Frequent Miler on the Air - 2020's Deal of the Year | Ep79 | 1-2-21

Episode Date: January 2, 2021

1:03 Pop quiz 3:17 Giant Mailbag: Letter from LarryinNYC 5:48 What crazy thing did Marriott do this week? The round-around we got over a member-to-member transfer. 11:50 Mattress Running the Numbers: Is it worth subscribing to the Motley Fool just to earn the 7500 Ultimate Rewards points? https://frequentmiler.com/7500-ultimate-rewards-points-with-99-motley-fool-subscription/ 17:18 Main Event: 2020's Deal of the Year https://frequentmiler.com/maximizing-chase-pay-yourself-back/ https://frequentmiler.com/wow-amazing-barclays-spending-offers-via-email/ https://frequentmiler.com/ludicrously-easy-path-to-hyatt-globalist-status-top-tier-status-for-2-years/ https://frequentmiler.com/wow-17k-business-class-to-from-europe-on-iberia-through-march-2021/ https://frequentmiler.com/marriott-bonvoy-boundless-5-free-nights-should-you-go-for-it/ https://frequentmiler.com/incredible-125k-10x-platinum-offer-for-some-targeted/ https://frequentmiler.com/big-new-75k-offers-pick-5x-office-supply-or-1-5x-everywhere/ https://frequentmiler.com/hsbc-600-bank-account-bonus-available-with-easier-requirements/ https://frequentmiler.com/airlines-eliminate-change-fees-aa-alaska-delta-united/ https://frequentmiler.com/amex-refer-a-friend-three-for-all/ 1:02:01 Post Roast https://frequentmiler.com/loyalty-alchemy-convert-citi-to-choice-9k-to-15k/ https://frequentmiler.com/use-your-expiring-ihg-free-night-for-status-match-opportunities/ 1:08:13 Question of the Week: Isn't 5x Ultimate Rewards better than 5x Marriott, Southwest, or United? Don't forget to like, subscribe, and leave a comment! Join our email list: https://frequentmiler.com/subscribe/ Music credit: Annie Yoder

frequent miler on the air starts now today's main event 2020s deal of the year we're going to discuss all the all the best deals of 2020 and we're going to decide right here live but recorded what was the top of the year and we don't know the answer going into this right i mean it really is live even though it's recorded and you're listening to this recorded because like we have a list of deals that we literally came up with in just a few minutes and didn't discuss which we think is the best so this is like it's totally going to be off the cuff discussion exactly and and we do all that non homework for you, the listeners, so that you can hear us discuss this in and our natural reactions to all this,

not because we're trying to avoid doing pre work for it. Okay, right, right, right. No, no, you're looking for the thought process, right? That's not the interesting part. That's where it gets interesting. Absolutely. Hopefully, we'll see. So we do, of course, have the giant mailbag. But before we get into the giant mailbag, I have a little pop quiz for you. Okay. Oh, you're getting a little nervous, aren't you? It's been a while since a pop quiz.

I know. Yeah, I know. I am. I'm sweating. You can see. It's not just the lights, I promise. So I got onto YouTube today. And for some reason, it was showing me our first ask us anything video where we went live on YouTube for an ask us anything. And, you know, since then we've been doing them about every other week, but that was first one ever. Now, each one, we usually have a banter topic ready to go. And we discuss that and show that it gives people time to log on and, and ask us questions and everything. What was the topic for our first ever ask us anything?

Oh my goodness. I have no idea. Not even a, like a mild, your cat. Did we talk about your cat? Oh, we talked about cats, whether or not we like cats, right? You got it. Good job. Wow. It was, the question was, are you a dog person or a cat person? And that's where you said you were a cat person, but you have a dog at home, not a cat. Right. I know. It's not fair. Life isn't fair guys. It isn't fair. And that was because your wife is allergic to cats. Right. Exactly.

She maliciously decided not to be allergic to dogs instead. I see where this is going because I think I, well, yes, now I do. I had no idea where you were going with this initially, but I think I saw the comment. And I saw the comment and I was like, where did that even come from? I definitely didn't put, because I didn't actually look at where it came from. It came in email or something like that. I saw the comment and I read it and I was like, huh? Now there's some context. Oh actually no i so i know okay so you know nick's talking about we did get a uh reader some reader feedback that mentioned his lack of cats i think um

but that's not that's not the giant mailbag no no this is either two separate things sorry i'm not that clever not that clever que that clever in queuing up the mailbag. But I passed the pop quiz. We talked about it. You did. You're good at these pop quizzes. Got to tell you that Reyes University is really paying off. Getting warmed up.

All right. No, in the giant mailbag this week is a very nice letter from Larry in NYC. Larry's been a frequent commenter since I think early in 2012, which is pretty much when the blog started, you know, very close to that. And not just, you know, he doesn't just comment to ask questions

or, you know, he doesn't comment to get something out of it, although I'm sure he does sometimes, but he's often very helpful. A lot of the Hyatt posts, for example, he's been very helpful answering other people's questions. So, uh, thankful to Larry in NYC and, and, uh, also thankful for this feedback. So Larry says, just wanted to express my appreciation to everyone at Frequent Miler, which has become my primary source of miles and points information during the pandemic, not only because of the great information, but also because of the community spirit that you foster. I've especially enjoyed spending an hour a week with Greg and Nick and the podcast.

I also want to extend my gratitude to the other frequent Mylar readers here and in the Facebook group. Despite the very occasional sour note, this is one of the very few groups where reading the comments is both enjoyable and edifying in a medium where the comments section more often resembles a Spirit Airlines flight the day before Thanksgiving. To be clear, he was saying that other blogs and such have that spirit. As much benefit as I've gotten from Greg, Nick, Stephen, and Kerry's work, it's been equaled by the help I've gotten from other readers. Here's to fair winds and safe travels sometime in the new year and wishing you all better things. Aw, thank you, Larry.

That was really nice. That was very nicely worded, meaningful. Thank you. I thought that was great and a great way for us to, you know, ring in our New Year episode. That's right. Right? Yeah, that's right. Welcome to 2021. Yeah, exactly. Happy New Year, everybody. Happy New Year. Yeah, Happy New Year.

I guess you don't have your hat and and uh i know you know i didn't even always make her this time no i missed it ah darn it happy new year that's okay make sure everybody needs to make sure to to watch the little new year video that that carrie put together for us so uh of course knocked it out of the park she did she did it's really fun it's very short too just Just watch it. Okay. So that's the mailbag. So what do we have up next? Oh, yeah. That was great. So next up is what crazy thing did Marriott do this week?

Okay. I hear you spent some time with Marriott. Good way to spend an afternoon. Right, right. I spent a little time on the horn with Marriott. So I had to call them up because you'll remember, if you've been listening along each week, you'll remember that we talked about recently

and actually posted in my checklist of things to do that one of the things I said to do and one of the things I said I was going to do is to move 100,000 Marriott points from my wife's account to my account because that's the limit per calendar year. And we want to get the points from her account to mine because I have the elite status. So I want to book things in my name. All right. So I talked about a couple of weeks ago about how it costs like 10 or $11 or something if neither

member has elite status, but if at least one of you has gold or platinum status, then it's free. Well, today, today being the day that I called to make this, I called to make this transfer on December 31st, last day of the year, of course. I waited until the very last minute. So I Googled to find the phone number. And on Marriott's website, it says that transfers member to member are free of charge. It doesn't say you need to have status. So maybe that's changed.

It certainly used to be that way. But maybe that's changed. So it might be free. So that isn't too crazy. But that was kind of nice. I was like, oh, nice surprise. Not that it mattered for us, but maybe it matters for our listeners. So then we called up the Marriott phone number that they list for you to contact because it says right on the website that you can transfer member to member, but only by contacting

Marriott directly. And it's like, here is a link to Marriott's worldwide phone numbers for whatever country you're in. So tells you right on the website, here's where you get the contact info, got to call Marriott. So call Marriott. And of course, it's an automated system where you have to pick some things and go through some menus. And so when we pick the transfer and the member to member, there's a recording that lets you know that transferring member to member is free for gold and platinum members. So I don't know, maybe if you maybe don't need a lead status, maybe you don't need a lead status. Who knows? I mean, the recording seems to suggest that you do the website seems to suggest that you don't. So I kind of got a little chuckle out of that. I was like, Oh, that's funny. At least I know I'm not

crazy. It was at least at one point a thing and they perhaps just haven't updated the recording. Sure. So. All right. So that's all well and good. Then we get through to an agent who answers and asks how she can help us. And so it was my wife who was making the call because she was transferring from her account. So my wife said, well, I'd like to transfer points to my husband's account. And the agent said, okay, well, you got to do that online. Like, just very much like that. Like, oh, well, you got to do that online. Did she make your wife sound like, like, seem stupid?

Like, like, why didn't you know that you're supposed to do this online where you can't act right it's exactly the tone of which i was on speakerphone and i was i was it was exactly the tone of which it was said and my wife looks at me and i was like i kind of mouthed her you can't do it online and so my wife says uh you can't do it online the website says to to call you. And so the agent says, okay, what's your Marriott number? Like that was how much pause there was. And so my wife gave the number and she said, can you verify your email address? Can you verify your mailing address? Do you have the other member there? And so, so I gave her my information. She asked if she could

put us on a brief hold and came back like three minutes later and the a hundred thousand points was moved over. Like she knew exactly how to do it all along oh that's so bizarre didn't feel like doing it or couldn't remember i don't know what the case was but i know that had i just taken her word for it and been like oh okay i gotta do that online i would have hung up and not been able to do it because you can't do it online so i'd have been calling again and waiting on hold to speak to an agent. So moral of the story there, don't believe what they tell you. Don't believe it.

That's a common refrain around here, isn't it? It is. Now there's a small chance. In fact, I think it's so small that I probably shouldn't have brought it up, but that Mariette's been working on putting it online and the reps are aware of that. And she kind of forgot that it's not yet enabled but um no more likely she just unlikely unlikely

i guess just didn't want to do i don't know like it was she didn't sound like she wanted to help necessarily but then she was kind of jovial towards the end and thanked me for having titanium status and all that but But it was just at any rate, I bring it up because yet again, we often say this, I often say, don't make a call and ask customer service a question that you don't already know the answer to because they're not going to get it right. And if you push back, then either maybe you'll get the outcome you're looking for. Maybe you'll have to call again. I mean, I, when she said that I was rolling my eyes thinking we just sat here on hold. We're busy doing other stuff. It's the last day of the

year. And I'm trying to get all those things that I said I was going to do a week ago done. Like, I just want to get this done. And I was thinking we're going to have to call back again, but I figured it was worth a second push. And the second push was all it took and we got it done. Right. Thanks, Maria. And a follow-up to that advice you gave is that don't in the comments of a blog post, right? Your blog post is all wrong because I called customer service and they told me so. Right, right, right. I mean, you can write it, but it's not going to get you anywhere. No, no. Our answer is going to be the same, which is we're right. They're wrong. Not that we're never wrong, but we're definitely right more often

than a random customer service. I think if you just put us up against a random customer service agent, nine and a half times out of 10, we're gonna be the ones that get it right. Yeah, maybe not our 2020 predictions, but- Right, right, right. That aside, don't even look at those.

There's nothing to see there, okay? It was a weird year right right right not prediction when it comes to like the rules and how things work it just tends to be that not everybody gets trained on every single thing and maybe they do and they just you know forget i mean it's highly possible also that she just forgot that you could do that over the phone so and then remembered when we were like no you have to do it over the phone i don't know right she figured it out anyway. So that was the crazy thing. All right. That's that mattress running the numbers. Let's talk about mattress running the numbers this week. What

do you got for us, Greg? Yeah. So this week, instead of a hotel, we're talking about earning points by buying a subscription for something you don't want. And the deal is that you can shop through the Chase Ultimate Rewards portal and get 7,500 Ultimate Rewards points for purchasing a Motley Fool subscription for $99. So I'm not saying you don't want the Motley Fool subscription. What I'm saying is there's a chance that this is worth doing even if you don't want the subscription, right? Because you're going to get 7,500 points, which are worth, if you have the Sapphire Reserve card, worth more than $100. And you're paying 99. So you're getting more point value than you're paying. So that's the deal.

Right. So is that mattress run worthy? So now you're right. It's worth more but how much i mean that's the rub right right so if you if you were to cash out those points via chase pay yourself back so you're to use them at the grocery store or a hardware store if there's anything else you can do that with i can't remember off the top of my head but one and a half cents each 7500 points you're talking about what 112 112, 113 bucks.

Something like that. Right. Right. So, so I mean, it's, it's a win. It's a 12 or $13. Right. I mean, it's almost what I refer to as a pizza win, you know, like it's pizza money. Yeah.

Depends where you shop for pizza, I guess. You know, if you're shopping at the grocery store, you might get a couple. That's true. So another way to think about it, the same deal is that you could buy $99 worth of groceries and pay yourself back for them with about, I think it's like 6,900 points or 60, I don't know. I worked it out earlier, but the point is you come out with a net game of about 900 points or something like that. So, um, is it worth doing that for 900 points? And, uh, well, I mean, is it, imagine running the numbers here? So tell me, is it worth, I mean, it's 900 free points then, right?

I mean, like you should, we should put this up in like a neon sign free points right 900 free points what do you think i mean would you do it sign up for motley fool for the 900 quote-unquote free points no i wouldn't why not greg they're free right they you know i mean actually to some extent they are free but um there's you know there's a little bit of effort of signing up and then changing your subscription preferences so that you don't auto-renew. There's also an opportunity cost. If you have the Amex Platinum 10X deal and you spend $100 at a grocery store earning 10X, you would have been getting 1,000 points from that same charge. But now you're putting it on your Zephyr Reserve, which at best you're getting 300 points plus the 900 extra.

You're not coming out that much ahead of of just using your amex platinum straight up at the grocery store and just enjoying your 10x so kind of depends where you are as to whether that's true but um but it's too little too little to be worth the effort i think i i totally agree i i hate having to deal with the cancellation i mean if it's a big enough number of points, maybe. But otherwise, it's not worth the pain of, like you said, having to change the subscription settings, follow up when they charge you,

even though they're not supposed to. And it's particularly not worth it when Staples keeps running these fee-free Visa gift card deals. Like if you got an ink cash card, we're talking about 7,500 ultimate rewards points. That's $1,500 worth of Visa gift cards at Staples. And since you can buy 1,000 a day per customer with the deals now, right? I mean, that's what it's stated in the ad.

I mean, one and a half days at Staples and you can generate the same number of points with zero activation fee. Now, it depends on what your uses are for those cards, I guess. But even if you just hang on to those cards and pay for regular everyday expenses with them, there's no cost involved in generating the 75 points there. So yeah, I wouldn't bother with this Motley Fool thing. I wrote about it because some people surely will be interested. I mean, and really, if you were to use it for a Hyatt Hotel Category 1, 5,000 points a night, or whenever they start running off-peak, 4,000 points a night, I they start running off peak four thousand points a night i mean certainly could be worth 99 bucks you could get more than 99 worth of value out of 75

yeah i'm just not particularly interested in buying points like that when there's other easy low-hanging exactly and it's it's such a small win such a small win yeah um you know maybe if you sign up for a thousand subscriptions subscriptions, then it gets interesting. Even then, I mean, then the monetary cost starts to get a little crazy. At that point, maybe you're better off doing some other forms of MS. If that's your thing, it might be time to look into other ones. Yes, for sure. Thumbs down on mattress running the numbers this week. Two thumbs down.

Don't bother with it. All right. Unless you really value the subscription, I guess. If you really value the subscription. Yeah, I mean, it's a decent, it's a great rebate for the subscription. So if you're going to get a subscription anyway, it'd be crazy not to shop through a portal like that.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Okay. So deal of the year. What was the deal of the year in 2020? I mean, that's a really good question. I'm not even sure I know the answer yet as we record this. So I think we should review some of the best deals and debate what we think is the best deal of the year. All right. Why don't we take turns

listing what we came up with earlier and just describe it briefly what it is and why it's on the list. Okay. All right. Sounds good. So Chase, pay yourself back. Chase debuted this year, the ability to pay yourself back as we were just talking about grocery stores and home improvement stores, one and a half cents each. I mean, that's a pretty terrific deal because you can effectively cash out your ultimate rewards points at one and a half cents each. Obviously, grocery stores and home improvement stores sell lots of different gift cards, including Visa and MasterCard ones. They run fuel point promotions sometimes.

If you hit one of those Kroger 4X fuel point promos, you'd be cashing out your ultimate rewards points and getting that one and a half cents each and earning a bunch of fuel points in the process. It could be a great, great deal. So, I mean, that's pretty solid. And I talked about early in the year why everybody should consider it because I'm sure there's some people still listening who are saying, but I don't want to take one and a half cents in value.

I can get more value out of my chase points than that by transferring to partners. And you're kind of right. But if you haven't read my post about why you should still consider the cash out via the grocery store, I'm going to link that in the description. You should at least read it and be open-minded about it because I think everybody should be considering it whether you do it or not. Right. And I'll just add one more thing that Chase kind of made it a little more

attractive by adding the three X at grocery stores up to, you know, what is it up to? A thousand bucks a month. Okay. The next one we have on the list, Barclays. They, not everyone, but many people with Barclays cards got a great email towards the end of the year that said, just because you're a card member, put a little spend on your card and we're going to give you a total of 60,000 points. Some people got different offers, but a number of people got 60,000 for spending. I think

it was $3,000 total spend altogether. That's what I got. Didn't have to sign up for a new card. It was just like, your existing card, just go to it. It was like a, just here's a present. Enjoy. No kidding, here's a present joy yeah i mean no kidding here's a present at 20x 20x on 3k of spend anywhere you want to do it basically and like i said on a whole bunch of different

cards people got it on the aviator card and the choice privileges card and windham card the arrival plus i mean tons of different barclays cards got this offer so jet blue whatever whatever it was you had you might have gotten a spending offer and yeah 3k for 60k hello i mean normally you would have to sign up for a new credit card for that so i mean that was a pretty interesting one for sure yes yes i'd love to see that every year no kidding but yeah barclays if you're listening keep coming back with that all right what do you have next for that okay so i might have written them in a different order than you yeah so we might have some trouble around a little bit yeah figuring it out figure out which ones we've missed but all right i'm gonna mark mine so i know which ones i've talked about so hyatt hyatt we got to

talk about hyatt i mean come on it'd be an incomplete list without talking about hyatt hyatt's deal of the year has been this double elite night credit combined well and i say double elite night credit what i mean by that is you get one elite night credit this year and one elite let me back up one elite night credit for the year in which you earn it and an additional elite night credit in 2021 the reason i kind of corrected myself there is because you might be checking in, well, you might have checked in a few days ago by the time you've listened to this in December of 2020. But if you check out in 2021, you're going to get elite credit in 2021 for your stay as you normally would, and then an additional night of elite credit for each night. So kind of

doubling up there, easier path to status, 25% rebate on award stays for credit card holders, 15% rebate for everybody else. And then as if that wasn't enough, they extended all of that through the end of February. So you could get those double elite nights all the way through the end of February and they reduced the qualifications for globalist status. So you only need 30 nights instead of the usual 60 nights, which means you really need 15 nights by the end of February to get the best top tier hotel elite status there is. Did you mention triple points on paid stays?

I didn't even mention that. I mean, how did that fall by the wayside, right? I mean, you know that Hyatt has knocked it out of the park when you forget about the fact that you're earning triple points on paid stays because Hyatt points are valuable. Like triple points, if you're a Hilton person, you might be like, oh, I mean, they give triple points all the time. Hyatt doesn't give triple points all the time. That's a great deal.

It is. It is. So all those things together, insane, insane. Right. Insane. All right. Almost makes me feel silly bringing up the next one. Marriott Bonvoy credit card from Chase, the boundless card offered five. This was a signup offer. Five free 50K nights. So you could theoretically get 250,000 points of value from the signup bonus. They offered that, I think it was back in maybe September.

Which if you can get those five nights, that's pretty incredible because there are some 50K properties that are really nice and that can be quite expensive. in maybe September. Which if you can get those five nights, that's pretty incredible because there are some 50K properties that are really nice and that can be quite expensive. So if you knew that you're going to be able to use those 50K nights either domestically here in the US or perhaps in Europe or Asia, I mean, you could really clean up and easily get a lot of value out of that. Yes, definitely. Definitely. So, okay. What's, what do you have next? Okay, so next, Iberia. Iberia did a 50% off business class award sale to Europe. Now, I know what you're saying. You're saying, but 2020, come on, nobody's going to Europe

this year. Right, but it was valid through March of 2021, and now they've let people change those flights all the way up into December of 2021. I recently changed my itinerary from March to October before I realized that I had a conflict, and I changed it to the wrong dates. I'll have to call again and change it again. Hopefully, I'll get it into November by then. So, so anyway, 50% off business class award sale, which meant it was 17,000 points each way in flatbed business class from New York, Boston, Chicago to, to Madrid, Spain. So 17,000 points each way, 34,000 points round trip business class to Europe. I mean, that's like what most programs charge for an economy class. So that was a pretty amazing deal. That is totally amazing. Okay. I'm going to go with, all right, so here's one that we almost forgot about.

Early in the year, I think this is in January, Delta, maybe even before January, but anyway, it was still happening in January. Delta Amex cards. Some of them were offering 20,000 MQMs as part of the sign-up bonus. MQMs are things you need to get elite status. So it was possible to get darn close to mid-tier status just by signing up for two of these Delta cards at once. And, of course, with some spend on each of the cards, I'd written up how you could actually very easily get to platinum status, which is close to top tier.

And so that was pretty exciting back when travel was a thing. For sure, for sure. But I mean, it's still exciting for people who did it probably because those MQMs are rolling over, right? MQMs roll over, right? So normally with Delta, only the MQMs above the level

you needed to reach your level of status roll over. But this year, all the MQMs should roll over. So yeah. So in fact, that gives you an opportunity to get even higher status than you had achieved. Also, your status rolls over. Yeah. So if you got that in January um yeah so so so you're gonna if you got that in january i guess that means you're gonna have status then through at least the end of

2022 right because yeah i mean what comes from over you'll have status in 20 well in 2021 what you're gonna have to do is you're still gonna need an mqd waiver. So you're going to want to spend $25,000 on one or more across your Delta cards in order to get that MQD waiver. And that will then, yeah, keep you in status for all of 21. I mean, what you have already, all of 22 and through end of January of 23. 23. So yeah, let's not discount that. That definitely could still be a great deal because travel will resume at some point. So it could still be a great deal for some folks. Okay, I mean, if you went for it in the first place,

you probably could still be excited about it today. All right, so let's see. I'm going to jump around here. I'm going to jump to Amex offering to jump to amex offering 30 000 points per referral on some cards so remember with amex you can refer to just about any amex card and so they started offering some card holders i think it's mostly gold card holders but we've recently seen platinum card holders also who've had the ability to earn 30 000 points every time they refer somebody who gets approved that's terrific especially if you play in a two-player household, because you pick up 30,000

points by referring your spouse to open a card. What? I mean, that's more than the welcome bonus on some Amex cards. That's pretty insane to earn as a referral bonus. It's pretty funny when 10K is the standard offer for the Blue Business Plus, for example, but you could often get considerably more than that, even referring from that card. Yeah, so that was a great deal. And especially, you know, when you match the fact that Amex lets you refer any card, any of their cards from these cards. So whatever card has a hot offer, you can refer your friends to that one. And so you're helping out your friends by making sure they know about some great offer and you're getting a lot of points,

which is really, really nice. All right, I'm going to throw in one that we didn't talk about earlier, but it just occurred to me. It's not technically a deal, but I think it just needs... Airlines eliminating change fees. So, you know, that's made, we've talked about before,

that's made our miles more valuable because the change fees and, or at least cancellation redeposit fees are waived now for most flights that you book, most reward flights. It's, you know, it's really made travel easier to plan because you could just book things prospectively that you hope you'll be able to do and change it as you need to, like you were talking about with your Iberia thing. So I love that, you know, airlines are forced to do it because of the pandemic, but they, at least the big three U.S. airlines, did it in such a way that it's not that they're never going to back off, but it's going to be hard for them to

back off. They won't be able to back off, like, right when the pandemic is, like, over. You know, it'll be more of a maybe five or ten years out, I think, that we'll start to see some back off from that if we do. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that's a great one to add. You know, since we're in the adding spirit here, I'm going to add another one. We've skipped some that we intended to talk about. We'll get back to them. But I'm going to add one more. And that's the ability to earn or use lots of extra credits on cards. I feel like that's really broad. But there's so many cards that were the travel credit, Chase particularly, Chase travel credits, being able to use them for grocery stores, restaurants, be the sapphire reserves credit or the ritz card

credit that's been a great deal because it's made it much easier to keep those cards and and i thought about this really right now because last couple of days i was thinking to myself maybe i should have had my wife upgrade her marriott card to a Ritz card because she could earn $300 in statement credits at the grocery store before the end of this calendar year. Then I don't know whether Chase will offer that again next year, but they certainly might. And even if they don't, she could get $300 in travel credit next year during the calendar year and a 50K certificate eventually. So maybe it would have been worth it or her anniversary date just recently passed so even if the anniversary date changes slightly for the upgrade and i'm not sure

whether or not it does wouldn't have really been a big deal so i'm thinking in hindsight that might have been a really good play to make before uh before things changed over so that that was all right that's something so let me ask you so does the Amex Platinum credits count in that category? You know how they gave us all the shipping credits and streaming? It goes along with it, right? Yeah, I mean, that's been a terrific deal, right? Oh, that's a fantastic deal. Yeah, you got a whole bunch of credits this year.

I think we should consider that on its own. Okay, separate. Yeah. Separate. Platinum credits. All right and so the platinum credits business platinum i think was the better deal than personal right and we've debated that like like it's certainly more total money there's no question about that but um as far as

usable credits it kind of depends on your on your situation but yeah for sure for sure but either what you're talking about 10 10 it was like what 60 i don't know a whole bunch of money right a lot of money there was a whole bunch of money there so yeah those were actually the amex ones arguably were even better than the chase one right right another one that we didn't discuss before what about and it's sort of in the spirit of this but what about hilton making their weekend free nights available any day of the week and for two years yeah i mean that's also pretty awesome if you were able to earn any of those if you got any from welcome bonuses or from the aspire card or from spending on the the uh ascend card or what is it the surpass card now the. No, the Hilton Surpass card, the 15K.

I mean, great deal there because two years to use it, presumably you're going to get a chance to use it somewhere you actually want to. Whereas there's some risk with like, for example, the Marriott offer for the credit card that gave you 550K certs. I don't know, are you going to be able to use it where you really want to use it within the next year? Maybe, maybe not.

Probably not in the next couple of months anyway. So, you know, the value there was somewhat questionable, whereas I'm almost 100% confident that within the next two years, you'll be able to use that Hilton cert anywhere you want and any night of the week. I mean, that's, that makes it really valuable. It does. It does. All right. What do you have next? All right. So HSBC bank bonus. So I wrote a lot about bank bonuses this year and the HSBC bonus in particular is one that I want to highlight because I think that really has been a deal of the year for people in a two player household that have been able to make it work by jumping through the hoops. And I know that's a lot of qualifications, but we've had quite a few readers who have successfully been able to do it. And so the bonus is a $600 bonus.

Then there's a $100 referral bonus. So if you're playing in two-player mode, you can pick up $600, refer your spouse, pick up $100 for doing that. Then your spouse also picks up $600. So we're talking $1,300. And the requirement is to direct deposit $5,000 a month, which as many readers have given us data points on,

a lot of transfers from other external bank accounts have been working to trigger that rather than an actual direct deposit. A lot of people have been able to just transfer money from an external bank account and trigger the $600 bonus within a month or two. So it's been pretty quick, easy money, pretty easy bonus there. And I think it got extended. A reader commented today to. And I think it got extended. I, a reader commented today to say that they thought it got extended through the end of January. So that one's going to apparently be ongoing for at least a little while longer, but 1300 bucks for a two player household that, that has to put it in the list of, of these deals. I feel like that's up there with some of these other very nice. I wish they would make it something that you could apply for online

instead of having to call for that. It's such a pain having to call. Yeah. And that part of it, when I said that the readers have been able to make it work, because yeah, that's been the pain that you have to call. And lots of reports of people who've waited on hold for a long time to talk to somebody. My sister-in-law did this account and she got ahold of somebody and the person said, I'm just too busy to deal with this right now. Can you call me back around three o'clock? And she was like, what kind of service is that? Like, you're busy. I can't deal with this right now. Call me back later.

So, I mean, I think they got inundated with people doing this offer, right? In fairness. But it certainly hasn't been particularly easy to get through. And you've maybe had to make an appointment. And then it's like 45 minutes on the phone. There are a couple of hoops there but it's probably worth thirteen hundred dollars if you're playing in two-player mode they just need your marriott rip on the phone there so they could say no you have to do that online and then hang up on you right exactly exactly all right so so

hsbc what's that what's next all right um chase ink cards uh,000 points for signup bonuses for the no fee chasing cards. I mean, come on. Those were incredible offers when there were 50,000 points. Now you have 75,000 points as a signup bonus for a no fee card. I mean, it used to be that fee free cards just in general did not have good sign of bonuses, but Chase has got a long way of changing. Like nothing forever, right? Like it's a no annual fee card. I don't think there was a sign of bonus

at all this year on that card. Chase is saying, you know what, city? I understand you're not giving anybody a bonus on that, but we're going to give $750 as a welcome bonus on these or more than a thousand, more than $1,100. Right. If you've got the Sapphire reserve. Yeah. Yeah. So it's a sweet deal. All right. What do you have? Pretty good one. What do you have next? I mean, if we're going to talk credit card, welcome bonuses,

we got to ratchet it up a notch and mention Amex really blew the roof off of everything because we didn't talk very much about those ink offers. Although I think maybe that's a mistake. I think maybe we should have talked more about those in general, because I think that the fact that there was no upfront investment makes them a pretty hot deal. But at any rate, Amex kind of stole their lunch by launching these incredible offers on the platinum card, where now anybody can get the 100K plus 10X offer. So it's 100,000 membership rewards points after 5K spend, plus 10X for six months at U.S. grocery stores, U.S. supermarkets, and U.S. gas stations, up to 15K in purchases. So going to

cover all your groceries and gas spend for six months. You also have six months to meet the initial spending requirement on the card. So you could earn as much as 250 000 points if you did that entire 15k spend at u.s supermarkets and u.s gas stations so i mean 250 000 points from one card in six months what right and then if you ratchet that up a notch from there and you say some people who opened that recently got the 30K referral ability. So they've also been able to earn 30,000 points. Well, you know, 55,000 points is the max per year. But two referrals has gotten you to the maximum 55,000 points on top of the 250.

That's right. That's right. That's right. So it's possible to earn over 300,000 with that offer. And then, of course, with the base offer, some people had the 125,000 point offer as well. So the 100,000 plus 10x is available to everybody now. It wasn't originally, but it is now through the referral links we post. And then the 125k, that was pretty hard to get. Some people got targeted for that. Some people got targeted, but not very many.

But still, if you got targeted for that, I mean, hello, it's another 25,000 points. And all that is to ignore the fact that that card had those temporary credits this year. So when that offer launched, you were talking about getting all of that, plus getting the $20 a month in wireless service credits and $20 a month in streaming credits for at least two months anyway on that card. So that was, what, $80 in those credits. Plus, because it came out in November, great time.

And then it was available through December and hopefully now into January. But November-December time was great timing for it because you were able to use the $200 in airline credits for 2020 and then get a fresh $200 in airline credits in January of 2021. So, I mean, it was just the great timing too for that. Yes. Yeah, definitely. All right. So that's everything on my list. Is that everything? I think that's everything on my list. Before we pick the one best, let's pick the top three without saying an order of them so that we can then pick between those three. Okay. Okay.

All right. Sounds good. I nominate the Platinum Card 10X 100K offer for the top three. Do you want to nominate? I would agree with that. Yeah. How about you? What else would you throw into the top three?

Oh, I'm looking back at them now. I'm going to put the Chase St. Cash 75K in the top three. Okay. I would nominate that. Would you put that? Well, let me first say, I think the Hyatt overlapping deals has to be on there. Now, I knew you were going to say that,

and I'm going to argue that it shouldn't be, because really, even though it's a deal that launched in 2020, it is a 2021 deal. Okay, that's true. The whole premise, I definitely, okay, so let's back up. If that deal were for status right now, okay so let's let's back up if that deal were for status right now even though it's a bad time of year if if if this was 2021 so to speak that would hands down be the deal of the year because easy globalist status is worth

you know worth its weight in gold so to speak and if you're able to do the mattress run and pick up the 60 nights and get all the sweet nights and everything else we've talked about a bunch of times i think the value there is pick up the 60 nights and get all the sweet nights and everything else we've talked about a bunch of times. I think the value there is potentially in the thousands. So I definitely think that. All right. So, so basically it's not a 2020 deal.

All right. I agree with that. Parts of it were 2020, but, but not the, not the key parts that make it right. The meat and potatoes as unbelievable as it is. So good.

We'll put it on the list for next year. And we ought to have a list so that we're not like making it up as we go along right and uh all right and then um just going over the i think the barclays 60k uh thing uh probably belongs up there but you could argue me into the hilton free weekend nights yeah more than the six okay so sorry so let's think about this logically so the barclays thing 60 000 points let's say most airline miles we value at about one and a half cents each right so let's say that that offer is worth about nine hundred dollars in return okay $3,000 spend. $3,000 spend, if you alternatively did it on a 2% cash back card, would earn $60.

So your opportunity cost on that is $60. So you're talking about about $840 worth of value, generally speaking. Now, it might be less because if you have that on the Arrival Plus, that $60K is only worth $600. And you get the same opportunity cost. now it's a $540 offer get it on the choice privileges card those choice privileges points aren't worth a penny and a half each so really if you had it on the American Airlines or JetBlue cards maybe it's worth about 840 bucks maybe a little more to you I don't think that that's high enough I don't I don't think that's high enough to put it in the top three, but that to me is worth more than the Hilton Free Knights.

Okay. Is there any others that you'd put in the top three? Well, so I feel like for the top here, we need to be offers that are worth more than $1,000, so to speak, because I feel like most of these are worth more than $1,000. Chase, pay yourself back. It depends on how many points you you uh redeem each year but i feel like that's a pretty good one the iberia one 17k each way to europe in business class you're talking about a flight that round trip would ordinarily cost well over two thousand dollars you're talking about 34,000 points round trip

for a $2,000 plus flight. I think that should be in there. Argue with me why it shouldn't. Because there's not that many routes you can fly across the pond. So it's great for those that fly out of the airports that fit. It's great for those that fly out of the airports that fit. It's not as – once you start adding in connecting flights, it's not as amazing of a deal.

It's still not a bad deal, but not as amazing at that point. Not as amazing. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Especially once you start talking about having to change flights with multiple carriers. Except that airlines have eliminated their team. I'm just saying the work involved in doing it.

All right, okay. All right, okay, all right. I'll give you that. All right. That's a pretty good deal. I don't know if this whole narrow it to three thing is working. No, no, no. I think we're doing well.

So we got rid of that. We got rid of Hyatt. So I don't know. So I know we have the MX platinum and the chase St. Cash 75 K. So then I guess, and I eliminated Barclays cause I don't think that's worth as much as like Marriott five free nights or the chase pay yourself back. It is the change fees. Like one of those things that's worth more because it

gives you flexibility? Yeah. Well, let's put another way. If, if you could only have one of these things, Ooh, like I would have a really hard,

I mean, I don't, I don't know that I would pick it, but I'd have a hard time not picking the airlines, eliminating change fees. Really? Yeah. Really?

Really. Over the $100K plus 10XMXM? I know. I'm just saying. Because that's like something I could... You need to sell me on this. Because I could earn points other ways. I can't earn that many points that quickly, but I could sign up for an Amex Gold and get 60K and then refer someone and get 30 more K for the referral and so on.

The change fee thing, I don't know. It's changed my it's it's it's sort of like changed my future life it hasn't changed things yet because i've i haven't been booking that much travel but i have you know i'm sitting on all these american airlines and united united airlines miles which i haven't liked to book unless i'm sure that i'm gonna book something that i'm definitely going to take. But now it's like, oh, I could just book it. And if I, if I'm unhappy with it, cancel it, get the, you know, get the money back. So it's big to me. It's, it's a, it's a game changer.

That's interesting. You know, I would have definitely not assumed that that would be number one on this list. Well, again, I'm not arguing that it's number one as much, but for inclusion in the top three. Well, I think the way that you put that was interesting when you said that if you had to pick one, if you can only have one of these things

basically, which one would it be that you'd want to have? That really is interesting and it's interesting for two reasons because a gives you that sense of freedom being able to use your points and book things and and flexibility and i really value that freedom and flexibility to know you can always book it and change it or cancel it later but the other thing is as opposed to everything else on this list that's something that's quote unquote permanent right that's a long-term change that's going to change the way you book awards for years and years, potentially.

I mean, obviously airlines could always take it back and be like, well, we meant forever until 2023. Exactly. They really mean it. Right. Right. So, and I don't know, I mean, that might happen, although I think it would probably be a while before they start in with those fees again.

So at the very least, it's probably changed the way you look at positioning flights and that sort of thing for the next few years. Because you mentioned before the Iberia thing was lukewarm, because if you didn't live in New York or Chicago or Boston, you're like, ah, then I got to book a flight to get there. And then I got to deal with changing or canceling that, which could be a headache in and of itself. But then on top of that, if you had to pay change fees in order to change or cancel that, it makes it harder to position for one and of itself. But then on top of that, if you had to pay change fees in order to change or cancel that, it makes it harder to position for one of those flights.

But if you know you don't have to pay those fees, then you can hop on that Iberia deal and not feel bad about booking your positioning flight. So I don't know, actually. The more I think about it, the more I think, that might be a bigger game changer long-term. I'm more excited about the Amex Platinum 100K offer. I feel like that's a more exciting, flashy deal

that screams to me like, this is deal of the year material. I agree with that. I also think it is more precisely a deal than a feature. I think the airline changing fees is

hard to classify it as a deal. I know I threw it in there, but that might be why I kind of want it in the top three, but I'm not sure I would vote for it either as the number one, because the MX Platinum, that's the exciting headline deal. That's it. Right, right. So is that it? Is that like, is that more, for example, is that more exciting than Chase Pay Yourself Back?

You can pay yourself back a penny and a half each. You've said many times that you hope that that becomes a permanent feature and that you hope that Chase makes it available on travel. It's similarly sort of how US Bank real-time mobile rewards works in the sense that you can just book what you want to book and then pay yourself back at one and a half cents each.

Like that's your ideal there. So the fact that Chase is kind of potentially moving in that direction with pay yourself back and grocery and home improvement store and giving you a great way to get excellent value out of your ultimate rewards points, particularly if you're earning most of your points at 5X or even at one and a half X, it's a pretty terrific return.

I mean, right. I think, I think that better. I've now, I think that and the airlines changing, um, eliminating change fees belong in our top new loyalty features of 2020 deals. It's, it's on a gray line, right? Is it really a deal? I don't know. Okay. All right. Is it really a deal? I don't know. Okay. All right. I think of a deal as like a sale or a, you know, a bonus. Exchange some sort of bonus. Yeah. Okay. All right. So then then basically what we've narrowed down to then is the credit card offers in the HSBC bonus then, right? I mean,

that's basically what the possibilities are here. So the, the chasing Cash offer is 75K. Between that and the Platinum card, which one is the better deal? Between which one? Sorry. Between the Chase Inc. Cash or Inc. Unlimited cards that are offering 75,000 points, no annual fee. You got to spend 5K in the first three months or something.

Or 75, rather, in the first three months. That's what it is in order to earn the 75,000 points. Is that a better deal than the Amex Platinum 100K plus 10X? Which is the better deal between just those two? Which one is the better deal? Yeah. Head to head. The Amex Platinum is the better deal.

Why? Because, so... I mean, you've got to pay 550 up front, you got to pay 550 upfront. You have to pay 550 upfront. There's several reasons, but one is the total potential upside with the 10X ongoing and all the airline fee credits you can get

or various fee credits you can get so that a lot of that 550 spend can come back to you in rebates. But also, it's availability to many more people. So in cash, income unlimited, you have to have a business. Chase has been much tougher on approving cards if you have questionable business. I think that's, you know, almost anyone could get it. The platinum 100k plus 10x offer. It's a way to get a small fortune of points with a single card, which I can't think of when we've ever seen that before. Okay, so hang on now. I'm going to challenge you a little bit because I'm curious

what your next answer is going to be. So, all right, you're talking about the, obviously, you can earn the 10X at the U.S. supermarket and at U.S. gas stations on that Platinum Card offer. Now, if you were to get the ink cash, and let's say you're interested

in spending $15,000 bonus, right? So instead, obviously, you're going to go to office supply stores and spend your $15,000 at office supply stores instead of the grocery store. You're gonna get 75,000 points for that spend plus 75,000 points from the welcome bonus. You have 150,000 Chase Ultimate Rewards

with the same $15,000 in total spend. So it's not quite as many as you would have with Amex membership rewards points, but it doesn't cost you 550 on the front end right if you're under 524 yeah you're eligible right which one is the better deal ouch like which one do you go after now you're hurting me because because um so all right if uh if you're okay with buying gift cards um which is what you're presumably buying at office supply stores, then you convince me that in cash is a better deal because Chase has not shown

big problems with people buying gift cards, like as long as you do a reasonable amounts and you're not cycling your limit many times each month. Whereas Amex, if you do that at the grocery store, they're very likely to do something punitive, like not give you points, claw back points or worse. So if you're, if you're a gift card buyer, I think you've convinced me that in cash is probably the way you want to go. If though, you are a family that has fairly big grocery and gas purchases each month. So I'm not saying that you're going to max out the amount that you can, you know, the total 15,000 in six months, but if you got anywhere near that, even 10,000, you're talking about another, you know, 100,000 points for that spend that you're doing anyway, that would be fantastic. So then I would pick the platinum. So, and then the piece here that I think we left out is that the platinum also comes with a number of credits. So you also have to consider whether or not you're

going to use those because i think that it's i feel like i could make an argument why the ink cash is pretty interesting and if you're under 524 burning a slot for the platinum instead of going after the ink cash i don't know it's a little bit tough if if this were december still when you were listening to this then i would say the platinum card wins because you can get 200 dollars in airline incidental credits in December, if you'd opened it in December. $200 in airline incidental credits, $50 SACS credit, $35 Uber credit, the $20 wireless credit, the $20 streaming credit.

And then starting in January 2021, another $200 airline incidental credit, $200 over the course of the year in Uber credits, and $50 each six months at Saks Fifth Ave. And then you could do all that stuff again in January of 2022 before you actually have to pay the next annual fee. And if you decide you don't want to keep the card, you can cancel it and have pocketed well over $1,000. And so that deal, even though that deal's not,

that deal where you could triple that deal is not that deal where you could you triple those credits is not available right now temporarily it was available uh in december and in 2020 in 2020 so um it was certainly you know i think it makes sense for us to consider that as part of the deal of the year just. Just like the Iberia deal wasn't, it isn't available. That's right. That wasn't available in 2020. Exactly. We're talking about 2020 stop deals. So yeah, I think, and really you could have opened in November because this 100K offer started in November

and gotten yourself another 40 bucks between the wireless services and the streaming credits. So, I mean, you were looking at well over a thousand, over $1,100, I think in credits before your next annual fee would be due. So, I mean, that's pretty good because even if you don't value those credits at full face, you probably value them at more than 50%, which mitigates the fee and gives you the chance to earn tons and tons of points. So as long

as you can spend more than $5,000 at grocery stores in six months, then I think that that deal was probably better, even though I tried to of push greg a little bit on the ink yeah and you did a good job because you know i certainly uh said there are situations where that makes sense the the cash is is the better deal i think for you in certain situations um all right so so we had that we had the marriott five free nights i think it's pretty obvious to me anyway that the mx platinum offer is better than the Marriott five, right? So we eliminate the Marriott five free. So we've got the Amex platinum offer, the HSBC bonus Amex referrals,

clearly not better than the rest of that. So the HSBC bonus up to $1,300. If you're playing in two player mode, you got a lot of hoops to jump through. It doesn't cost you the effort that spending on the Amex platinum card does. You don't have to have a credit pull. You don't need a new account.

So there are some benefits, but there's also some hurdles to jump through for $1,300. I think the points are more exciting. So I think I'd go with the MX Platinum. I think, even though I think the HSBC bonus is a very good bonus. I mean, especially if you're playing in two player mode,

points are more exciting. Right. Right. I think the Platinum card. I think the Platinum card. I think the Platinum card. And I agree. I agree with the Platinum card. I think you brushed over the 30K referrals quicker than you ought to have.

I do. Okay. All right. Tell me why. Because... You only get 55,000 points, though. I mean, you probably only got one card. I mean, did you get really lucky and pull up? Have you had more than one card?

Because a couple... One person's name with 30K referrals? Well, that's a good question. But imagine they were more common. Then a couple playing two-player mode could refer. I could refer one to my spouse, and then she could sign up for that card and then refer me to a different card and so on. So we could rack up a lot of points very easily that way, assuming we

can get approved for new Amex cards. I haven't yet seen the ability to earn 30,000 points, though, from more than one card in one person. That's probably true. Yeah, so... I don't know. I haven't looked for data points. I just haven't seen that. I haven't looked either, so I don't know. I don't know whether that

is a thing. Yeah. That's a great point we forgot we forgot a major amex deal i can't believe we forgot this the plus three for referring someone oh so so it's a very good deal too that deal you not only could get 30 000 points or whatever the offer was for referring someone but you get an additional three points per dollar for all your spend for three months. How could we have forgotten that? I don't know how we forgot that. Like what a year 2020 has been when that type of deal gets forgotten. I know 2020 has been a horrible year in so many ways, but really on the loyalty points, credit cards and miles and points front, there has really been a boon, like especially in these last six months, there've been some amazing things to forgotten about that. I mean,

three X uncapped additional, right? An additional three points per dollar uncapped for referring one person during that small window when they offered this bonus. So, so fantastic. For someone who has a lot of spend they can put on Amex cards, I'd have a hard time saying that's not the deal of the year for them. I think the average person, though, it's a little hard to find a lot of ways to spend big on Amex cards, especially because of all their...

How much? How much? At what point is that a better deal than the Platinum card deal? How much do you have to spend at the additional 3X to make that a better deal than the Platinum Card? Well, if you're spending $100,000, you're getting 300,000 extra points. So if it was like the, you know, the Amex everyday preferred where you could get up to one and a half points everywhere, then that's what 450,000 points for $100,000 spend, right? In three months, right? So you do have to be spending that in three months. I'm saying it's a big span. Yes. But so that number would be better. Yes. If you had 300,000 or I'm sorry, $100,000 in spend

to do in that three months, then yeah, that would be a better deal than the platinum card offer yeah um so yeah i i think for the average person platinum deal 100k is better what would it be so if you do 15 and you do 15 of that at grocery stores let's say right so you're of your 100k spend if you do the 15 at grocery stores you're talking about 150 000 points there are 100 000 points from the sign-up bonus so you're at 250 000 points you got another 85k spend to go the personal platinum doesn't earn the one and a half for 5k spend that's not right so so the rest of it yeah you're talking about just another 85 yeah so you'd only come out with 330 000 points so yes you would come out ahead with greg's scenario if you had 100 000 to spend you come out ahead with with that plus 3x referral offer but where does it come out you know where

to be a wash i mean it's a pretty pretty high number of spent so you had to be a big spender but if you got like a big tax bill or something like that where you could put that all on an amex then yeah that could have been the deal of the year for you yeah and you know we've talked about how you in previous episodes how you can use uh tax payments to uh basically lend the government money but at the same time earn points and so you could spend big with the IRS if you can float that money and earn that extra 3X on top of whatever you're earning naturally. So pretty impressive deal. And I'm really impressed that we missed it. Another one that we didn't talk about is the PayPal key, because it was an incredible deal for those who knew how to

like leverage ins and outs of it. But it, it is, it's, it's only mostly dead, but still it's, it's, the easy pickings are gone from that. And so let's just leave that be. Yep. Yep. All right. So, so then I think our agreement here is that if you had big spend or you can imagine how to do big spend then probably the plus three for referring one person was the deal of the year if that's not you if you're not in the 100k spend camp then the mx platinum 100k plus 10x offer i mean i think so that would be a headline offer most years. Wouldn't it?

It's the like popular, you know, what could grab people's eyeballs and run into the store. You know, they could put the sign outside the door and people are going to run in, whereas Plus 3, you have to know what they're talking about. You have to be the right kind of customer. And for 2021,

Hyatt has set the bar high. Oh boy, oh boy. They're running out, Hyatt has set the bar high. Oh boy, oh boy. They're running out of the gate, setting the bar high. If you haven't read the ludicrously easy path to Hyatt Global and Status Post, then you should read that because this whole conversation would have been entirely different

if I hadn't convinced Greg early on that that's a 2021 deal. I would have certainly made this for a very different conversation. So that's a runaway leader for 2021 from the start. I think it's going to be hard for somebody to beat it. Right. But the good news is Amex is going to want to retain their top spot. They have the top two spots on this year's awards. Right. This year's Frequent Miler Deals of the Year

Awards Show. That's right. So they're going to be the year award show that's right so they're going to be very eager to retain that spot so they're going to be looking at hyatt students saying how can we we're not a hotel chain how can we beat that and so it's going to be very interesting to see what they do what crazy thing will mx do this year i can't wait all right so that's that i think that wraps us up on the main event. It does. Let's move forward into the post-roast. So you sounded excited, ready to go with a post-roast early on. So I don't want you to think that I don't have one for you, but you've got my curiosity.

What is it that you have for me? So I actually have a roast for myself. Oh, a roast for yourself. Oh, good. We both get to roast. All right. Sweet. All right. Ro roast it up so

fire up the barbecue let's go what's going on i i am going to give you a mini roast though so in your in your post in your post with predictions for 2021 uh-huh you you wrote about your prediction that emirates and eddie had um won't merge but they're going to find a way to cooperate and i i just my roast is about, not about the prediction, but about a very confusing sentence if you don't know where Nick's mind is going. You said in response to Emirates and Etihad cooperating, you said there will be some opportunity,

this is your prediction, to use Air Canada miles to book a flight on Emirates Metal. Right, right. The reader is sitting there going, what does that have to do with cooperation between Etihad and Emirates? What is going on here? This is Air Canada. Did you get confused about these airlines?

No, that's probably a good roast. Yeah. No, I didn't connect the dots for anybody on that one. That's true. Because, of course, Air Canada is partners with Etihad, I didn't connect the dots for anybody on that one. It's true. Because, of course, Air Canada is partners with Etihad. So you can book Etihad flights with Air Canada miles. You can't book Emirates flights with Air Canada miles normally. But if there becomes some scenario where Etihad is operating an Emirates plane,

then perhaps you'll have the opportunity to use Air Canada miles in order to book a flight that's actually an Emirates plane. Now, that's pretty far-fetched. That's my most far-fetched prediction out of this year's new predictions. But far-fetched as it is, I don't think it's totally impossible that we'll see some sort of an opportunity like that. So that's a fair roast. I definitely should have made that clear. All right. Why don't you roast me first in case we have the same roast and that way we won't have to double up. Well, I mean, this week, basically everybody knew what was going to happen. One reader after another said that they were looking forward to a roast and I don't want to disappoint them.

So we have to talk about your choice privileges, your nerdy geekiness of turning city thank you points into choice privileges points. What? 9,000 city thank you points into choice privileges points. What? 9,000 city thank you points. So we're talking about more than enough for a one way using Turkish miles and smiles to fly anywhere United flies in the domestic United States to turn that into 15,000 choice privileges points. And you were like, that's a good deal. What?

What? Would you actually do that with your city thank you points? And if you would, do me a favor and book me some flights with Turkish miles and smiles. And I'll just buy you all the choice privileges points that you want in return. Because I mean, because I would 120 bucks a pop, basically, you can buy the choice points that you're talking about. I want the Turkish miles in that case, Greg, where were you going with this? Or would you actually really do this? And that's to say nothing of having to spend $20,000 on an Amtrak card in order to be able to do this crazy experiment of yours. And,

and, and I mean, come on, let's be real. When was the last time you took Amtrak, Greg? Uh, yeah, it's been a while. Alright. So are you going to roast your own? No, I'm not going to roast that one. Okay, alright. So I guess, let me just say about the choice thing that

it is fun to make fun of it, but I think everyone who read it knows that I wrote it in fun as well. I could defend why you might want to do it at some points, but that would be a whole nother show. So let's do that another time. And realistically, I'm just having fun with this. Cause I love the post too. And if you read on with the, the comments that people made,

there were quite a few very positive comments from readers because that was really, really creative and interesting. I mean, and finding that kind of loophole as much as I just joked, correct about it is like where all the fun is in this game right so if you didn't read that post because you were like choice privileges who cares about choice privileges i'll do something else with my thank you points you made a mistake i just roasted greg over that but it was a joke like you made a mistake if you missed that thank you thank you i appreciate that yes it was it was a fun post to write um and hopefully it was fun to read. And that was the point of it really was to have some fun.

So no, my roast is I wrote a post about why you should use your IHG certificate that's expiring at the end of 2020. And, and the reason he had to do so you can set yourself up to status match to a different hotel chain and you have some activity in your account. What I meant to do but forgot to do was have a very conspicuous thing highlighting the fact that when you book that stay, IHG might actually take one of your certs that is not the one that's about to expire. They might take one of your good ones that goes for longer. And so you need to make sure that that doesn't happen. And a bunch of ways you could have made sure of it. It's too late. No reason for me to go on about that right now. But a reader wrote in saying, you know, oh, you shouldn't have written, you shouldn't have recommended this. Don't do this

because this is what happened to me. And luckily I caught it in time and changed it so i'm hoping that anyone who did that and wasn't careful did change it in time i don't know uh so i'm very sorry if that happened to you and you lost your good certificate because that's certainly not what was intended there ouch yeah yeah cringe moment yeah yeah yeah that that hurts but i you do have to pay close attention to the details on on these things so that's that was one that where i imagine it would be pretty easy to have used the wrong certificate or yeah i mean it actually doesn't let you pick which one you're using it just you just say you're booking your free night and it takes what it wants to do so yeah yeah yuck yuck yuck all right so so

hopefully not too many readers got caught on that one all right that then if that's this that's your roast right so that then brings us to the question of the week am i right yep okay so question of the week came in on the post so chase is now once again offering spending bonuses at grocery stores and this time also drug stores and maybe gas stations on a number of different cards, all the co-brand cards, basically, or a bunch of the co-brand cards, Hyatt, Marriott, Ritz, IHG, et cetera, et cetera. So generally speaking, five points per dollar at grocery stores and pharmacies. You can see the post, you'll find the link in the description if you want to read all the details. But the key detail for most folks is that most of those co-brands are offering five points per dollar at grocery stores. And Joel, on that post, in response to

that post, asked a question, said, is it just me, or are these bonus offers not particularly exciting? If you have the Chase Sapphire Reserve, the Chase Sapphire Preferred, the Chase Freedom Unlimited, the Amex Gold, et cetera, I already have 5X ultimate rewards points at grocery stores on my Chase Freedom Unlimited. That's part of the first year welcome bonus, up to 12,000 spend. My gas station spend is minimal and I don't do MS. So even the drugstore option doesn't offer me much. I'd rather get any gift cards I need from the grocery store and also grab the associated fuel points, although also of limited value at the moment. I see no reason to divert earning ultimate rewards in favor of co-branded points. So what do you think about that? Yeah, I think Joel's totally right. I mean, especially we just finished talking all about the

MX Platinum card, which gives you 10x at grocery stores for six months, I mean, I think if it's between spending natural spend with the Amex Platinum or one of these co-branded cards, and, you know, definitely do it on the Platinum. If you're buying gift cards, though, then you don't want to use an Amex card. So then at least that puts you into the, you know, chase camp, I guess. But yeah, if you have other 5X offers and they're for transferable points, I would much rather, of course, go for the transferable points and let it go. So yeah, it's definitely the case that we're sort of having an embarrassment of riches right now. And so just because an offer is a good offer standalone doesn't mean it's a good offer for you because you probably have other competing deals going on that are better. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's exactly it. Hit the nail on the head there.

A good deal is not necessarily the best deal for you. So Greg hit it there. So I totally agree. One thing to consider, absolutely, I'd rather have the transferable points than the co-brand points. And if you're not into MS, totally makes sense that you're going to stick with the one that offers the best. One thing to consider though, is that I have found anecdotally that a number of Walmarts that I've visited have coded as 5X grocery on those co-branded cards for these short-term temporary bonuses, but not coded as grocery for most cards in most situations, particularly in that first year Freedom Card bonus.

I have not gotten the 5X grocery at the same Walmart where I've gotten 5X grocery on co-branded cards with the temporary bonus. That is so weird. Were you buying groceries at one point and not at the same walmart where i've gotten 5x grocery on co-branded cards with the temporary that is so weird were you buying groceries at one point and not at the other point are they looking at what you're buying no no no that's what i'll say no so no i but so anyway like for example in the r, the Marriott card, I've gotten 5X at Walmart. I have not gotten 5X at Walmart with the Chase Freedom card that's in the first year. So if you're a Walmart shopper, I mean, forget about what I was spending money on. If you're a Walmart shopper, if that's where you tend to get your groceries, then these co-branded offers might make sense.

Or if you're going to go there for groceries, I mean, certainly if you have one of these co-branded cards, activate it. And if you're going to go to Walmart, then you would want to use that over the Freedom Card since you're not going to get your 5X. Unless it's a neighborhood market, maybe that earns 5X. And I haven't been to a neighborhood market. So no info on that specific one and how that codes. You'd have to check data points.

But anyway, so that's one situation where you might consider it. That's great to know. Yeah, if you're talking about like Kroger or Food Lion or, you know, Safeway or something like that. But yeah, you know, of course, if that's my choice, I have to pick one or the other. And of course, I want the transferable point. Right, right.

You got it, Joel. All right. Doing it right. Cool. All right. So that brings us to the end for this week. So I want to thank everybody for being out there with us. Welcome to 2021.

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