Frequent Miler on the Air - Amex Platinum Coupon Book: Is it worth the annual fee? | Ep145 | 4-9-22

Episode Date: April 9, 2022

Can a coupon book really be worth $695? This week we run the numbers and see if it all adds up to make the Platinum card worthwhile. 00:43 Giant Mailbag double header. First up: Booking Air France intra-European flights via Virgin Atlantic and getting Caesars Diamond back again 4:27 Giant Mailbag: Confession time: Caesars Diamond once again 11:45 What craazy thing . . . did Capital One do this week? https://frequentmiler.com/baseball-fans-capital-one-has-great-seats-for-5000-miles-each/ 19:10 Mattress running....er, Airport Lounge Running the Numbers: ANA elite status match to Star Alliance Gold https://frequentmiler.com/star-alliance-gold-match-via-ana-mileage-club-match-delta-gold-aa-platinum-pro/ 29:21: Main Event: The Amex Platinum coupon book: Is it worth the annual fee? https://frequentmiler.com/platinum-card-arrived-heres-next/ https://frequentmiler.com/dont-want-to-pay-that-695-annual-fee-heres-the-strategy-before-you-cancel/ Wide appeal coupons: 32:04 $240 Digital Entertainment Credit 37:24 $200 Fine Hotels & Resorts credit 40:06 $200 Airline fee credits https://frequentmiler.com/amex-airline-fee-reimbursements-still-works/ 42:00 $200 in Uber credits 44:22 $179 CLEAR credit 48:28 $100 Saks credit 51:21 Walmart+ credit 55:56 Other perks (Airport lounge access, elite status, emergency evacuation coverage, etc). 1:09:42 Post Roast: Are IHG credit card free night certificates "kind of like" paying for points? https://frequentmiler.com/my-ihg-free-night-strategy-on-gregs-mind/ 1:13:13 Question of the Week: Is it safe to pay my taxes with a new Chase card? https://frequentmiler.com/pay-taxes-via-credit-card/ Join our email list: https://frequentmiler.com/subscribe/ Music credit: Annie Yoder  

Let's get into the giant mailbag. What crazy thing did City do this week? It's time for Mattress Running the Numbers. Ready for the main event? The main event. Frequent Miler on the air starts now. Today's main event, the Amex Platinum Coupon Book. Is it worth the $695 annual fee? Greg, I paid $12 for my last entertainment bug. What are we

talking about here? Is it worth $695? Oh my gosh. How could any credit card be worth that much money? I don't know. Maybe it is. There's some recent changes that make it a little more appealing. So yeah, we'll get into that. First, of course, we have the giant mailbag and today's giant mail is a special. We've got a special giant mailbag today because we have giant mail from both me, Greg, and you, Nick. So- Which is a great way of saying nobody emailed mailbag at Frequent Mileage. No, I'm just kidding.

People emailed, but we had other things to talk about this week. So we do, we do. So, okay. So I'm going to, I'm going to go first. My mail is about, I, I just wanted to follow up on something. A little over a week ago, I wrote a post about how this cool sweet spot, which is flights across Europe on Air France or KLM, you can book with Virgin Atlantic miles for as few as 4,000 miles in coach or as few as 8,000 miles, this is one way, in business class. Now, business class isn't any big, great thing in European flights. It's very similar to coach. But what's exciting about that is that's actually pretty much just as cheap as most other mileage programs charge for a coach flight and sometimes less. For sure. Quite a bit less. I'm always surprised at how

much intra-European flights cost in most airline programs, like how cheap the tickets are usually with cash. They charge way too many miles. It feels like normally. Right. Yeah. It's, it's kind of crazy, but what's so nice about having a cheap way of booking business class is that business class awards, at least on Air France and KLM, seem to be wide open for almost any time you want to go. So I've been looking at some really expensive times and it's expensive for a coach, let alone business. And business class awards have been wide open. I managed to, I had previously snagged an Air France flight that I needed. And I, since then have snagged a KLM flight that I needed. And both cases in business class for two, I could have booked more than two people.

In both cases, I had to, I use Virgin Atlantic miles, but the website errors out. So I had to go through their Twitter team to actually get it booked, but it successfully booked both times. So I really just wanted to follow up on that and let people know in case they lost track of this little niche thing that it's really, you know, it's real and it works. And, you know, I think it especially benefits in some ways, Delta flyers, because people are people flying Delta to Europe are likely to end up in, um, the Paris or Amsterdam, uh, air France and KLM hubs, and then might need another flight to go onward from there. And, uh And so it's a great trick to keep in

your little storage pocket for later. For sure. For sure. Funny enough, I was looking for one of these yesterday and could only find coach. I was like, oh, where are my 8,000 miles? Yeah. It must've been a little bit too long to be the 4,000 miles. I guess I didn't actually look it up, but I figured out it must be a little bit outside of the range of the cheapest ones. Had to be just outside of the range of the cheapest ones. So I was like, that's gotta be right outside the circle. But yeah. If coach was available, that's still a good deal. It is. It is. So, so anyway, very good, good tip. Good one to keep in mind and one that I actively have been looking for since you wrote about it. So it's certainly something that I found helpful. All right. So this week I have a little bit of

giant mail too, and it's one of Greg's favorite types of giant mail because it's confession time. Oh yes. We all love confession time. So let's hear what you did wrong and everyone else will gloat. Well, you know, so let me start out. I won't do that to you. But everybody, everybody else. I will gloat on behalf of others. But personally, I'm going to be not coming from you.

All right. Good. Glad to hear that. So many readers may remember that a couple of weeks ago here, we had reported how people had matched to Caesar's diamond status. So there had been a status match go around for a long time where people have had Wyndham status and matched over to Caesar's. And then, you know, time ran out on that and you match back to Wyndham and then match back

to Caesar's back and forth and keep top level status in both programs. And this year, Caesar's put the brakes on that and said, okay, no, people who are matching back from Wyndham again, aren't going to get diamond. We initially all got diamond and then they downgraded us to gold or whatever it is that's below diamond. So, so yeah, all the way at the bottom rather, I should say, because there's another level in between too. So I had talked about how I lost my status. I got taken away. My wife kept her diamond status, which I assume is because she has the Wyndham business card. So I guess that's like earning Wyndham status. And so Caesar said, if you've earned your Wyndham status,

then you get to keep the Caesar's diamond. But if you're just one of the riffraff matching back and forth, we're not going to keep doing that. Which to be clear is a totally logical approach. Totally fair and logical. And it was inconvenient know, it was inconvenient for me, but, but totally fair. Like that's what I would do if I read the programs. Right. Right. Right. Clear. Uh, I, but it was fun while it lasted. I, it lasted much longer than I ever anticipated it. So anyway, anyway, so I know that I, what, what am I talking about all that for? That was a couple of weeks ago, water under the bridge, right? Give well like i said i have some confession time today because i once again now have caesar's diving status oh which doesn't yet sound like a confession but it's coming no it doesn't so readers who are very

regular readers with the memories of elephants may remember way back when sometime a long time ago when I wrote about founders card and how founders card had some, I don't know, some stuff and they had an ability to sign up for a free six month trial for a very short window of time. I don't think that's still available. This was a long time ago at this point. So you were able to sign up for a free six month trial. And then, you know, obviously if you don't cancel, they'd charge you. But then I wrote in the post about how good they were in terms of, I think they gave you 30 days or 60 days or something to cancel after getting charged and they would still refund you.

So I said, well, if I forget to cancel when six months is up, I'll see the charge and then I'll just go ahead and take care of it. I think I know where this is going. So I don't have to worry about getting charged for a founder's card because I'll take care of that when it comes up. As soon as I see the charge, I'll just email and say, hey, listen, I really meant to cancel my money back. Right.

And so, you know, of course, silly me. So maybe I should say what we do that our bills in my household is, you know, like once a month we go through everything, put it all in a spreadsheet. So all of our expenses are in a spreadsheet. We have everything that we've, we've spent money on. And then, you know, obviously all the bank account balances, blah, blah, blah, which makes sense. Except for the one card that I have that I don't pay every month because it's preloaded. That would be the Brex card. The Brex card is like you put money in and so you have a balance and you just spend out of that balance. And so I use it so sporadically that I didn't always think to put it into the spreadsheet when we were doing our bills because it wasn't something

that I was actively paying. And so I didn't notice until recently that I got charged $395 quite a while back, too long ago to cancel and get my money back for Founders Card. So I am the proud owner of a year long or a few months long, I don't know how long I have left, Founders Card membership. So I was, of course, a little upset with myself for that silly mistake. But then my next thought was, well, okay, I got burned here. What can I make out of it? Oh yeah. Founder's card offers free Caesars diamond status. Let me see if I can get that back and get my free trip to Atlantis and at least feel like I

spent my three 95 on something. So, uh, so sure enough, I did the match online. I don't know, sometime in the last week here. And it took a few days. It wasn't instant took maybe almost a week anyway. And then my, I noticed this morning, actually that my Caesar's status is once again, diamond, and it wasn't at the beginning of this month, but it is now. So, so here I am Caesar's diamond yet again. So if you are one of those people that lost your Caesar's diamond status and you really value it because you don't pay resort fees in Las Vegas or because of some of the other stuff you get, like, you know, if you're into the sports book, you get a monthly $20 free bet.

There's some other things here and there, bells and whistles. But so if you're into those things and you're like, oh, man, I lost my Caesar's diamond status. I really want it back. Founders card is at least an option. Not necessarily a good one, but it's not as good, not as good as signing up for the Wyndham business card, which is what, 95 bucks or something to be the same status. And you would get yourself eight acts of gas stations, five utilities or whatever. There'll be many more benefits. So I'm not recommending that you sign

up for the founders card. I'm just mentioning. We should have done a you sign up for the founders card. Maybe we should have done a show. Is the founders card coupon book worth its $3.95 fee? You know, if you accidentally pay for it. You know, what this reminds me of, a little niche credit card, the X1. Not the Venture X, the X1 card. One of its capabilities, which I really enjoy having access to, is you could create these one-time use virtual cards that are used for, it actually says it on the app, it's for free trials. So the idea is that for free trials, you have to often put in a credit card and they check it to make sure that, you know, a credit charge can get authorized to that card before they set up, before they

enable your free trial. And the downside of doing that usually is that things happen like what happened with Nick, where you accidentally pay for the thing that you didn't mean to, but the X one, it will just automatically, if you use one of these free trial, um, virtual cards, then you don't have to worry about it. So I really liked that feature. Um, yeah, I wish, I wish all cards had that. Me too. Especially the Brax card. Really wish that one had it or that that hadn't been the card that was like in my hand the day I signed up for the free trial and thought, well, it doesn't matter what card number I put in because I'm not paying for it anyway. So I'm not going to renew it. So it doesn't matter. I just typed, yeah, silly, silly. We'll make that mistake twice. All right. So there you go. That

is my confession time, but little tip for those that really want Caesar's diamond status for one reason or another. Okay. That out of the way, let's talk about something crazy, not just the crazy stuff that I did this week, but rather what crazy thing did Capital One do this week? What did Capital One do this week? I actually have a Capital One card in my household now. I've talked about this, that my wife signed up for the VentureX. We've actually earned the 100,000 point signup bonus that was available before. And I've already redeemed 100,000 points for travel credits because just in case Capital One shuts me down. Bet you're happy. I left 20,000 points in the account because we earn points from spend

as well as the bonus, right? Just in case we're going to use them for something like what you're about to talk about. Right, right. So Capital One, we wrote about Capital One Entertainment a while back. They launched this entertainment portal where you can buy tickets to various events, concerts,

sporting events, cooking things, I don't know, stuff, different experiences like a lot of companies have these days. And for the most part, I found that the value was horrible. It's powered by Vivid Seats. And I had looked into Vivid Seats a couple of times in the past because I needed tickets to various things. And every time they always looked like they had the best price until you get to the final page of checkout and they had a billion dollars in fees. And I found that to be the case also with most of the events through Capital One Entertainment. So I didn't think it was a deal at all until a reader reached out and pointed out to me that Capital One had

some exclusive tickets to Major League Baseball games. that Capital One had some exclusive tickets to Major League Baseball games. And when I say some exclusive tickets to Major League Baseball games, I mean, I think every single team had every single game. They had four seats, I think, at the beginning, because by the time I saw this, some seats were gone, but the vast majority of games are still available. So I think they had four seats at every single game that they were selling for 5,000 miles per seat. And we're not talking about nosebleed seats. They had great seats at these games. Like for example, I bought tickets for my sister-in-law to see a Mets and Phillies game. She's a big New York Mets fan. It's going to be a game in Philadelphia, but we settled on the game in Philadelphia because the capital one tickets were five rows behind

the visitors dugout. So she's going to be five rows behind the players coming in and out right up close to the action. She's thrilled 5,000 miles a ticket. I mean, that's great. Yankee stadium had seats like six or seven rows from the field right behind home plate. Like these are tickets that normally sell for two or $300 a ticket, depending on the game, 5,000 miles a piece was just like an absolute no brainer. I'm talking 5,000 miles period, no additional fees. It was 5,000 miles a ticket. That's what he paid. So I bought tickets to a Yankees game at Yankee stadium for a friend and to the Phillies Mets game. So in both cases, 10,000 miles.

But the crazy thing is, so a crazy thing number one is capital one had great seats real cheap. Like, I mean, for very few miles, we're talking about $50 worth of miles, right? Or if you value them more than a penny each, still what $75 worth of miles, if we're going to be generous here, and you're getting in many cases, two or $300 tickets. this opportunity. The crazy piece to me is that Capital One had these tickets for all of the baseball games in April and May. I don't know if they're going to load games beyond that in June, July, and August. I hope so. But they had all the games in April and May and they didn't tell anybody. It was nothing. My wife and I are both Capital One cardholders. We didn't get an email. Did you get an email? Not that I'm aware of now. Capital One's marketing team didn't reach out to us and tell us about it at the blog. That's the kind of thing that normally we would get an email? Not that I'm aware of, no. Capital One's marketing team didn't reach out to us and tell us about it at the blog. That's the kind of thing that normally we would get an email and say, hey, we've got this great new enhancement.

Check this out. Instead, they reach out to us with things like, hey, we're now providing a virtual eating experience with a celebrity chef or something. And things that we just look at know, and things that like, we just look at these emails, go, uh, okay, next. Right. But, but this would be, this would be, is truly exciting. And yet they, they were mum until, until, uh, this reader found it and we, we, uh, posted about it. Right. Right. And it seemed quite popular amongst people who like baseball. Now, if you're like me, you're like, I'm a big baseball fan. I mean, I'd go to a game, especially great seats for 5,000 miles each that didn't fit into my plan starting April and May. So I didn't get any tickets for myself, but if they, if games come up in June, July, and August,

I might sit a few rows from the field for 5,000 miles a seat. I'm the same way. I'm not that much of a fan, but I'd be thrilled to go to a good game with those kind of seats. It'd be a lot of fun. It'd be a fun experience. But the bigger thing to me is I guess I got to keep an eye on Capital One Entertainment, right? Because they're not going to tell me when they have something good. We're going to have to find it, I guess. Thanks to the reader, to Nick, who emailed me to tell me about this, because otherwise I never would have seen it. And lots of other people who got tickets, thanks to us posting it, wouldn't have seen it either. So thank you to Nick who tipped us off to that. But now we're going to have to keep our eye on Capital One. Right, right. Well,

you know what I really love about this? Every other thing like this, where the credit card company offers some special perks for cardholders, it's almost always just for people in New York City or in LA. Occasionally, there's a little sprinkle here or there beyond those two cities, but for people who live elsewhere, there has not been a lot going on. And this is something available nationwide. know, nationwide, everyone who has a, who has a, a, a professional football, I mean, professional baseball team, uh, playing somewhere, uh, in the vicinity that you can get to. I mean, that's a lot of people. So that's a huge improvement over their norm. And I would love to see similar things with other sports and other, um, non-sport things

like, you know, maybe, um, traveling shows. You remember, um, Amex had done a thing where platinum card holders were able to get tickets to the traveling, um, uh, uh, Hamilton. It was Hamilton. Yeah. And so we were able to snag some great seats at the one in Chicago. And, and, you know, I would love to see that kind of thing happen with Capital One too. Yeah. That'd be great. Yeah. You know, Gary, you from the wing pointed out that I guess Capital

One had announced a large sponsorship of Major League Baseball. And so I'm sure that that has something to do with their ability to have gotten these tickets. So that worked out well, I think in this case, but still I'm going to keep my eye out because obviously they're looking to do something here. And, and I mean, you know, I think probably I'm not alone in saying that I don't normally think of things like major league baseball games, because it's kind of a pricey day out, right? I mean, you got tickets that are going to cost a bunch and they know you're going to spend a million bucks on food. And if you've got kids, they're going to want a souvenir or whatever else. This makes it pretty affordable, right? I mean,

because the most expensive piece of the day is done with a few miles and not very many miles at that. So, and it's not common that I'm going to get excited about using miles for something other than flying. This is just a rare, rare instance where I was like, yeah, that's, that's pretty awesome. So keep it up. Capital one, give us something else like that. More, more craziness. Come on, bring it, bring awesome. So keep it up. Capital one, give us something else like that. More, more craziness. Come on, bring it, bring it on, bring it on. All right. Let's talk about mattress running the numbers. So this week's mattress running the numbers, not really mattress running, but we're mileage status running. Well, you know, last week we described it as, as airport lounge running. And I think that's fair

for, for this one as well. A and a out of the blue has come up with a status match. So if you have high level status in one of several other airline programs, you can match to ANA's status. And if you can match to their platinum status, then you have Star Alliance gold status, which you can use to get into Star Alliance lounges, even when you're flying domestically in the US, like on United. So that's pretty cool. And so what do you think? Is it worth pursuing? Yeah, absolutely. I was thrilled with this because they're matching. It seems that they're targeting

North American-based flyers. So they're matching, for instance, from Delta Gold to Platinum. So you get yourself lounge access when flying United with Delta Gold status if you match that over to ANA. So that to me was great because Delta Gold status I have because I did a status match challenge last year. So I only met the requirements for the challenge, but now I've got Delta status through January of next year. So I was able to take that and submit a match request. And I expect at some point, probably by the time this publishes, to have ANA Platinum and be able to get into lounges. So that's great.

I think for American Airlines, you had to have, what was it, Platinum Pro, I I think in order to match to, to pay an a platinum, it's I'm not sure which one it was. So yeah. Yeah. Information's in there. And the link of course will be in the description here. So very easy to do. I don't know if they would match something like jet blue or, uh, or spirit. I can't recall, but you'll see the list of airlines that they have listening that are qualifying, but then there's also a dropdown for other airlines. So you could try something else if you have status with somebody else, try anything. It specifically says not a Star Alliance airline, but you know, try whatever else. Try your Southwest Companion Pass, try anything.

Right. Why not? And so the thing is here, like, is there a lot of risk in this, Greg? I mean, I know normally status matches are like a once per lifetime thing, right? Right, right. Often programs will either say you can only do this once per lifetime, or they might say once every five years at the most. And in this case, I don't see that as a downside. I don't know what the rule is with ANA, but I have never in my whole time in this hobby, I've never seen ANA offer a status match.

So, you know, I think you should just jump on it. And the other thing is it's not, it has a set expiry as for how long your elite status lasts. So it doesn't matter whether you sign up now or five months from now, it'll still end at the same time. So there's no incentive to wait. I think just jump on it now because who knows, they might discontinue the match before the program is supposed to end. Um, I, I, I, I, I would just jump on it. I'm going to do it,

even though I have storylines gold, I have it through, uh, air that's right yeah yeah i i um the reason i'm gonna do it is you might remember me struggling to figure out what to do with my 269 000 a.m. a miles rings about and which are still alive they haven't expired yet they're in they're in uh limbo right now so what happens is each time ANA renews miles because of COVID, which is what they've been doing the last couple of years, which is why I still haven't spent these miles. Each time they renew it, there's a period of two or three weeks where they're gone. And they tell you ahead of time that's going to happen, but it's still scary every time, you know, see your balance drop to zero and you can't use them. Right. And then at some point, at some point they'll reappear in my account. So that's the state of it right now. But the, the, one of the platinum perks, ANA platinum perks is to have like sort of special access to a group that, that helps you like book awards and

other things. And so if, if that even reduces my call time just a little bit, when I have to start really booking, you know, my, my miles for let's say an around the world trip for two in business class, which is what I've been hoping to do. I think it'll, it's absolutely worth the minute or two to sign up for the status match. So I'm definitely doing it. For sure. For sure. You know, and I, when you pointed that out, I was like, oh man, that is a reason to look for an around the world, right? Because maybe you'll at least have a little less hold time getting to an agent. Although I have no idea what the situation is like calling any now in the past, I haven't had to wait very long to speak to somebody, but, but hopefully it'll reduce any hold time you might

have experienced and get you to somebody who knows what they're doing right off the bat. So that's, that's an exciting prospect that might make that a little bit easier to book. So I'm interested in that now too. I don't know whether I'll be able to actually fit one of those bookings in before my status expires, but I'm going to have to look at it pretty seriously because it's a great opportunity. Yeah. So great. So there's really no debate there. Just if you have a qualifying status, might as well do it. I mean, I guess there's a tiny chance that they'll come back with a status match in the future.

And so you'd be missing out on a future one, but I think that's so low that's to be discounted. So low. And I figure that this is a decent chance to match to ANA. And then I think there's a good chance that we'll see match opportunities in the future from other airlines where you could parlay into something else. And, you know, so I think it'd be, it's worth having it to be where you could parlay this into something else. And so I think it's worth having it to be able to hopefully parlay it into something in the future.

And you're not giving up much because it's not an opportunity you're likely to see too many times. Right, right. And it doesn't cost anything unlike the Royal Air Maroc one that costs 49 euros. Correct.

Okay. All right. I think it's time for the main event. Welcome to the main event. The main event today, the Amex Platinum Coupon Book. Is it worth the $695 annual fee? Wow. That is a lot of moolah, Greg.

It really is. Let's back up a little bit. Why are we calling it the coupon book? What's with that? I mean, because Amex has really kind of, well, they've kind of changed things to the point where the card at times in the past really felt like it came with enough benefits to outweigh its fee. But as the fee has gone up, the benefits have sort of turned into a dribs and drabs sort of thing, as you often say. They pass them out in these monthly credits or various smaller credits that you have to

continuously use. Whereas it has long had an airline fee credit that you could potentially use all at one time. Many of the credits these days are monthly credits or they're smaller offers that aren't going to produce as much value individually. So it kind of feels more like going through a coupon book and feeling like, okay, well, I got to use enough coupons to justify what I paid for this coupon book. That's right. That's right. And so, you know, for a lot of people, it, it really soured them on this card. It used to be like this. It had this luxury like cachet to it. And the fact that now you save on things like Walmart plus subscription. But that doesn't scream luxury to you, Greg.

It really doesn't. And even though the price is much higher than before, it, it feels, as you said, more like you're, you're prepaying for a bunch of coupons at which is, is a, uh, really unfortunate turn of events for, uh, for the platinum card. And for the record, let me say that I misspoke earlier when I said I paid $12 for my last entertainment book. I think it was $4. Just if anybody was horrified by the fact that I spent 12,

I'm pretty sure it was four. But anyway, so 695, like what? 695 for a bunch of coupons. Right, right. So a lot of our listeners and readers have platinum cards because there've been just ridiculously unbelievable

signup offers available. And a lot of our podcast hosts have as well. All two of them, I think. Right. And so, so the you know, the current offer as we're recording this 150,000 points after $6,000 spend, plus you earn 10 points per dollar at restaurants for six months up to $25,000 spend at restaurants. And that's just a fantastic offer. So it makes sense, regardless of whether the Amex Platinum card is worth $695 in future years, it's worth the first year because of the huge signup offer. For somebody who stumbles on this show, who is not intimately familiar with these miles and points, can you put in perspective, what is that worth? 150,000 points in the 10 exit restaurants or

whatever. Are we sure that that's worth more than $695? Like what is it worth? Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, if you used it for poor value for one cent per point value, like to book, let's say a fine hotel and resort reservation at a nice hotel, it's worth $1,500 straight up, you know? So you could get a $1,500 hotel stay. That's not even counting the fact that you get $200 back because of the, uh, one of the coupons, but, um, you know, right off the bat, you're, you're trading 700 bucks for 1500 bucks without considering any of the rest of what we're going to talk about. So it's pretty good. Exactly. And you could do much better than that by transferring points to, to partner, to airline partners that where you can get like high value awards, for example.

So, you know, there's a lot you could do with those points that's really valuable. And so, okay. So Nick wrote a post because a lot of people ask about this. They say, hey, this card isn't really worth it to me. What should I do? Should I cancel? And so Nick wrote a post about basically what to do when it comes time. You realize that the card's not worth renewing after the first year and you want to cancel. Well, there's some things you should do before you cancel. And so you need to read that post if you decide to cancel. But before all that, you should really be thinking about, is the card worth more than the annual fee to you?

Maybe you do want to keep it, actually. And, you know, I think a lot of people will just look at the overall price tag and say, no way. But I think for others, you might look at these set of coupons and say, you know what? It actually is worth that to me. So I'm going to keep it because I get my money back plus I get other perks. It's interesting. I look forward to talking about

these perks and the values because when they initially announced the increase of the annual fee and we heard that it was going to be $695, I thought, okay, you're unreasonable at this point. That doesn't make any sense. I can't possibly justify

paying another $100 and whatever a year at this point. That doesn't make any sense. I can't possibly justify paying another a hundred and whatever dollars a year for this card, but I'm not so sure that that is right anymore. I'm starting to think maybe I should pay for it. Let's talk about it. Right. So I looked at what we're calling coupons and broke them into three categories. First category is what I'm calling wide appeal. These are types of spend where you get your money back. And I think these things have wide appeal to a lot of people. I'm counted up $840 a year in potential credits, wide appeal. Preston Pyshko, MD, PhD, PhD, PhD, PhD, PhD, PhD, PhD, PhD, PhD, PhD, PhD, PhD, PhD, PhD, PhD, a year in potential credits, wide appeal. So I'll get into the details of that. And then I have medium appeal categories, $377 medium appeal. That means it's the type of things

that some people definitely, I mean, probably a lot of people will be like, oh yeah, I want that thing, but not that other thing. So there's very few people that are going to want all three things in my medium appeal category. And then there's the category I'm not even going to count. And that's stuff like Equinox credit. I mean, there's a few people out there that subscribe to Equinox, so you're going to get full value from that. But that seems to be so specialized to me that I don't even want to count it. But let's just, let's dive into wide appeal now because $840, if you really got $840 value from these things, then the $695 annual fee doesn't hurt much, right? Right, right.

If you get $840 worth of value. So let's talk about what they are. It's a really big F. So, okay. Digital entertainment credit, when it first came out. So the way it works is you get up to $20 back per month. If you use your card to pay for things like New York Times subscription, Sirius XM.

Audible. Audible, right. So there's a few. Oh, Peacock TV. Right. But, and all of those are pretty specialized. I wouldn't have put that in the wide appeal category before, but now they added the Disney, Disney ESPN and Hulu. And Disney has Disney has a bundle of all three of those that costs, what, just short of 20 bucks a month. Right. Well, you pay 14 a month if you're okay with the ads on Hulu or $19.99 a month if you want Hulu with no ads. And so you end up getting Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN completely covered by this credit.

Right, right. And that to me is awesome. I wasn't previously paying for ESPN, but I was paying for both Disney Plus and Hulu No Ads as separate things. So I wasn't very far from the $20 combined already. It seems like, you know, not much of a stretch to say I'm getting close to the full $20 value by using it for the bundle instead of the, the using it for the thing separately. Yeah. You know, and, and we, we haven't subscribed to Hulu because we've got Netflix and we've got

this and that, you know, the peacock that we haven't even used that we got from the free credit so we hadn't signed up for hulu but i'm not i certainly wasn't against signing up for hulu i like having the option to sign up for it and not have to pay for it so that's appealing to me i've become more interested in sports over these last few months as things you know have heated up there so espn plus sounds great to me i can catch some games on my phone. So I, again, not something I was necessarily going to pay for, but something I do value, uh, because I don't pay for cable TV. So, uh, so that sounds, you know, like a good thing to me and Disney plus is something I already subscribed to now Disney plus I feel like is worth mentioning. Now I subscribed to Disney plus on an annual basis

because I signed up through some deals we wrote about, but at some point here, that annual subscription is about to, you know, end up here and then I'll have to renew or whatever. And I'll switch over to the monthly and a platinum card. But my question for you is this. So when I heard Disney plus initially, I thought of kids programs and I got two young kids. So, I mean, great. It's perfect. Terrific for me. Lots of Mickey mouse, making the roads to racers, this and that. I don't even know all the stuff that's on Disney that the kids watch, but they watch a whole bunch of stuff on Disney. But I imagine that there are a few people out there who are like, okay, well, I get that if you have young kids, but why would I want Disney Plus? Now you don't have young kids.

So I'm hoping that you can tell them why they might be interested, even if they didn't realize they were interested in Disney Plus. Right, right. So if you're, if you're at all a star Wars fan, Disney plus is a way to get into watching the Mandalorian and the what's the new one that just came out or forget, but, um, but these shows are really good. I've really enjoyed them. And, uh, Boba Fett that's, that's the other one. And both terrific shows and they're intertwined actually. The characters from one show up on the other. So if you like that stuff and if you like the Marvel universe of movies

and TV shows, it's all on Disney+. And then there's the occasional Disney movie that I actually want to see like Soul came out on Disney+. I haven't seen that. Oh my gosh, such a good movie. Such a good movie. It is digitally animated movie,

but it really is great even as an adult. So a lot of good stuff on there. Yeah, I agree. When I first saw Disney Plus come out, I thought, of course, I don't want this, but I was proven wrong. Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of stuff on there that appeals to a much wider range. I think I've been surprised scrolling through Disney plus at like, oh, wow, that's not a kid's thing at all. Disney has bought enough stuff now,

I think between the stuff they've bought and the attempts they've made anyway to make content that's relevant to a wide range of people. I think there's just much more on Disney plus than some people would realize who have ignored it because they only pictured Mickey Mouse. So it's worth looking at it, even if you didn't think you wanted it. And that's why I think this has broad appeal. Obviously, Mickey Mouse has broad, broad appeal. Lots of people go to Disney World every year, all the animated Disney Lion King and this and that, that stuff. I'm sure that there are lots and lots of people, the vast majority of people probably into that stuff. But then additionally, there's enough other stuff that I feel like this has to appeal to almost everybody.

Right. I mean, yes, yes, yes. So, so I think that was a huge, huge value add. So, right, right. So, so that's that right there, $20 a month, that's $240 in credits in, in wide appeal credits. Right. And then you have the fine hotels and resorts, the hotel collection, $200 back per year when you make a booking with your Platinum card in one of those programs. Now, these are programs where you book a hotel. Not all hotels are available through this program, but there are select sort of like higher end hotels. They can book through this program and get $200 back per year with these. They both have benefits.

So it's not like you're gaining things beyond the $200 back. You get things like with fine hotels and resorts, you get things like guaranteed 4 PM late checkout. You get a free breakfast for two, you get a hundred dollar hotel credit of some sort, whether it depends on the hotel, what you can use it for. So, you know, a lot of good things there. And, you know, we've written about how you can often, not always, but you can often find a relatively cheap, you know, stay at a fine hotel and resort property like we did in Abu Dhabi. We stayed at a Four Seasons for just over $200.

So we got almost the full credit back and used it for incredible value. And it was good. It's a good deal. Incredible value. I did a similar thing, not as great over the top value, but I did a similar thing in Arizona where I booked the Ventana there. It's not the Ventana I usually talk about, but it was still a very nice Ventana hotel. And so that, you know, I think has wide appeal. It's a little harder to use maybe, but, you know, it's there. I think you have to look for opportunities sometimes to use it. Because sometimes we hear from people that say,

oh, everything I look at is so expensive. And that's true if you're looking in like New York city, there's, there's one Mr. C seaport that's sometimes in the $300, but everything else is very expensive in New York city. So if you're looking to use it in a city like that, it's not going to probably be useful unless you're the type of person who often spends five or six or $700 and then you're going to get 200 bucks off. But, but if you look in places beyond that, and there's a map, and we have a way to find those places, then you can find reasonably priced hotels also. That's right. That's right. We even have a post about how to find the deals. So you can go pull that up and see how to find these $200 per night properties and do really well with that.

All right. The next wide appeal one I have is airline fee credits. Is that a wide appeal, Greg? Isn't that a pain? Aren't those a pain to use? They can be a pain, but we have a post on how to use these credits or what works really, because what they're supposed to be for are things like fees to assign your seat or pay your baggage fees if you're checking your bags, things like that. That's what it's supposed to be for. But it works for some other things.

And just to throw one out that's actually very easy to use is if you pick United as your preferred hotel. Hopefully you don't. Don't pick it as your preferred hotel. Don't pick it as your preferred hotel. If you pick it as your preferred airline, then you could just deposit $200 a year into your United Travel Bank credit and use it to pay for airfare. So I think paying for airfare has pretty wide appeal. Pretty wide appeal for sure. And the thing is, you know, this comes up from time to time and, and we hear people now and then that are upset about it, or, you know, read posts on Facebook or here or there where people say, oh, you know, I have to jump through so many hoops to use it. And, and I always have the same thought. If you listen to this show

and you read our blog, you hear us frequently refer to that post about things that work and we don't get up in arms about how hard this is to you. So if you've picked up on that, then it's probably time to go read that post. If you're, if you're one of those people who's like, Oh, I don't want to jump through all the hoops. It's probably time to go take a look at that post. Cause clearly there's a reason why we're not like, Oh, these are horrible and hard to use. They're really super simple to use. You just have to look for the things that work. So that's that. So $200 airline fee credits. Yeah. I mean, that to me is not, we don't want to value any of these at face value.

So maybe not quite face, but pretty darn close to it. I get, you know. Right. Right. Let's talk about how to value it as a separate thing. So the next one, the next one, the last one under wide appeal is $200 per year in Uber credits. So the way that works is every month, January through November, you get $15 of Uber credit. And then in December you get $35 of, of Uber credit. And you know, if it was really just Uber rides, I wouldn't put it under wide appeal, but the fact that you could use it for Uber Eats food delivery as well makes it, I think, very wide appeal and very easy to use. Yeah, I think most people use Uber Eats enough anyway that it or could use Uber Eats often enough anyway that it's pretty wide appeal. Yeah, right. Right. All right.

Now let's talk about how much you'd pay for these things. So I don't want to get into the little itty bitty detail, but just let me just say, so we just discussed $840 in credits that you could earn. Now, if someone came to you and said, here, pay me $840 and I will give you the ability to earn $840 back by jumping through various scoops. Would you take that offer? Well, the answer you're looking for is no, but I might look at all the other benefits of the card and be like, well, yeah, I guess I would. Cause I get all these other things too. Sure. Sure. Sure. Yes. If you look at the other things, but taken alone, you should not value

these coupons at face value. You value it something less. Do you value that combination of things at $695? I probably wouldn't. If someone said, oh, here's $840 in credits where you got to jump through hoops, would you pay $695 for that alone? Again, this is before thinking about other benefits. I wouldn't do it. It would be something less than that, but everyone can come up with their own number. What would they be willing to pay for that rebate? But the point is, I think we're getting close to where the coupons alone make the card worth it, but it's not there yet by just looking at wide appeal. I think you need to also value some of the medium appeal coupons and perhaps some of the other benefits that aren't really coupons at all. So let's get into medium appeal. $179 per year in clear rebates.

So clear is the thing where you go into the airport and instead of waiting in line to show your ID, so then you can wait in line to go through the security scan, you instead go up to a machine. It looks at your eyes and it recognizes who you are. And then you can get into the line to go through the metal detector. So, I mean, it also theoretically is used at some sporting events and can be used at concerts and other things. I don't know how widely it's in use at any of those things, but, but, um, I find it, um, occasionally great to have. And so, so what, what I mean by that is, you know, probably 70% of the time that I go up to, I also have pre-check. About 70% of the time that I go up to the pre-check area, the line either doesn't exist or it's so short that going through Clear isn't really saving me any time, but I do it anyway, just so I don't have to get my ID out of my wallet. But in those cases, Clear is not really benefiting me anything.

But every now and then, there's a really long line to get through the ID check. And I've never had a long line at Clear. Greg leaves me there at the line and he goes through the Clear line. I do. And then I go the wrong way to get to the restaurant where we're meeting up and I still get there first. You get there first anyway. Yeah. This is a true story. Yeah. So, you know, I was thinking you said it's a general,

or sometimes really useful. I was thinking, you know, you're doing percentages at the time. And I was like, I've made a hundred percent of the flights I've taken without ever having clear or TSA pre-check so not 100% I did miss one I missed one once yeah but that's different from you've still stood

in line longer than you would have if you had clear and pre-check true much longer yeah so the $179 clear but by signing up for a clear through either Delta or United, both of which have stake in clear, um, you, you can actually sign up yourself and a family member for the one 79 and get that back. So you could get two people annual clear for this

one credit. Again, I, I think I find a value. I don't find it $179 valuable. Like if I didn't get it, I get it free from having Delta diamond status. So I don't, you know, personally value this credit at all, but I would, if I decided to drop Delta diamond status and, but I wouldn't pay, you know, $179 for clear. I would pay, um, something though, maybe $50 a year is what I'd be willing to pay for that. So I think also it's interesting. It's been interesting because United has run a few deals now with clear. They just recently ran one that's over now, but we're signing up for clear through them. You'd get 15,000 miles. And again, that's already expired. But so, I mean, while typically I don't value this because I'm not interested in clear personally, you can think I'm crazy and I'm sure a lot of people do, but I'm not particularly drawn

to clear. However, it was an opportunity to get 15,000 free miles. I actually didn't end up doing it. I should have, but that's beside the point. The point is that even if you're not really big on clear and don't value clear very much, there've been some opportunities like that to pick up easy, free miles. And I do value the miles or United did a hundred dollar travel bank credit at some point. So I do value those things. So I think this benefit has had some value for people who've taken advantage of special signup deals like those. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Okay.

The next medium appeal category, SACs, $100 in SACs rebate per year, but it's divvied out $50 at a time, $50 January through end of June and $50 July 1st to end of December. I, you know, I, I enjoy it. I find it like, to me, it's like free play money to get a pair of socks every six months, or I got a, um, I get a little frying pan, a little, and we needed one and, and, you know, it was available for 50 bucks and it's a good one. So, you know, it's, it's, I find it kind of fun to have that credit available. I agree. I I've enjoyed using mine too. You know, I bought a fedora.

The one time is $51 and 20 cents. So use my $50 credit. My wife's gotten some skins care stuff from sacks that, that she likes and enjoys and probably wouldn't have bought, but is happy to have now. So, uh, so I mean, that's, I think, been fun. And I also just enjoy shopping around there and looking at what I can get with my 50 bucks, because I actually find there's a, I don't know, a decent variety of things, you know, like whether it's glassware or the kids clothes, or every now and then I'll see things that I might wear that are in the range of affordable.

At some point in the past, there was a workaround to use it on Saks Off 5th. And so I bought some sandals on Saks Off 5th for 50 bucks. That workaround doesn't work anymore. But anyway, the point is that I've had fun with it. And I wouldn't value it anywhere near the $50 twice a year because I probably wouldn't have bought any of those things otherwise, but it's kind of a fun excuse to go shopping for yourself, right? Exactly. Or for somebody else. For somebody else. Right.

So it works out really well as you're getting towards the end of the year and realize you need to get some holiday presents for people. And at least it's one present for somebody, right? Right, right. You get a nice pair of glasses. So I like it. Again, I wouldn't pay $100 to get $100 of sex credit, but 50 bucks, I would pay 50 bucks for this benefit. Yeah. I mean, I don't know if I'd quite pay 50, but I'd pay something for sure too. I mean, maybe I'd pay 40 or 35, but neither here nor there.

The fact is I probably would pay something for it because it's, it's not been a bad deal. The stuff that I've gotten, I've been happy with and felt like it was not bad. Actually the thing, the, the lotion that I use to shave, I don't use a shaving cream. I use this Jack black stuff. It's called beard lube. They use it's clear. I've been using that for years and years, and it's the same price anywhere you get it and Saks carries it. So even if I didn't want to buy myself something, you know, like the fedora or the skincare stuff for my wife, I'd buy something I'm going to buy anyway for the same price anyway. Yeah. So, so anyway, I think there's enough stuff that I would, you're probably right. $50. I guess I would be in on 50 bucks on that. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Last one in this category is Walmart Plus. If you sign up for a monthly Walmart Plus subscription, and those cost $12.95 a month, then they'll just rebate the whole thing. Plus, it's sort of like Amazon Prime in that you get free shipping on things that are sold by

Walmart. You also get free, I think, same day shipping from your local store if you spend more than $35 for those kinds of things and various other benefits. The scan and go thing. You like and go thing is, I think, you like that one. That's the thing I like about this. And I don't go to Walmart very often now anyway. In pandemic times, I haven't really gone very much. I used to shop at Walmart often enough anyway. But yeah, it's convenient because you just scan everything

as you put it in your cart. You walk to the register, you scan the QR code, pay, and you're out. Like there's no re-scanning everything as you're just done. So I feel like that always takes up so much time bringing everything up on the scanner and scanning it. It takes all that time out of it. So I like that. I probably wouldn't pay very much for it, but I like that convenience. Yeah. Before we talk about the two other benefits that I think are

worth mentioning, you get a, you get some prescription drugs for free and then others at a discount. So, you know, depending on your situation, that could be really useful. And you get a discount on gas. So if you go to their, you know, their station, you get some kind of discount there. So a lot of goodies there for those who shop Walmart. And but I would not value it $12.95 times 12 because you can sign up for $98 per year. So the most you should value this credit at is 90, $98. And I would only value it that high.

If you would be paying that per year anyway, if you wouldn't be paying it anyway, you should value it less than $98. Yeah. And truthfully, I have a hard time imagining how much I would actually pay for it. I like the convenience of the Scan & Go. I don't think I would pay for the Scan & Go. I would just stand and wait. I mean, I don't pay for the clear, right? I waited at TSA. I waited at security at the airport. I'm going to wait at Walmart for the register if I have to. So even though I like this one, I actually value this one very little. Right. Right. And I just, I shop Walmart so infrequently that I also value it very,

very little. It's sort of like nice to have just in case I need it. I mean, occasionally order something from Walmart so it can come in handy. Right. But it's not, it doesn't, you know, I don't know. What would I pay? Would I pay 20 bucks? I don't even know if I'd pay that much. I was like, I don't think I'd pay 20. Yeah. I have the same thought. I was like, would I pay $20? I wouldn't pay $20 to scale down. Just go to the register. I don't know. But for people who, you know, who use those benefits, it could be worth a lot and it could clearly be worth paying for. So for sure. All right. All right. So, so yeah, I mean the, that combination of benefits of medium appeal benefits that add up to $377 probably for you is more like, you know, a hundred dollars total or at most, depends on your situation, but that then combined with the wide appeal ones

is getting it to really where this card is like maybe more than paying for itself, even before you get into its other benefits. Yeah. I mean, so that was $840 in wide appeal and 377 in medium appeal. So obviously you're not going to value all of that anywhere near face, but we're talking over $1,200 worth of credits. So even if you only value that at 50%, that's $600. That's already pretty close to the annual feedback. That's a great way to put it. Without anything else. How many $95 cards do you pay $95 for? And this one has many more perks that if they came on a $95 card,

you would probably pay for that, right? Yeah, for sure. So just some examples of perks that it comes with. So airport lounge access, I think this is the big one. So for those who are at airports, frequent airports that have Centurion lounges or escape lounges or airspace lounge. You, uh, you could get them free when, when flying, um, same day until what is it? February of, of next year, you can, you can add it. You can even bring in a friend with you for free starting next year. You'd have to spend a ridiculous amount on the platinum card to get a friend in for free. I don't recommend that. So, um, but if you're buying a car, you might be a third of the way there right off the bat from the beginning of the year. So I don't

know. That's true. Um, for, for, uh, you know, so, so I, for long-term think of it as like getting yourself in for free to those. The other one is you get into Delta Sky Club when flying Delta. And again, this is just yourself. But if you think about how much Delta charges for the same thing, for a membership, a single person membership to their Sky Club, I don't remember the exact amount, but I think it's over 600 bucks or somewhere in that range, five or 600 bucks. That's an incredible deal because the other way of getting in is to spend $550 on the Delta Reserve card each

year. If you think about the price of this card after all the rebates this is a much cheaper way to get in it really is yeah and delta sky clubs in general are decent right i mean you know better than i would but decent airport yeah you know you know you can count on them all the ones i've been to in recent years you can now count on them to have like real food. Like, you know, if you're there at lunchtime, dinnertime, breakfast, whatever, um, you can fill yourself up with, with real food. It's, it's no longer like looking for the cracker and cheese and, and whatever little, you know, hand and trying to stuff those in your face that that's how it used to be at most domestic lounges actually and they've gotten so much

better about that so that's really nice um yeah no i think that's a very very valuable benefit centurion lounges are notably nice i typically the nicest i would i would say on average often have great food at them as well um i love the food at escape lounges. I've only been to a few of them, but, but really good food at them. So yeah, no, it's, it's a really good benefit. It's, it's a shame about not being able to bring in family members for free. That's the big, yeah. Yeah. I mean, I'll enjoy that while it lasts, but that'll be really annoying when, uh, when we can't bring in the family with one, one platinum card. So that'll be a downer then. But for people who travel alone, if you travel on business a bunch, this could certainly

be a nice perk to have. Other perks on the card, cell phone insurance. Oh, no, I'm sorry. Was more to say in the lounges? No, go ahead. Cell phone insurance. Amex has great cell phone insurance. Anything deductible, if I remember correctly, is $50 and it's up to $800 or $1,000 a claim. I can't recall now. I should have looked that up before we started talking about it, but enough to cover most phones and the low deductible particularly is appealing to me because I've made a number of cell phone insurance claims over the last couple of years here. And in fact, I cracked my phone again the other day. So it's a very small crack, but yes, I did. The sun fell on the driveway and I just threw my phone down really quickly to pick him up and of course, put it down face down.

Threw your phone down, pick it. Right, right. So as much sense as that makes. That might be your first problem, yeah. Yeah, so anyway. But you know, you're doing blog research basically. Right, something like that. I like it. So anyway, so that has been valuable to me because it's really easy.

Dealing with Amex is great. Most other credit card companies go through the same claim benefits provider, but Amex does it themselves through the Amex insurance company. So that's nice. My experiences with them have been great. So I think the cell phone protection is nice if you value cell phone protection. And now I'm at the point where, because T-Mobile has had all of these free line promos that I added so many free lines.

And then I just recently did a buy one, get one free line to add a couple more family members, save them some money on their phone bills. So now I've got like, I don't know, nine different lines, I think. So I've got nine people that all have new phones. It's just insane. It is. It is. And so with nine people with phones that like phones. So insane. It is, it is. So,

and so with nine people with phones that like, when I added these two last two lines for adding a line, I got brand new phones that are free after bill credits for a couple of years. So, so I mean, they're brand new $800 phones. And so, you know, it's valuable to me to have the insurance now with nine of them, the chance of somebody breaking their phone is kind of high. So cell phone protection, I really like. So that's something that's good. And it's something you can get on a number of different cards. Let's be clear.

Amex is not the only game in town on that, but I like their coverage. So that's a good thing. What else we got? Yep. You know, let's not talk about all the benefits, but another couple that jump out at me, one is emergency medical transportation, like evacuation and transportation. That's a really unusual benefit.

You see it on some other high-end cards, but like the Sapphire Reserve has up to $100,000 for that. But you have to have paid with the Sapphire Reserve, you have to have paid with the sapphire reserve you have to have paid for the travel with the card and it's limited to 100k um the platinum one you don't have to pay for the trip it's just a benefit for being a card holder and there's no written cap so So I have zero idea how easy it is to use this benefit, but it's kind of cool that it's there. Yeah. Yeah, it is. I think it's cool that it's there. I mean, it's a nice little kind of almost like an insurance policy, right? That you're like, well, you know, if the worst happens, something, I got my back somehow, maybe if I need it. And the one or two experiences I've ever heard with it have been

positive experiences. So people got stuff covered. So fingers crossed, fingers crossed. It's one of those things you hope to never need, but if you do need it, it could be worthwhile. And then you get the little other little things like Hilton gold status or national executive status, et cetera. So there's statuses, various statuses you get. Yes. And of those, I think Hilton Gold is worth mentioning because having Hilton Gold status means getting free breakfast everywhere, right? Yeah, right. Free breakfast outside of the United States. And now a little credit that's probably going to cover a croissant, but not your coffee at most Hilton's. Still, it's much better than nothing. You get a daily food credit, food and beverage credit at Hilton's within the US just for having gold status. And might as well, if you have the card

and you don't already have Hilton gold status, of course, sign up for that. It's free. For sure. And that might be worth it for people who are going to travel, not enough to get status, but enough to be able to use the benefit. So as much as I joked about the fact that you won't actually get your breakfast, it will get you a free food and beverage credit that you can use for breakfast. Or nowadays you could use at the bar or for an appetizer in the evening or whatever else. So that's kind of nice, I think, for a lot of people. Absolutely.

Absolutely. So that's so yeah, you know, I had previously and I think I think you're on the same pages as me with this. I'd previously looked at the set of things and and thought, you know, it's not worth all the mechanisms you have to go through to use these credits and everything to get a little bit more value than the card's annual fee. But the, the, the, the entertainment thing now is, is like so much closer to full value that, that it's kind of pushed me over to where I think that for many people, I think having a platinum card actually and keeping it year after year could actually make

sense. Yeah, I totally agree. Cause I definitely was not on the keep your platinum card train before. Uh, but that makes a huge difference and people have pointed out and I've started to find that maybe there is something to this, that the Amex offers on the platinum cards are, I shouldn't say they're better as a whole. Many of the better Amex offers come out on platinum cards and not necessarily on other cards. So that's another thing that we do see some good, useful offers come out. I think one that pops into mind right now is the one that I had for Carnival Cruises. It was like $500 back on 1500 or something last year. And that was something I'm fairly sure I only saw on platinum cards. So, so things like that every now and then that come up may only be available on platinum cards. And I don't want to value that much because who knows

what's going to come up and if you're going to need it or use it or whatever else. But if you find yourself coming pretty darn close to breaking even on all of these other things or coming out a little bit ahead, it's just another reason why I feel like that can make a difference. A similar thing is refer a friend offers. They often have these great offers and sometimes, and sometimes you, you get an offer that, that is so good for your friend that there's literally no other way that that friend can get such a good offer. So the offer we mentioned at the beginning of this program, about 150,000 points plus 10X dining, that's only available if you find a friend who has this exact offer that shows up on certain platinum cards. Now, we do the work for you of finding people who have that offer and,

and posting that on our blog so that, you know, as a, as someone signing up, you can get that easily. But the point is, if you are lucky enough to have a platinum card that has that referral option, it's very easy to max out your, your, your, um, uh, referral points you get. I don't remember how much it is, but let's say 30,000 points a year, up to 55,000 per year. Um, we'll even put it on our blog. If you join our frequent miler insiders group and post your link, if you have, if you have that platinum card, if you have that referral offer. Find the specific thread for that. Don't just post it in the group.

Find the thread for that. But yeah, super easy. And many readers have gotten the referral points on top. So, I mean, even if you only get one referral at 30,000 points, you add that on top of everything else we've talked about and it's a no-brainer. It's incredible value. One thing I do want to say about the referral offers, they're not as good. If you have the Morgan Stanley or the Schwab platinum cards,

which have all the other benefits, all the other same benefits that we've already described, they don't have as good of referral benefits because when you refer a friend, you get a hundred dollars. You don't get 30,000 membership rewards points. You get $100 cash back and those are maxed out at $550 of credit you get per year. You don't get these special referral links like we were just talking about. So that's the only thing I can think of where having the non-generic version isn't as good as the generic version. That's true. Absolutely true. And I would much rather have 30,000 membership rewards points than $100 for a single referral. But at the same time,

if you have a spouse and you're going to be able to refer them for something like one card a year, then that extra a hundred dollars may help offset the annual fee on your platinum card. Right. I mean, just like, you know, if you add that along with everything else, it may help obviously not as good, like, like Greg said, as the vanilla platinum offers that we've seen. Right. Right. Now those cards have other benefits that make them better though. Right. So since I brought it up, I just really quickly, Morgan Stanley card, it lets you add a free platinum authorized user. That means you could add your spouse,

let's say, and they will get into the Delta Sky Club also, whether or not they're traveling with you because they have their own platinum card. Now they don't get the coupons. They don't get extra rebates on things, but they get the lounge access benefits, the elite status benefits. That's the Morgan Stanley, the Schwab one.

You get, if you want to just cash out your points at better than one cent per point value, you can transfer them to your Schwab investment account, 1.1 cent per point. So, you know, that's a pretty good deal too. Yep. Yep. Very good. All right. So the you know, that's a pretty good deal too. Yep. Yep. Very good. All right. So the, the platinum card coupon book, funny enough, I think we both have come to the conclusion. I like in the coupon book. I almost feel bad saying it because I, I, I hate that they moved into this like couponing, uh, you know, approach, but at the same time, you know, uh, value is getting there. It's values getting there. And, and, and yeah, you, you need to, I have, I have friends that have the platinum card and don't,

don't use up these credits, just make some effort to use them up because they are valuable. And some of them are set and forget, you know, just set up your Disney bundle to pay with the platinum card. And, and, and as long as you as long as you've enrolled in that benefit, which is a one-time enrollment, you'll get the money back and it's done. So do it. Right. Super easy. Super easy. So, yeah, I'm particularly pumped about that.

I'm very excited. I wouldn't have paid for it monthly. I would have paid for it annually. So just like the Walmart Plus, you can't quite value it at full face, but going to totally be worth it. I'm going to enjoy it. So, so I'm happy with that. Thank you, MX for adding that. And please add something else. We're always happy to see more. So, you know, don't, don't, don't rest on your laurels MX. All right. So I think that wraps up our main event and brings us to the post roast post roast time.

I don't have a post roast. Okay. I do, but I don't actually have the post open. So I'm gonna have to paraphrase here. So you wrote a post this week on how you were considering four IHG cards in order to get multiple free night certificates. Cause there's the personal cards and the business cards, and you could have one of each and your wife could have one of each.

And so you can end up with four of these IHG Premieres with flexible free night certificates. And what I mean by that, if you're not familiar, is that if you have the new or the Premier card, rather, or the new business card, then the 40,000 point free night certificate you get each year can be topped off with more points. So if you want to stay at a higher category place, or I shouldn't say category since I don't have categories, but if you want to stay at a place that costs more than 40,000 points, you can add the difference. And that's kind of exciting, right? Right. So in your post, and again, I have to paraphrase because I don't have it open. You said something like, since you can top those certificates off now with more points, then it'll

be much easier to use them to full value. So it's kind of like if we pay the hundred-ish dollar annual fee on each card, it's kind of like paying $400 a year for 160,000 IHG points, since we know we're going to be able to use our 40K certs to full value. And I looked at that and I was like, no, it's not, Greg. It's not like buying 160,000 points. You don't get a fourth night free when you're using free night certificates. If you bought 160,000 points, then you could use those for a fourth night free and actually only pay 120,000 points for your stay. So it's not the same thing, Greg. That's true.

It's not. That's why it's only kind of like it. Well, that's true. It is only kind of like it. for full value. And so there are people where, where it actually could work out to exactly as good as having bought the points. If you use them for stays that, that are not exactly four nights long, um, because you can't, because you can't use these certs, uh, and get fourth night free at the same time, but you could do a five night stay, right? You could book four nights with points, um, in order to get the fourth night free and then tack on another night with your cert and get the full point value for that fifth night. Okay.

So I think that brings us to this week's question of the week. And this week's question of the week has come in a few times with similar variations. So I'm just going to generally give you the broad version of the question, broad version of the question. And hopefully this is going to be timely for people who listen to the show as soon as we publish it, because tax time is coming. You're going to owe your taxes here or you owe your taxes or whatever. You got to pay them here pretty quickly. And so one of the options, of course, is to pay by credit card. And Greg republished a post this week about paying your taxes by credit card. And we've had a number of people who have asked the same question.

If I get a new Chase card, is it safe to make a big tax payment right away with my brand new Chase card? Because you've written in the past about how one of the shutdown triggers for Chase cards is spending a lot of money really fast. So if somebody has a high tax bill and they're going to max out their limit on a chase card, or maybe not even max it out, just spend a few thousand dollars right off the bat on one tax bill, is that a risk? I wouldn't be worried about that at all. The place where you might worry a little bit if you have such a large tax burden and you have a low credit limit so that, you know, I think someone asked us about, could I, you know, let's say they had a $2,000 credit limit just to make things up and a $20,000 bill. Could they spend the $2,000, pay their credit card bill, spend $2,000 again, pay their credit card bill, spend 2000 again, pay their credit card bill, spend 2000 again. I think there's some point at which I'd be okay doing that maybe two or three times, but there's some point where if you kept doing that, that's certainly going to

draw eyes on your account and they might look at that and go, something weird is happening here and shut you down. So I wouldn't do that, but I wouldn't be worried at all about spending a big chunk at once to pay your tax bill. It's not looked at like a cash-like purchase. So it's totally safe in my opinion. I think you have to pretend there's an asterisk there and some fine print because I don't know. I'm not part of Chase, but I've never seen any issues with doing that. Me either.

You know, and a number of people asked about various size payments, five or 10 or 20,000 or whatever it might be. And like you said, it's a legit expense. So if you've got the credit limit to support it, then it's not that's not the type of shady business that normally gets people shut down. That's something that would seem entirely normal for people to be spending money? Like if I pay my son or daughter's taxes or my cousin's or whoever it might be, is there a risk factor paying someone else's taxes? I can't imagine that there is. I mean, I don't, I don't think Chase has any way of knowing who's taxes you're paying anyway. So no, I wouldn't worry about that. I wouldn't worry about that either. I've paid taxes for other people a whole bunch of times

for the miles. So yeah, I wouldn't be particularly worried about that either. I think that's a totally legit use. And there's nobody, like Greg said, I haven't heard of any issuer ever balking at tax payments or trying to charge a cash advance fee on tax payments or anything like that. So like you said, it's not considered a cash-like transaction. I can understand why the question comes up, but it just hasn't been an issue. So probably safe to do that. But if you're going to, you got to get on that quick. Keep in mind, though, by the way, if you apply for a new Chase card, usually Chase will overnight that if there's a few exceptions on like the Marriott cards, I think takes a little bit longer for them to get generated or whatever. But many of the Chase cards, they'll overnight them. If you call and

ask, Amex is the same way. If you call and ask, they'll often overnight them. So, you know, if you're like at the last minute here and you're like, Oh man, I should get a signup bonus. It might not be too late. So keep that in mind. Right. You know, a little trick with Amex one time, um, I, I wanted a card overnighted and for some reason they wouldn't do it. I can't remember the situation exactly, but I could add a authorized user or employee card for a business card and they would overnight that. And, you know, spend on those cards also count towards your signup bonus spend. So, you know, if you, if you run into a dead end on getting the main card overnight to

try that approach. Yeah. Yeah. That's a great trick. Great trick to know. So you don't have to pigeonhole yourself to which issuers will issue an instant card number

because Amex usually will instant issue an instant card number, but not always. But not all the time. Yeah, not all the time. Not all issuers do that, but you still may be able to get the card in time.

So, so there you go. That's that. Hope you enjoyed today's show. Hope you've been enjoying our emails each day or each week. If you haven't been enjoying our emails each day or each week, that's probably because you're not yet subscribed and you should be. So you want to go to frequentmiler.com slash subscribe to get on our email list. You can follow us on all the various social medias. We're on Facebook and Twitter. We have a Frequent Miler Insiders Facebook group you can join where you can ask

and answer questions like the one we just answered there. It's been answered in our frequent Mylar insiders group this week also. So thank you guys very much for being out there with us. Oh, if you have a question or a piece of feedback, you want to send that to mailbag at frequent Mylar.com. There you go. Thank you guys very much. We enjoy having you here and we'll see you again next week. Bye everybody.