Frequent Miler on the Air - 2021's Deal of the Year | Ep131 | 1-1-22

Episode Date: January 1, 2022

1:33 Giant Mailbag: The Venture X vacation rental credit may apply more broadly than you'd expect. 4:31 What crazy thing....did American Express do this week? Unexpected (and clawed back) Uber credits https://frequentmiler.com/happy-holidays-from-amex-gold-cardholders-getting-bonus-10-uber-credits-targeted/ 7:12 Mattress running the numbers: Hyatt points for expiring certificates - including club access awards https://frequentmiler.com/hyatt-offering-bonus-points-for-club-access-awards-certs-extending-certs-suite-upgrade-awards/ 14:51 Main Event: 2021's Deal of the Year https://frequentmiler.com/2021s-amazing-deals/ First deal: Hyatt makes elite status incredibly easy 19:30 Brex Cash 210K easy points 22:20 Le Meridien Maldives, bookable with 35K certs! 25:48 Amex Expand Your Membership Offers 28:04 Amazing Amex Offers 31:30 Amex Referrals for +4 points per dollar 34:25 Resy Platinum 125x + 15x offer 40:43 Overlapping Amex offers 45:33 240 miles per dollar donated through SimplyMiles 1:09:08 Question of the Week: Is it possible to keep the points game going year after year? Sign up for emails: https://frequentmiler.com/subscribe/ Music credit: Annie Yoder

Let's get into the giant mailbag. What crazy thing did Citi do this week? It's time for Mattress Running the Numbers. Ready for the main event? The main event. Frequent Mylar on the air starts now. Today's main event, 2021's deal of the year. Exciting stuff.

Yes, we're going to review the best deals of 2021 and we're going to decide which one was the single best deal of the year. And it is tough. And which one was the second best? And which one was the second best too, right? We might come to that too. But it is not going to be easy because 2021 was chock full of just crazy good deals. Really? I mean, some of them would have easily been the deal of the year in previous years, right? I mean, this year it's going to be tough because there's a lot of deals. I mean, yes. Yeah. You know, I've been keeping track of great deals all year long. And in the beginning, I had on my list the old Amex Platinum offer for 100K

and get 10X at gas stations and grocery stores. I had that still on the list because it rolled over from last year. And as we know now, that does not belong at the table, but it sure did last year. Okay. But before we get into that, right, you've got to drag out the giant mailbag. All right. Giant mailbag time. Okay. So giant mail comes from Greg. Yet another Greg.

Well, I don't know. It's not me, Greg. Okay. All right. This Greg wrote in about his Capital One Venture X card. As you know, it at least temporarily, I don't know how long this will last, gives you a $200 vacation rental credit as part of the welcome bonus, I guess, for the card right and he was surprised he bought a restaurant gift card and it credited for this vacation rental and so when he looked at it more closely the restaurant is tied to a like hotel i mean it's it's not in the hotel but it's it's sort of attached to it or

whatever and the name of the hotel is like roughly in the purchase thing. So that's kind of interesting because, you know, Capital One says you get these credits for things like Airbnb and VRBO and I can't remember what else. But it doesn't say random hotels and the restaurants. It doesn't. There's a number of other things it doesn't say that have coded so far. So it's worth using your VentureX card and seeing what might code as a vacation rental. You never know. Exactly.

Exactly. So it seems like that, that little $200 extra is a nice, you know, a little nicer even than, than you might've thought. Right. Pretty cool.

Pretty cool. Nice little piece of mail. Good. Good job. All right. I'm also going to end yet another piece of giant mail. Oh, two pieces. Two pieces.

Because it's the end of the year, I figured we might as well end with a nice compliment to our show. So this comes from Podcast Reviews. Hopefully I haven't read this one before. I can't swear that I haven't, but it's a good one. It's a good one. Go ahead and read it again, Greg. but it's a good one. So, you know what? This one's from Josh. He says best show for the hobby. Greg and Nick do a fantastic job. I commute an hour and a half each day for work. And I listened to a lot of points and miles

podcasts. Frequent miler is an extremely informative and highly entertaining show. I've learned so much from them and applied it to my own travel hacking adventures. When the show comes out every Saturday morning, I'm always hoping that it runs over an hour because it's the most entertaining podcast out there for the hobby. Greg and Nick keep up the great work. Well, thank you very much.

Thank you. That's awesome. Thank you, Josh. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We're happy to be along with you for the ride. At least one day a week in one direction. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Dear. We're happy to be along with you for the ride. At least one day a week in one direction, right? Right. You're going to need a shorter commute if you want to listen

to us every day. Right, right, right, right. You have to find a job closer to home. But in the meantime, I'm glad that we're there at least, you know, for one way, one day. Absolutely. Absolutely. Awesome. All right. All right. So then we should talk about what crazy thing did American Express do this week? Yeah. Amex has been on this, you know, segment quite a bit lately, I think. They have. I mean, they're almost making a play for getting it renamed. Yeah. About a week ago, they were almost making a play for getting it renamed. Yeah.

About a week ago, they did it. They did a fun thing along with Uber, which, which is, you know, how a bunch of Amex cards give you Uber credits each month. So the personal, personal platinum card,

the Amex gold card. So normally the, those credits appear on your Uber account, either the last day of the month before when they're supposed to come or the first day of the month. I all these credits started appearing on people's, on people's accounts. So that was, that was a lot of fun until Amex realized, Oh,

wait a minute. This was a mistake or maybe Uber realized it. Somebody realized it and, and started and started taking away those credits. Now, if you spent those credits before they were taken away, your account did not go negative or anything like that. So in my case, I saw about half of the credits had disappeared.

So I quickly placed a delivery order. And I didn't use all of the remaining credits, but I used a lot of it. And then a few hours later, my account went to completely to zero. And so I got my little order in on time. So that was a nice little present. We'll see whether you get any credits on the first of the month. That's right. They might say, we already credited you, buddy. I mean, it seemed like a Christmas present because it was initially just the $10 credit on the Amex Gold card. That was the only one that was coming through. And 10 bucks seemed like maybe a reasonable surprise from Amex, right?

But then the $35 credits all started rolling in one after another. And I realized, something might be up here. But I think the kind of the crazy, the additional crazy piece of it is that when they clawed it back, they marked it revoked as though like you had done something wrong for them to revoke it and take it away. All I did was have your cards, Amex. You didn't need to revoke it. Right, right, right, right. A little harsh. So that was fun.

It makes Giveth Amex take it away, except if you were fast enough like Greg. Right, right. All right. So then let's talk about mattress running the numbers. What do we got going on this week for some easy free points, Greg? Yeah, yeah. We're not going to talk mattress running today, but we are going to talk a hotel related thingy, which is Hyatt.

We've complained on here about how Hyatt did not extend their certificates like most other big chains did. And so if you had certificates expiring at the end of 2021, they were still expiring at the end of 2021. But what came out is that they were starting to give points if you requested it. Like online chat with Hyatt, for example, and say, I've got some certificates or other types of awards expiring, and they will give you some points. And what they offer seems very by person, but for the category one to four certificates, I think everyone's getting 10,000 points for those. As long as they're milestone rewards, the ones that are issued by Chase,

I've heard from one person after another, they've not been able to get anything out of those, but the milestone reward ones, 10,000 points. And then the category one to sevens, of course, 20,000 points. Those are also milestone rewards for reaching the, what is it? 60 nights you get category one to sevens, of course, 20,000 points. Those are also milestone rewards for reaching the, what is it? 60 nights. You get the one to seven. So I mean, that's still, that's not bad. That's essentially like an additional 10,000 point bonus for when you hit your 30 nights and 20,000 point bonus when you hit your 60 nights. So both decent deals there.

So that was nice, but that wasn't the most shocking part because Hyatt's been doing that after the fact on the DL for a long time. Once it expired, then you could ask for that. This is a little unique because you could ask for it a few days before it expired, which is, you know, not usually the case with Hyatt. But the more interesting piece of this was the club access awards. Absolutely. So when you reach 20 nights and 30 nights, I guess, you get these club access awards where you can access the club lounge, book a paid rate or book an awards day, and then apply one of these club access awards and access the club lounge. The problem is that once you hit globalist status, those are just totally worthless because you already get club lounge access if you have globalist status and you can't gift them

to anybody else. So they're only useful if you don't have globalist status. Once you do, they're just, I mean, they're totally wasted. There's no use at all. Right. So it was an awesome surprise to learn that Hyatt was crediting points for these expiring certificates. And at first the reports were 500 points then we heard some people got a thousand but then people started getting 3 000 points per certificate and it seemed to be that people who were had explorist status at the time they requested it usually got the 3 000 point offer but i don't know if that was universal but But we found that with some pushback, you could often get the 3,000, even if that's not what they offered you at first. I mean, it was pretty crazy

because some people were getting offered 500 points if they had global status, for instance, were getting offered 500 points. And that first day that this came out, 500 points sounded pretty good to me. I was like, oh, great. I mean, you know, it's much better than, exactly much better than the, you know, zero value we assigned to them before because of our status. But it was the weekend. So I was like, I'll take care of that eventually. And then the offer went up to a thousand. I was like, I'm going to get around to that.

I promise. And then the reports rolled in about 3,000. I said, okay, I need to pull up the chat now. And so it seemed that the people who got the most points were people chatting via the app or the website, not the people calling or emailing their concierge or the twitter concierge even so the odd thing is like it varied because like i said some people were getting 500 some people were getting a thousand i chatted and the agent said they could offer me 2 000 points per i was like where did that come from right

you know i pushed back and said i i mean i know other people who've gotten 3 000 and she put me on hold for a few minutes and she's like, okay, I gave you a 3,000 for each one. And it was just, it was weird because it's not like Hyatt, right? I mean, what an uncoordinated response this was from Hyatt. True, true. But, you know, I'll take it. So hopefully, you know, we're recording this before the end of the year. Hopefully, if your certs expired already by the time you listen to this, hopefully, Hyatt will still give points retroactively for things that expired. So I think it's still worth chatting them up or check our blog to see if we've reported any negative results

from people trying to do that after the fact. But in the past, they've given points for free night certificates that have already expired. And in fact, they used to require that you waited until they expired in order to get any points for them. So I think there's a good chance, but we'll find out. So is it worth it? I mean, that's the question we should ask, because the chat hold times were forever. I mean, I got in on it before I republished the post. And after I republished the post, people were saying, oh, they were waiting forever and getting disconnected. Before I published it, I waited about 45 minutes before it was even like widely out there on lots of blogs.

I waited about 45 minutes for an agent to pick up the chat. I mean, is it worth waiting 45 minutes for this? I mean, is it worth bothering, Greg? Yeah. waiting 45 minutes for this i mean is it worth bothering greg yeah i mean you know because the nice thing is that you can you can start the chat and then do other stuff you know you don't have to be constantly watching it so i mean maybe if you only had one i mean gee even if you only had one of these certificates for 3,000 points is, you know, I would do it. This is coming from the guy who wouldn't save $5 on a gift card, right? He's like, oh, it's up to 3,000 points though. But no, I mean, I totally agree.

I had six of these Club Lounge certificates. And so I ended up with 18,000 points. Even if you only value those at one penny each, which I think we all would agree that Hyatt points are worth well more than a cent each, but that's 180 bucks that fell out of the sky basically. I mean, hello, why not? I know. I know. I know. It's awesome. And then my wife is a, is explorist only because she's been on that merry-go-round of, of M M right? And you match to Hyatt. And then later when your gold expires, you match from Hyatt back to M Life Gold and you just keep going over and over. And so she has Explorys. And because of that, before they stopped giving Explorys automatic suite, not suite, lounge,

club lounge awards. Before they stopped doing that, you know, she got them, and then all this COVID stuff made them keep like renewing them and renewing them until now. And so she had four of these and got 3,000 points for each of them. And so did I, same thing. And I also too-

Yeah, and that must be where mine came from too, because we also have club access awards that aren't expiring yet. And that's the thing, they're only giving points for the ones scheduled to expire on December 31st, 2021. If you have some that are expiring in February of 2022 or 2023, they weren't doing anything for those

at this point. Who knows, maybe they will- I tried, I tried. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, I'm hoping, because I have several things expiring in February. So, you know, we can hope, but, but it was a nice, it was a nice, uh, you know, real, uh, sort of end of the year gift from Hyatt, even though it wasn't, uh, proactive on their part,

you know, it was reactive to people requesting it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Squeaky wheel gets the grease, so get out there and squeak. All right, so that brings us then, I think, to the main event. The main event. All right, 2021's deal of the year. We're going to get down into it.

We have a list of what we think were the best deals of the year. And so we're going to start by reviewing the list and then you and I are going to get into it and argue about what was the deal of the year? What was the single best? And you're probably thinking, well, it's obvious, but I don't know that it is.

I don't know that it is either. You know, hold on to your- Ding, ding, ding, let's put fights on here. Because, yeah. Yeah, right. Hold on to your deal hat because there's some doozies here. But we're going to start with the ones that... We're going to start with the ones that probably don't make the top list.

Okay. And then we're going to work our way more to ones that maybe do. All right. I'll get started first one to first one to review hyatt easy ludicrously easy top tier status this year they they kicked off the year with a promo that rolled over from last year that gave us double elite nights on stays. It gave us, what was it, up to four times as many points on paid stays. It gave us up to 25% back on reward stays. And so those rewards on top of the double elite nights meant you could earn a lot of elite Knights and get a lot of rewards you know material rewards in the terms of points uh in exchange for all that um so you're not just earning elite as you're also earning arm points with which to stay more and on on top of that they have the requirements for top tier for well for all their elite tiers but you know so they

brought their globalist status which usually requires 60 nights they brought that down to 30 for 2021 and then if you stayed 15 nights during the time january and february when they were doubling elite nights you were done you got your 30 elite nights in with, with like almost nothing. And there were, there were other tricks too, that you could do to get even to get more elite nights. So you didn't even have to stay as many as 15 nights to get, to get to top tier status this year. Wow. Absolute insanity. And, and, you know, so there were, there were a few different, very easy, high top tier status promos, right? Cause there was the one that wrapped from last year into this year, but then there were also a few like with the and as with

extra elite nights and whatever. I was just, it's been super easy to get high at elite status this year. And that is pretty insane. I mean, it's pretty impressive in terms of what you've been able to do this year. And so I was just scrolling backwards in my account activity because i was wondering how many points did i end up earning so i i did one of those things at the end of the year into this year where i did 30 nights mattress run you know check in check out so i spent about a thousand dollars on the 30 nights it was just over a thousand dollars because the rates were dirt cheap able to negotiate a cheap rate and so for that i ended up earning 16 000 points on this day i got the category one to four and the category

one to seven certificate for the milestone reward so they just cashed in for points so that was another 30 000 points essentially right so that's what 46 000 points plus there's the 49 milestone award. That's another 5,000 points. So, so that's 5,100 points and globalist status. And 4,000 points, 51,000. I'm sorry. I'm not sure. Sorry if I misspoke. So 51,000 points globalist status for suite upgrades for like less than $1,100. How is that like the bottom tier deal of the year? Like, how's that at the bottom? Yeah, yeah.

Don't feel bad. You know, if you went for this, you got it, especially early in the year, that meant you have global status for all of next year too. You had it for all of this year and you also have it all of next year and through February of the year after that. So it was sweet.

You know, it's a great deal when that's like the bottom rung of the year after that. So it was, it was sweet. You know, it's a great deal when that's like the bottom rung of the ladder. Great, a great year for deals. Right, right, right, right. And I mean, I didn't necessarily sort these exactly from worst to best, you know, it's just that, you know, we're starting with the ones that I don't think are going to compete. Incredible competitors for deal of the year. Okay. All right. I agree. That was good. Okay. So next up, we've got to talk about Brex cash. Brex cash blew the lid off of things with this super ridiculous, easy bonus where you had to spend, I don't know, if you spent a total of $3,000, I think you have the lion's share of it for a thousand spend,

but spend $3,000 on this new business credit card that wasn't exactly like a credit card because you kind of pre-fund the account and then spend out of the balance you have. And so it is a credit card, but it's like super easy to get, right? And there was no credit pull. No credit pull.

It didn't hurt you to sign up for it in any way. Right. Yeah. And 100 hundred thousand transferable points. 110,000. 110,000 is what it was, right? Yeah. For 3,000 spend total. Right. Right. So, I mean, that already would be fantastic. I mean, 110,000 transferable points for 3,000 spend would be a fantastic credit card offer. And for a credit card that comes with no pull and was, again, super easy to get, that just seemed pretty amazing to begin with. Absolutely. And then they had the crazy PayPal offer where you could connect it to your PayPal account, send yourself a dollar, like have one invoice through PayPal, sending yourself a buck and they

give you another hundred thousand transferable points on top. Right. Right. Well, you had to sign up for like PayPal merchant services or some kind of thing like that. You did. But it was literally like the process of signing up for PayPal merchant services was like talking to a person for 15 or 20 minutes on the phone maybe with including hold time and then they walked you through sending yourself a buck. And that was, you know, and I think you had to transfer the money

maybe from your PayPal account or something, right? One time and that triggered it. So altogether, this one card with very minimal effort and $3,000 spend was 210,000 transferable points that could be cashed out at one cent each. So it could be $2,100 back on your $3,000 spend. What? Right. But you remember, Nick, the trip on Emirates first class that we took from Dubai to the Maldives. I don't know about you, but I used my Brex points to convert to Emirates and to book these flights. Right. Right. And that flight had a cash rate of like

3,500 bucks or something. I mean, it was like ridiculous. So you got a great value out of that, really comfortable, awesome experience out of these super easy points. And Brex has also had a couple of transfer bonuses since. So if you picked up one of those transfer bonuses, you know, if you hit it at the right time, you'd probably turn those 200,000 points into even more airline miles than that. So that was a pretty great deal. Yes, it was. All right. So moving on, speaking of our trip to the Maldives, next on the list is La Meridian Maldives, which brand new resort that it actually opened in September of this year. And it opened as a category five Marriott, which means the standard points rate is 35,000 points.

Peak is 40,000 off peak 30 000 and when we went it was i think it was pricing at 30 000 at the time you know um and and uh so i you know i was able to use my free not my 35k free night certificates to book these and wow, what an unbelievable use of free night certificates or points if you choose to book the points. And I used one of my 40,000 point choice, my choice benefit from hitting 75 nights the year before titanium status, which if you remember going back, I had to mattress run. I had to spend like an extra 15,000 points to get that 40,000 point certificate. That was a conversation from a long, long time ago, but that's the gist of it that I, I spent 15,000 points to end up with

a 40,000 point certificate that I used for an overwater bungalow in the Maldives. Like it was a great use of 15,000 points for that mattress. So, yeah. And so they, at the time they were letting you book into an overwater villa as a standard rate. Now they, they charge a small upgrade fee, $50 a night or, or 10,000 points. I always recommend the $50 a night because otherwise you're basically getting, you know, a half cent value for your, your 10,000 points. And so not worth it. Unfortunately, the way Marriott does these upgrades is that you can't use a free night certificate. So, so let's say it's at, you know, it's price standard at 35 K and you want to be in the overwater villa, which, which is 10k more you can't um you can't use their certificate and and add 10k even once they add the ability to add points to a certificate um you won't be able to do that with um because of the weird way they do upgrades as opposed to flat out awards so that's a little too bad but on the other hand, it's still a smoking deal until March when Marriott gives up their award charts. Yeah. Marriott has a bunch of properties

in the Maldives. There is no other property that's category five or lower. There's only one property that's category six and that's the old Sheridan, which is not, you know. I've stayed at both. I would definitely stay at Limeridian again. Yeah. Yeah. That's my point. I mean, if anything, you can compare it to a category seven or category eight, which they have a number of properties there. And so the fact that it's category five right now, great deal. Great deal. Great deal as long as it lasts. So take advantage of it. I have a stay booked for next year that I probably won't actually be able to make, but I booked it anyway because, hey, why not?

It was 35,000 points a night. May as well take advantage while I could. So that's, I mean, that's an excellent deal too that in a normal year might be even more interesting, but 35,000 points a night that you're paying out doesn't quite compare to Amex throwing 150,000 points at you with the expand your membership offers. So Amex was throwing out these extra business platinum offers to people that had been doing it kind of all year long, where they send you an offer saying, hey, expand your membership, get another business platinum card with 150,000 point welcome offer. Of course, after you meet

minimum spending requirements. And so they did that. And some people were able to get a second and even a third business platinum card with another 150,000 point offer, even though they already had a business platinum card open. What? Right far as I could tell, there was no limit to when they would keep spamming you with these offers. You know, you'd accept the offer, meet the minimum spend, get the points, and then they'd spam you some more and say, don't you want to expand your membership some more? Now that's not from personal experience. In our household, we did two, but I certainly know of people who did more and there was not an obvious end to it. So, wow. Yeah. You know, again, normal year, a single 150K offer would have been...

A big deal. A big deal, you know, a big deal, big, big deal. I mean, I remember years ago when I opened my first business platinum card, I got like a secret mailer code from somebody on the internet. Uh, I don't even know from a message board somewhere to be able to call in and get the 150,000 point offer. Like, and that was a big deal to be able to get 150,000 points. Like they gave me street cred for a little while. And now forget about it. Like it makes tosses those out like candy these days. So that, I mean, 150,000 transferable points in any normal year would be like a wow offer, but not in 2021. No, no, no.

I mean, it is wow. It's just not the wowest of wow. All right. I think, I think we're about to get into some really wowsy stuff. Yeah. This is the big wow factor. So if you've been yawning a little bit so far, you're like, okay, that's pedestrian. Then, hey, we're about to wake you up. And if you've been thinking that these sounded pretty amazing, well, hold on to your hat there. Sit down, hold on to something, get ready because you got to talk about these Amex offers, Greg.

What's up with these amazing Amex offers? Yeah. So Amex, you know how you log into your Amex account and there's these Amex offers that are usually things like, you know, spend $200 at Best Buy and get $40 back. And sometimes they have spend offers, which are like, spend this much on anything and we'll give you some points. Yeah, I got one of those right now. Spend $26,000, get 13,000 extra points. I was like, $26,000 for an extra half a point per dollar spent. Are you crazy? How are we talking about this, Greg? Well, so some people got offers like this. Let me talk about the, maybe, you know, one of the, wow, less exciting of these was spend a thousand dollars, get $1,000 back. What? Say what? Spend $1,000. Get $1,000 back.

Spend 1,000 points or 1,000 records or $1,000 US dollars. Yeah. I mean, that was obviously a mistake, right? I mean, they must have meant like get 10K points back or i don't know what but

they certainly didn't mean a thousand dollars back for spending a thousand dollars and by the way you could do it up to three times so you could spend three thousand dollars and get three thousand dollars back oh my goodness treat yourself completely. Completely free spend. Yeah. Right. But that isn't even the best. There were variations on this offer. Some people got spend $3,000, get $5,500 back. That's almost double what you spent. And you could do that up to three times. It's insanity, Greg. Stop the madness here. That's crazy. Spend $3,000, get $5,500 back. So it was clearly a mistake. I definitely couldn't have posted, right? It was so clearly a mistake, yet people who got this reported that they actually got the money. It's insane.

Amex, yeah. Amex did the right thing and, you know, fulfilled their end of the deal. So that's nutty. Spend $3,000, get $5,500. I mean, like, think about what you could buy yourself for $3,000 if someone was only willing to pay you $5,500 to buy it. Because I can think of a few things. Yeah, yeah. I mean, wow.

Yeah, that's... I mean, give to Yeah. Yeah. That's a, I mean, give to charity. Where else can you make this big of a profit giving a chair? Oh, wait a minute. We're going to get into that later. You thought Greg was just being charitable. Yeah. So, so that, I mean, that was pretty insane, but it was very niche. I mean, that was not widespread. There were obviously people that got it, but I mean, I didn't see that on any of my accounts. Did you get it on any? Yeah. I mean, not, not a one, not a one. Did log in and check every single card three times. Oh yeah. No, none of that. All right. So I mean, that was amazing if you had it, but not widely applicable.

Not enough widespread. Yeah. But one that was widely applicable that almost anybody could have found a way to do was the Amex referral offers this year. So twice this year, I think, at least twice this year, they had an offer where you could get an extra four points per dollar spent when you referred others. And the better version of this was the more recent one that ended on December 1st, where you could refer someone to a new Amex card. And when they were approved, you would earn an extra four membership rewards points per dollar spent on all spend up to $25,000 over the next three months. So we're talking, you can earn up to

100,000 points, bonus points on all your spend over the next three months, just by referring somebody to a new card. Yeah. Yeah. And remember that's on top of the points your card earns anyway. So if you started with, for example, a blue business plus, or you hadn't already maxed out the $50,000 of two X spend, you're talking about getting 150,000 points with that $25,000 spend after, uh, you know, referring someone and hopefully they got a bonus as well. And so this was the perfect opportunity to do two player mode fun. You know, know, you refer your, if you have a spouse, you refer your spouse to a card. It doesn't have to be the same card you're referring from. And they refer you, and then you each get, you know, 100,000 bonus points for all the spend, if you can manage that much spend. Insanity. And it stacks on top of bonus categories too. So

like, for example, my wife has an Amex gold card and so it earns four points per dollar at restaurants and at U S supermarkets and up to $25,000 spend per year. And her anniversary was just switching over. So she's about to get a fresh $25,000 cap on that. So she referred me and I opened an Amex business green card, which is not an exciting card at all, but the annual fees waived in the first year. So it cost me literally nothing to open it up. It doesn't count against 524 because it's a business card. It doesn't count against the Amex credit card limit because it's a charge or a pay over time card as they call it. So literally there was like no negative impact there for me to open that. And she ends up with four points per dollar extra. So she's earning all of a sudden

eight X at restaurants and eight X at U S supermarkets and up to 25,000 spend. Now, of course that plus four X is only good for three months and up to $25,000 worth of, of spend. And maybe she won't spend the full 25,000 at the supermarket, but even if she doesn't, I mean, hello, that's an amazing return. So that was a great deal. And then there were lots of other ways to stack that. I mean, we wrote about other things with authorized user bonuses because I added some to my business green card after that, because they offered these bonuses for adding more people. So we're going to get into overlapping deals in a minute.

Okay. Hold on. We'll come back. First, we have to talk about something we've talked about endlessly on the show. Because when it first came out, I had no doubt in my mind this would be a deal of the year. And that is the Amex Platinum Resi offer, where you sign up for the Amex Platinum card, the regular Platinum card. If you spend $6,000 within six months, you get 125,000 point bonus, but that's not the most exciting part about that, even though that's very good by itself. You also get 15, not five, not 10, 15 points per dollar at restaurants and small businesses. Insanity. And this, again, this is also for on up to $25,000 spend, although this one is for up to six months, I think.

Yeah, six months. And as we've talked about on the show before, lots of things count as small businesses. So it's not really as hard as you might think to use that spend and earn 15 points per dollar. 15 points per dollar. What? I mean, we're talking about with this one signup bonus, if you maximize it, you end up with a total of 500,000 points without involving other deals. Right. Right. Just this one deal. It involving other deals. Right, right. Just this one deal.

It's absolutely insane. It's crazy. I mean, you know, like that amount. So let's back up the truck for a second and just, you know, take a quick trip down memory lane and remember that time like a year and a half ago when people used to search to see if they would get the targeted A platinum offer to get a hundred thousand points after, what was it? Six, five, 6,000 spend, uh, something like that to get, to get a hundred thousand points. And, and like, if you magically got targeted for that a hundred thousand point

offer, you were like, I did it. I won. I won the points game. I got the targeted offer that everybody wants. I'm the winner. And like now we just, we would laugh that person out of the room, right? Because how silly does that feel now? Compared to this resi offer, it's terrible.

Right. Horrible. Absolutely horrible. Half a million points now. I mean, five times that with a single offer. Right. Right.

And it's not like theoretical points. Like, like I know people personally who have maxed it out through regular spend. Like I've talked about my uncle, his son was getting married. He used the card to pay for the wedding reception. Boom. Half a million points. He's sitting on half a million points.

Which is insane. I mean, these are membership million points. He's sitting on half a million points. Which is insane. I mean, these are membership rewards points. NEMEX membership rewards points, if you listen to the show frequently, you know, are incredibly valuable points. So, I mean, at a very base, base, base, base level, right? We're talking about those points. If you have a Schwab Platinum also, you can convert those to a deposit in your Schwab account at 1.1 cents per point. So, you're talking about by opening a Schwab Platinum also, you're talking about that half a million points being Schwab account at 1.1 cents per point. So you're talking about by opening a Schwab Platinum also, you're talking about that half a million points being worth $5,500. I mean, that's just absolutely insane. So, right. Right. And of course you get way more value from that

by, you know, transferring to good transfer partners and booking high value awards. So. And I opened this myself and I'm excited about it. I am hoping, got my fingers crossed, we'll find out. I'm hoping that by the time this publishes, I will have purchased my car, though probably will not have written about it yet because I'll be waiting for the points to post. So I got my fingers crossed

because I've found lots of car dealerships that are listed as shop small qualifying businesses on the NX map. And so I'm getting close. I almost, I went to go buy one last week thinking that I was probably going to buy it, got there and the condition didn't match what I imagined. But now I'm like inches away. I think that by the time this publishes, I'll probably be driving a new car. We'll see. Probably maybe be driving. Is it a new car? No, no, no. A new car to me. No, no, no. I'm not. I just won't buy a brand new car. I can't handle the depreciation. Just like, ouch. Right. Yeah. No, not going to do that. Buying pre-owned,

but only, you know, a couple of years old, late model vehicle anyway. So I want to try to hold on to as much value as I can. But the thing is here, you know, so I'm going to pay for it on a card and I've had a few places that were willing already to take the full purchase price on a card. Most of them that are willing to take that full purchase price are figuring in a 3% fee. So they're talking about charging a 3% fee. So if you're talking $25,000, your 3% fee is 750 bucks that you would pay to be able to use the card. But if you trigger a half a million points with that, that are worth $5,000 and change, then that $750 fee doesn't hurt so much. And even if you overpay for the car by a little bit, that really kind of makes up for it. Right. So it, it, it sure can. I mean, it's, it's similar

to what I talked about when we first heard about this offer that like, if there are, you know, local businesses in your area, you know, you're going to be spending money on, you know, go to them and see, buy a, you know, giant gift card to them. And giving up the 15X would be a shame, right? Like I would definitely pay, if I had no way to spend the full 25K, but I had a way only if I spent a 3% fee or even a 5% fee. I mean, not that I would do this, but you could almost justify a 10% fee because you're still getting the points at less than a penny each. For sure.

And again, as you said, if you have the Schwab card, they're worth more than a penny each just for hard cash. Right. So there you go. There you go. So that, I mean, we're not at the end yet. No, we're not. We're not. We're not. So, so, so in my, in my draft where I was recording

the best deals as the year went along. And when this one came out, I just wrote mic drop, you know, I was like, we're done, right? There's nothing that's going to happen here, but, but, but, you know, things happen. And one of the things that happen are, are that Amex does a lot of these deals. A lot of these things we've been talking about are all Amex, right? And all Amex membership rewards and they overlap. And so the deals do get better just by merging them together. So, so take the, the I'm going to, I'm going to give two examples here. The platinum card that we just talked about, that offer, take that. And if you had that and could refer someone while that plus four deal was going on, now you're up to earning 19 points per dollar instead of 15. 19.

Now we're talking 600,000 points with $25,000. Right, right, right. And then not only that, add an authorized user. If you get targeted for this offer to add another 20,000 points to your balance. 620, 620. 620,000 points. All right. Let's forget about that Reszy offer. Another way to go, the Business Platinum, 150K offer. Okay. Well, that card was targeted for a different authorized user deal where you could add up to five authorized users and get 20,000 points for each one with $4,000 spent on each one. So that's another 100,000 points if you got that. And if you got the plus four deal, then that's another 100,000 points. And oh, by the way,

the referral deal on the business platinum actually gave you 15,000 points. Plus the plus four. Plus the plus four. That's right. That's right. So all those things stack together to nearly, I think, nearly 400,000 points. So, wow. where Amex has these once in a lifetime sort of rules where the platinum resi offer, maybe you've been frustrated hearing us talk about it because you opened up the platinum card last year or with one of those targeted 100K offers a year or two ago. And you're like, yeah, I wish I could get the platinum, the resi platinum,

but I can't get the platinum through the resi link because I've already had the platinum and Amex limits you to the one lifetime bonus. But that's not the case with these business platinum offers that they've been handing out to expand your membership. So you could really conceivably do exactly what Greg just said. Even if you had a business platinum already, you could open another one and turn it into like 400,000 points, like you just said. And if you haven't followed all the math on that, keep in mind that those authorized users, the employee cards as they call them, the spend on those cards counts towards the minimum spending requirement in order to earn the welcome bonus. So if you added those five people that each had to spend $4,000 to get 20,000 points, and each of those people spends their $4,000 that meets the welcome bonus for you to earn

the welcome bonus too at the same time. So, you know, with those types of offers there, I was looking at it and saying, okay, well, I have, I have a blue business plus referred somebody from it, got the four bonus points and I could earn six points per dollar spent on the blue business plus. And that's been in the sock drawer because these other combining deals have all turned out to 10 or more Amex points per dollar spent like everywhere. It's not like it's one small niche place, but like just about everywhere.

Right. Oh my gosh. Yeah. It's been, it's been absolutely insane. And, you know, we've, boy, I feel like a broken record saying that Amex has just been raining points down on us. But it's true. If you've been paying attention and taking advantage of these deals as they come out, especially stacking the deals, you have to be sitting on a lot of membership rewards points right now. because then things happen like just a week or two ago, actually, yeah, about a week ago,

more of that Singapore Airlines, Singapore Suites award space opened up. And if you got in quickly, it was, well, maybe it was previously. I think it was the previous time when the award space opened up that there was a transfer bonus from Amex to Singapore. So you get an extra 20% points doing the transfer and then you could book that award. And oh, by the way, Singapore is running a deal where they give you elite status when you transfer in

a certain number of points. And so all those things stack together. And that's just like one, you know, small example off the top of my head of what you can do with the, with these points. Amazing. The points parade marches on and my goodness, like let's keep it going. Yeah. Yeah. So, so, you know, about, about mid December, you know, I realized that Amex had this whole deal of the year thing so much in the bag. Right. We might as you know. We might as well have just written. We might as well have done the post then because, duh.

Right. Obviously, Amex has it. I mean, 2021 Amex, done. These overlapping deals, never seen anything like it before. You are not going to get a deal that deserves to be in the same conversation as that. No way, right? Not possible. There's no way that could happen. I mean, and not going to see one next year or the year after, right? Like 2021, it's going to be one of those years that people talk about, like the old timers reminisce back in 2021, I'll tell you. It's a good impression of an elderly guy.

I tried, I tried, I tried. All right, so are we done? Should we wrap it up and decide what was the deal? No, we're not done, Greg. You were wrong. You were wrong, Greg. Just you. Cannot believe.

Because you were the one writing my truck. I was wrong. Yeah, so. Greg, just you. I cannot believe I was wrong. Yeah. So, uh, and meanwhile, I was sitting and waiting for American airlines to come out and be the one that blows this all out of the water. Yeah. Right. Right. Right. Cause I knew that American airlines was going to come out with what I think most people will probably talk about with their grandchildren about how it was the deal of the year in 2021, because Simply Miles, which is the sort of card-linked program that's run kind of between American Airlines and MasterCard. So it's a card-linked program

for MasterCards that offers bonus American Airlines miles, if you're not familiar. So Simply Miles ran this promotion and they had run a similar one in 2019, not quite as crazy as it got this time around, but where they gave you a bonus of five times whatever the offer was, whatever the card-linked offer was. So a simple example, there was an offer where you made any purchase at GoPro and you get 1,000 miles. So you buy anything at GoPro, get 1,000 miles. And with the 5X portion, they gave you five times that additionally. So another 5,000 miles on top. So any purchase at GoPro would have gotten

you 6,000 miles. That's the gist of how the promotion worked. And they were pretty clear about how they said that that would work. And so, you know, we saw that and we were like, oh, wow, that looks pretty cool. But, you know, so our reader forwarded the email and I didn't get a chance to look at it the first day, went to sleep, woke up the next day, kind of slowly took a look and found that there were some really good deals in there. There really were. There really were. But even the so-so deals were great deals for the most part, right?

For sure. So take a simple deal, Best Buy, spend $200, get 2,500 miles. That was the regular offer. but then six tuple it. Right. Right. And suddenly you get 15,000 American Airlines miles for a $200 Best Buy purchase. I mean, come on. It's like basically getting all your money back, right? I mean. Yeah. I mean, you know, the 15,000 miles have to be worth at least close to the $200 for you, if not more than that. Right, right.

I mean, I, the day we're recording this, I had the Martha Stewart Marley spoon meal for dinner tonight that we joked was courtesy of American Airlines. We joked that American Airlines bought us dinner because we earned more miles than whatever the cost was to buy that. I don't even know what the cost was to buy the box at this point, but whatever the miles were, even a penny each, I think were worth more than whatever we paid for the food. So there were a bunch of those deals where you essentially were buying miles at a penny a piece. And if you valued what you were getting at all, then you were buying miles at very little to nothing. Right, right, right. So fantastic deal. What we've talked about so far, though,

maybe not deal of the year quality, but there was more. There was. There was. And, you know, thumbing through the deals when we first kind of started taking a look at this, I saw that there was a charity deal where you could donate to a charity called Conservation International and get 40 American Airlines miles per dollar donated, which already sounded pretty good. I mean, 40 miles per dollar donated is a nice, like a nice incentive to give. Yeah. I mean, that's pretty good. right. It's not, you know, it's not getting the full value of your donation back, but you know, if, if you want to give to them anyway, that's a really nice, very generous rebate. Yeah. 40, 40 miles per dollar spent, but you know, like I busted out the calculator to see if I could figure out what, uh, you know, an additional five on that would be. And when you sextuple 40, it turns out that it's 240 miles per dollars,

like donated, which is insane. 240 per dollar donated. So if you donated a hundred bucks, you'd get 24,000 American Airlines miles. Yeah. Another way to think of it is like for each dollar you're getting getting you're getting 240 american airlines miles and if you valued them at a penny each that's getting two dollars and 40 cents in value back for each dollar you donate i mean you're you're printing you know you're printing value basically even if you value american Airlines miles so low at only a half cent each, you're still coming out ahead. You're getting more value back at a half cent. I mean, nobody values American Airlines miles at only a half cent.

But that's my point is that that's how incredibly good this was. I mean, yeah. And to be clear, so if you value them at a half a cent, then you were trading dollar bills for $1.20 a pop. Now, I mean, come on. If somebody's going to give me $1.20 a pop, I'm going to trade my dollar bills all day long. I'm going to run down to the bank and clear them out of dollar bills, right? I mean, like, who wouldn't? So, I mean, and that's essentially what happened here, right?

That people were like, wow. And that's at a really low half cent valuation and a more realistic, at least a penny a piece valuation. You were trading in dollar bills for $2 and 40 cents a pop over and over and over with no stated limit. It wasn't clear. American Airlines said that there was a limited pool of miles, but they weren't clear what that pool was. And there was, I mean, I don't know if there was a maximum amount you could donate at once, but I heard of people donating five figures at once without a problem. So yeah. Yeah. Yeah. If there was, you know, I, I, I did $5,000 that's 1.2 million American airlines miles. Now to be clear, it's not really money you're getting back. You know, it's not,

you know, this isn't something that I can put in the bank and we'll get interest. It's not really money you're getting back. You know, it's not, you know, this isn't something that I can put in the bank and we'll get interest. It's not something you'd use to, to buy groceries, you know, or, or pay the fuel bill or whatever. It's not even something you own. I mean, you couldn't sell it to somebody else. You couldn't like trade it for cash. That's a really good point. American Airlines could take it back if they decided they didn't like you anymore as a customer. So it's like, you know, they could, you know, right.

Right. But you know, you could think of it as being sort of akin to buying like, like an airline's gift cards or something. Cause you know, you're locked into using these points with American airlines. Now, of course you could fly one of their partners with the miles. So you're not locked into flying American airlines, which was a big consideration on my part in buying all these miles. But yeah, and at the same time, hopefully we're doing something good for the environment too with this donation. That's pretty amazing. I mean, I think that's the amazing thing for me because a donation of that size is not something I probably would have considered without this, but it was pretty

awesome to be able to make that kind of a donation to an organization that looks like they're doing, doing good, you know, doing good stuff and helping the environment. So, and obviously, I mean, we travel a lot and so that is obviously potentially harmful to the environment. So being able to donate and make some positive impact there, but kind of feels good, whether, you know, however you feel about that. I felt I felt good enough about it anyway. So, uh, and I also, I did 6,000 altogether, five, my wife did five and I did one more, uh, just cause I had to one up Greg basically. So, uh, so this is kind of like buying carbon offsets, right? Like we're, we're, we're buying improvement in, in the, in the environment. So the, so then we can go and spend all these miles on wasteful travel.

Right, right. Sort of like buying a get out of jail free card. So, yeah, don't pass go though. So, yeah, I mean, yeah. So there you have it. But anyway, I mean, pretty amazing, right? I mean, being able to donate, like you said, you donated $5,000. And so that was 1.2 million American Airlines miles for your $5,000 donation,

which, you know, again, if you value those miles at one cent each, if you figure that you're going to be able to use them for fares that you would have paid one cent each on, which is pretty conservative, that's like $12,000 worth of flying for 5,000 bucks. So, I mean, that was a great deal. Some people went really, really hard. Some people just went for a few hundred dollars and got themselves an amazing deal out of that. So pretty crazy and pretty strongly a deal of the year, but, but I don't know, is it, I mean, you did have to spend a lot, right? I mean, you got your 1.2 million, but you had to give away $5,000 for that. Like, would you really, I mean,

would you really spend $5,000 to buy American Airlines miles, Greg? I mean, like, is that better? Is that a better deal though than like, from these other things? I think that's a really good question. I mean, there's three sort of deal buckets I'm going to call. It's a little hard to know what to say about the Amex things because it? That's one candidate, let's say. And I think there's a very legitimate argument for saying that, or that combination of things is the deal of the year,

because it's, yeah, it's not buying miles. It's, you know, being smart about how you're signing up for new cards and how you're using them in order to get these amazing rebates on spend that you hopefully were going to do anyway. Yeah. I mean, I look at that Resi offer. I did the referral, so 19 points per dollar. So if we conservatively say that's worth 20% back, which I think nobody would argue with me there, we were going to eventually buy a car anyway. We were talking about it in the, you know, kind of current environment. It was a little crazy because prices are a little high, but we were at the point where our old car, we were saying, oh, it's probably time to buy one, blah, blah, blah. Greg was right all along. We should have just gotten the minivan. So we were already talking about that. And we were looking at spending around the $25,000 realm a little bit more, maybe better around there anyway. And so like,

how often can you get 20% cash back on your $25,000 automobile? I mean, like, you know, if we look at it as 20% back, I'm talking about $5,000 back in my pocket, which I could get even more value than that. And you spent 5,000 on American Airlines miles, Greg, I think I got the deal of the year. I mean, I think that's a legitimate argument. Another one that's a legitimate contender by far is the crazy Amex offers to spend $3,000 and get $5,500 back. I mean, three times. Right. So all you had to do is donate to Conservation International three times, right? So if you did that- It's too bad that Simply Miles Steele didn't work with Amex cards that were enrolled in this offer because it was only

MasterCards. But wow, now that would have been the most amazing stack of the century, I think. But no, I mean, that's a legitimate contender. The main reason that I don't pick that those crazy Amex offers above these other ones we're talking about is they were so highly targeted that so few people got in on them that it's kind of hard for me to call it a deal a year when it's like a few people won the lottery. Right. And that's totally what it's like. It's like winning the lottery and the lottery isn't the deal of the year. The lottery is just, you know, you're lucky. So very lucky.

Yeah. So if you did get lucky, I mean, congratulations, you won, you hit the jackpot. I mean, I'd be happy about that too, but I'm not going to call it the deal of the year because, you know, I won some money in a slot machine either. It was just, you know, it was just luck. I put the thing in, got the money out. So, so yeah, I don't consider that the deal of the year. money in a slot machine either. It was just lock it, put the thing in, got the money out. So yeah, I don't consider that the deal of the year. I also don't consider it the deal of the year because Amex has shown a penchant for reaching way back to claw things back. Now,

I think it would be hard for them to claw this back because I'm sure those people took lots and lots of screenshots and I feel like they have a pretty good leg to stand on. But I also, I mean, come on, it wouldn't be the most shocking thing to hear that Amex later on tried to take the money back, right? And say that it was a mistake. Like it would be wrong. It's possible. I think it's unlikely. I think it's unlikely. You know, I think they, they long ago that they got some into some legal trouble with sort of welcome offers that were promised through affiliates or something that weren't honored based on what these other people had told the customers they were going to get.

And so since then, Amex has been, I think, very careful to try to provide what was promised. So I think it will be honored. I mean, I think they'll continue to honor it, but it's certainly possible. It's certainly possible that I'm wrong. I've been wrong about one or two things before. One or two, one or two, but I mean, I think that you may also be right. So we agree on at least the fact that that can't be considered the deal of the year because there was nothing you could do to get that. The only thing you did was you logged in and got lucky. So you didn't like, there's no, there was no, I have to jump on the deal kind of thing. It was just either you had, or you didn't. Whereas if you took advantage of the simply miles thing, cause

you were like, Oh wow, this looks awesome. Or the, the platinum resi thing. Those were things that were available to anybody that you could have either chosen to get in on or not. So, I mean, are those the only two things then that fight for it? Or do you think the expansion membership should be part of the conversation here? I mean, is that part of the Amex thing? I guess, because they're all, it's like the Amex stacking stuff versus SimplyMiles. You know what? I think we should simplify it and mainly talk about the Resi offer. Maybe add in the fact that it was possible to get about 120,000 more points on top of the 500K. But the Resi offer is really the headline one, right? I mean, 500,000 points with one card with some spend. Now, an argument

in favor of that is sort of along the lines of what we said, why the amazing Amex offers were disqualified. The opposite side of it, the Resi offer has been around for like six months. I mean, it's still around as we talk. we talk so you know so it's widely available easily available to everybody whereas the simply miles thing um was available for three days three and a half days something like four days i don't know whatever it was almost almost four i think i don't know whatever it was it's only available whatever it's very short and you had to have had a simply miles account already or created one early on uh because the the conservation international offer wasn't showing for brand new accounts that were made when we first posted it and there were some people that

had existing accounts not very many but there were a few people that had existing accounts that said they never saw the conservation international offer so apparently it was somewhat targeted though it seems it was somewhat targeted, though it seems it was extremely widely available. I don't understand where the targeting was there because it seemed like the vast majority of people saw it, but again, not on brand new accounts, at least for a few days. Now, if you created a Simply Miles account when we first posted it on that Saturday,

whatever it was, December 11th or something, when we posted it, then you did see the Conservation International offer probably before it was done, but you had to have hopped on it right away. So you had to be on it quick. You had to have a MasterCard. You didn't have a MasterCard and you couldn't get in on that. So, but I don't know. I mean, I feel like that's still pretty widely available. I mean, I know lots of people that got in on that deal. So I think it's tough. I don't know, which, which is your pick for the deal of the year? I mean, the one you're spending a whole bunch of money, you're buying miles essentially,

which I mean, you can manufacture spend. You could probably find a way to manufacture American Airlines miles for less than half a cent each, right? I mean, if you bought, for example, you know, gift cards at OfficeMax or Staples or whatever, when there's a fee-free promotion, you could use some sort of AA card to buy those fee-free Visa gift cards. And if you got a relatively cheap liquidation method, you could probably generate American Airlines miles at less than the 0.41 cents per mile, right? I mean, weren't you overpaying, Greg? Well, but you can't get easier than clicking through and spending it all in one shot. I mean, that's the deal. So yeah, it comes down to, in my mind, this widely available and long available 15X, sometimes up to to 19x depending on how you played it

um amex offer or the 240x short-lived high flame you know quick flame out um deal And, and I, I, you know what? I can, I cannot imagine giving, not giving deal of the year to the 240 point per dollar opportunity. I, I, I mean, don't you think that they're going to now that all these miles on the blocks, I mean, they could devalue those points at any time. They could become worth half a penny each maybe. I mean, aren't you nervous about that? Surely you're not going to use these miles right away, right? I mean, you already had been sitting on a healthy balance of American Airlines miles. So now you've got another million American Airlines miles. Who knows when you're going to use them, Greg? They might not actually be worth all that much by the time you go to use them.

Greg Fossum, Jr.: It's true. It's true. There's all kinds of reasons why you might argue against it, but I'm going with that as my pick. How about you? Tom Preston- I'm going to go on the other side. And obviously, I donated money too, so I'm teasing Greg, but hopefully people that are hearing that are saying, you bought him too, you bought more than he did. And it's true because I think that the thing about the Simply Miles thing was that it was definitely, I think anyway, a once in a lifetime chance to buy that many American Airlines miles so easily.

So I was definitely very excited about it because you were really turning it into something. And I think that the first time that I redeemed some of those miles for Cutter Q suites, I'm going to feel differently about this, but right now, because I don't have any international travel for sure. I mean, I got a couple of European cruises booked next year. I'm already like, oh, that was a stupid decision. I'm not sure that I'm going to actually do them. So I don't have any for sure travel plans. I haven't even gotten the miles yet to be able to use them. So I feel like that seems, the value seems farther off. So while it was probably a good deal, I can't definitively say that yet. Whereas I feel like the Amex membership

rewards points are easier to definitively say, amazing deal. I can't imagine that we're ever going to see a more generous American Express, a new card welcome bonus offer. This is as good as it gets. And I didn't have to give away money in order to get it. Obviously, yes, I have to spend money, but it was money I was spending anyway anyway so i was going to spend it on some card and earn something that wasn't going to be anywhere near as much as this whereas with american i had to invest money in the future of the american airlines advantage program which just saying that out loud makes me a little nervous about that decision for sure for sure i feel like i feel like the deal, like as far as getting the deal, I feel like the deal of the year is the Resi Platinum offer. Yeah. Yeah. You make a good case. Absolutely. And as I say,

it's a great problem to have that we have two, you know, maybe that's what we should do. You know, I picked one as a dealer, you pick the other, let's just say two deals of the year. Two deals of the year. Two deals of the year. Hard to pick one. So yeah, I mean, thank goodness for that.

And here's to 2022 and hope that we're back in this position again, because I know that at the end of 2020, we were like, oh man, you've got to get the platinum card now. Cause we're never going to see a better offer. And I mean, how stupid do we look now saying, so I, I am so looking back on this, this resi offer and laughing about us talking about how good it was. Right. Yeah. Yeah yeah come on mx it's time for the 100x uh everywhere card or chase balls in your court i mean hello come on no reason it has to be mx it makes us look silly so uh sorry i mean there we go i'm gonna predict it i'm gonna predict the next one that beats the resi offer is not gonna be from chase that's my prediction all right and you know do you know why i'm predicting because you really want it to be from Chase. No, I mean, you shouldn't because you're over

524 at this point. Oh, well, good point. Good point. But I would love for them to prove me wrong anyway. So we'll see. We'll see. We'll see. All right. So I think that wraps us up on the 2021 deal of the year. So that brings us to the post-drost. You got a post-drost for me, Greg? I do not. I figured I would give you sort of an end of the year present. Thank you. Let you off scot-free despite all the terrible things you've written lately. Very generous of you. Let me close out the year with a little bit of mercy. And you know-

How about for me? I have loved all of the posts you've written this week. So, um, which, which as we, I was to record this, Greg hasn't yet published one. So, but of course, by the time this publishes, there'll already be some, and I'm sure that I will have loved those. Uh, but, and I was going to roast your deal of the year with a couple of things that weren't on the list, but after we talked about these, I feel like I can't with a straight face roast you with the ones that I had in mind. So I'm going to skip right over that. And we're going to go to the question of the week.

So this week's question of the week came in via email, and I love this question. So I think you are going to love answering it. And let's see. It came in from, I'm not sure, from Eric. From Eric. Eric says he's new to the points game. He's benefited greatly from reading Frequent Miler. He's got a question, though. Have you ever published articles on how to keep the points game. He's benefited greatly from reading Frequent Miler. He's got a question though.

Have you ever published articles on how to keep the points game going? Is it possible to earn a million points year after year for a middle-class guy like me who has limited annual spend and no small business spend to earn points on? It seems to me that at some point, a person or a couple maxes out the number of cards

and signup bonuses they can accumulate and then has to rely mostly on day-to-day spend with the cards they already have. Canceling and signing up for the same card and bonus doesn't seem to work like it used to. Thanks again, Eric. What do you think, Greg? Yeah. Well, it's funny. It's such a timely question, especially because of the list we just went over where, you know, I've been doing this for years, my wife and I, and almost all of the things we talked about, my wife and I did this year. So you don't run out of things. So take the, um, the business platinum 150 K thing, right? We both did that. There was no lifetime rule on it. The platinum card. I mean, yeah, we couldn't get

in on the 15X deal, but my wife did the 10X Schwab deal. Okay. So, okay. Not as good, but still, we're talking about hundreds of thousands of points by the time we're all done. Simply miles, obviously. It doesn't matter what stage you're in to get in on something like that. So a lot of these things, boy, just because you sign up for cards before, most issuers have things like 24-month rules, which means 24 months, usually from the time you got a welcome bonus, you could sign up again. So, uh, you know, I know I'm eligible for a lot of cards that I've had before, uh, Amex sure they have the lifetime rule, but as I was talking about, there's often exceptions

like the expand your membership deal, but there's also often lots of other exceptions and again with amex as long as you still have cards you can make a lot of points from referral deals so it just goes on and on and on and and no i i you know yes it's easier i guess when you're starting off to to get ridiculous money points from signup bonuses, but getting hundreds of thousands of points each year by continuing this game is not a high bar. I don't think at least as things stand today and as they've stood in the last five, 10 years. I agree with you.

And, you know, Eric said that he, he specifically said as somebody without small business spend earn points on. So I guess maybe the business platinum deal wouldn't apply to you in that case, though. You know, I think that maybe it's worth deciding to become entrepreneurial and come up with a small business idea of some sort. You know, with those these offers, I mean, they're paying you to try out the idea of having a business. So, you know, and that's funny because it was an interview question that somebody sent to me this week interviewing me for an article. And the question was something along those lines of, you know, are travel rewards even worth it?

And should somebody consider new cards? Like most people don't get new cards very often. And is that a mistake? And if so, why? And my thought on that was very simple. Yes, it's a huge mistake. The bank thinks that you're worth X number of points, which translates to X number of dollars in your mind, right? X number of dollars as a customer.

So, I mean, who am I to tell them that I'm not worth that much as a customer? You know, that's what they think I'm worth. And that's what they think I'm worth. Let me take my piece of it. And, you know, we list so many cards on our best offers page. I think there's at least 150 different cards i know at different times in the past when offers were not nearly as generous as they are right now greg has counted up something like i don't know what five six million points five five million

somewhere in that range yeah and offers i would imagine today it would be higher yeah it'd be higher yeah right so i so i mean we're talking millions and millions out there and that's just from the new card welcome bonuses, and you haven't run through all 150 cards yet. I mean, most people haven't. So you got time to go there. And like Greg said, you refer player two, player two refers you. You pick up some points that way,

and you keep looking for those opportunities to kind of stick and move and pick up easy points. So, no, I totally agree with Greg. It hasn't ended yet. And will it last forever and ever? Will it always be this easy? I don't know, but I'll take my millions of points while I can. Right, right, right, right, right.

I mean, you know, if you had asked us to predict, would this year be as good for deals? You know, no. I mean, well, actually, we did predict it would be good for deals, but we wouldn't have expected it to be as good as it was. Right, right, right. So, I mean, you look at it and say, Greg and I each generated a million miles a piece in like a click, right? With a simply miles deal, like a click.

And yes, we had to donate a large amount of money and not everybody has the liquidity to be able to do that in one shot. So I certainly appreciate that as a person with a couple of kids and whatnot, I totally get that. But on the flip side, if you had that, and in my case, I talked about how I had put together money from checking account bonuses. That's kind of like a box of play money. I cashed out a bunch of membership awards points when the ability to trade those in for 1.25 cents each was still around. So I had built in some play money for these types of opportunities. And then, yeah, I mean, just generated miles easily. And so that was a million each just in a minute. And then when you add up everything else from the course of the year, I mean, my goodness, there's a lot of points out there, Eric. A lot of points.

Don't get discouraged, buddy. A lot of points. Absolutely. Don't hang up your hat. All right. So if you enjoyed what we've been talking about today and you'd like to get our posts in your email inbox, all you got to do is go to frequentmiler.com slash subscribe. Again, that's frequentmiler.com slash subscribe. Join our email list. You can follow us on Twitter and Facebook and Instagram. Join our Frequent Miler Insiders Facebook group, where you can talk about this stuff with other like-minded folks. Wherever you're listening to this, make sure you subscribe, enable notifications, leave us a like, a comment, that sort of stuff. It all helps the channel out and the podcast out. Thank you guys very much. And we will see you again next week. We'll see you again next year. Next year. Next year. Next year for us. Maybe

this year by the time you listen to this. Next year us well that's true that's true we'll see you in 22 2022 we'll see you in 2022 and hopefully that show was long enough for josh's ride home hopefully there you go all right bye everybody Music