Frequent Miler on the Air - 15x Madness from Amex | Ep105 | 7-4-21

Episode Date: July 3, 2021

00:41 Giant Mailbag: Reader Greg is unhappy 2:57 What crazy thing did.....Resy do this week? https://frequentmiler.com/now-125k-15x-platinum-via-resy/ 5:47 What crazy thing...did Upside do this week? 8:48 Mattress running the numbers: Chase 50% transfer bonus to Marriott 11:20 Main Event: 15x Madness from American Express https://frequentmiler.com/new-platinum-live-disappointing-restrictions-monster-offer-for-some/ https://frequentmiler.com/the-amex-platinum-coupon-book-review-on-my-mind/ 45:31 Question of the Week: I'm cancelling my Platinum. What do I do with my Membership Rewards points? https://frequentmiler.com/amex-membership-rewards-sweet-spots/ Join our email list: https://frequentmiler.com/subscribe/ Don't forget to like, subscribe, and comment! Music credit: Annie Yoder

frequent miler on the air starts now today's main event 15x madness from american express oh my goodness insane stop the madness they're totally bonkers we've been going nuts all day leading up to recording this show uh there's there's something afoot in mx land and we talked before about how they were showering points on us but we thought they were sprinkling they were sprinkling rewards sprinkling before whoa all right we'll get into that soon after our regular segment so we're going to start with the giant mailbag. Today's giant mailbag comes from someone named Greg. And he says, what is wrong with you guys? You encouraged me to sign up for the platinum card with the $550 annual fee before it went up on July 1st. And then, and I did, actually my wife did.

And wait, this sounds like a pretty familiar thing yeah keep going keep going somebody named greg yeah and the next day i find that the offer is like way way better it would have been way better for me to wait i mean for my wife to wait and to pay the 695 annual fee right what's wrong with you? If only someone had said a few days ago that the offer could go up and it could totally be worth the extra $145 to wait and get the better off. If somebody had predicted that and said that was a good idea, somebody whose predictions you trust, someone who does really well. If only one of us had said that. All right. Anyway, if anyone hadn't figured that out, that was me talking. And that is in fact what happened. And so for everybody out there is frustrated that they got in on the great offer based on

the $550 annual fee for the Amex platinum card. And you're frustrated because now the offer is much, much better. All I can say is I'm right there with you. Sorry. Well, you know, we'll have to talk about it more because I hopped in on the Schwab card too a couple of days ago, and we'll talk more about that. But I'm only semi-disappointed. There's part of me that's like,

eh, it also works out pretty well for the people who already got it. So there's pluses and minuses on both sides, but we'll talk more about that. So don't worry. There's Greg out there. Somebody named Greg. It'll be okay. Greg and his wife is,

is going to be okay. It's not, not the end of the world. Just don't tell his wife how many points they lost. That's all. Okay. Don't tell the local merchants either that where we would have been spending like crazy to get the 15x except to refer somebody and get the four the plus four and pretend don't worry if if

you don't know what we're talking about we'll get right we'll get there we'll get there okay let's so what crazy thing did resi do this week what what is resi what are you talking what is this i don't know what is resi i don't even know what resi it's some kind of reservation reservation reservation system but for whatever reason they tend to have like these extra good offers for the amex platinum card and and the amex gold card as well and platinum card offer is off the charts and that's what the title of this show is all about that they're offering 15x blah blah we'll get into that but the weird thing is the offer said one thing while the terms of the offer said completely different things so like in one place all over the splash page it like get 15x on up to 25k spend.

And then the terms say get 15x on up to 6k of spend. And that's a pretty big difference, right? Yeah, that's a large. I mean, we're talking about not only are we talking about a difference of like what, $19,000, but also 15x on $19,000. I mean, yeah, that's a sizable difference. Right, right. And it's pretty clear that whoever was responsible for updating the terms and conditions of the offer just messed up because there were other cases too, like where it said, you'll earn 15X, that means you'll get an additional nine points per dollar, which

is not what it means. It means you'll get an additional 14 points per dollar. It was basically copying and pasting and messing up from the other offers. Clearly, clearly. And we say that and watch by the time this publishes, we'll find something different, but it's pretty crazy because of course, like you said, on the landing page, splash page and the big font, it says the 15X and 25k spend, which I'm sure, I mean, we're sure is what they must have meant, right? I mean, it's got to be what they meant. But to have it different in two different places to make it seem like a gotcha that's hidden behind the scenes there. Yeah, that's just crazy. You don't see that because banks can't make those kinds of mistakes, right? I mean, there's all these consumer protection laws. They'd be in trouble if they start like, you know, baiting and switching, right? Yeah. Right. So, but you know, it seems like even though it's resi on the, on the title, I mean, it had to be Amex that I would think that had to write the terms and conditions. You would think, you know, maybe they gave it to an intern at resi and they were like, here you go. One job. Here's your one job. You had one job intern, resi and they were like here you go yeah one job here's your one trust you you're one you had one job intern resi intern you had one job all right yeah so we had

a double header this week right we got a double header crazy thing so and i don't have any idea what the second crazy thing is no i kept it secret i'm gonna have to see if you remember even what i'm talking about and and so i'm an elderly guy. There's no chance. I know. It's tough. It's tough. So readers out there, listeners out there who've been following Frequent Mile Later for years might remember a website called Upside. Do you remember Upside, Greg? Oh, yeah. Upside. Upside. Now, I'm not talking GetUpside, not the gas app, but Upside.com, I guess. Well, do you remember? What, what did they do? Don't, I don't remember. That's what, that's, what's crazy about this. So upside

was this, this, or is this business travel booking site where you can book a trip through their site and the idea at least years ago, whether or not it still works this way. And I haven't been there in a while. So, but the idea at the time was, I remember now, they would go ahead, go ahead. They would offer you a gift card for choosing a different itinerary or different hotel. So, you know, you got to be in Chicago for business and you've kind of put in where you want to stay and when you want to fly. And they're like, okay, well, you can do that for X amount of dollars. Or if you want to take this other flight and stay at this other hotel, we'll give you an Amazon gift card for a hundred bucks or something like that. That was the general idea. And they had this insane promotion where at the time, and this is years ago, you could book a $400 trip and get

$250 worth of Amazon gift cards. So it was super popular. Tons of people did it. It was a hot, hot deal that year on the blog. Well, I got an email today from Upside out of the blue. And the email from Upside said, hey, we see that you haven't used our site in more than a year. So basically, we want to know if you're still interested in using the site. If we don't hear back from you in response to this email by August 1st, then we'll close out your account for you. We'll go ahead and take care of that, close it out for you. And oh, by the way, any rewards that you still have in your account, we'll just get rid of those too. So if you don't respond to that one email, apparently, by August 1st, and you happen to have any rewards in there, they're going to get rid of it. Now,

come on, who has been traveling over the last year, right? Obviously, some people started traveling again in the last few months, and some people traveled the whole time. But overall, in the last year, I mean, it's not all that shocking if you haven't been to a travel site last year, right? Like one specific booking travel site. But this doesn't seem crazy to me. This seems like, you know, upside probably is like running out of money and they're like, hey, I've got an idea how we could avoid paying out for all those rewards that people earned. I guess so. I guess so.

I guess so. So moral of the story is if you have an upside account and you had like some gift card money hanging out in there that you were like, oh, I'll redeem that someday when I book a few more trips or whatever else. Don't forget to log in. Log in, redeem it now. Redeem it. Redeem it. If you don't, you're going to close out your account. So smooth.

Smooth there. I was hoping you were going to close out your account. Smooth there. I was hoping you were going to say that your email said that there's this new promotion that's good for $400 credit for every $400 you spend. But I wrote back because I was like, if they do that again, I want to know about it. So I was like, no, don't close my account. I want to hear about the next crazy promo you guys run. So please keep me in the loop. Hopefully they will.

All right. So that brings us, my friends, to Mattress Running the Numbers. This week for Mattress Running the Numbers, we've got a Chase transfer bonus to Marriott. What's the deal, Greg? And is it Mattress Run worthy? So Chase, who's not known for very many transfer bonuses, is out with a transfer bonus.

So you can now, you've always been able to transfer chase points one-to-one to marriott um which is not recommended in most cases but now they'll give you a 50 bonus uh through the end of the of august i think it is and uh so you'll get you know for every thousand chase points you get 1500 marriott points. So there's the mattress run question. Is it worth transferring now that you get that, that big bonus? I mean, that's a great question. So 50% more. So you're telling me that for every thousand points I transfer, I'm going to get 1500 Marriott points. Is that right? Yeah. So, I mean, think of it this way. If a Marriott free night costs 60,000 points, it'll only cost you 40,000 chase points.

True. Only 40,000 chase points. No, it's not. No, no, stop. Get out of here. No, I probably not. I'll give it a probably I'll give you a probably because I don't know, I guess it depends on the situation. But that 60,000 point Marriott and I would have to be really expensive. Because, you know, with 40,000 chase points, if you get the Sapphire Reserve, you can book a room that costs $600 through the Chase Ultimate Rewards portal. So if that particular hotel is available for less than $600, then it's going to cost you less than 40,000 points to book it out right now. You won't get elite credit if you book it that way.

You won't get points, blah, blah, blah. So there's some ins and outs and what have yous. But generally speaking, this is a horrible idea. I agree. I mean, and when you add on top also, by the way, the fact that you can often buy Marriott points on sale for less than a penny each, this is, again, not a good deal. Because if you can buy Marriott points for, let's say, eight-tenths of a cent per point, then getting one and a half of those is like getting 1.2 cents in value. Just cash out your points at the grocery store and buy the Marriott points when they go on sale. Yeah,, agree.

Don't do it. Don't do it. I mean, there's probably edge cases where it makes sense. I'm sure, yeah. And if you need to top off a little bit. In general. Generally speaking, no. Sorry, Marriott.

All right. Time for the main event. To the main event. Yeah, talk to us about the main event. X Madness from American Express. Let's just talk about, let's tell a story here. Yeah, talk to us about the main event. 15X Madness from American Express. 15. Let's just talk about, let's tell a story here. Okay.

June 30th. We go to bed knowing that the next day, the American Express Platinum cards are going to have a bigger annual fee, $6.95 instead of $5.50, and we know they're going to have a bigger annual fee, $695 instead of $550. And we know they're going to have new perks. And maybe we suspected that they might have a different sign-up bonus, but we didn't know that one for sure one way or another, right? Right.

So we go to bed. Some of us stay up really late. Some of us stay up past 1 o'clock in the morning, just in the off chance that it changes when it passes midnight passes midnight central time and did it did it change before you went to bed not before i went to sleep okay so so tell me about your morning then well so then then some of us got up around quarter to four in the morning to see all right what's going on is it chain has it changed what's what's the new offer looking like and we find whoa yeah absolutely everything is up and running

and on the MX site. Boom. 100,000 membership rewards points after 6K spend in the first six months, plus 10X this time in different categories. So 10X at restaurants worldwide and 10X when you shop small in the US, so small businesses in the US, but get this on up to $25,000 worth of spend in the first six months between those two categories combined. I mean, if you could actually do the full 25,000 spend, that's a quarter of a million points just at 10X plus 100,000 on top of that for the welcome bonus you're talking four or wait 350 000 points and i was like whoa hello i mean we were excited six months ago and we were like oh maybe you get 250 maybe you can get 275 and now i'm looking at 350 from one card what right right insanity and

and not only that the uh morgan stan Stanley and the Schwab versions of this card, which have had the fixed 60K offer after 5K spend like forever and ever, suddenly have the same 100K plus 10X offer going on. Insanity. So it's like, whoa, this is great. This is amazing. But Amex wasn't done. They weren't done.

They weren't. It's great and amazing. And also at the same time, a little frustrating since we just opened the Schwab Platinum a couple of days ago. So I got on with chat with Amex chat at four o'clock in the morning and said, hey, can you match me into this ball? I'm figuring maybe if I get in before everybody's awake, maybe I'll get that one rep that's just going to be sympathetic somehow and make this happen. But no, I didn't. So no dice there. But yeah, so we thought everything's great. We start writing it up, getting ready and hit publish on, okay,

here's the new offer. And then like minutes after publishing it, Greg notices that, whoa, there's an even better referral offer. Right. So, you know, as happened before, you know, a certain platinum cards have the ability to refer to a better offer. And that was in this case, that's only for the regular platinum, not the Morgan Stanley or the Schwab, but still 125K points plus the 10X. So even better, even better. I spent a while this morning, early, early this morning, four or five o'clock in the morning, trying to see if I could get that 125k. So what I did was I knew we had a referral link on our best offers page. And that was one of the old 100k referral links. So I clicked through and I noticed, oh, that's still got the gas stations and the supermarkets on it. Still got the updated 695 annual fee, but still got the old bonus categories for people

who prefer that. So I said, okay, well, that's an interesting piece to keep in our post, but no 125. I'm just looking at 100,000 there still. Try to open it up in different browsers and clearing cookies and all those fun things that we do to try to make sure that we find the best, best offer. And I didn't see anything like that, but Greg right away saw not only, it wasn't like he opened it and got lucky and saw the 125, but that's the way the offer shows up in your account, right? You log into your platinum account. As a referrer, as the person to refer others,

it shows me what the person who I refer will get. And it's just straight up 125k plus 10x. So you scrambled to update your morning post, you scrambled to update our card database to have the new information because that was the best public offer. And I was trying to scramble and get that done really quickly before the instant emails and the daily emails went out. I don't think I beat the emails. They went out, I think, before I had updated that. But still, I'm sure plenty of people saw it and were like, okay, great, good. People found the 125K offer, hopefully, and didn't sign up with the inferior 100K offer. So we were like, okay, we did our job, right? Everything's good. Right. We could relax for the rest of the day.

Right. Kick back, say, okay, done. We did it. Except. Except, yeah, except Rezzy so so how did you find out about the resi offer it was a member of frequent miler insiders so a member of frequent miler insiders named john responded to our post about these new platinum benefits because we haven't even talked about that but the card of course came out with new benefits so we also had to update there was some work there too but uh for sure but so, so John commented on our post about that on Facebook and our Facebook group, the Frequent Miler Insiders. And he said, hey, check out the Resi offer.

It's even better. And he pops a link in there. And I look at it and I'm like, whoa. It just seemed unbelievable, didn't it? It did. He said the Resi offer is even better. And I'm not even sure if he said what it was. So I don't know if my first site of this offer was after I clicked through or he said what resi offer is even better and i'm not even sure if he said what it was or or i so i

don't know if the my first site of this offer was after i clicked through or he said what it was but when i saw 125 000 points after the 6k spend plus 15 x on up to 25 000 spend i was floored. I was like, what? We've never seen a 15X anything before. 15X? What? That's just craziness. And as you said, I mean, we talked before a little bit about how this is for restaurants worldwide and for local or for small businesses. So Amex has sort of a mysterious way of they decide what counts as a small business, but they do have like a site where you could go and look them up. But, but I mean, there's a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot of businesses in the world, right? Yeah. Right. So, you know, so let's talk a little bit. If you got this offer, what would, ideas? How would you think about spending $25,000? Not that you have to spend all 25, by the way, we're talking about half a million membership rewards points, like between the 25,000 and 15 X plus the welcome bonus of 125.

That is 500,000 membership rewards points. That is so crazy. Yes. Insane. Like one card and you're almost like set for life with points. 12 months ago. Exaggerating, but. People were hunting for the 100K platinum offer, right?

I mean, people are checking every now and then to see, oh, am I targeted for the 100K platinum card offer? I mean, now those folks are looking back like, what was I doing with my life? Because 500,000 points with one card. Okay. So how would I think about it? What would I do? Well, I mean, there's lots of different things, I'm sure. Cause there's so many small businesses,

but the first few things that came to mind where anybody who's getting married, I mean, hello, your caterer is probably a small business or a restaurant, one or the other. So, you know, if you're paying for something like that, a venue, photographer, DJ, everything for your wedding, essentially is going to be a small business of some sort, I would think now, of Now, of course, it always kind of depends what Amex is going to code things as, but you try a little test purchase with everybody, you can figure it out, I'm sure. So $25,000 is probably in the range of what many people spend on a wedding these days in the United States. So you could potentially get it all knocked out there. I thought about buying a car. I wrote a post a few years ago about buying a car on a credit card.

And one of the things I wrote about in the post was that Amex has an auto purchasing program. It's basically just an Amex branded version of Truecar, but they have some dealerships in there that have agreed to take the entire purchase price of the car on the card. Now, that might have seemed like a bad deal before, because I would figure that if they're taking the full purchase price, they're probably inflating the price by a little bit. I don't know, 3%, 5%, 7%, I don't know. But if you can get a half a million points on your $25,000 car, it doesn't matter, right? I mean, you might have to have there a little bit. Preston Pyshko, At 15X, if they charge 5% credit card fee, it's so worth it.

It's ridiculous. Yeah. So some other ideas I had were like, it's possible some local travel agents might be considered small businesses. So if you're booking a package deal, tour, cruise, whatever, through them, and if they're the ones um taking the credit card charge as opposed to passing it through to a cruise boat or something that might count um local businesses that i frequent i could see going up to them and saying uh would you give me a discount

for a two thousand dollar gift card because i'm happy to, you know, basically prepay for the next couple of years of, of, uh, you know, being your customer. And I think they'd be pretty excited by that actually. They might, you know, it's probably not every day that somebody comes to the door looking to do that. Yeah. And I know, and I know from the past that some of the grocery stores around town count as, as small businesses, you know, according to Amex. So there's just so many things that you can spend it on. It's crazy. Not to mention, of course, all my regular restaurants spend. Of course, all your regular small business type spend. But yeah, I mean, there's so many things. And when you mentioned the grocery stores there, I think that's a really interesting point.

Somebody had commented on some grocery stores near them that coded small business. And the thing is, sometimes there's a business that might look like a big chain, but it's franchised. And maybe it's a local entity that owns it. And maybe that's going to count as a small business, even though it doesn't look like it. So I don't know. You'll have to take a look and see what's around you and try some things out. But you might be surprised that there might be things that you would have thought, oh, that's not a small... Well, yeah, it is a small business. Exactly. So I think there are just so many things.

The possibilities are almost endless in terms of what to count. Another thing I think if I could get this offer, I would consider going back to is reselling. So if I found something from what's considered a small business where I could get anywhere close to my money back. What a great deal that would be. Right. I mean, yeah, like you said, even if you're losing 5%, if you're picking up 15x, I mean, that's an amazing price for membership rewards points, right? I mean, you'd be thrilled with that. So yeah, I mean, definitely reselling for sure. That came to my mind in terms of what

you could buy or what other things you could pay for other people in your family. I mentioned in the post, if maybe you have a work for a small company and you're planning like a holiday party or something, you can book that maybe on your card or find those types of opportunities where you can cover an expense for multiple folks. I mean, those are techniques that I guess are always somewhat useful, but I really think with this 15X, you got to hunt those out, right? I mean, it's time. It's time to go looking for those. It's worth the effort to go looking, no doubt.

No doubt. Right. And I mean, maybe some hotels. I mean, Mike, I didn't even really think about this. But I wonder some of the hotels, especially like some of the hotels and fine hotels and resorts that might be just like a not necessarily small, small business, but maybe they count some of these boutique hotels that are independently owned. I don't know. I mean, again, probably say, but I bet some of them are, you know, so maybe double dip and get yourself your now your new $200 fine hotels and resorts, you know, prepaid booking credit, although the

prepaid probably wouldn't trigger it because I would, that would get charged by Amex. But you know, this is ridiculous. I'm almost getting excited by all these ideas, even though I have no way of getting one of these cards. Well, and I'll toss this out there. When they did the small business credits last year, people were looking for all sorts of different ways to use up those credits, right? And I remember there were some apps like Flues that counted as a small business, right? And it advertised that they counted as a small business

for that particular promo. And they weren't the only one. There was another one, I think. We've written about them. So there may be some other ways to kind of pump up your spending and find some opportunities there. So terrific.

And somebody commented on the post, I think to say something along the lines of Amex charges these high fees. And so this is going to be harmful to local businesses. You're going to be paying with an Amex because they're going to lose money, blah, blah, blah. But I don't know about you. I look at this and I say, I will be looking for opportunities. If I had this, I would be looking for opportunities to spend money at local businesses. And it's not that I don't spend any money at local businesses right now, but I don't go out of my way to look for the chances to do that. And I certainly would

at 15X. They're going to be getting more business is your point, right? Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Also, you know, my understanding is that there are Visa and MasterCards that are the premium ones that charge as much or more than Amex. So it's a bit of a, you know, it may be true that on average, the Amex cards charge more, but, you know it may be true that on average the mx cards charge more but uh you know switching to like the sapphire reserve is probably not saving your your local small business a penny right um so right yeah yeah so so exciting i mean and i never would have thought we would have seen this and i think that you know when we talk about the the progression of events here the thing is

you know we saw the 100k and we're like oh wow we saw the 100K and we're like, oh, wow. We saw the 125K and we're like, oh, my goodness, this is amazing. And then we saw this Rezzy offer and we're like, wow. We've been saying for the last six or seven or eight months here now that it doesn't get any better than this. You got to hop on the platinum card now, right? And it just keeps getting better, Greg. It does. Is there no end to this? I have no idea.

Are we going to turn around next week's show and say, well, that was silly? Somebody asked today, they said, is there a known end date for this offer? And I was like, if there's anything I know, it's that I have no idea when this madness is going to end. Because I said back in November when the 100K and 10X first came out, I don't know if this is going to be around in December that was right that was our perspective right you don't know if it'll be around this afternoon right now right right yeah yeah clearly we were wrong and it's good to be wrong I mean it's definitely good to be wrong it's nice to see this but and it's and it's because of our wrongness that is why I can't get one of these cards now right and I don't know are you in the same boat

but you know for me personally I jumped on it um back in November. And I'm happy with that. I got the 10X off for 100K and all that. That was great. My wife though, kept getting a pop-up saying she's had the card before until June 30th when I tried one more time. And lucky you. And she got it. And so we have another of the 100K plus 10X of the old 10X categories, which is fine in a way. But anyway. Somewhat less exciting, perhaps. Yeah. I mean, and of course, the Schwab offer for 60,000 points, which seems horrible right now. 60,000 after 5k spend that I signed up for just a couple of days ago thinking, oh, you know what, let me make sure I get in on

it now before the fee goes up. Because I was thinking, you know, Greg predicted that maybe the offer would go up on the Schwab and the Morgan Stanley. And I looked back through Greg's track record of predictions over the last year or two. And I figured for sure that meant that there was going to be no more signup bonus at all on those cards. They were just going to get rid of them or something. And so I was like, okay, I need to jump on this now, especially once Greg predicted that it might go up. I was like, okay, done. I'm signing up now. I love it because I was wrong about another part of it. So in the same place where I said that those offers were likely to go up, which I was very right about, I also said that the current 100K plus 10X offer is unlikely to get better. How was I wrong about that? Yeah.

Yeah. So you just picked the wrong part of my prediction. I guess I did. And you know, to base your decisions on. For a short glimmer of time, I was like, you know what, I made the right decision because somebody pointed out that the Schwab application page now has new terminology on there that says that you can't get the welcome offer if you've had previous versions of the platinum card before. And it's not clear to us yet as we record this, whether that only refers to previous versions of the Schwab platinum card or whether that means if you've had any platinum card, you can't get the Schwab card anymore. There's definitely some fear that that's going to happen or that that has

happened here that Amex has finally said, okay, once you had one flavor of platinum, that's going to happen or that that has happened here that amex has finally said okay once you had one flavor of platinum that's enough of course historically you've been able to get the morgan stanley the schwab the vanilla and then before that there were some other ones mercedes benz and ameriprise that don't exist anymore and he got all of them one time and get the bonus on them uh but there was some terminology that made us think maybe that's not the case anymore so for a moment i was redeemed. I was like, okay, you know what? Ha, ha, Greg, I got you. I locked in the 60,000 points that I wouldn't have gotten anything if I waited until today.

And then as time's gone on, we've become a little less sure as to what that terminology really means. Right. I think we'll know for sure pretty soon because someone will. Give it a shot. I mean, we'll be able to at least deny that hypothesis that we can no longer sign up for both because if somebody gets approved for, let's say, a Schwab platinum after they've already had the regular platinum or currently have the platinum, then that would prove that it hasn't changed, actually. Right. Or vice versa. Hopefully we'll have that data point soon. Right. It'll be hard to prove that it has changed because if people get denied, it could be for other reasons. Exactly. Exactly. So, all right. So, I mean, that was some craziness there and unbelievable in that Rezzy offer is just off the charts. So, what about you? I said I can't get it for my wife or me.

And my son's been in pop-up prison. You can get it? I can. I haven't gotten those. So, the Platinums that we've gotten up to this point were in my wife's name. So, I still have not had the vanilla Platinum. So, I am eligible to get this offer. And, and what this morning when I saw that last night, I had the application page up.

I say last night before the offers changed when it was still $550, I had the application page up and I started to type my information in and I was like going back and forth saying, okay, should I grab it now? While it's still five 50? Because I really don't want to pay $695. Yeah, Greg thinks the offer might be worth another $145, but I don't really want to spend $700 on it. I don't know if I really care how good it's going to be. This is a really good offer. So I was thinking about it and for whatever reason, I didn't do it.

And then I got up this morning early, this morning as we record this, and I was like, oh, wow, look at these offers. And then this Rezzy offer came in. And I definitely, as soon as I saw that, I wanted to hop on it. I was like, okay, now this is the one that I've been waiting for. Except I don't know, is it? I'm not sure. Right, we don't know.

I'm not sure. I mean, we've already seen that there's like 150K offer floating around, but that one isn't with 15X. So you have to decide which you'd want there. But is there going to be 150k plus 15x? Is there going to be 125k with 20x? Of course, we would have laughed you out of the room if you had predicted a 15x opportunity like this, right? Totally. I mean, if you told us that it was going to get 15X on $5,000 spent, I mean, on $2,000 spent,

we would have laughed if you told us it was going to get 15, you know, on top of the welcome offer being six figures. And he said, also, it's going to earn. I mean, if you told us it wasn't going to have a welcome offer, it's just going to be 15.

Okay, maybe. But yeah, you're going to tell us it's going to have 100 plus, 1,000 points plus 15. We'd be like, what are you talking about? What are you that's crazy nobody does a better because really before this has anybody done it i'm trying to think of of a bonus category that was greater than 5x on on one of these cards i mean apart from like hotel cards i can't i can't remember

any so yeah i mean 5x used to be like the special thing. Chase is still playing with that, right? As a bonus, 5X at grocery stores for a while. I mean, that feels so negligible now because MX has doubled and then tripled the the bar right on the x right i mean you would have thought that this thing would have heated up a little more slowly right that we would have gone like six or seven or eight but we skipped right from five to ten like they had just doubled it and that's i think why it blew our minds because we hadn't seen a 10x category from a transferable currency for sure before and not only from transferable currencies, but I don't think we've seen 10X from a United card or British Airways card, not even individual airline programs have offered 10X, forget about a transferable currency. So that was crazy to begin with.

And then we didn't just up it to 12 or 13, all the way to 15. I mean, did they have to do that? But don't get me wrong. I'm happy. I'm glad. Keep at it. I mean, so Amex must be getting something out of this Rezzy relationship. I think they own Rezzy. I think Amex bought Rezzy. So I don't know what's going on there. Why would they do this? I really don't know. Yeah. Unless they're just trying to test and see which channels they can market different things through. It doesn't make a lot of sense to me because the Rezzy offer for a while anyway, was the best offer available on the gold and platinum cards for a little bit anyway. Over these last six or eight months, platinum card ended up having a

better referral offer, but the gold card, I think the Rezzy offer lasted throughout and still I think is, I think off the top of my head is the best offer for the gold card. So yeah, it's weird. I think we briefly had a better one that was a referral for gold, but it went back to Rezzy being the best because it added that restaurant credit. Yeah, $250 in restaurant rebates. Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, I think that's really weird. you look at this because Chase also came out with some big new offers this week that just don't even really seem very interesting by comparison, even though they're terrific offers. I mean, you look at the, so the Freedom and Freedom Unlimited are once again coming with 5X grocery stores for the first year on up to $12,000 spend. And like I wrote the post last year,

I remember writing the post a year ago. You were pretty excited about it last year. Yeah. We were like, oh my goodness, 5X for a year. This is incredible. This is great. And that was super exciting. And it became so irrelevant that I mentioned on a show recently, I totally forgot that I'm still in the 5X period on that card for groceries. I mean, it totally slipped my mind and I would have just missed it if not for just luck. I looked at the card one day, I was like, wait a second, wait, do I have 5x grocery on that card? I do. I do have 5x. And now this quarter, the new quarter here, grocery is one of the 5x categories. Also, if you have a Freedom card or

Freedom Flex, it's the rotating 5x category. So if you get the card now new, or you have a freedom card or freedom flex it's it's the rotating 5x category so if you get the card now new or you have one of those still from last year that's earning the 5x you actually earn nine at the grocery store on that first 1500 spend this quarter so right which is almost almost amex territory almost like 9x you're like it's almost san x territory you know it's like not no 15x but you know it's and and then and that's not all chased it right they're airline cards they've got a bunch of 100k offers and even 150k offer and we're like yeah that's kind of cool right 150 000 airline miles and we're like oh that's kind of cool yeah and you know the funny thing is those british airways offers to british airways iberia aeroling you know, when we when we caught wind of a leaked link on those,

there's 100k for 5000. You were like, who really cares about that? Right? We were talking about it behind the scenes. And you're like, I really care about the British Airways 100k offer. And I was like, who really cares about the 100,000 point offer for 5,000 spend? Like, I mean, come on. And Avios aren't the most useful currency ever, but look at Iberia and, you know, from the East Coast anyway, 34,000 each way in business class off peak from New York to Madrid or Boston to Madrid. So you're talking about the signup bonus on that one airline card, more than covering really like three ways,

like there and back and there again in business class. And that is like an afterthought. And that's an afterthought because partly because your Amex points, which you have 10 times as many of now, after you get some resi offers, you can transfer to British airways or, or to Iberia. And you can often wait until there's a transfer bonus.

Transfer bonus, that's, oh yeah. It's 25%, 30% bonus, and even more points. We didn't even talk about that yet. I mean, you're looking at like this platinum offer, the Resi one, it's worth up to a half a million points if you also nail a transfer bonus.

I mean, we've seen sometimes 40% transfer bonuses to Avios. So, I mean, you're talking 700 talking 700 000 obvious off of one card 700 000 if you hit the transfer so crazy like yeah yeah that's why the chase obvious cards are like who cares about that right i mean you know don't get us wrong these are these are good offers they are very good if you're interested in them, they're probably worth considering. And if you, for whatever reason, the Platinum card's not for you, or you can't spend much in the 10 or 15x categories, then yeah. There's all kinds of reasons why you might not be into it. Well, there are.

I mean, even if the Avios are only worth a penny each, you're talking about a thousand dollars worth of pennies in exchange for 5,000 spent. I mean, that's like 20% back. I mean, that'd be an amazing offer. And anytime other than now we'd be like, oh my goodness. Wow. It's like 20% on five grand. That's amazing. Right. And if you get better than one cent a point, even, even better. So yeah, I mean, and United, the United business card, 150,000. I mean. I know that's, that's great. And that has the advantage, being a business card, if you're under Chase's 524 rule, if you sign up, get approved, it won't increment your account. So it doesn't count against you as a card you've signed up for

in the last 24 months, even once you're approved. So there are advantages to business cards. And in that case, 150K, I mean, it at least raises an eyebrow, even though compared to the Amex offers, it's not as exciting as it should be. Right. Right. And because United has become more dynamic, the miles aren't quite as valuable as they used to be. But if you fly United a lot, or you have a bunch of United miles from flying United anyway in the past, then maybe it'd be good to top off the account. United miles do have their uses, so they can certainly be useful. And the card has some ancillary benefits. It might be worth it. So yeah, I mean, it doesn't take away a 524 slot, but it wouldn't be something that, well, in that particular offer requires 20,000 spend in six months to trigger the whole thing. And I look at it and say, okay, well, do I really want to dedicate 20K spend to

that? No, no, definitely not. No, there is the offer out there. It's hard to justify anything like that right now. But it's very interesting to me. It's fascinating. What is it that Chase has got to do? Because we look at those offers right now and we're saying they are great offers, except they seem like nothing right now. I mean, what would Chase have to do on the United Business Card for us to be like, oh, wow, that's really exciting or on the Avios cards? Because I don't think they can do it. But I don't even know what it would look like. Yeah. I mean, I don't know. I'm assuming that Amex is trying to make up for the huge hurdle of the annual fee. So many consumers are going to look at that card and say, wow, that looks nice, but oh, wait, $695 for a credit card? Right. When there's other ones offering fee-free cards? Why would I do that? And I think that's a very legitimate question. And it's worth going through. And we haven't talked about them. Maybe we'll talk about them in a future episode, but there's a slew of perks

on these cards. And so if you know how to get value out of them, it could very well be worth not only getting it now for the signup bonus but keeping it year after year that's totally dependent on how you'd use all those perks but even if you wouldn't use any of the perks right which is that's right a stretch like but but even if you wouldn't use a single one cent of them right right the signup bonus totally worth it way way worth the 695. No question. Huge. I mean, if you were just to take the welcome bonus, if you were able to max it out, let's say the 25 spending, whatever it is, big expenses coming up, you're able to spend

the 25 somehow anyway, and end up with your 500,000 points that we're talking about. So even if your whole plan with that is to someday down the road, hopefully get the Schwab version of the platinum card. And we think that the conversion there, the redemption for Schwab is going to drop to 1.1 cents per point. So even if you did that, you're talking about $5,500 worth of points on 25K spent. I mean, it makes up for the 695 annual fee. It does. You know what I'm saying? That's taken care of in there. So I know it's a lot of money. Just the 125K alone, if you cash that out, that's well more than the 695.

Well more. Yeah. So if you can afford to float the 695 upfront until you have the bonus and you're able to then redeem it for that type of redemption, then I think it's just almost a no brainer. And it is a lot. And in fact, my wife and I were talking about it just today after these offers went up and everything. We're talking about new offers and new benefits. and she was like wait how much is the you know right right i was excited she's like how many of those do we have and i was like a couple but don't worry about that part it's uh you know the bonuses are gonna kind of take care of themselves right so but it is a lot right meanwhile at least chase with with their their primary cards their sapphire line has gone the other way right they've they've made the sapphire preferred the 95 card the one with the big sign up bonus and it's been this way for a long time where it's been a bigger sign up bonus than the reserve right now it happens to be 100k but uh for a long time it's been bigger than the reserve sign up bonus um they i i you know i've seen some hints that maybe the reserve they're

gonna up the sign up bonus a little bit but i there've been no hints that it'll be 100K even, let alone anything like what MX is doing here. Well, and I think they've been giving people $100 credits to help offset the annual fee. So they've been kind of going in the opposite direction where they've been kind of reducing the effective annual fee on the Sapphire Reserve, not trying to draw extra attention on that end of the spectrum, but rather, like you said, they're trying to draw attention with these cheaper cards. And so maybe that's the strategy. It's just a different type of a strategy. And I mean, who's to fault them for that? Because for the vast majority of people that I know in my personal life, if I said,

hey, there's an amazing offer on a credit card and and they're like, oh, yeah, is there an annual fee? And I'm like, yeah, it's 695. They're going to walk away in the other direction, right? So, I mean, so reasonable chase, reasonable to do that, to increase the offers on those cards that seem more reasonable to the average person. So I think it's an interesting strategy, but we'll see. We'll see how it transpires. I wonder, I mean, now we were talking just like what, like a couple of weeks ago about how a hundred K was the new standard, right? Like you couldn't get excited about a 60 or 70,000 point offer. It's going to have to be at least a hundred now because that Amex has done that. They've changed that. And now, now what? Now a hundredK is boring. Yeah. I don't know. I mean,

it doesn't seem possible that it could keep going up from here, but I think I said the same words last time we talked about this. I'm pretty sure you did. I'm pretty sure you did. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I don't know where it ends and where you're like, okay. And that's why I'm sort of wishy-washy on this Resi thing, because there is a large part of me that's like, okay, I got to do that now. And there is definitely a part of me now that's like, don't know if i have to do that if i'm gonna get one shot at it and you know the next seven years or whatever it is uh i don't know if this is the shot that i'm gonna take i mean i've also got a lot of spent to do so i predict i predict that you're gonna wait and it's not gonna go up in fact we'll go down before you have a chance to sign up.

It might. It might. So I just helped you out by making a prediction. That is not the way you want it to go. So you should be good. All right. Speaking of how it will all end, how will this show end? How will this show end?

We're going to post roast. The next segment is post roast. Right. And so, wait a second. Post roast. Are we doing the post roast? Because I had it. We're not post roasting today.

We've been too busy dealing with this roller coaster of crazy offers. Way too busy. So we're going to move into the question of the week. And so this week's question of the week came in via email and it's right on topic with what we're talking about here with all these cards with amazing membership rewards offers, because we didn't talk about the new benefits and the new platinum card, because like Greg said, there's a slew of new benefits, but there's also this huge annual fee. So Nancy writes in and says, thanks for the points in our post about the new platinum card. She said, I'm one of those platinum MX folks that's going to jump ship due to the new annual fee and then diminish benefits, feeling like their benefits have gone down for her. But I'm sitting on a boatload of points and wonder where you would direct me to learn how to most appropriately use them to get the most value. I suspect I'm not alone and wonder if

you thought of sharing a post on this issue if you haven't already. I appreciate your insight and reply, Nancy. So Nancy is wondering, okay, I'm not going to pay the 695 again because it's not worth it. So if you're an existing cardholder'm not going to pay the 695 again, because it's not worth it. So if you're an existing cardholder, and you looked at the new set of benefits, and you're like, which is fair, then you're not going to renew at the 695, which by the way, we think you won't get charged the 695 annual fee until your renewal date in 2022. That's the rumor. That's what it has been. And I imagine that's the way it's going to be. So if your renewal is in 2022. That's the rumor. That's what it has been. And I imagine that's the way it's going to be. So if your renewal is later in 2021, it'll probably be the 550 rate.

Probably. Yeah. But at some point anyway, you might be like, I'm not going to continue to pay 695. So what do I do with this boatload of points? Where should I transfer them? Or what should I do? What's the answer, Greg? So we, I mean, we have a post, I believe on the best uses for Amex membership rewards points. You should check that out. And if we haven't already, we will soon, you know, refresh it, make sure it's up to date, but I'm sure there's good stuff in there. But, you know, the other thing to think about are things like, if you're going to get rid of the Platinum card, do you have another membership rewards card? Because if you just cancel your Platinum card and don't have any other cards that have membership rewards, you're going to lose all those points. And, you know,

luckily, it's easy to keep them because if you sign up for any other membership rewards card, including the fee free blue business plus, which is a great card or the fee free everyday card, either one, you'll not only keep your points, but you'll keep almost all of the benefits. Like you'll keep the ability to transfer to any of the airline programs or hotel programs. So make sure you don't lose your points. That would be a disaster. And don't feel a rush to transfer them to transfer partners either. Because I think often people think, oh, I'm going to close this. So where do I put the points? Who do I transfer to? And they look for an answer in terms of where to transfer them. But like Greg's saying, the solution with membership rewards points is get a fee-free

membership rewards points card. You don't need to rush and wait until you're ready to transfer them to a partner. There's no need to jump the gun on that and be like, okay, I'm going to send them all to Avianca Life Miles right now. There's no need to do that. Slow down and wait. Exactly. And just to give an example, if you said to us, well, I am going to transfer them all, so recommend a airline to move them to, we'd probably pick, maybe we'd pick ANA or Aeroplan. But then down the road, let's say there's, I don't know, Delta has a great, uh, one of their, their, you know, award sales and you want to jump on it and you don't have any Delta miles. Well, you could have transferred to Delta to get in on that.

And, you know, and that's just one of many possible examples where having it as a transferable points currency gives you the ability to jump on those like special deals when they come up. Whereas if you transfer it all, let's say you transferred ANA, because we've talked about how great ANA is with their award chart, and you don't find uses for the points in three years, those points expire and they're all gone. And that would be a shame. It totally would be. Yeah. So there's no sense in doing that. And or you might catch a transfer bonus. We've seen these transfer bonuses at 20, 30, 40%. Now, I don't know what we're going to see moving forward. We're just starting to see transfer bonuses again. And I don't want to make

a prediction here because it doesn't seem realistic to me on the one hand. But on the other hand, I'm going to say, we've seen these welcome bonuses go up and up and up and up and up. And are we going to see transfer bonuses go up higher up and up and up and up. And are we going to see transfer bonuses go up higher than we've seen them before? It's not impossible, right? I mean, nothing is impossible these days. So I would hang on to the points until there's, like Greg said, until there's a time when you actually need them and are ready to use them, because it might work out to be a much better deal. So yeah, don't make any rash decisions and get yourself out of the currency altogether.

Just keep one of these easy to keep fee-free cards and use it to buy a pack of gum every six months. And then when you're ready to travel, then go ahead and transfer them. Definitely. All right. All right, my friends. Thank you very much for being here with us this week.

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