Frequent Miler on the Air - Announcing the 2024 Team Challenge | Ask Us Anything Ep67 | 5-8-24

Episode Date: May 14, 2024

In addition to our regular weekly podcast, we also host an Ask Us Anything Live on YouTube once a month where the Frequent Miler team answers listener questions about points, miles, rewards cards, and whatever else comes to mind. This special episode (67) was streamed live on May 8, 2024 and introduces our 2024 annual team challenge! (06:10) - Hi FM Team, now that we are approaching Summer, what you are most looking forward to this Summer? (13:35) - how do you plan on handling the requirement for onward travel that many countries have in this challenge? (15:37) - What's the "budget" for the contestants in this challenge? (18:09) - Scoring? (And) Will the judges share their scoring criteria in advance? (19:06) - Will there be any opportunity for reader/viewer engagement at the convergence points? (24:00) - I hope you plan to document via Instagram stories this time! That's been my favorite way to watch along with the previous challenges in real time (28:48) - Can you guess where you're each getting sent? (32:17) - What is a place you are hoping you aren’t sent to? (35:39) - Thoughts on the strata? And the strata elite? Do you think there will be family language? (37:40) - Do you think that citi rebranding the premier signals a much better chance of a prestige replacement/csr comp coming in the next year or so? (40:30) - Thanks for all the awesome content! Citi has denied P2 and I premier 3 times in the last 2 years, should I product change my DC to Premier since it’s going away or try for Strata Elite? (42:13) - hi team! what's going on with transfers to Virgin? are points getting stuck in transit lately? would you advise holding off on transfers to virgin? (44:11) - Can you speak on the capital one VX business priority pass rumors? My newly issued card is a visa and I’ve read on other blogs that the visas won’t have restaurant access. Is this true? (46:46) - FHR Points question please - My Platinum AU is getting a points cost 33% higher than I get for the same stay, ideas on the reason? (49:29) - Question: what are the most rewarding ways to get 529 gift of college gift cards? (51:21) - Name your 6 must hit destinations if you were booking an ABA around the world trip (55:39) - Is it worth to move 100k out of Fidelity to Meryl to get platinum honors ? Did FM team saw any inconvenience on maintaining 100k in Meryl (58:36) - hi. I was recently informed by an Air France representative that it's permissible to forgo the first leg of a reward ticket and still utilize the second leg. Can you confirm this?" Visit this link to get updated on in-depth points and miles content like this, and don’t forget to like and follow us on social media. You’ll find all other Frequent Miler on the Air episodes here.

This is not your usual Frequent Miler on the Air episode. This is our Ask Us Anything live session, recorded and brought to you in podcast format. Once a month, the Frequent Miler team gets together live on YouTube to answer your questions. Ask us questions about points, miles, credit cards, airline and hotel loyalty programs. We don't know what's coming next and neither do you. Enjoy. I like it. This is our monthly live brought to you not live on a podcast all right we're live now live today we're going to announce the latest 2024

uh team challenge and uh we're going to do that soon, but not immediately because first we're going to talk a little bit about past challenges, right? I think the first team challenge we ever did was 40k to far away where me, Nick, and Steven competed to see who could go the furthest with 40,000 points and $400. And Craig, where did you go where did i go i went to uh west virginia and then i went um i went all the way from dc to west virginia then went back to dc then i went to new york city then i went to madrid then i went to senegal then i went to johannesburg um south africa then i took a train to cape town and then I went to Johannesburg, South Africa.

Then I took a train to Cape Town and then I flew to the Seychelles. With 40,000 points and $400. That's pretty, pretty incredible. So that was like, that was the first iteration and Greg was the champ. So that won our first 40K to far away challenge. And that was something really, we just kind of threw together. We had a, we have an annual kind of team meeting where we away challenge and and that was something really we just kind of threw together we had a we have an annual kind of team meeting where we all get together and and that just sort of sprouted out a conversation walking back from ice cream right like we came up with

that idea essentially so that was a lot of fun and then we continued on right so we did the passing the duck challenge and that was fun greg and i i was tasked with using greg's global upgrade certificates on delta and so we did some crazy stuff and i used some portal shenanigans and so we were able to go to the uae and lamaridian maldives and that was a lot of fun and then we had our staycated far away which was a video based challenge during covid and so we've made some weird, wacky, fun videos and Carrie climbed in a suitcase. And I think I won. Yes, yes. And Carrie won also. My new details, my new details. Yeah. Literally, right in the suitcase. Dad joke alert. Anyway, so then yeah, so that was a couple years ago

and then we did our three cards, three continents challenge. That was pretty cool and so we took three welcome bonuses to visit at least three continents and most of us I think accomplished that challenge pretty handily, right? I mean we did our three continents and then some. It depends on how you

count the budget. Well, okay. Alright. Stickler for the details over here. And then we, well, I mean, what were, what were, Stephen, what was your favorite moment from it? Or then last year, of course, I skipped past it, but we had the party five challenge where all five of us traveled together and Stephen and Carrie teamed up to plan the first half and Tim and I planned the second half and half and Greg judged it to a tie.

And we had a lot of fun flying around the world. But Stephen, what's been your favorite challenge or challenge memory or challenge thing so far? I mean, each of the challenges had something like, well, had a lot of things fun to them. But one of the things I most enjoyed was um on three cards three continents was um going up to Scotland and then flying to the Auckland and taking the world's shortest flight which is less than two minutes long um and so my wife and I are actually going to be um going to Scotland next year for my birthday with a couple of friends and we're going to be going back up to the Orkney Islands spending a little bit more time there but then they're going to get to experience that um like two minute flight

as well um and so that'll be quite cool getting to do that again that's cool nick you redid a challenge thing with your family too didn't you yeah yeah we went so and at the end of the three cards three continents challenge i went to to see santa at santa claus village in rovaniemi finland and you can go back and watch some of the highlights to figure out why I did that. That was a comment Greg had made. And I thought it'd be funny if I could get there. And so I did. And it was a lot of fun. I said, oh, this would be awesome with young kids. And I have young kids. So this past December, we took a family trip to Santa Claus Holiday Village and met Santa and went sledding and saw

all sorts of cool stuff, fed the reindeer. And it was a lot of fun. So it was a blast with the family. It was as much fun as I imagined it would be. So that was really cool getting to go back and revisit that. I mean, we've seen some pretty awesome stuff. When I got back thinking about it today, I looked at all the places that we've been over the last few years on our challenges, and it's been pretty cool. What about you, Tim? What's been your favorite highlight um well you know i mean the only one that i personally participated in was the uh uh party of uh five challenge where team sfo won the audience vote um but the uh you know the one that i actually actually but i the the one that really weirdly enough

that I have the most, the strongest memories from is the steak A. And it's not just because Carrie got her face bit by an ant and into a suitcase and won the whole thing. Unrelated stories, but yeah.

But honestly, what it is, is I remember, and I don't remember everything about it, but I remember there being a video. I think that's when you guys were first trying to do videos. And there was a video of Greg trying to recreate his British walking path on treadmill. Oh, yeah. And it was perfect. And I would love to, you know, that's would love to you did a great job

perfect was a terrific adjective Greg's son got his directorial chops from from watching that video there was also that iconic video that Greg published where he gave some tips about how to not get stuff stolen in

your hotel room I knew that was going to come up a couple of good videos we won't go into too many yeah you'll have to google that one yeah so I do have a I do have a question that will be will serve as a good segue into our uh why we're discussing our past challenges right now. This questioner asks, hi, FM team. Now that we are approaching summer, what are you most looking forward to this summer? And on a related note, only in hindsight, wow, Nick isn't wearing his fedora. Related to both of those questions. Nick actually is wearing a fedora. The fedora related to both of those questions let's nick actually is wearing a fedora fedora doesn't make underneath the fedora yeah yeah that's right whatever has four sides to call fedora before we announce the next challenge i i want to mention two things one um if you're if you're

watching give us a thumbs up on youtube that always helps us out and if you're watching, give us a thumbs up on YouTube. That always helps us out. And if you're not watching, you didn't hear me say that, so just do it. And if this one is only if you're, I think only if you're on the live stream, I put a poll in there because I wanted to play with, I learned recently that you could do polls in live streams. And I put a poll asking people what their favorite past challenge was

that Freak of Mylar did. And so it'll be interesting to see how that turns out. So please do that. All right. Are we ready now? Our new challenge. Yeah. So why are you guys wearing those hats?

Drum roll, please. Our editor is not ready it's called flying by the seat of our points that's sort of work nick but yeah not really though huh only sort of sorry about that yeah i tried. The idea behind this challenge is it's going to be all about last minute travel. And in this one, it's going to be Nick, Tim and I are challengers. And Carrie and Steven are the judges, juries and executioners who are going to basically send us to a bunch of places that we don't know where we're going to be going. We're not going to find out until about two days each time where we need to get to next. And the idea then will be for us to compete to find the best flights, the best hotels, actually the best award redemptions for those.

So we want to get great value for our points. We want to travel as nicely as we can with those points for great value. And that's what flying by the seat of our points is all about. I think it's probably worth mentioning. So we're going to be sent a few different places and given challenges to complete in those places. So we have no idea. The three of us have no idea, Greg, Tim, and I, what Carrie and Steven are cooking up for us.

But presumably they have some things in mind. And so we're going to do some fun stuff and hopefully showcase some of the tools we use to find last minute award availability and to figure out, you know, okay, well, what's a good deal? What's not a good deal? Which one should we get in order to try to beat each other to the punch in terms of the best itinerary and the best flights and the best deal using our points and our free night certificates? And then who has the we, from the moment we find out where we're supposed to be somewhere in the world, how much time do we have to get there, be in a hotel and, you know, be filmable. So there's going to be checking. I think it's two days in between, right? So we've got a Wednesday start. Right? Wednesday start, Friday mid-check-in.

Jerry's not sure. He's checked my notes. We'll find out on a Monday evening where we're going first, and we'll all converge in one place in North America and have to be there by Wednesday evening. And then we'll be at that Wednesday evening time, we'll do a live stream and we'll be told where our next locations are, but those will be different this time. So we'll all fly away from each other. We don't know where. And so that'll be the second destination. And then we'll do another live stream from wherever we are. Each of us will check in at the same time with the live stream. And then we'll be told our final destination. And that one will be converging again somewhere international.

We have no idea where. So we don't know where we're going to start. We're going to find out where we start. We don't know where we're going to have to go to start for, you know, like an initial gateway, but the three of us will meet together in person for that. Then the three of us will separate and go to three different places somewhere in the world. We don't know where. And then the three of us will come back together again somewhere else in the world. And we don't know where.

Carrie and Steven are cooking that part of the challenge up for us yeah and as nick said earlier there'll be many challenges that carrie and steven will will cook up that will tell us okay you know once you hit the ground go who knows what i don't know do you have any examples that you can give the audience that won't give away yeah let us for instance like let's use that as an example. You mean the exploration challenges? Yes. Yeah, I don't know. I really don't want to ruin anything for you guys.

Yeah. What we said in the team meeting was we've designed challenges that basically force them out of their hotel rooms and are meant to increase the likelihood that they see something someone would care to hear about in that place um so you know that's really vague sorry once again just like last year's challenge we have to be a little bit cryptic so we're hiding things from each other but i think that's exciting because you guys presumably have found things that people are going to want to know about and we're going to go and do them yep so yeah we were um chatting about it i just like earlier on and can you like come up with some

great ideas of um activities to send you guys off um to do so it's gonna be fun yeah i'm pretty excited about it because i think if if some audience members don't know or don't remember, maybe you're newer to our team, you may not know that Stephen for the last like what now almost seven years has been traveling around the United States. So he's been on a 50 state road trip seeing all the states and so coming up with all sorts of cool, interesting things to do along the way. So I know he's got a handle on finding things to do like cool off the beaten path type stuff. And Kerry, you've spent like years and years and years as a nomad here, right? You've been traveling around all over the place. I don't even know where. More places than any of the rest of us have been to.

So you've seen and done things that we've only thought about. So I'm curious to see what it is you're going to come up with. So this person has a question for us. I'm going to see if we can start weaving in listener viewer questions. And we'll get to broad questions if we have to, but we're really excited about this challenge. So if you guys want to give us challenge-related questions, that would be great too.

So just an invitation to the viewers. This question is, how do you plan on handling the requirement for onward travel that many countries have in this challenge? I'm going to give that question to Stephen, obviously. So that is a fantastic question. And it's one that I wish I could say that I put a lot of thought into, but it's actually a very good point that I don't know if any of us had really considered about the fact about you go. I don't know if any of you have been thinking about the fact that you're going to be buying a one way ticket to somewhere, not knowing where you're going to be going after that. And so you're not going to have an onward ticket so i think the solution will be once they've booked their ticket to that place they'll just have to book some other kind of one-way ticket to anywhere in the world i guess that's

refundable and then once they've arrived in their destination then they can just cancel that and be book whatever they need once they know where they're going to be going to next but that's a thank you to whoever instead of suggesting that because that is something that will be worth having because it was for them to get that's the real reason we wanted to do this and then find out the things we hadn't considered huh yeah i i have to say there were quite a few times when drew and i were nomading that we would land somewhere. And before going through customs, we would just real quick book something we knew was cancelable.

We did that many times. So buy those SIM cards. Make sure you have international data. That's the answer to that one. Get clever and make sure you film it so we can show everyone. Truth be told i mean i've been to like 50 something almost 60 countries and i i can only think of two times i think that i was ever actually asked to show my proof of onward travel so i mean it's it's something that certainly

could happen so smart um thank you for asking whoever asked but uh but something i'm also not overly concerned about um so this next question um what's the budget for the contestants in this challenge i'm gonna give that one to greg just so it's not all steven answering yeah this is something that we haven't we haven't really um finished the the conversation this, but as things stand right now, there isn't a fixed budget. Instead, for each thing we do, we're going to be scored based on how good of a value it is, what we did. So if one of us books a outrageously expensive flight, they know they would get a bad score for that.

That said, to the extent that Frequent Miler, my business, is paying for these things, I am... Well, there's no budget. Let's just say there's no budget. I am interested in having a cap on those things. You can't put a price on the entertainment value, Greg. It's really, it's disgusting. Well, I think the thing is, I mean, like I know that Greg and Tim are going to try to find a great deal.

And so if I spent 200,000 points on something, I know I'm not going to win. So I know I got to find the award that is a great value, you know, within reason, obviously great luxury, too. But I think that we'll all be competing that down. And I assume that we will probably surprise ourselves as well. And I think it's good for the contestants to keep in mind that Stephen and I are both like we both score pretty high on the like frugality value side of things so you know like uh that kind of thing wows us and we're the judges so you know that will help greg's wallet i

think the other thing as well is that the guys are going to be at the mercy of last minute award availability particularly with flights that's going to be hard and so um in an ideal world like if planning this out three months six months ahead of time then sure they would have all kinds of options going to need to be booking a flight for the very next day or possibly even that same day they're going to have in theory far fewer options than they normally have and so it'll be interesting to see how they balance the kind of frugality with the luxury with just simply what's there to be booked in the first place.

Oops, I just shut my video off, my bad. So next question, it's a two-parter. This person just says scoring. And in combination with that, will the judges share their scoring criteria in advance? Good question. That's something we spent a lot of time discussing today. It's not that we haven't prepared. We've put a lot of time into trying to figure out the best way to do that right uh i guess so i am curious to know from those listening uh do you want to see our scoring criteria ahead of time we've discussed we've discussed showing it ahead of time we've discussed

keeping it private and showing it after uh what do you guys think what's interesting to you guys think? What's interesting to you guys? We have a criteria. It's pretty nerdy, you know, in the best possible way. But do you guys want to see that ahead or not? And then similarly, this person says, will there be any opportunity for reader viewer engagement at the convergence points? nick i'll let you cover that one yeah so we're gonna live stream so the way this is gonna happen is on a should we are we giving can i share the dates so on monday june 3rd we're going to have a youtube live where we're where the three of us will find out where we have to go carrie and steven will tell us okay you're gonna go here let's say it's chicago so the three of us have to be in Chicago by Wednesday, let's say at nine o'clock. And so the three of us will get together in Chicago and we're going to compete to see who does the best getting there, I think. And so when we arrive on Wednesday night, we'll live stream again. We'll each share what we've done, how we booked our flights there. And we'll make an argument to you, the viewer, the people who are

watching along on our live stream as to why we've done the best. And your job on the live stream is going to be to tell Carrie and Stephen who you think has done the best with that particular leg. Then that Wednesday, June 5th, we'll find out where we need to be on Friday, June 7th. And that will be a different location for Greg and Tim and I. So the three of us will each have to go somewhere different in the world. And so we're going to use our points and miles to travel there. And then we're all going to get online again two days later. So that'll be what the, help me out here, the 7th, 5th, 7th, 9th, two days after the Friday. So Sunday or Monday,

we'll get online again. And so what we're going to do is we're going to make an argument as to why we had the best flight getting there. And we're going to explain what we booked and how we booked it and why we booked it and why we didn't book something else and why we think each of us did the best in terms of booking the best flight, most luxurious, the best value, the best routing, best lounge access, whatever it may be that we think makes our itinerary better than the other two people. And Stephen and Carrie will presumably already have in mind who they think has won, but we're going to be counting on you to help us convince them. So essentially, I'm going to count on all of you to help me convince Carrie and Stephen

that I won. And you're going to tell them why in the comments. And, you know, of course, Greg and Tim will resist, but it'll be futile. The other audience participation thing that we're planning to do is the three of us contestants will each have our own blog posts that we will be keeping as like a journal of what we're doing, how we book different things and so on. And,

and what we'll do in there is, uh, open up those blog posts for comments and ask people to, um, to help us out. So, you know, maybe you have a better idea. You're a good idea for how we can, how, you know, maybe Nick needs to get to Morocco. Well, you have a great idea for how we could get there. So you, you would post in Nick's post, you'd write a comment there and say, Nick, did you know you could fly whatever for only, you know, 12 avios and get there? Or maybe, you know, that city really well. And so you, you saw that he's going to have a challenge to get to a certain place and, and you know, the city, so you, you saw that he's going to have a challenge to get to a certain place and, and you know, the city, so you can help him out and tell him, oh, you know, you can,

you know, get on the subway and do this and that, whatever, whatever the thing is based. Cause I don't know what the challenges are. I can't give a good example. Or, you know, I'm going to the city X and you're like, oh my goodness, you can't miss this coffee shop. It's got the most delicious pastries. Please tell me about the delicious pastries you know about. Wherever it is I'm going. And connect with the pastries so that Tim and I can get ahead.

I got a few a lot. We got some traveling to do. You gotta let me know. So yeah, we're going to be soliciting your help essentially in figuring out our routing, our flights, and what to do when we get to the places we're going to. And'm not sure really that person was basically asking whether or not there would be meetup opportunities i don't think there's going to be time on this challenge because the location they're initially going to be heading to in the u.s they're going to be traveling to that

day and then within a couple of hours we're probably going to be doing the live streaming so there can be an opportunity then and that's where they find out where they're going first. And so they're immediately going to be trying to do award bookings. It's unlikely during this particular challenge that there will be an opportunity to do any kind of like media meetups or or anything like that. So just in case, that's what they also hoping. We've got some really great feedback coming through a lot of uh a lot of great uh ideas from people um first of all they definitely want to see uh our scoring criteria ahead of time even if we don't go into specifics just the general things we're going to

be valuing that's good to know and they definitely want to see us posting on Instagram stories. So let's talk a bit about the ways we're going to be sharing all of this because we're not going to, we will definitely be sharing on Instagram stories, but we're going to try to add in a few other things. So Tim, can you talk about some of the ways we're going to be updating folks as we travel? Well, there's going to be, uh, uh, uh, a strong Instagram presence of course. And then, and then, but we'll also have, each of us will have, as was already mentioned, the kind of daily diary, uh, dear frequent miler. Uh, I was in, I woke up in Amsterdam today and I went and got a pastry for Nick so that he would be happy. And, and so those, and those will be the primary two ways

that we'll be kind of sharing what's happening. And then we'll also have, I mean, a big one will be every 48 hours, effectively, we'll be doing a live stream where not only will we be interacting with everybody that has been following or who hasn't been following and just wants to heckle us. And so then at that point we can give her, we'll be giving recaps of what we've been up to about what we think about Stephen and Carrie and their challenges. And, you know,

and then give some opportunity for folks to be able to say, give their feedback on who they think has been successful, who has not been successful, who's been the most successful, i.e. Tim. Who the hell is behind. Who's behind, i.e probably tim but so but so i mean there'll be a lot of ways to kind of interact what we're doing um the daily updates will be primarily based around the the kind of updated blog posts and instagram but then every 48 hours we'll be having a public live stream where we can kind of everybody can sort of hear about what's been going on,

hear about what Stephen and Kerry think and give their own opinions, which hopefully will be a lot of fun. And we have been listening to reader feedback because with some of the past challenges, it has been hard keeping the blog updated with what we've been up to kind of in real time. And so it does feel like people

who are only following along on the challenges by reading the blog posts have been like almost a little bit hard done by just because um we've been putting a bit more focus on the instagram side of things because that's kind of the easier way of telling the stories in real time um but we're going to be making much more of an effort to keep the blog updated as well with where all the guys are at and things like that so you should have a much better idea with this latest challenge and where they are what they're doing what they've booked how they've done it why they've booked that what challenges they'll have and things like that so no matter which medium you follow us through

you should be getting a really good ideas to all of the fun that they're having on the trip. Yeah, if I can piggyback on that, we've talked about how we need to get that blog post as up to date as our Instagram is. But I do want to give a shout out to Instagram because I know some people are not necessarily Instagram users. And that was me for a long time. But I find that it's a great way to share travel stories as they're happening. So it's really the I think it's the most fun way to follow along. And believe me, I love our blog and our blog will always be our primary outlet for creating stuff. But when it comes to actual live traveling, Instagram is the best way to tell the story. So that's, I think, going to be your best bet if you want to follow along as things are happening. And we've certainly put more thought as time has gone on into making that cohesive and coherent in terms of scheduling things out to make it a little bit easier to follow who's doing what and where and when. So hopefully that will be continually improved as it has been over our last couple of challenges, I would say yeah those daily diary you know dear diary tim brought me a freaking pastry someone here does say i'm here for pastry duty so i think you're i think you're covered i like it thank you thank you yes um we have a lot of people just saying really positive things which is awesome uh unfortunately doesn't translate well into a question for you guys but i do i do want to uh remind everyone to like against uh our buddy here uh commented come on guys we can do better um so we got to make him feel better

and get more likes uh if you're watching this um so before we go into more general questions um i am curious if each of you guys i don't i i'll be disappointed if you're all like correct but i am curious if each of you has like one guess as to where you might get sent and you're only allowed to guess one place. Okay, poker face time for us two. Yeah. Greg. Greg goes first.

Now, are we saying continent, country, city, neighborhood? However you want to guess it. The more granular granular the more interesting I feel like that should be like so much in it

well I mentioned Morocco before so I'm going to say that that's your story and you're sticking to it I'll be disappointed if it's Morocco let me tell you alright Nick Nick guesses Nick you know I had the other day something came to me and I was like oh my goodness I bet that's where they're going to send me.

And then it almost immediately flew out of my brain because I couldn't remember when I went to tell my wife. I was like, you know what? I figured it out and I forgot. There was something that happened and I was like, this is going to be it. Newark, yes. West Virginia again? No, but I'll pick a place because I'm sure that's what I'm supposed to do here. So I'm going to say Malaysia.

And how about Tim? What do you think? Well, so let me, I'm going to double down, right? So I think that, first of all, carrie and this is a little bit this is behind the scenes but carrie behind the scenes was very interested in getting all of us to fill out a map that showed all the countries that we've been to and she really wanted us to fill this out before she and Stephen started talking about I forgot about that dang it Tim you just reminded Greg

so I'm going to guess that there's going to be a little bit of countries we haven't been to involved I'm going to guess that and this is and I'm let to guess that, and this is, and I'm, and let me, let me, let me expand it a little bit. I think we're going to meet somewhere on the Midwest to East coast. I think we're going to start in Europe and I think we're going to end up in the Middle East or South Asia.

And I think that each of us will basically we're not going to antarctica so we're going to be starting in america we're going to be visiting no no no no no we're going to be visiting one two other continents no not not america we're going to be starting on the east coast okay okay yeah yeah we're going to go to europe as our first destination maybe middle east i think probably all three of us will end up in europe and that's my guess and then the last destination will be either i'm guessing middle east south asia that's where i'm guessing and i'm gonna say that each one of us will end up in a country we haven't been to because i have this weird little i haven't been to country in the middle of Europe.

I've been to all of Europe, effectively, except for Switzerland. You gave up your right to make a guess once you get to Switzerland. It's helpful. It's helpful he gets to go to Switzerland. Well, okay. We just got another

question that is quite similar. This is a good segue, and i love it uh what is the place you are hoping you aren't sent to tim let's start with you you you made a joke about this earlier but oh all right germany i thought you were gonna say morocco since you were germany or what yeah i mean morocco so the joke is that i'm actually in morocco right now and i'm like spending like three weeks in moroc Morocco so if I got sent right back to Morocco I would be fanatic um but I'm gonna say honestly like if I Morocco's fine but I but I would say like Germany is a place that I've I've spent a lot of time in

Germany so I'm ready to not Germany to Germany if we're going to go. Tim is hoping it's not Germany. How about you, Nick? Let's just say the two. I'm going to say for where I don't want to go. That's hard. I really hate to punt this one, but I'm not sure that there's a place that, you know, I guess I'm going to say Europe in general as a full continent because it's easy enough to get there that I've gone a number of times before. And I feel like I could easily go to Europe with my family just about anywhere in Europe at any time.

So it feels less challenging to me. So there you go. I'm going to say not Europe. Make it hard. I hope they plan to Europe and now they have to drop back 10 yards. You're hoping you don't go to Europe. All right, Greg. It's tough.

I mean, I can't think of too many places that I don't want to get sent. I mean, I certainly don't want to get sent to Antarctica, not because I wouldn't want to visit there, but there's just no way I'm going to get there in time and I'm going to miss the check in. There you have it. No Antarctica for Greg. Makes a great point. The correct answer is you don't want to go to london because then you're stuck paying the departure tax oh that is a good answer yeah there you could answer this another way saying where you hope not to go because it would just be really really hard uh

would that change your answer at all anyone no i think that would make it more fun wait what was that you said i don't want to give them ideas i'm up for the challenge make it a tough place to get to i want to know is meeting up in timbuktu are we gonna need jackets yeah that's the hard part that's the thing i've been wondering about lately how am i gonna pack we haven't even talked about that, which was true last challenge too, like how to pack for places you don't know you're going. Yeah, because last challenge, even though we did it in the summer, we did need jackets.

Yeah, sure did. That's true. Well, I'm inclined to not give you any information and you just have to pack like you did last time, but I suppose we can... I'll pack my credit card, which is probably the most important thing in that case.

I always get another layer if I need it. So it looks like we're still getting plenty of comments, but less and less questions. Are we ready to switch to general questions? Yeah, let's do an Ask Us Anything here. All right. Let me skim a bit uh thoughts on the strata and the strata elite uh do you think there will be family language

and can somebody explain what that means as you answer we'll start with nick um so the strata card you know we've seen some general details on, and obviously it's coming soon. If you've missed, it's coming next week. The Strata Premier is coming. The Strata Premier is coming next week. That's right. Strata Elite, I don't think is going to be coming soon. I think that's not going to be a 2024 thing.

I think that may be a 2025 thing if it happens at all. So yeah, I think it's probably not, my guess is it's not going to be significantly different than the Premier card as it is now, but it'll add travel protections, I'm hoping and thinking. So if they add the travel protections back, that'll make a lot of sense because it'll be like, oh, finally a travel card that has travel protections from Citi. It's been a while since they had that. be great to have that back uh in terms of family language so city has had different well so first of all family language i'm not as concerned about amex has had their family language but with city it's the whatever their application window is going to be i think

it's going to have to be 48 months since your last bonus is what's expected right and and the strata premier card um does have that language where if you've had a regular city premier card bonus in the last 48 months you won't be able to get the bonus on the new um version of the card so i thought you know yeah so i mean my thoughts are if you've had a new bonus a new card bonus on the premiere in the last 48 months you're not going to have to think too hard about it and uh if you haven't then i guess let's wait and see and hopefully they come out with something really interesting i mean at the very least 75 000 points is what's expected to be the welcome bonus and and that will be better than what we've seen on the premiere in a while right uh so we have a lot of questions on this and you'll have to tell me I don't understand these enough to know

If any of these are repeats so just say skip If so Do you think that Citi rebranding the Premier signals a much better chance Of a prestige replacement CSR comp Coming in the next year or so Was that already

Answered Tim Take that one if it's new. Okay. Yes. I think that to me, there's been a lot of conjecture over the last couple of years about whether or not the city was actually going to replace the prestige. I have been in an unfortunately unfortunately in terms of our annual project uh predictions uh an unfortunate space of predicting this for much too long than i should or much for much too long a time period than i should have but um the fact that they're creating the city strata that they're that they're product changing it from the city premier to the city strata premier seems to be a sign that the city strata elite which is what

they have trademarked as their city prestige replacement will eventually be on the way because otherwise why would you change the name of the premier um so yeah i think i think it's going to be coming um and the fact and honestly i think it's to me i think that that i'm much more after today or after hearing more details about the city strata premier effectively they've kept the annual fee the same they've added an additional category and travel protections back so that seems to indicate that what they're thinking about for the strata elite will be something that will be desirable as opposed to um i think what they did kind of city has been kind of stripping stuff away from their cards and stripping the actual prestige away from their card portfolio which was their premium card so um yeah i mean i think to me i

think this is a really positive development for city um and says that they're planning on trying to compete with Capital One, Chase, and Amex in both of these, in both kind of the premium and ultra premium sphere. But then again, I predicted this for two years, so I have to say that. Doubling down. I don't think you predicted it for this year. I did, actually. Oh, did you? I doubled down. I was going to say he's safe because I don't think it's it for this year. I did. Actually. Oh, did you? I doubled down.

I was going to say he's safe because I don't think it's going to happen this year. But I'm looking at the 2024 predictions and I'm not seeing it. No, I did. I thought I could have sworn I did. I'm going to predict right now. It'll be 2025. 2025. I'm the strategist.

Now I know what I should predict for 2025 if so. I beat you to it. I already did it. This will be where City ends up December 31st just to foil your plans. Just to get in the way. Greg, this is another City one for you.

Thanks for all the awesome content. City has denied Player 2 and I premiere three times in the last two years should I product change my DC? Double cash double cash? Okay to premiere since it's going away or try for Strata Elite?

Oh I would just wait and try for Strata Elite we don't we won't know whether having the premiere will, having it without getting a bonus, whether that'll stop you from getting the, the bonus on the strata,

but why risk it by changing now to the premiere? Why not? Why not wait and see if they, sometimes on new product launches, they're easier on approvals than normal so i would wait till till it's out try again and hopefully you'll have better luck and if they do for the new car then you can always product change at that point so it doesn't seem like any need to do it prematurely uh So before I get this question to Stephen,

we have an update from the Swiss Rail guy. If anyone remembers from last Ask Us Anything or the one before, somebody asked if there was a way to earn points buying a Swiss Rail pass. And we were stumped. Not one of us knew. He said,

Palago is a travel portal like Rakuten, but this portal gives us Singapore miles. I am booking my Swiss rail pass through them, and we'll be getting a lot of Singapore miles. Nice. So, yeah. That's kind of a fun circle back. Yeah.

Now I've got to look up Palago. Steven, what's going on with transfers to Virgin are points getting stuck in transit lately would you advise holding off on transfers to Virgin do we know anything about that I've not heard of any issues with transfers to Virgin and there's two

transfer bonuses at the moment to them or there had been like are they still going until the end of this month I can't remember if they ended at At least one of them is done. And I haven't heard anything about delays myself. And so I don't know if that's just a one-off kind of issue or if it's just been in the last 24 hours or something like that. But normally I certainly wouldn't have any issues with transferring to Virgin. But perhaps there's

something out there that this person's encountered but i haven't have you guys heard anything no once before i had trouble when i i transferred to virgin and then i tried to transfer again shortly thereafter and the second transfer got locked up that was with amx so i've had that happen before but i haven't heard any data points about this no oh i mean i guess the other thing is because there's like virgin red and there's virgin atlantic i guess it depends on if you're trying to like is there actually a difference when you're transferring from one to the other so a transfer part in a way they transfer to virgin red if you put in your virgin at to transfer and obviously that class is different or is it still exactly the same just because otherwise that's the only other potential issue i can think of yeah i don't know uh alternate question this person wants to know

how much has pepper peppered pepper and does he still plan to pepper pepper until it's no longer spicy uh i'm assuming that's the pepper. I'm guessing they're talking about the pepper rewards app that sells. Yeah. I probably should be doing a little bit more pepper than I have been. All right. Nick. It's spicy enough.

Can you speak on the Capital One VentureX business priority pass rumors? My newly issued card is a visa and I've read on other blogs that the visas won't have restaurant access. Is this true? I've read the same. And I assume that it's true based on the reports I've seen on other sites. So I don't. Tim, do you? Go ahead.

Looks like you got something there. Well, no, I've seen on other sites. So I don't, Tim, do you go ahead? It looks like you got something there. Well, no, I, I, I've, I've seen it on one site. Have you seen it? Have you seen multiple, like, I mean, I still have like, so to back up, here's my, um, uh, my question about this whole thing. I've seen reported, I've seen one data point that's now been shared on three different sites, but it's actually the same data point. Same data point. And I've been to multiple, because I have in my, I should say my family, I don't have, I have a VentureX.

My wife has a business VentureX. And I've been to multiple places where they have at the front, you know, like the restaurants where they have at the front thing that says capital one cards don't work here because they're used to the venture X. And then when we give them the priority pass from the business X, even though they swear up and down, it's not going to work. It actually does work for them. So what I'm unclear about, and I'm not saying it's wrong at all, but it seems like there was one guy who effectively said my VentureX, BusinessX priority pass didn't work. And I'm curious, and that's what my question is. Have we seen multiple data points on this? Or is it just the one person who said my Venture business venture x business priority pass didn't work

well it was i just need to reach out to capital one and ask for what's the actual see if we can get but i mean but when we say multiple i guess that's what i'm wondering is it still has anybody seen more than one data point because that's i haven't no the person that reported it wasn't a matter of the restaurant not taking it it was a matter of capital one when they called telling them that it didn't come with restaurant access but uh at least that's what i saw reported anyway but but you're right greg well let's follow up and get a definitive answer on the blog within the next day or two and if it's just a rep telling them that it makes me wonder if they've heard about yeah could be personal venture x and that's what they're confused about,

and they don't realize that there's been the differentiation between the two of them, maybe. All right. This one is for you, Tim. FHR points question, please. My Platinum AU is getting a points cost 33% higher than I get for the same day. Ideas on the reason?

No. Okay. three percent higher than I get for the same day ideas on the reason no okay no I mean honestly I've never normally I've never seen any um I mean I I guess I I'm I'm I guess I'm a little unclear about the question in terms of are they searching the F terms of how they're searching the FHR site. If they're searching it, I guess I'm unclear about how that relates to FHR in terms of what they mean by the platinum AU. I think I understand. So if you've got a platinum card and you want to book an FHR property with points, then you get one cent per point. But if you're not a platinum card holder, then if you, well, you wouldn't be able to book an FHR. Yeah, you would be able to book an MXR. Right. But I'm wondering if they got taken to Amex Travel overall and they're just hotels.

Oh, that's good. Yeah. Maybe are costing more, which would make sense that the AU doesn't have a platinum card of their own would see a worse point value for hotels. But yeah, they shouldn't be able to see fine hotels and resorts stays. Well, OK. No, no, no. Well, if it's a platinum AU, they would still have access to book FHR probably. Right. But they probably couldn't use their own points at one cent per point.

You know what I'm saying? Like if you're a platinum AU that has a full platinum, so you get Centurion Lounge access. And so somebody who's like paid for the AU, is that person not able to book an FHR? No idea. I would assume they are. That's a good point, Nick. Maybe you can. Yeah, maybe you can book it, but it uses your points instead of the primary's points in that situation. If you have it in your login, because you can put the AU card in your own login. That could be it. This doesn't ask us anything that's producing just as many questions as we're asking.

I bet at least 8% of the points that, though, that was unsaid is that at best you're getting one cent per point, which we don't usually like to spend our points for that low of value. So that's just something to think about. then um then i mean obviously it's fine but um there are other ways of getting uh better value from from your points than than spending them at one cent per point all right i think we're at greg um what are the most rewarding ways to get 529 gift of college gift cards? Is that a typo or is that a thing? That's right. That's correct. So gift of college gift cards can be used to fund 529 college savings accounts or can be used to pay for college loans.

And the best deal is usually when you can find them in a place where your credit card, well, that takes credit cards for buying them, that sells $500 versions of them so that the $595 fee or whatever it is, is not a huge percentage of the overall cost um and where your credit card will get a multiple so good example is um some gas station chains uh what is it uh from berlin farms okay um you know so if you had like the windham earner business card that gets 8x at gas stations for example that's probably the single best deal out there but of course um there's other cards that bonus gas stations not as much and you could use those um yeah i know in texas there's some grocery chains that that carry these cards and so you could use a card that um earns a good multiple

on uh at grocery stores like the um uh city premiere or the city strata strata premiere coming soon or uh i don't know the what the amex gold uh would be another good one with forex all right this is an everyone uh question and we're gonna to start with Nick. I'm shuffling my order here and my questions for those reading along. Name your six must-hit destinations if you were booking an ABA around-the-world trip. I'm going to guess that they meant ANA. ANA, maybe. Probably what they meant. But if you were going to book an ABA, what would you do?

I don't know. Because I would need to find out what ABA is. Like an ABBA tour. Well, that'd be two B's though. Right. That would be like the most impossible challenge ever. I mean,

if it's going to be ABBA, I got to see him in Stockholm probably. Right. So, but, but no, so six must hit destinations that are booking in any round the world flight. Well, the, so the issue I actually, I just spent a bunch of time in the last couple of days trying

to see if I could put one of these together because I needed to get back from a trip. And I thought that this might be a better use of miles. So I spent a bunch of time looking, but I think the biggest issue for me is that you want to avoid the Lufthansa group carriers because the high surcharges. So that limits and really just trying to avoid the carriers that have high surcharges limits where you can put one of these together too. So if I were going to do six must hits, wow, I don't know. Oh, I mean, Japan. I like Japan. And if you're going to do an A&A around the world, you don't have to fly A&A to get to Japan. You can fly United to get to Japan.

You can fly Asiana to get to Japan. So I think Japan would have to be one of my must-hit destinations. I don't know if I can come up with five more must-hits. I mean, Thailand, because you can fly Thai Airways there from Japan. And then from there, Tim would take it. Yeah, let's do two each. Tim, which two are you contributing? and then from there, Tim would take it. Yeah, let's do two each. Tim, which two are you contributing?

So from Thailand, I'm going to go to Singapore and then go from Singapore to South Africa. Oh, that's good because you can backtrack a little bit within a region. So going back to Singapore would be fine on an ANA around the world, we've learned. And Singapore Airlines, of course, has a route to go to South Africa. I don't know if South African Airways does or not.

Good luck finding Singapore Airlines business class availability, though, that's available to ANA. That's not going to happen is the problem. Hey. Stephen, where would you take us? Come on. From South Africa, I'd go to Rwanda. Go where? Rwanda. Go where?

Rwanda. Oh. Just because we went there probably about 15 years ago now and absolutely loved it there and I would happily go back. And then after that, I guess, given the direction we're traveling, it would make sense to go up to europe and so i will go to prague all right so but but steven you're like a little unrealistic on me there let's see does so yeah there's no star alliance carrier that travels to kigali from

to rwanda from from johannesburg so i guess maybe you can do etopian. I bet you could do Ethiopian. I was fact-checking you over here with Flight Connections. I use flightconnections.com to figure out who flies where. That's why I was like, let me see. Is there a Star Alliance carrier? Of course, Ethiopian. If that did happen, I would just cancel Tim's legs and just send myself to the person.

Greg, what would you change about the itinerary the rest um well i would probably uh from africa fly up to istanbul and maybe from there i bet you could i bet you could hit some greek isles and and uh hop around there a little, depending on the time of year. So that would be my next two. That's a good pick because Turkish has moderate surcharges. So you're going to pay some surcharge there, but it's not going to be super duper high.

So you can at least get to Athens and then you can fly Aegean to get somewhere else in the Greek Isles. So look at you. 2025 annual challenge should be everybody has to do an a and a around the world trip and nick is the judge oh that's pretty good i want to do another one it worth it to move a hundred thousand out of fidelity to merrill to get platinum honors did fm team be any inconvenience on maintaining 100k in merrill

uh so okay so for somebody who's not familiar the reason that we're talking about this here is because if you have a hundred thousand in cash or investments with bank of america or merrill lynch or merrill edge they're uh no fee self-directed brokerage then you get platinum honor status with bank of america which means you get a 75 bonus on credit card rewards on the like bank of america branded cards none of the co-brands like al, but on the Bank of America premium rewards, for instance. So it becomes 2.625% cash back everywhere, like three and a half dining or whatever. You add 75% onto the rewards. So is it worth moving the money from Fidelity to Merrill? Yeah, definitely. Are you getting any benefit by keeping it at Fidelity? I guess I would say definitely if you've got investments that you can easily move. If your investments are in ETFs,

for instance, that you get at any brokerage, then why not move them over to Bank of America, to Merrill Edge, that is to say, and keep them there so that you can get the 75% bonus on the credit card rewards because Fidelity is not giving you anything like that, I don't think, for having the money there. So you might as well in that case, in terms of, has there been any inconvenience in maintaining the money? Again, not for me because I'm investing my money almost entirely in ETFs and like Vanguard ETFs. So it doesn't really matter to me where I hold the Vanguard ETFs. They can be anywhere. And that's why actually I just moved mine away from Merrill and I moved them to Robinhood to take advantage of the 3% match they were doing through the end of April, where they would match 3% of your entire balance with a contribution to

your IRAs if you moved your IRAs over. So that's what I just did. So now I just moved it away, although I still have platinum honors for however long that lasts. I think it takes a long time before they take it away. So I assume that I'll continue to get the 75% bonus for a while anyway. But yeah, I think it's worth it. Anybody have a differing opinion? No, I totally agree. I'd say the one inconvenience is the only point of doing it is because you're going to want Bank of America credit cards that earn those big multiples. And Bank of America's user interface for handling their credit cards is awful. And so if you want to set up like auto pay or anything, it's very confusing.

So that's an inconvenience. Oh, and I should caveat, I guess, I'm not a day trader. I'm not like buying and selling stuff all the time. So I can't speak to the interface for that. I'm buying just the same three things buying and selling stuff all the time. So I can't speak to the interface for that. I'm buying, you know, just the same three things basically essentially all the time and just buying more of them in my investment accounts. So I'm not, you know, I'm not doing a lot of funny, I'm not buying options and, and stuff like that. So I can't speak to the interface in terms of that stuff. All right. Um, last question, which is probably just going to be a quick yes or no is my guess. Tim. Hi, I was recently informed by an Air France representative that it's permissible to forego the first leg of a reward ticket and still utilize the second leg.

Can you confirm this? I cannot. Let's elaborate. Do you have a guess? No. That's shocking to me, honestly, that an Air France representative would say that. I've never heard of a single, and maybe somebody can correct me and they found, but normally, unless you've made a change to that leg. Now, what I could see happening is the Air France rep says, yes, I can rebook you onto a different ticket that does not have this leg on it. But as far as I know, most programs, if not all programs, if you have a two-leg ticket or multi-leg ticket booked and you don't show up for your first leg, they're going to cancel the whole itinerary. That's true. There are a couple of countries now that have laws on the books that you don't have to show up for the first leg. Italy is one of them. I have not tried that, but by the letter of the law, by Italian law, if you don't show up for that

first leg from Italy and you just showed up in Paris, they can't cancel it on you. Now, arguing that out with a representative at the airport, good luck. I think that you may have a court case if you want to go to an Italian court, but I haven't tried to push that. I read about it when it happened because it was kind of a big deal. I think there might be another country in Europe that has a law about that also where you legally can skip the first leg without getting the rest of the ticket canceled.

But again, like I said, good luck in practice actually doing that. I wouldn't show up at the airport without a backup plan. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, that brings us to the end of our hour. Is there anything else we want to wrap up?

Greg, we'll have a post coming out soon, kind of summarizing all the stuff we sort of excitedly bantered about with our challenge at the beginning. And so you'll want to review that and we'll have more information coming we want to hear your questions and tips and now now i'm curious to hear your tips for uh how we should value uh value their trips uh because i saw some interesting suggestions in the um feed there uh any other comments from the rest of y'all before we go? Just make sure that you're going to be here at the next Ask Us

Anything, because that's where the guys are going to be finding out where they're going to be going to for their first destination. So that'll be one that you don't want to miss, because they'll find that out, and then they're going to get booking straight away. And more details coming in the blog, what, tonight, right, Craig? Tonight, yeah, really soon.

It'll be coming out. And I did want to say, again, if you haven't already given us a thumbs up, please do. At the beginning of this show, I posted a poll to YouTube and asked, what was your favorite past Frequent Miler challenge? 113 people voted, which I really appreciate. And Three Cards, Three Continents was the winner by far with 56% of the vote. Next was Party of Five with 22%, 40K to 40, 20%, and Passing with a Guck, which I imagine some voters probably had no idea even what that was, but only got two percent. They like the name.

It was a gucky name I liked that three card streak on this challenge quite a bit too that was a good pick that was a good pick 97 points yes one last suggestion for everybody if you do want to

get notifications about those live check-ins that we'll be doing throughout the challenge make sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel, but then you'll get a notification when we go live with those kind of irregularly scheduled, uh, mid challenge check-ins. And it's all going to be the beginning of June. So June 3rd is when it all kind of kicks off. So you're gonna have to keep your eye on this in the beginning of June, that first, you know, week and a half or so of June. Yep. All right. Cool. Peace out, everybody.