Frequent Miler on the Air - 3 new ways to earn transferable points | Frequent Miler on the Air Ep316 | 7-25-25

Episode Date: July 25, 2025

In today's podcast episode, we'll talk about how JetBlue bonvoyed Nick, how Accor bonvoyed Greg, and finally, two new transferable points programs and a new credit card that allows us to earn transferable points.Giant Mailbag(00:58) - "I've noticed that you love to be underwhelmed by the Amex Green card. In your recent episode about travel cards, it seemed like you couldn't contain your boredom with it, despite its valuable 3x Amex points for all types of travel ... A major benefit that you may have overlooked is constant Amex Offers from travel providers, which I've combined with the 3x on the Green card for a lot of value."Catch Episode 315 here.Card News(05:43) - Citi Strata Elite. Here's what we expect...(08:59) - Southwest card offers...Crazy Thing: Citi!(15:09) - Citi to Accor 1 to 1Bonvoyed(17:54) - Capital One brings back baseball tickets, but shuts out Venture X cardholders(21:08) - JetBlue's 25% off sale with code SAVE25...but "fares booked with SAVE25 will not be counted towards 25 for 25"Awards, Points, and More(24:15) - Bilt transforming travel portal(30:52) - JetBlue Mosaic first impressions(35:11) - Escape lounge SJU and The Beekman Tower NYC(38:51) - Greg's experience with Accor Live Limitless(46:26) - Greg's experience flying American Airlines with Alaska milesMain Event: 3 new ways to earn transferable points(50:22) - Why we care so much about transferable points(52:50) - Rove Miles(1:00:58) - Consider using our referral link here.(1:01:33) - MesaRead more about Mesa here.(1:08:55) - Rakuten American Express® CardLearn more about the Rakuten American Express® Card here.Question of the Week(1:17:21) - A rep says you can only use an Alaska Credit Card to book companion fare flights... this is a problem when a companion fare cancellation goes to your Alaska wallet (which then can't be used for a new companion fare according to this new policy.) What gives?Subscribe and FollowVisit https://frequentmiler.com/subscribe/ to get updated on in-depth points and miles content like this, and don’t forget to like and follow us on social media.Music Credit – “Ocean Deep” by Annie Yoder

This is a Voy Escape podcast. You can find all of our travel podcasts from around the world at voyescape.com. On today's show, we'll talk about how JetBlue bonvoyed me and a core bonvoyed Greg, and we'll discuss three new ways to earn transferable points. Frequent Mylar on the air starts now. Today's main event, three new ways to earn transferable points. Today we're going to discuss two new transferable points programs and a new credit card that lets us earn transferable points on today's main event. And we'll talk about why we're so excited about the opportunity to get transferable points in general and why having more options for earning

transferable points is always a great thing. Everybody likes options very good and if you would like the option to come back to something later on or to skip ahead to that main event, you can always find the time stamps in the show notes. So just expand the show description to find those there and wherever you're watching or listening, don't forget to like this. Leave us a comment, some feedback. We always appreciate hearing from you.

Now it's time to drag out this week's giant mail bag. Today's giant mail comes from Chris in response to our last coffee break episode where we discussed the cards that we would consider using for all other travel now that the Sapphire Reserve card is no longer offering 3X for all types of travel purchases. And Chris writes, I've noticed that you love to be underwhelmed by the Amex green card. In your recent episode about travel cards, it seemed like you couldn't contain your boredom with it despite its valuable 3X Amex points for all types of travel. Greg emphasized that it has only secondary rather than primary rental coverage, but that doesn't

make any difference outside the US. And Amex does offer primary coverage for about $20 if that's really important to someone, which it isn't to me. A major benefit that you may have overlooked is constant Amex offers from travel providers, which I've combined with the three X on the green card for a lot of value, even though you almost fell asleep when discussing one of my favorite cards. I love everything that your team does. So what do you think, Greg?

Are we sleeping on the green card? I mean, to some extent, I yeah, I mean, it, it's definitely a strong option for a kind of one stop solution for travel purchases. You get a strong 3X earnings for all that travel. And as Chris said, the ability to tag on Amex offers, which can often be, you know, like $200 back on a $600 flight or whatever it is. That's pretty good. You know, and his point about travel coverage, I mean, you know, he particularly mentions rental car coverage, but, you know, I'm more concerned about other types like trip delay coverage and things like that, which are not as strong with Amex. But if those things don't bother you,

I think this is a good choice. One thing to keep in mind though, and this is why I never consider it as like the ultimate one-stop solution, is when you travel internationally, there are plenty of places that won't take Amex still. And so I don't see how it could be your one card. There's no way it couldn't.

Yeah, I mean, unless you happen to just solely travel to places where you know, AMEX is accepted like and that maybe your your international travel is all to the same place and you know, AMEX is accepted there. Well, then great. But if that's not the case, yeah. My thought when reading the comment that the secondary coverage doesn't matter outside the United States was I was thinking to myself, but how many rental car joints are taken in Amex outside the United States?

I mean, there are some, there are places where Amex is accepted. I'm always surprised actually that it's accepted in more places than I would think, but on the flip side, I've been lots of places over the last year that don't take Amex. So, and that's just one given year,

not like years of travel. So I don't, I could never at it as my my main travel card for I think that combination of reasons, like you said, the lack of good flight protection coverage and the fact that it just isn't accepted enough places overseas. Even for flights this morning, I was booking a flight for a family member. And for a second, the green card came into. I thought, oh, three X points. But then I thought to myself, oh,

but my consumer platinum will get five X booking the flight. So I'd rather use that than the green card. So I don't find enough situations where I want to use it. And the other types of travel like trains and subways and whatever else, I'm not spending enough on those things for it to really matter which card I use in general, like for that stuff. So and I'll use the altitude reserve and get my three X which is worth four and a half percent basically. So uh so I I'm still not wildly excited

about it but I mean at $150 a year it's not bad and I think it gives you the clear credit right? So I mean you get that you have three X travel. It's certainly not a terrible card. I just don't get excited enough. I think MX needs to do something more with it to make it truly Oh, I'm sure they will and what they'll do is raise the annual fee and add two bonds and we're gonna like it less Let me take that back MX needs to leave it alone. Leave it alone Yeah, so that people like the person who called us Chris here can can be happy with the green card, right? No, exactly.

I hope they don't touch it. And you know what? For me, the best part of this card is, you know, when I'm having trouble falling asleep at night, I just think about the green card, Amex green card and all of the green cards as we fall asleep. Actually the business green card is even better for falling asleep too. Absolutely true. Yes, true. As much as we're joking, the consumer

green, the business green is the true snoozer of amaxes card collection. That's for sure. Speaking of cards, let's move on to card news. We've got several pieces of card news out this week. First up, we got the city strata elite. What's coming here? What didn't we hear rumors something was going to come out last weekend and then we have detail what's coming here with didn't hear rumors something was going to come out last weekend and then we have what's going on. Yeah, we did initial rumors were that it was going to debuted last weekend. It didn't but full details about the card

have come out since then and it's supposed to be released now this coming weekend as we record this. So by the time you listen to this, if you listen to this on Friday or Saturday, expect to see information come online on Sunday probably, and applications available on Monday, starting Monday. But that said, we don't know that 100%. I mean, that's what we heard from some bankers we talked to. But we will see. And we had really actually thought about making this the main event for today's show. But then we realized, no, we better wait a little bit. Because if all this leaked information, if any of that's wrong, it'd be such a shame to do a whole show on

this card. But here's really high level what's coming from Citibank with their Strata Elite card. One, a nice welcome offer, 100,000 points after 4k spend. Annual fee, $5.95. So that's a bit steep. Weird earning rate. So you get 6x at restaurants on every Friday and Saturday between 6pm and 6am Eastern time. What? Yeah. And 3 X at restaurants at other times and one and a half points per dollar for all other purchases. So notice some things,

they're not bonusing any travel purchases, they're not bonusing gas or grocery like the lesser Strata Premier card does. So what they're doing is they're, they're, they have this very weirdly East coast centric dining on weekends thing going on. Um, I hope it comes with, yeah, I hope it comes with like a digital ink time, like, like East coast time clock on the card so that when you're traveling internationally and you're wondering, will my card earn 6X right now,

you could, hopefully you could look at the digital display on your Stratolink card and see what time it is in New York at that time. Might be premature to refer to the Strata Premier as the lesser card, by the way, we'll see. Well, that's actually, it's lesser in fee for sure. So we're also expecting about $700 in annual coupons from the card. I'm not going to get into details now because

as I said we'll cover this in full once it's actually released. Priority pass, no restaurant access, boo. And we're looking at four annual American Airlines club passes with this card as well. Yes, that was my my boo hiss there. I don't know. Four club passes is better than nothing, but I don't know. Six hundred bucks. We'll see. We'll have to talk more about this when we know more about it. That yeah, that whole Friday, Saturday thing, though, weird. The timing.

It's really weird. Coast base. That's so odd. I guess they're going for a specific demographic. And I don't know, I don't know. We'll talk more about it next week, probably, so we'll leave our opinions about it for them. That's not the only new card news, though. The Southwest cards have come out with annual fee increases, boo

and big new offers. OK, I mean, the big new offers are big. They're looking pretty good, But the priority card goes up from $149 a year to $229 per year. And that bummed me out. I loved the priority card because for 150 bucks, you got both a $75 Southwest credit and all the benefits and whatnot. Now it's going up 75, more than 75 bucks. So yeah, that's that's a bummer.

The premier goes up from 99 to 149 and the plus goes up from 69 to 99. I think they all all of the consumer cards are featuring 100 points after $4,000 spent in the first five months, right? So, I mean, that's a big offer that gets you most of the way to a companion pass. And the nice thing about the welcome offer is that it's four thousand in the first five months and of course if you're good with math you know that as we record this hopefully as you listen to this it's July and five months from now would be December so if you just hold off a couple of weeks on applying

you wait until sometime in August then your spending window wouldn't end until January so if you just hold off a couple of weeks to get the card you wait until August five months would end your spending window in January and that would be preferable because you could complete the spending in January earn the hundred thousand points in January and then you're going to be just twenty five thousand points short of a companion pass because of course having one of these cards gives you credit for ten thousand points towards

it already. So you only need to earn another twenty five000 points next year in order to have a companion pass. Now I say that with a little bit of hesitation because there's been rumors that they might change the companion pass and how it works. And so there's the rumor had been the survey they sent out was that it might turn into an elite status thing. And if that happens, then your 100,000 points might not get you any closer to a companion pass. So I think it's a risk to be honest, like applying for this expecting the companion pass at this point, I think is a little bit of a risk, it's probably going to pay off. But I don't

know that for sure. Let me clarify something that I don't think Nick covered that the reason to wait to complete the spend till January is because if you get your companion pass, if you qualify for it in January, then it's good for two years. The rest of what would be 2026 and all of 2027. Whereas if you do it this year,

it would be good for just the rest of this year and all of 2026. So that first one, I'm saying, is a sure bet, I think, because I doubt they'll change the companion pass benefit before the end of this year. But, you know, obviously gives you a lot less time with a companion pass if you do it that way. It's a little tricky, I think, to do the timing just right with just one card here because you, you know, the goal is to try to get that companion pass as early in January as possible. So you can't spend more than, you know, $3,999 on the card this year.

And if you wait to spend, let's say, you know, you wait to spend that last dollar in January. And so then you've got your 100,000 points towards the companion pass, 100,001. And you need 25,000 more points. So where are you going to get those quickly? It's going to be a little tricky. So anyway, that just depends. Yes, I mean, that's a great point. Of course, there's things you can

do through the shopping portal. You could sign up for the SWA Biz program. You could refer somebody to the SWA Biz. There's a bunch of different ways to potentially bridge the gap there, but you're right. I mean, obviously you'll be a little bit short with one card if you take that approach. By the way, don't do what Greg just said

and spend $3,999 and leave the extra dollar. Every year we hear from somebody who tries to do that and then somehow mistakenly spends that extra dollar or a merchant overcharges them by some amount and they end up spending more than four, even though they didn't spend more than four. And even though it gets refunded later on, they still have already earned the welcome bonus.

We hear those stories all the time. So don't cut it like that close. You know, you can spend something on it, but don't cut it so close that a small mistake could cost you earning the bonus when you want. But I think actually what Greg said at the beginning is a really interesting thought. I would predict it's fairly likely that Southwest at some point later this year will announce a change to the companion pass for the 2026 qualifying year. So they're not

going to change it for people qualifying this year. If I were betting, and I don't know this for sure, so don't take this as written in stone, but if I were betting, I would bet on Southwest just because all the negative changes they've made, it's might as well just blow that one up too, I guess. Right. So but if they announced it, they have to announce it before the qualifying year. You can't do it part way through the year. You can't change things around. So either they're going to announce that change towards the end of this year for people qualifying in twenty twenty six or they'll announce it in of this year for people qualifying in 2026 or they'll announce it in 2026 for people qualifying in 2027. I think it's more likely that they announce it this year for people qualifying in 2026.

If you agree with that prediction, which is the doomsday prediction, then you may want to spend right now and earn the welcome bonus now and figure out the other 25,000 points so you can at least have the companion pass for the rest of this year and all next year, cause they're not going to take away the companion pass you've already earned, but they very, very well may change the requirements for companion pass before the end of this year. I would bet on like an October, November type of announcement. Yeah. Yeah. And, and just as a reminder, if you,

if you spend the 4,000 now in order to earn the a hundred thousand points, that's 4,000 more, uh, qualifying points. So you'll need 21,000 now in order to earn the 100,000 points, that's 4,000 more qualifying points so you'll need 21,000 more. And if you have taxes to pay or something that you could do before the end of the year, you can do that to earn the last bit. Yeah. Yeah. All right.

Anyway, there you go. All right. Let's move on to what crazy thing did Citi do this week? Welcome back. Love it when Citi's... Yeah. crazy thing did Citi do this week? Love it when Citi's, yeah, welcome back Citi. Okay, so Citi earlier this month had a transfer bonus to Accor Live Limitless, which their normal transfer ratio to Accor is two to one.

So two Citi points becomes one Accor point, and that works out okay, because the core points are worth two euro cents each. So it's like getting one euro cent per city point. So that's not great value, but it's not bad. But when there was a transfer bonus, it made it a bit better. So what happened though, is when the transfer bonus was over, they apparently assigned their intern to go and take away the transfer bonus from the system. And what they did is they put it back to one-to-one. So the website no longer listed a transfer bonus being in effect,

but it just showed one-to-one transfer and that was great value because you're getting over two cents per point value by transferring your city points to a core. That happened over the last weekend. I expected that Monday morning, 9 a.m., someone would discover it and shut it off right then. And the almost crazier thing than this happening at all is that this lasted into Tuesday. Yeah. Yeah, unbelievable.

So to be clear, it was better than the transfer bonus. The transfer bonus ended. And then when they put it back to the normal ratio in quotation marks because it was not done correctly, they actually increased the transfer ratio when the transfer bonus ended. So it was even better. So the people who took advantage of the transfer bonus probably felt a little cheated because a few days later they could have had even more points.

You know, obviously you could never have predicted that city was going to make that mistake. And like Greg said, you never going to predict it. It was going to last all of Monday and part of Tuesday. I mean it was and Sunday too. It started on Sunday so pretty crazy because it was a good chance to get about 2.3 US cents per city point towards a core. We don't talk much about a core because there's no chances for outsized value but at that rate 2.3 cents per city point towards lodging then it's kind of hard to ignore. That's

that's really good. I mean, that's on par with Hyatt or you know, the the typical good uses of points. Yeah, yeah, it was good enough. I transferred 100,000 of my points to a core despite recently having a really unpleasant situation with a core, which I'll talk about later in the show. Alright, sounds good. Let's talk about more unpleasantness. Let's talk about this week's Bonvoit items this week. We were Bonvoit or some of you

probably were Bonvoit by Capital One Capital One brought back the baseball tickets. We've talked about the baseball tickets plenty of times before Capital One has cardholder exclusive seats to every baseball game. There's only four cardholder exclusive seats, but all of the major league baseball parks have them. So there's four cardholder exclusive seats for every game. And when they put them on sale, they sell out within a couple of hours for the most desirable teams. And they cost 5,000 miles each. And they're usually, I should say 5,000 miles or $40 in cash back rewards.

They're usually very close to the field, great seats in some parks. Those are seats that ordinarily cost in the hundreds of dollars a ticket. So it's a great deal and we have a lot of readers who have subscribed to comments on our post about it because inevitably the way we all find out is somebody comments on that post and says,

hey, the tickets are back. And then it's a mad rush to get the tickets. And so that happened. But this time around, Capital One shut out Venture X cardholders. So I don't understand exactly what happened. There was some sort of technical glitch. And when Venture X cardholders tried to get these baseball tickets, it said your card was ineligible to get the baseball tickets. And in fact, my wife is a Venture X cardholder and her Venture X card and her Venture card

were both grayed out as options ineligible to buy baseball tickets. Her Spark Cash card could buy the baseball tickets, so she was able to buy them for $40 in rewards per seat. So thankfully she had that. But can you imagine your Aventure X cardholder paying the $400 a year for the card? You've been following us and know about these baseball tickets

and you know the best way to find out is being subscribed to the comments. And you see the comments and you log in, you're like, yes, the game I want is there. And then Capital One is like, sorry, Ultra Premium cardholder, we've got a glitch, You can't buy them. Right.

This is only for the lesser cards. That's yeah. Yeah. That's, that's a shame. I, I mean, I, it seems pretty certain because it would be too weird. Otherwise that this is a glitch as opposed to an intentional. Oh yeah. They got it fixed later in the day.

It's just that, you know, the people that are following the most desirable teams know those tickets are going to go within. I mean, like Yankees, Dodgers, stuff like that goes within like an hour usually. So and of course, the the glitch lasted at least an hour or so, maybe two. I don't know exactly, but long enough that the toughest to get games were going to be gone by the time those people were able to buy tickets, though there were some still available and we did hear from plenty of readers who got tickets. So I don't mean to say that nobody got them. I mean, go through the comments and you'll see plenty of people did get tickets. But but unfortunately, it just stinks that

they had that glitch for Venturex card holders. I'm sure that it will be fixed for the next round next year. But although I say that, keep your eye out because they did do playoff tickets last year, apparently I missed that, but they did playoff tickets and World Series tickets, not 5,000 miles a seat. It's going to be more, but, but they still may be a good value if your team makes the playoffs. Yeah, cool. All right.

But Capital One isn't the only one who bonvoyed us this past week. JetBlue came out with their 25% off sale. Now that's over now that as we're releasing this recording, but they had a sale which was use code save25 in order to save 25%. It seemed perfectly aligned with JetBlue's 25 for 25 big promotion. You know, save 25, do 25 for 25 to celebrate their 25 year anniversary.

But there was some fine print in there that fairs booked with save 25 will not be counted towards 25 for 25. And I don't think Nick was too happy about this. Ridiculous. Oh my goodness. This was awful because the 25 for 25 promotion said that you needed to book a blue fair or higher. That's all it said when they launched the 25 for 25. So what reasonable person would receive an email from JetBlue that says, hey, save 25 percent on your JetBlue tickets and you go and it's valid on a blue fair?

What reasonable person would assume that that blue fair is not good enough for the 25 for 25 promotion? I mean, I tend to think that the conspiracy theorists are wrong in most cases, and I mean that just generally about conspiracy theories, right? Normally I feel like there's a good explanation for most things, but I gotta say, the people here who are like, man,

this feels like JetBlue is just trying to like invalidate some flights for people who are doing JetBlue is 25 for 25. I mean, I can't imagine their marketing team is sitting there scheming like, ooh, how can we get people to not qualify? But at the same time, like you've got to know that people aren't going to read the entire email, right? I mean, JetBlue must know that people don't read every word, right? And I can't I just I can't wrap my mind around the fact

that they would send that out in such close proximity to this whole 25 for 25 thing and make those flights not valid for 25 for 25. I'm sure that there are people who booked flights with that code, assuming that they're going to qualify. And they're only going to find out when they don't get the points at some point later this year. And then they're going to qualify. And they're only going to find out when they don't get the points at some point later this year, and then they're going to be scrambling to book a last minute

jet blue flight to finish things up or whatever. Just what a mess. What a mess. Jet blue. Boo. Yeah, totally boo. You know, and even if they're listening and they come back, I could imagine and I think you should do this jet blue if you're listening to this, like, you know, change that rule retroactively. So if anyone flew on that book, that I think you should do this, Jiblu, if you're listening to this, like change that rule retroactively. So if anyone flew on that book that fair, it should qualify.

But that's not really even enough because people like Nick who saw that rule did pass on getting that really good deal. And so I think you should come back with that 25% off deal, but make it valid for the 25 promo. That would probably be the right way to handle it, JetBlue, so thank you for considering that. All right, that's good.

So, well, not good, but good that we've completed that. So hopefully anybody out there who booked one of those expecting it to count can at least rebook now, because otherwise you're going to be disappointed later. Speaking of points, though, and bookings, let's talk about awards points and more. So words points and more built has come out with a newly transformed travel portal.

So there are some big changes and built travel portal where you can book through the built app or the built website. You can book travel. And we've talked about that plenty of times before. You can use your built points at one point, 1.25 cents per point to book paid travel. It's not something we've typically been very excited about because well for the same reason we're not excited in general about booking through credit card portals because when you do that you oftentimes give up a lot of power and control and if something goes wrong with your flight for instance then you're

scrambling with the travel portal rather than the airline to get things fixed however built is fixing that so they are phasing in direct bookings using your when you book through built travel so it's not all flights yet but apparently it's a lot of flights and expanding. So for instance, I saw an example where you book a United flight through built travel and then it shows up on the United website as a direct booking. And so you can manage it through United change if you need to change something goes wrong, you can contact United. It's handled as a direct booking with the airline so I'm sure that that won't be the case with every airline in the world but probably at least the major ones. It sounds like are intending to come online phasing in soon. Same thing is happening with hotel bookings with at least the major five chains. So, Hyatt, Hilton, Marriott, Accor, and IHG. Over time, those will be direct

bookings. They're not all direct bookings now. I think the home away from home bookings which something else I'll mention in a second are direct bookings but the rest of them it's it's something that's developing over time. So if you see the opportunity to add your loyalty account number in the booking flow then you know that's going to be treated as a direct booking and the advantage here that's kind of interesting is that you'll be able to book the member rate through built so the the long-term thing here and i'm already seeing this in some places is that you'll be able to book like the hilton honors rate through the built app or the hyatt member rate through the built app so

you're not going to be overpaying for those reservations and you'll be able to use your points at 1.25 cents per point like Like I said, it's not rolled out everywhere yet, but they do have agreements to do that with at least those five major chains. So keep an eye out for that and when you see the ability to enter your loyalty account number, you'll know that that's going to work like a direct booking. So that's good news, I think. I mean, that's, I think that's interesting. I think that's awesome. I mean, I think it makes using built points to purchase travel so much more attractive.

The airline thing was only really an issue before when things go wrong, but the hotel thing is a pretty big deal. When you're booking a chain hotel where you would like to earn points, you'd like to earn credit towards elite status, you'd like to get the benefits of your elite status if you already have it,

all of that was unlikely when booking through travel portals, or I should say is unlikely when booking through travel portals, but BILT is starting to change that. And that is great news. And hopefully other travel portals will take notice and follow their lead, but not gonna hold my breath. Yeah, it seems like quite an undertaking

and they were clear that Expedia is still going to be backing some reservations because particularly if you're booking like something way off the beaten path in a far flung country somewhere, that the issue is that if they're taking the rates directly from the GDS, apparently it's the responsibility of the hotel to be entering all their information into the GDS.

And when some small unknown privately owned hotel closes or moves or whatever else, it's their responsibility to update the GDS. And so that makes it tough if built is letting you book direct because you don't want to show up and find out that the hotel is closed. Right. So Expedia has region managers that make sure that that doesn't happen. And so my my understanding anyway, is that some of those more far flung type places will still be serviced by Expedia. But I think for the most part, most of your travels to major areas with major chain hotels are going to be direct bookings over

the long haul. And like you said, nice to be able to earn elite credit and and hotel points and use your points at 1.25 cents per point and still earn hotel points. I think that's an interesting stack. Speaking of stacks, they also debuted this home away from home program that I mentioned, which is a fine hotels and resorts like program. And so this is aimed at gold and platinum members. So built you have to have built gold or platinum status in order to be able to book home away from home.

This is like MX fine hotels and resorts. It's actually booked through virtuoso on the back end. So essentially what happens is you book a hotel and you'll see that it's a home away from home property and you'll get typical FHR like benefits breakfast for two maybe a late checkout $100 credit that sort of thing over time they intend they say to add on more local type benefits specific you know drinks at a specific bar in the neighborhood or things of that sort, I think is the aim in the long run that's not launched yet at this point.

And it'll be serviced by a virtuoso agent. So you're going to get matched up with an agent who can then offer help with other stuff if you want it. And if you don't, obviously you don't have to have that additional help. So I think that'll probably be an interesting competitor to FHR in the long run. Cool. That's a lot of, I don't know, positive developments and we'll see how that goes over the long term.

Somewhat downside is that it's only open to gold and platinum members at the moment and I'm not sure that that's going to change. They've been clear they don't know yet, but I would bet that it's going to be, it's going to continue to be a golden platinum member thing. Yeah, I think they are probably trying to tell the hotels that it's good to sign on to this because you're going to get their like, you know, wealthy customers who spend a lot and their way of doing that is by limiting it to golden platinum members who get there by either having huge mortgage payments or Spending a lot on the bill card. So Yeah, same thing with the virtue also agents that are servicing these right because those Agents are earning commission on the stuff that you book. So I think the

That's the selling point for them also Makes sense. All right, let's talk jet blue. You finally got your JetBlue mosaic status thanks to that Duncan flight that wasn't Duncan. I did. I did. So I got the mosaic status and I was able to take advantage of it last weekend as we flew around to pick up the first of our JetBlue 25 for 25 destinations. Probably the most valuable benefit was one I didn't really talk about in advance, but some readers mentioned would be a good one and that's free same-day changes. And so the free same-day changes saved us a bundle. I

was able to book a flight and same day change it, book a flight that I didn't want to take but was cheap, and then same day change it to the flight we really wanted that had been $300 more expensive. So save $300 by booking, like I said, an early flight that we didn't want to have to take so early in the morning and then just doing a same day change. So that could end up being a great benefit, particularly because there are some situations where you can change the airport. And so, you know, airports that are located near each other that are eligible for same day changes. So you might be able to book a flight to an airport that's less expensive and same

day change to a nearby airport that would have been more expensive. So that's I think a great potential benefit of Mosaic, particularly when you're chasing 25 for 25. It could save you some money potentially. Of course, you're relying on there being availability for those same day changes. So you know that could work out well or not. We I will say that we did indeed get extra legroom seating on almost all of our flights so far.

So I said in the beginning when I did the Duncan flight, one of the reasons I wanted to do it was so that we would have the chance to fly more comfortably now and then by picking the extra legroom, the even more seats at check in. And I didn't expect that it would happen on all of our flights by any stretch, but I figured if it happens on a handful, I'll be happy. Now we had to cancel a bunch of plans last week, so we didn't actually take eight flights. But at check in anyway, before plans changed,

we were able to select the extra leg room on seven out of eight flights. And remember, I'm traveling with a family of four, so I need four seats. And that eighth flight had the four seats. It was just pairs that were middle window instead of middle aisle. And my wife prefers an aisle seat. But we could have had two rows back to back with a middle window if that were something that we wanted. So it was really our choice, essentially, not to take it on that flight. So almost really eight out of eight and essentially we flew in. So anyway it's worked out really well is my

point. Pretty soon here after we record this I'm gonna check in for the next one. Looks like there's still plenty of extra legroom seats on that one. I check the price it varies from flight to flight but the flight that I'm about to check in for this afternoon it's $120 a seat for those extra legroom seats on that one. I checked the price. It varies from flight to flight, but the flight that I'm about to check in for this afternoon, it's $120 a seat for those extra legroom seats. So I'm not surprised that there's quite a few of them left. So anyway, that's worked out well. Early boarding has been especially important on their A220 flights. If you haven't flown on JetBlue's A220 before, which I had not, It's worth knowing that having early boarding is really valuable on that because the A220 the seating is two on the left side and three on the right

side and the overhead bins are not the same size because obviously it's not quite evenly spaced. So the your your rollerboard bags only fit over the row that has three seats. And so there's a bunch of extra leg room rows at the front bunch of people that have roll aboard bags. So if you can get on the plane early, you have a much better chance of having your bags near you. In fact, we did have our bags near us and there were several people around that were not very happy that they had to put

their bags further back and I don't blame them for being unhappy. There just wasn't enough space for everybody's bags. Unfortunately, so so having early boarding if you're don't blame them for being unhappy. There just wasn't enough space for everybody's bags, unfortunately. So having early boarding, if you're flying in A220 particularly, I think is really helpful. If you got those extra legroom seats up at the front or really anywhere on the plane, you're gonna wanna be on early in order to get your stuff

in the overhead bins. Yeah, yeah. So those are some really good perks. If you fly JetBlue a lot, obviously, that'll be that'll be great. And obviously, anyone doing the 25 for 25 promotion where you have to go to 25 JetBlue destinations to finish it is gonna be flying JetBlue a lot. So having that status for that is as Nick did, made sure he got was a great great move. All right, now, tell us about the escape lounge. You went to a new lounge.

Yeah. A couple of quick tidbits here. So San Juan airport has a new escape lounge. It actually opened I think July 3rd. So it opened just a few weeks ago. So brand new. It still feels very brand new. So you can access of course with a platinum card or you can get access with a Delta Reserve

card if you're flying Delta the same day. If you have an Amex Platinum card, don't forget it. Escape lounges, you still get two guests. You don't have to spend the $75,000 a year. You still get two guests at escape lounges. And the food was delicious. It was very small. It's a very small lounge. A couple people in the comments commented and said, oh, I wish, you know, priority pass could get access or Venturex card holders or Ritz card holders, whatever else. And the fact of the matter is if anybody else had access there would just be no space it's it's right very small so I'm glad that there isn't more access because then there would be less access you would just have a long

waiting list to get in because there'd never be enough space it's quite small but the food like I said was delicious so I thought it was good service was excellent and my understanding from past experience is that you can also access an escape lounge on arrival, so good to know that if you want to grab a bite or a drink or something when you arrive in San Juan and if you're doing 25 for 25 you might be arriving in San Juan at some point since they have some very cheap Caribbean flights from there. Although I did write about how the same day turns may not be the best idea on those Caribbean flights, you can check the

post for more on that. The other quick tidbit from last weekend's travels was the Beekman Tower in New York City, which is a Wyndham property, a trademark collection property, not to be confused with the Beekman Thompson Hotel that's bookable through Hyatt. That hotel is like downtown somewhere. Beekman Tower is around 51st Street and 1st Ave or so. Three Mitchell Place is the address, but it's Midtowntown East essentially and this is a Wyndham property so it's bookable with 30,000 points per night. If you're a Wyndham earner cardholder you

get a 10% discount so it's 27,000 points per night and the interesting thing is that they have two different room types and either one is bookable with points as a standard room award. One is a queen studio apartment and the other is a one queen one bedroom apartment. And so it's a true one bedroom apartment. We booked the apartment and it's got everything an apartment has. It has a living room and a kitchen and a bedroom and a bathroom and all of that in Manhattan for 27,000 points per night is pretty good. Now let me be clear.

It wasn't luxurious. This isn't the fanciest place I've ever stayed. It was clean, though it was comfortable and it was spacious, which in New York City is hard to come by. So I certainly will be back again. I think that if my choice is twenty seven thousand Wynum points per night or twenty seven thousand ish Hyatt points per night, I probably have to consider this place in the future because when the points are relatively easy to

come by and the amount of space here was really convenient. There's not daily housekeeping and there's no breakfast. So there's definitely plenty of drawbacks. You can read my my review for more but it's something to keep in mind because I don't usually think of Windham in New York City. I know they have the Windham New Yorker but I don't usually think of the other Windham properties. So this is one I just noticed I hadn't seen before. And I said, Oh, let's try that out. And it was actually quite, quite good for the price. Yeah, that's really good to know. And when I think about this one, I think for you, Nick, the decision for you will probably come down to are you driving to the city or not? Because if you're driving to the city, you want Hyatt Globalist free parking.

And then it'd be worth paying the more valuable points for your stay. But otherwise, yeah, this sounds like a great option, especially for a family. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. All right, now you mentioned earlier that you recently had a not so great experience with a core. Tell us more. I did. Okay. So if we go back in time a little bit, built a while back had this special short-term deal where I think it was a rent day promotion where if you had, I'm not sure what level status with built. You could transfer a certain 5,000 points to a core and get a core platinum

status for a year. And that came with two sweet upgrades and other platinum status benefits. So I did it and kind of more because I wanted to do it for the podcast and the blog to have experience with the Accor program and with their elite program. And so I had an opportunity, we were staying in Amsterdam for just one night. And I had originally booked a fine hotel and resort property for about 450 bucks. And so the $200 back I would get from my platinum card made it really cheap. I decided to cancel that when I remembered about this Accor thing and book an Accor property

and apply a suite upgrade. The Inc Hotel Amsterdam had really good reviews. It's very close to the train station. So that was convenient because we had to go to the, we were coming from the train and leaving by train the next morning. So I went through the process online to book the hotel and to apply the suite upgrade.

And the price it showed on the screen was, I think it was about $490. So that's that's considerably less than how much the suite would have cost. But it's more than the lowest room rate. Like so the way the core thing works is only certain room rates are available to apply the suite upgrade. So this was not a slamming deal to begin with. It was just like, I was willing to pay that much for the sake of science and learn about this. And plus, it looked like a good hotel and a good opportunity, you know, to test everything out.

I chose for some dumb reason not to apply my 5000 points at checkout, which I could have done. Because I knew that you can apply a core points at the hotel. And so when I said not to apply them at checkout, you mean check out online when you were, I meant, right. Yeah. Checkout online. I know that's so confusing. Yeah. I chose not to apply them online. Uh, I would do it at the hotel was my decision. I don't know why. Um, and so, okay. So that's that. I did not look closely at

my email confirmation. Had I looked closely at my email confirmation, I would have seen that the confirmation had the full suite price, which was probably, it was in Euros, but it was probably close to $800. Yeah. So flash forward to the day I'm, the morning I'm getting ready to check out of the hotel, which was lovely, by the way. So first of all, I guess I should mention what my elite experience was there, which is you don't get free breakfast with platinum status. You need diamond status to get free breakfast with a core.

And then it's only valid at certain types of properties and only on weekends. So it's very limited even with diamond status. They did the app showed and the check-in person told me that we would get a free drink at the bar. My app showed I had two free drink coupons. We didn't have a chance to use them, but they were there and available. At breakfast, the manager just proactively offered to give us two buffet breakfasts for the price of one. So we did that. So about, I think it was 29 euros for the two of us. So not bad for that. And it was a good breakfast.

So then I went to check out and that's when I realized before checking out that they had applied. I looked at my bill and I was like, what is this price on here? And so I went to the desk and said, oh my gosh, somehow the suite upgrade didn't get applied. Can we apply it?

And she was so nice. She tried to help, but she was like, there's just that this isn't a core thing, not a hotel thing. There's just no option at all for them to apply the sweet upgrade retroactively like that. Okay. Well, at least I could use my 5,000 points to save, you know, what, 100 euros off the bill. So I said, can I apply my 5,000 points?

Sure, she types it into the computer and says you'll be receiving a code from a core. And you just need to tell me that code and then we're good to go. The code was supposed to come to my email. It didn't come. I checked, I checked spam. I checked, you know, promotion stab, all that stuff.

It didn't come. She tried three more times. It didn't come. She tried sending me a test email to make sure I'm getting my emails and that came instantly. No problem at all. So ultimately I couldn't use my points. I checked out, paid the full amount the next day.

So 31 hours after she, she, you know, pressed the button to, to get me my code. The, the four emails came rubbing salt in the wound here at core 31 hours later. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. salt in the wound here at core 31 hours later. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it was overall a, a miserable experience with a core, uh, live limitless. Um, as Steven Pepper said in our group chat, uh, limitless is how much you end up paying for your stay.

Ouch. I especially, I mean, I don't need to be the one to tell you, but if you had an FHR property booked for 450, that would have cost 250 after your credit. That's, yeah, especially painful to pay $800 for a suite that you probably would not have booked at that price. And we didn't even need a suite, you know? Like, there's just the two of us. It was nice, it was a nice suite. We like, actually like the hotel a lot.

And if they, if they changed to a different program from a core, I'd like them even more. But anyway, that's, that's the situation with that. And, and so, uh, you know, my, my initial reaction was like, I'm never going to stay in a core property again, but, um, but the truth is like, but then you went ahead and transferred a,000 points to a court. I know. Glutton for punishment, Craig.

You're a glutton for punishment. I did. I'm sure. I'm pretty darn sure that if I just apply the points upfront when booking a hotel, that that part will all work fine. Can't go wrong. What could go wrong? And I'm 100% sure that I'm going to be very carefully checking the confirmation emails anytime I

make a booking in the future. I still have a support issue making its way through the system, so I don't know what the final, you know, the end result of all this will be, I hope, according to something to make it right for me retroactively. But so far, all they've done is try to pass off the problem to the hotel when it's a hundred percent, not the hotel's fault. It's a hundred percent of course fault. So I replied to them with that and see where that goes.

Yeah, we'll see where that goes. All right. And then you also recently flew American airlines and you got there on time more or less, right? Yeah. So, um, I've, I've talked to before a lot about how American Airlines always likes to bonvoy me with canceled flights, delayed flights and everything. But I could not ignore the fact that with Alaska miles, it's now possible to book business class from Detroit to London or to Europe, if you can find it for 45,000 miles.

And so this, the flight I booked was Detroit to Chicago, to London on American airlines, the whole way, uh, 45,000 Alaska miles, smoking deal. Um, we get to the airport in Detroit and of course our flight is massively delayed. Now they would have put us on another airline, but all other options for getting to London were, were ruined as well because of weather. Now the irony here is our flight was not delayed because of weather. Our flight was delayed because of a mechanical issue. Broken plane. Broken plane.

Broken plane. So we were sweating it out and my wife was like, why did you do this to us again? She couldn't believe it. Cause last time we tried this, the same route, Detroit to Chicago to London. Right. We, well, actually the first was supposed to be Detroit to Charlotte to London. And that ended up being so delayed that we couldn't even get to Charlotte. So we ended up switching to Detroit to Orlando, I mean, to Detroit, to Chicago,

to London, and we got to Chicago. We took off and it blew an engine. We had to come back and then we switched to United and got to London that way. So my wife was like, why would you do this to us again? Um, and I was like 45,000 points. I'm sure she loved that explanation. The, the flight crew, when we eventually got on our plane to Chicago, the flight crew was great.

The air, the air, um, the pilot said they were going to do their best to get us there quicker than expected, because as it was before we got on the plane, the estimate was that we would be there six minutes before our flight to London was supposed to take off. So, you know, after the boarding doors should have closed and everything. Luckily, two things, the pilots, you know, said they're going to try to get there quicker and they did. The other thing that's really lucky is American Airlines is so reliable. And what I mean by that is you can rely on them to be late. And so, of course, the flight to London was delayed, not by a lot, but enough that we actually made it comfortably on time to our flight.

And it was the new their brand new suites and and we had actually a great flight it was beautiful suites very comfortable so a good experience in the end but a lot of stress I can imagine yeah well it was sort of a joke at the beginning when I said and you got there on time right on time for the delayed flight. So we said right at the time. So, yeah, just as they expected all along, they knew that you didn't. But they knew, you're going to be fine. Don't worry about it. No problem.

Yeah. We had one with JetBlue last week where we got up like 430 in the morning or whatever, because it was an early flight. And the app said it was delayed by an hour. And I was like, maybe we should go back to sleep for a little bit. My wife was like, no, let's go to the airport. You never know. And sure enough, it took off on time. So, wow, that we are glad that we went to the airport.

But yeah, yeah, we were luckily mostly on time last weekend. But that was JetBlue, which I say, but that was JetBlue. But JetBlue apparently has the worst on time percentage right now. So, yeah, knock on wood as I. Yeah, American is like in the middle of a percentage right now. So, yeah, knock on wood as I. Yeah, American is like in the middle of a pack right now. So they're they're improving. Apparently, apparently.

All right, now it's time for this week's main event. Main event time, three new ways to earn transferable points. So of course we love transferable points. We talk about it all the time. When you have points that can transfer to different airline and hotel programs, it means that when there's a great opportunity for some kind of award booking with some program where you don't already have the points, you can now potentially transfer your transferable points to that program and make that booking for that incredible

deal. It's often, often, often the case that foreign airline programs have the best deals for flights, even for booking United or Delta or American Airlines flights. Often the foreign programs have the best deals for flying our domestic airlines. And yet, you know, most Americans don't have points in those programs. So that's where transferable points come in. You, you, you earn your transferable points. You say, you want to fly that, that, um, United American Delta flight. Okay. I can transfer my points to, uh, Air France or to, to, to fly Delta or, or, you know, to Air France or to fly Delta or,

or, you know, to British Airways to fly American things like that. The other thing that's kind of exciting here, and we'll, we'll talk a little more about this is that we're, when there's new transferable points available, there might be new transfer partners that we didn't have access to before. And so one example is Air India. Suddenly we can transfer points to Air India and use them to fly United for as few as 3,500 points one way for short flights or 7,000 points one way for short flights

in domestic first class. So some exciting opportunities there. Yeah, that's great to great to think about. So you mentioned that sometimes we get new opportunities for new transfer partners. So we got to talk about these new transferable points programs because they have given us access to some of those transfer partners that we haven't had

from the traditional transferable points programs we've talked about. Traditionally, we've talked about Amics membership rewards and city thank you points and chase ultimate rewards and capital one miles, but there's some new kids on the block. So the three that we're going to talk about today are Rove miles Mesa and the Rakuten credit card, which might kind of raise an eyebrow to

that is not entirely a new kid on the block, but the card opens up some opportunities. But let's start out and talk a little bit about Rove miles. So Roove Miles is a rewards program that's not linked to a particular credit card. It's sort of aiming to be an overall rewards program for all your travel booking and online shopping. It doesn't require a specific card. You can use whatever card you want. So you earn Rove Miles by booking travel through Rove Miles as

flights or hotels or using their shopping portal to earn Roe of miles and then you can use the Roe of miles to either book paid travel that better than one cent per Roe of mile oftentimes 1.25 1.5 sometimes you'll see as high as almost 2 cents per point for booking paid travel or you can transfer to their airline and hotel partners and that's where they have some airline partners in particular that other currencies or few other currencies can access I should say so. The transfer partners that they have include a core which is a slightly better transfer than you see from some other programs it's fifteen hundred rove miles to a thousand a core points so that's a little bit over one and a half cents per point if you want to sign up for a

little bit of Greg's pain at the core properties and then it transfers to some programs that you already know Air France KLM flying blue couple of the obvious programs Cathay Pacific at Dihad but programs that maybe you haven't considered before that it transfers to include Air India. So Air India, I think it's called Maharaja Club, and they also transfer to Vietnam, Airways, Lotus Miles, which is one that we recently wrote about. There's an opportunity to download the app and get some free miles, and several readers commented to say that there were a number of good uses of Lotus Miles, but I've never collected them before since they weren't partners with most of the

major transferable currencies, so I don't know what we're missing there yet, but I've never collected them before since they weren't partners with most of the major transferable currencies so I don't know what we're missing there yet but I look forward to hopefully digging into that I did see they had a really good award sale a while back I just had a really hard time figuring out which flights were available in the award sale so maybe some challenges there if you're not familiar but and you get some other programs that we don't talk about as often so Um, so they've got a collection of partners. Anyway, what do you think? I mean, I wrote a post about it this week.

Are you intrigued by Rove miles? Why are, why not? Yeah, I am. Um, you know, the, the opportunity to earn them seems like kind of hit or miss. Like, you know, sometimes, uh, the, the deal you get when booking a hotel through their program looks really good. Other times it's kind of like, I could do better through other portals. But I am intrigued by the ability to unlock, for example, the Air India opportunities or to learn about what's available through Vietnam's program and things like that.

So I think that's, that's pretty exciting actually. Um, if, if you, the other thing is I think it's a good supplement to earning other transferable points. And what I mean by that is like, there, there are tons of, uh, transferable points programs that earn, for example, Air France, KLM Flying Blue miles that are transferred to Avio's like British Airways, Finnair, Qatar, that transfer to, there's fewer, but some transfer to Cathay Pacific. And so, the ability to earn points in miscellaneous programs like Rove miles,

while you're also earning points with Amex, with Jace, with whoever, you know, because they have these transfer partners in common, you can transfer from each of these programs to that transfer partner and get enough miles you need for your award. So that's really good. If you were kind of using this as its own program, like not looking elsewhere, I think there's one big thing noticeably missing here, which is they don't have a really strong Star Alliance program. I mean, now I'm saying that not knowing a lot about like air india's program but you know what were used to turning to avianca life miles or air canada aero plan.

Or sometimes united for those star alliance awards that won't incur any surcharges you know like so airlines like lufthansa charge huge surcharges to their partners except United and the ones I just mentioned don't pass those surcharges along when you're booking award. And that's really great. I don't see one of those programs on here as a transfer partner. So that to me is missing. But otherwise, I like it. I think it's pretty strong that it has Air France, KLM, Flying Blue, that it has some programs that are good for like specific purposes, like Cathay Pacific. If you want to find, if you want to fly Cathay Pacific itself, they have better award availability for their own members.

So you can transfer to Cathay and book them. Or if you see a British Airways flight bookable through Cathay, you'll often find much lower surcharges booking with Cathay Pacific Asia Mile. So that's really good. So overall, it's I find it really intriguing. Yeah, you know, the return on hotel spend in some cases can be pretty compelling. I showed a random example of a hotel that was like 23.8 miles per dollar spent. So that's I mean, if you value miles at one and a half cents per per mile,

that's almost like a 40% rebate or something. I don't know. It's quick math there, but but a lot anyway, a significant rebate on on the hotel spend and readers chimed in to say that sometimes they've seen as high as 66 miles per dollar spent on hotels. And so if you found something like that, then you might be able to get a rebate that essentially kind of a race is the cost of your hotel and there are situations where I think that might actually influence which hotel I booked. I mean it's rare that the portal return makes a big difference to me but here it might now the thing of course to know is if you're booking through a row of miles you're not booking directly so you're not going to get elite credit or hotel points and you're not going to have the ability to stack with a shopping portal when you're booking the hotel. So for chain hotels it's hit or miss at best. For independent hotels though I think it could be a really compelling booking option particularly

some of those that pay out quite a bit. I also think it's interesting for people who I know they aren't necessarily our audience but people who aren't interested in credit cards people who don't want to collect a wallet full of credit cards or want to keep a very simple strategy. This could be a way to earn lots of transferable points with I mean there's no annual fee of course to use Roe you're just using them to book your hotels and flights and and using the shopping portal so you could essentially be earning a whole bunch of transferable points without even needing a credit card if you didn't want one. I would still recommend

one for all the travel protections and things, but I think it opens up the idea of transferable points to a lot more people. The thing that looked most interesting to me is that they have an award search where you can look side by side with opportunities to use your Roe of Miles for paid bookings or transfer bookings where you would transfer and book awards and I had high hopes that that was going to display both side by side really well and short story is that I found it just didn't do a good job of that so I wasn't particularly happy with the award search tool I would still recommend using another supplemental award search tool

so that you're not missing awards that you could be booking with Rove miles transfer partners but other than that I think it's pretty interesting yeah yeah and we should mention I think you could you could use Rove miles from anywhere in the world so you know unlike most transferable point or many transferable points opportunities this one's not limited to US residents so So that's really good. There's no fee to use it. So it can't hurt to sign up and poke around.

If you sign up through someone's referral link, you get 500 miles from the get-go to play around with, although that's 500 fewer than is needed to do any transfers. So a little limiting, but at least it gets you started. And you could check out our post on this by going to frequentmiler.com forward slash rove miles, and you'll find a link in there for our referral link. And we'll, we don't earn anything at first, but if you, I can't remember the rules, but if you, you know, buy, I guess if you earn

a certain number of points through their portal or something, uh, or through paid travel, maybe I don't, I don't even remember. Um, then we'll get, I don't know, 250 miles, maybe something like that. I don't know what the deal is. Yeah, not it's not going to make us rich, but, um, we'd appreciate it anyway. There you go. All right, next up is the Mesa Homeowners card. What's going on there?

Yeah, so this is really intriguing card where you can earn miles based on how much mortgage you pay. So if you're a homeowner that pays mortgage, you don't use this card to pay your mortgage. You just show them how much you're paying in mortgage and you can earn that many points each month just for having proven that you, let's say you spend $2,000 month on your mortgage, you'll get 2,000 Mesa points per month if you have this card. But in order to earn those 2,000 points per month, you have to use the

card to spend at least $1000 to unlock that thing. So the card has no annual fee. And you, as I said, you can earn one point per dollar of your mortgage up to a limit of 100,000 points per year, as long as you spend $1,000 or more on the credit card each month, one intriguing opportunity is you should be able to double dip once BILT offers the ability, which is coming soon apparently, the ability to pay your mortgage with the BILT card

or through the BILT Rewards Program. You should be able to double dip and earn points in both programs and built is also a transferable points program. So you can earn multiple transferable points for your mortgage, which is really cool. Now the card is kind of interesting on its own, even aside from mortgage, it has some 3X earning categories that are really unusual. So you've got three points per dollar on home decor, home improvement, general contractors, cable and streaming services, home insurance, property taxes.

I mean, that jumps out to me right there because I pay a lot in property taxes, maintenance, telecom, utilities, and daycare. So a lot of people pay a lot in daycare. That could be huge. The telecom utilities stuff, I mean, I could see if your utilities let you just auto pay, I could see you satisfying the $1,, the, the thousand dollar monthly charge just by putting a bunch of regular bills. I don't know if you have a thousand dollars worth, but, um, on this card and getting three X in the process, you also get two X for groceries, gas, and EV

charging, and then one X everywhere else. Then it also has some coupons, right? Yeah, I'm not terribly familiar with the coupons. I know they exist. There's like $120 Lowe's credit, you get $30 a quarter for purchases at Lowe's. And remember, home improvement is one of the three X categories home improvement stores. So it's already a bonus category store. So I don't know very many homeowners who wouldn't be able to spend $30 a quarter at Lowe's on something and then $65 towards big box membership I don't know very many homeowners who wouldn't be able to spend $30 a quarter at Lowe's on

something. And then $65 towards big box membership warehouse clubs. So I would assume Costco, Sam's Club, BJ's Wholesale, if you're in one of their areas, would qualify for that. Yeah. It's basically unlocking free membership to one of these warehouse clubs, which is pretty remarkable for those free free cards. So yeah, considering there's no annual fee on the card, like that's you have to remember that I think on top of it. So that it's $30 a quarter essentially

in free Lowe's money and a free warehouse club membership. That's pretty good. Right. So yeah. And then as if all that wasn't enough, it has transfer partners. The points you're earning are transferable. I'm not going to list all of them, but they have one of the best ones they have is Air Canada Aero plan. So that's one that Rov does not have. But, you know, Air Canada has some great uses. So they have absolutely huge, probably the number one number of partners, airline partners that you could use Air Canada miles to book.

So it's not just booking Air Canada itself. It's not just booking Air Canada and United. It's like all star Alliance partners, plus probably 20 or more more I don't know how many unique partnerships that Air Canada has with lots of different airlines and you can also get a stopover on a one-way award for only 5,000 additional miles. Yeah that's a great program to have access to and one that like we said before you can supplement your other existing miles with miles you're earning on this card for another one that's interesting and is unique to mesa is sass euro bonus we talked a lot about sass euro bonus last year because we did the sass euro bonus

million mile challenge so greg and i and steven each have a million sass euro bonus miles or at least we did i guess each of us maybe may have used some of them. But anyway, ROV does not have access to this. AMEX doesn't. I mean there's no other transferable points program that has access to SAS Euro bonus and SAS Euro bonus has some decent business class award availability to and from Europe for 50,000 miles per seat. And in fact, I've seen a decent amount of availability for even four passengers. Don't get me wrong, it's not every day. But it's possible to fly even with four passengers

in business class to Europe sometimes for 50,000 points. And certainly if you're one or two, then it's more widespread. So that's an interesting one because you wouldn't otherwise be able to transfer other transferable points to it. They share some with Roves, so like Vietnam Airways, That's an interesting one because we wouldn't otherwise be able to transfer other transferable points to it. They share some with Roves, so like Vietnam Airways, Lotus Miles, Air India, and then of course Avio's programs.

There are some that they do share with Roves. So I think actually this would make a pretty interesting no annual fee combination having the Mesa Homeowner's Card and Rove Miles, no annual fee, but the opportunity to earn a lot of transferable points each year. That's kind of an interesting combo. It really is. It's super interesting. It's also interesting that they share the same weird like programs that we wouldn't

we don't necessarily have access to from other programs. And so there must be some avenue for them that is in common to get good deals with these. The one to me glaring thing that's missing here is you don't have Air France, K-Lim, Flying Blue. Neither of these programs also have Virgin Atlantic at this time. So those are two, I think, pretty big misses. But other than that, you know, it's, it's not at all a bad collection in my mind. No, no, certainly, certainly not for the price. So, and for folks out there paying a lot in daycare or going through like a home remodel,

the Mesa card is pretty much a no brainer at three acts on stuff like that. There aren't very many cards that bonus things like daycare and general contractors and home improvement. So I could certainly see somebody going through a lot of expenses there or property taxes. You know, those those can be high in some places as I probably don't need to tell the people who are paying high property taxes. So 3X that's pretty nice. So yeah, I think that's an interesting combo. All right, so we talked about Rove Miles, we talked about Mesa.

What's up with this Rakuten American Express card? Yeah, so this isn't a new transferable points program the way the other two are. It's just a new way of earning transferable points because Rakuten has come out with a credit card. And for those who have used the Rakuten portal, you probably know that with Rakuten, you have the option of earning cashback

or Amex membership rewards, and you can earn Amex membership rewards with Rakuten. If you have an Amex card that earns membership rewards, you sort of connect that to your Rakuten account, and then all of the rewards you earn through the Rakuten portal become membership rewards points, which is great. Now with this credit card, it's the same thing. If you've set up your Rakuten account to earn membership rewards and you get this Rakuten credit card, then all the rewards you earn from the credit card now become

membership rewards. So it's it's sort of indirectly a membership rewards earning card that is not available directly through American Express. Now all that being said, I don't find this card very interesting. Unfortunately, like, you know, the idea of a new way to earn transferable points, great. But then you look at the details, I mean, yeah, it has no annual fee, that's good.

Earning rate is as follows. You get an extra, you get five points per dollar on racket and dining in addition to the points you normally get for racket and dining. So racket and dining is like where you've enrolled your card with their dining program. And if you happen to dine at one of the restaurants that are in that program, you, you know, normally you earn five points per dollar doing that.

If you pay with this card, you'll get the normal five points plus five points on this card, so a total of 10 points per dollar, similar thing with shopping through the portal, if you shop through the racket and portal, you get four points per dollar on your reckoning card, in addition to whatever the payout. Normally was. So for example, if, if Macy's is 10 X through the rack and a portal and you pay with your reckoning card, you'll get a total of 14 points per dollar.

That might sound I think better than it is because let's say you have a credit card that normally earns two points per dollar everywhere. Well, if you shop through rack it in for 10 X to Macy's, then you're getting a total of 12X with your 2X Everywhere card, 10X from the portal and 2X for your card. So this is just saying you're getting 4X

on those purchases from your card and plus a normal. The card also has a bonus category for regular spend, not through Rakuten at all, 2X for groceries and restaurants, and then one X everywhere else. Yeah. So, you know, I think you're underselling this a little bit, only a little bit, but I think you're underselling it a little bit. And, and here's why a reader pointed this out. And I know what your counterargument's going to be, but I think that you don't make a terrible point.

Look at the freedom cards or any of the, the, the freedom flex. Any of the cards with a rotating 5x category once per year or each quarter rather you can earn 5x on up to $1,500 spend in a rotating quarterly category and you have to track that and whatever else. If you found that interesting, like doing that interesting, this is even easier. It's about the same cap in fact it, it's a little bit more at $7000 a year versus $6000 a year on the 1500 cap per quarter. And it's not capped to a specific quarter. So you can do that spend whenever and essentially get the extra an extra 4X and spend in a much wider range of places. You don't have to track some sort of rotating category. Now, obviously the argument could still be made that well, you know, even with the freedom card, you're the 5X you're earning in that quarterly category bonus might not really be five points per dollar or four points more than what you

could earn with some other cards. So that bonus category bonus isn't always great either, but I think for people who spend at least $7000 a year through Rakuten, I mean, I don't why wouldn't you? I know I shouldn't say why wouldn't you? I wouldn't necessarily tie up a 524 slot for this card, but I think that it's as good a fit as a Freedom Card. No, I don't know. I see those as pretty different personally.

And and by the way, I forgot to mention that $7,000 cap when I was giving the overview that that cap that Nick's talking about is an annual cap on the Forex you get for racket and purchases. After that, you just get the normal 1X. And the reason that's important to understand is you might look at that Forex and say, oh wow, giftcards.com is normally, you know, 1x or half x or whatever for buying Visa gift cards. And so I could, you know,

buy them all day long and be getting at least four points per dollar, you know, at least 4.5 points per dollar. But you can't because of that $7,000 spend cap. It's not $7,000 in earnings, it's $7,000 spent. So that would be very limiting. But Nick's point and the reader's point is that that $7,000 cap is more than the Freedom card, Freedom Flex cards, quarterly 5X category. So yeah, I mean, I guess it's true. Like I don't do the, honestly, we have a freedom card and I rarely ever bother with the quarterly thing just because I don't remember it

I got to activate it I got to figure out which ones it is and figure out how to max it out and I just don't Dedicate the mental bandwidth to it. Whereas this is something that I could see myself being like, you know what? We need to buy it X Y or Z and the store only offers one X everywhere. Hey, take the Rakuten card and buy that. Now I'm not going to get your card probably. So I don't mean to say that everybody should rush out and get this. I can see the place for it.

It's not wildly exciting. Yeah, yeah. No, but I think this reader has a good point that if you're someone who would go out of your way to do a Freedom card, then this is potentially an easier play to get even more points potentially. Well, I shouldn't say even more points because it's anyway. Yeah, it's murky. I guess it gets particularly murky because the Blue Business Plus offers two points per dollar and there's not a Chase card that offers two points per dollar. So it's like it's not a direct comparison anyway because Greg's right. You're really only earning an additional two points per dollar over what you

could earn at a base level with the right Amex card. So it's not a huge win and seven thousand dollars spent. That's an extra fourteen thousand points per year. So it's better than nothing but it's not wildly exciting. You do still have to kind of track and pay attention to max it out. So it's better than nothing, but it's not wildly exciting. You do still have to kind of track and pay attention to max it out. So anyway, but you know, you get the same transfer partners as AMEX as long as you have an AMEX card that transfers to AMA or to partners, right? I mean, you need to have something else in order to answer in order to earn membership rewards points to react and you got to have an AMEX

account already, right? Yeah, you have to have an Amex account already. Right. Yeah. You have to have an Amex account that earns membership rewards in order to do that, and then, then you should have the ability to transfer as well. And, um, then you could, you know, take advantage of Amex has a number of the trance, same transfer partners as these other programs we talked about. Um, like you could transfer to, uh, obvious, various obvious programs. You could transfer to air, Canada, Aero plan, like the could transfer to Avios, various Avios programs, you could transfer to Air Canada Aero plan, like the Mesa card does. But it has some that you are pretty are unique across

those three programs like Avianca Life Miles, you could do with Amex that you can't do with those other two. Then there's, you know, Virgin Atlantic's another one that's like that. Then there's one that's unique across like all programs, ANA. I think Amex is the only one that I know of that you could transfer one-to-one to ANA. I don't necessarily recommend doing it, but ANA does still have some really nice sweet spots, but then you have to put up with a lot of weirdnesses in that program. Sure do. All right, so that wraps up the three new things that we're kind of interested in any way, even if not wildly excited about

the third one. But there you go. There you have it. Let's move on to this week's question of the week. This week's question of the week comes in from an anonymous reader who says been trying to use my annual companion fare in conjunction with Alaska wallet funds for days and the options no longer there. Spoke with customer service a few times. Rep said it's a new policy that's here to stay. You can only use an Alaska credit card to book companion fare flights, no gift cards, wallet funds, etc. Multiple reps had to research before giving the

answer. This is problematic because you can cancel a flight and get the money put in your Alaska wallet and the companion fare reissued to your account, which was my case, but you can no longer then use the two together to book a new flight. So if you had booked something and you had to cancel it for some reason, you get a credit and you get the companion fare back, but then you can't use that same money to rebook essentially your your new flight

option. Alright, so what's the word here? So can I dial a friend on this one? You can't. I'd like to call. I'd like to call Tim. OK, what is Tim? What is what is our buddy and and and fellow author on the blog say about this question? How can how can we solve it? Alaska expert Tim Stanky responding to this one says. I ran into the same issue recently. All you have to do is make sure that there's at least some cash component that's paid with an Alaska card. It doesn't matter how much.

I just booked a cheap throwaway flight in the future in order to get my wallet balance below the total cost of the ticket I wanted to buy and then cancel that flight and had to read deposit in my wallet after I booked my companion ticket. It's a pain for sure, but not impossible. So to interpret what Tim did, let's say he had $500 in Alaska wallet money, and the flight he wanted to book now was $400.

Well, you can't use the Alaska wallet money to pay that because no amount then would be covered by a credit card. So instead, what Tim did is he found some flight in the future that cost $110, let let's say and used $110 of his wallet funds to bring his total wallet funds down to $390. Then he booked the flight he wanted using his Alaska companion fare by putting $390 or using $390 of wallet funds and putting the other $10 let's say on his Alaska credit card. And that worked. And then just go back

and cancel the cheap, the $110 throw away flight in the future and get that $110 back in your Alaska wallet. So it's a little bit of a workaround, but it can still be done. Yeah, yeah, that's a great, great trick that Tim uncovered. So it sounds like such a pain, but it reminds me of dealing with, um, Marriott free night certificates. If you have a, if you have a combination of 85 K and 35 K certificates, and you're trying to book a, um, you know, nights that are 35 K or you're bookable with 35 K

certificates, it's going to automatically try to use your 85 K. So you have to first book a throwaway reservation using your 85 K certificate to get it out of the flow. You know, it's the same kind of deal. Such a pain. It is such a pain, but that's a common style of work around. And that's where a lot of times it's valuable to learn things that, you know, even if this no longer worked,

it's valuable to learn those things that worked in the past because that's a style of work around that,'s where a lot of times it's valuable to learn things that you know even if this no longer worked it's valuable to learn those things that worked in the past because that's a style of work around that as Greg points out works in other scenarios also so it's a good way to think about it when you run into this type of roadblock in the future. Alright that my friends brings us to the end of today's episode if you've enjoyed this and you like to get more of this stuff in your email inbox each day or each week you want to go to frequentmiler.com slash subscribe to join our email list. Follow us on all the various social media.

Join our frequentmiler insiders Facebook group where you can ask and answer questions like this one all the time. And wherever you're watching or listening, don't forget to like this and give us a thumbs up if you have a comment that you'd like to be considered for a future giant mailbag or a question that you'd like to be considered for a future question of the week. You can send those to send it to mailbag at frequentm that you'd like to be considered for a future question of the week, you can send those to send it to mailbag at frequentmiler.com. Bye

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