite a long time in both directions and having that lounge access was absolutely huge i mean especially since we were counting every little penny so i was able to get full meals out of out of those stops so yeah it's it is a real

tangible benefit for those who fly star alliance economy, right? Cause if you're flying business class anyway, you're going to get lounge access anyway. And that's true. Also free check bags. Uh, if you're flying internationally, you're going to benefit from this. I think it's probably best that you mentioned before, people who just fly United enough to where it matters and probably have a United club in your home airport. I think that would be the ones who would get the most out of this. Yeah, I mean, people who are flying United enough that the checkbag fees add up, but not enough that you're earning elite status with United, right? So, or you don't have Marriott titanium, so you don't have United silver from that or anything. So the bag fees add up in the club, like you said, club lounge. Yeah. I mean, I think you almost have to base your decision based on the, on the club access because you could get the free, the free bag, I mean, if you're flying enough for it to be worth it,

get a credit card. I mean, credit, that'll pay for itself in no time. Right. True, true story. So, all right. So what do you think? I mean, is it worth it? Is it worth it?

Essentially, we're saying that the main benefit here is club lounge access at United Club Lounges and Star Alliance Club Lounges around the world, which is only going to be useful outside of the US if you're flying economy. Otherwise, you would get club lounge access presumably anyway, unless maybe you're flying in like a one world airline and they happen to have a great Star Alliance lounge in that airport. There's probably some niche situations where having Star Alliance Gold might come in handy outside of that. Is it worth transferring 250,000 miles and locking them up with Singapore for three years

where if you don't use them, you lose them? Is it worth doing that for Star Alliance Gold, Craig? What do you think? I'm saying for most people, no. I think it's a bad bet to transfer your points in unless you have a plan. So the way I'd like to think about it is, are you between now and when this promotion ends, which is a long time, end of February of next year, you can do this deal all the way until then. If you have a situation where Singapore miles are the right currency for you to book a trip, or even if they're like,

oh, I could transfer either to Singapore or to LifeMiles, and the reward and the award rates are similar in either of those cases, I'd say, okay, well then this is sort of like a nice transfer bonus. You'll get, not only you'll, you'll get the miles so you could book your trip, but you'll also get gold, you know, star lines, gold status that that'll last another year. I wouldn't, I wouldn't do it prospectively. Is there anybody that should do it prospectively. Is there anybody that should do it prospectively? Is there, or is there any reason you could see somebody doing it prospectively without that immediate reason to have star Alliance gold status? Oh boy. I think you, I think you have to, I think you'd have to highly value the star

Alliance gold status. Like we were talking about before you fly around enough that you would get value from the lounges and you are certain that you're going to use those miles. Like even if you don't have an immediate plan, you, you just know you travel enough and you'll be able to use the awards. And that actually is not an unlikely combination, right? Cause if you already know you travel United enough to get value from the lounges, probably you'd say, oh, it's a good bet. I'll be able to book my United flights with my Singapore miles and that'll be great. So what about for status challenges, status matches? I mean, is it worth doing that?

Like, so I looked at this and I perked up a little bit because I was like, oh, well, we did talk just last week about this whole Delta status match thing and trying to get Delta status or get on the fast track challenge for our global upgrade certificate challenge. And I thought to myself, Ooh, well, if I pick up star Alliance gold status with Singapore, can I maybe find a way to leverage that into like American or Alaska maybe? And then from there move my way on to Delta. Like, is there a, is there a play to parlay status here? And even if you don't value the star Alliance gold status all that much, might it be worth it to get on a fast track challenge with an airline that you

do care about? That's a really interesting idea that does it's possible. I mean, have you looked at Delta who Delta matches from? Maybe they match directly from Singapore. Most of the airlines just list us programs, Delta. I looked at the other day and before this, and they only listed us programs, but they all list the caveat that this is not necessarily an exhaustive list.

They basically give themselves an out to, to agree to match anybody they want to. Right. But they don't, they don't show you what you're going to match over to though. One would think presumably that star Alliance gold might do it. My thought is I feel like it's probably more likely that I'll get Alaska to match that then the Delta straight up. So I'd probably have to match to Alaska and then Delta.

Um, but I would, I would start by trying Delta with the Singapore status, I imagine, and see what happens if I were going to do all this anyway. So that's why it intrigued me. The United- I think, right. So I'll revise my recommendation, which is no one should do it prospectively except for Nick. Except for me. And then only for science, only in the name of science guys, only, only for the listener that's curious about how this stuff works. So I'm definitely thinking about it. I, you know, I'm not, I don't value it. I certainly think it'll be easier to, it should be easier to match you from Singapore gold to Delta gold somehow, even if it's roundabout then from your current spirit gold. I mean, that's, you know, Hey, listen, don't, uh, don't look down your nose at my spirit gold status, Craig.

I, uh, you know, I'm, I'm rocking it over here and I'm, I'm going to try that first. So for the record, I'm going to try it. It should be, I'd love to, I'd love to, you know, listen in on a phone call with you and Delta saying, yeah, you you know i have the top tier status top tier top tier it's i mean it's gotta be what do you give me gotta be a diamond challenge right gotta be a diamond challenge come on i mean how are you gonna how are you otherwise gonna steal me away from the clutches of spirit airlines so uh yeah we'll see right which just as an aside you know i was kind of joking about Diamond Challenge because on Delta's website for the match, it doesn't list Diamond as a possibility.

But United also did not list, I want to say, their, what is it called? Premier 1K? Premier 1K or something. I don't know. I, I kind of lost, I've kind of forgotten the, the, the details of the story, but the point is someone that I matched you in the past matched me to a higher level than they advertised was even possible. Yeah. So you don't know. Yeah. All right. Well, so Singapore, you're getting crazy on me, but mattress running the numbers here. We're saying it probably doesn't make sense for most people, but I think it's

kind of fun. So I may go for it, but I'm not going to hurry because I'm not flying anywhere yet. So I don't really need the status yet. And like Greg said, this promo is scheduled to go for a long time. One thing that I do find interesting here is that I read View from the Wings right up on this. And I totally agreed with what Gary said when he said that he thinks it's basically time for airlines, or he said for a while, it's time for airlines to recognize that some of their most profitable customers are those of us transferring in lots and lots of miles because the mileage programs are a huge profit center and they want to reward the people that are earning them a lot of money. I think that this whole movement towards counting miles transferred in towards status is kind of interesting. And it's something that I hope we see at least from more of these foreign

programs. I think the foreign programs are potentially even more interesting because like we were saying here, you would get yourself United Club Bunch access, which you wouldn't get if you transferred points to United or you flew united a lot and had united elite status you wouldn't get that so we'll see i hope to see more of that okay yeah yeah so that then i think does bring now it's time now it's time main event time so this main event main event it's getting crazy out there too we're talking another crazy thing the 100k offers what. What's our main event, Greg? So 100K offers here, there, and everywhere. They seem to be falling out of the sky every which way we look.

Not just 100K, but even more than 100K. Like we've talked a million times about the platinum card offer that is 100K plus. You get 10X for six months, like gas and grocery, plus you get $200 at home furnishing stores. Now the business platinum card, if you go in like private mode or incognito mode, you can find that, what is it? 130K? 130 on the business platinum. It requires a lot of spend. You got to be able to spend 15K in three months, but 130K, I mean, that's, hello, that's a lot of bonus miles.

Right, but before you say, oh, we've seen big offers on the business platinum before, have we seen 100K offers on a United card in recent memory? I mean, that's pretty new. That is. I mean, I think we've seen it maybe on yeah the um on the no i was gonna say on the american airline side on the on the like executive platinum card but i can't remember if we've seen that on any united cards but regardless united

quest card 100k offer um chasing business plus it's been it it's been around a hundred K for a while now, but still. Business preferred. Yeah. Yeah. That, that has been, but the United card, I would say that the spend is fairly reasonable too, because it's 5k for 80,000 miles, which already that's pretty terrific. And then just another 5k, 10 K total in six months to do it. So you're talking about six months to do 10k spend. So it's not a crazy amount of spend. I mean, less than $2,000 a month in credit card spend in order to get 100,000 bonus miles. And the card isn't bad. I mean, it's not even it's not a bad card. This new is the new United Quest card. We haven't even

mentioned the name of it yet it's a new card so i don't know which offer we should talk about first i'm i'm jumping ahead of us here i'm getting into talking about this well let me just let me just mention before before we go into that quest card because i think that is interesting dive into a little bit more is another one that came back 100k offers that venture rewards that's right one and of course you know a few months ago we saw the jet blue 100k offers and um southwest flirts with 100k all the time so you know there's a bunch here now i'm not even going to talk about hotel offers because they're having 100k there is just common because those points are worth less but we're talking about transferable points we're talking

about airline miles 100k this has gone kind of insane. Yeah. I mean, we didn't see any, when the Sapphire reserve launched in, what was it? 2016, 2017. Um, that was a huge deal that it was a hundred thousand transferable points. Like that was big news. It was like, that was mainstream media, big news. Everybody was talking about it, this crazy new offer, and Chase got all sorts of new customers out of it because they were drawn in by this massive offer. 100K offers just were not commonplace at that point, certainly not in airline miles.

Like I said, hotel points, a little bit different story, though even with hotel points at that point in time, I don't think the 100k offers were as common. But yeah, these all of a sudden, we're just getting hit left and right with 100k offers. It seems like every time we look around, there's another one and you know, one expires, but then a new one comes behind it. So I mean, is that the new magic number? 100,000? Does it have to be, you know, six figures in order to draw people in? It certainly feels like that's where things are going, doesn't it?

80K is the new sort of... If you think back in time, when I started this game, 50K was exciting. And so things like 30K, 35K were more normal. So it's starting to feel like 70K to 80K is the normal and 100K is when they do the enhanced offer. So it's definitely moving that way. Of course, most of these require quite a bit of spend. They do.

That seems to be the new trend, right? You have to spend 10 or 15 or $20,000 and how long you have to do that, whether it's three months, six months or a year varies depending on the offer, but you do have to invest more spend on one card in order to get these big offers for the most part. Right, right. So let me ask this question then. So if this is normal, becoming normal, then theoretically, the country is getting flooded with points and miles. These are going into people's accounts. And now once people are traveling using these points and miles, what's going to happen?

Are we going to be able to find award space anymore? Are the programs going to devalue because there's so much demand, they've got to raise the award prices to make it all work? You know, that's a good question. That's the natural inclination that people, the natural fear that people will have is that, you know, oh, they're going to have to devalue now because they've got so many miles on the books and, you know, they have to devalue, they can't possibly stay as valuable. I don't know if that's true. You know, I look at Alaska as a sort of a case study on that, because when I got started in this, not really that long ago, you know, when I talk

about when I got started looking at this stuff was maybe 2013, 2014, 2015. And Alaska was like twenty five thousand miles. That was the offer on their credit card. That was it. Like it was always 25 K and, and then it slowly crept up and suddenly 40 K was the new normal. And then 50, 60, 65. And then we heard the other day about a targeted 80 K offer going out. And apart from Emirates that they devalued overnight, we haven't seen a massive Alaska mileage plan devaluation. I mean, they've continued to have a good award chart with good sweet spots. Perhaps the Emirates one is the argument to say, oh, yeah, obviously they had to devalue, but they've kept great values

on Cathay Pacific and Japan Airlines. Now that might all change in the very near future here as they join One World. But I don't think joining One World, or I should say, I don't think it was the larger credit card offers that will necessitate that change. It's going to be the joining of One World that necessitates a change in the Alaska award chart. So I don't know as though it's true that they're going to devalue. There probably will be some competition for booking awards. But you know, there's a lot of people that collect these miles and points that just don't use them to or, you know, aren't sure how to use them and sign up for the card, but don't necessarily know what they're doing with the points. Right. Also, you know, we know that

at least historically, the most miles have been spent on domestic economy flights. And so a lot of people presumably be earning a hundred thousand miles with this United card and using it for these 25,000 mile round trip, or of course with United, there's not an award chart anymore, so it could be anything, but it'll be in that, you know, in that neighborhood, anywhere from as low as 10,000 miles round trip to, you know, there's no upper bound that I know of, but presumably a lot of people will use it for that. And that would probably make domestic awards harder to get because there's more competition for those flights. I would, I presume, I mean, United was already pretty bad with that in my experience. Yeah, you know, I don't know.

I mean, is it going to make it worse? Because, you know, you look at it and you say, OK, well, you did you did those recent posts about how much miles are worth towards domestic economy flights. And United, there was quite a bit of variance comparatively compared to Delta and American. But generally with Delta and American, at least you found the values to be fairly consistent. And it seems like these programs are moving more and more in that direction where miles are worth about a penny each towards domestic flights. Maybe a little bit more than that. One point one, one point two, one point three. Right. Somewhere in that range. And so I think that now that they've gotten rid of the award chart, there's no need to limit the supply of rewards, really. Right. And you're right. I don't think there's really any any issue there when it was twelve five and it had to be twelve five for a saver award. And obviously you got to limit how many of those are going to give away.

But, you know, when it's going to vary up and down, depending on how many seats fill on the plane. Yeah, I don't necessarily think there's going to be a big change there. There's maybe there'll be a change in what's available to partners. I don't know. But yeah, I think actually this is good news for people who are going to take the time to learn how to maximize their miles because it's a great chance to get a whole bunch of miles. And I don't think that most people who are going to apply are going to be competing with you for the seats that you really want to book with these miles. Yeah, Yeah. I just want to correct something I said a minute ago, which is I said, United was already bad about releasing domestic award space, but actually my experience has been

they're bad about releasing business class, like their, their domestic first-class product as awards. I think they've actually been better, at least in my experience, than the other domestic airlines are releasing saver level awards and economy. And, you know, I've often found what I needed when I needed it. So that, that at least has been good. And, and yeah, I think you've got a really good point that the more they, the more they act like this is just cash, it's like saying, well, people have more money, so we're going to run out of flights that we can pay for. But that's not true. If there's more demand, then they'll increase the number of planes flying on the routes where there's too much demand. Right.

So, I mean, it's going to be supply and demand, I think, generally. And if flight prices are cheap, awards are still going to be cheap. I mean, that's typically the way, it's going to be supply and demand, I think, generally for the flight prices are cheap. Awards are still going to be cheap. I mean, that's typically the way that it's going to work. So I don't think that's bad news at all on the United side and the transferable points fronts. I don't think that is going to lead to any tangible devaluation either because the transferable currencies, for the most part, apart from Capital One, it's all one-to-one transfers. They're not going to change that and make it different. I mean, they're not going to go the Capital One route, I don't think, and start making different transfer ratios for different partners. So you're still going to have one-to-one. And I don't think that it's likely that we're going to see big devaluations from the foreign programs, because I think that what we're seeing when we

look at Singapore and Air Canada with promotions to earn elite status by transferring miles in, they want us to transfer miles into those programs, right? I mean, that's a revenue center for them. Right, right. And a lot of programs, I don't think it's right to say we're not going to see devaluations. In cases where a program hasn't devalued in quite a while, I would argue we probably will see a devaluation, but it might not be because of these offers. It might not have anything to do with that at all. That's more what I meant. We've seen a trend in that direction over time, and it feels inevitable. Who knows?

That's true. We don't know when they're going to come, and devaluations are kind of inevitable. So who knows? That's true. We don't know when they're going to come and devaluations are kind of inevitable. So I guess what I meant was that I don't think that 130,000 American Express membership rewards points on the business platinum is going to have any tangible benefit

on how much your ANA miles or Virgin Atlantic miles or whatever else are worth. I don't think that those programs are going to devalue because Amex gave us a whole bunch of points. So I think generally these big offers are good news. That's my opinion. I don't think that those programs are going to devalue because Amex gave us a whole bunch of points. So I think generally, these big offers are good news. That's my opinion.

I don't know. I think so, too. And what do you think? Do you think, imagine the pandemic's over and actually travel goes back to what we considered normal before. We don't know that that'll happen, but just imagine that scenario. Do you think this trend will reverse? Will we go back to, I think it was like 60K, 75K were high watermarks before? I would expect that it would go back logically. It makes

sense that they're not going to have to continue to compete at this level. And so there's a large part of me that says, you got to get these offers while you can, because like, are we going to continue seeing a hundred, 130,000 point offers? It just doesn't seem realistic to me that they're going to continue to throw that much value at you, especially with some of these cards that come with lots of ancillary benefits too, or it's profitable that first year to have the card, you know, almost if you're asleep at the wheel. So there's part of me that says that it can't possibly last, grab it while you can. But then there's another part of me that says, man, at this point, those offers are becoming more and more commonplace.

And as you've said before, it's hard to put that genie back in the bottle. Right, right. Yeah, that's kind of how I feel. It's going to be hard for the card issuers to attract customers with a 60k offer going forward it's just not going to look exciting no it's not definitely not i mean who's going to get super excited about that united card for 50 or 60k that they can't even market as two domestic round trips anymore you know right some number of trips yeah yeah fly Yeah. Fly for free sometime. Well, okay. So let's get back at, you want to talk a little more about the quest card?

Yeah. I think the quest card is actually really interesting. I, you know, I I've said for a while that I'm kind of surprised that chase hadn't really entered that 250 ish dollar card market after MX debuted the gold card, that seemed like an interesting play. And so it's interesting now to finally see that happen from Chase. I don't think I expected it to come first

from a co-branded card, but this Quest card, I think looks like an interesting value. So $250 annual fee on the Quest card. The bonus now is 100,000 as we're talking about this, 100,000 United miles. So it's 80K after 5K spend

in the first three months. And then an additional 20,000 bonus miles after you spend a total of 10,000 in the first six months. So not huge spend for a hundred thousand United miles, you know, 10 X on your spend. And, and then the card is 250 bucks a year and it comes with $125 in statement credits for United purchases. So your first 125 bucks in United purchases, get statement credited back. It comes with two free check bags for the cardholder and one companion. So if you're somebody who travels heavy, if you've got kids, hello, I'm always checking multiple bags. Then two check bags for each person could be really nice. That puts you

right on level with Southwest Airlines now. And so, which I'm joking about, but also not joking about, that's certainly one of the reasons that Southwest stands out for us because we can check everything we need to. So, I think that's a really good benefit if you're somebody who often pays for the check bags. And then of course, you get your priority boarding and all that kind of stuff. And then also interesting, you get a 5,000 mile rebate on your first and each of your first two award tickets booked each year. So if you book two award tickets, you'll get 10,000 total miles back. So that has some value. So if you value those 10,000 miles at, let's say a penny each, that's a hundred dollars, $125 in United credits. If you often, if you annually spend $125 on United anyway, let's just

for easy math, consider that at face value for a second, you're at $225 basically of the $250 annual fee. Yet those check bags once like that, the more or less pays for itself, right? I mean, that's a pretty decent little card and it's got bonus categories um so one of the things that that struck me looking at this card is that i think chase and united you know the team that worked on this card looked over at the delta platinum card and said let's beat that so first of all the obvious one with the offer so delta platinum is out with a all-time high 90,000 point offer right yeah so they're like yeah let's we could beat that easily 100,000 uh same annual fee delta platinum and and this united uh quest card um delta platinum has this this companion ticket you get upon your card anniversary each year

so that's kind of a pain to use because it has to be for round trip tickets uh it you know it's only for domestic us and so they said no let's just give people what is it 125 dollars for any united flight that you want to buy. I mean, that's, I would take that trade off. Like if I could get, instead of my companion ticket, just have $125 to spend. I mean, I know it's sort of worthless at the high end of what's possible, but it'd be much easier to use much, much easier.

And you'd earn some miles when you're using it. And then not only that let's give them some rebates on award tickets as well and so all that stuff is is beating delta and then then they said let you you know there's that delta reserve card over there we can't match its features but we can make our card look exactly like that one. I'm not kidding. Hold the two cards, bring the two cards up on your screen at the same time. They are hard to tell apart. Delta Reserve and new United Quest are both purple and just look exactly the same. It's true. That didn't even cross my mind, but you're totally right. They do look exactly the

same. I guess look exactly the same. I guess they hired the same marketing company to come up with their card art. No, I swear. I think they were like, how do we beat Delta? I know. We'll make it look like their higher level card. It'll look like the reserve. And they'll be like, oh yeah, I got one of those.

Boom. Plunk that down. Yeah. You're paying 550. I'm only paying 250 for.50. $2.50 for my purple card. I got the purple card. So well done. Well done, Chase and United with that one. Nicely done. Yeah, I mean, where did they come up with purple? Like for United, it was purple.

I told you how. You're right. No, that's it. My reaction when I saw it was where did they come up with purple? But now I clearly understand it. Now you know. Now you know. Mystery solved. Mystery solved. You know, the weird thing,

the weirdest thing about this card to me is that it gives 2X travel. And they say 2X travel is airlines, hotels, blah, blah, blah. So are they really going to give me 2X miles when I book my Spirit Airlines flight with my United Quest card? Yeah. Doesn't it?

I think they will. I think they will too. You Yeah, I think they will. I think they will too. You know, I think they'll be happy. They'll be like, well, we weren't able to earn his business for flying, but at least we can get some of his money anyway. Right, a little piece of that. They'll get a little piece of it.

Yeah, yeah. No, they'll be glad for that. So 3X on United, 2X on travel, all travel, and 2X on dining. So, I mean, it's not, most people that want United miles are better off allowed for that. So three, three X on United, two X on travel, all travel and two X on dining. So, I mean, it's not most people that want United miles are better off with an ultimate rewards card strategy because you, you know, the freedom unlimited and get your three X at restaurants and transfer those to United. So it'd be a better restaurant United through the, uh, chase portal and get five X. Right, right. Exactly. So you could do better, I think, with an ultimate

reward strategy. But in terms of an airline credit card, like if you're if you want to do apples to apples versus other airline credit cards, this is a pretty good one. It's pretty good. Yeah. So I agree. All right. And 100,000 miles. I mean, like, I just talked about all the reasons why I think the card is actually kind of interesting, mostly because I'm surprised because most airline cards just stink, right? I mean, most of them are not worth anything at all, except for the bonus. And in this case, I'm like, wow, this one's kind of worth something. Oh yeah. And a hundred thousand miles. So I don't even agree with that. I don't agree that most airline cards stink. I think that most of them have some purpose. Like, like there's a lot of those $95 cards that the purpose is, in my mind, is to get waived

first check bag fees. And so if you check bags, it'll pay for itself in no time. The higher level cards, usually they pay for themselves because you're chasing elite status or something else. There's something else that you're getting out of it that because of the way you travel, it's meaningful to you in this case you just have to be sort of a moderate united traveler to i think a decent value from it um doesn't help you i don't think i mean any more within any other united card with elite status right right you can spend towards elite status but yes it's not going to do you any

better than anything else uh with united so yeah yeah well sorry uh yeah so it's you're right i guess what i look at here is they say okay versus spending at one mile per dollar on most cards at least there's a couple of bonus categories here where it's like right it's not a straight line card stink for spend yeah and it's got these other ancillary you know the credits and whatever else that you typically want so on top of just the check bags it comes with other stuff that kind of pays for itself. So it's all right. United card. I think that's interesting.

Hundred thousand miles, by the way. I was kind of surprised. I haven't looked at all the comments yet. So by the time this podcast publishes, maybe somebody will already set it. Are a hundred thousand United miles worth it, though, Greg? Like, is that worth anything? Because, I mean, you found they were they were worth the least for domestic economy amongst the three carriers. They got rid of their award charts. Should I not be that excited about 100,000 United miles? Should I be cooler? Because I made it sound like this is pretty good.

Should I really be cooler on 100,000 United miles? I kind of expected somebody to call me out and be like, that's not worth anything. So unlike what Delta has done, United has kept award levels for partner flights. And so I wanted to say award charts, but there's no published charts, but there is like a fixed rate for flying to Europe or to, you know, wherever you're going on partners and well, and actually on their own flights, I think internationally, I think it's, I think it correct me if I'm wrong, that it's only domestically that they've done this complete lack of award charts, but anyway, I don't pay close attention to kind of doesn't really matter. The, the, the point is that, yeah, you know,

you could for a hundred K, uh, that's way more than enough for one way to just about anywhere in the world business class, if I'm remembering right. So it's worth quite a lot. And then if you throw in the excursionist perk trick, which let's not get into the details of that, but it's sort of like a way to get a free one-way as part of your trip, then you could certainly squeak out quite a bit of value, I think. For sure. Yeah. And, and, you know, when you do the spend the 10 K spend, you'll end up with 110,000 miles. That's not for ANA first class one way to Asia. So, you know, that, that card could be worth it if you're looking for something like that. And then if you're able to squeeze an excursionist perk out of that, since your first leg is in first class, you could potentially squeeze a nice little excursionist perk out of that. Since your first leg is in first class, you could potentially squeeze a nice little excursionist perk out of that, continuing on somewhere in Asia.

So lots of interesting stuff going on there. But of course, if I talk about ANA first class and this card getting you one way, how can we not talk for a second, at least here about the Platinum Card 130K that we just mentioned, the Business 130k because 130 000 membership rewards points on 15k spend i mean that's that's pretty sexy it is it is um that gives you enough for round trip first class from anywhere in the u.s to japan on ana or it it gives you enough for a couple of one-ways because now you can book them one way via Virgin Atlantic, or it gives you enough for, obviously you can transfer to ANA

and fly round-trip business class to Europe and have a bunch of miles left over. You can almost fly like two people, not quite round-trip, but by the time you finish the spend, you'd be pretty close to two round-trip business class tickets to Europe via ANA or Japan via ANA.

But of course there's lots of other good transfer partners with membership rewards. But then we, of course, also talked about your ANA round the world trip. And so that bonus could get you all the way around the world. It really could. Although don't forget the, the personal platinum card bonus could get you there too, because of the 10 X of grocery and gas. It doesn't take that much spend to get more than $130K.

True. So that one, I mostly prefer that deal over the business platinum if it's one or the other for you. But the platinum, the consumer one, does eat up a 524 slot if you're waiting to get more chase cards, the Business Platinum does not. Another advantage to the Business Platinum is it gives you that 35% rebate on paid flights you book with points. So that works out to getting about one and a half cents, slightly over one and a half cents value per point if If you use it to basically pay for flights, book through Amex. And, um, so that's, you know, a very decent deal. If,

if you're not going to use your points, uh, to transfer to transfer partners like ANA or Virgin or whatever. Yeah. And then, I mean, there's a little bit of difficulty there because it's only on your chosen airline for economy class, but then for business or first class, it's for any airline. So, right. I think, I think it's also any airline for premium economy. And don't forget to Amex platinum has these deals with a bunch of airlines where they give you discounts off their airfare. So sometimes you, you can kind of get two deals in one by, you know, if they have a deal on that airfare, you can not only get the one and a half cents value again, yeah, if it's your chosen airline, if you're booking only economy, and you also get lower fare to begin with. So that's a pretty sweet deal when that all works out. It is. And I agree with you that if it's an either or,

then the Amex Platinum consumer card is definitely the one to get right now. However, the timing on this is pretty hot because a lot of us are nearing the end of the six months of 10X on the consumer Platinum. If you open that back in November, when we were like, we don't know how long this is going to last.

You better hop on this like right now. And here we are almost six months later and it's still available and it got even better. Who would have known? Never would have, never ever would have predicted that that was going to also come with a $200 credit these days. But that's another story for another day. If you opened that back in November or December when we first started talking about it, then you're almost done with your six months of 10X gas and grocery. And so if you're almost done with that, you're like, okay, what's the next big thing? And you haven't had the business platinum before and you can accept the high annual

fee because it is a $600 a year card, $595 annual fee, not waived or anything in the first year. So you do have to pay the $595 annual fee, not waived or anything in the first year. So you do have to pay the $595 upfront. You get very similar platinum card benefits in terms of credits and whatnot, as with the personal card, slightly different set of benefits, Dell instead of Saks and blah, blah, blah. But it could very well be worth it for the timing here. Because I mean, you could end up with in a year's time and two credit cards over 300,000 Amex points pretty conceivably yeah yeah I mean Amex has just made it crazy easy to amass these

membership rewards points and they have not become less valuable in in some ways they've become more valuable like now being able to use Virgin Atlantic points to book ANA first class one way, which it used to require round trip. That makes it so much easier to book those and get huge value. So things like that are pretty incredible. And, you know, I think this is a fantastic time. Amex has just been pummeling us with great offers for the gold cards too, and even the green card. And so if you're at all interested in massing points,

this is just such a great time to do it. It really is. But that kind of goes back to your question or the discussion we had earlier. Is that going to make it harder to use? Like, is there a time when you got to start booking stuff? Is now the time to start booking stuff for next spring? Because is there going to be this huge increase in competition since everybody's got a lot of points? I mean, we were talking about that with United a few minutes ago, but now that we talk

about the transferable currencies and international premium cabins, do you see there being like a huge rush to book premium cabin trips? Do you think like there's going to be a crunch at some point where it's hard to use these for those ANA first class, or it's always been somewhat difficult for ANA first class, but for business class to Europe or whatever else, do you see that, that market becoming too competitive very quickly here? I would guess that there's not enough of us that kind of, you know, hold out for those best uses of miles booking business class and that do it enough to make a difference. So, you know, for example, if I might, I might in a typical year book a international business class trip a few times. Most people,

it's probably like if they do it regularly, it might be more like once a year. And people who are just doing it once a year, the chance of them interfering with what you're trying to do seems pretty small to me. So my guess is this is, this goes back to what you said earlier. I think it probably has more to do with general travel trends than anything else that like if the planes are filling up, yes, it's going to be harder to, to book awards on those flights. That's just the fact. And that's true also of getting good cash deals. So I would look for those two to kind of line up to some degree. Yeah. I don't really think that the points are going to make much of a difference. Like you said,

it's, it all comes down to supply and demand. And I don't think that these huge offers are going to create demand for international flights. Either the demand is going to be there or it's not. And that's pretty much always the way it is. So now is probably a good time to be planning for next spring. If you've suddenly got a lot of points. But at the same time, who knows what's going to happen between now and then. So if you want to hold off for a while, I don't think that there's going to be a disappearance of award space. I think, you know, airlines, as we said earlier, earn a lot of money from the mileage programs. So I think that they are going to continue to offer awards because that type of activity is profitable for them. So. Right. Right. All right. So we agree.

We agree. It's good news. I think it's here to stay. I think this has been a very lucky thing. If you're a miles and points collector, you know, when you look at the fact that this awful pandemic happened, one positive to come out of it for miles and points people is that the offers have just gotten ridiculous. And I think, like you said, it's going to be hard for those to go away. So I think that that probably is long-term good news because I think we were not expecting to see lots and lots of 100K offers anytime soon before the pandemic.

And then as the pandemic wore on, we realized at some point they're going to have to come out with some big offers. And I think those big offers came sooner than I expected. Yeah. And that means they're going to be here longer than with some big offers. And I think those big offers came sooner than I expected. Yep. And that means they're going to be here longer than I expected. I hope that's right. I hope that's right.

All right. Are we ready to move on to post roast? Post roast. All right. What do you have for me this week? What I have for you this week? I have a roast that didn't come from me, but came from a reader for you, Greg. All right.

Great. didn't come from me, but came from a reader for you, Greg. So last week, you roasted me about something that I had said previously on the podcast. And so we didn't have a handy way to roast me for that. And so a reader said, come on, Greg, this is obvious. I would think that roasting the host of a podcast or one of the hosts of the podcast, I should say, is clearly a host roast. So you gave me a host roast and you didn't even know it. I didn't even name it correctly. Didn't even name it. You were like, oh, I'm going to do a podcast roast. And they were like, a podcast roast? Who is this guy? It's a host roast.

I love it. I love it. The host roast from now on. Yeah. You know, if, if post roast didn't already rhyme, I'd say we should just rename this segment to host roast, but well done. Whoever wrote that. I can't even remember who it was, but I saw it and I was like, oh, that's, that's brilliant. I don't know how we didn't, how we didn't come up with that. So I like it. So just because I didn't think of host roast and you decide to read it, I'm going to give you a pass this week. Oh, not roast you. Nice. It's going to be a, a roast list, host, post roast, which I think moves us into the question of the week. I think so. The question of the week,

I'm hopeful that you have an answer for this because I don't yet. And if you don't have an answer either, then it's going to mean that one of us is going to have a post to write because- I'm going to shake my magic eight ball and we'll have an answer one way or another. James in our Frequent Mylar Insiders group

asked an interesting question like yesterday, just before I say yesterday, of course, this week asked an interesting question like yesterday, just before I say yesterday, of course, a couple of this week asked an interesting question. I haven't seen much written about the Lowe's preload card, but I saw it in the Lowe's site and I'm considering signing up. It seems like a no brainer since it gets you 5% off, no credit check, no impact on credit report, and you can load it with a credit card am i missing anything lowespreload.com he gives the link and he talks about how i made the point that you can often buy lowes gift cards for a percentage off but when those aren't available you can load a prepaid

lowes card with a credit card and get five percent off at lowes what is this magic right have you have you heard about this before? No, unfortunately, no, I haven't heard a thing about it. So that's very interesting. We'll have to go do some research. Yeah, we will. I saw that and I was like, that sounds kind of interesting to me. And I wonder what it can be used for at Lowe's. Right. Retrieve Lowe's card. I don't know. I'm not sure like does it work like the target debit card like the target red cards because card to get target of course has the red card and they got the credit card version and the debit card version and either one gets you five percent off so there's no reason to

sign up for the credit card you just want to get the debit card once you get your five percent you get your whatever when they run their promos sometimes they give you a 40 off a 40 coupon for signing up for the debit card so So that's usually a pretty good deal. And then the debit card, I mean, it's a debit card. You buy whatever you want to target with the debit card, right? But you can't load it with a credit card. No, you can't.

So that's the difference. That is a big difference. So anyway, I thought that was interesting. I thought that was notable this week. Anyway, out of frequent- There you go. Great question. All right.

So my friends, that brings us to the end for today. So I want to thank you guys for being out there with us listening. If you've enjoyed what we've been talking about and you want to get on our email list so you can find out when we do write the post about the Lowe's prepaid card, what you want to do is go to frequentmiler.com slash subscribe. Again, that's frequentmiler.com slash subscribe to get on our email list. Follow us on social media. Join our Frequent Miler Insiders Facebook group. If you're watching this on YouTube, hit the subscribe button, ding that notification bell, give us a thumbs up,

leave us a comment. If you're listening to this in podcast form, we appreciate the same in whatever podcast platform you're listening on. Thank you guys for being there with us today. We appreciate it and we will be back again next week. Goodbye, everybody. See you next time.