Frequent Miler on the Air - Amex races out of the gate. What's next? | Ep80 | 1-9-21

Episode Date: January 9, 2021

00:23 Giant Mailbag: Choosing Marriott elite nights over suite nights. https://frequentmiler.com/marriott-choice-benefit-valuations-which-to-pick/ 8:15 What crazy thing did Amex do this week? -Random Hilton free nights -Extra Dell credits that aren't correct 14:37 Mattress running the numbers: Should Greg really transfer Membership Rewards points to Hilton? 24:14 Main Event: Amex races out of the gate. What's next? https://frequentmiler.com/amex-adds-30-monthly-paypal-credit-to-platinum-card-for-6-months/ https://frequentmiler.com/great-amex-offers-for-personal-platinum-cardholders/ https://frequentmiler.com/amex-biz-plat-cardholders-5x-gas-station-wireless-office-supply-shipping-and-advertising/ https://frequentmiler.com/amex-offer-spend-500-get-25-10-times/ 1:04:51 Post Roast Nick roasts Greg over Delta elite status https://frequentmiler.com/gregs-delta-elite-plans-for-2021/ 1:12:01 Greg roasts Nick over the Southwest Companion Pass https://frequentmiler.com/is-the-southwest-companion-pass-still-worth-it-in-2021/ 1:17:55 Question of the Week: Do you earn elite nights when booking through The Hotel Collection from Amex? https://frequentmiler.com/hacking-hyatt-prive-for-the-win-in-new-york-city/ Don't forget to like, subscribe, and comment! Music credit: Annie Yoder

frequent miler on the air starts now today's main event mx races out of the gate what's next today i'm sound effect there sorry i didn't mean that was a good oh sorry i didn't mean to interrupt you that was a really good sound effect i was going to tell you why i was excited about the next segment i'm more excited than usual about the giant mailbag oh more excited than that's because what's going on that's because for our video watchers you're going to see what first time our giant mailbag has actually made it onto the screen now i know it's going to look backwards to those watching because because well maybe well we'll see we'll see um but anyway um a uh a fan sent us an actual giant mailbag and so i'm really that's awesome actually use it for the

show for those listening let me describe it it's it is technically a giant mailbag because it says so uh right on the bag giant mailbag it has our logo on it and everything and uh so that's what we're using now for for the show you know we we used to have an giant email bag right i guess right but now we got the real thing the real now we got the real thing so so i actually have real real oh look So if you're listening, you didn't see that Greg just held up a piece of paper. No, but they heard the paper. You heard the paper, Russell. That's right.

Hopefully. Yeah. And that wasn't just a sound effect. That was the real deal. That was paper. No, this is real. Yeah, that's right. I mean, it's not our expensive sound effects going on here.

This is real mail. Okay. All right. But I think the fan was just like, come on, guys. No excuses for not getting the mail. Now you have to have the mail every week. Because, I mean, we had a week there where the mailman got lost or something. And so I think that they were just trying to send us a message here and say,

let's get on it. Let's get on it. I think you're right. But anyway, that was a fantastic episode. Okay. This is Jake from MSP in response to our post about like hurry and pick your Marriott choice benefit. Now, anyone listening, it's too late to pick if you earned one for last year's progress, but for this year. But I thought his comment was worth reading. He says, I have picked Sweet Night Awards for at least one of my benefits for probably six to seven years in a row.

To date, I have had one clear in advance. And it was in freezing Minneapolis in January a couple of years ago. I probably got the same room I would have had had I just waited for the complimentary upgrade in the ultra-empty hotel. Despite being titanium, most of those nights came from the card and their issuance of half, in quotes, the number of nights needed to obtain status, and thus I didn't requalify for titanium this year, I think he meant, and so I will only have one gift this year. Nevertheless, I am 95% sure

I'll be choosing the five additional knights. So he's not meaning the Sweet Knight Awards, but the five elite knights he's going to be choosing. Even though it won't get him to titanium status. So it won't be meaningful to his status at all to choose five elite knights, but he's doing it because it'll inch him closer to lifetime platinum status.

He's saying, if I didn't do that... That's five more knights you'd have to actually stay at a Marriott someday, right? Well, he he says something tells me i'd stupidly waste money if i was on the cusp of clinching the 600 required nights so i kind of figure picking five more nights will mean i won't blow money on nearly pointless future matches smart decision smart decision jake that was uh you know it seemed crazy to me as you started to read it but it makes a lot of sense when you break it down that way.

So, I mean, I've been struggling because we're recording this the day before the deadline to make your final choice. And I haven't made mine yet. And I've just kind of assumed I'm going to take the Sweet Nights, but at the same time, I assume I'm not going to use them. So maybe I ought to just take the five Elite Nights, even if it's not going to get me the status,

like you said, an inch closer to lifetime status. Right, right. It's, it's a really tough decision and, and I'm still trying to decide with my titanium choice benefit, whether to choose the, choose the 40 K free night or the five sweet night awards.

Interesting. They're, they're both, I mean, I have sweet night awards that I can, but I also have like a bajillion free night certificates that I need to use up this year. And so I'm hoping to apply all those Sweet Nights to those or as many as I can to them. Hopefully, I've had much better luck with Sweet Nights than Jake has. and on the other hand, like the 40 K free night,

I would argue that's definitely more valuable, especially since I have enough sweet night awards already in my account. But do I really want the headache of one more award that, that I've got to figure out how to use this year at that year, this year, although, you know, maybe that one will be more likely to get extended if I, if I ask nicely or if they automatically extend any we'll see possibly possibly yeah it is kind of tough I don't know I see I've only got a 50 night one

to select because I didn't bother making it the rest of the way to titanium so I just have a single one but I already have five sweet night awards and zero hotel reservations basically so you know I don't have a plan in mind yet to use those. I mean, I guess I could take five more Sweet Night Awards in case I do get a good opportunity. I got a bunch of Marriott points now. But yeah, it's tough times right now. Although I would think, I would hope that for at least the foreseeable future, your chances of a Sweet Night Award clearing are probably much better in 2021 than in previous years, especially if at any point you're able to travel internationally.

If borders open up, if people get vaccinated, all the rest of that, and you're able to go overseas, I would bet the Sweet Night Awards are going to clear, right? I mean, there just aren't going to be enough. Yeah, I hope so. There have been reports, though, that hotels, at least domestically, have just been like apparently just closing their their suites and and not applying them so we'll see we'll see but we've got two more pieces of mail today two more oh my goodness i didn't mean special it's a bonus triple day down yeah triple

header all right okay you ready for the next one i am all right this one reads happy birthday to you happy birthday to you happy birthday dear nicholas happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday, dear Nicholas. Happy birthday to you. From the Frequent Miler team. From the Frequent Miler team. Aw, that was sweet. That was sweet. Very cute.

Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. So we're recording this on Nicholas's birthday. Less is more. So, yes. Thank you. And we've got a, we've got a, a personal message from, from Kerry as well. So that's the third piece of mail today. I'm sure Steven would have had some too, but I asked the team about a minute before we started recording.

Kerry's faster. All right. Here's the message from Kerry. Okay. Might be a pro in miles and points and he might make fedoras and headphones look really slick but better than all of those things he's one of the kindest people you'll ever meet oh hold on there's okay all right oh she's gonna gonna take that all back in a second which is good because he's never going to win a frequent miler challenge. So he needs something else to feel good about. Well, thank you very much, Carrie. I appreciate that very much.

Sort of. Is this a good time to review your, your, your standings in the, in the last two? I don't think it really is we don't have a mile of challenges spend a lot of time on feedback so far so we probably we should move on to the next segment i think all right because it's your birthday we'll move on so what crazy thing is the next segment up today so what crazy thing did amex do because amex got a little crazy this week right in more ways than one, really. Right, right. So Amex, a couple things going on there, it seems like. One is that people with

certain Hilton cards who downgraded last year from the Hilton Aspire, which gives you a free night each year, have been randomly getting free nights in their account. And it's not even at time that would normally get them if they had kept the Aspire card. So some crazy... It's just like a happy 2021. Thanks for downgrading your card. Here's a free night certificate. What?

I mean, you know, yeah, I don't... The question here and also in the next one, let's talk about the next one first. The other thing that's been happening, a few people have found that, you know how the platinum business card has $100 Dell credit every six months. And last year they doubled it. They gave you $200 every six months because of COVID. So someone who recently, who has the card and spent at Dell, they spent, let's say, $160. They got back the whole thing. This was, I think, reported on Miles to Memories.

Yeah, so I don't know how widespread that is. Pretty widespread, apparently. I saw Dr. Accredit also published it. So yeah, apparently quite a few people noticed it. And in fact, it happened to me and I didn't even realize it. No, really? It did, because I was trying to thread the needle. I knew I had the 10% back Amex offer,

and I still had like $92 in change to use of my platinum credit. And I know from the past that Amex has clawed back if you make money, right? Like last year, a year ago or whatever, if you came out ahead, and what I mean by that is you get $100 credit with the business platinum card. And if you stack it with that 10% back and you buy something that's 100 bucks, you get the full 100 back plus $10 back, you end up $10 like a $10 money maker, so to speak, profit. Amex seemed to not like that. And we're clawing back credits on people that did that. So I made sure to order just enough to be able to get myself just over the hump where

after the 10% back and my $92 credit, I would still be paying like a dollar and change out of pocket. Right? Right. So I did that. And I, I saw when I, when the, when the credit posted that I got a credit for the full amount that I paid and like, and there were two different line items in hindsight, I didn't even pay close attention. There was one for the $108 or whatever that I spent. And then another one for the 10% back. And I, when I saw it, I thought, oh, that that's, that's weird. Well, maybe the math worked out. Maybe I messed up or something. And I, when I saw it, I thought, Oh, that that's, that's weird. Well, maybe the math worked out. Maybe I messed up or something. And I just didn't think twice about it until right now when we started talking about it, I was like, you know what?

I got more than a hundred dollars back to, I got 117 or something back. So, so what do you think is this, is this just an error or is this a, a preview of the fact that Amex is going to extend that Dell credit again that they did last year? Yes. It's one of those two. Yeah. No, I think it's both.

I think it's a mistake. I think Miles to Memories, their reader had contacted Amex. Amex said, no, it's a mistake. And Dr. Credit reported that Amex was saying that it's a mistake. And so they've definitely made this mistake, but now it's not probably presumably one or two people. There's probably quite a few people who spent more than a hundred dollars and got the full bit back.

Yeah. So now what are they going to do? You know, claw that money back from like everybody, from all these people who innocently bought a $200 item that they thought they were getting for half price i mean that just seems like poor form i think all mx is almost going to get strong-armed they're almost going to strong-arm themselves into extending that credit even if they didn't anticipate doing that so right right so you don't think they were intending to

add that credit this i think somebody messed Because otherwise, why wouldn't they have announced it? Why would they start crediting people back for the purchases before they announce it? It just doesn't make a heck of a lot of sense. Although I guess as soon as I said that, I was thinking to myself, that platinum card credit that they announced this week, I guess if you spent money on PayPal

on January 1st or 2nd, I guess you got reimbursed for that before Amex announced that that benefit. Yeah, absolutely. Maybe, but now, I mean, we're already at what? We're recording this on the 7th. I don't know how many more days before they announce. How long are they going to wait to say

you're going to get 200 bucks? I would think that they'd be out with it by now. Right, right. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I would think that it was intentional if they hadn't already announced those 5x deals for the business platinum. You of these have something to do with COVID-related benefits that they're giving out. I mean, they obviously are giving out a bunch of stuff, and we're going to talk about that. Now, though, now you have me really second-guessing myself because I realized my purchase was December 31st. I didn't receive the credit until January, but now I'm confused

because I would have already used up my $200 from last year. Now I'm going to have to go back and look at it. It doesn't make a lot of sense. So anyway, at any rate, people are getting the credit. Amex, you're crazy. I don't know what's going on because clearly the free night certificates also have to be a mistake, right?

Right, right. And Amex, don't call any's going on because clearly the free night certificates also have to be a mistake right i mean right right and you know amex don't don't call any of this stuff back i mean can't do that you're in a situation where you're trying to keep keep customers and so people are you know getting these things thinking they're they're great they're gonna love you for it so but they're not gonna love you if you claw them back but also am, if you gave an extra free night to the people with a no fee card, come on, hook up the people with the Aspire card MX. Some more free nights, right? I agree. More free nights.

Okay. Free nights for everybody. All right. So that's the crazy thing. Let's move on to mattress running the numbers. Mattress running the numbers this week. Greg has a dilemma and I'm really interested in hearing about this dilemma and how you've been thinking about it so that I can tell you what you should do. Okay, great. I can't wait

to be told what to do. I thought you would really appreciate that. Of course, who doesn't like being told that they're wrong and what they should do. Okay. So, all right. So here's the situation. There's going to be a family event in the fall. And I know, so I know when that's going to be. I know where I want to stay. And it's a Hilton, a Hilton property that costs 80,000 points a night or over $800 a night right now is what they're, what they're charging. Yeah. So I'm pretty likely to go. I would like to stay at that Hilton. I don't want to spend anywhere near $800 a night. I wouldn't stay there if it was really that cost. I don't have enough Hilton points to cover this day. So I was thinking, so, you know, I looked at my Amex account and my membership rewards balance has been lighting up.

It was already high and it's just getting higher, right? Right, right. So, you know, just really briefly, so there was the 100K plus 10X offer that I signed up for. I was lucky enough to be one of the ones that have the ability to refer people from that card to 100K offers. So I easily get 55K from referrals because just two referrals is enough to do that. I did that last year. I did that this year already. So that's 110K more. I also referred during that plus three deal, I referred from Amex card. And so I have, you know, minimum of 4X on all my Amex spend. So I have a lot of membership rewards. Tremendous number of membership rewards. Starting an easy quarter million points that came out of nowhere there, basically.

Yeah. So many points that I finally got around to actually cashing some out through Schwab. So I have the Schwab platinum card and I was able to, you know, move them to, to my Schwab investment account at 1.25 cents value. I didn't move all of them. I moved a few hundred thousand, like 300 and some thousand. And so, okay, so that's my situation. And so I also have on my account, there's, there's a transfer bonus going on until the end of January to Hilton. The normal transfer ratio is 1000 membership rewards to 2000 Hilton. Right now it's 1000 to 2800. So for my eighty thousand point per night stay, I could transfer twenty nine thousand Amex membership rewards points to Hilton. That would become eighty one thousand two hundred Hilton points for the sake of simplicity. Let's just pretend I just keep those

extra thousand two hundred for a rainy day. And so so so anyway, so 29,000 points per night for this very expensive hotel. Doesn't sound horrible. Doesn't sound like it, you know, a incredible deal, but it doesn't to me sound like a horrible deal. And that's instead, I mean, the other approach I could do is look for a Hilton point sale. I don't even know if there's one going on right now, but I'm sure if I wait a few minutes, there will be. And buy the points for half a cent each. 80,000 points would be $400. That'd be $400 per night for the hotel. I don't really want to spend $400 a night, but that's what it would be. That would be better than paying cash for this hotel, obviously. And so in a way, this is like getting, if you say my alternative is buying the points,

$400 for the 8,000 points, this is like getting $400 divided by 29,000 is 1.38 cents per point value for my membership rewards, which is slightly better than the 1.25 that I got for cashing out. Sure. So that's what I'm thinking about. Well, I mean, that all makes some sense there, the way you're looking at it. So let me ask you a couple of things. First of all, how many nights do you anticipate staying? Three.

Three. Okay, perfect. That's a great number of nights to stay so all right so so if you're gonna stay three nights at this hotel you're talking about taking 29 000 membership rewards points per night it's trying to take a hundred thousand based 90 000 90 000 membership rewards points to cover a three-night hilton stay. You're talking about enough points to fly round-trip business class to Japan, almost round-trip business class on Star Alliance partners to most of Asia. You got like enough for almost one way,

especially if there's a transfer bonus one way, or rather round-trip first class, maybe on ANA if we hit a transfer bonus for three nights of Hilton, you're out of your mind. Now I say that, and really, if you are cashing out membership rewards points at 1.25 cents each, then I guess, yeah, it makes more sense to do this because 29,000 points is only worth $362. So you're buying $400 worth of stuff with your $362 worth of cash, so to speak. So I guess that's a decent little deal.

You're getting 10% off. But instead, what I would tell you is that this year, you're not spending your quarter of a million for Delta Elite status. You've already established that. What you need to do is get on the Aspire train, buddy. Come on. Pick up an Aspire card. Get yourself a free weekend night certificate,

get yourself enough points to cover almost two more. And by the time you finish the spending requirement on that, basically the other two nights that you need, the Aspire card will cover all three nights and you don't have to waste your membership rewards, points, and core values. So that's solution number one. And I think that's what I would do.

Yes. Right, because you're one. And I think that's what I would do. Yes. Right. I think because you're in the position to do that. However, solution number two, and I don't know why you haven't just done this independently, but solution number two is to open the HSBC account. We had another round of people that got the bonus this week.

You open up that HSBC account and if you did it and you referred your wife and she opened it, you'd get enough money just from opening those accounts to cover the three nights you'd get your three nights from two checking account bonuses between the two of you and actually the referral bonus would just be gravy on that so the just each of you opening the account meeting their requirement you get the 1200 bucks that you need in order to cover the points so you don't even need a new credit card you can do it with two checking account bonuses so i I would say get the points, keep your membership rewards points for something more valuable.

I know you want to go back to Necker Island. I know you want to go to one of the other Virgin limited properties. Keep your membership rewards points. Don't send them to Hilton. Come on. What do you think? Well, so, okay.

Part of me. So part of me, I like the aspire plan and I'm working towards it. And what I mean by that is I would have to cancel a lot of cards that I'm not ready to cancel to get under the five credit card limit with Amex to sign up for one. My wife's only one away. There's one that I want to cancel of hers so So she could sign up and we could do this from her account. I think that's a good plan. What about your son? I'm not, but we're about, let me just finish. So we're about a month away from being able to do

that because I'm finishing up. She actually had the plus three deal, referral deal on the card that I want her to cancel. So we need to make sure that all those points post first and we kind of max that out before, um, before going anywhere with that. And then, um, and then, yeah, I think, I think getting her the Hilton cards, it's the right time to do that. My son, um, he, he seems to be banned by Amex from getting any new cards. So what I tried with him was there was 150K targeted referral offer for the Surpass. And so he tried applying, denied. So there was no pop-up.

It was just in denial. And then he tried later, tried the no fee Hilton card thinking, well, of course, I'll get approved for that. Nope, denied right away for that one too. So we might still play around trying. He's had a lot of business cards, hasn't gotten any denials from on the business side of amex and i know they kind of run independently so i was thinking about signing up for the uh hilton business card yeah see if that works you know i would get you enough points for one and a half of the nights anyway i think with the bonus on that card right so you know cover at least at least half the stay so uh yeah i mean i i

think i would i would take that route especially one of the two between your wife or your son one of the two getting at least one of those cards and i would think the aspire card for sure at this point because you don't need those delta slots right now and down the road you can go ahead and get rid of it and pick up delta card if it, you know, it's the right play for you at that point. But I think timing is perfect for that. Yeah. Okay. All right. That's what we'll do. Done. Good. Glad I could help. All right. So, so then that makes us move on to the main event, right? Yes. All right.

So Amex races out of the gate, all kinds of goodies coming from Amex, but they're spilt, they're sprinkling here and there um right i mean they're fairly heavy sprinkles let's not oh yeah yeah no that's true you know they're pouring the sprinkles they're not they're not just sprinkling them they're like opening up that side of the sprinkler that all right let me let me change the analogy a little they they they're don't say anything about peas in a bucket. All right. I don't want to hear no peas in a bucket this time. It's like, it's like they're, they're the ice cream scoopers at a ice cream store. Right.

And their favorite customer comes in and they give them triple scoop for the price of one. They add all the good eat toppings. And then the next person comes in and they're like, Oh, well, you've only had the card for a month, so here's a little bit. Not much for you. Not much for you. So actually, it's platinum cardholders so far, right, that are getting most of the goodies.

The new platinum cardholders are getting the great goodies I just talked about a little while ago, which is the 100K offer plus 10X rewards for six months at grocery stores and gas stations. Awesome, awesome offer. They're also getting, all consumer platinum card holders are getting $30 a month in PayPal rebates. So you buy anything through PayPal and you get $30 back. So that's 180 bucks. That's super easy to get, right? So that's for all consumer platinum cardholders. And then there's some really good Amex offers for consumer platinum cardholders, but not for the people who got in on the 100K offer because they have a new requirement that says you have to have had the card open and active by November 1st to qualify for these offers.

That's the sad music for those of us that did not have a personal Platinum card as of November 1st. Because those offers are pretty good looking. I mean, those are some pretty cool offers. So if you had the Platinum card since November 1st, you should have Amex offers in your account for, I think it's like $1,700 worth of credits. I think that's what I saw. Is that right?

$1,700 worth of credits. I didn't add it up. Amex added it up and put it on their website. So I went to log in earlier. I saw $1,700. So I didn't do the math myself. Some of those, I mean, I don't think we should use that number. Okay.

Because they're including things like Avis $75 off a $200 rental, which is like a normal Amex offer. It's not like a special treat you're getting. Agreed. You know, so yeah. All right. But some of them are really, really good. So what are the best of the bunch?

What are the really good ones? Yeah. Best of the best are best buy. Get basically $100 back off 100. So it's stated as $50 back on $50 spend two times, but you could just spend $100 once and you get both of those $50 right away. So it's $100 back. Yeah. Boom.

Same exact thing with Home Depot. So that's $200 of free stuff from both of those stores. It's a hundred dollars back. Yeah. Boom. Same exact thing with Home Depot. So that's $200 of free stuff from both of those stores. Yeah. I mean, that's, and that's pretty close to cash value because I mean, who doesn't need something that they sell at Best Buy or at Home Depot? There's gotta be something at one of those places that you'd be happy to take home with you for free. Right? Exactly. Exactly. And you know, even if you're not like,

I've been thinking about like so suppose you're you're comparison shopping and you see oh this like coffee pot i want is ten dollars more at home depot than at this other place you're then you're still saving like ninety dollars right i mean right it's right and best buy has got a price match guarantee so you know if they're a little overpriced. Oh, there you go. Price match guarantee. So I don't know about Home Depot, but I think they match prices from at least lows and stuff. So, yeah, I mean, you can play that whole game if you want. And but even if you don't, like Greg said, you're still coming out like 90 bucks ahead on each of those.

Hello. So, I mean, even if you only value those at 90, that's $180 between the two of those, then another $180 in PayPal credit, that's $360 in cash, without even thinking about the usual airline credits and Uber credits and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then there's more. I don't know all of them, because I don't have the personal platinum. But I know like Home Chef, it's a $50 credit you can use what three times now? Three times now. Yeah. So that's that's 150 and basically free food that's been delivered to you to uh prepare yourself with those simple recipes so that's that's really cool um there's some the others are well not all of the others but some of the others are are sort of good

percentage rebates so you know there's there's ones that I don't, again, I don't remember exactly off the top of my head, but, but there's a, especially like local food delivery thing where you're getting back, I want to say a 50 off 150, something like that. So, you know, a third, you know, and, and so there's a, there's several that are really good deals there, but they're not like free money. Right, right. So there's free money and then there's decent discounts.

If you're already going to be spending money, you might as well spend a little bit less then, right? So I mean, it seems like a pretty terrific deal. If you had a platinum card before, you can't be too upset that you kept it because between what happened last year and what's happening now if you had a platinum card before the first of november of last year i mean you made out pretty well you had one since may when they introduced everything last year and statement credits last year you got what like 320 in statement credits last year and then even if you only got the 300 and change this year you're still well ahead of the annual fee already

right even if you don't use any of those like 50 back on 150 local food delivery, who can't find a way to use that? I mean, so a lot of those other ones can probably be useful too. And you've already come out ahead of the annual fee. So that's pretty terrific, especially on a card that, you know, platinum cards, the kind of thing that people long paid for, for the ancillary benefits. Obviously you're not making great use of those ancillary benefits right now.

And that's why they're giving you these credits, but it might still be worth having that card so that you can use those benefits when the time comes around. And certainly if they're going to pay you to do it, it's worthwhile. Exactly. So, so I was lucky enough. I have a Schwab platinum card. As you mentioned earlier, that gave me the ability to cash out at 1.25. My annual fee just came due just like last week. And I did call to, or I guess I instant messaged to see if there were any retention bonus offers on the card. And they said, I want to say, I don't remember exactly. I told you to pound cent.

No, I think they said I would get $200 sometime after renewal, which was strange because that's what they've been doing for the business platinum cards. So I don't know if the person was just confused, which on, you know, the instant message reps don't seem like they're, you know, top rung. Not always. But anyway, so, you know, that's what they said anyway. So, so I, I wasn't going to cancel at that point anyway, cause I was going to at least minimum use up my $200 of airline fee credits this year before canceling. And, but now with the PayPal credits, Home Depot, all this stuff, it's like,

no, it's definitely worth keeping for another year. And who knows what else will come up? Right? Well, and that's a good question. Who knows what else will come up? But before we talk about what else will come up. So that was on the consumer platinum side. Then on the business platinum side, they came out with some things that I don't even know if I want to call them offers. They came out with some, some things, some extra points. Well, they're called offers. I mean, you find them in your Amex offers, right? You do. Yeah. So you get 5X. I mean, it, it actually, it looks exciting when you first see it. 5X

rewards for all purchases of shipping. 5X rewards for all purchases of office supply, you know, advertising, gas, that's something. The kind of things that if you have a small business, maybe you would spend money on, right? Yeah, exactly. If you spend a lot of these areas getting 5x, fantastic, up to 80,000 points for six months, I think it is. So that's nice. I don't think for the average miles and points person who doesn't have like a business, the type of business where they're spending a lot in these categories,

I don't think those categories are gonna mean a lot, especially because you don't wanna go, the one that, you know, you don't wanna go to office supply stores or gas stations buying gift cards with your card because Amex is known to claw back the the points for those things that are obviously gift card purchases so there's not like an easy way to run those up that i'm aware of um not me either and and the gas one is not particularly amazing if you have that new platinum card offer. If you open one with the plus 10x,

that's good at U.S. gas stations and 10x at U.S. supermarkets and 5x gas on your business platinum is not going anywhere anytime soon. That's right. That's right. That's not particularly useful. And 5x on wireless is again, not particularly useful because there's no cell phone protection on the business platinum card. Now I say that, and I guess we've said before no cell phone protection on the business platinum card. Now I say that, and I guess we've said before that cell phone protection is not necessarily a good deal. And we've said that getting five X on the ink cash is worth it. So maybe, maybe I'm wrong when I say that that's not exciting.

Maybe some people will be happy to earn five membership rewards points per dollar on their cell phone bill. I guess. Yeah. But that's part of the reason what we're not excited about too, is that if you have the in cash rank plus card you could get 5x in in that category and office supply category as well right and then it's just a choice ultimate rewards or membership rewards which you prefer yeah um getting 5x and either is really good but um you know it's just not super exciting it doesn't feel like free money the way the other thing does. So I'm wondering if we're still going to see more.

We talked about this at the beginning of the show that maybe they are going to do more Dell credits. It wouldn't surprise me. Although it does seem strange that they haven't announced it with the other announcement, if they're going to do that. Yeah. I hope that if they're going to, that they'll get on it and go ahead and do it because at least if I did it right, like I said,

I was a little confused. We talked about it at the beginning, but as long as everything posted correctly, I should still have my full a hundred dollars for this six months. And I would hate to use that a hundred dollars on something and then get another, let me take that back. I would not hate to get another a hundred dollars in credit.

Not at all. I mean, not like a gift horse in the mountain. I know where you're going. You're right. It's something on one thing. Exactly. Not at all. I mean, not only do you get worse in the mail. I know where you're going. I'd rather use $200 all at once. Yeah, on something. On one thing, exactly. Right, right. I'd like to know sooner rather

than later. And I wrote a post this week about the fact that I'm looking at buying a laptop. So, Amex, you know, if you're listening, $200 all at once would be nice to know sooner rather than later. Although I don't really want one of the dull ones that I've seen, so I guess it probably won't make a difference.

So maybe they should do an HP one for you. If you do a $200 HP credit, that would be terrific. All right. Well, since they're taking requests, I think that'll be okay. Now, what they are doing for you is $25 off of $500 spend with the Blue Business Plus card, which we've long told people, great card to have, no annual fee. It'll keep your membership rewards points alive if you want to cancel your other cards that earn membership rewards. So I think a lot of our listeners and readers have that card and have this offer. And right now they probably have it falling asleep in a sock drawer somewhere because 2X was hot for a long time, but the way things have been lately,

I'm sure that most readers probably haven't been doing a whole lot of two X spend, but eventually hopefully you will again. And because there's no annual fee and the card preserves the ability to transfer to partners, totally worth having. And now when you add this basically 5% back, if you spend in $500 increments on top of the two X,

although that's a pretty good offer. It's not very good. It's shattering, but it's nice money in your pocket anyway, especially if you have bills or things to spend about 500 bucks on at a time. Right, right, right. You know, so, and, you know, especially, you know, look at things, not just bills, but things like your charitable contributions. Maybe if you've been giving, just as an example, if you've been giving someone a charity

$50 a month, maybe move it all forward and give them the 600 right in the beginning of the year, and you get $25 back or give them the 25 as well. So, you know, it's, it's, there's a lot of opportunities to get creative there and, and take advantage of that up to 10 times. So up to $250 and that's per person that has a card. So, you know, if, if family members have the same card, you can enroll them in the offer as well and do it again. Now question on that, is it $500 purchases or $500 in purchases? In other words, is it cumulative? If I buy two things that are $250 each, am I gonna get $25 back

or do I have to spend $500 all in one shot? Unfortunately, you have to spend $500 in one shot. Yeah, that definitely makes it, I'd be much more excited about this offer otherwise because then it would be, it'd be very close to a real like extra 5% off all your spend, which would be amazing. But as it is, you know, it's still very good and you could pay your taxes through PayPal. You know, so anyway, there's a lot of opportunities there. So not bad, not bad. And in the announcement about all of that, Amex said that there is going to be something coming,

new limited time offers of some sort for the co-branded cards. So presumably for the Delta, Marriott, and Hilton cards, they are going to do something as well. Now, they haven't said what they're going to do, so I want to know, what's your guess? What do you think they're going to do? What are they going to add on the co-branded cards? My guess is they're going to,

they're going to reward people who downgraded from the Hilton Aspire with random freeze and free nights. Craig playing Monday morning quarterback. I don't know. I mean, maybe that has something to do with, I mean, that would be very weird,

but people have quite a few people have gotten that. It's not been a one or two off kind of a thing. So maybe that was a part of the plan and they flipped the switch too early, but realistically, what do you see coming to the co-branded cards? And is it going to be just like last year where the aspire card, you were able to use the resort credit at restaurants and the Marriott card, you were able to use the the resort credit at restaurants and the marriott card you were able to do the same kind of thing with the marriott credit yeah it's per dollar gas or what do you think's going to happen here right well yeah i think i think the

the first part of what you said is a is a no-brainer like i would put that it's like close you know 95 probability that they're going to, for the Bonvoy Brilliant and the Hilton Aspire, which have those, those brand specific credits that they'll make them apply to the type of spend we do every day, whether it's grocery or restaurant or both, whatever. So they'll make it easy to earn those credits. So that's great. That's a nice thing. I expect that just like last year, they won't make it easier to do the airline fee credit. They'll keep that the way it is. And so then the other thing, as you said,

the other thing it did, they had these like bonus point earning offers where you'd get, I don't even remember the numbers, but I think with Hilton, it was like 12 X at grocery for a while. Yeah, and then it was 10 at gas and restaurants for Marriott. For Marriott, yeah, yeah. So, I mean, they'll probably do the same thing, right?

Do you think though that they will do anything more anything more creative i hope they do i'd be interested in seeing it and you know i kind of think they will after what they've done here with the platinum card they didn't just copy what they did last year they could have very easily just extended those wireless and that's right in streaming credits and everybody would have been probably relatively happy with that but part of the problem with doing that is you would have gotten people so used to it that it's even harder to take away down the road. So changing it up and making it a little bit different might not be a bad strategy just to avoid getting people too used to that

so that they're not expecting it over and over again. So maybe they'll come up with something more creative. I think one person in Frequent Miler Insiders or maybe on the blog said, oh, I hope they'll give Aspire card holders the ability to spend and get a bonus on spend or get a free night certificate with spend because some Aspire card holders got targeted with an offer last year to spend only $5,000 and get a free night certificate. I'd love to see them add a spending incentive like that to the Aspire card. I think that would be a nice deal for people,

especially if Hilton decides to continue allowing those free night certificates to be validating end of the week. I don't think that the ones issued this year are slated to be any end of the week. It was just the ones issued up until December 31st. But if Hilton were to continue that policy, then it'd be great to see another opportunity to pick up a free night certificate. So I'd like to see that opportunity to pick up a free night certificate. So I'd like to see that. I don't know. What else do you think? Does he have another creative idea? Well, so on the Marriott side, I could definitely see them doing something to make getting platinum status easier. So they already did that with their their signup bonus, where they had,

you know, you sign up for the card and you get platinum status for a year. And currently the Bonvoy Brilliant card will give you platinum status with what $75,000 spend. That's way too much spend. But so I could see them, you know, I think half of that is even is still too much spend, but I could definitely see them doing something like that saying, you know, maybe 35,000 or 40,000 spend to get platinum status. So we might see that. I wouldn't be super excited about that because as I said, I think that's too much during this time to require for that. But

what else? I don't know. I, you know, I guess. I think that's actually, I think that makes a lot of sense because on the Delta cards, they've long had the status boost and then they just added a little bit more status boost last year. Right. So that's true. So something like that for the Marriott card might make sense. The Hilton card obviously wouldn't make sense because you're already getting status with the Hilton card with the Marriott card. Maybe, although on the flip side,

new card holders are already going to have platinum status. So that offer would only be presumably for people who are longtime card holders, not people who picked it up. It wouldn't do any good for people who recently picked it up. Although I guess Amex has shown a willingness to handle things that way. So maybe that's what's going to happen. Well, and I actually think that they want to handle things that way because they want to incentivize people to keep and keep spending on their cards when they've had their card. But people who are new to the card, there's not as much reason for them right now to try to encourage spend. They already get the encouragement of trying to meet the spend bonus for the sign-up offer.

Right, right. So what about the Delta cards? Delta, yeah, that's tough. So as you mentioned, they'd already announced, I forgot about that until you mentioned it, but they already announced that the spend boost will be increased by, I want to say 20%, something like that. I don't know, some small percent. And what that means is it makes it easier to spend your way to elite status on Delta. What else? I mean, again, I think it's likely we're going to see more spend offers. We saw a lot of those with, you know, what was it? Forex restaurants for the gold card. They had offers where you, on the platinum and reserve

card, where you could earn extra mqms and bonus miles on top of the ones you earn from the status boosts that kind of thing i'm betting instead of them getting creative that we're going to see more of the same of that type of thing i maybe that's i think that's probably a good guess i don't have a guess as to what the creative thing is hopefully amix is more creative than i am because I'd love to see something else but yeah I don't know what else it'll be although I wouldn't have guessed the PayPal credit on the platinum card I wouldn't have seen that coming and really I wouldn't have seen the other things coming last year either the streaming and the wireless so you know I guess something else that's aimed at

getting you to spend on uh spend on the things that you normally are spending money on right now and one of those cards might make sense so it's really hard to predict but i'm sure that they're going to add something that's going to be appealing anyway i don't think they've added any benefits yet where we've been like that's really not worth anything i feel like everything they've added for the most, I can't think of anything so far that we've been turned off by, I guess. Maybe there's some stuff that's been more exciting than others, but I don't feel like we've said,

oh, they shouldn't have bothered. Yeah, no, definitely not. And I'm encouraged by their going into 2021 position with some strong things coming out. And I think we're going to see even more from them. And so I'm looking forward to seeing what that is. I love that it puts pressure on the other banks. Don't we all,

don't we all, this competition is good for all of us, right? Because so far at this point, all we've really seen from the other banks where the city jumped out of the gate on day one. And I guess we haven't given them any credit yet for the fact that they announced it on January 1st.

They didn't play any games. They got out of the game. They were like, no, we're sick and tired of Nick and Greg talking about how crazy we are and how we don't tell anybody what's going on. We'll show them. We're going to let everybody know on the first of the year that they can

use their prestige travel credit on like dining and grocery for all of 2021, all the way through December 30th. Wait a minute. Why wasn't that? Or what crazy thing happened this week? It should have been in hindsight. It should have been. I should have lived up just like that, but Oh, well, what are you going to do? You got a bonus crazy thing in the middle of the main event. It's like dessert while you're eating dinner. Right. Right. So, so prestige card holders get to use their $250 credit easily. I have a hard time getting excited about that

because I feel like the prestige travel credit is super easy to use anyway. So I don't have the prestige card anymore. So it's even harder for me to get excited about it personally, I guess. But it seems like they were taking something that was pretty easy to get and making it a little bit easier easier but it doesn't seem like they added anything to the prestige card really so no they didn't change the equation much of of whether it's worth keeping i mean it's uh and it's not even worth getting because the the premier card has a better signup bonus and, and you can't get both. So, so you should,

even if you want the prestige, you should start with a premier and then upgrade. So, you know, yeah, you're right. It makes it easier. I mean, for me, I still have the card and it makes it like, you know, when it, when it was a travel credit, I had to do something a little bit different once a year, which is use that card for some travel spend instead of whatever I would use instead. And now it means, okay, once the plus three on the Amex Gold card is is over it prestige goes back to being my restaurant card and so i just do what i normally do and the credits will roll in that's nice yeah but it's but it's just like that's nice it's not like right oh that makes it a keeper no i still have to look at yeah how much value i'm getting for the card for the annual fee which is not quite covering it i think so looking forward to see will they do more with the card?

I hope they do. It's more fun to use that to pay towards travel, I think. I mean, I look at something like the Hyatt Mattress Run. If you're completing any Hyatt Mattress Run nights right now and you're paying cash, kind of nice to pull out the prestige card and pay for the stay and get your $250 back, right? And get a piece of that back.

It makes it feel like Mattress run costs you a little bit less. Whereas, you know, when it's dinner here, dinner there, you know, take out, blah, blah, blah. It just doesn't feel as exciting to me when I get, you know, like subway for free for dinner or something, you know, like that doesn't, it doesn't excite me. Or you could go, you know, once, once things, if things return to normal, you know, you could go to a three-star Michelin restaurant and use it to pay for the tip. Exactly, exactly.

Yeah, I mean, that's just, I don't, I have a hard time getting excited about that when there are, it's more fun to use it for travel. Or, you know, if perhaps you needed to stay at a Hilton property that was 80,000 points per night. And you're going to buy Hilton points. And actually, I guess that's a poor example because I think buying Hilton points probably wouldn't code as travel for the prestige credit. So nevermind. I was going to teach you that you could use your credit for that, but perhaps not. Cause I think that transaction goes to points.com. So I would not trigger it anyway, but, but so, all right. So we covered the fact that I'm not excited about it. You,

you sound like you think that's nice, but it's not like, wow, City, you shouldn't have. Exactly. The wow is that they announced it. That they announced it, exactly. And right away. Right away. Right out of the gate. Right away.

They were ready. So there you go. Attaboy, City. That's all of the attaboy you got out of that one. Attaboy for announcing it right away. Exactly. Yes. So that's out of the way.

What's Chase going to do? Because I already predicted at the beginning of the year that city's not going to do anything interesting so i don't think they're going to do anything else i think that's it they're done yeah like they're tapping out chase on the other hand you know city will city will keep doing those those little you know oh you get 5x for this or that but it's limited to this many points and then you've got to calculate. And they do this weird thing where they base the calculation on your extra four points. So it's some odd number of spend, like $887.12 that maxes it out. And anyway, so they'll keep doing it. They'll keep doing stuff like that.

But those are not they're not super interesting not interesting at all i mean we'll write a post about it now and then when it happens but i don't feel like it's yeah it's compelling so it's not going to make me be like oh yes i'm excited about the prestige card on the flip side though chase has added now again spending bonuses for let's see is it uh drug stores and grocery stores and maybe something else you can earn 5x at least at drug stores and grocery stores i know something else? You can earn 5X at least at drugstores and grocery stores, I know, and most of the co-branded cards, like your Marriott, Ritz, IHG, et cetera. Right.

Right. So that's feeling, you know, that's really nice if you have those cards and you value those points. It's feeling boring now. I mean, it used to be like, that would be pretty exciting that they had those, but it's more of the same. It is more of the same. So it doesn't feel particularly exciting. But now what I'm going to ask you is, would you make one of those cards, your primary grocery cart right now? One of those five X cards, would you make that your primary

grocery cart right now? You mean if I wasn't, if i hadn't signed up for the platinum no i mean you have recently you have the platinum card so yeah so you wouldn't well then it's not even not even a consideration because the platinum card's giving me 10x for grocery for six months i mean right now it's not even close now had i not signed up for it, I think it's a valid question to say, like, let's say you've got your Chase Sapphire Reserve card, which is earning 3x for $1,000 spent on grocery. Do you use that or do you use a card that's getting 5x airline miles? Yeah. I mean, you get 5x Southwest miles, for instance, which are worth about a penny and a half each, more or less, then that presumably is better than getting 3x chase points, though obviously not nearly as flexible. It becomes one of those things where you have to kind of do the math and figure out

what it is that matters to you. But some of those returns can be decent, Hyatt points, Southwest points, United, perhaps. Right. In those cases, what I would do is I'd say, are you pretty sure you're going to use those points you're earning then, then use the, use the co-branded card. If you, if you have no idea what, you know, if you're ever going to use the points, I think it's better to, to load up on ultimate rewards just cause there's so many more things you could do with them. But yeah. So, so what about, so, so what's next with Chase? So yeah, that's a good question. What is next? I mean,

so the Ritz card had the travel credit last year that was available to use at restaurants and grocery, which I just eked that out right at the last minute. I literally called a new year's Eve to get that credit used up. You got the Sapphire reserve, which I think they, if I remember correctly, they extended the ability to use that travel credit, of course, restaurants and stuff through the middle of this year or something at least. So you could still use that $300 relatively easily, I think. What else are they going to do though? I mean, that stuff kind of seems ho-hum now because it was already happening. And this is a masterful move on Amex's part

that rather than just do the same boring thing they did, they did switch it up. So now what's Chase going to do? Right. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I mean, they, so what do they have? They have the Peloton credits. A lot of the things that they did are still ongoing.

I think the peloton it is it is i just cut up last night because my wife said wasn't there some peloton thing and she asked me how it worked and i said i don't remember i had to look up the frequent miler post and see what you could get because you can get like two months of the all access for free or like nine months of the digital for free i don't know what the difference is yeah clearly i've not been doing my peloton workouts uh so so yeah you got the Peloton thing that's ongoing. DoorDash, $60 in credit this year on the Sapphire Reserve. You get the $300 travel credit that's super easy to use.

I mean, actually, that's not really a bad deal at all because also renewals have been charging at $450. They were charging at $450 last year. And I think I've also seen data points where so far this year, people that have had renewals in January have also seen $450 renewals. Yeah, I wonder if they're doing that kind of like unofficially, like because they probably don't want to announce like, it would be a confusing message. Like they might be thinking, oh, we'll do that up through June. and then we'll stop if things are better then.

But they don't know if things are better. So I could see where they might be like, let's just throw everyone a bone and just not announce it. I can imagine. I can see that. Yeah, that would make sense. So that's possible that that'll continue to happen. So, I mean, if it does, if renewals continue at $450 for a while here, then you're talking $300 in travel credit, $60 in DoorDash, another $120 on the reserve via Peloton. I think it's $60 with Sapphire Preferred via Peloton.

I mean, that's not bad already, right? Right. And then you still have that Lyft Pink thing. Well, that's like 12 months of it, I think. Yeah. So it depends. If you already signed up, you might be... Although they extended it. It depends when you

signed up as to whether they extended it. DoorDash, DashPass, they came with the Sapphire Reserve, and LiftPink gives you Grubhub Plus. Are you confused yet? Because I'm starting to lose track. It's confusing. There's a whole bunch of different.

Here's the big question. Will they next year do what they did this year or last year, sorry, where people called up and said, hey, you got any money for me? And they gave us Sapphire Reserve card holders, either $150 or $250. Some of us. I'm thankful to some of us right right yeah because some of us not the birthday boy had nothing at all thanks chase thanks i see it you shouldn't have all right so well yeah i mean i think that probably that's going to continue i think that's likely to continue anyway but for people who call in and ask for it, but what I'm even more interested in at this point is last year around this time, a little bit later than this, I guess, because it was the pandemic was already on. We said, you know, initially we

thought certain offers were going to go down and other offers were going to go up and blah, blah, blah. And when travel started to recover, we'd see a and B and C and travel hasn't really recovered yet. And my goodness, the credit card offers game has been booming i mean look at that amex platinum offer we talked a whole bunch about the chase ink cards the no fee cards that have the 75k offers now they're letting you refer from your chase ink card to refer people to those 75k offers or the 100k offer on the ink business preferred we've seen the marriott card offering a year, platinum status. There was the five 50K nights of wealth. I mean, it's just been kind of going crazy and haywire up in here. Are we going to continue to see credit card companies just throw points at people to sign up for cards? I

mean, these big offers just going to continue coming. I know there's a bunch that are scheduled to end here on the 13th. We had a whole bunch of them that are scheduled to end. They are. What next? So I predict those really will end, and they really will go down to the old sort of anemic levels. But I think we're going to see a bunch of other really great things coming out. And so those will go down, but other things will come out. And, yeah, I don't think we've seen the end of this. This is like the golden year for signup bonuses. It's just incredible.

Yeah. Yeah, I think so. And it's funny because I feel like the perspective in the game, so to speak, was that, you know, award travel is dying and things are getting devalued and MS is dead and this and that. And then I feel like over the last six or eight months, we've seen the best bonuses I think we've seen in years, really. I mean, especially consistently one after another, after another, I mean, Sapphire Reserve 100K offer came out and that was huge news because there was nothing else like that

that happened that year. Like that was it. And in the last like three months here i can name three things that were as big as that probably yeah yeah yeah and so back in september i think was we had the 80k sapphire preferred offer we had uh even even i think before that we had the the two freedom cards yeah it started in august the 5x grocery deal um so yeah it's been it's been really nice so uh but i don't know will it will they will anyone come close to matching the amex platinum offer man i would love to see chase give it a shot and i feel like chase has been fairly responsive and coming out with things that to make sense i feel like the two of them have been competing fairly well, Amex and Chase in terms of offering additional benefits, offering spending bonuses,

offering something to people to keep them using their card and keep them happy with having their cards and keep those cards in their pockets. More importantly, I'm sure for the bank. So I'm excited to see what they come up with next. I don't know what it's going to be, but I feel pretty good about 2021 from that perspective. I think that we're in for a really good year of credit card benefits and bonuses. I feel like it's going to be a solid boon coming our way from that perspective. Absolutely. I think this is a great time to start the hobby. Like if you

weren't in it before, you know, it seems weird to say, you know, Hey, it's time to, to earn miles and points. But, um, so much of what we talk about the ways of accumulating the miles and points is not traveling. It's through signing for credit cards. It's for spending the right way. It's for shopping portals. It's all kinds of things that are not travel. So then you can travel free. So this is actually like, it's the best time in two ways. Like one, because the ability to earn incredible signup bonuses is better than ever. the ability to earn incredible spend bonuses better than ever um and you're not traveling so you've got time to do this yeah yeah no i totally i totally agree with that and i so often i feel like in the last few months i've heard people say that they're canceling this card or that card because they're not traveling right now so they're not they're

not looking to use now to some extent that makes sense you don't want to to keep paying annual fees on cards. You're not using the benefits for, so I don't mean to criticize that in general. I feel like generally speaking, of course, you only want to keep things that are going to benefit you. But, but, but if the perspective is I'm not traveling and so I don't need travel points because I'm not traveling and I don't know what I'm going to travel again. That doesn't make a lot of sense to me because yeah, I'm not traveling right now. So I can focus on this stuff. That doesn't make a lot of sense to me because yeah, I'm not traveling right now. So I can focus on this stuff. We've talked about, I talked a lot about last year,

how I focused on bank account bonuses because I had the time to do it. I did a lot of bank account bonuses last year because I wasn't going anywhere. I was at home. So, you know, why not? Let's knock some of that stuff out that I might not make the time for in a normal year.

And it's the same kind of thing with these welcome bonuses. You know, maybe in your normal day-to-day life, when the world is a normal place, you don't have time to pay attention to every single bonus that comes up and maximize every spending category. But right now, maybe you do have time for some of those things. And at this point, I'm doing very little spend that isn't at like 5x, right? At least, or or more because almost everything is getting bonus in some way shape or form or i i found a way to play it so that i can get 5x or more so you know it's just a great time to be collecting points and yeah of course i'm not going anywhere tomorrow but i'm going to go somewhere eventually you know there's going to be a time exactly so i'm happy to pick up now i think

it's a great time and hoard everything you can because it's not going to be like this forever. Like when the world goes back to normal. You don't want to miss out on this stuff. Right. That's right. That's right. So get in on this stuff now.

And then you'll also have all these kind of travel credits and rewards that you'll be able to use once things open up. And so that's good stuff. Exactly. And when I say that, I feel almost like I sound like a credit card salesman. And it's not, not at all. It's just that you're not going to get 10X

at the grocery store and at the gas station in like 2023. You know, it's not going to happen. I feel like if I can be confident about anything, it's like, you're not going to get 10X in those categories. I hope that. Right. It seems pretty unlikely. It seems pretty unlikely it seems pretty unlikely and and uh so we we're just excited about it we don't want people to miss out right exactly exactly and it's not like you know we keep talking about this 10x thing we don't get any

any money from those right right we publish we publish referral links from our readers so on our frequent miler insiders facebook group people posted their referral links where our readers. So on our Frequent Miler Insiders Facebook group, people posted their referral links where I allowed them to, because we don't usually allow referral links. And we've been grabbing each day a different referral link to put on our blog so that those readers are getting 55,000, which is most you get from referring people, points because others are getting in on this great deal. And so I'm sort of a gravy train of points, which has been just fantastic for everybody. When you go to our best offers page

and you click through on the platinum card and you see, you know, Billy Bob has referred you, that was intentional. That was Billy Bob from Frequent Miler Insiders. You know, that was somebody that was linked, we put in there. So yeah, I mean, we're not trying to sell you on the idea of getting the platinum card for our benefit it's because it's something you just don't want to miss out on right now it's way too crazy to miss out on that

at this point it was already good now we got those those uh paypal credits each month and everything else it's just great time to get in on that stuff and then all these 5x offers that we've been talking about too it's just collect the point the easy points what you can don't wait until it's like you know one and a half x is exciting because i mean before 2020 one and a half was exciting right one and a half everywhere and the freedom unlimited was like wow and then 2x 2x on the blue business plus was like hello wow that was exciting and that will be exciting again someday. So pick up points now while you can. Well, probably. That's right.

Right. Okay. I think it's time to move on. All right. Let's move on. Let's move on to the post roast. All right. Roll up the sleeves.

Roll up the sleeves. I think I'm going to let you go first this week. Oh, really? Okay. All right. All right. So I'm going to roll up the sleeves here because we got to talk about Delta. We're going to talk about Delta because Greg wrote a post this week about Delta elite status

and his plans for 2021. Yeah. So you wrote in there, just kind of quickly give me the summary of what it is that you need to determine right now, because you got some stuff, some decisions you have to make in January. So can you just summarize for me what that was all about okay so from having earned uh diamond status which is delta's top tier status from having earned it in the year 2019 uh i earned choice benefits that are labeled 2020 2020 choice benefits and i haven't selected them yet. I have until the end of this month to

select them. And normally, in normal years, I select the, one of my three selections is four global upgrade certificates, which let me buy a cheap international fares and upgrade to LifeLab business class by applying these certificates. I've had great luck with them, you know, going through. And so my wife and I have traveled usually to Europe, but we also did Japan in LifeLab business class for the price of coach and fantastic this year. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. This year we have some...

This year, it's like, I don't know that I am going to have the opportunity to use those certificates before they expire. So they're good for a year from when they're chosen. And so I would need to book an international trip for my wife and I. So one round trip for both of us would use four upgrade certificates because they're one-way certificates. So I'd have to book one of those with cash and then use the upgrades for them to be worth anything. So my decision question is like, do I get those and hope that I actually use it before they expire?

Or do I just take 25,000 sky miles? Right. And so you were saying in your post that you're leaning towards probably just taking the 25,000 sky miles because as a Delta credit card holder, you know that you can use those miles at a penny each towards paid delta fares so your worst case scenario is you're going to get 250 worth of delta credit essentially out of those right so that's you know your floor level and you can probably hopefully do better than that but your floor level is 250 bucks so you're like all right

250 in the pocket bird in the hand beats two in the bush. I'm going to take the $250 right now and forget about those four global upgrade certificates. Now, I looked at that and I saw that you explained that obviously those are worth way more money if you're able to use them. And that's clear and plainly obvious, but you just don't know whether you're going to be able to use them or not in the next year. Now, that's fair, but you must know somebody who's going to be able to use them in the next year, right? I mean, like the employee of the month. Who's the employee of the month this week, right?

So there's something you don't know. Uh-oh. We're not flying American Airlines here. American Airlines will let you use your global upgrades for your friends. But you have to use them. Delta. Well, it's not even that I have to use it. It's just that whoever does use it has to be on the same exact flight as me.

Right, right. So it has to be someone you want to go somewhere with. Yeah. Well, you don't have to want to. Right. You have to go. You have to go with them. Like it or not, you have to go with them.

That's right. That's right. So, yes, as much as I would love to, especially for your birthday. Hey, I'm going to give you four upgrades. Right. Right. I can't do that without also say, hey, by the way, I'm coming. Right. Right. Right. Right. On my next international trip where we've used these global upgrades certificates. I don't think I'd fly with the family. You're right. So. So. But I see what I did there. I don't think I'd fly with the family. You're right. So, all right. But see what I did there?

I don't think I would fly with the family. No, nevermind. Silly dad joke. No, I didn't catch that. All right. So anyway, so let's go back to this. So you have to be on the flight yourself in order to use these. Yeah.

Now, do you have to travel by the time they expire or you just have to book? So you have to travel by next January. Now, here's where I'm going to roast you. Between now and January, do you just not think international travel is going to return at all? You think you're not going to take any international trips? Because if you're going to take an international trip, if you think there's any chance that you're going to take an international trip

between now and the end of January, it's clearly going to be cheap economy class, right? I mean, like flights are cheap right now and they're not going to get expensive anytime soon. So if there was ever a time when you're going to definitely be able to book a cheap economy class ticket, it's probably 2021. We were talking international anyway.

So don't forget that I've got about two, I want to say 270,000 ANA miles that expire now. I think it's, I can't remember what they extend it to, maybe May or June or something. Yeah, something like that. I have got to spend all those. And so to the extent, yeah, I think it's very, very likely that I will travel internationally before the end of January. But I don't want those miles to go away. So I want to use it.

I want to use my travel for that. So yeah, that's, that's the dilemma really. All right. Okay. Yeah. I was going to roast you.

You're right. You're right. I feel like that was a crazy decision, but it makes sense now. It does seem crazy. Yeah. I don't know. It's just,

yeah. Yeah. Only a little bit though. In just a yeah yeah only a little bit though in hindsight only only a little crazy as crazy as 2021 is you know already shaping up to be so i don't uh i maybe that's as good a decision as any so all right i'm gonna take my roast back i'm gonna withdraw my roast because i was i was looking forward to roasting you and saying hey how are you gonna possibly do that when this is gonna be the cheapest year to book an international flight ever? You definitely want to have those global upgrade certificates now if you ever want, but maybe you don't if you've got all those. You know what I should do?

I should take the global upgrade certificates and aim to get an award for the worst possible use of them and fly like Detroit to Chicago or something like that and apply my global upgrades instead of regional upgrades certificates to sit in. One of those two-by-one first class where the one side you're kind of curved because the roof, it's a tiny little plane, so the roof is curving over your head. Wait, I'm going to take my rose back. Okay, so even in that situation, though, so you're saying that you're going to trade 125 dollars a passenger right basically you're gonna take 125 dollars a passenger to not sit up front in that situation no because we we also have regional upgrade

certificates that are uh that are selectable all right i withdraw the roast again. All right. Your turn. Moving on. Okay. All right. So you wrote a post about the Southwest Companion Pass. I did. Is it worth it still? Is it worth it? Yep. 2021. And your post, you went through a bunch of examples of how cheap Southwest awards were. You compared like sort of real world flights on a

given day from your home airport to various cities around the country, right? And you looked at how much it would cost to fly Delta, American, United, Southwest. Did I leave anyone out? No, no, no, that was it. And in almost all the cases, Southwest was dramatically cheaper. Am I remembering that right? That's correct. Yes, you are. For two passengers. Correct. Right, right.

So you use that to conclude that the companion pass is still worth it because... Sort of. Because... Sort of. So here's my problem. Okay. The Southwest Companion Pass, you have to get on a normal year. You have to get 125,000 Southwest points, right? Right. And so that's either, it's sometimes like two credit card signups.

Sometimes it's one with a great amount of spend. Sometimes it's a whole bunch, one sign up and a bunch of referrals. I mean, there's a lot of different sort of cheats to get there, but all of them have big opportunity costs. Meaning you could have- Says the man who spent $250,000 a year for Delta Diamond status for years. Okay, keep going. I'm looking forward to where we're going. That's a good example. You could have gotten Delta Platinum status instead of that. Okay.

So anyway, there's big opportunity costs involved. You could have been earning other things with that same amount of effort, same signup bonuses, whatever. And the meat of your post proved to me that the Southwest program is really good to pay attention to. It's really good to have some points in. It's, you know, probably good to fly on when you want

a cheap flight. What it didn't prove to me was that the companion pass is still worth it because if I'm only saving 3,000 points per passenger, and if let's say I'm only flying, I don't know, four times a year sure that's not a lot of points that i'm saving because it's so cheap so by showing how good and cheap they are i thought you were making the opposite argument basically it's like you know what the companion pass isn't really worth that much because you're not going to save that much it's all right okay but yeah so that's an interesting point interesting way of twisting it around there however worth that much because you're not going to save that much. It's okay. But yeah, that's an interesting point.

Interesting way of twisting it around there. However, you're still going to need the points in order to pay for those flights, right? So what are you going to earn the points and intentionally keep yourself short of the companion pass? I mean, the bottom line is that Southwest points are for domestic flights, often the best alternative. Now, that's obviously not going to be the case every out of every airport and every time every set of dates but what i tried to do is take a slice of different real life situations from a number of different airports to a number

of different places around the country and show that two passengers is going to cost you less with southwest with the companion pass than what you would pay with other airlines so you're going to get the points for free if you do it through the credit card, so to speak for free, obviously opportunity costs in the sense that you're not spending on some other card, but you're going to pick up the points from, from a welcome offers and then spend less points flying yourself than you would with another airline. I think it's a, on paper, it's a great deal.

I think in 2021, it's probably a bad deal. I think probably nobody should go after it right now. You should probably wait until 2022. I think it's a very niche case scenario that anybody should think about. But let me just go back to my point. So let's say, and I know the reality is going to vary dramatically from case to case, but let's just say on the low end, someone's only going to use, let me make up a number, 20,000 points on Southwest flights while they have the companion pass. Well, then they would never be thinking about the companion pass in the first place.

It's like saying that somebody's not going to stay at Hilton. Should they get the Hilton Aspire? I mean, that's a bad example. They probably should get the Hilton Aspire card. It's like saying you're not going to stay at Marriott all year long. Should you get the Marriott Elite status up? No, of course not you know but no because because you said that the flights are so cheap so that's like seven flights so they think they think they're flying a lot but you know all

their flights are like 2,000 or 3,000 points so uh you know they're like wow look at all these times I'm using companion pass but they're really only saving 20 or 30,000 points. And had you done those signups, had you done like ultimate reward signups instead of Southwest, you could transfer those points in and still use the remaining points for other stuff. All right. Fair enough.

Anyway, fair enough. It was kind of a, you know, nitpicky thing. I actually thought I really enjoyed, you know, seeing. Me squirm while you're pulling apart there. It was pretty, no, it's easy to pull it apart. No, it was pretty eyeopening seeing how much cheaper those awards were from your, from your airport. Wow.

Yeah. It wasn't just for mine. I did it out of Albany. I did it out of Omaha. I did it out of Chicago, out of San Francisco, and out of Los Angeles. Each of those places, out of Dallas, each of those places I picked all of the other places to show how much it was. And yeah, every single situation, two passengers in all those situations and still use fewer points, even if you don't have the companion pass. I mean, that is a good point. So Southwest is a good value to pay attention to and to think about having some Southwest

points. So, all right, we agree on that much. All right. So that brings us then to the question of the week. Question of the week time. Question of the week comes from a frequent miler insider, and it is, drum roll please, Alex asks us, and masking this this question the answer is going to be relatively easy but but then we can expand on it a little probably alex asks does anyone know

if booking amex is travel or amex travels the hotel collection so booking a hotel from the hotel collection gives elite night credit i'm looking at a hyatt booking of course like free excuse me like fhr does Hotels and Resorts. So often when you book through Fine Hotels and Resorts, you do get elite credit. If you book instead through the Amex Hotel Collection, which gives you additional benefits as a platinum or gold cardholder,

do you still get elite nights? He said that the rates are comparable to booking through Hyatt.com, but there are additional perks for platinum cardholders. So will he still get his elite credit if he books through the hotel collection? So I don't know the answer. I suspect the answer is no, that like any other hotel booking portal that you wouldn't get points or elite credits because fine hotels and resorts is special in that way. But it's possible that since this is still Amex, that they do something special for these other hotel collection things.

But I don't think so. That's what I think. Hotel collection is all prepaid. So whereas fine hotels and resorts, you can pay at the hotel. And that makes all the difference in the world because that's, know how the hotel recognized right paying them instead of paying the travel agency and so presumably the travel agency is getting a much lower kickback which is what i think happens with fine hotels and resorts whereas when you're booking hotel collection or anything else through mx travel it's just like booking through expedia or hotwire or whatever else

travel agency takes a big cut so you don't end up getting the points or the elite credit. At least that's what I think. I think that's right. I think that's right. So, so what should you do? You want to get elite credit. You like the fact that they're offering additional perks for platinum card

holders at this particular Hyatt. What would you do? Would you take the perks or is there anything else that comes to mind? Top quiz. I would look at Hyatt Pruve. So I would Google for frequent miler Hyatt Pruve and read Nick's article about that. Well done. You won, Greg. You got it. That's the quiz. Exactly. Yeah. I mean, if they're offering additional benefits, I can almost guarantee that it's probably a property that qualifies for Hyatt Pruve. When I first read about Hyatt Prevay, I assumed that it was just like the top high-end Hyatts that were included in the Hyatt Prevay

stuff. And that's not true. I mean, I booked a room at the Grand Hyatt New York, which I actually didn't think was that bad, but I feel like most people in the miles and points space will say that the place is kind of a dump and they were on Hyatt Preve and you can get the $100 you know resort credit and the confirmed upgrade to a suite at booking and blah blah blah so you definitely want to look at Hyatt Preve that's okay yes yes hands down I you know I haven't done it yet. There have been other factors, but I've been eager to try that out. Yeah. So someday. Yeah.

So if it fits, if you're looking at a paid stay and you want those additional benefits, really, if you're doing a Hyatt, I'm going to say, quote unquote, mattress run, where it's not a mattress run, you're actually going to stay at the hotel, then definitely look to see if they're on the Hyatt Prevail list. If you Google that Frequent My Owner Hyatt Pre purvey post, I link to where you can see all the different properties that are on there. If they're on the list and you definitely want to reach out because the rates were pretty comparable to what you found as far as the best rate, best flexible rate anyway on the Hyatt website and you got extra perks. So that's what I would do if I was actually going to

stay at a Hyatt hotel right now. Yeah. Yeah. Except if you got globalist status, you'll be a little depressed because like, you'll be getting like most of your benefits for free. Right. Right. It's going to be almost like you're not getting extra benefits for having global. Right. Well, if you're working towards global, I'll argue with you there because I did get a suite upgrade at the time of booking without having to use a globalist suite upgrade. Yeah.

I say a suite upgrade. Let me take that back and upgrade to the next category is what it is. Actually not necessarily a suite. If you book whatever is right below the suite, then you're going to get yourself an upgrade to the suite at booking without having to use one of your upgrades. So now presumably probably would have gotten upgraded to that suite anyway, but knowing that you have it as a nice feeling.

So it sure is. Sure. All right, cool. All right. Well, I think that my friends brings us to the end for this week. So thank you for being out here with us.

If you would like to hear more about what we've been talking about, or you'd like to read more rather about what we've been talking about, you want to get on our email list, follow us on social media, et cetera. You want to go to frequent miler.com slash subscribe. Again, that's frequent miler.com slash subscribe. Again, that's frequentmiler.com slash subscribe.

So you can do all that stuff. Now, if you're listening to this or watching this on YouTube, please ding that notification bell, hit the subscribe, give us a like, leave us a comment. Same kind of thing if you're listening to us on a podcast platform or you can leave a review, leave a review, let us know what you liked.

Let us know we can do better. We always love to hear from you. Thank you guys very much for being out there. We'll see you next week. Thanks, everyone. See you next time.