Frequent Miler on the Air - AA Elite Status Without Flying. Let The Game Begin! | Ep132 | 1-8-22

Episode Date: January 8, 2022

American Airlines elite status will be easier than ever to achieve if you play the game right. Greg and Nick discuss why they care and how they plan to earn high-level AA elite status in their pajamas and without setting foot on an American Airlines plane. 1:08 Giant Mailbag / What crazy thing...did IHG do this week? 5:08 Mattress Running the Numbers: Should you sign up for 2,000 free Emirates miles? https://frequentmiler.com/get-2000-free-miles-when-joining-emirates-skywards-using-promo-code-flydubai/ 8:04 Main Event: American Airlines elite status without flying: let the game begin! https://frequentmiler.com/aas-loyalty-point-pursuit-game-earn-status-w-out-flying/ 1:00:16 Post Roast: Greg roasts Nick https://frequentmiler.com/frequent-milers-2021-predictions-realized-or-not/ 1:02:10 Post Roast: Greg roasts Stephen 1:04:08 Post Roast: Nick roasts Greg https://frequentmiler.com/fm-predicts-heres-what-will-happen-in-2022/ 1:08:17 Question of the Week: What do you think about the CRO Crypto.com Visa? Join our email list: https://frequentmiler.com/subscribe/ Music credit: Annie Yoder

Let's get into the giant mailbag. What crazy thing did City do this week? It's time for Mattress Running the Numbers. Ready for the main event? The main event. Frequent Miler on the Air starts now. Today's main event, American Airlines Elite Status Without Flying. Let the game begin.

It's on. It's on like Donkey Kong. It is just like Donkey Kong. That is a game from way, way back. It is. It is. We're bringing it back again. I love Donkey Kong. So yeah, so you can earn AA elite status just by playing Donkey Kong. Is that what we're going to talk about? I mean, sort of, sort of. As long as by playing Donkey Kong, you mean spending some money and trying to find ways to get it back. Yes, absolutely. It's the same thing. Sort of.

All right. Great. All right. Let's move on to the giant mailbag. All right. So this giant mail today comes from Jody via email. Jody says, my family booked two rooms for three nights at the Holiday Inn Express, Manhattan, Midtown West. We used a combination

of free night certificates and points. Upon arrival, we discovered that the hotel had been converted to a COVID shelter and we were not permitted to check in. IHG made no attempt to rebook us in an alternative IHG property. The hotel staff directed us to the adjacent Comfort Inn and indicated that a reservation had been moved there. However, upon arriving at the Comfort Inn, staff informed us they could not actually accommodate us. I then called IHG customer service and was told no hotels nearby have points nights available. You're out of luck. I'm ad-libbing in there. And Jody is with, what? Oh my goodness. And what world is that an acceptable solution? So do we know what

happened? Like it did, she ended up just having to book something else and pay for it? She used her points to book a Marriott and had a very nice day, but I mean, I, I mean, you know, when your hotels turn into a COVID shelter, sure.

There's nothing you do about that, but you could get a lot of other hotels in New York. You know, who, who booked and actually reaccommodate them in advance. And if you can't again, let them know in advance. Right, right.

Before they show up. Yeah. I mean, the moment when they show up is not exactly the right time to do that. And I mean, and let's back up here for a second. It's not like Jody was looking to check into the Holiday Inn Express side of the highway in the middle of a cornfield where there's nothing else nearby. I mean, IHG's got to have like a hundred properties in New York City just about, right? Yeah. But they weren't going to put her in the intercontinental because nope.

Right. Right. Which is what they should have done. But even still, there's got to be like a dozen Holiday Inn Expresses in Manhattan, I think. I mean, come on, you couldn't have reaccommodated. That's insane. That's insane. Yeah. It's insane. And that's why, that's why today's mailbag is, it's connecting two dots here. It's, it's fulfilling our, what crazy thing did IHG do this week? Yeah. Yeah. And wow. Wow. IHG. Come on now. Now, you know, the interesting thing is that I have written in the past about the walk policies because some properties or some chains rather have really good policies. For instance, if you're a Marriott member and you get walked, in other words, they don't have room to accommodate you when you get there.

If you have elite status, I mean, you can come out really well, right? You can get like 90,000 points plus the hotel stay covered. And plus cash in some cases. Yeah, I mean, you could do really well if they actually honor it. Plus the hotel stay covered. And plus cash in some cases. Yeah. I mean, they give you a lot. You could do really well if they actually honor it, which there's a lot of reports of struggling to get hotels to honor it. But still, they have a policy.

And I remember when I wrote that post that IHG did not have a policy for when you get walked. Oh, interesting. There was nothing written about what they have to do in that case. Now we know what happened behind the scenes. Someone asked the manager, shouldn't we let people know about this? And the manager's like, no, we don't have to do that.

No policy for that. Why make work for ourselves? Come on. Wow. All right. So, I mean, I guess moral of the story here is call the hotel make sure they got a room for you i guess before you arrive like i don't guess you do that every time i don't ever either but i'm not gonna do that i mean it's not it's not thank goodness she had points you know i guess that's the moral of the story really right like when you have enough points and enough

programs you might be annoyed and angry and inconvenienced but you'll also know that you're not gonna like have to spend a thousand dollars in a room probably in the vast majority of cases, because you'll probably have the points to book something. As long as you make sure to get stranded in a place like New York city, that's full of points hotels everywhere. Right. Right. Right. If you're in that cornfield, good luck to you because IHG doesn't care. All right. So that was the crazy thing. So let's talk about Mattress running the numbers a little bit here.

So this week, Emirates is out with a promotion where you can get free miles for signing up for an Emirates Skywards account, right? Was it the 2,000 miles when you signed up? 2,000 miles. Promo code flydubai. That's right. That's right. So the question here is, is it worth doing?

Should you sign up? If you haven't signed up for Emirates before, the Emirates Skywards account, I mean, you can't do it with your existing account if you already have one. Should you do it? I mean, yeah, I guess. Why not? But at the same time, like 2000 miles is, it's not gonna get you very far, you know? So I mean, don't get me wrong. I I'm happy to save 2000 miles. So I, when I saw this, I thought to myself, does my wife have an insurance account? I'm not sure I should sign her up, but then I haven't signed her up yet. So, right. So I don't know. Yeah. So, so here's why I ha same exact thing with me. Um, and here's why. Same exact thing with me. And here's why I haven't signed up my wife yet, is that those 2,000 miles are only good for 12 months from issue.

And I'm 99.9999% sure that she is not going to use those 2,000 miles before they would expire. So even though it's virtually no work at all, um, you know, there's, there's at least, there's probably a better chance of if it ever comes a day where, where she could use those miles, there's a better chance of there being a similar promotion running then that she could sign up for and get those, those miles then getting them now and letting them just expire. So that's my thinking, but I'll tell you what, if I was going to sign her up and I'm not saying, you know, that I've decided definitely not to, but I'd wait until March 31st, that's the last day of the promotion. And that way,

uh, the miles will be good for 12 months from then or from whenever the miles are issued after you sign up, which that makes sense. And to be clear, Greg said there's a better chance of a similar promotion running next time. I think he's being comparative here. It's a better chance of that than there is that she's going to use the miles within 12 months of today. Exactly. Not necessarily a good chance that you'll see the promo again because they don't regularly do this, but it's better than 0.00001% chance. That's exactly my point. Thank you for clarifying that.

So I'd say there's maybe like a 0.001% chance of the Emirates promo being there when we need it and less than that chance of my wife actually using the miles if she takes them now. There you go. So if you're going to book something, go ahead and do it. If you're not sure you're going to book something, hold off and then probably just don't bother unless you're... Yeah, or if you think there's someone confident. If you think you have a chance of using it, then why not sign up on March 3rd first?

There you go. There you go. There it is. All right. So then that brings us, I think, right to the main event. Main event, American Airlines. So American Airlines has revamped their loyalty program. Now, for a couple of months now, in the beginning of 2022, they have both things going on, their old loyalty program and their new one all at once. But let's just talk about the new one because that's just complicated.

So the new one is you no longer have to worry about earning elite qualifying miles and elite qualifying dollars and elite qualifying segments and all that stuff. Flying American. And flying American Airlines in order to earn American Airlines elite status. Now, you just have to earn loyalty points. And if you earn enough loyalty points within a, usually it's a 12-month period, then you get whatever level status based on how many you earned. And then that status is good for the next, you know, well, for the rest of that elite year and all of the next elite year. So they also did, before we get into why this is exciting and fun, let me point out a couple

other things they did that are kind of interesting. Most programs define the elite year as January to December. At least that's the year, that's the time period in which you can earn elite status. And the issue with that for a lot of us is that if we're trying to get or keep elite status, we find ourselves in December worrying about, oh my gosh, I need to fly somewhere in order to get that final bit of miles in order to get to the status I want. Isn't that part of the fun of the holiday season? The extra stress of flying across the country when you're trying to remember everything else you got to do and take care of loose ends. Think about how much travel there is during the holidays and how problematic that is for the airlines, for everybody traveling.

And here the airline policies are encouraging people to fly more during that time. And so I think American made a really smart move, although it might be confusing to a lot of people, but very smart move. They moved their elite year for qualifying to March 1st to end of February. So that's'm sorry. Through yes. Through end of February of 2023. So 14 months, um, will count towards your, uh, elite status that, that kicks off. Um, oh, well that kicks off once you earn the points, but then we'll be good until, uh, March 31st of 2024, which is pretty crazy. But before we get further into that, let me back up and say, I totally agree. I thought that the announcement about people having basically mileage run in December and wanting to avoid that, I thought that all sounded great and

wonderful, except that you don't have to mileage run anything with American anymore. So I don't know if that's like not particularly relevant with their new program, but that's, that's the kind of funny thing. And, and, and actually the way we're going to talk about doing it probably is best done during the holidays when there's all kinds of deals and promos going on. So that is kind of funny that they're, they're kind of fixing a problem that no longer applies to them. But longer exists, yeah. But whatever. Fine, American. You play the game the way you want to play the game, and we'll play it the way we want. Yeah.

They probably have illusions that some people are still going to be mileage running. Right. I'm sure that they do think that some people will fly American Airlines. We just probably won't be those people. That's right. That's right. That's right. So, and that's, that's what makes this, this fun is that now we can earn these loyalty points from all kinds of crazy things like shopping through the advantage e-shopping portal, shopping with an offer that's, that's linked to your mastercard

on there on the simply miles, the portal-ish thing. Those two things can combine. You could get miles from both of them, and you get loyalty points from both when you have the same merchant on both of them. You could get it from car rentals or almost all those miscellaneous things, ordering FTD flowers, all those miscellaneous things where you can earn American Airlines miles, almost all of those, you can earn loyalty points.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the vast majority of things, basically almost anything you would think about. The only things that you aren't going to earn loyalty points for are Basque Bank. If you have a Basque Bank account, you're not going to earn loyalty points for the miles you earn there. And you're not going to earn loyalty points for credit card signup bonuses. So money that you spend on the credit card, every dollar you spend on the credit card

will be a loyalty point, but you won't earn loyalty points for the signup bonuses or any category bonuses. You just earn one loyalty point per dollar spent. But still, I mean, like all of those different avenues, I mean, it gives you tons of different ways to earn points. I mean, there's a couple of other small I mean, it gives you tons of different ways to earn points. I mean, there's a couple of other small exceptions here and there, but those are the big things for people I think that you need to think about. So suddenly that creates ways to stack things and earn a bunch of loyalty points and earn

elite status without even ever stepping on an airplane. And they're not the first airline to do that because Delta, Greg has obviously written a lot about how you can manufacture Delta top tier status with credit cards, though it requires quite a lot of spend. If you want top tier status, you'll have to spend a quarter of a million dollars a year. If that's a little too rich for your blood, then you could go with JetBlue elite status, $50,000 credit card spend or Spirit Airlines elite status with $50,000 credit card spend. But I think that one of us is likely to end up with very high American Airlines elite status for a lot less than that amount of spend. Am I right?

Oh, definitely. Oh, definitely. Definitely. Because what's different here than all the ones you mentioned, except for one that I'm going to go into, is that this is not just credit card spend. In fact, I don't see myself doing any of it with credit card spend, most likely. I see it mostly through the portals, through the things I mentioned before. The one thing I was trying to rack my brain about, who else has really done something like this before? And it's Southwest with the Companion Pass. It's been possible for years to earn the Companion Pass by doing similar types of things. Now, unfortunately, over time,

they started putting more and more restrictions about what counts towards the Companion Pass. But on the flip side, they do count credit card bonuses. And as a result, we don't get as excited about playing that Southwest game because it's so easy with a couple of credit card signups to earn a companion pass or credit card referrals, referring friends, that it would seem extreme to try to earn it through shopping portals and stuff. Right. I mean, and back in the day, I did earn one through shopping portals. When I was reselling stuff and double dipping and triple dipping and when different things work that

don't work anymore necessarily, I earned a companion pass in a couple of days through the shopping portal, just something else that I earned through the shopping portal. So that did come to mind right away when I saw this with American Airlines, because I was like, oh, wow, this is very much like the Companion Pass, ways to game that. It's just, like you said, there's so many easier ways to do the Companion Pass that you wouldn't put the time and effort in. And the other thing is the Southwest Companion Pass, while I have loved it and found it very valuable for me and my family, A, isn't valuable for everybody in the same way that it has been for us. And B, doesn't give you any benefits apart from adding the companion. I mean,

that's a big benefit, don't get me wrong, but you're not going to get priority check-in or an earlier boarding position or any sort of benefit. Whereas with American elite status, you could end up getting upgraded on regional flights or even on long haul flights, depending on I say long haul and transcon flights, perhaps. I have to look back over the elite benefits here, but you could end up sitting up up front in some instances. You could end up in lounges. You could end up with priority check-in, et cetera, extra baggage. So we'll talk about some of that stuff and whether it's worth it, because I think that those things make this game at least kind of fun. I totally agree. And you know what, because we talked about the Southwest thing, I'm just going to bring up

two deals in the past. They no longer work, but I think it'll give an idea of why I see this as a fun game because finding these opportunities as part of it. And then actually doing them, it's fun. And especially to on the Southwest Rapid Rewards portal for 15 points per dollar. And back then, you could go through the portal, buy a Sears gift card, get 15 points per dollar, and then go through the portal again and use that gift card to buy stuff to get 15 points per dollar. So you're getting 30 points per dollar on top of whatever you're getting from your credit card, which just by chance, there were some credit cards offering 5X during that time for Sears purchases. So you're getting a total of 35 points per dollar, but 30 Southwest points per dollar. And so a lot of people did what I did, what you probably did at the time was I bought a bunch of tablet computers

and resold them. And, and, you know, I think I lost a little bit cash wise, but I earned so many points in the companion pass. Well, yeah, I mean, Sears is absolutely it. I bought other stuff. I bought like those industrial bun coffee makers and I bought like a phone systems had headsets for corporate phone systems and stuff and resold them. I found different weird odd items on Cirrus to resell that I could get at least close to the face value out of because you left out the third part of that stack was that you also earned shop your way points. And sometimes there were opportunities to earn lots where you were earning like half or even sometimes a% back and shop your waypoints.

And then you can go through the portal again and use your shop your waypoints again. So yeah, I mean. That is absolutely why my garage got filled up with terrible, terrible Bluetooth speakers. Oh yeah, because well, with the Bluetooth speakers, it'd be something like you'd get a hundred, like you'd pay 50 bucks, let's say for a Bluetooth. It was even less usually, but 50 bucks for a Bluetooth speaker, it'd be something like you'd pay $50, let's say, for a Bluetooth.

It was even less usually, but $50 for a Bluetooth speaker, you get $50 back in points. And then you could use the $50 back in points to buy another Bluetooth speaker and get another $50 back in points. And you're getting portal rewards each time. Right, right. It was nuts. It was nuts. And so I don't know as though we'll see that with this exactly. No, no, no.

Maybe not that. But I want to mention another one that was fun that didn't require reselling. And again, I don't expect this one to work, but there are going to be things like this. So there was a deal where we could buy things from 1-800-Flowers really, really cheaply, meaning we were getting like a big rebate on it and getting lots of points. Again, it was Southwest points at the time. And they have some like food items, like boxes of pears or whatever, or nuts and things like that. And so I set up with like a local food bank charity. Hey, where should people have these things delivered to? Because the deal was so good that it was worth doing just for the points you get back. And hey, all this food might as well do some good. And so a whole bunch of people earned their companion pass by just sending food to a food bank, which was fantastic. I love it when we can do good and do something good for ourselves and have fun along the way. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and so we don't know which of those things are going to happen

here, but that's, that's the fun, right? The thrill of the hunt is finding that, figuring out what's that thing going to be. And so that's why I'm not even super interested in American Airlines elite status. When this first came out, I was like, eh, without the choice benefits, and we'll get into that in a second, I think, but without the choice benefits, what does it really mean? Is it really worth it to me? But then, you know, Greg was right when he said, but this is the fun. This is the way you should play the game for. And, and you also, I mean, there's some other side things you get benefits of other airlines and potentially the ability to match and just the fun of walking around being like, yeah, that's right. I'm American Airlines platinum pro, and I haven't

flown American in a couple of years. You know, that's just kind of fun if you like this stuff, right? And we happen to like this stuff. Right, right. You know, it's definitely not for everybody to do this, but, you know, and it doesn't actually have to be hard either. Because think about at the end of last year, Simply Miles had this thing where you could donate to the Conservation International. Am I remembering the name right? That was right. And get 40 points per dollar. So even without all these bonus miles you got back then, if they bring back that 40 miles per dollar type of thing, then a $5,000 donation will get you 200,000 loyalty points in addition to 200,000 miles.

And so you'll have top tier executive platinum status with a single donation and you'd be done if that's your goal. Right. Right. And I have got some other reasons why I think it's become more interesting to me, but we'll talk about that in a second. So let's talk about like, what is it you have to achieve? What are the levels? What are the benefits? Is it worth it? And then, you know, what are some ideas about how, you know, we talked about some things

that don't work anymore through other portals, but what are some things that, you know, we've stumbled on or thought about so far? So we should probably start with, okay, what are the levels, right? Right, right, right. So American Airlines calls their lowest level status gold. Everyone else calls it silver, but Americans are so proud of theirs, I guess they called it gold. It works because I always associate it with being something better than silver. And then I see it not exist on status match charts. And I'm like, why is there no American Airlines? It's gold. It's not gold.

I mean, they got me every time. Right. Haven't we learned that gold is more valuable than silver? But that's what they're going for. Smart marketing. Okay. So gold is silver. 30,000 loyalty points for that first level of status. I guess let me march down what the levels are, how much it costs, then we'll go back and review what each level gives you. So gold, 30,000. Platinum, 75,000.

Platinum is every other airline's gold, by the way. Platinum Pro, 125,000. That's roughly equivalent to like Delta's platinum. And then there's executive platinum at 200,000. Okay. So the levels are 30,000, 75,000, 125,000, and 200,000. That's how many loyalty points you need to earn in a 14 month period right now. Usually it'll be a 12 month period in order to get status. Okay. Okay. And I'm with it so far. All right. So at the gold level, uh, you get, you, you get one world Ruby status, which I actually have no idea what that gets you, if anything, but there you go. So that's only matters when flying with a different one world carrier than

American. Um, you get free upgrades on very short flights. These are the 500 mile or less flights, which are really short. You get a 40% mileage bonus, meaning like the miles you would earn on a flight, you get 40% more. And you do get complimentary main cabin extra seats at check-in, assuming they're available, and free preferred seats. So I think that means you can select the exit row, for example. Perhaps, or closer to the front of the plane. A lot of times the preferred seats are just closer so you don't have to wait as long to get off the plane. Right. Yep. Yep.

So question here- And one free check bag is the last thing I have on the list. Now, this isn't a complete list, but it's a list of things that we highlight as sort of the key benefits. Now, the 40% bonus, like when you fly American,

you get a 40% bonus. Will you get 40% more loyalty points? I think so. Just redeemable, yes. No, you do. You do. Okay. Yeah.

All right. So that's, I mean, that's all not bad. It's like basically credit card status, right? American gold is No, you do. You do. Okay. Yeah. All right. So that's, I mean, that's all not bad. It's like basically credit card status, right? American gold is like, you know, a credit card is your like gold light. Pretty much. You know, free check bag, better boarding position ish or something. And I didn't even mention that, but yep.

No, exactly. I think that's a really good comparison. Um, with the one exception of the free upgrades on those free upgrades, that's, and you know think that's a really good comparison. With the one exception of the free upgrades on those short flights. And that could be great. I don't know. I live in a place where there are a number of short flights on American that are under 500 miles. And the number of those flights that have anything to upgrade to is like zero, I think. I mean, I don't think I've been on one of those with two cabins. So the less than 500 mile upgrades.

I'm like, if you live in Chicago, okay. You probably have some decently sized planes, but if you live near a small airport, like I do, then it's not the biggest benefit. Yeah. Yeah. Now, you know, the, the flight from Detroit to Chicago certainly has a first class. So I wouldn't mind the occasional upgrade there. I want to,

that'd be nice. That'd be nice. Okay. So then the next level up is a bit of a bump because it's 75,000 for advantage platinum, right? So it's like, I mean,

more than twice, more than double. Yeah. Yeah. So two and a half times as much, but, but what do you get? So with platinum,

you get one world Sapphire, which that's suddenly meaningful because what that means, if you're flying one world carrier and you're not flying business class, you could still get into the business class lounge. So that could be pretty good. If you're flying economy on cafe or British airways or, you know, whatever, um, you, uh, you get the same free upgrades on short flights. Um, but it's a little better.

You have a 48-hour upgrade window, which I guess is more than the gold upgrade window, which I don't know offhand what that is. And you get a 60% mileage bonus, so you get more miles and loyalty points. You same complimentary main cabin extra and preferred seats and you get two free check bags instead of just one is the main cabin extra at booking or is it still a check-in um i think that's it oh you're right you're right i think it's a booking so that's a pretty big big advantage right there but aside from that i mean it seems like pretty soft, soft extra benefits over gold to me. Oh, I don't know.

The lounge access, Greg, is a soft. I mean, I don't usually fly economy internationally, so I'm usually using a word, you know, miles to fly in business class. So that lounge access doesn't matter much to me. But for somebody who does fly economy frequently and one world carriers, I mean, that lounge access could be very nice. Like you said, I mean, Cathay Pacific is a great example. If you're going to go to Asia and fly around on Cathay Pacific and get into their business class lounges in Hong Kong, I mean, that's a nice benefit to have. So, I mean, don't get me wrong. I'm with you in that it doesn't excite me necessarily, but I think that there's

some promise. Yeah, yeah. Although I'm hoping that those who are going to be doing this are going to have so many American Airlines miles, they're going to be booking business class. Anyway, right? Especially international trips. Hopefully, yes, yes.

That's very true, very true. And the other thing we should mention before we even get to the next level is that those upgrades on the short flights, for instance, and this will carry through to the others, are prioritized in part by your loyalty points, right? So that's a tiebreaker. So this requires 75,000 loyalty points, but if you have 85,000 and the next person, another person on the list has 82,000, you're going to get the upgrade before they do. So that kind of incentivize continuing to play the game, even

after you hit the tier. That's, that's a really good point. That's a really interesting, you know, new wrinkle to the program as well. So that that's pretty cool. Uh, or, or bad depending on where you stand on that. But cause you know, you get to like, there's part of me that's like, Oh, you want to just keep going until you get really close to the next tier, except, well, then you just want to go to the next tier. Right. So, but you don't want to stop at 75,000 necessarily, because then you're not going to get those upgrades over somebody else. So this is a smart pro American. You did well, you did well. Very smart with that. Yeah. Because people love their upgrades. And so, yeah, if they think they could earn more by earning more of these loyalty points, they're going to do it. All right. Let's

go to Platinum Pro. 125,000 loyalty points required. You get One World Emerald, which the previous one was One World Sapphire. This one's One World Emerald, which is a top tier One World status you can get. What's unique about this status is that if you're flying one world, you have access to not just business class lounges, but first class lounges as well. Now, I know a lot of people have complained, well, they're all closed. So due to COVID, most of those first class lounges are closed today, but the idea is hopefully that won't be forever. And so, so it'll have some great value because some of those lounges are magnificent and you don't get into those first class lounges when there's a business class lounge and you're

flying business class. So, you know, having one world Emerald is special in those situations. Agreed. I mean, that intrigues me. The ability to get into like a Cathay Pacific first class lounge or a Qantas first class lounge when I'm flying business class. That is appealing to me. Yes. You also get free upgrades. It's not limited to these less than 500-mile flights. You have a 72-hour upgrade window,

so you have a chance of getting upgraded before the people who are lower status than you. 80% mileage bonus, so that's a nice extra. Same complimentary main cabin extra and preferred seats, two free checked bags. Preston Pysh, Jr.: Three at Platinum Pro, right? Three checked bags? Jeff Ross, M.D.: Three at Executive Platinum, I think. So maybe Preston Pysh, Jr.: I don't know. Jeff Ross, M.D.: You could double check while I'm talking.

Preston Pysh, Jr.: I don't know. Yeah. Jeff Ross, M.D.: And you also get a chance to get a loyalty choice award, which is things like system-wide upgrade certificates. But you need to have flown American Airlines 30 segments. It could be on award flights, it could be on paid flights, but you have to have flown 30 segments in order to be able to get this choice award. So that one, it depends how you're getting obviously the status as to whether it's meaningful to you. So if you get entirely through the shenanigans where you're talking about, then you're not flying American enough probably to get the choice award. So what are your choices for the choice award? Oh, I don't know off the top of my head. I just know that when I looked at them,

system-wide upgrades seem like the most valuable. I think they have also things like lounge access. Because keep in mind, all the things we said about lounge access do not apply to American Airlines lounges when you have American Airlines status. It's this weird thing that if you have status with British Airways, you know, one of their partners, then you could get into American Airlines lounge for free, but not if you have American Airlines own status there, you have to either buy the, the, um, uh, access or, or get the, the city executive card, which would advantage executive card, which would get you in or use a loyalty choice award. Yeah. Yeah. So that's, I think where things start to get interesting, the 30 segments

for the choice benefit is a bit of a bummer, but I'm going to talk about that in a few minutes when we talk about what we're going to go for and why. So that's a pretty attractive status. And then it's a big bump from there if you want to get all the way to the top tier executive platinum, because now we're going from 125 for Platinum Pro to 200,000 loyalty points for executive platinum. I mean, that's a hop. Right. That's a big, big hop. I mean, so you're almost doubling it in a way and, you know, boy, you have to really want the extra benefits there because you're going you're almost doubling it in a way. And, and, you know, boy, you have to really want those, the extra benefits there. Cause you're going to get the same one world Emerald. You're going to get the, you know, the same ability to upgrade for free on, on

flights bigger than 500 miles, but but your priority be higher. And the upgrade window is longer. So 100 hour upgrade window. You get free upgrades on Alaska Airlines. So that could be very attractive. 120% mileage bonus. I mean, that's a big hop right there. So, you know, if you actually fly American a fair amount, then it's going to be easier to re-earn this status because your flight, well, your paid flights are going to be earning this 120% mileage bonus. So you're going to be getting a lot of loyalty points and miles from the actual flights. You get, let's see, three free check bags and two loyalty choice awards. And again, you have to complete the 30 or more AA segments. There you go. I mean, so, you know, and I want to hop in with something because I'm double checking because I had this open, the benefits

open, and I was just double checking to make sure that the new program stuff has the same information. But on the benefits, and I don't see a list of benefits on the page with the new program stuff has the same information. But on the benefits, and I don't see a list of benefits on the page with the new program information, but on the page that lists American Airlines Elite Benefits, something I want to point out is, A, what I said before is what it says, three free check bags of Platinum Pro

and three free check bags Executive Platinum, both the same. Also, complimentary upgrades on American and Alaska are a benefit of both Platinum Pro and Executive had that wrong am i okay well that's great so even less reason to go for executive platinum why why would why would you go for executive platinum then just higher higher upgrades than the extra elite choice award if you're going to fly 30 segments on American. I mean, is it worth it? I mean, it depends. If we find the perpetual points machine that turns out these

loyalty points like nothing, then it'd be worth it if you're going to fly 30 segments on American and get a system-wide upgrade. I mean, it'd probably be worth the extra 75,000 loyalty points. Because remember, these loyalty points, you're earning them basically at the same rate that you're earning redeemable miles. So you're also getting 75,000 redeemable miles in that gap there and that difference. Right. You're getting something that has value to it. And so it's not like you're just wasting it just for the loyalty. So yeah, I mean, at least in the previous program, you would get two loyalty choice awards at Executive Platinum and one at Platinum Pro. I don't know, and I don't think their new page spelled out

how many you get at each level. Okay. Because they also have more levels beyond 200K for getting more choice awards. And I don't know whether you'll get an additional two at each of those levels, or if they'll even expand it from there. We'll wait and see soon, hopefully. There you go. So yeah, because you do have all of those different level one, level two,

level all the way up to five levels of that. And for the loyalty choice benefits, it lists Admirals Club day passes, more bonus miles, system-wide upgrades, and more rewards to come. So we don't know for sure yet what the more rewards to come are going to be, but hopefully we'll see some good benefits there. So, all right. So all of that said now, which status level are you going to go for and why? And why are you doing it? So I don't fly American Airlines enough to really need or value American Airlines elite status. Years ago, I flew American. It was actually US Air as they were starting to merge. I flew it enough to earn top tier executive platinum status.

And then the next year, I used system-wide upgrades to upgrade a flight to China on a mistake fare. And so I was able to earn executive platinum status with that and a couple other flights again the next year. So I've had a few years of executive platinum and I found it not worth it for me. Underwhelming. So now part of this, American Airlines wasn't showing its best colors during the merger, but it was really bad for me. What do you got against red, white, and blue, Greg? It was really, really bad for me. So I never did statistics to figure out exactly whether this number is right, but it seemed to me that about 70% of the flights I took on American, and I'm talking like of the segments, were either very long delayed or outright canceled.

Yeah. Yeah. It was really, really bad. Yeah. Yeah. Not had good luck with American, which, you know, we're not, I don't think we're alone. I don't think we're unique in that. Now that's not to say that there aren't plenty of instances where they're on time and other people are probably happy with them and everything else. But yeah, I mean, I've,

I've shared in your poor luck with American airlines more often than not. So, so yeah, I mean, that's, that's kind of a downside. So you're not interested in executive platinum. So, so what are you interested in and why? So I set a target of the Platinum Pro. And the idea is that, well, there's a chance that I'll use things like the One World Emerald status for getting into a first class lounge if that happens. But to be honest, the main reason is it just, I want to play this game. I think it's fun to try to find the deals, find these opportunities to earn loyalty points at dirt cheap rates. And I will talk about one that I've already done that seems to be fully paying out.

And so I find it fun. So I want to set a target that's like high enough that it seems like winning is somewhat meaningful. And so going for something like the bottom tier gold or mid tier platinum just doesn't seem good enough. So that's why I picked Platinum Pro probably unless we discover some crazy thing to get to Platinum. Yes. Same thing as you. And the reason that Platinum or the reasons that Platinum Pro appeal to me, so I don't fly American very often. However, when I have to travel to something alone, it usually doesn't matter to me all that much. So for example, pre-pandemic, we're doing FM2Go's where we would do meetups in different

cities with readers. For example, pre-pandemic, we're doing FM2Goes where we would do meetups in different cities with readers. And so whether I fly American or Delta or whatever else doesn't really matter to me when I'm all by myself. So I could see myself flying American to those types of events. In a normal world, we'd probably do three or four of those. FTU, normal world again, three or four of those, maybe a year. So probably at least six times a year where I'll be flying by myself, maybe seven or eight, where I wouldn't mind flying American. And so in a more normal

world, not probably this year, but maybe 2023, I could see myself taking six round trips on American naturally if I were so inclined to do so. And so on those six round trips, I, because I originate in a very small airport, am highly likely to have two segments in each direction. So we're talking about four segments for each one. That's 24 segments. That's getting pretty close to 30. So with just a little bit of effort, you know, six more segments, I could get myself a choice benefit. So I think that there's a decent chance in 2023, I could get a choice benefit. And what would make me more likely to choose American for those six times a year that I may be inclined to fly them? Well, being able to get upgraded on those shorter 500 mile flights, or even on the

longer flights would make that a little bit more comfortable to choose. So if I can earn platinum pro this year, then I'll have it next year. And next year I can work on the same game of earning platinum pro again and, and fly 30 segments next year and get those, uh, those choice benefits or a choice benefit at least for platinum pro next year. So, and then that could be valuable to me. So that's kind of the thought process I have. Yeah. The three free check bags also nice. Cause I travel with a family and, and so three free check bags is, I mean, we check bags. I don't know. I know a lot of people out there are able to go carry on only all the time. We are not that family. So the three free check bags is also pretty nice. Even though I have lots of cards that'll cover the airline incidentals,

might as well use that in some other way and get the check free check bags. So I can see all that. My trouble here is that I said all that as though I'm going to do it for me, which is who I would probably do it for, except that as Greg knows, and maybe some regular listeners know, my wife did the big donation to Simply Miles. So she's the one that's got more than a million American Airlines miles in her account. So it would probably make more sense to be going for status for her since most of the miles we redeem are going to be out of her account. But because if we can get to executive platinum eventually and then have free changes, if and when they ever bring back change fees, that'd be kind of nice. But probably I'm going to end up going

for this through my own account because I'm much more likely to do 30 segments on American. I saw your comment in my post about that, wondering whether to do it in your wife's account. And I don't get that because, well, so first of all, I don't see American bringing back like non-free changes like anytime soon. Like I'm not counting out like eventually, but, but probably not this year, next year, publicly said this is like a permanent change. And for one of them back out, like they would have to know the others are backing out too, because they're not going to want that negative publicity. So I don't think that's likely.

And aside from that, as long as she, if she's booking a flight for you and puts your loyalty number and you get all the same benefits as you get if it was booked out of your account. Yeah. So there you go. Makes sense to do it for me. So, all right. So we're both interested in going for Platinum Pro. So we need to earn 125,000 loyalty points. And now we have 14 months to do this, this time around. That's not going to be the case most of the time, but this time around we got 14 months. So, I mean, that's less than 10,000 loyalty points a month, right? I mean, that, that seems pretty doable. That's a good way of putting it. Yeah. Yeah. Or just over that during a normal 12 month period. Yeah. So, so let me talk about a deal that I just did the other day and then I've, I've already seen success with it so i think it's worth talking

about um spot and tango you know them right uh yeah spot and i mean i took some tango lessons that we're talking about here no the only reason i have any idea what this is is because the advantage shopping portal was showing um get 2500 points for a purchase from Spot and Dango. And this is the kind of thing we look for. Yeah, this is the kind of thing we look for because when it says a purchase, sometimes they don't require a minimum dollar amount. And then you can get super cheap miles and in this case, loyalty points for a small purchase. So I saw that. And then I went and looked at the Simply Miles site to see if Spot and Tango was on there as well, because those things stack.

You can get Miles from both for the same purchase if you play it right. I like Spot and Tango a lot already. I have no idea what they do. No idea what they are. I like them so far. And yes, they were on, they were on simply miles and there it was not as good. It wasn't 2,500 miles for any purchase. It was 930 miles for a $25 purchase. Okay. So that sounds, you know,

good, nice little stack there. We could make a $25 purchase and get both the 2,500 miles and the 930. By the way, I checked my Citibank account because Citi, for one, is the company behind most of the MasterCards that I have in my wallet or at home. But two, they have something called Citi Merchant Off offers, which is very much like Amex offers or Chase offers. And it's these offers that are tied to your credit card and you just go in and you activate them. And guess what? This spot and tango was in there too. $20 back on $25 or more. What are the that if I could spend exactly $25, I would get $20 back. So it only cost me $5 to get over 3,000 American miles in loyalty points. So great deal, right? So I went

through, click through, and I found that what Spot and Tango is, it's one of those food delivery subscription thingies. Okay. I like food. But for dogs. Oh. For dogs. I don't like dog food, so. You don't like dog food?

No, I'm not big on dog food. No. Yeah. And so that explains the Spot part. I'm not sure what the, because I guess dogs are often named spot, but I don't know. Tango, is that a common dog name? No idea. Never had a dog named Tango.

I don't know. Maybe whoever started this site had a dog named Tango. Let's assume. Sure. Sounds good to me. All right. So you go in there and you have to sign up for the service to get regular deliveries. And it asked me what kind of dogs I have how many dogs what you know and it asked me information about them like um

how many like do they meow what breed are they right nick's asking that because i don't actually have a dog right now um so at first i put in um my my niece's address and her dogs, because I thought might as well do something useful with this purchase because she does have dogs. So I put in her big dogs and I found that- Big dogs eat a lot, Craig. Big dogs eat a lot. I discovered that because at first the smallest initial order I could find was like 80 something dollars. Yeah. Now you want your niece to have a Chihuahua. Right. So I took away one of my niece's dogs and it still cost like more than $50. And I'm going for 25. That's what I'm looking for. So then I made her dog really small. So I, I went in and I said,

Oh, it's only a 10 pound dog. Okay. Now, finally I got to a, about a $23 or $24 order, but her address, uh, in New York, apparently there's no sales tax when you're delivering dog food or maybe to that state. I don't know, but there's no sales tax applied. So it wasn't a large enough purchase. So I went back and changed it to my address and with sales tax, with Michigan sales tax, it bumped it over $25. So that's how much was charged to my card. I use my city double cash card. So I get 2% back, but that's, you know, sort of neither here nor there. Cause that's such a small amount, but the cool thing is, so I made that initial order. All three of those deals have posted now as pending.

So city shows the $20 back, you know, and, and, uh, simply miles shows it's miles. And, and, uh, the, the shopping portal actually showed the 2,500 miles like that day. It took the others several days, but that's pretty awesome. That's terrific. I mean, it's terrific for everybody except your niece's poor dogs, but otherwise, yeah, I mean, that's a great deal because it costs you, again, like five bucks for 3,000 miles, right?

So, I mean, that's hello. And I have a to-do to myself to go in and cancel all future orders because, obviously, I don't actually need them. So, that's the downside. A lot of these deals require signing up for something. You've got to remember, set a reminder to yourself to cancel these things when that happens. That's certainly one helpful way to do it.

What I discovered, though, is that some of them, what I kind of like now is the ones, obviously it's super convenient if you can log in and just click a button to cancel and then, yeah. Okay. Set yourself a reminder and make sure you do it. On the flip side, if there's a way to cancel via email, super easy to schedule an email in the future in Gmail, there's a little down arrow right next to the send. And so the minute you sign up, you could schedule the cancellation email for like a week or two or three later or whatever, and not have to worry about remembering. So, uh, so, so there's ways, there's ways, there's ways to handle that. Right. Right. It's funny you said that. Cause

that's how I remind myself of things as I send myself an email and schedule it to send when, when I want to be reminded, I find that's more useful than a calendar, uh, reminder. Cause I don't always look at the calendar. I see them, but then I forget about them. Whereas an email, it's like in my face. Right there. Got to look at it. Can't look away.

Yeah. So that's, I agree with you there. So very good. I mean, nicely done. That was an excellent little stack there and a nice way to kick things off. So I'm excited to see what else we find. I think both of us are going to be looking at these things often, right? I mean, I feel like I'm already constantly checking the portal for stuff.

Yeah, definitely, definitely. I don't know if you want to talk about your idea for the prepaid card. Yeah, so first of all, let me back up and say, by the way, if you're searching for those offers that are like an amount of miles rather than, or for any purchase, for instance, like Greg just mentioned on the Simply Mile side, you can, in the search box, you can literally type in any purchase and see which offers have that wording. So like right now, I just did that. And so there's one that's like 10 miles per dollar on any purchase. But then there's a couple that are like one that's I'm looking at right now, 2,325 miles on any purchase. That's some golf thing. That's probably too expensive. There's a 500 miles on any purchase. But anyway, the point is you can sort it that way. So that's kind of nice on the Simply Miles side to be able to do that. So, and I mentioned that because we've seen a couple of those, like during the 5X promo,

there was a GoPro one that was a thousand miles with any purchase. And so I bought a $5 item that was free shipping, five bucks with taxes, 529. So not as good as Greg's 3000 miles stack, but still a thousand miles for five bucks was a okay with me and would work out decently well for our purposes with this challenge. So, all right. So yeah, one of the things that I talked about in the post was Verizon prepaid because there is an Amex offer out on some business cards. I don't know if it's still syncable if you didn't sync it already, but check your business cards out. I couldn't find it on any of mine, unfortunately. I synced it up right away when I saw it because it was $75 back on $75 at Verizon. And I almost put a message up on my social media before Christmas to ask who has Verizon service to,

you know, wish somebody a Merry Christmas by paying $75 of their bill. And I'm glad I'm not that generous of a guy because it's going to work out really well here because I expect that prepaid service will trigger that Amex offer, even though Amex says you got to go to Verizon.com slash business or something like that. Data points have indicated that any purchase from Verizon Wireless seems to work. American Airlines shopping portal right now, there is an offer for 3,700 miles for signing up for any of the various Verizon things, including prepaid service. So the cheapest prepaid plan is I think $35. I've done this before. And with tax, it came out to $39 and change. So what I think I should be able to do, and I haven't done it yet because I'm waiting to see if there's a portal increase, but I could right now go through the shopping portal link at the American Airlines eShopping portal, go to Verizon, sign up for a prepaid line, cost $39, like I said, get that prepaid line, and then go back and do the same thing again. I should be able to click through the portal and buy another prepaid line.

And because Amex offers typically work cumulatively, I expect that one will as well. So those two $39 purchases will add up to 78 ish dollars. And so that should trigger my 75 back on 75 offer. So out of pocket, I'll be, I don't know, $3 and 20 cents or so, I think. And, and I should be able to then have earned a 3,700 mile bonus twice. So 7,400 American airlines miles for about $3 and 20 cents. Uh, and I haven't done that yet. So I'm explaining it. I haven't done it yet because American has offered as much as 6,200 miles in the past for doing that. So I'm waiting to see if it increases, because that would be great. I'd love to get 12,400 miles for $3 and change if I can. So, because again,

you're getting redeemable miles and you're getting the loyalty points, you know, all in one shot. So that's, that's a really nice deal. So even if I did it now, it would be a good deal. I'm just hoping that maybe it'll get better. I did this when Wyndham had an increased offer this last spring, I went through the Wyndham portal to get Verizon prepaid service because the number of miles or the number of Wyndham points they were offering was worth way more than the $39. So I went ahead and did that, got the miles, never activated it. So I didn't, some card came in the mail and sat on my desk and I was like, I'm going to activate that one of these days so I can maybe port it to another service or something. And I just kept sitting there, kept sitting there, never did anything with it. So, so yeah,

it didn't have to activate or anything, got the points. I expect this will be really it. So, uh, so yeah, it didn't have to activate or anything. Got the points. I expect this will be really easy. So that's, that's going to probably be my first one unless something else comes along, but yeah. Yeah. And I, you know, I, I want to point out that the getting 3,500 miles for a $38 purchase is already a pretty guard turn good deal on its own. Cause that's like buying the miles for about a penny each, just tiny bit over, uh, which, which is not, which is not bad at all. So that's, uh, that's a really nice stack. Yeah. Without the MX part. Yeah. Yeah. So if you could get like anything additional, like if you have a city merchant offer or something like that, if you don't have the MX offer, um, it could very well be worth doing.

It could. It could. Like I said, if the mileage goes up above 3,500, then I'd say it's definitely worth doing. How sure are you that it will work though, the portal part? I mean, I'm pretty sure because it worked with Wyndham when I went through Wyndham and signed up for prepaid and the American Airlines portal part, it lists all of the various things that qualify for miles and the prepaid service, it says 3,700 miles with prepaid service. So it's like, it's explicit. There's no, I have no doubt there. I guess there's a chance the Amex offer might not post because it's supposed to be business services. But again, based on the

data points I've read, doesn't sound like that seems likely at all. Yeah. So I think that'll work. So yeah, I feel pretty good about it. So the key here with looking for these things is going to be to look for stuff that stacks. So you want to look at card linked stuff. So simply miles because that's MasterCard card linked offers be a good place to go because they have offered some decent things, the American airline shopping portal. Now also keep in mind that there are some master cards that have card linked offers like Greg said, the city offers, but also chase issues, a couple of master cards. There's the IHG card, there's the freedom flex card. And so, you know, take a look there and

see if your chase card has any offers linked to it, because I expect that would stack with everything else to help you save more money and pay less for your loyalty points in American Airlines miles. For sure. Yeah. I'm trying to remember, is the new airplane card also a MasterCard or am I remembering that wrong? Anyway, I was just thinking that it'd be pretty funny to use an airplane card to get American Airlines status. It would be. It sure would be. Yeah. I don't know. That sounds right. Let's see. The Chase Arrow plan card is indeed a master card. Yes, that is correct. So yeah. So yeah, do that.

Yeah, I mean, so fun stuff, fun times. So I'm looking forward to that. I think Greg's looking forward to it. We'll talk about opportunities and we'll make sure to highlight in quick deals when we see good opportunities for stacking. We're not going to hide those and keep those to ourselves. Also, I'm expecting to keep updating and reposting the post I did about this.

So I'm going to keep adding deals and specifically what works and what doesn't as we find out. So I've already gone in and I've made some changes, added some things about what works and what doesn't, and I'll just keep doing that. So if you want to play this game, thing to do is go find that post, which we should have linked in this video, and subscribe to it down in the comments. You can hit a little button to subscribe to comments and put your email in there so that you'll get emailed when people comment and when people report, hey, this worked or this didn't work. So you'll know. And I will post when I know things have changed or when I've updated the post, you'll know from that. And please also use the comments there to report in what has worked and what hasn't for you, what great deals you've found like this

Verizon thing that Nick was talking about so that so that we could all share and do the same thing. And if we all work together, I'm betting it's I'm betting it's going to be actually pretty easy to get to our to our targets. I think so, too. Easy and inexpensive. I mean, you know, because I just gave the Verizon example, that's going to be, I said right now, today's rate could be 7,400 miles for what I say, $3 and 20 cents out of pocket. You know, so 10 times of that and you're a platinum status, right. And you know, so you need 10 of those types of deals. Now I obviously not gonna be able to do that one 10 times, but, but 10 of those types of things and you're already at platinum and you're on roots of platinum pro.

So I, you know, we're, we're, we're looking good here. So I think that's going to be a lot of fun. I look forward to it. Please do share and we'll try and keep up with what works and what doesn't work. And I think it's equally as important to share what doesn't work. So when you find things that don't work, obviously report those too. Absolutely. That's, that's really key because sometimes sometimes you know you're going to be spending

a lot of money uh on things that that you don't actually want because of the expected payout and if it doesn't come then then that would be that would be a shame all right so that brings us to the post roast post roast time that's right all right i have a. I have half a poster for you, Nick. I'm not that hungry. And a full poster. I have a full poster for Stephen, who's not here to defend himself. All right. So so so go ahead and let's let's just rip the bandaid right off. Go ahead and give me my half poster. Roast away. So so because of the holidays, we recorded these at much earlier in the week than usual.

And so this week, I'm going back to previous weeks. Right, right. Previous one. So I'm going back to a post that was that was published, you know, more than a week ago, but I didn't have a chance to roast anyone for it because of how early we we we recorded that that time. So this is about the 2021 predictions realized or not post where we each went through our old predictions from 2021 and scored ourselves. How well did we do? And this is where I'm giving you just half of a roast because you gave yourself a half of a point for the prediction saying city won't do anything notable and in in your original write-up you said well that you know they did that 5x card but that's not really that exciting it's it's sort of

half you know so it's sort of notable but but not enough. And Nick forgot that Citi notably added both Wyndham and Choice as transfer partners. And with Choice, they're giving you two choice points for everything. All right. That is kind of notable. If that's not notable, I don't know what is. So, yeah is so yeah yeah so nick agreed and he actually changed edited edited the post that was that was notable steven steven i'll give up okay so steven let's talk about steven steven much more interesting steven steven steven so same post same post steven had predicted that marriott was going to offer at least one decent promotion in 2021. Okay. And he gave himself zero points for that saying,

nope, they didn't offer any decent promotions. But in like February of 2021, Marriott did this double points, double elite nights promo, which combined with the fact that they were giving 50 percent of the knights required to get to the status that you have now kind of thing it made it super easy to re-up or accelerate your elite level with marriott it wasn't as good as the hyatt double elite knights promo but to say that wasn't a notable and good promo, I was really surprised to see that.

I think he should have gotten one full point for that. I'll agree with you there that you're absolutely right. And I think that it stands out more looking at it on its own in retrospect here than it did at the time, because it was coming on the heels of, you know, getting easy Hyatt Elite status with many fewer nights. But I say many fewer nights, really, you didn't need very many nights at all

actually in hotels with Marriott based on your previous year status. So yeah, I mean, you're right. Looking back at that now, that was a really strong promotion in hindsight. And there've been some decent targeted offers where people have gotten, you know, free night certificates for stays or, you know, a bunch of points for stays. So there've been some decent targeted ones, but for public ones, yeah, I mean, that was, that was pretty good. I agree. You roasted Steven, Steven, you're roasted. So, so yeah. And, and, you know, I think Steven agrees because I don't hear him saying anything in protest for what I just said. Keeping it quiet. All right. Zip it, Stephen. All right. So now my turn to post-rose. So I'm glad we're talking about predictions because

that's exactly where I'm going next. So in your predictions for 2022, we wrote a post with all of our various predictions for 2022. And unless I misread something here, it sounded to me like you said that Chase is going to make travel a pay yourself back feature where you're going to be able to use Chase ultimate rewards points at one and a half cents each to pay for travel anywhere you want and reimburse yourself. And I'm sure you read my prediction. So you already know at this point that that's horribly wrong. I just want to know whether you have the appropriate amount of remorse for. And obviously they spend lots of money trying to market, chase ultimate rewards and the travel portal and getting people to book there so they can earn their commissions. Why, oh, why, oh, why do they want to confuse people

by telling him, hey, go book somewhere else. You don't have to book here. Go book wherever you want. We'll let you reimburse yourself. That doesn't make any sense to me at all, Greg. You think that's realistic? Yeah, you're right that it's not going to happen, but you're wrong about the reason. All right. Is the reason just because you predicted it?

That would be a good reason. That would be a better reason. No, the reason is that they're doing Airbnb this quarter as one of the pay yourself back categories. So you can, this quarter, earn 3X using your Sapphire Reserve card to book an Airbnb. And then you could pay yourself back at the full 1.5 cents. So you both get the 3X for travel and you race it at that good value. So that's great. And I'm betting that Chase likes that a lot because I'm betting too that Airbnb pays them in some way for this. It's free advertising for Airbnb if they weren't paying them. So they must be doing something for Chase. I don't know whether,

no idea what the deal looks like, but there's just no way that Chase isn't getting anything from this. So that's the main reason I don't think it's going to happen is that I think that whoever is, you know, running this campaign is like seeing it as a profit center for Chase and they don't want to cannibalize their own profits from there as opposed to the Chase portal, which is a whole nother thing. But no, when I, when I wrote it, I, I almost wrote in the post that like that I think there's something like 5% or 10% chance of this actually happening. Cause I didn't really think it was likely, but, but I thought,

that weakens the prediction section. So I'll just, I'll just leave it. All right. So you didn't really believe it. I do think there's a, I do think there's a chance because they, they added the travel category to the aeroplane card, but do I think there's a big chance? I don't think there's a big chance. I think they'd have to cap it. Otherwise it'd get expensive for them and, and compete with their core travel portal offering. And, and if you cap it, then just the confusion and dealing with the customers who have no idea how many points they've used that way or can use or whatever, it's just

too much effort, but you're totally right. I have to imagine that sponsored and why wouldn't you continue to sell that to somebody who wants to pay for the one and a half cents each? I mean, I doubt grocery stores were paying anything for being one and a half cents each for when it's brand specific, like Airbnb like that, for sure. That advertising isn't free. Or that miscellaneous like Away luggage. Yeah, sure.

I mean, come on. That came out of nowhere. Of course, that's right. And not a coincidence, probably that the Amex green card came with a credit for Away purchases last year, and now they're over on the Chase side. I mean, clearly Away is trying to market themselves. So that's great. You know, clearly Away's trying to market themselves. So, and that's great. You know, enjoy that marketing boom, I guess,

but I'm sure it costs them something. All right, so we agree to agree that it's not gonna happen. So let's move forward to the question of the week. Now this week's question of the week is one that I'm gonna bet we going to have to rely on the research that I did in like 20 minutes before this, because I'm going to bet you don't have an answer for it. Something I've looked at a little bit, but I thought was really fascinating.

So I thought it was worth talking about, even if just to get your reaction. How, how much are we, how much are we betting on this? I am going to bet three loyalty points that, uh, no, I mean, you'll, you'll have heard of this, but whether or not you're going to be prepared to talk about it is the wild card. But I think you'll at least be able to respond. So Dan in MCI writes in with an email and says, I'd love to hear Greg and Nick's opinion on the podcast regarding the CRO crypto visa card that offers 1% to 8% cash back. The top level Obsidian card is a bit too rich for my blood, but seems to have some really good travel benefits in addition to 8% back.

Now, I am going to go out on a limb here and assume that you're not super familiar with the CRO Visa card, are you? Do you know more about it than I? I have to admit that is true. So CRO is a cryptocurrency and this is not my realm of expertise either. So what I know about this is what I've been hearing about it. And I have, I mean, I do belong in some cryptocurrency groups and invest a little bit in cryptocurrency. So I have like cursory knowledge of this card, mostly because I've had the feel of missing out. I mean, whatever the opposite of FOMO is after you've missed out, when you know you missed out, that's kind of the feeling

I've had for a long time, because the time to get into this really was like a year ago, a year and a half ago, almost. So maybe ROMO, remorse on missing out. That's perfect. I don't know why we don't have that. Now you do. They just coined a new term, ROMO, remorse on missing out. That's perfect. I don't know why we don't have that. Now you do. They just coined a new term. Romo, remorse on missing out. Okay. There we go. So the deal is here, CRO is a cryptocurrency. And again, if you know a lot about cryptocurrency, forgive my simplistic explanation.

But the idea with the Visa card is that it's a prepaid card. So you load money to it and use it. And then the rewards you earn depends on staking this cryptocurrency, the CRO. And so staking it is basically like you're depositing it so they can loan it out to other people and make a profit on loaning it out when people do their shorts and things like that. So you have to stake an amount of money in order to earn rewards. And so depending on how much you stake, the rewards go up.

And the Obsidian level, the top level that you stake, the rewards go up and the obsidian level, the top level that he mentioned in the email, I'm going to say, we're not even going to waste time talking about it is an 8% cash back card then, which, you know, sounds great and wonderful. And it comes with a bunch of amazing benefits, but you need to stake $400,000 in order to get that. So that's like, that's, that's not happening probably for most people listening. So the two levels that I really want to talk about here are the Royal Indigo or Indigo Green, which is 3% cash back and comes with a couple of benefits that require staking $4,000. And so you've got to buy $4,000 of this cryptocurrency that maybe you've never heard of

and like agree to leave that and not touch it. So essentially, it's kind of like a CD or something where you're locking up the money, except it's not FDIC insured or anything. You never know when the cryptocurrency is going to crash, but you got to lock up four grand and you'll get 3% cash back on this prepaid card and side benefits. You'll get Spotify subscription costs reimbursed. So if you pay for Spotify, you would get that back. It like, what, $14 a month, I think, is the reimbursement on that. So $14 a month you get from that. Netflix gets reimbursed 100%.

And you get a lounge key, lounge access, airport lounge access with this card. So for staking $4,000, that's what you get. If you want to get crazy, you could stake $40,000 and get a 5% cash back card. And then that comes with free Amazon Prime and 10% back on Expedia and some other stuff like with the cryptocurrency world that is probably less interesting. Now, 40,000, I think is kind of nutty to stake that much in cryptocurrency. The reason I have remorse I'm missing out is because for a while it was 10,000 for that level and a 5% back prepaid card that kind of functions like a debit

card for 10,000 stake might've been interesting at some point in the past. I think probably for most people though, I doubt you're going to stake 40,000 if you haven't heard of this before we started talking about it. So I think the level really worth talking about is the $4,000 stake. So if you stake 4,000 bucks, you get yourself a 3% back debit card, essentially. And by staking $4,000, so you're actually buying into this cryptocurrency? And locking it up. Are you not allowed to sell it? Or if you do sell it, you lose that 3%? That's exactly it. So you're buying $4,000 worth of this cryptocurrency and locking it up in an account where you can't take it out.

Or when you do take it out, then you won't get your 3% cash back anymore. Okay. And the 3% cash back is actually paid out as a cryptocurrency. So that's very volatile. So your 3% could really end up being a little less or a little more, blah, blah, blah. Right, right. But if you had like a huge purchase to make, could you stake the $4,000 or even $40,000, let's say, make the huge purchase, get the big rewards, and then cash it all out? I think you could, but I haven't looked far enough into it. That's an interesting question. So that would be a great question to ask if you're interested in this or you have that kind of big purchase to take a look and see, could I do that? That's a great way to think outside the box on it. I think it should be possible. The one thing is that they've changed the staking levels. Like I said, that level for the 5% back was 10,000 at one point. Now it's 40.

And so I know from reading the rules that if you unstake and then you restake, you'll need, like if you were at stake 10,000 in the past, you still have that 5% cash back card. But if you take that out and then you go to restake again, you're after restake 40,000 to get 5% again. So, uh, so if they change the levels and you want to get back in, then you're out of luck if you've gotten out. So sure. Well, that makes sense. So, so I mean, is that interesting? Is that something you would do? I mean, there's obviously some risk there. I imagine you're not up on CRO or what it's worth or what it means or how it's set up or anything. Is it worth risking $4,000 for the chance to earn 3% back on a prepaid card? I mean, at 3%, no. I mean, at 3%, I'd say I'd only be interested in it if I was interested in investing in crypto anyway.

And I thought that this particular one was one that was worth investing in. Then I would see it as sort of a win-win that you get a high rate of return, plus you get the investment that you're theoretically doing anyway. And then as a small side benefit, you get the, I forget which service you Spotify service paid for. So that's the way I'd think about it. Cause, cause, cause there are too many other opportunities for near or equal to 3% back that if you want, if you want a sure thing, like obviously we've talked about the Bank of America, 2.62% back.

If you have 100K invested with Merrill and or Bank of America, there's the X1 card. If you just spend $15,000 a year on it, you get 3X everywhere. It's not really cash back, but the 3X back can be used for a lot of things at full value. So it can be like 3% back. So that's kind of the way I think about it. I mean, I think the bigger question is the $40K level, if that's kind of the way I think about it. I mean, I pay for Spotify and Netflix already, the Spotify reimbursement is $14 a month, if I remember correctly. And I can't remember what the Netflix one is, but I'm

sure it's at least 11. So you're talking at least $25 a month to keep the math easy. If you were already paying for those things at $25 a month, then over the course of the year, you're talking about what, $250, $275, $300, right? $29 a month. I just did the math on that, right? Yeah, $300, right? So, I mean, if you're getting $300 back essentially a year on your $4,000, that's $4,000 that's locked up,

that's like 7.5% APY basically, right? So, I mean, you're getting an incredible return if you value those services because you're paying for them. And, you know And you should probably time value money all of that. And if the crypto doesn't depreciate. Exactly. So there's obviously some risk there. Okay. Well, that's a really valid point. It just feels to me like, like small stakes for, um, small gain, I guess. So, so another way, another way of putting it is like, there are lots of like high interest, um, bank

accounts that are limited to up to 5,000 or up to $10,000 invested. You can, you know, get this very high, like rate of return. And I just haven't, just haven't bothered with those, but if you're interested in earning a really good return on those kinds of amounts, then they make a lot of sense. And so I think you make a good argument that, again, if you're willing to risk the money because of the volatility of crypto, it has a good return. So good point. 40,000. I mean, would you do 40,000 for 5%? Well, I probably wouldn't personally, but again, if you're interested in investing in crypto and have that much you can invest and are willing to invest, then that's a pretty darn good side benefit to get 5% anywhere on your spend.

Did you say, does it work on debit purchases? It does. Now, and I know where your mind is going on that. And I know early on, there were a lot of people that had the same thought process that I think it worked as you would hope that it would. But I look through now and there's a long list of excluded merchant category codes. And it was a weird list. There were some things you would expect, like wire transfers, for instance.

You couldn't earn rewards on that. Or like funding a bank account or a brokerage account. Couldn't earn rewards on that. But they also exclude for rewards things like utilities, like gas and electricity. No idea why. Memorabilia and souvenir shops were an excluded category. Car insurance, health insurance, and life insurance were all excluded. I was like, what are they doing here?

Department of Motor Vehicles was excluded. And I was like, why? I don't even understand why. So there were some things that were excluded. So but taxes, I didn't see in the excluded list of things. So, I mean, there might be some other potential uses. I mean, because, again, it's a prepaid card. So it effectively functions like a debit card. So kind of interesting. And I mean, I guess if you're rolling in the dough and you can put 400 grand in to get 8% back, I mean, again, by the same logic, I suppose, maybe it's worth it. And at that 400 grand level, you also get like 10% back on Airbnb, but I think it's capped at like a hundred dollars a month or something like that. So there's some, you know, some caps on some of those things. Yeah. Right. Right. That's very interesting. Very interesting. Yeah. I don't know. I haven't looked into crypto enough to certainly not to feel comfortable in investing any significant amount, just because I've been kind of intrigued by the whole thing and I haven't done it. And now that we got this email, I'm more curious about it to write a post about this. So, um, so we'll see maybe, maybe coming to a blog

near you sometime soon. So, uh, thank you for the question, Dan, because I think it's an interesting time. I hope so. I'm looking forward to reading that. Okay. So that brings us my friends to the end of a long episode today. So whoever it was we talked about a couple of weeks ago that has a long commute, you're welcome. You got all the way home today, probably. So thank you. Thank you for being here with us today. If you enjoyed what we were talking about, you want to get those posts in your inbox.

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