Frequent Miler on the Air - American Airlines takes elite gaming to the next level | Ep181 | 12-17-22

Episode Date: December 17, 2022

American Airlines clearly is not a player-hater: the newly revamped AAdvantage Loyalty Points program seems to be designed with an eye toward gamification. Gone are the days when George Clooney's character from Up in the Air was the ideal of an airline's best customer because this new program values those of us who earn miles without flying. Listen in to hear us discuss our takeaways form this week's AAdvantage announcement -- and a lot more. Join our email list: https://frequentmiler.com/subscribe 1:00 Giant Mailbag: Thanks for the tip on how to use Dell credits https://frequentmiler.com/how-to-convert-xbox-egift-cards-into-microsoft-store-credit/ 4:20 What crazy thing....did Capital One do this week? https://frequentmiler.com/capital-one-shut-me-down-again/ 9:31 Mattress running the numbers: Revamping our Reasonable Redemption Values for hotel points https://frequentmiler.com/what-are-marriott-bonvoy-points-worth/ https://frequentmiler.com/what-are-hyatt-points-worth/ https://frequentmiler.com/what-are-hilton-points-worth-and-should-we-buy-points/ 22:19 Awards we booked this week: Apply Delta Upgrades online https://frequentmiler.com/apply-delta-upgrade-certificates-online/ 30:26 Main Event: American Airlines takes elite gaming to the next level  https://frequentmiler.com/sweeping-changes-at-american-airlines-is-it-more-aadvantageous/ 1:00:08 Question of the Week: How do you know which hotels are eligible for the Hilton Aspire resort fee credit? A weird reader data point. https://www.hilton.com/en/resorts/ 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 Liler on the Air starts now. Today's main event, American Airlines takes elite gaming to the next level. If you like the loyalty point game in 2022 you're probably gonna love it in 2023

i've been having fun i've been having fun too but if you earn all your status from american airlines flying you might not be too happy so we'll get into the the new and not just because you're flying american i i take it not just because you're flying American, I take it. Not just because you're flying American. No, it's because you're not going to get as much, as many benefits if you're only earning loyalty points from flying. But we'll get into all of that. First, of course, we have the giant mailbag. Today's giant mail comes from Apple Podcast Reviews. And this review is from JP90210.

And JP says, I really enjoyed listening to you guys talk about the miles and points hobby. You're one of the best out there. And I listen to every episode, even though most times I'm listening a few weeks behind. I just listened to the episode where Greg gave me the best option to use all my Dell credits. I never knew about using Xbox gift cards to buy stuff on the Microsoft store. Best advice ever. Thank you. I will definitely keep listening to you guys. On a side note, I think you should not hold back deals from your subscribers for the fear of killing the deal. Because it seems to me there

are so many folks writing about this hobby that inevitably other folks will be taking advantage of the deal and those loyal to you might be missing out my two cents. There you go. I mean, that's a good point. And when we've talked about on the show before, and when we've certainly also talked about behind closed doors, so to speak, that we often talk about where that line is in terms of what to publish and whatnot. And we do try to err on this side of what it's going to benefit readers the most, right? Right, right. And the Xbox gift card deal, that's one that was kind of on the edge.

Do we publish it or not? But we decided to. The deal for those who aren't keeping up is that if you have American Express business platinum card, you get $200 every six months in credit against Dell purchases. And if you don't know what to buy at Dell with that $200, one option is to buy Xbox gift cards, and then you'll get your money back for those purchases

up to $200 with your business platinum card. And then you can load those gift cards into the Microsoft store and you could buy things there, not just Xbox or Xbox games. You could buy laptops, you could buy peripherals, you could buy lots of software options or whatever. The laptop I use right now is bought through that method. So that's what JP was talking about. And there are other things that we... So we wrote about the Bose headphones. If you're looking for things at Dell,

remember, it's not just computers that Dell sells. And we wrote about their deal on Bose headphones over Black Friday. But then I also got looking because my wife wants a Fitbit for Christmas and they sell a whole bunch of the different Fitbits. They sell the Pixel Watch, the Google Pixel Watch, it looks like, but they've been out of stock. So, I mean, there are some things that aren't just Dell computers that are there.

So we've talked about that before and they've changed over the years. They used to have TVs and Roombas and there are a lot of those things that they don't have anymore, but there are some things that you may not immediately associate with Dell that you can buy at Dell.

Yeah. One thing that I've bought for gifts often or for myself is Amazon Echo Dot devices or fun little devices. And so as long as you don't care about Apple listening to everything you say in the house, it's a nice little gift. Or Amazon listening in that case.

But yes, he's at Apple. But maybe they're listening too. I don't know. Maybe they're all sharing that data. Apple's listening to your iPhone. That's right. That's right. Somebody is listening all the time. That's the moral of the story. But so, all maybe they're listening too. I don't know. Maybe they're all sharing that data. Apple's listening to your iPhone. That's right. That's right. Somebody is listening all the time.

That's the moral of the story. But so, all right. Well, good. Thank you, JP, for the feedback on that one and for the zip code that brings back memories because we all know where 90210 is. So that brings us, I think, to what's our next segment, Greg? Get me back on track here. What a crazy thing. Did Capital One do this week?

Capital One's been doing lots of crazy things. I've been super excited about the crazy things that Capital One's been doing, but you haven't been. What happened? Well, so, you know, we've talked a million times about how a couple of years ago, Capital One shut down my Venture card with no obvious reason. It seems to be related to a little screw up I did with my Capital One 360 bank account seven or eight years ago now. But now, so my wife has the Venture X card and she added me as a authorized user and uh the whole point of it i i was kind of testing to see what would happen you know as as a blogger i almost have to find out right like will will they hold it against my wife that that i'm like trying to get back into the capital one world by her adding me as a authorized user.

And as much as I like you, I'm kind of rooting for this to not work out because like that makes it a funnier story, right? It's like, oh man, they're still finding you, not rooting against you, Greg, not really. And so a month after getting the card, my wife got some strange emails from Capital One saying your request to replace your authorized user card has, you know, has been received. Uh, we've, you know, changed, I forget what the second one was, but, um, basically what had happened behind the scenes without any kind of, um, formal message to us until it came much later by a snail mail was that they had shut down my account for

the same reason, same non-reason as they had shut down my venture card. So here's the thing. It's kind of ridiculous for Capital One at a very high level, at a business level, because if they sort of connected all the dots and said you know they they probably should avoid these kind of shutdowns for people who are you know bloggers or writing about their influencers of some kind you would think you'd think they wouldn't want that kind of press but i mean don't you get the blogger treatment craig come Come on. To their credit, I guess. They don't treat me special. The interesting thing that I'm happy about is that they didn't shut down my wife's

account. That's nice. They seem to be tacitly approving her keeping her account despite the fact that she fraternizes with the evil Craig. They're like, oh, you're one the evil Greg. Yes. So.

You're like, oh, you're one of those Davis Keens. All right. I'll let you keep the card. Just don't give him one. The snail mail letter was kind of threatening, though. I thought. I don't know if you read it this way. I did.

Yeah. There was a line in there that said, basically, don't even think about adding him again as an authorized user. Don't even, you know. Oh. Those weren't the exact words. No no, but they were getting it there. They definitely wanted you to read. Don't you dare try this again? So they're going for there, which is just it is absolutely crazy, both because it seems like the only guess you have as to what happened seems so trivial and small and, and B, because again,

you would think that since it's not like, you know, we don't know people over there that somebody would be like, you know what, this is kind of silly. We should just, you know, fix this.

But, but, but I guess, like you said, to their credit, somewhat, somewhat, I guess like they are just gonna,

you know, stick with their guns, so to speak. And, and I guess, you know, if they reversed yours now and they don't do the same thing for other people, I guess that wouldn't seem fair anyway, right?

It wouldn't be fair. Right, right. What they really should do is have some kind of process for reviewing these blacklists and maybe giving people who are on their blacklist a way of appealing. Because I think if they you know read the explanation for what happened with my capital one 360 account they'd be like oh well that's no big deal and they could they could look and see there was no other activity that looks suspicious so or they could look at it and be like you know i know we still don't like rectifrequent miler you can't have a card at least you'd feel like you were hurt, right? Right, right, right. But I guess they don't have much incentive to add that kind of thing, I guess. Sure they do.

You'd stop writing bad things about them. But yes, no, for most people, for most people, they don't have any incentive. You're right. There's a total lack of incentive for reviewing that and a potential world of pain if they continue to choose to do business with somebody that they thought was a criminal. So I guess that's... I mean, they are missing out on probably quite a few very good customers, I would think, by keeping them shut down for stupid little things. Yeah. Anyway.

Anyway. All right. So that's crazy. Still crazy. My craziness doesn't sound like capital one's going to uncrazy anytime soon. So let's move on to this week's mattress running the numbers. So for mattress running the numbers this week, you went through and redid the reasonable redemption values on a bunch of the hotel programs. Not only did you refigure them, but you revamped the process, the procedure, the methodology. So explain what changed and why. Yeah. Yeah. So first, our reasonable redemption values are a

point value, how much are points worth sort of, but the idea is that whatever the value is that we say for the RRV, the reasonable redemption value, that's a value at which it's reasonable to get that much value or more. It's not really possible to say, for example, Marriott points are worth exactly X amount because it depends on what award you book. Sometimes you're going to get only half a cent value. Sometimes you might get two cents per point value. And so it's going to vary. So what we do is we find a midpoint where we say it's totally reasonable to expect to get this much or more. That hasn't changed that definition. But what I used to do is I would collect a lot of data, and I still do this, on the cash price for hotels

and the award price. And I would compare them together and come up with the RRV. But what I used to do was I would use the pre-tax rate, cash rate for the hotel and use that as the cash equivalent value of the stay. And the idea was that there would be two offsetting factors that, that I'm, I'm not accounting for. I wasn't accounting for how many points you would earn on a paid stay. Like there's real value to doing a paid stay over an award stay because you earn points.

Um, so I thought those two things like offset each other pretty well. And so I just made that simplifying principle. There was one big problem with that approach, which was that one, I hadn't tested that assumption, but two, the resort fees were not properly accounted for. So with Hilton, Hyatt, and Wyndham, you don't pay resort fees on awards days. With Marriott and IHG and most others, you do pay resort fees on awards days. And yet I had the exact same formula for all of these chains. And so Marriott and IHG should be penalized for charging resort fees. They should get a worse RV anyway.

Um, so what I did, I, I, uh, I created a new formula that accounts for all the taxes and fees correctly accounts for the resort fees, if there are any, um, and, you know, and, and calculated with a new data set. And, uh, what happened is I did that for Hilton, Hyatt, and Marriott. I haven't yet done it for IHG or others. But what happened was all three of them, the RRVs increased. And, you know, on the surface, I thought, well, that's natural. There's been a lot of inflation in hotel prices. Of course, the value of points earned was not actually enough to offset the cost of taxes and fees before. And so by acknowledging in the formula

that you don't pay taxes and fees, except for resort fees under certain circumstances, as I explained, but in general, you don't pay taxes and fees. That makes points worth more. And so that's all accounted for. Also, the value of points earned is accounted for in this new formula. I should have mentioned that earlier. Anyway, so it's a new, better formula.4 cents per point. It went up to 0.48. So it's gotten incredibly close to the 0.5, which is the amount that sense to buy Hilton points prospectively? I still wouldn't necessarily do it, but it increases by far the likelihood that you're going to get at least that much value or more by buying Hilton points at half cent each. It makes it more reasonable. It makes it more reasonable to do it. Absolutely. Yep. And Hyatt jumped the most from 1.6 to 2.1. That's a huge jump. Again, before a lot of it is

due to the new formula, but still a sizable amount is I think due to the fact that there's before a lot of it is due to the new formula, but still a sizable amount is, I think, due to the fact that there has been a lot of inflation and that Hyatt still has award charts, unlike the other two. And so when prices go through the roof, Hyatt still constrains the upper bound point cost of a hotel. And that's great news. And so Hyatt points 2.1 um that's totally jives with my experience in booking hyatt hotels over the past year or so yeah um and uh it's just yeah yeah i mean you've been able to get incredible value because rates are so high but that doesn't this beg the question now rates have gone up lot. Everybody else has gotten rid of their award charts. Is Hyatt ripe for devaluation? Are we going to see them get rid of their award charts too? What do you think? Yeah, I don't think they will. I think the

leadership there understands the value of their loyalty program. They've shown that time and again that they really want to keep its value and they've done tweaks to sort of devalue things, but nothing big enough to make us all run away. They've kept the program better than the others each time they've made those tweaks. So I don't think they'll get rid of the reward chart. Will they continue to do things like increase in category a lot of hotels? Yeah, I'm sure they will. That the hotels that are the most popular to book with points, we're going to see them go up in category again. And that's basically a devaluation for those hotels.

So we'll see that most likely. Yeah, it has been great, though. I mean, if you've got Hyatt points, and in fact, I have a friend who knew nothing about miles and points six months ago, and maybe eight months ago, where are you going? And, and I found a bunch of Hyatt's that were like 8,000 points a night that would fit her needs. And she realized she could stay for far more nights or for far less points anyway, than she intended to. And then she took a subsequent road trip across the United States and back staying at almost entirely Hyatt's. And this is someone who just never even thought about miles and points and loyalty programs and probably hadn't stayed in a Hyatt before, but it's just been incredible opportunities to get way outside of value. And just to be clear to people who are kind of newer

to this, what Nick's talking about is when you have a Chase Sapphire Preferred or Chase Sapphire Reserve card, they encourage you to book travel through the Chase portal and you get more than one cent per point value that way. And it's a nice, easy way to book travel and get decent value for your points. But often a better way, and sometimes a far, far better way, is to transfer those points to Hyatt one-to-one, which you can do for free from Chase and then book through Hyatt. So just look up the point price on Hyatt's website, compare to the point price on Chase's website. And that's a nice, easy way to see which is better. It is. As I said, usually Hyatt will be better. Plus you'll, if you want to earn elite status with Hyatt or you have elite status, like you'll earn elite benefits and you'll enjoy elite benefits during your stay by booking through Hyatt instead of through Chase. And you'll actually enjoy them unlike other chains that will frustrate you with their elite benefits.

Well, you know, I mean, Hyatt has great benefits at the top tier globalist level. That's true. That's true. It's not good otherwise. Not great. Yeah. But although I, you know, if you have 30 nights a year, you're like an explorers and you've done 30 nights a year, then you've got some club upgrades that you can use once you've hit 30 nights. Actually, once you've hit 20 nights, you pick up a couple of club upgrades and then at 30, pick up a couple more and a free night certificate. So I think those milestone rewards still reward people who don't stay all the way to globalist. Now the on-property benefits, obviously, or not obvious if you're new to this, but the on property benefits are way better at globalist

status and fairly non-existent at most of the other statuses, except for, like I said, those choice benefits, milestone rewards you get on the way towards status, getting those club upgrades could be really valuable for somebody who only stays 30 nights a year and hasn't had club access in the past so uh so anyway that's my two cents on that we like hyatt everybody knows that points are worth even more now so good i think that was interesting and that was really an interesting find that yeah right and one more thing i'll say marriott went up from 0.75 to 0.8, not a big increase. I was kind of surprised because I thought that the resort fees would make the ROV go down, but luckily for Marriott, the other taxes and fees are so high that it actually made the value go up. And the other thing I kind of modeled what would happen. So in 2023, Marriott's not going

to have a cap on award prices anymore. And so I took out all the data points. I did a separate analysis, taking out all the data points where it looked like the hotel was, the award price was at the maximum level it was allowed in 2022. And I redid the calculation with that data set and it didn't change much at all. I surprisingly didn't have very many data points where the price was capped. And so it didn't make much of a difference. Now, that said, if you're staying only at hotels that are super popular and super popular, you know, locations, Hawaii, the Maldives, stuff like that, they're probably all going to be capped at the top. And the value will go way down for those when when the gloves come off for that. But on average, I didn't find much of a difference.

So that was good news for Marriott fans. Yeah, that is good news. It's good news to hear. So, all right. Well, points are becoming more valuable for hotels. And this has been a great time to have hotel points. I got to say this last year has been a fantastic time to have hotel points. I think the one thing that has little to do with us or maybe relatively little is I got

to imagine that hotel owners want more reimbursement. I was just going through some receipts from hotel stays and I saw one of them where I had used points and it actually listed what Marriott was paying for the room. And I think this was a place that was 35,000 points or something like that. Maybe it was less than that, whatever it was, they've gotten reimbursed $36 from Marriott on a night when the room was over 200 bucks for the going rate. So I got to imagine that owners are going to want more, whether that affects us or not, it trickles down or not. I got to imagine owners want more. Yeah, that's a good point. But do keep in mind, in most cases, they have a policy of some sort

where if the hotel is, let's say, 90% full, then they go up to much higher rates that they pay the hotels. And so the idea is that, oh, this room would have been empty anyway, most likely. So it's not really costing you much. So we're not going to pay you much for that. I think that's the idea behind not paying them much for those rooms. It is. Yeah. But I think they're still like, well, yeah, it would have gone empty, but we could have sold it as a Priceline Express deal at the last minute for 80 bucks or whatever. You know, maybe. Oh, for sure.

Yeah. I'm sure hotel owners are looking for every which way. I'm sure they are, yeah. These days. These days. All right. So, all right. That brings us, I think, to awards we booked this week.

And so what'd you book this week, Greg? I booked a test flight. So Delta introduced the ability to apply regional and global upgrade certificates online when you're booking a flight. Now, as a reminder, Delta's upgrade certificates become available as choice benefits to those who earn Platinum Elite status. Those Platinum Elites can pick four regional upgrades as a choice. They could also pick other things. And then at Diamond status, one of the three choices you get is to pick, for example, four global upgrade certificates. And so those are used internationally to upgrade to either premium select or to Delta One. And that's kind of complicated because they devalued those

certificates this year, early this year, and made it so that, so it used to be, you would automatically, if there was upgrade space available and you booked the cheapest coach international flight, you could upgrade all the way to Delta One suites or whatever the Delta One, you know, lie flat, great business class experience is. Now what they did is the upgrade path, again, from regular economy is you get put into premium select, which is a little bit better than coach, but it's not, you know, it's, it's more like domestic first class basically. So it is better

than, than coach. Don't get me wrong. But, um, but the difference between, you know, uh, premium select and businesses is absolutely huge. Um, and, um, but you're not locked out of an upgrade to Delta One. What happens is you're confirmed in premium select automatically, and then 24 hours before the flight, you're supposed to be put onto an upgrade list. So you have a chance of getting upgraded to Delta One. In practice, at least for me, that last part just did not work. And it was just a nightmare, just getting my tickets issued at all so that I could fly, let alone trying to get upgraded. I did get upgraded once, I didn't get upgraded the other time, even though tons of seats were available. It was very, very frustrating. So backing up, you can still get from a global upgrade, you could still confirm into Delta

One by booking a premium select seat from the get-go and upgrading that. So there's still an option. Anyway, the thing that happened this week is now you can do these upgrades online when you're booking a ticket. You didn't used to be able to do that. And the reason that's interesting is that, you can apply your global upgrade certificate to upgrade to first class automatically. As long as there's a seat available, there doesn't have to be upgrade space at all. And that's really interesting because there's some flights that

you'd be surprised that fit into that pattern. And it's not obvious as a person browsing the Delta website when this happens. So for example, Delta right now has a flight Detroit to Honolulu. So that's a long's A350. It's the one that they bought from LATAM when they built their partnership with LATAM. So it's different. It's not suites. It's a 222 configuration, which means you won't necessarily have direct aisle access unless you're in the middle. But the seats are wider. They're very comfortable, according to reports, and it all looks very nice. So that would be a fantastic way to fly to or from Hawaii. I would love that. And even though on Delta's website, it shows the price as being under the Delta One column,

now when you go to book the flight, if you have a global upgrade certificate, it'll show the option to apply a certificate and it'll show the option to upgrade to first class. And that's the key. It would only show the option to upgrade to Delta one or to premium select if that, if those were the options, but this time it showed first class. So I did a dummy booking. Well, I mean, I did a real booking, but I tend to cancel it where I booked a coach fair with points and applied a global upgrade certificate. And within seconds, a thing popped up on the Delta app saying your upgrade has been confirmed to first class and I'm able to pick my seats. Interesting.

So that's really cool news for those who have global upgrade certificates. I'm in the unfortunate situation of having between my wife and I, a number of them that are going to expire on January 31st. And with our New Zealand trip coming up, I just don't have an opportunity to use them and that's just really and we've covered that you can't give them away because you have to travel on these you have to travel yeah yeah we're going through that whole thing well could our son fly it no not without one you know not without one of us and so yeah it's right it's a shame i have a related question so if you were to find a route that has more like a regular domestic first class

than what you're describing. So forget about the lie flat seats. Let's say it's more of a domestic and you can use it to instantly upgrade to that. Could you potentially do a same day change when the day comes to a flight with a lie flat seat? That's a great point. Yeah, I believe you can. When an upgrade with Delta, when an upgrade is confirmed in advance for same day changes, it's treated like it was purchased. As opposed to when you get upgraded with the free upgrade before your flight. With the free upgrade before your flight, when you do same day change, you're just back on the upgrade list. You're not, um,

you can't same day change to first class, but, uh, yeah, that's a great idea. I bet you could do that. Yeah. It has to be seats available to do that. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Also, you know what, now that I said that wouldn't work if the alternate flight has premium select on it they would probably match you to that yeah yeah premium select equals first class and deltas i see i see so i think that would only work if there was no premium select which is the situation situation you can upgrade directly anyway so you wouldn't need the same day change okay all right all right so never mind i was just thinking about it as you were describing and i was like oh yeah no that's a great idea.

Okay. It might be a way to pay a lot less, like to book to Hawaii through LA or something, and then same day change to the nonstop. I think that's still allowed with first class, but not economy to change the route. Yeah. I did that on a paid Delta flight just, I don't know, a while last fall, maybe it was at some point where I booked one through Amex Travel using my points from my business platinum card. And I booked it in first domestic first, whatever it was in recliner seats. But then same day I changed it to a route through a different city that had flatbed seats. So, yeah, I think that that sounds like it would be possible. But all right, so there may be a little bit more value

on those Guck certificates than what we thought after they changed them. Certainly still not as valuable as they used to be. Yeah, and it's very much a niche situation that I just described. Yeah, but worth being aware of those if you've got them. So good stuff there. All right, that brings us to this week's main event so what do we got for the main event greg today's main event

is american airlines takes elite gaming to the next level there's all kinds of changes coming up to their elite program in 2023 which you know made massive, massive changes for 2022. And now they're piling on some more. I'd say in a way, when you're talking about how it's like a game that you could play to earn these loyalty points and get status and status benefits, they made it more of a game than before. And the reason I'm saying that, a couple of things. One is that it used to be that, yeah, you could earn or used to be. It is right now in 2022, the case, you can earn top tier like executive platinum status just from buying things through the AA shopping portal, for example, to earn loyalty points, but you couldn't get certain like

choice benefits, like system-wide upgrade certificates that is like American Airlines version of what we were just talking about with Delta, the global upgrade certificates. They're like that. You couldn't get them unless you flew 30 segments on american airlines and so they were kind of for 2022 preserving the idea that that only the the you know people who actually fly american airlines should get some of the best perks um well they they finally realized no we've got a good thing going here where you know we're making a lot of money from all these people playing you know unlike game unlike capital one in contrast Capital One, somebody at AA understands that Greg,

the frequent miler is good for business. And so he's gaming this and more people are going to be spending more money in ways that profits American Airlines. Right. I mean, because goodness knows they must be making a fortune off of this from people like you and I that are playing the game and not flying American. Yeah, when we earn loyalty points, it's through things like the American Airlines shopping portal, it's through Simply Miles, it's through partners like staying at Hyatt or whatever. In all those cases, those partner programs are buying American Airlines miles from American. And so American is making money off all those deals and they're not having to provide any service. Until we redeem the miles, at least, I guess. But then whatever we're redeeming them at, they've established that that's a profitable price. Exactly. Exactly. So and even better, I mean, you know, people who are just playing the game are probably not not flying American Airlines very much.

And so they're not having to do anything physically for you. Right. Having to, like, serve you drinks in first class or anything, because if anything, you're probably using your miles to fly a partner that's doing all the work. Right. You're using your miles to fly JetBlue like me and get free extra legroom seats and priority check-in with JetBlue. They get to deal with the problem, not American. So there's a ton of upside for people who don't fly American Airlines much, but want to play this game

and get the benefits that you can get. And a week or two ago, we had a whole show about the kind of benefits you can get from things like this, even if you're not flying American and there are a lot of benefits that you can get. So don't forget that. And anyway, it's like a win-win. It's a win for American Airlines. They get more money, have to do less to get it. We get more status and benefits that we can use with American or other places. And I don't know who loses other than their competitors really, who are not doing this yet,

which surprised me. JetBlue, for example, had a chance, they revamped their program. They made sort of a minor, like dip their toe in the water towards this kind of approach, but didn't go nearly as far as I would have expected. So and we're going to get deeper into this. But I was actually fascinated when I looked at the American Airlines news this week because I thought that it looked very similar to what JetBlue did with their program. It's better with American because there's more flights and more ways to use things like system-wide upgrades and whatnot. But I thought that this whole concept of earning benefits along the way was very familiar. So I thought that it was interesting that there were pieces that I thought reflected pretty clearly to me. But anyway, so all right, so they've made it different.

So if you're somebody who loves flying American Airlines and loves earning your benefits by flying American Airlines, you might just want to turn off the show now because you're not going to be particularly happy. But if you're somebody who's been playing the games and going after things and you're like, oh, I'm going to go to Platinum Pro. I'm not going to bother with Executive Platinum because I'm not going to be able to use those system wide upgrades anyway because you need to have 30 segments on American. Well, we have good news for you. So that's right. That's right. So first, let me just get the bad news out of the way. If your only intent is to get to gold status, that now requires 40,000 loyalty points instead of 30,000. The other levels, though, haven't changed. The other bad news is if you are relying on getting system wide upgrades at when you earned platinum pro and executive platinum status

not so fast anymore. What happened is they've completely decoupled those kind of choice benefits from the elite level. So those upgrade certificates come at higher levels of loyalty point earnings. So let's go through, as Nick said, they made it so that you kind of earn stuff all along the way. So I'm going to just briefly go through what those earning levels are. At 15,000 loyalty points, there was no benefit before. Now you get group five boarding, which I don't know how many groups there are, but yay, I guess. And you get to choose either group four boarding instead, but that's only for one flight. Group four boarding plus priority security and check-in.

Or you could get five preferred seat coupons, which I think would probably be a better choice for most people. But, but it depends because if you're not flying American, it's not really going to have any benefit either way. No. And remember preferred seats are not like there's not any bigger. They're just a little closer to the front, but yeah,

yeah. Might be helpful. Maybe you could pick exit row with preferred seats. I'm not sure. Those are, those are considered main cabin. I prefer it or are just closer to the plane or like aisle kind of a thing. Maybe you could pick exit row with preferred seats. I'm not sure. No, those are considered main cabin extra. Preferred are just closer to the plane or like aisle kind of a thing.

So, I mean, there are some things that situations where you got like a 40 minute connection. You want to make sure you're near the front of the plane so you can get off right away. There are situations where those might come in handy. But overall, it's like they're all kind of weak at 15. But at least you get something. I mean, yeah. So at 15, they throw some things at you. You're probably not going to use any of them.

At 40,000 points, you get gold status and that comes with all kinds of benefits. You could look up and read about that. But we've talked about the lead status with American also gives you benefits with partner airlines like JetBlue and Alaska. So there's some stuff there. And then at 60,000, so just 20,000 more, this is where it gets really interesting and where American is just doubling down on the gaming aspect of this. You get 20% bonus on loyalty points earned through a number of avenues. And they're all partners. You don't get it through American Airlines itself. You get it with spend on American Airlines vacations, American Airlines hotels, American Airlines e-shopping. So that's

the American Airlines portal through dining and through Simply Miles. So wait, is this like an uncapped 20% on everything you earn? It appears to be. For six months is what View from the Wing was told about how long you get that. And so virtually all, when we've written about playing the loyalty game, the American Airlines loyalty game, virtually all the deals we've written about are either through the American Airlines loyalty game, virtually all the deals we've written about are either through the American Airlines shopping portal or through Simply Miles

or through a combination of both of them. And so this means that if you're earning your status through those things, which is what at least those on the Frequent Miler team are primarily doing, then you're getting 20% more once you hit 60,000 loyalty points. Hello. That's nice. Very nice. So, you know, you're getting to the next levels quicker. At 75,000, you get platinum status, which is the same as before.

And that just means, you know, more upgrades, more free check bags, things like that. At 100K, you get a 30% loyalty point bonus. So the bonus goes up from 20% to 30%. Presumably the clock restarts at six months, I would assume, which I find very interesting if that's true. We don't have the full details yet, but it theoretically means, let's say you're going for 125K Platinum Pro status. Then if you reach the 100K sort of towards the end of the Elite year, which the Elite year ends end of February, then you'll have some months in the next Elite year to still earn 30% bonus, get you much quicker to the 20% bonus. You know what I'm saying?

Yeah, yeah. So there's a nice little treadmill boost there if you can time it all right. And then at 125,000, you get Platinum Pro status. Then there's a big gap. You have to go all the way up to 175K to get the next benefit, which is you get to pick just one, what used to be called choice benefit. They're now called loyalty rewards, I think. You get to pick either two system-wide upgrades

certificates, bonus American Airlines miles, which are not loyalty points, but you get 20,000 of those if you don't have an AA credit card or 25,000 if you do. There's some other things, but the only other one that I found interesting, a 15% award rebate, which, again, I don't know what the limitations are on that,

but if it's kind of uncapped on one award, that could be incredibly valuable. Yeah, I mean, that could be huge, especially if you've got multiple passengers and it counts for multiple passengers, then that could be a really big one. Or even if it's only one passenger and you book a round trip award,

especially if you're the kind of person who might book an anytime award that would be at a higher level, you could get quite a few miles back with that. Yeah, I find that particularly intriguing. And I don't know, like, let's say it's uncapped on one booking, however many passengers, whether it's one way or round trip, it's uncapped. I would have a really hard time picking.

Do you know what you would pick between 15% back or two system wide upgrades? I actually, I take that back. I wouldn't have a hard time picking. I know which one I would pick. What about you? Excuse me. Yeah, so my pick here, I think pretty clearly would be the 15% award rebate

because those two system-wide upgrades, I don't have any experience using them, but I have experience hearing people complain about how difficult it is to use them. So rather than like trying to struggle and see if I could use those, man, I think I'd take 15% back if I'm able to use it on multiple passengers and a bigger booking. Now, if it's only going to be on one passenger one way or something like that, then I guess I would be more apt to take the 20,000 or 25,000 miles or take my chance at the system wide upgrades. I think if it's a choice between 20,000

miles and two system wide upgrades, maybe I take a shot at the system wide upgrades and hope that I can find a way to make them work because I'm lucky I've got a really flexible job and I have the flexibility to go different places and work remotely and everything else. So I could probably find a way to take advantage of the system wide upgrades. But man, 15% on one booking, if I'm able to do it for the whole family, that could add up to be pretty good. Yeah, yeah. Historically, American Airlines has been very stingy with their upgrade award space for

those system wide upgrade certificates. We have no idea if that'll change going forward. Historically, that could only be used on AA, but I think now they could be used on British Airways as well. Yeah, I think so, yeah. And, you know, back when I had, excuse me, I've got a bad cold and I'm trying not to cough on our audience here, but I'm struggling. You keep those coughs over there, Craig. Keep them over there. Don't spread your germs through the microphone. I'll try to cover my mouth going forward.

All right, there you go. Back when I had upgrade certificates five years ago, I don't know how long ago it was now, I found ways to use some of them but not all of them and so uh when i had some expiring i i reached out to friends one nice thing unlike delta you could apply them to someone else's ticket so there was a family friends that were flying to um chile and i applied my certificates for them so they got to fly in first class which was nice that's nice yeah so that's certainly especially because american has is one of the u.s airlines with i i'm gonna say without any data to back it up i feel like they probably have the most flights to south america at least on the routes i've checked i feel like united has very few routes to south america i'm

not sure what delta has i know they have some to Brazil, but beyond that, I'm not sure. And American has several, quite a few different routes to South America. So that could be useful, particularly if you're looking to go to South America, because their own awards tend to be ridiculously expensive based on the searches that I've done. And I have done some lately. I didn't talk about awards I booked this week because I didn't actually book anything, but I did do a lot of searching the South America for something. So, uh, so I, I have some recent experience searching, not finding much. Yeah. And just to be clear, um, Delta probably has the best network for through partners right now with Latam and Aeromexico. But, um, but yeah, for their own flights, I think that's probably true that American probably has more, but I haven't looked. Yeah, I think that's probably true that American probably

has more, but I haven't looked. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So 175, you get to pick one of those three things, two system wide upgrades, 20 or 25,000 miles, depending on whether or not you have the credit card, 15% award rebate, some other things. There's some other things too, but those are the ones that kind of perked my interest.

Um, you at 200 K. So just 25 K more. That's when you get executive platinum elite status, which is same as today. And then it's at 250K that you can select two choice benefits and all the choice benefits from there on up, you get to pick two. And so your choices are things like two system-wide upgrades, again, 20,000 miles, but this time if you have a credit card, you get 30,000 bonus miles. One of the things they add in is one or two flagship lounge visits. So if you want to visit the American Airlines flagship lounge, elite status won't get you in

there if you're not flying first class or something, uh, so, uh, you can use that, but anyway, uh, the, the, uh, amounts go, uh, the next ones, I'm not going to go into all the details after 250 K, you have to get 400 K to get some more choice benefits than 550 K, which seems like a very strange range to me. Um, they're both 150, you're adding 150, right? And 250 plus one 150 is four and then you add another 150 so why they're at 150 000 point intervals at that point that's a lot yeah they have to add on a lot at each level right right and at 550 they jump to 750 750 they jump

to a million wow and get this after a million if you want some more choices gotta get three million three million is that all three million yep and more choices, you got to get 3 million. 3 million. Is that all? 3 million. Yep. And after 3 million, you have to get 5 million. And, you know, I thought there would be like some like unbelievable gifts at these like million level or whatever.

But I don't know. They don't really get that exciting to me until at the, at the 3 million level, you get to gift someone executive platinum status, for example, as one of the, one of the gifts. So that's pretty sweet. But yeah,

I guess I'm a little surprised. Like if you think about aero plan, how they have this thing, like if you, if you earn a million points or spend a million dollars, I guess it is on the aeroplane American on the US-based Aeroplane credit card, you get a full year of being able to add a companion to any of your award flights. And so that's like one of those kind of eye-popping kind of amazing benefits, which I still would never go for, but it's kind of what I expected to see at the million

and two million or a million and 3 million, 5 million level, but not quite as eye-popping as that. Well, let's back up the track here for a second. So I am not familiar with what they are at those levels yet at the time that we record this. So I haven't looked at those levels because my eye just doesn't make it that far when we're talking about the number of points. However, maybe it should have. Do you think if they added these, I mean, because these levels are ridiculous, 1 million, 3 million, 5 million. I mean, those are just so far beyond, even if you account for the fact that there's crazy shopping offers and things like that, nothing that's going to get you to that level. If you're going to get to 1 million, 3 million, 5 million, you're spending a lot of money on American Airlines flights, or you're spending a lot of money on American Airlines

credit cards, or more likely both. And so do you think- You probably have a big business where you're filtering all the, flowing all the business through a business American Airlines credit card or something like that. You would think so. But now, or were they building in some layers of protection for folks who are going to get to that level because they might repeat the 5X Simply Miles deal at some point? Do you think they're going to bring back? So when I bring this up, if you weren't around last year, I'm sorry. But last winter, there was a crazy deal through Simply Miles where you could earn five times the payout on all the Simply Miles deals. And that was notable specifically for one, because there was a

chance to donate to a charity and earn 240 miles per dollar donated. And so, for example, if you donated a few thousand dollars, you'd end up with a million American Airlines miles, or in this case now, a million American Airlines loyalty points. I think that would have been less than $4,000 would have gotten you a million, right? So are they building in some stuff because they're going to give people that opportunity again? They know some people are going to have a million and 3 million and 5 million or what?

That's a really interesting thought. And it does make me a little more excited for these because don't get me wrong, There are some good gifts here. I was just thinking at the, compared to how, you know, how much you need for the lower levels, they didn't seem as amazing, but, um, you know, at a million, you get like a hundred thousand, uh, point mileage rebate. Um, so that's sort of like getting 10% back, I guess, on what you've earned. And you get to gift Platinum Pro or you get four system-wides. At 3 million, you get six system-wides, gift executive Platinum status, a 300,000 mileage

rebate. And then at 5 million, it's a 500,000 mileage rebate and 10 system-wides and gift executive again. So at each of these million X levels, it seems like you get a rebate. I'm not sure how those work, but that's basically, you know, 10% of what you earned. Right. Right. Yeah. I mean, so like for every million miles last year, it costs, like I said, somewhere around less than $4,000, right? So, or about 4,000, about four, a little bit more rather than $4,000 in donation would have gotten you a million so five million twenty thousand so if you you drop twenty thousand charity and you end up with 20 million or with five million american airlines miles and potentially some incredible benefits too i don't know i we don't know that

that'll come back it probably won't come back in the same way it did last year but i think there's at least some hope that we're going to see something good because otherwise these like crazy 3 million and 5 million levels I have to feel like wouldn't exist if they didn't expect some people to reach them. So I don't know. We'll see. Maybe they didn't have that in mind at all. And I'm just wishful thinking, but I can hope for the best, can I?

Of course you can. All right. So there are some, I think there are fun things to be had there. I'm looking forward to it. I actually got excited when I saw this because of the gamification of it. And because before I was kind of like lackluster

on going beyond Platinum Pro, because I thought, well, I'm never going to get the system wide upgrades anyway, because I'm not going to fly 30 segments on American. But now that they're within play, I'm kind of feeling like I might have to get an American airlines credit card in order to do some spend and hit some of these. We'll see.

We'll see. Let me not get ahead of myself, but I'm more interested than I was before. That's for sure. Same here. So, and we talked a little bit about how to win already. I see you had some, some notes about that here. So how do we talked about this a little bit, but remember, you can earn miles from all here. So we've talked about this a little bit.

But remember, you can earn miles from all those other things that we talked about. We didn't mention much about AA vacations, but you can earn when you're booking AA vacations for people booking AA vacation packages. If you've got a city MasterCard, like you've got the Premier card, for instance, don't forget that MasterCards are the cards that you'll link to simply miles and simply miles. If you're not familiar with simply miles is a rewards program. It's a card linked program. So think like sort of like Amex offers or chase offers, except that you link them to a master card. So you can link whatever master cards you want to the simply miles platform. And so he's got a number of them. They got the double cash card.

They've got the, uh, premier card. They've got the double cash card. They've got the Premier card. They've got the Rewards Plus or whatever. So you link those up to Simply Miles, and that way you sync the offers through Simply Miles and then get to earn, in some cases, easy American Airlines miles. So you'll want to make sure that you do that. And, of course, if you want the enhanced rewards like the extra miles when you get to

those milestone benefits up near the top, you're going to need to have an American Airlines credit card. Would you go after an American Airlines credit card for this, Greg? Maybe. Yeah. I mean, there's not much downside, especially to picking up a business one. It doesn't hurt your 524 status. And so, you know, why not get a, especially when they're offering a big welcome bonus, pick one up. Yeah. Keep in mind though, that the welcome bonus is not loyalty points. The welcome bonus is valuable because you can use those miles to book something. And often the welcome bonuses are pretty good on the American Airlines cards, considering some of their award chart sweet spots anyway. But those

points don't count as loyalty points you'll get one loyalty point per dollar spent on the card so it can be a nice little supplemental thing yeah you know unfortunately even if you're earning bonus points like if you're spending within a bonus category for the card you still only earn one loyalty point per dollar which is kind of unfortunate but that that's the way it is um i actually usually prefer to spend on my double cash card because i'm getting 2X. They're not American Airlines miles. They're not loyalty points at all.

But by choosing to pay with American Airlines card instead of my double cash, I'm basically buying American Airlines points for two cents each. Basically, that's the sort of mental math calculation. And I'm not really willing to do that most of the time. So the other thing to know when we're talking about Citibank cards is city merchant offers. These are card-linked offers like Amex offers, but they often, well, often, sometimes are the same vendors as are available through, yeah, merchants who are available through Simply Miles. So you can not only earn American Airlines redeemable miles plus loyalty points, but also earn cash back from city merchant offers. So that suddenly makes that combination really sweet. And if that same

merchant's also available through the American Airlines shopping portal, then you've got a great trifecta and you're doing really're, you know, doing really great. Yeah. Yeah. And that's a really good point to drive home there that those Simply Miles offers are linked to the card. So you can still go through a shopping portal, whichever shopping portal has the best payout, whether that's the American Airlines shopping portal or some other portal, you know, make sure you're still going through a shopping portal because you can in most cases. So with the trifecta to review for anybody new is you would look for a city merchant offer in your city login that shows up in your city card and sync that and go to simply miles and see if there's an offer for the same merchant

because you can link that and also earn that. If you have that card synced up with your simply miles account. And then before you spend any money at that merchant, you want to go to American Airlines eShopping or some other portal and click through the portal to go spend your money. And it should give you the mileage rebate from the portal, whatever the rebate is from Simply Miles and the rebate from City Merchant Offers. So that's the trifecta that he's talking about there, the triple stack. So you want to look for those opportunities to triple dip wherever you can, because some of them have

been really good this year. We've written about lots of them. I mean, Tim and Steven in particular have written about a ton of those great stacking offers. Yeah. Yeah. And so if you're going to play the game, those are things you need to have in your arsenal. And, you know, obviously keep following the podcast and the blog because we'll report on the best of the deals when we see them. Right. Right. Does it seem silly though, that we're doing this, Greg? Because like you and I don't really fly American. Is there, is it silly? Are we all being silly? I don't know. At some level it's silly, I'm sure. But as you've shown, I mean, there's benefits even when not flying American. And we talked about this a week or two ago

that Nick had like great experience with JetBlue, which is a partner. So, you know, it's not silly in that point, from that point of view. And you know what? If you can have fun at this and earn elite levels and everything that you wouldn't have earned anyway,

and it's not costing you an outrageous amount, why not have fun with it and play the game, earn your elite levels, earn your, I was going to say choice benefits, whatever they're called now, the loyalty rewards, and have fun with that. Well, and lastly,

I want to drive home the point that all this gaming that we're talking about here in terms of playing the loyalty points game, we're talking about the benefits of elite status. But don't forget, you're earning redeemable miles at all of those. Right. So all of those miles we're talking about, you know, getting the Platinum Pro at 125. Well, that means you've got 125,000 redeemable miles. And the thing about American is even if you're playing this game and it's a little bit silly because you're not going to fly American and use all of the elite benefits, American Airlines miles themselves are still pretty valuable. If you want to fly Etihad, now that they're bringing back the apartments on some of their routes, one of your best options to fly that is one that Greg did from London and Abu Dhabi. It's like what, 40,000 miles in

business class or 50,000 in first, right? Or 40,000 in first. I can't, it's cheap. I can't remember. I actually flew from the Maldives, which costs more. Right, right, right. And then if you fly from the Middle East to Asia, it is 50,000 in first class, you know, in the apartments, if you find a route, they're flying the apartments on going to Asia or not much more to Australia in first class from there. So there are some fantastic opportunities. Of course, Qatar business class we've written about this year and lots of great options there for using your American Airlines miles. If you want to fly Cathay Pacific or Japan Airlines, there's lots of good sweet spots. So it's worth earning American Airlines miles,

just intrinsically. A lot of people like to collect them when they can, and then you can also have all of this fun. Did you know you can also use American Airlines points to fly American Airlines regionally? I mean, I've heard about that, but I haven't tried it myself lately. I've found, I've actually found some great deals lately. I've, uh, I've had a few trips where American Airlines was a good choice, uh, with nonstop flights. And, um, no, I did. And yeah, yeah. And one of the things I found, you know, Delta for a long time has not been good about last-minute awards. That is, like, it used to be a given that one of the best values of airline miles, just to use them at the last minute because cash prices go way up and point prices go way down. American seems to still be doing that.

Delta very much is not. So I found where Delta won an incredible cash rate or point rate, American Airlines had the flights for some really small number of miles. Yeah, that's a good point. I've noticed that from major metro areas too, now that you mention it. I don't, it doesn't come to mind usually because I'm based in a small airport and awards are almost always ridiculously priced. So especially close in when cash prices are really high, I'm not finding that to be the case.

But now that you mentioned it, I have often found that to be the case when I look out of New York City. So if you're in a major metro, that's a good point to look at American for those close in bookings. So good stuff there. All right. So that, my my friends brings us to the question of the week. And for this week's question of the week, I got a pop quiz for Greg. So Greg, are you ready for the pop quiz?

I'm ready. Okay. So if you've got a Hilton Aspire card and you want to use your resort credit, your Hilton resort credit, especially because that particular credit is, well, I guess that credit is a card member year offer. So end of the year doesn't matter, but you've got a resort credit, $250 every card member year on the Hilton Aspire card. How do you know which hotels you can use or at which hotels you can use that $250 resort credit. There's a webpage that lists them. So you just go to the Hilton Resorts webpage and they're all there. They're all there, right?

And so you just go there. Of course. And so you would just see one there. And if you see it there on the list, it triggers the credit, right? I thought so. Well, I thought so too, but you and I would have failed this quiz because... All right. So a couple of things about the resort credit and the Aspire card. The Hilton Aspire card is one of the best values out there because for $450 a year, you get a $250 airline incidental credit, a $250 Hilton resort credit,

and a free night certificate that you can use at almost any Hilton property in the world, as long as they have standard award availability. So it's a fantastic deal for $450. There's been rumors that maybe it's going to go up to $550 next year. I wouldn't be surprised if that happened. But at the same time, we haven't gotten any indication to think that'd be the case yet. So at any rate, the reason I bring this up is because I saw a thread in Frequent Miler Insiders this week, just before we started recording this show, in fact, about the Aspire credit. So Sean wrote about how he booked a stay at a property called Mahogany Bay in Belize because it's a resort on the list. When you go to the Hilton dot com slash resorts or whatever

the link is, I'll put the link in the show notes. And so he saw it there and said, OK, well, great. I'm going to stay there. I'm going to use my resort credit. Well, apparently, Amex is not accepted in Belize in general. And so the many properties in Belize don't take an Amex, but the Hilton property does take Amex. However, it gets charged through some sister company that processes the charge. So he paid using his Aspire card because it was there on the list. But of course, because

the charge wasn't processed by Mahogany Bay, but was rather processed by some sister property somewhere else, he didn't get the credit. Now, that already on itself kind of seems like, oh, that's one of those weird, exceptional kind of things, right? It's like some weird random thing, which it probably is, let's be clear, not something that would happen often. But what shocked me about this was going through the comments, because not only was that, that seemed nutty to me that you would expect that if it's on the list, it would count. Right. But the screenshot that somebody showed, if you pull that up in the list of resort properties, you pull up that hotel, which shows in the list of resorts, you will find if you read the fine print underneath like the

select dates, it does say that cardholders will only receive three points per dollar on purchases at this property. And it says stays at this property are not eligible for the $250 resort statement credit for Aspire card holders. So what's it doing on the page, MX? Like, why is it there? If you can't use it for the credit, why would it be on the resorts page? Because that should have been under what crazy thing did Hilton do this year? It seemed nutty to me. That's nuts. It seems nuts. Because let's back up a few steps. You might think if you've never had the Aspire card that, okay, that resort credit works at any hotel with resort in the name, right?

I mean, that's how you know if it's a resort, right? It says resort. Yeah. Except no, it's not true. Number one, there are plenty of places that say resort in the name that are not on the list. That aren't resorts, yeah list and won't trigger the credit. And B, there are many places that don't have resort in the name that are on the list that aren't resorts by any stretch of the imagination. So so I would not even think twice about whether or not it says resort in the name.

I only refer to the list because they're very clear that it has to be on the list. And this one's on the list. And the fine print says, yeah, we're on the list, but no. That's crazy. So that feels to me like the type of thing that if you call Amex, explain what happened, they should give you credit. And it's one of those, like, if the rep doesn't hang up and call again,

because somebody's going to say, yeah, you should have gotten credit here. So far, the reader has called and tried. I think it sounded like at least twice and got nowhere with amex amex saying sorry it didn't process as a charge from mahogany bay you know no soup for you and and a reader pointed out that it does say in the fine print that it won't trigger the credit that that is bad news yeah so it's bad news all the way around and i think that that's probably not something widespread it's probably really rare but who would even think to try to check the fine print i would never have thought to look at the fine print on that so uh so moral of the story craig is that yes it's got to be on

the list of resorts on the official page and you'll find the link in the show notes but also read the fine print make sure that it's not on the list but excluded wow thanks mx Thanks for that. Yeah. I am not going to remember that when it comes time to do this sort of thing. Who would? Ridiculous. Crazy. All right. So it is a crazy thing, but I thought a belonging question of the week because I thought for sure you'd say the same thing I would. And anybody else listening was like, oh, it's on the resorts. Done. Easy. Go to the list. Yeah. Except not necessarily. All right, my friends,

that brings us to the end of today's show. If you enjoyed what you've been hearing about and you'd like to get more of it in your inbox each day or each week, you want to go to frequent miler.com slash subscribe again. That's frequent miler.com slash subscribe. Join our email list. Follow us on all the various social media, wherever you're watching or listening to this show. I hope you've hit the like button already, but if you haven't,

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