Frequent Miler on the Air - Airline Elite Status via Hotel Stays | Frequent Miler on the Air Ep289 | 1-10-25

Episode Date: January 10, 2025

There are a few ways now where you can earn elite status on airlines entirely through hotel stays! This is sort of a new development that we're excited to discuss in today's podcast. (01:32) - Whoops: Forgot United offers elite earnings on award tickets (UA flights only) Find episode 288 here. (04:09) - IHG Choice Benefit annual lounge membership trick worked this year (05:58) -  One reader finds a way to get an offer to upgrade back to Amex Platinum for 50K bonus points after 2K spend. (08:03) - Alaska Biz Card 70K offer is back: 70K miles and Companion Fare™ Learn more about the Alaska Business card here. (09:27) - Costco card goes up to 5% at Costco Gas on 1/19/25. All other gas/EV will stay at 4% (12:32) - US Bank Altitude Go: beginning on April 15, 2025, cardholders will be limited to earning 4x on the first $2,000 in dining, takeout and restaurant delivery purchases each quarter. Learn more about that update here (13:45) - Sonesta credit card taking a siesta Learn more about the Sonesta siesta here (15:34) - Pay1040 fees up, down, all around (21:42) - Hyatt promo: Earn double elite night credits for stays at Under Canvas properties Read more about that Hyatt promo here (28:21) - Marriott Choice Benefit 40K expiry (33:30) - BA goes revenue-based (Read more about that change here (34:45) - Daily Getaways Dead: The program has been discontinued (36:29) - Marriott ->> United Premier Silver AND Air Canada Aeroplan 25K Read more about that here (40:59) - Hyatt ->> American Airlines Read more about this option here (50:49) - Hyatt Explorist/Globalist elite members can trade Hyatt points for status for a day (53:33) - Not as many shortcuts with Hyatt as with Marriott Read more about this here (1:03:00) - Should I mattress run with Advantage Hotels the rest of my way to AA Executive Platinum status? (1:06:14) - How do you value your time, for example when an hour of effort will save you a small chunk of change?

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 Liler on the Air starts now. Today's main event, airline elite status via hotel stays. It's the beginning of the year for us,

and that means that it's time to either renew our elite statuses in different programs or decide we're not going to do it, or maybe just wait and see what naturally happens and then follow our lead that way. Either way, it's worth knowing that there's a few ways now where you can earn elite status on airlines entirely through hotel stays. Kind of a neat development. And we'll get into that in today's main event. Yeah, I'm actually looking forward to this discussion because I haven't really decided on my own elite status strategy for this year. It's still early in the year. I've been thinking about it a little bit. And maybe this will influence my decisions in terms of what I kind of go after. So I'll be curious to find out

what Greg talks me into here. And if you want to come back and listen to it again, don't forget, you can find the timestamps in the show notes, just expand the description box to find links to those timestamps. And of course, links to more information about some of the stuff that we talk about throughout the course of the show, wherever you're watching or listening, don't forget to give us a like, give us a thumbs up, leave a comment or feedback. We appreciate all of those things. Now we need to drag out this week's giant mailbag. All right. Today's giant mail.

We're going to start with a couple sort of whoops messages from us. First of all, on the show last week, 10 pointish things we're most looking forward to. I think it was when we were talking about looking forward to Alaska mileage plan, being able to earn elite status through award bookings. We mentioned Delta as another one that does it. And I don't know exactly what we said there, but I do want to clarify that Delta, you earn elite earnings with award bookings with either Delta flights or partner flights. So it's both. So I think we may have been a little unsure when we were talking about that. Virgin is the other one we talked about, but we forgot a major one.

United also lets you earn premier qualifying flights and segments from award bookings. Now, in their case, it's only when flying United. Yeah, so that's a little bit different. I completely forgotten about that. So I'm glad that we have added that now. A key difference, though, of course, is that when we're talking about what we were talking about Alaska, and Alaska being able to earn mileage flown essentially on all of their partners when you're booking awards through Alaska and United, you'll have to be booking United flights in order to get credit. And of course, United's program's a little different in that there are a couple of different metrics to earn status, and you're going to have to

essentially spend some money with United, I think still, right? You still need to earn enough premier qualifying dollars probably in order to earn status, whereas with Alaska, there's no, I don't think there's a dollar requirement, right? You's a, you can earn entirely on distance flown, I believe. That's right. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. They're very, very different, but it's just worth pointing out that that's, we were kind

of saying how unique it is that you can earn status or at least status credits from award bookings. But there are quite a few that do it. Delta, before Alaska came on, Delta was the most expansive. But since they have mostly bad award pricing, not entirely, but mostly, it's just not that exciting. Yeah. Anyway, so to me, the Alaska one's a lot more exciting. Agreed.

Another thing. This isn't something we got wrong, but I guess we could say we got it wrong because I wasn't specific enough when we talked about this. So one of the things we talked about is how there has been a, not even a loophole necessarily, but a way of gaming IHG's 40 night, and I think again at at 70 night choice benefit when you pick the annual lounge membership. The deal has been that you could wait if you earn your 40 nights near the end of the year, you could wait until January to pick that award. And then it's good for the rest of that year and all of the next year. But new terms came up in the program that make it sound like that's not going to work anymore. And we talked about that. What I didn't explicitly say is those terms seem to be something that's going to happen going forward, not for those who earned the 40 or 70 nights in 2024.

So a number of people wrote in saying, hey, this happened to me. I just waited till January and good news. It's still good for two years. So yes, that's what I expected to happen. So that's great. I'm glad that worked out. But the issue will be what happens next year will we

be able to do that trick at the end of uh this year and and pick pick that annual benefit pick that lounge benefit in early 2026 in order to get it for two years it sounds like the term say no but we'll see yeah yeah very very interesting We'll have to see what happens there. I had a couple of things with a different program that credited oddly and were valid for much longer than expected. So I got to dig into that a little bit more, but maybe we'll have something more on that sometime soon. All right, so that was the two things in the mailbag. Is that it for the mailbag today? No, we have some genuine mail as well.

This one comes from Julie. Julie says, hi, FM pals. We're at Julie's pals. I've heard on your podcast previously that sometimes you can get a retention bonus for 25,000 to 30,000 points after 2K spend for Amex Platinum if you call and ask Amex. Well, just FYI, I called and didn't ask for a bonus and downgraded to gold. Now I have an offer in the app to upgrade back to Platinum

for 50,000 bonus points after 2K spend. So, you know, anyway, she's sharing this because, I mean, I don't know how reliable that is, but she did better than a retention bonus, at least better than the type of retention bonus she was expecting. I do want to say that retention bonuses can be all over the map. So a 50k retention bonus is possible as well. But it sounds like this is another way you could try to get a retention bonuses by downgrading and then see if you get an upgrade offer. Yeah, I mean, we do see that sometimes on Amex cards. And so it was great to get a data point on that a recent data point on that. But we have also heard from other readers who've had the

similar experience with that. And also in the past with the everyday and everyday preferred cards, though, I don't know if that's the case anymore. Now that those cards are no longer available to apply for new. And also before that on the, the Hilton cards, we used to see that, you know, where you downgrade one and they used to be really common. Yeah.

It used to be really common. We don't, we haven't seen those common as much couple of years. Yeah. Right. Yeah. But this is a good one. This is a good one.

Yeah, absolutely. So, all right. Thanks to our pal, Julie. Thank you. You got a pal in me,ie all right so i i'm

gonna spare you i'm not even gonna try and sing it but i figured i'd throw that one in there that's right let's toy story reference right right right right right right yeah toy story on the mind because uh we've got some upcoming disney plans so and you've got in the mind there yeah i do i have kids that's that's true all right let's talk about card news. So we've got several pieces of card news. What's first up? can earn 70,000 miles plus their companion fare ticket, which is where you pay $99 plus taxes for a companion. You get all that after $4,000 spend within 90 days. So that's a good offer. It comes and goes over time. And it's nice to see it back, especially with all the sort of Alaska focus we've been doing lately. Yeah, you know, I find this interesting. I've been wanting we've been doing lately yeah you know i find i find this interesting i've been wanting like boy i've been wanting the hawaiian card but man i've been waiting for that

to come up with a 70k off or hoping that it would and i think that those hopes are probably misplaced so uh but this is a really good alternative if you don't need a hawaiian card or don't want to try and get one of those before they're gone because we expect those to go away at some point. And of course, I'm mentioning Hawaiian because as we've talked about lots of times, you can move your miles one-to-one between a Hawaiian and Alaska right now.

Right, right. And the nice thing in both cases with the business cards, they won't affect your 524 status, so it won't make it harder to sign up for Chase cards if you want to after that. All right. What's next? Something about a Costco card?

Yeah. So the Costco card apparently is going to start earning 5% back at Costco gas starting on January 19th. But all other gas and electric vehicle charging is going to remain at 4%. So you'll earn an additional 1% back when you're buying gas at Costco. So for a lot of people, that will be useful. 5% back on gas is about as good as it gets, I think, for gas stations outside of the Wyndham earner business card. And I don't know if the Wyndham earner card earns 8x at Costco for gas. I think it does actually at BJ's Wholesale. I would assume it does.

Yeah. So I think wholesale clubs are sometimes treated a little differently I don't I could be wrong but for cash back anyway this is I think as good as it gets five percent back that's that's a good deal yeah yeah so that's

nice for anyone with a Costco card the Costco card is a you know cash back card but it's a solid one with good earnings and some you know perks or features i guess that make it worth keeping if if you're in the cash back it's not the best though right it's well yeah worth a mention that the costco card isn't necessarily the best one for costco

purchases because if you're a regular costco shopper you should get the u.s bank altitude reserve card because that card offers 3X on mobile wallet. So you could be tapping your Apple Pay or Google Pay and earning 3X, which you could redeem either for 3% cash back or use with real-time mobile rewards to book travel and essentially turn that into 4.5% back at Costco rather than the 2% back that you'd get with the costco card yeah except last we checked uh us us bank was no longer offering a card for new applicants so um it's basically a teaser change i think yeah is it still available for product change maybe it was the last i knew but i don't know whether for sure whether or not. And I had called recently to see if I could product change my U.S. Bank Altitude Go card to the Smartly Visa. And they said, no, that wasn't available. And so then I asked about product changing it to another Altitude Reserve card, just figuring maybe this is a situation where if I take one hop, then I can take a second hop.

Sure. As we've seen in other instances before. And they said, no, they said there was nothing else, nothing I could product change to. So I don't know if it's just my card or, or they just don't like me or whatever the case might be, but I, I couldn't product change my altitude go. So, uh, but the last I heard, I haven't heard a negative data point on product changing to the altitude reserve since the last positive data point, which was sometime after they stopped accepting applications.

So that could just be that nobody's tried. I don't know. Or nobody that I know has tried. But anyway, that's a good pick for Costco purchases. Or of course, you could get the US Bank Spartanly card and put $5,000 in the bank with US Bank, and then you'd be getting 2.5% cash back. And you could use that at Costco. So you'd be earning more cash back. There's some other options that earn more than 2% cash back. But 5% on gas is a good deal if you're filling up regularly at Costco, so you'd be earning more cash back. There's some other options that earn more than 2% cash back, but 5% on gas is a good deal if you're filling up regularly at Costco. Yeah. And we were just talking about U.S. Bank as an alternative for Costco. Well, the U.S. Bank Altitude Go card, which if I remember right, is a fee-free card that offers a very nice 4% back on dining.

Unfortunately, there's bad news there. Beginning April 15th, cardholders will be limited to earning 4% on the first $2,000 in dining per quarter. So, you know, that's probably enough for most people, and you'll probably still be getting 4% on all your dining. But for those who spend a lot, it's going to be a bummer. Yeah. I mean, for me, I carry it as a backup card sometimes. So I'm not spending more than $2,000 a quarter on dining on the card. So it's not really going to affect me at all. But yeah, I mean, if you're a heavy diner, heavy diner, that's a heavy diner that's

the wrong way to put it if you are if you enjoy dining out often then uh then four percent uh you know uncapped essentially is what it was with no annual fee it was a pretty good deal for dining but you know now it's now it's capped so 2k per per quarter. Keep that in mind. Yep. All right. And last but not least. Yep. Last but not least, what's happening with Sonesta? Taking a siesta on their credit card. So if you snoozed on that one, you lost, it seems, because the Sonesta credit card is no longer available, or at least not available at the time that we're recording this for new applicants. And we had to reach out and ask what's going on with the Sonesta card. And when we heard back,

basically the messaging we heard back is that they are pausing applications for it for now as they reevaluate and tweak the program and blah, blah, blah, which I don't, to me says, I don't know if it's coming back or when it's coming back. And we don't know either.

So, so if you didn't apply for it, you missed your, you missed the boat probably yeah i think it's probably gone the good news is at least for now uh existing card holders are unaffected your all your perks and things should be uh fine and so that makes this a genuine collectible uh the synesta card had some nice features including including a nice bonus number of points you could get with a very small amount of spend each year. So congratulations if you did not take a siesta on Sunesta,

as Nick had written about. But I think both Nick and I did sleep on it, right? That's true, yes. Neither of us got the card. It was a very good offer. There just weren't any Sinesta properties that were going to line up with my travel plans and I had so many other things going on.

But I didn't get it. But for people who did, it was definitely a good deal. That $125,000 offer was solid. Tim got it. So Tim can keep us informed about how it goes being a holder of that collectible card. So congratulations, Tim.

Tim, take a siesta at Sinesta. Tell us all about it. That pun's not going to die anytime soon. Sorry, guys. All right. So let's talk about next. What crazy thing? What crazy thing did the IRS do this week, Greg?

Or was it really the IRS? Not necessarily the IRS. Not necessarily the IRS. Not necessarily the IRS. So the IRS published, they have a page where they publish their places you can go to pay your taxes with a credit card or debit card, and they list the fees for those places. And so they listed that pay 1040, the fee for paying with a credit card is 1.75%. That's great. We talked about that, I think, last week. And so we're excited to see that.

But if you click through to pay 1040 and then go to pay your personal taxes, there's a note at the top of the screen that says the fee is not 1.75, but 2.89%. Well, to be clear, it doesn't explicitly say it's not 1.75. It says that the fee is 2.89. I just want to be clear that it's not like it says, hey, there's a mistake on the IRS website. It's not 1.79. It just says the fee is 2.89%. That's right. That's right. So specifically what it says is the convenience fee for this service is $2.15 for debit cards or 2.89% for credit cards or through PayPal. And then it goes on to say corporate credit cards, same thing, 2.89%. So which is right? Is IRS right or is is pay 1040? Right? What? What? Yes. So so when I clicked through after a reader brought this up, I the Schwab debit card, Schwab platinum card rather was top of wallet, I'm working on spending on that right now. And so I pulled that out. And I said, Okay, let's let's give this a shot and see what the fee is to make sure that the reader report was even correct. And sure enough, it showed me a 2.89% fee for using the

Schwab card, the Amex Schwab card. So I reported that the fee was indeed 2.89%. But then readers corrected me that that wasn't necessarily true. Yeah, we saw readers reporting 1.75 for a variety of cards and so we're like oh what is going on here did uh is was it just wrong entirely or or what but then other readers wrote in saying they were charged 2.89 and so so then we we started collecting information about like, well, what kind of card were people using? And it appears that all Amex cards, if you try to pay, they're going to charge you 2.89%. So don't pay through pay 1040 with an Amex card. You could still pay the other payment processor with an Amex card and pay that pay 1.85% there. So Amex card and pay 1.85% there. So Amex card, the 2.89. Most consumer cards that are not Amex, 1.75.

As it turns out, once I tried some of my other consumer Visa MasterCards, I was getting the 1.75% that some readers were reporting. Right. Not all, but most. Most. A few of them are still were reporting. Right. Not all, but most. Right. Most. A few of them are still reporting 2.89. And then the flip side is true for business cards that are not Amex, where most

but not all are 2.89%. For example, we had someone report, I think it was the World of Hyatt business card, that they were charged us 1.75. If you want to pay with a master card or Visa card, I think it's worth just stepping through the process and see what Pay1040 shows as the fee. Now, what you do is actually step through to where it actually shows you the fee. You go all the way through before actually pressing go and paying. And just do the calculation. Take the fee that it shows,

divide by how much you're paying, and see if it comes out to 2.89 or 1.75. I don't recommend proceeding if it's 2.89. That's a very high fee. Yeah. I mean, I guess if you're earning a welcome bonus and that was the only way that you were going to be able to meet the spending requirement, maybe, but if you could use the other payment processor, then you could pay just 1.85%. So I can't imagine many scenarios where it would make sense to pay the 2.89 if you got a card that is showing that 2.89%. But it's really worth knowing that it depends which card you use as to which fee you're going to see through Pay 1040. So be sure to check that carefully and look closely. A nice new feature of Pay 1040 is that when you go to change the credit card you're using you don't have to

start all over with all the other information they now have it divided by like sections so you can just just edit the credit card information which is great because before it wasn't that way it started over completely and i hated that right so there you go there you have it and there's there are even some cards out there there's we've reported and there's been reports of like some people with Barkley cards from some time, maybe, I don't know, only get charged a $2.50 fee. It's not something consistent. It's not something that works on any of my cards, unfortunately, but we had a reader report it just the other day saying that they only got charged $2.50 with one of their aviator cards. So I had a Bank of America card that it just temporarily treated like a debit card and charged the $2.50, which was great.

But then the next time I went to pay taxes, it was treating it as a credit card again. So it's worth trying your different MasterCards just to see what happens, because why not? Especially now that it's easier to change your card in there and see if any of them are treated as a debit card. But don't be surprised if none are. Right, right, right. Absolutely. Okay, that's our crazy thing.

Let's talk about Mattress Running the Numbers. For Mattress Running the Numbers this week. We've got a Hyatt promotion out. Hyatt is offering double elite night credits for stays at under canvas properties by February 28th. You'll have to book through Hyatt. And that's important to note because I think these properties can be booked directly through the property, but you'll need to book through Hyatt in order to get double elite night credit. And then you'll have to stay between March 7th and June 15th, which may or may not be canvas camping weather, depending on the location you're going to. But if it is, then you can get yourself double Elite Night credit. Is that worth it? Is this something to pursue? What do you think? Well, let's dive into an example. I looked at their Smoky Mountain property, and that's somewhere in the Gatlinburg area. And I found dates where they charged as little as $179 per night, and that came to $222 per night after taxes and fees were included.

The good news is that it's the exact same price whether you book through Hyatt or go directly to Under Canvas. under canvas. So that's good because if you're going to stay at one of these luxury tent properties anyway, might as well go through Hyatt and earn extra rewards. And during this time frame, you can earn double elite nights as well, get you closer to the next level of elite status and the next milestone rewards, which is great. But a negative thing here is that they use the same Mr. and Mrs. Smith methodology for award nights. So if you want to use your points, the number of points you pay is based on the cash rate, and the value is going to be less than 1.5 cents per point, usually less than 1.4 cents per point. The particular example I looked at was very close to 1.4, 1.37. So not horrible, but Hyatt points tend to have better value when used for actual Hyatt properties.

Yeah, that's unfortunate. I probably wouldn't be interested in using points at the lower value like that for a Hyatt stay, most likely. But I do think that this could be worth it, not as a pure mattress run, not to go check in if you don't need the stay necessarily. But if you have some interest in staying in one of these places, then I think the double elite night credit could be pretty compelling. Because if we look at something like paying your taxes with your your Hyatt card, if you have the consumer card, the world of high consumer card, every $5,000 spent, you get to elite night credits. So if you're paying the 1.75% fee, that's like $87.50 for two elite nights. So the elite nights would cost you, if you were paying your taxes, about $44 each to earn inconvenience fees, right? To keep the math simple. So much cheaper than checking into one of these just for the elite nights.

But as you were saying, if you want to actually stay, it's a pretty good reward. So if you're interested in high elite status and you actually want to stay, of course, that's a good deal. You should go for it. Yeah. The time of year, though, has got to, I would assume, be shoulder season for a lot of these places. I mean, it brought up Gatlinburg, and I was there in April a few years back. And it was beautiful, nice during the day, but it was nippy in the morning. And I just looked up the average highs and lows in April, the nighttime low dips to like 35 on average in April and March, it goes up to a nighttime low of like 45. So I don't know. I mean, I imagine that these are nice glamping tents, but you know, may or may not be

camping weather for you depending on what your preferences are. Yeah. I mean, that's probably true in Gatlinburg. Although, I mean, I saw that low rate for a weekend in May. So maybe that would be okay. I mean, it's still a bit shoulder there, but still. And it could be very comfortable during the day. But yeah, as Nick just said, they have a lot of different locations, including ones in the Southwest. They're all like, I think they're all near national parks. And so if you go to one that's in a warm weather area, uh, should be good.

I would love to try one of these. Um, I don't love, so the, the lowest, the cheapest level tents are where you use a communal bathroom. Um, but the next level up. So if you pay a bit more, then you can have a bathroom in your tent. So personally, I would opt for that, but I would enjoy trying it. This whole thing, though, makes me once again realize that Hilton is going in the right direction and Hyatt has been going in the wrong direction. Because Hilton has almost the exact same thing with AutoCamp. So Hyatt's got this relationship with Under Canvas and Hilton's got AutoCamp, which is very similar, except you stay in an RV instead of a tent. But they do have tents as well.

So very similar glamping type thing. But Hilton actually has um you know their their standard like awards so if you if you get what's considered a base level room at autocamp you can pay a fixed point price which when cash prices are high would could be a good deal you also get like fifth night free you can use your free night certificate you even get a few benefits. There's none of that with high end. Right? No, I totally agree. And I would take the Airstream over the glamping tent personally. That'd be my preference. So I'd already be on the Hilton side to begin with, but yeah, just the way that they're incorporating it and making it part of the program instead of this other separate thing just feels much better. And yeah,

you're absolutely right. Hilton is knocking it out of the park in that realm and Hyatt is just dropping the ball. I don't understand some of the decisions here, but on the flip side, I guess if those types of things and poor value point redemptions at them continues to make the award chart a possibility, something that we can keep and have and hold then i guess maybe that's a trade that we should be more comfortable with and i feel like i am but yeah anyway so i think it's probably worth looking if you're interested in that type of glamping experience the double elite night credit is nice so yeah decent deal all right bonvoid what's going on here we got like a bonvoid list we got do we

get bonvoid during the first week of the year already oh yeah we did uh yeah i just i decided it'd be it'd be fun to have a section uh here where where we talk about all the ways in which we've been bonvoid um meaning like you know where have have loyalty programs really let us down? And we've got a few here. First up, Marriott, of course. They have to come first on a list if they're on there at all because they coined the term. They made us all aware of what it's like to be Bonvoyed over and over. Yeah. So, I mean, they kick things off by first giving something

and then immediately taking it away. Yeah, yeah. So this whole thing is kind of complicated. If you stay 75 nights within a calendar year at Marriott's or you earn 75 elite nights, it doesn't have to be through actual stays, you get a second choice benefit you could pick. And one of those options is a 40,000 point free night certificate.

In the past, it's always been an option to, or a trick, I guess, to wait until January to pick that certificate because it was good through the end of the current year and all of the next, right? So near the end of last year, it seemed that Marriott had eliminated that trick because what they did was they changed the terms to say that the certificate is good for a year from when it's issued. Well, people- So to be clear, that would mean if you selected it as your benefit on December 15th of 2024, it would theoretically be valid until December 15th of 2025. Or if you waited until January 7th to pick it, 2025, then it'd be valid until December 15th of 2025. Or if you waited until January 7th to pick it, 2025, then it'd be valid until January 7th, 2026. Right, right. Somewhere between us updating

our post on Marriott Choice Benefits and a reader writing in, they changed the terms back to what they used to be, or something like what they were used to be that had to do with like the rest of the current year and to December through December of the next and so people were reporting in December that their certificates were good through the end of December of 2025 2025 so meaning um it was back to how it was before um and then in january people who are picking then were seeing again the way it was before that it would last all the way until the end of december of 2026 so that so the trick was still working so that was the good news it's hard to call it good because it's just what has been the case for years, right?

So that was good-ish news anyway, that it worked out the way it always has. And okay, we thought, all right, everything's good. It's all good here. Nothing to see here. You know, Marriott did the right thing and just stuck with the past precedent and issued certificates that had

a 2026 expiration date but then then marriott pulled one of their nighttime switcheroos and so out of nowhere without telling anybody just kind of sneaky style within the app i think right is where people have found i think anyway i don't think there's been any email notification right right i mean it's from logging in i don't know app or yeah yeah right but you log in and look at your certificates and those people who got them and it said they expired december 31st 2026 now are seeing 2025 december 31st 2025 so maria just sneakily you know went into their accounts and changed the expiration date cut off a whole year without telling them even. Without telling them, right?

Yeah. So you're only going to find that out if you thought, if you saw that, right, early in January, presumably you're not looking at those certificates over and over again, right? You just mentally know, oh, I have one that's valid until the end of next year. And so you might not even think about that for many months, right? Until late this year. And then all of a sudden discover that it's only valid for a few more days or maybe that it already expired.

Right, right. So now the terms are correct, I guess. And the terms now say it's valid through December 31st of the year after the benefit was earned, not selected, but earned. So if you earned it in 2024, then it's good through the end of 2025.

So it's working as written now, but that was sneaky and Bonvoyish of you, Marriott. So thanks, I guess, for kicking off the segment. Thanks for that. Yes. All right. So there you go. There you have it with Marriott. But they're not the only ones to disappoint. Then next up, British Airways goes revenue-based. I didn't pay close attention to this one, but British Airways Executive Club program has now gone revenue-based where your earning status based on your spend with British Airways

is the short version of the story, I think. Exactly. So British Airways previously, I don't think anyone on our team had been doing this, but they made it pretty easy to game the system and earn high-level elite status by flying certain types of flights that would earn a lot of tier credits because they had a kind of zone-based tier crediting system that you could game and book cheap flights and get high-level status. But no more.

That's all gone because it's all going to be based on the price of the ticket. And so if you were doing that before, you're probably going to look at the new system and say, oh man, that's not worth even pursuing. Yeah. Bummer. Bummer. I mean, it's probably an inevitable, but that doesn't make it any more fun for those who are enjoying the old system. So there goes that and finally daily getaways are dead what daily getaways are gone they're toast so uh every year for years um except maybe during some of the pandemic i don't remember probably it was during the pandemic

there have been these daily getaway offers where for a few weeks you could get in on travel-related deals. And some of them were good. Some were terrible. But there were always like a couple of opportunities to, for example, buy points really cheaply. And so, you know, I always kind of look forward to this as a time when to at least look and see, is there something there that interests me and maybe jump on one of the good deals? It's gone. No longer. That's too bad. Yeah. Yeah. That's too bad. The website, it just says the program has been discontinued. Bummer. Yeah. So I think that was run by the U.S. Travel Association or something. And yeah, I mean, when Greg says for years, I mean, I don't know, I was buying stuff in those deals well before I worked for Frequent Miler. So it's got to be more than a decade that that thing has been running. So it's been a long time. But yeah, like you said, though, a lot of the deals had kind of become pretty lukewarm or cool. So it's not a huge loss. What I think is the bigger bummer is that

it was often relatively possible to buy the Marriott gift cards for 20% off and you could buy kind of a larger Marriott gift card for 20% off. And those weren't too terribly difficult to buy or the IHG points because, you know, they wouldn't count against your annual cap. But unfortunately, that one's gone. All right. That, I think, wraps up all of the small segments. Let's get to this week's main event. All right.

Main event time. Airline elite status via hotel stays. We're going to talk first about how you can earn some airline elite status through Marriott. That should be a pretty brief conversation. That's something that's been going on for a long time. It's just recently changed a little bit, but it's easy to talk about. The concept's really simple. We should get through that really quickly, I think. Where things are different and we're going to spend more time on is the partnership between Hyatt and American Airlines and the ability to earn American Airlines status from Hyatt stays.

That is not simple. And it's not, yeah, I mean, it's not straightforward in any way at all. So that's going to take some discussion. That'll take the bulk of our time. Yep. Very good. So, all right. So let's kick it off with this Marriott thing. So with Marriott, you can get elite status with both United and Air Canada with Marriott titanium status. And

Marriott titanium status requires 75 elite nights in a calendar year. So you could earn those by spending 75 nights at Marriott properties if you're a glutton for punishment, or if you travel frequently for work, then you could earn it that way. But of course, there are easier ways to do that. You could earn as many as 40 elite nights per year via credit cards. If you had the brilliant card on the consumer side and one Marriott business card, you could earn 40 elite nights just from holding two credit cards. And then you could pick five elite nights once you reach 50. Once you reach 50 nights, you get a choice benefit. One of those options is five elite night credits. And so if you chose that as your 50 night benefit, then really you would need to

stay 30 nights in Marriott hotels over the course of the year. If you have the two credit cards, you pick the five elite nights as your 50 night choice benefit, then yeah, 30 nights in Marriott's would get you to titanium status. And that would in turn get you United Premier Silver and Air Canada Aeroplan 25K status. Pretty simple, pretty straightforward. Yeah. In both cases, it's the bottom tier elite status, but for many people, I think if you were earning Marriott status anyway, you know, and you were shortcuts to earning elite nights with Marriott beyond what we just discussed. So we have a post on that. And so if you're like, oh, but I don't even, I won't even say 30 nights at Marriott hotels, there's actually additional things you can do. So you don't even have to necessarily do that. Yeah. so I've been doing this for years to get United silver status.

And now that they've added Air Canada, that's a nice extra perk in case I have a chance to fly Air Canada, which I don't tend to do very often. But I think they're pretty nice to fly. So that'll be nice if it happens. I think it also gets you with Air Canada access to potentially better award pricing sometimes, too. So so we should probably do a comparison of that, actually, and find what what kind of discounts you're able to see with that status versus one of us that doesn't. But at any rate, so there's a little bit of that. Another point that I want to make on this, because this always comes up with folks who are new to these kind of things,

is that getting status this way, getting your United Silver or United, or excuse me, Air Canada Aeroplan 25K status, getting it from the hotel program, you know, sort of reciprocal elite status thing will not reduce the path to reaching the

next tier of airline elite status. So it doesn't give you credit for everything up to that doesn't make it, you know, you're not going to get to gold any quicker with United by having your silver status this way. So, you know, Greg mentioned, if you're somebody who had mileage run, then maybe you want to consider this instead. That's sort of only true if you had mileage run to silver status, right? Because if you're going to try and get to gold status or higher, you're still going to have to do whatever it is you're going to have to do to earn silver status in order to get to gold. Yes, yes. Great point. That's so important. So very good. All right. Let's talk about Hyatt and American Airlines now. So they have a partnership that they completely changed. It used to be mostly about points that you would earn Hyatt points when flying American and you'd earn American miles when flying, when staying at a Hyatt. They changed that. And what they did instead is made it possible to, usually it's about redeeming points in one program in order to get elite status or

status-like benefits in the other program. We're not even going to talk about the path of using American Airlines to get Hyatt benefits because the pricing, like you have to pay so many miles that it's just not worth it. And you can't get to like globalist status where it would be exciting through that path anyway. So just forget about that. Like don't even look at that. Don't waste your time looking at that part of what you could do with your American Airlines miles and status to get to Hyatt. Forget about that. The question is, is it worth going through Hyatt to get some status and benefits from American Airlines? Yeah. So Hyatt has added a bunch of milestone reward options. And so Hyatt's milestone reward program is where you get to pick benefits at various elite

night levels. So starting at 20 elite nights with Hyatt, and then going up each 10 elite nights from there, you get the opportunity to pick different benefits. And you know, those benefits obviously vary, the value of them is going to vary person to person. We've talked quite a bit about the value of Hyatt's milestone benefits, because some of them are really good. And so now they've added the option for some American Airlines benefits. So for instance, at 20 or 30 elite nights with Hyatt, or 35,000 or 50,000 base points, if you're paying for your Hyatt stays, your employer's paying for something like that, you're paying for a lot of expensive stays at those levels. So 20, 30 elite nights, 35K or 50k base points you can choose two preferred seat coupons for american

airlines flights so i mean that's not enough thing and if you're somebody who's going to get to globalist status anyway i think the what the other 20 night options are like club access awards and something that i don't know doesn't really appeal to me so the preferred seat coupons probably about as good yeah i mean they have those like 1500 point next day vouchers or whatever, but they're only valid at certain hotels. And yeah. And so, and then you have like a few dollars in find credit, which find is like Hyatt's experiences that where you can, you know, way overpay for a small selection of experiences that may or may not apply to anything you're ever doing. So, yeah, I think that's a perfectly valid – if you could use preferred seat coupons, that's really good.

And it appears that these preferred seat coupons are giftable, meaning you could give them to someone else to use. So that would be nice if you want to offer it to someone who needs it. All right. So then that's 20 nights and 30 nights. You have the choice to pick those two preferred seat coupons at 40 and 50 elite nights with Hyatt or 65K or 80K base points. You can choose two main cabin extra seat coupons for American Airlines flights. So that'd be like exit row or the extra legroom seating at the front of the cabin on American Airlines. So, you know, that's a potentially useful benefit for you, depending on the length of the flight

that you're taking. It certainly could be something that's of interest, though, personally, at 40 and 50 nights, well, 40 nights, I don't know, 40 nights, you got other options that are sort of so-so. Anyway, at 50 nights, I think I would probably be choosing suite upgrades personally over choosing a main cabin extra coupon. But if you don't value suites, maybe the main cabin extra coupon is right for you. I mean, at both 40 and 50 nights nights you'd be giving up those sweet upgrades i can't see doing that um for a main cabin extra seat i mean so main cabin extra means you're getting a little bit extra leg room and there's really not much else happening there i mean right

right they right i guess there's maybe there's free drinks or whatever, like alcoholic drinks. But there's just not a lot of value in that, in my opinion. So I would not be looking at that. Where things get a little more interesting, though, is at 70 nights and then again at 80 and 90 elite nights with Hyatt, you can choose as one of your options American Airlines Advantage Gold status, which is valid for the full status membership year. So you get, you know, theoretically, other than, it should be very similar to have earned gold status with American directly, and you keep it for the whole status year. Sadly, the terms say this is not giftable, that you can't. So when Hyatt first announced this, we asked Hyatt, like, are these things giftable?

They said yes, but the terms for this are very clear, that this is for the Hyatt member who selects it only. So I'm bummed about that. But if you're going to get to 70 nights anyway with Hyatt, you could choose some other things. Like at 70 nights, you could choose like 10,000 points, or you could choose a suite upgrade or a big fine discount. And this is another option. And I'd say a year of gold status is a valuable perk. And so, you know, I could easily see trading one of those other things for that.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's a, yeah, for sure. 10,000 points, suite upgrade award, $300 fine credit or advantage gold status. I mean, you might easily save enough just in check baggage fees pretty quickly to outpace the value of the other options if you're going to fly American any number of times. And keep in mind, elite status benefits like that, you're going to get the ability to extend some of those benefits to other people on the same reservation as you too. So yeah,

I mean, that could be a good one at 70 nights or 80 or 90. If you pick the suite upgrade at 70 and you pick the fine credit at 80 or whatever, maybe it's a 90 or like, I don't really need another suite upgrade or another fine credit or whatever it might be. But I guess I could take American Airlines gold status. Keep in mind gold status with American is really the bottom tier of status. It's more like the silvery status of every other program it sounds a little bit better than it really is um but then at 100 nights it gets a little bit better yeah uh at 100 nights you can pick uh instead of gold status you could pick platinum status so that's you know american's second tier which is equivalent to gold on every other program that does those those colors um but uh and that's also

not giftable but you know platinum status uh also gives you one world sapphire status which means if you're flying you know internationally it won't work in in the u.s like flying you know american or whatever in the u.s you won't get into lounges there. But flying internationally, you'll be able to get into business class lounges, even if you're flying an economy, as long as you're flying on a one-world flight the same day. Also gives you other

Sapphire status, gives you other perks like priority checking and boarding and other stuff with one-world airlines. Then, of course, you have more perks with American Airlines itself with the platinum status. Yeah. And valuable for me as a family traveler because I can pick the main cabin extra seating for my whole family, for everybody on my reservation.

So in fact, I had a reservation booked earlier this year with eight people on it. I was able to pick the main cabin extra seats for all eight of us without a fee. So, I mean, it certainly could be a valuable park. If I were going to stay 100 nights, if I were going to earn 100 Elite Night credits, I would probably at 100 pick Platinum status with American. I mean, I think anyway. Now I say I probably would. And you have to consider that there are other ways to earn elite status with American because of the fact that you can earn loyalty points, both with credit card spend, and with things like their shopping portal and their, you know, hotel booking platform. So there are a lot of different ways to earn credit towards American Airlines elite status. And just like I mentioned with United and Air Canada, if you ultimately want a higher level

of American Airlines elite status, this isn't going to get you a shortcut to Platinum Pro or Executive Platinum. You're still going to need to earn all the loyalty points from scratch, essentially, to get to those levels. This is more so if you want to have American Airlines elite status benefits without having to earn anything on the American side, just from your hotel stays. Right, right. Now, this is not all. So this is how you can get a year of elite status with

starting at 70 Hyatt nights. But what if you don't fly American Airlines or One World carriers that much? And so you just want status for a day. They've got you covered there because as long as you have at least Explorist elite status with Hyatt, which you get at 30 nights with Hyatt, then you can use your points to buy status for a day. Now, again, unfortunately, this can't be gifted or transferred so the so you have to use it for yourself but um the nice thing here is like let's say you're you're doing a very special trip uh where you really want top tier status you want well not you want platinum pro which is very high level status with american You can buy that for a day for 12,000 Hyatt points.

If you're okay with just Platinum status, you could buy it for a day for 8,000 points and for Gold status, 5,000 points. So you can use your Hyatt points to buy American status for a day, cover the actual trip you're going to take that you care about. Is that worth it? Well, I mean, it depends on the situation, of course. So, you know, I think especially if you're traveling with a number of other people and especially if, you know, picking preferred seats and the chance of an upgrade and getting free checked bags and all that stuff is valuable to you, even the cheapest one one the gold status for

a day at 5 000 would get you all those things like everybody would have i think it's one check bag i can't raise one or two but everybody in reservation would get one um and so 5 000 points to check a bunch of bags you know because it's one per person um could be really valuable. And so it depends on your situation. But yeah, it can be a really good deal, I think. Yeah, I would agree with that. I think that that's exactly what it comes down to. I think, if you're traveling by yourself, maybe, maybe not, whether it's worth it. I wouldn't redeem for status for a day expecting to get an upgrade because that's something that's just super highly variable in terms of whether or not that's going to happen. So that wouldn't be

the main reason I would choose status for a day. But certainly for the checked bag, you know, the priority boarding, maybe even, you know, it could be I think it could be worth it. Like you said, if you're traveling with a group of people, particularly, I think that that makes a lot of sense. Platinum Pro status, I think that's the top option here, right? And that's the first three checked bags free. I mean, my goodness, that's enough check bags for probably most people in most situations, but that could be useful. And if you were moving, I mean, somebody was moving from place to place and you needed to pack up a lot of stuff, I mean, that could certainly be a way to save some money on whatever the fees would be to pay for that so yeah and and if you think about

if you think about um if you had been thinking about like trying to earn status through flying or through shopping or whatever and and what that might have cost you, uh, you know, maybe spending 5,000 points here and there might be a lot cheaper than, uh, what you might've done otherwise. So something, something to think about. Um, now let's talk about getting those nights with Hyatt just briefly. Um, Hyatt, there's not as many shortcuts as with Marriott. You're not going to automatically get 30 or 40 nights as you can with Marriott each year just by having some credit cards. There's a few, like the World of Hyatt personal card gives you five nights automatically, and then you can earn two elite nights for every $5,000 you spend. The business card doesn't give you any automatic nights, but it gives you five

elite nights per $10,000 spend. We have a post on shortcuts to Hyatt status where you can look at what other options there are. the nights to get there in order to get those like milestone rewards, then you're going to have to do the stays and or spend some combination of that. However, you know, there's often opportunities to get a status match or challenge to explore a status. So if you wanted to do this status for a day thing, having explore status would get you to where you can do that. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and like Greg said, I think, you know, for me, I look at it and say, well, you know, I have played the shopping portal game to earn American Airlines elite status, but I

don't fly American all that often. This would be something that might be appealing to me because I don't have to go through the time and effort to earn status through all of the other means. I could just buy it every now and then with some high points if and when it comes in handy and I think I'll need it. So that's, I think, a really good point, a good way to look at it for those of us who don't fly American so much that we really need the status, but we liked having the easy access to it. This gives you a different path for easy access. Yeah. Yeah. For me, you know, for me, I'm looking at Alaska and saying, I'm probably going to be earning Alaska status through by booking award flights and getting

one world status that way. They partner with Americans. So if I made sure that my Alaska number was on any American flights I take, I'd be covered. And so this doesn't really excite me that much. And I previously was excited because I often buy flights for some family members who are not traveling with me, and I would have liked to have given status to one of them, but I can't. It's not giftable. So instead, if you have American Airlines status, American Airlines will let you buy like status for a day that you can give to someone. So that's another option you can go with if you want to look to gifting to somebody else, but not through the Syatt channel, apparently. Yeah. All right. So I mean, kind of interesting anyway, that you

can have some level of status with airlines just from your hotel nights. So it can be worth kind of planning out what's your strategy going to be over the course of the year. So I guess I have to ask you, Greg, what are you going to do? Are you going to requalify for globalists this year? Are you going to requalify for titanium status? Does the chance at elite status with an airline influence your decisions in those regards in any way? So with, let me answer Marriott first with Marriott, um, probably. So I do have the two credit cards. And so as long as I earn 30 nights through actual stays, through tricks like if I have a four nights day, book a five nights stay where you have the fifth night free with points. Things like that can all like inch me up towards the required nights.

I pick five nights as my 50 night choice benefit, you know, and so on. So, all those things, I think that re-upping Marriott Titanium is very likely for me, plus just the fact that Marriotts tend to be like all over the place. So, it's easy to just find yourself having stayed a lot of nights at Marriott's in my situation. Hyatt, oh man, it's tough. I love, love, love Hyatt Globalist status and the perks you get along the way with milestone rewards. And the problem is that now that they don't have the partnership with SLA, Small Luxury Hotels, which they did the right way, I'm not staying at Hyatt,. I'm not staying at Hyatt, like I'm not staying at Hyatt Hotels or hotels booked through Hyatt as often as I used to be.

And so I have to look at things and say, is it really worth it anymore? I mean, the perks are fantastic. So when I do stay, I really am glad I have it. But it's tough, especially seeing how like Hyatt seems to be going in the wrong direction from Hilton. I don't know long-term efforts. So my guess is I'll probably re-up this year, but maybe not afterwards if things don't look good, but I'm not sure. What about you? You know, the airline elite status through Marriott might tip me to picking up a few extra elite nights. So my situation with Marriott is that I am one year short of lifetime platinum and 54 nights, I think, short of lifetime platinum.

And I'm in the same situation as Greg. I get the 40 nights each year from the two cards. So I'm going to get 40 nights next year. So I'm 14 total nights I need between this year and next year on top of the platinum status in order to have lifetime platinum. And at that point, I'm very unlikely, I think, to chase status with Marriott after that. I'll be happy with my lifetime platinum. But since I need an extra 14 nights at some point between this year and next year anyway, then that means if I did those all this year, then that would put me at 54. Plus, if I add the five nights from picking that as the

choice benefit, then we're at 59. So now I'm like 16 nights. And I have a lot of unplanned travel yet this year. So well, I shouldn't say a lot of I have some anyway, this year. So I think there's a chance that I'll go for 75 nights to kind of have the two statuses. I think that'll be kind of interesting. And I tend to fly Star Alliance more often, though, I'm usually on award tickets. So it's not necessarily super valuable to me. But I may go for 75 this year is what I'm going to say. I like like you said, I don't have as many Hyatt nights booked this year as I have in years past. I do have some. I don't know where we're going to go with that yet. I'm certainly going to shoot for 40 nights in order to get a guest of honor award

in the suite upgrade. But but beyond that, I'm not yet sure. I don't know if I'm going to get close enough to 60. It is helpful, though, that spend on the card is going to make that a little bit easier. So I'm going to do my 15 K spend for my category one to four free night anyway. So there are six elite nights that are going to come in plus the five for holding the cards. That puts me at 11 plus my stays. So I don't think that the advantage stuff is likely to influence me though,

in terms of, of where I'm going to end up with Hyatt. I don't think that has much influence for me because American status is still relatively easy to get otherwise. So I don't think it's going to make much of a difference for me. Yep. All right. We agree on that.

It sounds like we're in similar situations. Yeah. All right. All right. That brings us to this week's question of the week. And I think I'm going to do two because I think the first one's really quick. But if the first one ends up being longer than I expected, we'll hold one for next week. Yeah. All right. loyalty points away from executive platinum status with American Airlines? Should I mattress run advantage hotels for bonus points? It would cost me about $1,200 to earn 30,000 elite points. So elite qualify or loyalty points rather, is this something I should do? So you can book hotels

through advantage hotels and earn loyalty points. And apparently Vernon has found a situation where it would cost him about $1,200 to book a hotel that he presumably doesn't even really need just to earn the 30, he's looking at getting four, spending four cents per qualifying mile, per loyalty point. That's really high. There are better deals, including with booking hotels. There are much better deals

where you could be looking at more like two cents. So I would not do that. I would also note that with Advantage Hotels, you could book a stay in like a cheap stay in like Mexico or Bali or somewhere. And at least in my experience, you don't actually have to show up or anything and you'll still get those loyalty points. So I definitely would not be doing $1,200.

But there's so many ways through portals and credit card spend and cheaper hotels that you could get to 30,000. I do think it's probably worth trying to get there if you fly American a decent amount, but I would not do it the way you're planning. Yeah. So it doesn't seem worth it to me either, especially when you consider things like, I don't know, you go through the portal and sign up for Blue Apron, and I think it's like

4,500 miles. And the Blue Apron is a meal delivery service. So you're overpaying a little bit for the food, but you're getting food that you're presumably going to eat anyway. So that has some value to it. This is a pretty cheap way to earn 4,500 miles. And that's one of the million different meal delivery things that are available and one of the many examples of things. So I feel like 30,000 loyalty points should be a lot cheaper to earn just like Greg. But if they weren't, the way I would look at this is say, okay, how much value do I expect to get out of executive platinum status? Because it's going to have to be a lot more than $1,200 for

me to consider spending $1,200 on a hotel stay that I don't need. So if you're going to light $1,200 on fire, you better be lighting it on fire because you're going to get 1,800 or 2,000. Or for me, I mean, it would probably have to be double, right? I'd probably be really confident that I'm going to get at least $2,400 in value out of executive platinum status. Now, I can't tell you how much value you're going to get out of that

because I don't know how often you fly American, how much you value the various perks, but that's what you need to ask yourself. Am I going to get $2,400 in solid value because I am spending $1,200 on it? So I need to be getting a lot more out of it. Yeah, no, perfect. That's exactly right. That's the way to think about it. If you think you're going to be getting, as Nick said, if you think you're going to be getting $1,200 out of it, even $1,500 or something like that, not worth it why why why spend that much money for to break

even to hopefully break even or even to hopefully you know get a little more benefit as opposed to just keep that 1200 like what if you just kept those the 1200 and said whenever flying first class was important to you you use some of that money to pay for first class. Whenever, you know, or flying Comfort Plus or whatever American calls that, you know, pay for that and use that $1,200. That's your bankroll for that and see whether it lasts you the whole year and you get what you want without having to worry about, you know, trying to get to executive platinum. And those weren't even good examples because you're still going to be on the upgrade list. You'll still get into the higher level of economy

with Platinum Pro, which you have. So I don't know. You have to look at what the incremental benefits of executive platinum are and say, can I pay for those instead? Yeah, that's important. The incremental benefits, right? Because you're already getting benefits at Platinum Pro.

So it has to be worth more than $1,200 more. I would have a hard time justifying that personally, but in your situation, maybe it is justifiable. It's very difficult to say that for somebody else, but that's the examination you have to make. Could I just spend that $1,200, like Greg said, buying what it is that I want? You know, maybe less than $1,200 to buy those things. So anyway, yeah.

So that was that. On that note, though, I am going to sneak in this second one. And that's one is when we get often Matt says, hey, FM team, how do you value your time? Once Greg said he doesn't spend time tracking the minutia of Rakuten points back in a broader sense, how do you value your time? Would you spend an hour to save $20 or would you spend an hour for a 50% chance of saving $40? I was thinking about this when the $15 Walmart credit was mentioned recently, the Walmart app had a $15 credit for Walmart Plus members over the holidays. He said it didn't show up for me in

the app when I tried, but I decided it wasn't worth pursuing. But a lot of times I wonder if what I'm doing is worth the payoff or potential payoff. Happy New Year. Thanks for all you do. So do you, how do you decide which deals are worth going after? Is it like, ah, it's only $15. It's not worth my time. And it's just like a blanket. If it's less than $20 in savings, I don't bother with it. Or is it case by case thing? How do you decide what's worth it? I mean, it is more case by case. i don't have like an algorithm that tells me um but uh the walmart thing was uh was one where i looked at it and said i don't shop much at walmart i i'm not even gonna bother i've got too many things going on so i used to i used to get really stressed by all those things coming out of it and they always tend

to come out around the holidays like you have black friday stuff then you have like right before christmas and all that right before the holidays all these little things come up also some big things but and it used to stress me out to no end because it's like i just don't have time for all that and and to pay attention to my family and everything else. So at some point I just decided, no, I'm just not going to sweat the little things at all. And that has been such a relief and been doing that for many years now. So lots of little things like that.

I just don't even bother it. You know, if I see there's something like, just click here and you get like $20 in Lyft credits. Yeah, I'll click. But then if it leads to like some problems, I'm not going to spend any time trying to track it down. Right? Right. Right. Right. I think that's it. Like, I'm not I don't get stressed over those things. That's exactly it anymore. And for me, it's partly, you know, all the things you said, but also partly

that over time, enough experience with these deals has shown me that there's always a new deal around the corner. So if I miss this one, I'll probably catch like the next date. And I'm not too worried about the one that I miss. There's always something else coming around. So I don't sweat it. And like, you know, that is exactly the whole point of the, I don't track with, you know, great, great precision, every single Rakuten purchase to make sure that I earned exactly the multiplier that it says. Like, I precision, every single racket and purchase to make sure that I earned exactly the multiplier that it says, like, I mean, I generally take a look at it. And I usually have an idea of what I should have earned. And, you know, it's not that I don't pay any attention to

it. But you know, if I if I earned 50 points less than what I expected, I'm not going to waste my time with an email over the 50 points, there's another deal coming around the corner. So don't sweat the small things in general. But you know, that was a situation where that was a deal that I took advantage of. And, you know, because I, I actually what happened was my wife found a Lego set to buy as a gift for another family member, and it came with $15 in Walmart cash. And as I read through the thread, there was somebody who said, Oh, I was able to apply the 15 that I got for free from this other deal and link to it. And I happened to click that. And I was like, Oh, well, let me pull up the app.

And boom, I had the free $15 in Walmart cash in the app. And I was going to buy the Legos anyway. So it just saved me 15 bucks on the Legos. Plus, I got another $15 in Walmart cash from buying the Legos. And then I was able to parlay that into diapers on clearance that we stumbled upon while in a Walmart neighborhood market. So I mean, it worked out really well in the end. But it wasn't that I was stressing about, oh, I got to check this. And I didn't sign my wife up for Walmart Plus to see

if she can get the $15 credit too, even though we've got another card that would cover Walmart Plus. I'm not going to overextend, I guess, especially like you said, busy time of year and all that. But when it's easy and simple and it's convenient and fits in, go after it, enjoy it. But don't stress yourself out over the deals. Always another deal. There you go. All right. That brings us to the end of this week's episode.

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