Frequent Miler on the Air - Awesome award travel (economy to first class), Rakuten rant, best business cards & more | Ep50

Episode Date: June 13, 2020

Like, subscribe, & comment! See timestamps for links to content below: Greg & Nick discuss: 1:12 Feedback time: Rakuten Visa rant https://frequentmiler.boardingarea.com/earn-6-cashback-on-rakuten-visa-at-grocery-stores-restaurants-mobile-wallet-purchases/ 8:00 What crazy thing did Citi do this week? 11:52 Economy class to Africa: The best deals are cheaper than flights to Europe https://frequentmiler.boardingarea.com/best-ways-to-get-to-africa-using-miles-economy-class-edition/ 15:09 Premium Economy: Vanished Air France award space https://frequentmiler.boardingarea.com/book-air-france-klm-with-virgin-atlantic-miles/ 21:55 Business Class: ANA's super sweet award chart https://frequentmiler.boardingarea.com/269000-ana-miles-expire-in-5-months-what-to-do/ https://frequentmiler.boardingarea.com/ana-strengths-and-sweet-spots/ https://frequentmiler.boardingarea.com/ana-now-charges-10-of-mileage-for-lap-infants/ 39:43 First class: The world's best, now bookable for next spring https://frequentmiler.boardingarea.com/book-the-worlds-best-first-class-now-fly-next-year/ 48:25 Are you tempted to transfer points to book this stuff? 54:16 Do the best Kimpton hotels in the US excite you? https://frequentmiler.boardingarea.com/best-kimpton-hotels-united-states-canada/ https://frequentmiler.boardingarea.com/kimpton-ihg-platinum-experience-kimpton-muse/ https://frequentmiler.boardingarea.com/grocery-store-diamond-new-emirates-suites-from-new-york-ppp-enhancements-and-more/ (for a link to road trip post) 1:02:33 US Bank releases Altitude Go https://frequentmiler.boardingarea.com/us-bank-launches-altitude-go/ 1:07:41 Question of the Week: Which business cards are "easy" to get right now? https://frequentmiler.boardingarea.com/complete-guide-to-plastiq-credit-card-payments/

Welcome to Frequent Miler on the air. Hey, Nick. Today we're going to do something a little different with our show. Instead of us... Yeah, I'm pretty excited about this. We're changing it up a little bit. Instead of just bringing up three or four random topics, we're going to dive into award sweet spots.

And what we're going to do is we're going to start from the bottom and go up so with the bottom being the back of the class economy class sweet spots move up to premium economy business class and then ultimately first class so that's how we're gonna sort of set up the show all right so we're gonna build up slowly build there's there's some excitement so each each thing there's something a little bit more interesting coming maybe we. Yeah, exactly. So we'll see if that works out the way we're kind of envisioning it. We can help. We don't know at this moment. By the time anyone's listening to it, we will know by then,

and we could go back in time and warn you. It's not going to be as good as we thought. No, all right. So before we jump into that, though, we always have two segments first. We have when we remember them we have the feedback time and then we have the what crazy thing did city do this week so feedback time now i know that you love feedback time i do i love hearing what people have to say and i know you even more love confession time when it's not your own confession.

Everybody loves it. Everybody loves it. So I'm going to do neither of those. Oh, man. Come on. And I'm going to do a little rant. A little rant. Okay.

Well, I mean, that could be fun depending on what the rant's about. Yeah. It's a customer service story. Nobody wants to hear it. No,. It's a customer service story. Nobody wants to hear it. No, it's not a customer service story, really. Although I guess it could tie into one. That's okay. We'll give you a pass.

Here's the thing. So Rakuten Visa. Some of us who have the Rakuten Visa have it set up to earn membership rewards points, and it gets 3x for online purchases that go through the uh racket and portal which is great for those purchases but it hasn't been much use since they stopped giving us 3x for gift card purchases through the portal so it's been collecting dust dust until this month when suddenly i got an email saying 6x on groceries and mobile wallet payments. And you were like, dust that off, 6x on both of those.

That's awesome. Back to the top of the wallet. Right? So I loaded the thing into my Apple Pay for the first time ever and I marched off to CVS and tried to Apple Pay some gift cards and no dice. It was declined. Uh oh. Uh oh.

Yeah. So it was declined right off. I didn't think I had to... Usually when you start with a new credit card, before doing really big purchases, you need to ramp up slowly or else you're likely to get a lot of things declined. Season it a little bit. I didn't think I needed to because, yeah, season it. I didn't think I needed to because it wasn't that long ago I was doing large gift card purchases all the time online. So I thought, and then it's more purchase.

I thought Rakuten had a better memory than they actually do. I thought something I thought Rakuten had a better memory than they actually do. I thought something like that. So I pressed yes. Like, I got a text, you know, is this really yours? Pressed yes. Tried again. Declined again.

Okay, that didn't work. Anyway, I'm going to skip forward, fast forward a bit, because I called Rakuten several times to clear up the fraud holds on my card. Each time they said, you're good to go. It'll definitely work now. And every time it got stopped again, including one time a manager promised me, promised me it was all fixed.

And then I went immediately after that into a Walgreens, tried my Apple pay denied so it looks like well there's at least one person on facebook who seems to have narrowed it down to apple pay itself he was able to get a so i did get some purchases through at a grocery store not through Apple Pay. Just using the card. Just using the card directly. So that's good. Not all of them went through, but at least some did. But none of my Apple Pay purchases, at least of gift cards, have gone through. Did you try anything else?

Did you try it? Yeah, I mean, I've been using it as my everyday apple pay like you know spend 40 bucks at the store or whatever um but uh and those go those do go through but the bigger gift card purchases are not going through and so anyway so uh one person on facebook said he went to meyer tried samsung pay and it worked then he tried Apple Pay and it didn't work. It's not proof because it could be the repeated purchase that was the trigger. But anyway, so my little rant is this.

Get an Android phone. If you're going to give me one of the best deals in the world, make it actually work so that I can abuse it. Clearly, they just didn't want to be abused as much as you wanted to abuse them. That's all. They put up a wall somewhere. They were like, oh, you Apple Pay users, you try to get tricky with your stuff and your mobile wallet

payments. So they took that away from you. Yeah. I mean, if you think about it, like 6X is amazing, phenomenal, but with the amount that I'm spending just day to day especially during quarantine times it's not really going to amount to a big hill of beans it's like a very small hill of beans right very very small can't so you're not a hill yeah a little mound of hill of beans so you have to buy gift cards in order to spread it,

to make that mound of beans. I mean, and they're clearly incentivizing you. They want you to go out there and use it. That seems to be what their goal is. So now the question that I'm sure is on everyone's minds, because regular readers know that you also have a Google Fi phone. So we all know that you have a Motorola phone of some sort that's on Android. Maybe you don't use it every day,

but you've got one, so you could potentially use Google Pay on that. And I don't know if you've gotten rid of your Samsung watch, but if you have that, you still have potentially Samsung Pay there. Have you tried anything else yet? I haven't yet. So that's my plan is to dust off my Samsung watch

and see if I can get the, see if I could, first of all, remember how to use it and load the racketing card in there and see if it works. Yeah. Cause that would be nice because you know, there's only so many purchases I want to make at the grocery store every day. And if I could expand out to the other stores and still get that 6X for the rest of this month, it ends at the end of the month. So here's a tip when you dust off that watch that you haven't used in a long time and you set it up with Samsung pay,

take out your wallet, you start putting your cards in it. Remember where you put your wallet after that. Cause I haven't seen my wallet in like three weeks. I've got my watch. So I've been able to use that to pay for stuff. But luckily I haven't needed my license at all because I have no idea what I had it that day. And I have not seen it since i put my cards so oh that's funny it's well that's

nice that it works literally everywhere that you need it it does it does so i've been okay i mean i mean i have some backup cards too in case that weren't in that wallet of course but uh you know i don't really want to dust off the club car Carlson card when I could be earning much better on groceries right now. So anyway. So anyway, that's my little rant. All right. Best of luck. Best of luck.

Thank you very much. I hope you're able to abuse that much better these next couple of weeks. Thank you. On to what crazy thing did Citi do this week? But not to disappoint you, you city didn't do anything new and crazy this week really they just continued their crazy because they if you've been following along they announced that they started offering the three acts at grocery stores and i think at restaurants also started as of june 2nd this month and they emailed that to bloggers to their pr

folks on june 4, two days afterwards. No idea why they did it two days late and why they started on the 2nd and not the 1st. But what I don't know even more is why they still haven't told cardholders and why they furthermore haven't told the phone agents. Because we had somebody comment on the post this week saying they called Citi and the agent said,

it doesn't start until August 23rd. And I was thinking, except it already started. But of course, yet again, phone agents prove that they often don't have the latest information and don't know what's going on. And Citi, why did you email the PR? We said this last week. We said, why did they bother with the PR people

and not email the cardholders? You couldn't email your phone reps? I mean, couldn't email them and let them know? You would think you want people to know that they're earning a bonus on groceries right now, that they could take that card out of their wallet if they wanted to. But so cities continued that craziness. They probably told all their phone reps, you need to be reading Frequent Miler. And those phone reps that just haven't been reading. Haven't apparently. Enough, right? Right, enough. They missed it on the 4th and didn't been reading. Haven't apparently. Enough, right? Right, enough.

They missed it on the 4th and didn't see Weekend Review or something. So they apparently are out of the loop. So just a fair warning, if you're going to call a city and ask their reps about something, keep in mind that they may be out of the loop and they should probably read Frequent Miler. You might want to suggest it to them. Maybe that word will get around. Maybe they'll toss it in the Slack conversation or something in the office and let everybody know hey read frequent miler that's a good idea yeah uh so you know one of us should probably you know dust off a premiere card and actually use it at a grocery store or restaurant just so we

just for one little purchase just so we could see the little 3X on the online statement and can kind of prove it. Well, that was one that was in my wallet that I put in my watch. So I do have it on my wrist these days, at least, even when I find the physical card. But one of these days, I will. I guess that's the nice thing about quarantine. I don't really need to worry about it because I don't really have to go anywhere and I didn't go anywhere. So I know it's here at home somewhere. I just can't imagine what happens.

So anyway, all that, your son's playing with it. I mean, it wouldn't totally surprise me. You know, the scary thing is that, so we,

we stayed at a hotel last year and well, we stayed at a lot of hotels last year, right? And one of the things we learned traveling with him, once he got able to walk around and pick things up, we learned when we went to check out one day and there was a long distance phone call on our bill, we learned that we should unplug the phone when we get into the hotel room. So these days, that's the first before unplugging it from the wall, we unplugged the handset, you know, like the part you hold up to your ear from the phone itself.

And we went to check out and we could not find that anywhere. He must have thrown it in the garbage and it must have gotten taken out because it was not in that room. We tore the room apart and we couldn't find it anywhere. So he clearly must have thrown that one out. And so I, who knows, maybe my wallet went to the, went to the dump recently. Yeah. Did you fess up to the hotel or did you just like be like, all right, let's, let's run

out of here quickly. I mean, I figured they'd bill me for it if it mattered. Figured they'd bill me for it. They didn't. So I figured, you know, they figured it out. They found another receiver somewhere. Oh, good. Good. All right. So, so all that said, now that, now that confession time is over, thanks for that. Let's talk a little bit about some of the stuff that we, we kind of unearthed

this week or wrote about this week. We said, we're going to start an economy class at the back of the plane and work our way forward. So this week I wrote a post about flying economy class to Africa, which I don't know, does that sound appealing to you, Craig? Well, I've done that. Been there, done it. So, you know, just last year, I'm done. Just last year. Yeah, that was my 40k to far away destination. And I flew a lot of economy class. And it was almost all Star Alliance so right uh i think that was uh was that relevant to your oh no not entirely but i mean but but well it wasn't it wasn't

probably the key sweet spot in that post i think the key sweet spot in the post though was actually flying air france specifically in economy class air, France or KLM, because man, Virgin Atlantic has some great prices. You know, I don't get super excited about redeeming my miles for long haul economy class. But on the flip side, some people are traveling with a family, you need four or five seats, and you can probably get that in economy class. And you probably won't get that very easily in business or first class. And really, you know, if you're looking at some of those like Central African nations that I think can be pretty pricey to fly to if you're paying the economy class prices from a lot of places, you're looking at like 24,500 from the eastern United States to

Central Africa, using Virgin Atlantic to fly or France or KLM. And they fly to a lot of places in Central Africa. Yeah, that's so cheap. That's only one way though, right? That's one way. That's one way, yeah. 24.5, one way. And that's during off-peak times. During peak times, I think it's 34.5K each way. Okay.

But that's like less than what most programs charge to fly to Europe. And you're flying to Europe and continuing on to Africa like another eight hours or something. Right, yeah, yeah. Because the standard rate, to the extent that there is a standard from US to Europe is like 30K one way in economy, right? That's what most programs charge. Most of them are 30, a couple, maybe 25. And yeah, I mean, there's some outliers, but yeah, 30 is generally the accepted norm. And so 24 and a half to get to Central Africa, 20K to get to Northern Africa, it's 20K. I mean, my goodness, hardly cross the Atlantic at 20K.

Maybe you'll find a deal where you'll get across the Atlantic for 20K. So being able to get, and that's like a deal that you'd have to search and hunt for. Whereas this is 20K all the time. Well, all the time during the off-peak season anyway, which is about half the year anyway, I think.

And this is with Virgin Atlantic miles to fly Air France, right? Air France or KLM. Or KLM, okay. Now, and Virgin Atlantic miles to fly air France, right? Air France or KLM. Or KLM. Okay. Now, uh, and Virgin Atlantic miles are super easy to get.

Super easy. Super easy. Transfer from almost everyone except capital one, I think. Except capital one. Doesn't support them yet. That's right. That's right.

So. Wouldn't be surprised to see that happen someday and capital one joined the party there too. But yeah, super easy. There's often each year we usually see a transfer bonus or two to Virgin Atlantic. I don't know if we've seen anything this year. I don't think we've really seen any transfer bonuses since the whole COVID thing hit, but not uncommon to see 25 or 30% at least once a year. So I mean, if you hit the

transfer bonus too, then that's super cheap to fly. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's nuts. Um, and that post of yours reminded me of how I had written up a post about how to use Virgin Atlantic miles to fly, to book Air France awards. And, uh, in that post, I noted that the premium economy award prices were super cheap between the US and Europe. In off-peak times, East Coast US to Europe, to most of Western and Central Europe, is only like 24K one way. In premium economy. In premium economy. In premium economy. This isn't like the comfort plus type of thing in domestic economy flights. This is an extra recline, usually a foot rest, better meals, all that kind of stuff.

Something that more closely resembles domestic business class. First class. First class, whatever they want to call it. Yeah, exactly. And so that you know, that was pretty sweet. And when I wrote about it back then, it was kind of buried in my bigger post

about how to do this. But what I noted at the time was that premium economy awards at the time were wide open. Every route I looked at, you could get like nine seats, no problem. Unfortunately, they were reading Frequent Miler. They were reading Frequent Miler because I actually started writing up,

after your post, I started writing up this specific sweet spot as a headline, 24K to Europe. And East Coast US, by the way it goes all the way as far west as Chicago so it's it's really quite a lot of the US population can fly for only 24k if you could find Air France premium economy to Europe problem is there is none anymore when I say none I checked i checked like crazy all kinds of things um so i started on virgin atlantic site because i thought it would be easy based on my previous experience that i could pick pretty much any date and just look and i'd find it

didn't find any so then i remembered that seat, which is a tool that we've talked about before. They support Air France awards. So you can see at a glance all the award space for a whole year. And you could pick by cabin as well. So I picked each of the U.S. destinations from Chicago eastward that Air France serves. Looked at it, seats by zero.

Literally zero premium economy awards that whole time. Wow, just zeroed it all out. Got rid of all of it. I don't know what's going on. I don't know. Yeah, I mean, it's possible it's COVID-related in some way, that they just changed things up, and so they're not releasing. And for some reason, that affects their award space in premium economy.

Now, they still have award space in economy, still have it in business class, so I don't understand it. They still fly premium economy. I could still book it through Air France's website, just not with a partner award. So that's one of the best sweet spots that you can't book. But it's a good one to keep your eye on. Sometimes you keep an eye on something like that.

The thing is, eventually, when somebody flips the switch back, there's going to be a ton of award availability. And if you were the one wanting to do it for a while, you're probably going to luck out. Right. I mean, unless it was a mistake that they had released so much. Because it's possible that their partners weren't previously able to book premium economy

so they'd never paid attention to what award space they were releasing and so maybe it was just releasing all of it and maybe that was a bug or just an oversight but now it seems to be a bug or oversight in the other direction which is

I don't know why they wouldn't release some. So what do you think about that? It came up a little bit today talking about some other stuff that we'll discuss here in a little bit. Do you think that award availability is going to be better or worse in the coming months? I mean, there are a lot of situations where we've seen airlines historically release like one seat or historically release two seats

or maybe they used to release four and now they release two. Do you think that we're going to frequently see more award availability far in advance when travel picks up here? Or do you think it's just totally going to be unpredictable? Yeah. I think with some airlines we will, because I think they're going to be, you know,

eager to fill up their planes again. And,'s one of the ways they can do it. But yeah, I mean, I don't think that'll be uniform across the airlines or the routes, right? I think it'll be certain routes that they're going to say, well, in order to keep those gates, we have to fly so many times. So let's make sure that our planes are flying full and open up a lot of war space. I think we will see that. That's my guess. Yeah. Interesting. So, so worth keeping your eye on that particular sweet spot. Virgin Atlantic, you know, interesting because they have all of these different partners and they don't

belong to an Alliance. So sometimes I forget about the partners that they have. In fact, just today I was looking at their site because a question about lap infants came up and somebody mentioned using rather Virgin Atlantic miles and booking a lap infant that way. And I was like, oh, that's right. Yeah, you can use miles on them. And they used to have different prices, I through all their different partners, looks like their pricing is now standardized. 1K each way in economy, 5K each way in business class, 7K each way in first class. And there was only one partner in Virgin Australia that had premium economy listed. And that was 2K. Air France KLM had no pricing for lap infants at all in Virgin Atlantic. And they were the only partners, I think, that did not have lap infant pricing, which I found kind of interesting. But at any rate, it made me look at it and I was like, oh, that's right.

They're partners with Air China and they're partners with South African Airways and they're partners with so many different random airlines, Air New Zealand, different alliances, different parts of the world. So there's always some interest. But the other weird thing is how inconsistent the word pricing is.

Well, that's true. You know, you look at some of them and it's spectacular pricing and others, it's spectacularly bad and it just doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to it. No, it is. It's kind of all over the map. It's true. And some of their partners like Air New Zealand, for instance, rarely ever releases business class award availability. So if you're looking to fly up front, you're not going to probably be able to use any kind of miles on that particular airline. But yeah, anyway, always worth keeping an eye on them

and seeing what else pops up, what else sprouts up over time. All right, so that was economy and premium economy. Yeah, so now business class. We've written a few posts about business class awards. At the beginning of the week, I wrote about my struggles with having a bunch of ANA miles that are going to expire

and what I'm going to do with them. And most of the solutions, I think all the solutions I suggested involve booking business class awards because ANA has such good business class award pricing. They sure do. They sure do.

They have, I think, the best business class award pricing across They sure do. They sure do. They have, I think, the best business class award pricing across the board of any program. I mean, other programs might have a sweet spot here or there. But I think if you were to look at one airline program in terms of their pricing, it's got to be the best, right? I think the most expensive business class award is a Star Alliance award that's 136k round trip. And Australia for a Star Alliance Award that's 136k roundtrip. And Australia for a Star Alliance Business Class Award is only 120,000 roundtrip, which... So what's further away than Australia? Yeah, that's the crazy thing. It's not necessarily farther away. It's Asia too, as a Star Alliance Award is 136k. But Asia too for them is not only the traditional Southeast Asia,

but it's also like all of India and Nepal and Pakistan and like all of the various places in that central part of Asia. So it's really kind of more Central Asia, Maldives, et cetera, and Eastern, you know, Far Eastern Asia. So that one's 136K for Star Alliance partners. today I wrote about ANA even more because Steven Pepper was doing a post yesterday because we found out this week ANA has dropped their fuel surcharges on most of their own flights not all of them but the vast majority of their own flights they've dropped it to one dollar per leg each way so I mean that's that's terrific because ANA's already got amazing business class pricing when you take out the fuel surcharges hello hello, it's fantastic. And so Steven had emailed me because he saw this award pricing Australia for 105,000 miles round trip. And he's like, I thought it was 120. And I said, Oh, that's right. When I wrote

the post about it, I was just thinking about the Star Alliance pricing. I slipped my mind that ANA charges a different rate for flights on their own metal metal and it's seasonal. So it depends on the time of year you want to go. And it just so happens that like basically the heart of the Australian summer is low season for whatever reason, the time of year when I would definitely want to go to Australia is low season. And so it's 105,000 miles round trip. And now since there's no fuel surcharges, it's 150 ish bucks bucks in tax or you can add a stopover in japan also for like another 10 basically 160 bucks i mean 105k round trip with no fuel surcharges to australia and the ability to do a stopover hello so you yeah right so so from the u.s this is from

the u.s round trip business class anaA which is no slouch you really enjoyed your I love ANA not everybody loves it as much as I do but I love them and the new business class if you can get it which oh man that looks spectacular that looks terrific yeah I think they're only flying it out of New York so far from the US

I'm not positive on that I think that's right I'm pretty sure it's just out of New York and I think it's both the flights to Narita and Haneda out of New York now. Originally, it was only one or the other, but I think it's both now. So if you can get that great, hard to find award space, at least I had a hard time looking at it last night. If you find award space, it's typically just for one person, it seems right now. But at any rate, you can get two people out of a number of the other cities. And I like the old ANA business class product, old, before the new one. So, yeah, I mean, it's terrific.

I think that's a great price. And that's not the only one. I mean, 75K round trip, low season to go to Japan, which includes most of the month of April or all of the month of April, I think, which is like cherry blossom time. Again, another time you would want to go to Japan. How is that low season? I don't get it, but who am I? So 75,000 miles round trip and like 55 bucks in tax now. So-

And their seasonality, is that fixed across all routes? As far as their definitions of low and high? No, it's route specific. Well, it's region specific. So they have seasonality between Japan and Europe and North America and Hawaii, and maybe like Russia three or something like that. They have one set of,

of, of low, low, regular and high season. And then it's different for Japan to Australia. There's a lot of overlap. So it's generally similar, but like,

for example, April 1st, April 23rd, this year would have been low season to both Japan and Australia. But to Australia also, I think it was something like May 11th to June something or other was also low season, whereas that wasn't low season to Japan from the United States. So, you know, there's some things to navigate.

But bottom line is the pricing is good. It's worth looking at their site, seeing it. You're stuck with 269,000 miles. And I say, that's just some of the great is good. It's worth looking at their site, seeing it. You're stuck with 269,000 miles. And I say, that's just some of the great regular pricing. We didn't even mention 88K round trip business class to Europe. Now, fuel surcharges are really high on Lufthansa-owned airlines. So I don't want to fly any of them. But I mean, there's so many good sweet spots. I mean, you can fly a lot Polish, you can fly United to get to Europe. You can fly, let's see,

what is it? SAS, I think was probably moderate fuel surcharges, Turkish kind of moderate fuel surcharges and kind of high side. So you got a lot of options anyway, a number of good options, tap air, Portugal,

no fuel surcharges to get to Europe. What are you doing stuck with 260? Well, wait a minute. Don't, don't forget the 104 K round trip business class to South Africa. Right? Well, wait a minute. Don't forget the 104K round-trip business class to South Africa. Right.

Well, and again, no first-year charges on Ethiopian. 55, 65 bucks. That's something I really appreciated in your post this morning because when I was researching my post about what am I going to do with those miles, I looked at South Africa. I knew that if I fly to South Africa on Star Alliance,

it's likely to involve Ethiopian. And I could not find information. Google did not help me find any information. About the fuel surcharges. Fuel surcharges are passed along from Ethiopian. So I love that you put that there because that theoretically could be what I do is I just book it.

So one of the nice things about ANA, I'm not sure if you put this in there, is that the date changes are free. Didn't and I should have, yeah. Yeah, you're right, I'm going to have to update. No, you can't change the route though. I mean, if you want to change the route, I think you have to,

now it doesn't cost much to cancel. It's like 3,000 miles per person, but I think you have to basically pay to cancel and re-buck if you want to change anything, including just, you know, which carriers

or just what route you go to get there, things like that. Date and time are free, but everything else. If all you're doing is changing the date and time. So if I had a route that I liked enough and was pretty confident it would reappear, I could book it now or whenever and then just change it as time goes on to a time that's actually more convenient to me. And I think, you know, knowing at least historically Ethiopians pretty,

uh, uh, they're pretty, uh, um, I can't think of the word generous with their word space, uh, that, you know, that would be a good pick because I'd be kind of locked into that carrier. So, um, so yeah, so that makes it a very legitimate option for me. Yeah. So I, it was actually $67 round trip in tax on Ethiopian. I looked that up flying just to Ethiopia, but then I think it was $69 in tax added a little bit if you continued on to South Africa from there. So you're looking to get to South Africa, good way to do it.

Remember, you can do a stopover on a round trip. You have to book round trip with ANA, and you can do a stopover. You can do one stopover and one open jaw. So you could stop in Ethiopia on the way to South Africa. You could theoretically, if South African Airways sticks around, you could theoretically do a stopover perhaps in Johannesburg or Cape Town and continue on to the other if you want to see both places. Right. Or at least do an open jaw between the two. Sure. Yeah. So a lot of good options there. And again, 104K round trip. I mean, that's pretty terrific. We mentioned economy class earlier, and they're another good sweet spot for economy there too. 65K round trip to Africa,

also quite good with ANA miles. But at any rate, so yeah, I mean, there's some terrific options there. And then there's the round the world chart. And so I kind of put one together that I put in the post that I published on Thursday here. And so I put one together that I think it started in Chicago, flying to Tokyo, Sydney, Singapore, Delhi, Warsaw, Copenhagen, to Boston, like stopping in all of those places be like 145 K total, you know? Yeah. Yeah. So, so how are you stuck with these miles? I mean, are you, are you going to use them now? Or, uh, you know, are you, are you worried about it? Here's my situation, Greg, I am thinking very seriously about making a speculative transfer to ANA. And I look at you and I'm like, you're in this position where you're sitting on 269,000 that are about to expire. And you're like, I don't know if I can, am I crazy?

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Why would you make a speculative transfer? I mean, I know it takes a few days to, for the miles to post. But that's mostly why. Why wouldn't you wait until you know what you're trying to buck before you, before you move it? Well, mostly why is because, yeah, if I'm able, so here's my situation. I need three seats now because I have a son who's over two, and we're expecting another child in September. So I'm going to be traveling with a lap infant then theoretically also.

And so I'm going to need three seats. And finding three seats in business class right now seems to be very challenging on ANA, whereas in the past that was actually pretty doable, I think. Nowadays, I'm seeing one or two seats. So there's part of me that says, man, if I see a day with three seats, I want to be able to scoop that up right away. But it takes a couple of days to transfer the miles over. So I can't scoop it up right away if I see three seats. So there's part of me that's very tempted to transfer, thinking that, you know what, even if a trip to Japan or Australia doesn't work out,

88K round trip to Europe can work out one way or another, probably take a trip to Europe at some point in the next three years. And today, I also wrote a post because now we found out that they've changed the way they're charging for lap infants. Whereas last year, I paid 10% of the adult revenue fare for a lap infant. Now ANA is charging 10% of the revenue fare for a lap infant. Now ANA is charging 10% of the mileage fare for a lap infant. So we're talking 7,500 miles round trip. If you're doing that 75 K business class to Japan or 10,400 miles to Africa, or, you know, a hundred or 12,000 miles on star Alliance, if you're flying to Australia, I mean, those are terrific lap infant fees. So there's part of me that says,

man, I'm going to find a way to fly Star Alliance in the next three years, like my next vacation. With that being the lap infant fee, a high chance it's going to be on Star Alliance. So am I crazy to think about speculatively transferring over so I can snap up that award space when I see it? You know, you might not be crazy, but you're missing out on an opportunity for me to basically loan you those miles.

So, you know, in my post, I talked about how my friend Dave wanted to do that. But we got caught up in the fact that ANA requires you can only book relatives. And so I wrote that we didn't do it because of that. But several people commented that they did something similar and ANA never checks your relativeness. So if you want to become my cousin or whatever is allowed there. Your brother-in-law. Brother-in-law. You know, we can make it work. Well, I mean, maybe possibly that's the way to do it then. But yeah, I mean,

I've definitely thought about it. And so, I mean, if you're in a situation like that, great. Okay. So that would work out. I'd obviously rather do that than transfer over and sit with the Miles in case I don't end up using them. But I feel like ANA seems like a really easy to use opportunity. I'm surprised that you haven't found an opportunity to use them yet. Yeah. I mean, I think it's, I think it's mostly because of two things. One is being based in Detroit and, and always I'm strongly prefer non-stops over stops especially when flying with my family I don't mind as much when I'm traveling

alone but usually travel with my family or at least my wife and you know Lufthansa is the only non-stop Star Alliance flight we have and that's going to be huge huge fuel start charges. So

then it's also complicated by the fact that my wife and I have Delta Diamond status. She often has her airfare, her economy airfare paid for. So we book Delta economy and use upgrade certificates to fly in business class. So, you know, all those things lead to the fact that it's not that often that ANA would work for us at all. And then complicating it is the round trip requirement. So even the one time I used the miles, the reason I got them, I didn't even use it for a round trip at that time. I did this trick where you fly U.S. to Japan and then return to Hawaii in economy because Tokyo to Hawaii is much cheaper than Tokyo

all the way back to the continental U.S. And so that made a sort of slightly more than one way price, but much less than the regular round trip price to, to book a one way. And so I don't know that there's that many other routes where you can do that kind of trick. There might be. I'm not sure.

Yeah. That, that, that did cross my, my, my plate, so to speak last night as I was looking at pricing, But yeah, I don't know if there are other places. I didn't look hard for other places where you might be able to advantageously find a way to do that. might disappear at any time but the other hand is like what I hate is is how I mean if you know exactly how much you're likely to spend I guess I guess

you probably do then you could transfer over that much but what I hate is the idea of even if you do use most of your miles there's gonna be some residual ones that are likely to expire in three years and look yeah well i don't know maybe not because maybe you keep booking more awards so you keep transferring more miles in i don't know but um well maybe yeah it's hard to predict you you certainly wouldn't know so you're definitely running that risk because my thought is i would probably move over enough to fly to australia in case that's what we ended up wanting to do with the backup that 88k a person to Europe will work out if not. So that would theoretically, yes, leave me with

orphaned miles. So that's a good point. And definitely different situation for me in the sense that I tend to fly out of New York City. So I am not really so much captive to any particular alliance since I can basically fly anything out of New York. But I will say a tip that I'll give you, and you'll have a couple of days head start before we publish this on everybody else, is that I did see quite a few dates out of Chicago next April with first class availability on ANA. Now, if you want to fly ANA first class, you want to do it with Virgin Atlantic miles because that's much cheaper than using ANA points. ANA is great for business class, pretty darn good if you want to fly economy class, pretty darn good for economy class, but phenomenal for business. Their pricing for first class kind of stinks though. It isn't very

good. It certainly isn't good compared to what Virgin Atlantic will charge you for the same flights from the United States. So you'd want to book those with Virgin Atlantic. I did not look for the return from Tokyo to Chicago, so I'm not positive that their returns were all there, but I was surprised to find a number of dates with two seats. Cause I could only find one seat in first class out of all the other hubs that I tried. So that's interesting. Cause I, I just found, uh, yesterday two out of New York to Tokyo first class round trip in May, in May. I was looking New York. And I was looking at my post. You had to look at my post. It was in your post.

I mean, it has... What? Did I miss it? It was in the post? Well, not the post that I've published yet. The one that I have saved. I see. I see.

Well, I guess I've missed that. You could go behind the scenes. I'll have to go behind the scenes and see if I can get a head start on that one. So anyway, I don't know if I'm going to go to Japan next year, though. So I guess I shouldn't get too excited yet. But I'll take a look. So alright, so those were there were definitely some good sweet spots to be found. I feel like ANA is a program that people are not looking at enough. I talked about that. This all kind of sprouted this week with ANA from the fact that ANA dropped the fuel surcharges, which we found out from Spencer,

straight to the points, he had me on for an Instagram chat on Monday, and he mentioned it kind of casually during the chat. And I was like, Oh, wow, that's pretty awesome. And then he kind of let that that be known on his social media. So we went ahead and published it after he shared it with people. And, and then that kind of led to taking a more serious look at ANA. So some exciting options there. But I was saying on his Instagram live, the reason that we kind of got to that in the first place is I feel like ANA is a program that flies under the radar with all these great prices. You have to book round trip. And that's the big pain for me. It's always been the pain point. But now I'm looking at more and more round

trip travel. So I think it's kind of interesting. But all of that aside, it's really fun to fly in the pointy end of the plane. And it is. It is. So, yes. So by the time anyone sees or listens to this, I will have published the second version of my post, which is the best international first class awards. And what I did. And so basically, I created the first version of this post several months ago. So in March it was released. And the idea was I took one mile at a time.

I took Lucky's list of the top first class products in the world. And I said, all right, I went through them. I said, which ones can you reasonably book with miles? Like where you don't have to be flying that particular carrier and earning that weird kind of miles, but you can transfer some from some program or some other reasonable way to get the miles and, and actually book first class. And so that whittled it down to about, I think maybe eight or nine carriers. And, and then I looked for, back then I looked for, was there award space in January and February to fly first class on these incredible products?

And when I say incredible, I'm talking about these are sweets in the sky. These are like, not all of them, but a lot of them, several of them are, you know, you have enclosed walls, you have not only a bed, but more space and a big recliner, all that kind of stuff. And a champagne caviar. If you've never done this, okay? I mean, if you've just heard about it a little bit, you've never actually done it. I mean, it's the real deal.

Flying that kind of style, it is as much fun as you might imagine it to be. Probably more fun, right? It's incredible right so um anyway so back then what i found was that um a lot of the carriers it was possible to find award space usually just for one person but uh but i did find that eddie had eddie had first apartments was pretty wide open in the winter for two adults, which is an incredible thing to see because that is an amazing, amazing product, as we've talked about before. So now what I did is I updated. I said, all right, let's look not at winter this time, but at spring travel. Let's look at mid-April to early May. What are we seeing? And one of the things I found, Etihad's still there, but there's a deadline. This was really surprising to me. April 27th, they're no longer allowing two adults.

That's so strange. Before April 27th, there's plenty of award space for two. Something happens April 27th. I don't know what, but I didn't see any anymore. Are they planning on going bankrupt that day or something? I don't know. Obviously, it could change at any time, but that's what I'm seeing right now. Interesting. So there's that.

Last time I looked, I struggled to find even one Singapore Suites award anywhere. This time I was really surprised to find tons of award space between London and Singapore. There was also a good amount between Sydney and Singapore. There was also a good amount from between Sydney and Singapore. And even if you wanted to fly, as long as you're okay with the old suites product, London, between London and Singapore, you could fly two people

without too much trouble finding that. You know, on those suites products, when you book two people, they make up, if you want it, they make up the bed want it they make up the bed the two middle suites the wall opened up so that you have a double bed double bed in the sky that's like one of those things that it's like i don't really know why i would need it but but it just seems like so cool to right how many people ever yeah how many people ever get a chance to experience

that i mean it's one of those things you see in a movie, and it doesn't seem realistic. It seems like over the top and crazy, and you've got to be a bajillionaire to ever be able to have that experience. But sure enough, you can get it, and you can get it from London and Singapore. You're saying, how much does that cost? How many miles?

Do you remember? Oh, I don't remember. It's not cheap. You have to book with Singapore miles and Singapore charges, I want to say something in the range of maybe 110,000 one way per person, or maybe as high as 125,000. I can't remember. But it's close to double that if you go to their standard price that they have like saver and standard or something. So you definitely want to try to find that saver, and that's what I was seeing.

So that was good news. I did find, as I said earlier, I found some ANA between New York and Tokyo. Sorry, everybody, it's gone. I booked it yesterday. That's right. And there wasn't a lot of it, but there was some. And there was more if you're looking on ANA's website

than on partner websites because ANA releases more website. They release more award space to their own members. So that's worth paying attention to. And I thought I hit the jackpot with Japan Airlines. So I actually wrote a post about it yesterday where I said, wide open awards between the US and Japan. Every day, two adults. And I was using a.com,

and that's been a reliable source of uh japan airlines award space in the past but um and i even i sort of verified that if i change it to three adults i didn't see that award space so i that kind of looked reasonable to me like gotta be real yeah i should have clicked a couple times in to see what happens if I try to book it because when you did do that, you quickly got an error and it wouldn't let you book it. And so I spent

hours today trying to figure out, is there a word space available or not? And I got a different answer on every website I used. So nobody knows. Qantas said, you know, yeah, there is on these days. British Airways said, not only is there not a word space on those days,

but first class doesn't exist on those days. Cabin's just closed that day. Cabin's closed, guys. Sorry. And Japan Airlines itself had something in between it was like it didn't have show as much award space as qantas did but it showed obviously more than uh british airways which was nothing um right so anyway so less than nothing i ended up you know just giving up and saying all right, we don't know. Did you by chance try and call American Airlines on any of that?

Not that I advised calling. No, but one thing I did do is I know there's some award space because you know how I said you get an error if you click through? Well, if I found the award space on Japan Airlines' website and then went to American, plugged in that exact same date um then i could click through and it would let me book it so i do know there's some it's just it's very very hard to figure out how much is there because yes you could see how much japan airlines releases to their own customers but i don't know that that's the same always the same

as what's available to booking with american airlines and and we also know there's a weird thing going on with Alaska where they're not allowing bookings of first-class, uh, far in advance or something. They're just not, they're not seeing the availability. It seems as far in advance as they,

they previously had. Now it's only like 306 days or something like that. Yeah. 30 or whatever it was before. So, so there's been a difference. No must coach for that one. Yeah.

What about that? Yeah. So, so yeah, I mean, there's some weird stuff going on with JL award one. Yeah. What about that? Yeah. So, so yeah, I mean, there's some weird stuff going on with JL word availability. I was just curious with American. Cause I thought,

I wonder if you're able to put it on hold over the phone since you don't actually have to take it. If you could put it on hold. Oh, you mean for the phantom space? Well, I mean, you know,

I doubt the phantom space would, would work, but I guess then it would tell you, like, if you found something that you think you're pretty confident would work and you try and put it on hold. And if they, if they can put it on hold, you would probably know it's not Phantom, right? I guess. Yeah. But I guess my point is that I'm pretty sure that if it's not Phantom, you can book it online so that you don't really need to do that. Yeah. Interesting. Well, so fun stuff there. So, so are you going to, I mean, I know you're,

you're looking at this a little bit. Are you tempted to transfer points to try to book any of these? I mean, my, I'll lead with my, my hesitation here. So I am, I told you I was kind of interested in transferring to ANA and when Emirates

dropped their fuel surcharges, I was pretty interested in Emirates. A lot of this stuff looks really good. I mean, these are some really nice, luxurious products to fly in. And so if you're going to travel and I feel like there's a decent chance I'm going to travel in 2021. Obviously, I don't know right now, though. And so that's, that's where my dilemma is. I think if I'm going to travel, man, snapping up some of these great premium products now seems awesome. I mean, I'm joking

about how I already booked the ANA first class availability out of New York, which, you know, maybe I will, maybe I won't because I just don't know if I'm going to travel in 2021. And so my hesitation is, do I want to transfer points and book a trip and then come to find out there's another wave of COVID, there's more restrictions, there's not going to be any, you know, catering on the flight or whatever it might be. Are you ready? Are you at the point where you're ready to transfer points and risk that you might have to cancel it and get stuck with some miles that are going to expire in three years again i'd really hate to do that with a program

like ana where where the clock uh stops at the end with no way of restarting it. Same thing with Singapore. I'd be tempted to try to work in Singapore suites into my travels, but I've been in that position before with Singapore where I had miles from a flight that had to be canceled. I don't want to be in that position again. And of course, as we just talked about earlier, I have all these ANA miles that I need to use. So I'm more likely to book business class with ANA than anything else. But if there's one thing I'm tempted to do as far as transfers is to aeroplan to book Etihad apartments for two. So, you know, I could see going the long way home from Australia. If I could, if I could find that award,

uh, to go Sydney to Abu Dhabi to New York, all in Etihad apartments, that would be a pretty spectacular way to go. It sure would. It sure would. So if that, if that opened up,

if you were like tomorrow, if you saw the, I mean, so it's open. So what are you waiting for? Actually, wait a minute. No, Abu Dhabi to New York, I think, was the one route. So New York to Abu Dhabi was pretty wide open.

Abu Dhabi to New York, though, was not. And I think that has to do with it's easier to find that award space. You don't have to trick it to find it, unlike the other direction. So yeah, that might be a little challenging to find that. So I mean, if you did, you found it. Would you book it? Would you transfer the miles and book it now?

I mean, are you still too hesitant? I don't even know roughly what date we want to come home. So I'm not sure what do you know what ANAs I'm sorry, what, do you know what ANAs, I'm sorry, what arrow plans change rules are? Will they allow me to change the date for free or no? I don't know. No, I'd have to look it up. Yeah. So that's something I'll have to look into. If they would, then I'd be,

yeah, I would definitely consider doing that. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, I think that's an interesting dilemma because I don't know, I'm not, I want to, I really, I'm itching to book something. I feel like I almost want to book something just to have something on the books for 2021. And yeah, you know, I,

cause I just want to have a trip to look forward to at some point. Right. But, but I'm hesitant to transfer over the miles and end up with them stuck in a program. Now I know I just said earlier, I'm playing, but,

but I mean, aside from that, because I feel like ANA gives me a mean, aside from that, because I feel like ANA gives me a wide range of options that are all great prices, I'm hesitant to transfer over to a program where there's one specific thing, you know, like, if I were to transfer to Virgin Atlantic to book ANA, I mean, that's like basically the thing that I would want. I could use them for Delta to fly to Europe as a backup, if not, but there aren't a lot of things I have in mind right now to do with the Virgin Atlantic miles. So it's like be one very specific use case.

Whereas I feel like I'd have more flexibility with ANA and I'm still hesitant. Like, man, I just don't know if there's going to be, going to be issues because we've ever seen South Africa is saying they're not going to allow tourists until 2021. I think that's like, I think they said that they announced that a week or two ago that they're not going to allow any tourists in any foreign visitors until 2021. So, I mean, that's already closed down until 2021. I saw that the border with Canada has been closed to non-essential traffic for another month and Hawaii has extended their quarantine. And I wonder how long those are going to get extended it's hard it makes it hard to book that future

travel it's fun to think about right now and and I feel like I'm going to regret it because I'm going to look at all this availability and it's going to be gone once it's safe to travel again I'm going to be like man I waited a month too long but yeah yeah and then a lot of us are you know planning trips within our own state just to kind of get out. And it's hard to find luxury life flat seating when flying within Michigan. I don't know about New York, but. No, there's none.

Well, I mean, yeah, my wife drives sometimes so I can recline the seat. There you go, there you go. So that's sort of premium economy. Right, so it's leather. I mean. Domestic first. Yeah, domestic first.

More domestic first class, right? As soon as I recline though, then I hit my son's car seat and i get the person behind me kicking my seat again you know those those economy passengers in the back riffraff can't can't live with them can't live without them so all right so we got a lot of cool stuff going on as far as that stuff and there's great posts to look at and if you're listening to this in podcast form make sure you go to the episode notes and you can find those links to the various things we've been talking about since I didn't give you any links as we were going through. So you'll have to check the notes and those will also be on YouTube for those particular posts. So real quick though, before we run out of time,

I did want to ask you about Kempton because you wrote a post this week about Kempton properties, the best Kempton properties, in fact, in the United States. And I got to be honest, my eyes kind of glossed over reading it because I was like, I can't get excited about Kempton, not because of your post. Don't get me wrong. I love the idea behind comparing these resorts and hotels by using their average TripAdvisor ratings and using their comparison to other properties and whatnot. So, I mean, I think it's a great methodology. I just can't get excited about Kempton properties. I'm like, I'm not going to get breakfast. There's no lounge. There's no benefits. And I think you like Kempton. Were there any of them that you were excited about that you were like, wow, this one actually, I would love to check that one out?

Well, I was excited to see, when I started doing the research, I was excited to see that there were something like four or five different properties in Key West. And we enjoy visiting Key West. I've never been. I had no idea there were any Kemptons in Key West. Five of them, really? Yeah, four or five. But they were all pretty far down on the list. In fact, most of them, there were very, very few that didn't score a 4.5 on TripAdvisor,

but I think some of the Key West ones only got a 4. Yeah, yeah. So that doesn't necessarily mean they're bad, but it just took the excitement off of it. So, no, I mean, that was probably what I was initially excited about. As far as what you're saying about the perks and all that, the one recent Kempton I stayed at, well, recent, a couple years ago, I think now, stayed at one in New York City. I can't remember which one. I remember, yeah.

I wrote about it. The title is something like Platinum Benefits at Kimpton. I was impressed that my having IHG Platinum status was so heavily recognized there. They upgraded us to a suite. I don't remember what else

we got, but you can read the post. You'll find the link to that post in the notes. Yeah. So, so we didn't get free breakfast and there's no lounge, but they do have all Kemptons, I think have an afternoon free, like wine and cheese kind of thing. So, so you get to enjoy that. It is kind of nice. And so, yeah, we really enjoyed it. So, so you get to enjoy that. It is kind of nice. And so, yeah, we really enjoyed it. Now,

when you say, do I get excited about it? I mean, I can't say I'm excited. I, it's like, yes, I like it,

but I also like a lot of other, right. Right. A lot of other things. And, and so it's nothing, it's not like flying at aiata apartments you know it's it's not an over-the-top wow experience but it's a good experience so um yeah yeah well you know

so i was i was interested when you wrote it well so first thing now you just mentioned the free wine hour which is true i stayed at a kimpton last year and they had that too um but when you mentioned it it sprung something into mind that there's some cheap Hilton brand I want to say it's like embassy suites or something that I booked my wife and her friends for a shopping trip into one that was by a mall and and they have they had a free wine hour at that and and when I looked it up on the Hilton website I think that's something that was like brand standard at that brand that there was some sort of a free cocktail hour I was like how have I never heard of that at this extended stay brand before?

So apparently there are other hotels that do that too. I mean, I know lounges do it and that sort of thing in places, but I was surprised about that one. Marriott residence in, I think does, does a, they do like a manager,

manager special. I can't remember what they call it, but only on weekdays. But yeah, they do. It's more around food. So they have, it's like lounge food that they have uh each evening yeah and so that's very nice as an option if you're staying at one of those so there you look for some of those perks out there but so okay

but kenton i was actually kind of excited to check it out when you wrote it because i wanted to see where a specific property ranked because you ranked all the ones in the United States in this post. So they're all in there. And I've been curious about which ones I might be able to use my 40K certs at from the IHG or my 40K cert from the IHG card. But I had recently stumbled on this one that's in Vermont because Aaron Hurd at NerdWallet had written a post about five properties in the Northeast to check out kind of a thing. It was like award type properties, properties with the major chains. And I included it in the Weekend Review around the web last weekend, because I was surprised. I live in the Northeast, and I hadn't heard of any of these five properties. One of them was like Kempton that was in like Manchester, Vermont, population 4,400 people. I was like,

how did Kempton end up in a town of 4,000 people? I mean, and I come from rural America, so no diss to towns of 4,000 people. I mean, my town has many fewer than that. So no disrespect there. I just, I couldn't believe that there would be a Kempton in a place like that. And then it was like number 46 out of 60 or something. And I was like, it was all my enthusiasm. Yeah. You know, though, I don't think you should be that hard on it because the Kemptons are so highly rated across the board that being way down near the bottom of that list is not like being number 20 on the Marriott Resorts in Florida list, which is, you know what I'm saying?

The Marriott Resorts range from from really good reviews for really really bad whereas uh kimpton's almost all of them have really good reviews yeah well i found it interesting anyway that there was one in such a small place because i mean i'm sure that there's a lot of fallacy to travel to places that are less populated feels a little safer right now i guess with the the covid pandemic fewer people i guess fewer exposure right there are less exposure so i was like, that's kind of interesting. That's a place that I could see myself maybe going as things ease up a little bit, or I can still be, you know, fairly far away from most people, but still, you know, get a chance to get out and visit

a place. So I was curious about that. And like you said, I guess that's a good point. It's I think you still had it at four and a half stars on TripAdvisor or something, but it was still number 46. I know. That sounds bad no matter what. No matter what I say here, that sounds bad. Yeah. The other reason, I think you just sort of hit on one of the reasons

I wasn't as excited about the results as I thought I would be too, which is I wouldn't have known this going in had I thought about it, but most of the Kemptons are city hotels, big city hotels. And I'm just not that interested in vacationing right now in a big city, and it's because of the COVID stuff. So I was hoping to find more resort type of things. They didn't have a way to easily filter to resorts so i don't

really know which ones are resorts i mean there's a few that uh you know are pretty clear that they are because um you could see that they're on the beach or whatever but um i think most of them are are more like as as you'd expect it's a boutique brand or more just a small thing that isn't really a resort. It's just what it is. But, you know, there's a few. There's some in Florida that look like they'd be nice to stay at as a resort property. But, yeah, I was hoping to find more of that. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, I was hopeful, too, when I clicked on it, particularly because of the chance now with dynamic pricing, you found the ability to use 40 K certs at some of those places, right? Yeah. Almost every, every place that I looked at, I could at least find some dates that were less than 40 K. So some places that were regularly, you know, 60 K or more, I would find dates where they were only cost 30 K. So yeah. And it wasn't that they were that cheap that, I mean, they were cheaper at that time and the the cash rate but it's not like they were like dirt cheap they were still like you know maybe 250 dollars right where a free night certificate would still be pretty worthwhile to use so yeah yeah so i i'm gonna probably end up going back to that post though because i do want to use my certificate someplace nice and i know kimpton's have that that uh that reputation

so maybe i'll check out the one in Manchester and give it a little bottom line review. We'll see. We'll see what happens. Well, that would be good. You definitely should do that. Speaking of reviews, real quick, U.S. Bank released a brand new card this week.

Is it interesting? Is it exciting? Why? Why not? What do you think? They introduced a brand new one. Tell us about it. Yeah, so U.S. Bank Go, right, is offering Altitude Go fee-free and I think foreign transaction-free.

It is. Yes, that's correct. And they're giving you 4% back at restaurants. Mm-hmm. That's right. And less than that at other places. And so, I don't remember what the others were. 2% at some other place, like grocery stores or something like that.

And then 1% everywhere else, right? Everywhere else, yeah. 4% dining, including takeout, Grubhub, Uber Eats, stuff like that. So the basic idea is if you get this card, use it only for dining. Right. Because anywhere else, you could just use a regular 2% everywhere card or better so that said in your post you said you didn't find this exciting that that it was basically you saw it as basically a uh a card that's convenient as a way to get into the u.s bank uh universe so that you could then get the altitude reserve card. Right. Right. I was kind of surprised to read that because I actually think 4% dining with no annual

fee is actually pretty exciting. So I was excited about that. I was recommended it to a lot of people when the Uber visa had that same thing. That's true. Yeah. And I would tell people then, you know the uber uber visa for all your dining purchases and a two percent card for everything else you know and um these are people that wanted fee free and wanted and said they eat out a lot and you know um so i don't know i i think

that's pretty darn good that now there's a there's a new no fee version that'll do the same thing. Yeah, I mean, that's definitely a valid point. 4% dining with no annual fee, that is pretty good. So I'm not gonna argue that that's a bad return. I feel like probably a lot of readers and listeners have a card in their wallet that earns better than 4% or a transferable currency that's worth more than 4%, I think. But if you're the type of person who wants to be annual fee-free or you're looking to cut back on annual fees this year and still get a great return on dining, then yes, you're right. It certainly might be worth it.

Yeah. So I need to update or one of us needs to update. We have some posts where we where we did like card combinations and this deserves a spot in the cashback card combination it does and you know i think the uber card was more interesting when it offered cashback because it also offered what was the cell phone insurance on that card uh it's another perk or two i can't remember what they were but i feel like there's a perk or two on that card. Whereas this, there was like a $50 credit for Netflix or something like that, if you spend enough money on it or something. But this one just is the 4% basically. And there's a $15 credit for Netflix or for streaming rather,

I should say. If you put your streaming purchases on it monthly, then at the end of the year, you'll get a $15 credit for the 12th month. So, I mean, could be a small moneymaker, could be decent for dining. Again, if you're looking for a cash. So, so I mean, could be a small moneymaker could be decent for dining. Again, if you're looking for a cashback strategy, no annual fees, sure, get it for your cashback for your for your dining. There you go. And maybe get it for Uber. Because I you know, I mentioned in the post kind of been passing through it, that it says it'll earn 4% on Uber Eats. Now we know from the platinum card, the MXmex platinum card, that both regular Uber, you know, travel, so to speak, trips in a car or Uber Eats orders, both trigger the

Amex platinum monthly $10 credit there. So it seems to me that Amex sees a purchase, whether it comes from Uber Eats or Uber codes the same way for Amex purposes. Now, is that going to be the case for, I think it's a Visa card, now is that going to be the case for i think it's a visa card right like this us bank go card i think it's a visa or is it a master i think i think it's visa so i'm pretty sure it was a visa card i'll i'll put a picture of it and right above me here somewhere where it'll be like um anyway yeah well if you're watching anyway if you're not watching just imagine floating above next head right right that says go on it go visa uh so anyway i i imagine it's

possible that that'll be the same for visa so maybe regular uber trips will also earn four percent on it i don't know that for sure that's just totally a guess but seems like an educated guess that would be nice i mean i have trouble getting excited about things like that because like, how much does anyone spend on Uber? And if they're spending that much, they probably could do much better buying discounted Uber gift cards. That's true. Yeah.

Yeah, that's true. And there are a number of different opportunities to earn bonuses on Uber. Like I think right now, Uber Eats Air Canada is offering 10 miles per dollar for a few more days on Uber Eats orders. So that would be worth more than 4% to me. SoFi has offered 20% back on DoorDash and that sort of thing at different points in time this year. So you're right. That's a good point too. All right. So that then I think brings us to the question of the week, right? Question of the week. What do you,

what do you have for me? Mike G sent me a question on Twitter. He sent a message to me on Twitter with a question that kind of piggybacks on a question from Lisa that we had talked about and privately and didn't answer on the broadcast a couple of weeks ago. So I think this is similar cut from a similar thread. So everybody, you're referencing a conversation that we privately had that we didn't talk about.

Right. But then I figured that that would help drag your memory and put you in the right mood to answer this question. So everybody else is going to be like, well, Lisa had a similar question. Okay. All right. So Mike G says, Hey, I have no idea what Nick's talking about. I'm big into the hobby and a big fan of the site.

Watch the podcast each week. Unfortunately, won't be able to make the live. Oh, that's right. Meant to mention that we're changing the live time, but you'll find that out. I guess you'll see an announcement. So he says, I was hoping you can answer this question. Here it is.

I'm at 224 right now. 224 with Chase, obviously under 524. 224 right now. And I have no business cards in my wallet. I'm in the process of setting up my own business so I can get access to business, and I have no business cards in my wallet. I'm in the process of setting up my own business so I can get access to business cards. I plan to pay off some student loans through Plastic, and I thought that I could use that as a minimum spend for a sign-up bonus on a new card. Any thoughts on what card I would have the best chance of getting

approved for right now? And so I thought that was a particularly relevant question because business cards in general can sometimes be a little bit more difficult to get approved for depending on the issuer. And certainly in a current environment, we've heard stories of them being much more difficult in some cases. He's got no business cards at the moment, and he's looking to be able to use them on plastic to pay student loans. So that kind of makes it fairly specific in order to meet the spending requirement. It does make it specific. So what do you recommend?

So the student loan thing eliminates Amex off the top. And so Amex would normally be my recommendation for an easy way to get into business cards because they historically have been easy on approvals. I thought the same thing. So let's ignore plastic for a second. If he wasn't looking to meet the minimum spending requirement with plastic, Amex seems like a reasonable one. That was my first thought too.

They're usually the easiest approvals for business cards. Which one would you tell him to sign up for them? Yeah, that's a good question. In general, I love the Blue Business Plus, 2X everywhere, up to 50K spend. But if you're really worried about approval, you might have better luck with the co-branded card. So Hilton seems to be trying really hard to get people to sign up for a card. So if getting approved is your sort of biggest thing,

I might consider going for the Hilton business card. Interesting. What about you? Just in order to start building a portfolio of business cards. Get in the door with one that's easy to get approved. I think that's a really good suggestion. I wouldn't have thought of that. That wouldn't have come to mind. Blue Business Plus came to mind first,

and I thought it's probably fairly easy to get approved for because you don't need to have a massive credit limit or anything. They might not approve you with a huge useful credit limit, but they'll likely approve you with some small limit, I would think, or at least fairly likely. Though I think Greg's right. I think the Hilton card might be more likely. And the problem with the Blue Business Plus is that I think if you apply through a referral link, like what we have on our best offers page, you get a very small bonus, 10,000 points. If I remember correctly right now, after meeting minimum spend,

it's a pretty small welcome bonus. So it's not going to feel like there's enough meat in that sandwich, so to speak. So, um, so I don't, I don't know if that's going to seem exciting enough. Whereas on the flip side,

business platinum is going to require way too much spend since you can't, uh, hit your student loans with that through plastic. So, you know, if you're even thinking that you need that in order to meet the minimum spend, the business platinum is off the table for you. So yeah, I was going to say probably Blue Business Plus would be my pick, but now you convinced me, Greg. Hilton it is. All right. So I don't know whether Hilton Business is right now at a top bonus amount,

but that's something worth looking into. Okay. So that aside now, he wants to be able to pay student loans though. He's at 224. Now keep in mind, by the way, Mike, that you're at 224 and applying for that Hilton card isn't going to affect that because if you're applying for the business version, that's not going to add to your 524 count so that's not going to get you any farther away from chase cards there's no damage done by going after a card like that so but but let's focus then again he wants to be able to pay student loans so i can't remember off the top of my head whether these business cards are allowed to pay student loans or not. I think they probably are. But, you know, that's something if you go to our plastic guide,

it's right in there whether you can or not. But anyway, if you could do Visa, I think I'd be looking at the Chase Inc. Cash, maybe. So the Inc. Cash and the Inc. Business Unlimited, those have the 50K offers, and they're easier to get than the Inc. Business Preferred, which has the 80K offer. And the reason they're easier to get

is because they'll approve you with a, I think it's a $3,000 credit limit. Whereas the ink business preferred requires maybe a $5,000 limit. So that would be my next guest. Although we have heard that chase is being much tougher on business approvals right now. We have a little bit, you have to log in a little bit leery about that. Yeah. And if you don't have any deposit accounts with chase, then it seems that you may

not be able to, it seems like that's been a hurdle that's been repeated enough times at this point, that it seems like that may actually be a thing. They may want you to have a deposit account in order to get approved for a business card right now. It's not like hardened, you know, not set in stone necessarily, but it does seem like something that we've heard a few times. So that may be a barrier there. Although, I mean, my son got his account six months ago or so. Right. And doesn't have a deposit account.

No, I think that that's like a more COVID recent. More recent, okay. So, I mean, you know, opening a business account with Chase is not a bad thing to do. And certainly, if you have a branch that's open and can do it in branch, one way that improves approval odds, I believe, is to open a business account.

And at the end, they say, you've been pre approved for this card, and it'd be one of the ink cards, and you can apply then. The hurdle is that in order to open this business account, you do need a DBA, a doing business as certificate from your, your county or whatever. That's not a big deal. Usually you could usually get one for 10 bucks or 20 bucks, but Well, Mike does say he's in the process of setting up a business. So it would seem like it's a legitimate business. So one would think that he, that may, he may be able to meet that requirement. So, so that would involve again again opening up like a business checking account or something like that in branch is what you're saying yeah and then from there you may get an offer i'd be very surprised if he doesn't get

an offer at the end of the setup process of setting up that account so there you go and by the way i did check while greg was talking to make sure he was absolutely correct, that visa business visa cards can be used to pay student loans. So consumer visa cards can not, you'd need to use either a MasterCard, a Discover, a business visa, except the business visas from Capital One. Apparently that hasn't gotten resolved yet or US Bank.

So not from Capital One or US Bank, but from Chase, you'd be able to use a business visa. So I think that's a pretty good idea. The Inc Business Unlimited or the S bank. So not from capital one or U S bank, but from chase, you'd be able to use a business visa. So I think that's a pretty good idea. The ink business unlimited or the ink cash, right? The two, two suggestions there.

So one of those probably would be your best bet. I think best, best welcome bonus, most valuable cards to have longterm. So, so, all right. So Hilton,

if you want to go Amex and not pay your student loans with it or ink business preferred or ink business unlimited. Now, if he can't get approved for one of those, do you have a one third tier card that you would recommend? Well, I mean, it might be a little harder. So, so one of the ones I like for, for paying plastic bills is, is the bank of America cash rewards card that gives you 3% for some different categories. And if you pick travel, there's certain things that you pay with plastic that might just look like travel to Bank of America. So that's a nice option, especially

if you have a lot saved with Bank of America, you get extra rewards from them. But the reason I didn't bring this up is that I've heard that Bank of America is pretty hard on approvals and harder than usual these days as well. So actually, I feel better about this suggestion of going in branch, opening up a business checking account, and applying from there. That's a good tip. That's a good tip because that's a good way to begin a relationship with the bank, theoretically anyway, and get your foot in the door to be able to get a pre-approval that you'll kind of have an idea right away that you're likely to get approved for. So I think that is a good safe tip because these days it is a little bit of a difficult environment.

So I think that applying for business cards is probably more challenging in general. Annex is probably going to be your easiest bet, but yeah, we've heard stories of bank of America becoming more difficult. We've heard stories of that Barclays aviator business card being challenging for people to get capital one can be challenging. Although if you're at two 24, maybe the one of the spark business cards is worth taking a look at. The Spark Miles card, then you have the ability

to transfer to partners or to be able to use it towards travel purchases. So that might be worthwhile. What about American Air? What about Citibank's American Airlines card? I mean, that's historically they've been super easy to get. I think I've heard some people saying that the Niles are up, but I still bet they're easier than others. So if you value American Airlines miles and want an easy grab easier, maybe that might be an option too. There you go. All right. So now you've got a whole bunch of different options. So Mike, Mike G, hopefully we gave you some stuff that you can use. So maybe next time we could, we can answer Lisa's question next week. I remember

it now. It's a good one. Very good. All right. So I want to thank you very much, Greg. Thank everybody who's out there. Thank you, Nick. More. You're welcome. You want to read more about what we've been talking about and you want to get in on these things as soon as we post them, you want to go to thefrequentmiler.com slash subscribe. That's thefrequentmiler.com slash subscribe. So you can get on our email list and you can join our Facebook group and follow us on Twitter

and all those fun things there. Again, see the episode notes for links to all of the posts that we spoke about this week specifically. Thank you very much again, Greg. And we'll see you guys all again next week. Bye, everybody. See you next week.

Bye-bye.