Frequent Miler on the Air - Amex Gold card - keep or cancel? | Ask Us Anything Ep69 | 8-14-24

Episode Date: August 20, 2024

In addition to our regular weekly podcast, we also host an Ask Us Anything Live on YouTube once a month where the Frequent Miler team answers listener questions about points, miles, rewards cards, and whatever else comes to mind. This episode originally aired on August 14, 2024.  (10:19) - Does Cathay Pacific still do multi-cabin award pricing? I tried both as a one-way and multi-city routing and the price remains the same online and speaking to a rep on phone.  (10:59) - How often can I upgrade - downgrade Surpass to Aspire and vice versa?  (13:22) - You educate us with helpful info. Do you ever have the chance to talk to banks, airlines or hotel programs to influence them?  (15:45) - ​​I have the Wyndham earner biz card and did the AC status match in Feb 2023. I’ve heard you can rematch at Oceans casino after 18 months. Does Hard Rock have any restrictions on rematching  (17:28) - ​​I have the Wyndham earner biz card and did the AC status match in Feb 2023. I’ve heard you can rematch at Oceans casino after 18 months. Does Hard Rock have any restrictions on rematching  (18:50) - When you all fly from the US in the evening and arrive in Europe in the mornings, do you typically book another night at the hotel or try and check in early? How do you handle that gap before checkin?  (25:02) - ​​I have about $15k of previously unexpected spend in the next few months, in five chunks of around $3k. What current credit cards offers would y’all pick to parlay that into lounges/status/etc? Thanks!  (27:25) - ​​Probably a question for Greg - is there a way to add a non-AF/KLM frequent flier # to a Flying Blue award? I recently matched to ITA Executive status and want to add to an AF award.  (28:36) - ​​I’m Hyatt globalist. Status match to American Airlines. How do I find the status challenge back with Hyatt?  (35:25) - Hi! I was curious about the timing for the cruises. When you receive the offer, is there a time you have to book, or is the offer for a specific cruise? I'm trying to figure out how to time it.  (38:40) - What is one sweet spot you hope to do in the near future? Either because you're afraid it will disappear soon, or because you just haven't done it yet?  (45:57) - ​​Question about Cap One lounges. I have a regular Cap One Venture card and 2 passes. Can I use the 2 passes on one visit, or do they only work for cardholders?  (46:24) - ​​What did you guys end up doing with your Amex Gold? Keep or cancel?  (50:10) - I don't have any travel plan for next 8 months, but i was targeted for 0.5 cents per point, (Hilton) - do you recommend to buy preemptive or should i wait and hoping that same offer will be back?  (51:21) - I plan to downgrade my Ritz to apply for BONVOY Brilliant. How long do I need to wait after the downgrade from Ritz to get approved?  (54:15) - ​​Is it possible to book an Aeroplan stopover with multiple stops?  (58:01) - Do you have a video that talks about American System-wide upgrades? Just used AA SWU from Tokyo to Japan for 3 people. Paid $1,800 total for $33,000 (website costs) for business class

This is not your usual Frequent Miler on the Air episode. This is our Ask Us Anything live session, recorded and brought to you in podcast format. Once a month, the Frequent Miler team gets together live on YouTube to answer your questions. Ask us questions about points, miles, credit cards, airline and hotel loyalty programs. We don't know what's coming next and neither do you. Enjoy. I like it. This is our monthly live brought to you not live all right now streaming welcome to frequent milers ask us anything our monthly uh get together

and uh everybody is welcome to literally ask us anything, but we can't promise that we're going to answer anything. We're waiting for Nick. It's feeling a little bit like the team challenge where Nick was trying to get to the, get to Morocco and, and didn't join right away. Steven though is on vacation and can't make it today. We got a lot of feedback that the most exciting check-in during the annual challenge was when Nick was in Africa trying to get through immigration and we were trying to find out, is he actually going to arrive in time?

Right. So we thought, let's just recreate that every week. Let's put Nick in Africa. Let's see if he can make it in time. It we thought, let's just recreate that every week. Let's put Nick in Africa. Let's see if we can make it over time. It's true. And then here we are. We're just so nostalgic. Yeah. While we're waiting for Nick though, let's talk about, there's some bad news in the So Avianca Life Miles, new, more expensive awards, and Qatar is no longer super, super cheap for those short distance American Airlines or Alaska Airlines flights. It's hit in the last couple of days. And look who's going to join to talk about this with us. Oh, yeah.

It's knocking on the door right now. Nick puts the Nick in just the nick of time. Yeah. He does. The minute that somebody said devaluation, Nick showed up. Right. So, Tim, though, he's here. Well, before that, I just want to say that one of the things that we always, you know, for me, this is always kind of happy hour time. And there's that state that there's that old saying that it's always five o'clock somewhere. And indeed, that's true.

It's always five o'clock. What time is it for you and Kerry? It's 9.02? 9 p.m. 9.02. 6.02 for me. Nick, what time is it for you? Five o'clock. 5.02. 5.02 a.02. 6.02 for me. Nick, what time is it for you? 5 o'clock. 5.02. 5.02 a.m.

5.02 a.m. Nick is joining us at 5.02 a.m. So if anybody wants to guess about where, so look at where, where, where could Nick possibly be? It's 5 o'clock in the morning where Nick is at. Where would that be? Any guesses? It is. But anyway, talks and evaluations. Yeah. it's five o'clock in the morning where nick is at where would that be any guesses but anyway

yeah um so i'm wondering um both of you guys is are there any changes that have hit you like near term like are you looking at something and saying oh man i was going to book something and now either you're not going to book it or you're going to change how you're going to book it because of those devaluations. I'm going to guess that Nick is Nick's life mile plus membership is looking a little more negative now with all of the business class to your, although, I mean, there's actually some that are cheaper, right? Like the Northeast from where you're at,

then the Northeast to Northern Europe is cheaper now, right? Yeah, I'm actually, I'm not all that unhappy. I mean, don't get me wrong. I never want to pay more, but even the 70K pricing, 10% off is essentially the same price as it used to be, you know, 10% back. So, you know, every devaluation stinks, but that one didn't sting me too bad. I think the biggest disappointment is I figured someday I would book tons of first class with life miles. Now I'll probably just use aeroplan if I ever get a chance, but yeah, but if I don't, I probably won't be too disappointed either. So I don't know,

not, not that big of a deal to me and then the qatar one with aa flights and i don't usually use that so i don't have a lot of use for that anyway so they didn't sting me as bad as some other people probably okay well for me i think that uh i have enough alaska miles and al Alaska already was cheaper than any of the obvious programs for any short AA flights that I needed like short short flights and it continues to be that way 4,500 miles a leg is pretty cheap you know I think and it's a it's a bummer to see you know it's a bummer to see Qatar get more expensive. It's still not as expensive as VA. And the nice thing is Finnair is still pricing back at like what I think it's 2019 AA levels, something like that in terms of British Airways.

So Finnair is actually still very cheap for a lot of the same awards that are like I think it, what is it? 1,152 miles and above versus Alaska. But the, and it sounds like that both Alaska and AA are getting easier to book on Finnair. You still have to chat, but it sounds like, or call them, but it sounds like the chat agents have actually gotten used to booking these. That said, I'll say the same thing that I did about Qatar when the British Airways, the last VA devaluation happened, is that it's only a matter of time before Finnair devalues. Like, yeah, enjoy that pricing now, but Finnair is not going to be the one obvious program that's

left that actually has cheap North American pricing for long. It could be months. It could be a year. It could be, you know, whatever. But it's going to get raised as well. So the Tim prediction. So add it to the prediction. Yeah. So, I mean, that that may be. But I think one thing that's helpful there with Finnair is they're the one program that is zone based. Right. Instead of distance-based? So you can't really as easily compare apples to apples as you can with the other Avios programs. So with the other Avios programs, it was really obvious that Qatar was much cheaper than the

others. And what's interesting is that they didn't move to a unified pricing structure across some programs have gotten relatively more or less valuable. My first thing with Avianca LifeMiles, the big hit there to me was first class, as Nick mentioned. You want to book Lufthansa first class. LifeMiles was the go-to before. Now it's going to be Aeroplan. So LifeMiles is now down. Aeroplan's up. And then with the... But that's such a specific use case Greg I mean

when was the last time you booked the plans of first class like 10 years ago it has been a while so like it's not it's not even something that most people are going to use like it's one of those like dream things obviously you'd like to use some point

and I get that like the dream being broken stinks but at the same time like you can only book it three days in advance anyway like how many of us are actually booking that work i so i would have booked it more recently except that um that life miles doesn't have free changes uh within three days. And so, there would have been several times where I would have set up alerts for the Lufthansa flight to open up for first class and would have switched to that. But now if I just But this devaluation didn't change that, right? No, it didn't. It didn't change that. Right, right.

Anyway, finishing what I was saying before. Then on the Qatar side, Avio's down a bit and Alaska up because they are the best way to book short distance AA and Alaska flights.

I think Qatar was cheaper for first class for domestic first class though than Alaska before. And I don't know what. They are. Let me, I can actually tell you, I had this, I was charting this all out earlier. Nope, not anymore. That's a shame. Yeah. No. Yeah. It's pretty much until you get to like, you know, it starts getting competitive once you get to like Hawaii. Okay. That level of distance. And actually, even then, it really is.

Once you get to Hawaii, like, things are good and you're not worried about it. I mean, it can still be a great deal, but you know, because they don't, they still price cumulative distance as opposed to VA, which price is based on segment. So it can still be a good deal from the East coast, especially with the Midwest because it's pricing on cumulative distance, but the first class rates are not great. No. Yeah. Unless you guys are burning to add more to that. I'm going to jump into our reader questions.

Can we just spend the rest of the time talking about how often a person is likely to book with tons of first class? Right. Could be once, could be twice, could be three times. OK. Question one. Does Cafe Pacific still do multi-cabin award pricing? I tried both as one-way and multi-city routing and the price remains the same online and speaking to a rep on the phone any insights on that? I mean it's been a while since I checked

but as far as I know they haven't changed that but I guess maybe it's time to check that out and see I saw a comment come in about that over the last week at some point to to check that out and see i saw a comment come in about that over the last week at some point but i was on vacation hadn't hadn't had a chance to get on the computer yet and check and see whether that has indeed changed but but perhaps it has so inconclusive on that all right uh tim how often can i upgrade slash downgrade, surpass to aspire and vice versa? How big is the known universe?

How many times? And I say that kind of jokingly. theoretically and this this is you know this is this is one of those things where i have never heard of anybody getting into trouble by upgrading and downgrading their surpass and aspire too many times um i've certainly done it a lot and do it regularly i do it yearly um at least once i've never had any issue with it that said it does seem like when you look at it from the outside looking in that this is something that at some point might draw higher. But we don't have any reason to think that it would. Now, that said, I wouldn't like – there's two caveats to that. One is that if you accept an upgrade offer, if you upgrade without having accepted a bonus points offer, like you just say, hey, it's October. I want to take advantage of some Aspire credits.

So I'm going to upgrade from my surpassed to the Aspire so I can take advantage of the calendar year credits for the calendar year ends, but you don't accept an upgrade offer. You can downgrade back to the Aspire the next year. Once you've used up the next year's the next calendar year's Aspire credits. However, if you do accept points you have to leave it open for a year and i believe it's there's some degrates to screaming about if it's a year from when you accepted the upgrade and a year from when the

points post i actually believe based on personal experience that it's based on when the points post so you actually have to wait a full year before downgrading if you want to make sure that you're going to retain those points. Otherwise you put those points at risk of clawback. And that's part of the terms. But up to that, I mean, you know, I don't know that there would be much reason to do more than twice per year.

I think it's very easy to do it, to get a nice rhythm going once per year. And I think that once per year, you'd be absolutely fine, in my opinion, because I've been doing it for a while. And I'm literally, I don't know, has anybody ever heard of anybody getting into trouble for that or a rep question on that or any sort of friction? Not that we've heard. All right, Nick, on to you. You educate us with helpful info. Do you ever have the chance to talk to banks, airlines or hotel programs to influence them? I think that made Bilt a notable exception in a lot of ways that at the beginning anyway, they sought a lot of input or at least feedback on what they were doing, which was unique because most entities might share information with us like the day before they're going to release it. Occasionally, not even always. But no, it's not been a common thing where they've asked for a feed once or twice in the years I've been here.

Greg, is there? Yeah, it is very rare. In addition to Bill, Capital One has come to us a few times for input. That was the once or twice that came. And sometimes, sometimes there are sort of one off conversations that can influence them. For example, I had met the guy who's in charge of the Hilton honors program. And in our dialogue, which continued, which started in person, but continued over email, he asked me which SLH properties we were most excited about. I think like this was before they had brought them all in and all except one that I sent him were actually added. So I think we helped influence that.

But of course, it's possible they would have been added other way anyway. But yeah, other than that, I think sometimes we write posts hoping to influence the programs. Sometimes it doesn't work. Was it your fault, the devaluation? Just kidding. It was that post you wrote. Well, didn't you have on the last

podcast, didn't you talk about Qatar Avios, using Qatar Avios for American flights? Probably. I feel like it does come up a lot. You killed it. Yeah. Thanks.

Alright, this question, I'm we're gonna stick with nick again here for a moment because everyone's gonna pass it to you anyway um i have the windham earner biz card and did the ac status match in february 2023 i've heard you can rematch at ocean's casino after 18 months does hard rock have any restrictions on matching? And for those who don't know, this is about free cruises, right? Right, right. That's the reason to be doing this. Yeah, so my understanding is that Hard Rock in Las Vegas will not give you a second match, that it's a once-in-a-lifetime thing.

But if you're doing it in Atlantic City, people have been successful matching again at Hard Rock in Atlantic City. That could change at any time. I mean, I have my fingers crossed that it's going to last a few more months so that I can try and do the same thing again because my 18 months is not yet up. Keep in mind that you need to have had 18 months of no activity in your Ocean Prime account in order to do the match again, which means if you've been to Atlantic City and put your Ocean Prime card in a machine, then it's going to be 18 months since then. But no, to my knowledge, or yes, I guess to my knowledge, you can still do all of those matches. But how long that's going to last with hard rock atlantic city is anybody's guess and if somebody else has more recent experience please do pipe in in the comments but i have not yet seen anybody comment to say they were unable to do the hard rock atlantic

city which tells me it's still working because someone will comment and let me know when they fail to match we're counting on you guys to tell us when it fails. All right, Greg, do you have to pay fuel surcharges for flights to and from Japan, even if you book United or Air Canada flights via ANA, but no surcharges if it's different routes on United or Air Canada via ANA? Sort of. Okay, so ANA, if you're booking with ANA miles, they will pass along any fuel surcharges that are imposed by the carrier. Now, United has certain routes. United usually does not impose fuel surcharges, but there are certain

routes, including, I think, to Japan where they do add fuel surcharges when booking with partner miles. And so with United, I think the answer is yes. I don't

think you would be surcharges with Air Canada, but does anyone know one way or another about that one? I'm not aware of Air Canada adding surcharges for certain routes the way United does. I haven't heard that. Me either. Obviously not.

Inconclusive. All right. Any other thoughts or moving on to tim move on all right tim uh well everyone but we'll start with tim when you all fly from the u.s uh in the evening and arrive in europe in the mornings or anywhere in the morning, do you typically book another night at the hotel or try and check in early? How do you handle the gap before check-in? I like this question. Good question. Yeah, I like this one. Well, first of all, let me say that I have the one advantage that I, the advantage that Nick and Greg have over me when it comes to getting a European business class is they're on the East Coast and they have approximately 200 business class flights for every one that I have direct to Europe. Advantage that I have is that by and large, I tend to, flights from the West Coast tend

to arrive in Europe at around like late morning or early afternoon, as opposed to six or seven o'clock in the morning, eight o'clock in the morning. So I'm just going to, I'm throwing that caveat to say that I never tried because of that. I've never had an issue booking or arriving or I've never had an issue checking early at that point. From what I, and so Nick and Greg can talk about East coast experience, but almost all the time, even when it's like 11 o'clock, 12 o'clock, I've never had an issue checking in early at all. And that's what I always do. And usually I'll take a nap. And then, you know, back when I was, had an issue checking in early on. And that's what I always do. And usually I'll take a nap. And then, you know, back when I was, back when I was in my younger days, I tried to

like force my way through the first day. No more. Now the first day, you know, take a nap and then go out and explore. Greg, how about you? Yeah. So when I'm looking at flights to Europe, I usually prefer to book the, you know, board at 6 p.m. and hope to be tired enough to sleep by the time they have before they roll out breakfast and say they're landing. So that would help. And now that gets you in more like 11 a.m. or noon. And then by the time you get to the hotel, you're fine. The other thing I've done, and it's not always possible to get those later flights. So the other thing I've done is make sure that to be arriving in a hotel that has a spa,

because what happens if you arrive really early, if your room's not ready, if they can't give you early check in, they can give you access to the spa area where there's usually like, you know, hot tub and different options for relaxing and just kind of start enjoying your time. So when we know that's going to happen, we actually like pack a little like, you know, separate set of stuff for that arrival time so that we check our big bags at the desk and just take a little bag to the locker room of the spa to relax. That's a good idea. Nick?

I have one follow-up question for Greg. So if you get the spike, you get slippers in the spa, do you steal the slippers from the spa and the slippers from the room? I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna tell my secrets. I like how you slipped out of that one. How about you, Nick? You know, I more often than not, not always more often than not, I just get lucky and I'm able to check in right away. I've had very little pushback or lack of success in checking in early.

Now I do have an advantage. The other guys don't know that I'm arriving with young kids. And so people take pity on me. And so usually I'm able to get into a room early, even when I arrive early. Now I have at times booked a room for the night before when it's been a hotel that's reasonably award priced. And I just really want to make sure that we do have that room. But then I have to reach out in advance and make sure that they're not going to cancel me for a no show. So that's not like much less stressful necessarily, because I've also had those canceled as a no show before when they said

they wouldn't. And then that's a pain getting fixed. So, um, but again, normally get lucky, but Greg's tip about the spa is a good one. So I don't know if anybody figured out where I am, but it's five something AM now, but I'm in Mauritius at the moment. And, uh, so I arrived yesterday at 5 30 AM at the airport. By the time we got our rental car and got to our hotel an hour away, it was probably 8 a.m. or so. And I'm not at a chain hotel here, just a more independent sort of local chain. And very nice place, though. And I was pleasantly surprised that I wasn't able to get a room, but they have shower rooms that they have set up that have a shower and a couch and like an entire private room. So my family could go in and

bring in all of our bags and get ourselves like, you know, set and ready for the day to go out to the beach. And they were kind enough to give us a free breakfast because we arrived during breakfast hours and room wasn't ready yet. So we were able to eat, we were able to go shower and kind of slowly get ourselves ready. It took us probably at least an hour, but that was fine. We had our own private little space to do that and then went out to the beach and sat on the beach until the room was ready. So it worked out fine, even though it wasn't perfect.

I mean, everybody was tired. We'd love to have gotten into a room right away, but as it turned out, it was almost as good. So Greg's tip about a place that might have those facilities is a good one. Nice. We'll sometimes try to make sure that we just have lounge access. Yeah.

And so then if our room's not ready, we can just drink coffee in the lounge for several hours. All right. Sometimes it takes hours, right, Nick? Okay, Nick,

I have about 15,000 of previously unexpected spend in the next few months in five chunks of around $3,000. What current credit cards, what current credit card offers would y'all pick to parlay that into lounge status,

et cetera? Which cards would you pick to put five chunks of $3,000, right? Over the next how long was it? Three months. Few months. So we'll say three months. Let's say three. Few months. Boy, that's harder for me to answer because I'm coming straight off of vacation brain

and it's 5.30 in the morning. So I would have to go to our best offers page and look at the way that it's sorted. The business gold offer right now is so compelling that I would probably be considering that assuming that it is still at the 200k everybody and somebody not and tell me that I'm right there. So 200k for 10k spend seems like a really good use of two of those 5k chunks. After that, I don't know. It's harder for me to say. I know the Brilliant offer is now 185, right? So that's kind of interesting. Gives you Marriott Platinum status.

Gives you tons of points. Costs quite a bit, though, still. So whether or not you want to do that, a little tough to say. Who else can chime in here and help me with whatever offers? I just want to say the business goal is 15K spend. 15K spend. Okay, thank you. But still, I think they could manage that if necessary. But if lounges and things are what you're desiring, I'd be looking at one of the platinum cards probably. So there's

the consumer platinum card that has the 150K offer or the business platinum card with the 200K offer, because those will get you lounges and some status benefits, not much. Well, I'm glad you said that. Great point. It depends on whether you're talking lounges at the airports or lounges at the hotels, I guess, because that's why the brilliant came to mind because of Marriott status to get you lounge access at many Marriott's not quite all. But so that came to mind. But airport lounge access is probably what they meant. So then, yeah, platinum card would be where it's at. All right.

Thank you. On to Greg. Probably a question for Greg. You're welcome. Is there a way to add a non-AF KLM frequent flyer number to a flying blue award? I recently matched to ITA executive status and went to add an Air France? What is it? Yes, you got it. Air France. Air France award. Yes, there definitely is.

I'm trying to remember how exactly, like what's the best way to do it. I can't remember off the top of my head, but I know that the last time when I booked an Air France award, I put, I think my Delta number on there. Um, so yeah, I don't know. Just Google how to, how to, how to do that. And, um, there's just gotta be, uh, it's, it wasn't hard. I don't, I don't remember being difficult at all. I was able to do it online somehow.

So there is a way, and it's easy enough that it should show broadly on Google, sounds like. Yeah. Cool. All right. Tim, I'm a globalist, a status match to American Airlines. How do I find the status challenge back with Hyatt? Does that make sense? So what I'm guessing, pardon me. So the currently and actually the last couple of years, Hyatt and American Airlines have offered reciprocal status matches

and fast track or status math, instant status matches and then fast track to longer term status for each of their elite members. And they're now in the midst of doing it again. What I'm taking from the question is that this person is a Hyatt globalist because last or no, they were a Hyatt globalist that last year status matched to American Airlines and now they're wanting to find a status challenge back to Hyatt so from American with a which would they add which they match to last year I appreciate your zeal for this first of all this is that's that's right you're doing the merry-go-round in the right way. Now, that said, first of all, you can go to our post. I believe it's called something about American Advantage and Hyatt

or Back with Reciprocal Lead Status or something like that. And there's direct links to both of those offers in that post. And so you can just go to the section that you're looking for and click on it and log into your American Airlines account and hopefully it'll be there, or your Hyatt account, whichever you're looking match for other people that are watching.

But just as a cautionary thing, it is targeted. So not all Hyatt Elite members are targeted for AA status and not all AA Elite members are targeted for AA status and not all AA Elite members are targeted for Hyatt status. My sense has been that people that were existing from a previous status match are less likely to be targeted or the opposite to do exactly what you're trying to do. But that doesn't necessarily mean that you aren't targeted. I have no idea.

But just go to that page and check it out. And then you can also look in your AA online account and there's a promotions tab. And so go down into that promotions tab. And if you're targeted, it should say you should have it there. Although occasionally we see people that aren't targeted there that end up actually being able to work themselves into being targeted through the other methods. So, but, but you should be able to see it. If you are targeted, you should be able to see it under a promotion staff in your online AA account. Oh, very good.

Hold on before, before, before you can't feed me the next question there, I just wanted to go back to something I said before that I realized I should have explained my thought a little bit better. And that's when we answered the question about the credit cards a second ago. And I said I'd go to the best offers page because off the top of my head, I didn't have it memorized. Something I should have clarified for people that probably a lot of people aren't aware. If you go to our best offers page, so if you go to frequentmiler.com and you click on best offers, up at the top, there's a best of the best section. There's best of the best consumer, best of the best business offers. And if you scroll those, that's not a subjectively curated list.

Those are based on first year value. And the first year value is a pretty objective equation that takes into account the value of the points, the cost of the annual fee, the cost of doing the spend. So you can scroll those. And that's what I meant when I said go to our best offers page, because that literally is the best way to quickly compare the first year value of different offers and or Greg's Greg's picks post, because that's the next place to look at that. If you want the subjective analysis, that's the next place that I would normally go. So if you just put in the search bar and frequent miler Greg's picks,

you'll find that pretty easily. Or I think there's a link probably in the right hand side. So, so actually on our best offers page, right above the top 10 lists, there's a link to it as well there. Cause if you're looking at the top cards and you get there, then at least you'll also be able to find my subjectively curated list of, of my favorite offers. Can I ask you guys a quick question just based on the earlier question now that we're going back to it? And I know this is, yeah, yeah, yeah. We're tangentializing now. I do have one question.

Would you guys, just as a theoretical thing, without having to know what's on the best offers page, but you kind of generally know what's around the credit card world. If you had 15K to do in a few months in $3,000 chunks like this guy had, or a person had, I'm sorry, like they had, would you be more likely to look at a card like the gold that has a 15K spend requirement? Or would you be more likely to look at cards that have say a three to five thousand dollar spend requirement and try to get several cards over the next few months that you can collectively get the spend for with that 15k like what kind of what would be your first impulse so my my first impulse was to get the, the one big offer and use that spend as, as a way of getting it. But, uh, it's a great question. Um, because yeah, it could, you could potentially do much better by doing, you know, maybe you would be able to get like three really good offers instead of one great offer and have more total points. Yeah. But I think you're going to have to do the math on your own because like you look at that business gold offer and a 15 K spend, if you were able to

do that in a four X category, which is an F obviously, I don't know what your three K spend chunks are, but if you're able to do that in one of the categories that qualifies for 4x you're talking about 260 000 points after 15k spend so even if you opened three cards that each offered you know 80 000 after 5k for instance well then you have 240 000 total points be pretty close uh you know plus whatever from the spend it'd be pretty darn close to the same number of total points and so then it comes down to, okay, well, which cards are better for you? Which ones are a better fit for your situation? And the compelling thing for me about the business gold is you don't see that offer often. And so if I'm saying, okay, three run of the mill, 80K after 5K or 3K spend or whatever, 60K kind of offers, or one big offer that probably won't be available

forever i'd go for the one that probably won't be available forever yeah good analysis all right nick now i have a question for you uh guess the topic cruises oh um i was curious about the timing for the cruises uh when you receive the offer is there a time you have to book or is the offer for specific crews i'm trying to figure out how to time it the offer well if there were only one that would be easier to answer uh because there's so many different cruise offers each ones are slightly slightly different. So if you do the Carnival Fun Match, there's no telling when you're going to get the offer for the free balcony room. Some people get it very quickly. And for some people, it seems to take forever to come through. So whenever that happens, there's a deadline on it. It'll tell you like you got a book in the next couple of weeks, two or three weeks, something like that. But what happened with us anyway is that we continued to get that offer.

It would expire, and then a week later, we'd get that same free balcony cabin again every month for a year. And after a year, they stopped. So that one is sort of time-limited, but as long as you're willing to roll the dice slightly, you'll probably continue to get it monthly. The Ocean Prime offer, if you do the Atlantic City matching and you want to cruise on MSC, then you have to wait until the 15th of the month after the month in which you match. So if you match today in August 2024, then you'd have to wait until September 15th of 2024 in order to try to book your MSC cruise. And if you match on September 1st, you're going to have to wait until October 15th. Anytime within the month, the 15th of the next month is when Ocean sends the list over to MSC.

And that has to be booked by the end of your status year so that would be by june 30th because status with ocean prime runs out june 30th so it's supposed to be sailed by june 30th of you know the your expiration year so again if you did the ocean prime match now it would expire in june of 2025 um if you match after march 1st they've been extending you an additional year so if you waited until march then presumably you would have until june of 2026 to take your free msc cruise with the ocean prime offer but i say presumably because who knows when that may end i don't know whether that'll still be around next march and then each of the other offers it depends like princess if you do that match i think you have a year from the day they give you the the match to to sale so um so

it just depends which one you do but i think the details for how how long you have to book should all be in the cruise status match post i'm gonna have to double check that because if they're not they should be there um so i'll have to make an update if not. This might be a good moment to invite all of you folks to please like this video. Or if you're listening to this in podcast form, like and follow our podcast, same for YouTube, all of those things. And if you happen to follow us on Instagram, if you comment on any of our posts hashtag free cruise post uh you'll automatically get a link to the post that nick just referenced so um so like us on instagram also thank you very much uh this is a question for everyone but i'm gonna start with greg um what is one sweet spot you hope to do

in the near future, either because you're afraid it will disappear soon or because you just haven't done it yet? All right, I'm going to answer with something that's not really a sweet spot. It's more of an only spot. I've been wanting to fly singapore's new suites and the only good way to do it is when singapore itself makes it available at their their version of saver level and that's just so darn rare as As I found during our last challenge, I tried and tried to find really anything, even business class of Singapore. And they just had like no award space,

but business class is findable. Those suites are really, really tough. And to make it harder, I want to do that with my wife. I want to get one of those where you can have the two suites next to each other and they lower the divider uh completely so it's like having one big like almost like a hotel room in the sky with a uh with like a king bed because they put the two uh singles next to each other um so yeah that's what

i'm hoping to do that wouldn't make as much sense for the entire team. We couldn't redo Party of Five. It's not a, right. But if you want to do it, great, we're open. Just to say, come on. Move to the floor. All right, Tim, how about you? Any sweet spots on the wish list either because you think they're going to disappear because they're just cool yeah you know I mean it's funny and I'm gonna and I'm not gonna I'm gonna sort of uh out myself a little bit here

but I this stuff I there's so much stuff that I want to do that it's hard for me to fret too much like like right now if I like for instance right now if there is one like airline product i'd like to fly that i'd have and it would probably be the apartment for eddie hod i haven't been on the apartment yet um i'd love to do it i'd love to do it with my wife um however five years from now i'm pretty confident there's going to be a better product than the apartment and so like i don't like i don't, like, I don't necessarily, like, I don't necessarily and I know this is switching a little bit from sweet spot to apartment. And so I want to get back to the sweet spot part.

But so like, I, I don't necessarily like, like there's, there's, to me it's like, it's almost like you're at a buffet and all of the stuff looks good. There's so much good stuff on this buffet. It's just there's too much. There's so much good stuff out there. And it's funny, even to the devaluations, people talk about how – and don't get me wrong, devaluations suck. But man, there's so much good stuff on the buffet.

Like there really is. but man there's so much good stuff on the buffet and and so and i'm gonna ask also say that what i um and i've been kind of it's funny i've been i've sort of changed my sweet spot thinking a little bit over these last couple years um that by and large i often find that some of the most incredible things for me and i'm not talking about for anybody else, but just speaking for me, are actually lodging. And for a recent example, we were in Sicily in May, and we stayed at this marvelous Marriott property that's called the Ortea Palace. Right down, it's right on the waterfront in the middle of Marina. I mean, beautiful location, about as central as you can get and just one of the most beautiful locations. And I applied some suite upgrades and I, you know, some Marriott suite upgrades. And before I went to the hotel, I looked and saw,

well, what would, this is how I always do with the suite upgrades. I'd say, what's the best possible room that I could get with this? And I do that first and then i put it and then if that doesn't get it i kind of like add a couple a couple other room categories you know a couple further days along and then sort of so i actually i put the top two room categories and they gave us the top one like within awesome an hour or like two hours. Boom, it's there. That's cool. And so we were in this literally, I mean, this probably like it was a corner room on this 300-year-old building that overlooked both marinas,

had two different balconies so that we could see the sun rise over the water on one balcony and the sun set on the water on another balcony. 30-foot windows windows all this stuff for 35 000 marriott points a night is what we paid for it you know and like like to us like lounging around and watching the sunset on our private balcony while the boats were coming in and out off of this like this is just marvelous we got to do it for three nights you know um and so don't get me wrong like i i get i think it's really cool to um to have and this is a really long explanation but i think it's really cool to have like to like you go like what you can get in the sky these days is pretty amazing you're in this metal tube at 35 000 feet flying at five or six hundred miles an hour and you can

take a shower and get caviar and stuff like that. That's pretty blingy. But for some reason, the stuff that I remember that really resonates with me tends to be some of these lodging things. And so what I find myself looking for is how can I like, what are these sort of, like, I would have never thought that the Ortega Palace in Sicily would be a sweet spot that I'd be looking at but like wow yeah that's a highlight of the last year for me so anyway all that to say that's kind of how I'm it makes it hard to answer that question that's kind of how I'm looking at it yeah it's more like what you find what you can find the moment you're looking for it rather than the thing that you right like rather than the one thing it's like what's there yeah there's so much that's there right right but there's not something like

kalala island that you've been like eyeing that that you're like oh i gotta get on you know on that before they realize that it's crazy to give that away yeah not really and i thought about kalala island because i'd really love to do that but it's not you know that's not you know kalala i wouldn't rather do that than the Ortea Palace that you spontaneously find. There's just so much. And I think that's kind of really my point. I mean, I'm kind of talking around it. Is to me, I wouldn't want to fixate so much on getting a sweet spot before it disappears as to just take what's in front of me.

And there's so much there. Sure. That's, I guess, what I'm trying to say. Nick, perhaps you disagree. Do you have something? No, I'm just going to co-sign Tim's answer. There's so much out there. It's hard to pick one thing

or two things. And I don't get too upset when one or two things go away because there's like, you know, like Tim said, it's a tasty buffet. So co-sign Tim's answer. From Mauritius. Yeah. things go away because there's like you know like tim said it's a tasty buffet so go sign tim's answer from mauritius yeah probably on the beach please for us i know i cannot um all right so that puts us to tim i think um question about Cap One lounges. I have a regular Cap One Venture card and two passes.

Can I use the two passes on one visit, or do they only work for card holders? You can use them on one visit. You should have said it slower. No, that's... I actually have a question queue now. Don't worry, I'm actually ready this time.

All right, Nick. What did you guys end up doing with your mx gold keep or cancel well the math had penciled out to keep it so we kept it and of course now with the additional credits uh they were certainly keeping it until the next renewal one of them just renewed recently, I think, and so is set to renew. I can't remember exactly the timeline, but I know that we were going to sneak in under the change date.

So have essentially another year to use the new credits. Whereas our other gold card, I think is going to probably renew like right after the deadline. So we will get hit with the higher fee. So I haven't decided on that one yet. I do, I think I mentioned, the new credits are actually a little bit better for me in the sense that the five guys being added to the one dining credit makes me much more likely to just naturally use it. And in the Duncan credits, I don't mind piling up a few of those and getting a cup of coffee that I don't love now and then. Or an ice cream cone, as Tim points out. This is news to me that you don't

love coffee. Yeah, well, no, I do, but not Duncan Coffee. And the Rezzy credits look like they're going to be a little bit easier to use. So I may be more inclined to keep it than I was. Now, Tim mentioned or ice cream. So I got to let you be the one to share what you meant. Like, I can't get ice cream at Dunkin' Donuts. Tim, what are you talking about? Well, and this was a new one for me. And so this, this is, this is just somebody told us that evidently because, um, basket and probably, you know, hundreds of people that are watching,

thousands of people that are watching this probably know this, um, that, uh, evident, but it blew my mind that Baskin Robbins and Dunkin Donuts are, were originally owned by the same holding company. And so they're now in a bigger company, but those two entities, their credits go back and forth. So you can actually use your Duncan credits

at Baskin-Robbins. So if you don't like ice cream, or if you don't like coffee, you can get ice cream. Yeah, somebody's got to try it. If you don't like cheap coffee and you don't like Nick, you can have cheap ice cream

that you don't like cheap coffee that you don't like, Nick, you can have cheap ice cream that you don't like. Did anyone else come up with a different decision on keeping or canceling Amex Gold? Our renewal is after the rate goes up. And so I'm going to just try to use the Resi credit before it goes up and so i'm going to just try to use the resi credit before uh it goes up in december and then plan on canceling um the only the only question will be if if the card the card does not currently have the ability to refer friends and if that referral comes back, I might think about keeping it because sometimes it's had in the past the ability to refer to those really good offers and then you can earn a lot of points that way.

But if it doesn't come back, then yeah, it's time to go. I'm unexcited about the new increased annual fee, so we'll probably chop at least one of them. Whether we chop both of them, it's yet to be seen. I've got a long time before I have to really decide. Shockingly enough, I actually don't currently have an Amex Gold card.

So not keep or cancel. I'm going to stay. It's a push for me. Alright, got it. Greg, I think? I'm staying. I'm staying. It's a push for me. All right. Got it. Greg, I think. I don't have any travel plans for the next eight months,

but I was targeted for 0.5 cents per point Hilton's. Do you recommend to buy preemptively, or should I wait and hope that the same offer will be back? No, do not buy. Do not buy speculatively. The ability to buy Hilton points for half a cent each comes pretty often. So I wouldn't be excited about it. And I wouldn't pull the trigger on it until you know you need Hilton points or you're very confident that there's a trip coming up where Hilton is the right answer. And even then, I mean, I would check how does the, how good is Hilton's point price for that property? Because there are some properties where

they charge so much in points that even at a half cent per point, you'd be paying more for the points than you'd pay just to book a room at the property anyway. So it just depends what's going on with the particular property, the time of year, things like that. All right. Thank you.

Then on to Tim. I plan to downgrade my RITits to apply for Bonvoy Brilliant. How long do I need to wait after the downgrade from writs to get approved? The reason why is because Marriott has a labyrinthine series of application rules that kind of looks like the old hedgerows, like the British hedgerows that go around. Literally every single time I want to apply for a Marriott card, I have to look at our post to track what i have and what i don't have to see what's there um and the ritz carlton card is to my mind the most desirable marriott card out there um the problem is you once you get it it effectively kills you from having any other Amex or applying for any other Amex bond card. So you can downgrade it. And then that kind of happens. I think it's, you know, and I don't actually, in terms of the answer to this specific question, I know that you have to have not had it for 30 days. In terms of when they see that 30 days as being, as having happened,

I'm not sure because it's across, I'm not sure how quickly the, and I'll ask everybody else. I'm not sure how quickly, because you're talking about communication between Amex and Chase in this instance. So, but it's the official rule is you cannot have had it for 30 days,

but I'm not sure exactly if there's an absolute, does anybody know, is there like an after five days is when they'll, is when the 30 day clock starts or. I don't know. I mean, I, I would, I would take a chance after 31 days that it would work, but I would definitely wait 31 days. You can always call reconsideration and say, you know, Hey, I haven't had, you know, I haven't had this for 31 days.

So jumping to quick thoughts, I mean, the easy way to test at 31 days is just try the Amex application and it'll give you a pop up and say, no, you're a Ritz card holder if you're not eligible. So that seems like a really easy test uh and then the other thing is when uh just passing comment tim made about the ritz card locking you out of amex marriott cards i just wanted to correct the record on that and that you are still eligible for the business card oh right it's the brilliant card that you're you get locked out of it but that is what the question was about the brilliant card so uh but yes you are still eligible for the amex business card even with the ritz card but yeah no i don't know the answer to the question better than the advice you guys gave all right well we're gonna make you answer another one though nick um not about cruises

this time uh is it possible to book an aero plan stopover with multiple stops oh perfect question with multiple stopovers no i mean you get one stopover in each direction for 5 000 additional points so is it possible to book with multiple stops well i guess if you're booking a round trip you can book one stopover in either direction now of course as i've written about before you can have long layovers. I've had layovers of 23 hours. And I think I have on the award I'm on right now, there's a layover of 23 hours and 50 minutes on one of the flights. So you can go up to 24 hours on a layover. And that's fine. You can do as many of those as you can only have, what, six segments in a single direction um but you could have five of those presumably i guess uh or four of those and one stopover of more than 24 hours but you can't add additional stopovers of more than 24 hours if that's what you're asking but nick's underselling just a little bit because anybody who's interested in that question should go back and look at, you know, it's what, two years ago? The Carthage Continent, that was two years ago now.

Yeah. How many total stops did you have on your one-way aeroplane ticket? Well, yeah, I mean, that's the thing. I think I visited, what, five or six countries and like six segments. And I must've visited six countries and it was five different airlines is what it was. So six, six different countries. So I had a stopover of almost 24 hours in Cairo. I had a stopover.

Actually, I didn't do any stopovers. I didn't pay any additional miles. I had enough time in Cairo to go see the pyramids and to go do some other cool stuff there. And enough time in Istanbul to take a cruise of the bosphorus and enough time in wiscott to go uh snorkeling and have whale shark swim right next to me and then have enough time in singapore to go get a delicious treat at a michelin bib gourmand place and then end up in cebu in the philippines and so now i've left out bangkok i also had enough time to go visit the flower market and the grand palace in bangkok on that one single direction ticket without a stopover i had enough time to go visit the flower market and the Grand Palace in Bangkok on that one single direction ticket without a stopover. I had enough time to do something.

There wasn't a stopover on that? That was all layovers. No, there was no stopover. Yeah, that was all layovers. Could this overlap with the question about what you do if you arrive before check-in time? Maybe like whale sharks, flower market. So are there no limits on layovers or was that unique to the time? No. Yeah. Well, I mean, you can, so a one way aeroplane award can have up to six segments and you can have a layover of up to 24 hours in between segments. So you could have, you know, five of those, I guess, is that the math works out to if you're doing six segments or is it,

I don't know, I can't do the math at six o'clock in the morning to figure out how many layovers that would end up being on six segments. This is not a layover for the first one, right? So anyway, there's no limit on those. No, you can. All right, cool. Other than the segment limit.

Well, the segment limit and then there's a distance limit. So the total distance of the award has to be less than double the distance from your starting point to your ending point. So if you start in New York and you end in Singapore, it can't be more'll actually show you what percentage of the end-to-end distance all those segments make up. So you don't have to do the math yourself. GCMap.com, right? I think. Yeah. Cool. Well, I think this is our last question for Greg. Do we have any videos that talk about American system-wide upgrades? This person just used an American Airlines system-wide upgrade from Tokyo to Japan for three people, paid $800 total for $33,000 website costs for business class. That's great.

Good job. No, we don't have any such video, but I could imagine that it would be worth doing a show about that. Yeah. We often will use ideas from these Ask Us Anything Lives for future coffee breaks or full-length Freaking My Life on the Air episodes. So you can influence us. I think that's it. All right.

And once again, if you enjoyed the show, please give us a like, thumbs up on the YouTube or however you are listening or watching like, and, and leave a comment. Yeah. Thanks for watching everybody. Bye all. to break into the world forever.