Frequent Miler on the Air - Business credit cards during the pandemic | Ep 57 | 8-1-20

Episode Date: August 1, 2020

Links and timestamps:   00:42 Reader Feedback: An interesting Amex Clawback data point For background: https://frequentmiler.boardingarea.com/amex-going-clawback-happy-for-grocery-store-spend/ 8:43 What crazy thing did....Greg do this week? 12:32 Mattress Running the Numbers: Intercontinental Ambassador now includes a free 40K night cert with a paid stay. Is it worth a mattress run? https://frequentmiler.boardingarea.com/ihg-buy-renew-ambassador-membership-then-stay-once-get-40k-free-night-certificate-cert-expires-4-30-21/ 27:20 The Main Event: Business Credit Card Offers https://frequentmiler.boardingarea.com/on-my-mind-pandemic-best-credit-card-offers/ 34:06 Is everyone else tightening up as much as Chase? 40:27 Post Roast: Are the "World's Best" really any good? https://frequentmiler.boardingarea.com/points-bookable-hotels-resorts-in-the-continental-united-states/ 50:45 Greg roasts Nick's Freedom post https://frequentmiler.boardingarea.com/freedom-vs-freedom-unlimited-does-it-matter-which-one/ 53:23 Question of the Week: If you already have an Amex Gold card, is it worth sacrificing a 5/24 slot for a Freedom or Freedom Unlimited? Don't forget to comment, like, and subscribe! Closing music credit: Annie Yoder

Frequent Miler on the air starts now. Today's main event is business credit card signup offers. Are they off limits during the pandemic? I don't know. We'll talk all about that. First though, Nick is going to drag out the giant mailbag so I can reach in and pull out a piece of reader feedback. See what we got today. Yeah, this is where I'm'm gonna insert the video of me dragging the mailbag okay there we go sound effects all right i'm reaching in there we go all right reach across to your side there there okay there you go okay i got it all right so this piece of feedback comes from doug ross reports and doug ross yeah says he's talking about amex clawbacks which we discussed a few weeks ago we discussed it because uh amex was

giving people like 12x with a hilton card and other bonuses with other cards at grocery stores until they found that people were buying gift cards with those uh bonuses with other cards at grocery stores until they found that people were buying gift cards with those, uh, with those credit cards at grocery stores and they were clawing all those points back. Right. Or, or not giving them at all. Um, so he had a data point to contribute or regarding, regarding all that. Cause we discussed about, we discussed various things about that topic. And so let me, uh, just, I'll go into his data point, and then we can talk about that a little bit. He says, I have an Amex Blue Cash Preferred coming to the end of the year in 2019. I knew I had about $1,000 of grocery spend left to max out the $6,000 per year at 6% cash back.

You with me so far? The blue cash preferred gives 6%, but only up to $6,000. And he says, I bought two Visa gift cards at $1,000 plus a few bucks in groceries in late December. I got the full 6% cash back for about a week. Then they went back and changed it.

The gift card portion was changed to 1%, and the small $30 or so in groceries was left at 6%. This is anecdotal, but would imply that they looked at the third-level data, and even though it was a capped benefit, they still clawed back my cash back from the Visa gift card purchase. Sad face. Very sad face. Yeah. So there's a couple interesting things here.

One that I started with level three data. So some stores provide to the credit card companies more detail than just overall how much was purchased, right? And so they include line item detail, and that's known as level three data. He's saying that this is evidence that Amex had that data from the grocery store. I agree, that's pretty good evidence. Right. Very reasonable. And it further is evidence that they're using that detail to identify purchases that don't qualify for the bonus earnings, rewards. And that's consistent with their terms and conditions.

They say you're not going to earn on prepaid cards and things like that. So basically, it's a data point showing that they are, in fact, doing that. But what's kind of interesting, an interesting additional piece here is that we've talked before about how we like when credit card issuers cap these kind of 5x or 6x benefits because that probably means that they'll let us spend up to that much and get that that bonus and then we could go on our merry way as long as we you know because we're keeping to within stay within the speed limit and this is an example where clearly amex is enforcing the rules even when there's a speed limit. It's not even, and it's a really small speed limit. I mean, $6,000 at grocery stores, most people are going to match that out on regular spend, let alone gift cards. Just naturally. Yeah. Right. Right.

Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's a really interesting data point because there are caps like the Blue Business Plus that's capped at $50,000 in purchases a year. The MX Gold is capped at $25,000 in grocery. So with a $6,000 cap, you would think that's a really low cap, that that'd be one that'd be pretty safe to spend on anything. Right, right. both mentioned that we thought it was still probably safe to spend, buy gift cards at the grocery store with the, with the gold card because of the 25 K cap. Have you done any spend since then? Like that? I haven't. No, I haven't. But now I,

now I guess I'll have to do one and see what happens. Yeah. Right. Yeah. That's really surprising surprising to me so especially with that low cap i'm i'm quite surprised by that data point yeah no that's a big deal because if that's that's the case that certainly makes it for a new landscape and one of the things that i kind of had set aside for question of the week later on but i feel like actually right now seems like the time to ask it is, is MS then dead on Amex cards? Is there anything left that you can do on an Amex card in terms of manufactured spend? Because I mean, clearly, they have made a statement in terms of not awarding points on cards where they've offered a bonus on grocery here. And over the last couple of years, we've seen them not include that spend towards different milestones, like earning the MQMs on the Delta cards, or not earning welcome bonuses on cards or bonuses for adding an authorized user if you bought gift cards, and in a way that was clear and easy for them to see that was gift cards, right? So is MSN MX cards just dead? Is it done? Right, right. Is there anything left?

Yeah, I mean, I think that's a great topic for a whole show. You're probably right. Maybe we should hold that off for next week. Yeah, that's gonna just open up a can of worms. But yeah, no, I mean, that's something that is a serious question and something that we need to spend a little time thinking about and think about what can people do if they really want to max out these things like the 25k and

grocery spend i don't know yeah yeah i mean i did i think it's a great data point i think one of the things that you could try doing is looking for places that do or do not offer level three data i mean that's that's probably something you can consider though even if you find a place that does not currently supply level three data who knows when that might change and so but maybe you'd have that as a go-to until then sure and the the only i think good way to find that out with amex is is to actually do a test purchase and see if the line item details are visible in your account once the purchase goes from pending to actual. Yeah, well, I think that's probably the way to do it. I don't know.

I've come to think of it. You know, I've seen line item before detail in my Amex statements. I'm not sure that I've seen Lionhead in before detail in my Amex statements. I'm not sure that I've noticed it on purchases like that recently. I'm going to have to go back and take a look now and see the stuff that I bought. Cause I did buy, so the 12X and the Hilton cards, we talked about that a good bit and how lots of points got clawed back. I did buy a couple thousand dollars in gift cards using the Amex card that didn't get clawed back. I got the points for them. So, and I don't know, was it that the store didn't provide the level three data?

Was it that Amex was looking for higher thresholds of spend? I kind of assumed more of the latter, but I'm not sure. I have to go back and check and see if there's anything. Yeah. Or do they go in waves? Like, you know, maybe Doug Ross just sort of hit them at a point where they were going through all the accounts looking for this kind of purchase and uh maybe it's not something they do automatically every time well and it's interesting because he's saying that uh that he got the the six percent initially

right and then it got clawed back like a week or two later so i could also see people having missed that kind of detail now and thought they got the points and not realized when they got, depending on how much volume, if you did a lot, a lot of volume, you'd notice that. Yeah. But if you'd only done a little bit, maybe you wouldn't have noticed. No, that's a great point. Right. Right. So let's take a look at that.

Interesting stuff. Yeah. Great piece of feedback this week. Yes. Yes. Okay. Next is City Time. That's right. So I have to ask, what crazy thing did Greg do? I mean, City do this week?

Well, all right, so we kind of changed the name there a little bit because last week, you know, Greg talked to us about what happened with his City cards or what he was worried about anyway. If you were listening in last week, you know, that he had a couple of cards in his household that got closed, I think for an activity. And then he immediately questioned during the broadcast, did I lose any points with those closed cards? So did he take away your points or what?

So the, so these are my wife's cards. They were city. Thank you. Cards like city. Thank you. Preferred probably. Wait, probably? You don't even know which cards got canceled? At least one was a Preferred. I don't know. One might've been a rewards plus or something. I know there were no fee cards. Ways you know you have too many credit cards. You don't even know which ones.

Right. Well, you know, the problem, I've complained about this before. The this problem with city bank and the thank you program is like the only way to keep those points alive when you don't want the card anymore is to downgrade it to a no fee card and so you end up if you do a lot of signing up for cards over time you end up with this sort of uh graveyard full of unused cards which are actually not total garbage because you can call and ask for a retention offer on these cards that have no fee and they often give you one but anyway i digress um so yeah so i realized that um my wife's cards have been closed a few months back and and i was like oh no did i lose any did we lose any points on her account and so i did i logged into her thank you account and i tried to figure out if we lost any points it it didn't look like we had um because the only

or if we did it was like a tiny amount because the only thing i could find by going back in time on of points that were associated with any card other than ones that are still open was uh like a few hundred maybe points in on one preferred card and so maybe we lost like two bucks worth of points something like that so i'm good i'm gonna assume now the thank you portal it's very hard to, I was going to say, I don't even know how you, you know, you don't really know.

I'm kind of like, uh, based on the little bit of data here and there that, that it shows you. Uh, I prefer to believe that I didn't lose. I prefer to believe. So I'm going to go with that.

Sure. You do go with that. So that's a crazy thing that Greg did this week. Prefer to believe. Greg didn't lose much on his preferred cards. Greg's looking the other way. Now, this is the part where I say, can't you look at your old statements

and see if you earned any points on those cards, even though they're closed? I don't know. How do you look at your old statements once, if they're all electronic and they're no longer oh are they on the line i don't know i mean maybe they're still there i don't know i mean you might just be able to go back and reverse the statement show how many points you have with that card maybe that maybe it does well they would show how many you earn so if you go back oh go back indefinitely yeah i mean well

not indefinitely but probably i mean you know when did you last earn any significant chunk of points on those cards? A long time ago. I don't think so. That sounds like a lot of work. Maybe not useful. It probably is. It's much easier to just pretend that I didn't lose any points. Right.

Greg didn't lose any points. So what crazy thing did Citi do this week? They didn't take away any of Greg's points. There you go. Good job, Citi. There you go. Well done. All right. So Citi out of the next key segment. Yeah. So we decided last week that before the main event, we're going to do mattress running the numbers. Last week, we had some good mattress running music to go along with it. I don't know whether we do or not

But what I do know is if we had music it was the music that you always listen to when discussing mattress running as everybody All right, so to when discussing mattress running as everybody does. That's right. Yes. Clearly. Clearly. All right. So to make things even more confusing about what we do and do not know, we're going to discuss a deal that may or may not exist. It might not be real. At the time we're recording this. I mean, this does not seem apropos these days. Who knows?

Maybe it's real. Maybe it isn't. Nobody knows. So there's a deal that we know about that we were going to publish the day of recording this, but Stephen discovered that the information about the deal is all on Intercontinental's United Kingdom website, not on the US website. And so we're, at the time of recording this, we're unsure whether or not this deal really exists here in the States. So if you do not see anything about the Intercontinental deal in the liner notes of this podcast or video, then just skip ahead of this whole section because it didn't

happen. It was fake news. If you don't see a link to our post about it, then you know it was fake news and so you shouldn't be listening anymore. All right. So here's the basics of the deal that may or may not exist. Intercontinental, they have that ambassador status that you can buy. You can buy it with either 40,000 IHG points or with $200. And that's pretty equitable because we think of IHG points, like you can often buy them for half a cent each. So it's kind of like the same thing, $200 or 40,000 points. If you do the 40,000 points and if you have the old no longer available IHC card you do get 10% of those points back so a tiny discount that way if you if you pay with points okay so that's always the case and what may or may not exist is a deal that says if you

enroll between July 30th and November 15th, and that's either for renewal or a new membership into this ambassador program, and if you have a paid stay at an Intercontinental Hotel, a Kempton, or a Regent Hotel by January 31st of 2021, then you get a free night certificate, good up to 40,000 points at any IHD property. That's good only until the end of April of 2021. All right, so basically, sort of to summarize, you have to sign up before November 15th. You have to stay, paid stay, before January 31st.

Then you have a free night until April 30th. That sounds like a horrible deal. Well, let's... That's supposed to be exciting, IHG? Is that the best you could do, guys? I mean, Hyatt's doing buy one, get one mirror ball and 25% of the points back if you got the credit card. Is this the best you could do, IHG?

All right, let's play playing devil's advocate for a sec. Ambassador status has quite a few perks that you get for signing up. Like you don't sign up just to have like be able to say, hey, I've got ambassador status. Some people might, right? Nobody listening to this, probably. And as an aside, I've discovered that when you have it and you go to check in at a hotel, like a Kempton or whatever, any of these hotels, even if they don't really recognize ambassador status,

they see on their computer that you are um platinum ambassador they call it because they take the ihg status you have which in my case is platinum and then they take the ambassador and they put them together and that's tricky it doesn't get you anything more than having platinum does it most of these places but it gets you an extra word at check-in thank you for being platinum ambassador impressive yeah um but it looks around they're like well this guy's an ambassador uh ambassador status does give you extra perks at intercontinental hotels and uh it looks like they're going to be extending them to regent hotels which there's only like eight of those in the world but still that's a good thing and and and uh at least one additional

perks so the biggest additional perk that's the most valuable is you get a free weekend night on a paid stay and that free weekend night now works on kimpton and regent hotels as well or at least certainly Kempton. I'm not sure about Regent. And on Kempton, it works any day of the week. It doesn't have to be a weekend. But what's really cool about this free weekend night, it's still called that, is that you can book a suite.

You could book a room that has lounge access built in you know you could book one with any kind of perks and that free night will also have all those perks and which is which is pretty cool but let's be real it's not a free weekend night it's a coupon it's a buy one get one free coupon it's like a buy one get one night coupon like Like, we'll give you a coupon. Right. So for 200 bucks, you buy yourself a coupon for a buy one, get one. Yeah. Right? Yeah.

And what else do you get? When you stay at an Air Canada hotel, even on an awards day, wait for this. This is amazing. Right, even on an awards day, you get, all right. You get a $20 food and beverage amenity credit.

Whoa. Whoa. Generous IHG. I can almost buy myself half of breakfast in the lobby for that. Well, so if you stay 10 times over the year, you'd get $200 of food and beverage for your $200. There you go.

There you go. It pays for itself. So actually, I mean, people who are frequent stayers at intercontinental hotels, it obviously actually is a good deal. You also get 4pm late checkout. You get a guaranteed room upgrade on paid stays. And that actually is guaranteed room upgrade. It can be really valuable because you could do things like book yourself into the highest

level room before the suites. And that way you're virtually guaranteed like book yourself into the highest level room before the suites and that way you're virtually guaranteed to be put into a suite so things like you can monkey around with in ways like that to to get really uh valuable upgrades so there are some good things um but yeah i i mean overall so okay so you can you can pay for a membership that gives you slightly better benefits if you want to pay IHG for your stays, right? Basically that's what it comes down to. If you want to, if you have a lot of paid stays at I at intercontinental, not IHG,

intercontinental or maybe, maybe Kempton. Do you get any of those benefits? So Kempton right now, the only known benefit is the free night, the free or the coupon. That's right hilton gives you a free night like a free night to me is a night where you can go and stay for free that's right i actually gives you a coupon for the ambassador thing come on that's true it's 200 bucks but it's a good coupon i agree it's a coupon but it's but it's a good one i used it i used it at intercontinental last year i i signed up so i could test this thing out and i had a great stay we had a weekend stay in a suite and uh it was very nice well and i mean i'm joking about it i'm sure you can get a

tremendous value out of that if you're booking an expensive suite and you're willing to pay for an expensive suite anyway you're getting half off if you're staying for two nights. Yeah, but the other thing is because hotels often, the room rates often change from night to night, it's gameable. So like when I stayed at the Intercontinental, the Friday night was much cheaper

than Saturday night. I only paid for Friday night and Saturday night was free. Kempton, it's going to be much easier to do those kind of games because of it working any night of the week, right? So there's definitely ways to game that coupon, which is really nice. be much easier to do those kind of games because of it working any night of the week right so so

there's definitely ways to uh game that coupon which is really nice and now if you do the timing just right you can get that um 40k free night certificate that's good for a couple months after you do all that for a couple months right for a couple months when maybe it'll be okay to travel maybe well who knows but but yeah yeah it's good for a couple of months. And so, all right. So, you know, the ambassador status, like I said, if you stay at IHGs and you do stay on paid stays, if you stay for business, that sort of thing,

and you tend to stay at Intercontinentals rather, excuse me, then okay, I can concede. It's probably worth it. For 20 bucks, you probably get yourself a free drink at the bar or, you know, maybe a discount on breakfast or something like that. So, all right, you grab yourself a little something for your 20 bucks each day, get yourself a little upgrade, get your little coupon. Like, okay, it might be worth it if you're staying a bunch of times throughout the year and or you have one really expensive. But like, is it worth signing up for that to get your coupon and get your potentially

your 40K night? and now the stay that you have to make so you have to stay by the end of january 2021 in an intercontinental region or kimpton to get your 40k coupon or your 40k night certificate rather right is it just a one night stay will that do it can you mattress run this yeah yeah uh so you could find you could probably find a uh relatively inexpensive kimempton or Intercontinental. I mean, unfortunately, they're not going to be as cheap as Holiday Inns, right? So let's say you could find one for, what, $120 maybe? Yeah, I bet you can find one for $120 right now.

Okay, let's take this scenario then. First, let me concede right off the bat. for 120 right now. Yeah, I mean, I expect- Let's take this scenario then. I think, first, let me concede right off the bat. I don't think you should, if you weren't already thinking ambassador status, buying ambassador status

was a good idea, I don't think you should be doing this at all. But, what if you did want to do ambassador status anyway? Is it worth, is it worth signing up

maybe a little bit earlier than you planned and booking a one-night stay to get this 40K certificate? I mean, yes. If you already had it in mind to get the ambassador status, then of course. I mean, this is a little bit extra. So great. Easy. And is it worth mattress running? Is it worth buying?

Yeah, it probably is. Is it worth mattress running at night in order to get the 40K cert? Well, careful there because you can get yourself a 40K cert with an $89 credit card, right? So, I mean, you can sign up for a credit card, get a 40K cert that's valid for an entire year

rather than one that's only valid until next April. So I don't, I can't value it much more than 89 bucks, right? I mean, I guess if you already have one of those, you can't get another one in your name. If you have somebody else in your household, maybe you can. So this is another way to get another 40K cert, I guess, but I wouldn't value it too much more than 89 bucks. So I wouldn't be mattress running just for that. If you got a night, you got to stay anyway. And the Intercontinental is 20 or 30 or 40 bucks more expensive than the next option you'd consider. Okay. Pay a little bit more for the intercontinental. Get yourself 40 K cert. If you got a use in mind before the end of April.

All right. I'm going to, I'm going to tweak the scenario a little bit. Let's say you, you already have the credit cards, whatever. I don't know that you can't get another cert through other means because you've already used them, whatever. You have a night coming up in March where you have it reserved. It's a 30K. You have it reserved to pay 30K points. So now you could mattress run one night

and basically get 30K points because you're going to use your certificate instead of those 30k points do you match us from one night for 30,000 IHG points I mean I mattress run I mean you buy those points for 150 bucks most of the time so I'm making a mattress run for 150 dollars worth of points probably not because I mean I can buy the points and so so I wouldn't mattress run for, but again, if you already are going to stay okay, but otherwise, if it's going to cost you anything more than 150, then no, I just buy the point. And all that, like in a normal world,

it might be a little bit more interesting to do this in today's world right now, signing yourself up for a certificate that expires in any kind of a short timeframe just doesn't sound like appealing to me at all. Right. Well, you know, cause you think you're going to use it in March. Great. But who knows? Yeah. I mean, maybe if you live somewhere where there's a number of either intercontinentals or Kemptons that you'd like to weekend at or whatever, then it might make sense. But overall, I agree with you. I wouldn't go out of my way for this.

I don't think so. I don't think so. I mean, you know, you might get lucky these days we've said with the 40 K certs, cause some of the properties, the variable pricing, you may get yourself a nice property for a 40 K cert, but I wouldn't go out of my way. If you're saying it in intercontinental, anyway, go ahead and buy it. You might as well. If you're going to make a paid stay at in Intercontinental anyway, go ahead and buy it. You might as well. If you're going to make a paid stay at Intercontinental anyway, but I shouldn't say that. If you were thinking about getting ambassador status and you have a paid stay coming up at an

Intercontinental, you might as well, but I wouldn't go out of my way. This one doesn't draw me in. Sorry, IHG. No, but I'm just going to add one little sort to the whole thing. If we're in that situation, we had the 30K night booked and everything, and you had a nearby Intercontinental or Kempton that you would actually enjoy spending a night at, and it's cheap enough, why not? So you're getting that night instead of buying the points, basically. Yeah, and when I say no on these things at the same time this is cheap enough that you know if you want to use your money how you want to use your money so if you think you can have a little bit of fun and it's going to cost you two or three hundred dollars and you got the two or three hundred dollars to you know to blow on it hey go ahead have a good time knock

yourself out but if you're asking me, is it a good promo? Do I get excited about it? Two thumbs down. I agree. It's not good enough for most people. So go out of your way for it. Should we go on to the main event? We should. It's time for the main. Welcome to the main event.

I won't do my main event voice. But today we're going to talk about business cards because you wrote a post this week that was about some changes you made to the best offers page because of some feedback that we've gotten. And so the gist of it boils down to, I guess, the fact that we've had a lot of reports from meters, particularly about Chase business cards being, I'm going to say, nearly impossible to get approved for right now. It seems like the vast majority of people who've applied are getting

denied for those cards. So you made a change in the best offers page to sort things so that the best offers that come up all the way at the top no longer include business cards because right now they just don't seem to be widely available to people. Is that summarizing the landscape? Yeah, I think it does. And I'm just going to bring up one of the comments on that post because I thought the detail in there was really informative. So the detail was that a person had signed up for a Chase Inc. business card a year ago, got approved, signed up for another one in, I think it was December, and got approved. But now in June or July, I can't remember, tried for a third one. And you could say, well, maybe they got denied because they already have too much credit with

Chase or whatever. But the reason they were given was their business was too new. And I just found that interesting. I mean, you don't know if the reason given really has anything to do with why they were denied. But if it did have anything to do with it, that's interesting. It kind of suggests that they have indeed changed their, you know, sort of what is the minimum threshold to make a business worthwhile of new business for Chase? Yeah, and that would be fair.

That would be reasonable. You know, in the current economic environment, you've got to expect that when the money runs out, so to speak, in terms of the different initiatives to help prop businesses up, that there are going to be a number of businesses that aren't going to make it. And so, you know, obviously Chase isn't looking at it from the perspective of, oh, is this person a manufactured spender that has a business and they're going to be fine? Or, you know, they're not looking at it that way. They're looking at it from the perspective of, well, you know, a lot of

businesses might not make it. And so, you know, we don't want to lend to the businesses that are particularly risky and riskier, surely our newer, smaller businesses. So it just seems reasonable to me that they've tightened up some. That's unfortunate, don't get me wrong, but reasonable. Of course, I wouldn't, you know, as Greg kind of alluded to, I would caution anybody not to read too much into any reason you're given when you're denied for anything in this game, because a lot of times it's very much like the, you know, it's not you, it's me. No, it's really you. And you got to try to read in between the lines a little bit sometimes, because whatever the convenient thing to tell you is, is what's going to pop up in the paperwork or the representative that's a great analogy so so just just as when someone turns you down for a date you can't make too much of whatever excuse they give you right same thing right right i mean they tell you they're busy i'm sorry i'm busy it might not be busy who knows that's what they told you you know it doesn't make it true right and they don't really want to be your friend just just to be clear. Right.

So now we got that out of the way. So, yes, I think that, you know, I want to be careful about not looking too deeply into that. But it does seem reasonable. And we have seen that now Chase requires you to log in to apply for business cards, unless you still have a referral link out there. I think that takes you right to the application. But otherwise, you have to log in if you go straight to their website to apply for a business card, which suggests that they expect you already have a relationship with them in order to be able to apply for a business card. And we heard a lot of data points from people saying that Chase said that they needed to have a deposit account on file with Chase in order to get approved for a business card. So some sort of like a business checking or something like that.

So it all seems consistent with a tightening up. So because those business cards tend to have some of the best offers, they had been at the top, the best of the best section of our best offers page for quite a while. Right, right. And so, you know, you would go to the best offers page before and the best of the best was at the top. And it would be like Chase business card, Chase business card, Bank of America business card, Wells business card, Amex business card. And then finally, you know, Sapphire preferred or whatever was the next one.

Finally, you get to a personal card. And to be clear, it wasn't us setting that up manually to put specific cards at the top. It's a spreadsheet that automatically calculates the first year value based on our reasonable redemption values and the opportunity cost of spending on those cards. So that's not something that we manually populate and decide which cards are the best of the best.

That best of the best section is just all automatic based on the same math. It's as objective as it could be, at least if you have any faith in our reasonable redemption values, then it's basically as objective as you can imagine. Right, so now if anyone wants to see that original display, we made it very easy to get to it.

There's a link right below the top end list. Or if you wanted to see just business cards, you could click the other link for that but but we i think that um showing the personal cards up front and center is going to be the most relevant to most people especially right now because because we've heard so much about how business cards are hard to get it might actually be a better display long term as well because i just i just think that people who some people just aren't comfortable well yeah i mean and and be a better display longterm as well, because I just, I just think that people who people just aren't comfortable. Well, yeah. I mean, and, and people who, um,

are comfortable with signing up for business cards probably tend to know more about what they're doing here than, than the average person who stumbles upon the page. And so, uh, you know, having those people do a second click to get to the business card information, it's probably not, um, kind of surprise them or be much a barrier for them and might be more relevant to more people who show up to the page. I don't know. I think that might, might be a good point. So now those business offers are filtered out of the, the, uh, the, the table at the top, just at the top. I mean, you'll still find them below in the bank by bank sections.

And so it's still all there. Yeah. And again, it's not something we manually decided, okay, this card should be at the top and this card should be next. It's just the best personal offers. Again, it's all very mathematical. It's not something we manually go in there and change every now and then. When the offer changes on a card and we put the new offer information in, it automatically calculates the first year value and that sort of stuff. Right. So we're pretty confident that Chase business cards are hard to get right now. Right. Does that apply to anybody else? That's the question, right? So we don't have much data on that, do we? I mean...

Not really. I mean, we had somebody who commented on that post who said that they recently got a Bank of America business card. They recently got a Citibank business card. I know somebody commented just a few days ago on a Capital One post that I wrote saying that they applied for and got approved for a Capital One Spark card. So, and you know, anecdotal one here and one there is difficult to draw any kind of big conclusions from. But I will say that we've always said that positive data points are more meaningful than negative. So one data point showing that something is doable shows that it's possible, even if it's

not, you know, widely available. So, so, you know, that's, I, you know, you look at it and say, at least it's possible to get approved with the other ones. So, so we want to hear from listeners, you know, if you've signed up for any business cards lately, let us know. Were you approved? Were you denied? Obviously, either of those scenarios could have happened pre-pandemic as well.

But if we hear a lot of data points of denials, that'll be useful information. If we hear a few data points of approvals, as Nick was saying, that'll be useful to know. And we'll be able to hopefully give better information to people about like hey maybe it is worth signing up for bank of america or u.s bank or you know whatever business cards and we didn't know that because we had heard anecdotally that they were hard to get before but uh right and and to to kind of solidify why this is important it's important because business cards don't add to your 524 count from most issuers.

Now, that's not true from Capital One, but for most issuers, if you sign up for a business card, apply for a business card, it's not going to show up on your personal report. So not going to add to your 524 count. So that's appealing because it means you can open up a new account without it counting as a new account against you when you apply for a Chase card. Eventually down the road when Chase becomes a little bit easier on their approvals again. And there are other advantages to having a business card. It's not going to count towards your utilization percentage, et cetera. And anecdotally, there's other banks that seem to be sensitive to how many cards you've opened in the past 24 months or so. And they also won't see these business cards except for Capital One business

cards. So yeah. Although I will say I found that Bank of America data point interesting because I feel like over the last year or two, I've heard more and more data points from people who've had difficulty getting Bank of America business cards. I know I've heard the same data point from a few people. My wife ran into it with the Alaska business card. They wanted her to open a CD or something in order to be able to open it. And I've heard other people say the same thing, that they wanted some sort of money on deposit in order to be able to open it. So I don't know. I don't know if Bank of America is as easy as one data point suggests.

Maybe it is, or maybe certain cards are easier than others in the current environment. So those are all things. I mean, again, it's, it's, I mean, again, it's hard for us to know because, so I got approved not, not long ago for the, what was it?

The cash rewards business card and no problem getting approved instantly on that one. Of course, I have a fairly long history with bank of America, have, have money with them and everything. So I've opened a lot of cards with the same card and the same day with them.

I've done that too. Don't tell them. Okay, all right. We'll leave that to you, Dylan. They've cracked out on that game. But, you know, I don't know. So hearing more would be great. I think the Fre miler team should,

should like have a concerted effort to sign up for a business cards from a rebank and see if we could generate our own data. You know, I want to hear it. Yeah. Baby Reyes can get approved for a couple of business cards for a business card straight out of the womb. Baby too.

You know, we'll see if they get approved or not. I'm sure capital one will probably approve them, but it seems like they like to approve people that don't have very much credit history. They're not so much into the people who've been opening a lot of cards. Yeah. So we'll see. I think that it's interesting nonetheless. I think that I expected really there to be more of a crackdown on approvals in general. I thought that probably getting new credit cards would be harder. I thought it was an interesting point in your post that you said apparently the banks seem to think that

businesses are more likely to default than consumers. And it's kind of a funny line because, yeah, I mean, if you don't have the money, you don't have the money, right? It's still the individual backing it either way, right? Right. But at the same time, it makes sense that, you know, when people are applying for business cards, it's usually because they actually have a business that they need it for. Maybe not our listeners, but, you know, I would say,

at least that's the bank's expectation. And so assuming that that business is not going to be pulling in the revenue or that it might not pull in the revenue that the applicant thinks, that's a reasonable assumption. It sure is. It sure is. And I think anecdotally, I have heard some reports from some other banks of people having difficulty with various cards. And again, like we said before, it's always going to, the utility of those data points varies a little bit until we get more. So feel free to share your data points. We're particularly interested in business cards, but also when you have relevant data points on other cards, it's always good to know what people are getting approved for or not approved for so we can sense out any kind of patterns. I don't know.

They'll be easy to determine, but it's always good to hear. And again, don't get too caught up on whatever they tell you for the reason. I think we're more interested in seeing how many people are approved and particularly business cards. Did you have a business that was long established? A brand new business? Is it a business or a business?

And that sort of thing. Right, right. So good. So that was our second in a row main event where we talked about something we know very little about. Last week, we talked about booking stay booking vacation stays for four or more people, which is something neither of us have done much of.

And now it's about which business cards you can't get, even though we haven't tried very hard. Nobody knows. So find out soon, hopefully. So that brings us then to the next segment of the week, which is post roast. So this is the segment if you're new, this is the segment where we each pick a little post of the other person's or something out of a post from each other to kind of roast a little bit. So last week, I think that Greg went first. And so I'd kind of like to make him go first again. But this week, I think I'm going to go first

and let him clean up for a second for whatever his post roast is. So my post roast this week, it's about Greg's post. So on Monday, Greg, you wrote a post about the world's best hotels that you can book with points. And so you took some lists.

In the domestic U.S. I'm sorry, yes. You took the domestic U.S. properties from Travel and Leisure, which wrote lists of the various best hotels in the world. So you took them from the best hotels in the United States, the best, I'm sorry, the best city hotels in the United States, the best resorts in the United States, and what was the third one? It was best spas.

So we wouldn't have gotten the Mirabals if I hadn't included that list. Right, right, right. So you took the lists from travel and leisure that were the world's best, or I'm sorry, the best in the U.S., the 15 best city hotels, 15 best resorts, 15 best spots. And you said, okay, out of all that, which of those out of the best ones are bookable with points, which is kind of an interesting thing.

Okay, thanks. Yeah, so kind of interesting. That's the roast. All right, so now we'll move on. So we're not done. We're not done. We're not done here. It was only kind of interesting, and that hurts.

Right, right, right. Right, right. No, no, no. It was more than kind of interesting. It was very interesting looking through. I mean, it's always kind of fun to dream a little bit and take a look at what you can book with your points. And there were some interesting finds in there,

particularly with choice points, a couple of places that look really cool that you can book with choice points. And there were some interesting finds in there, particularly with choice points, a couple of places that look really cool that you can book with choice points. So I thought that was neat, but I just want to go into the methodology a little bit here. So your methodology was, I think, excellent. Your methodology was great, but it was based on the travel and leisure articles, their 15. And I looked at that and I was like, all right, I kind of compared it. I'm looking for a double stroller because I'm about to have another baby. Right. So I've looked at a lot of different posts on the internet about like the 10 best double strollers. But every time I look at one of those lists, it's like all affiliate

links. And I look at it and I say, okay, are these really the 10 best strollers? Or are these the 10 that paid the best commission to somebody? So I look at that list from travel and leisure. And I was immediately a little bit skeptical because I'm like, are these really the best? How did they determine that? Who's paying what? And then I saw that the Kempton Lop here in Beverly Hills was like number four on the best city hotels in the United States.

Now I commented on the post because I stayed there last year and the hotel is fine. It's fine. If you go there, don't go there and say, oh, Nick said that this is a horrible hotel. Nick is crazy. It's a great hotel.

It's a fine hotel. Nick is crazy. It's a great hotel. It's a fine hotel. There is nowhere near or there's no universe where that is the number four city hotel in the United States. First of all, it's like in the middle of nowhere. There's nothing nearby. Oh, really? If you've got a car, it's fine, I guess, which is L.A. in general. But it's not like an awesome part of L.A.

Like you're like surrounded by all sorts of cool stuff. It's not like right on Rodeo drive or anything like that. And so I look at it and I say, the hotel isn't special. The location isn't, how did that become the number four? So I was immediately skeptical of the list. Are you skeptical of those kinds of lists? Oh yeah, very much. I, I, uh, you know, in seeing your comment on my post, I kind of regret it. I had planned to, and I just forgot, to write like a part of the intro saying, you know, basically, you have to, you know, realize that these lists aren't like real. It's not like somebody went to every hotel in the world and rated every one and picked the 100 best. Whatever data source they have, it's going to be biased by a number of things, even if they're not driven at all by advertising revenue or anything like that. Because it's different people going to different ones.

And so they're going to, they're going to rate them differently. And that's what travel and leisure says is that they did these big surveys, but what, what makes me a little, so I'm not surprised that there'd be like a, that there'd be a number of surprising findings in there that doesn't surprise me at all. But what does surprise me, some of the, some of the information on the, on the top hundred worldwide list kind of surprised me because when you read their methodology, they have a page on their magazine about the methodology for this.

And it says how they did this survey and they weeded out any that, you know, that appeared to be like fraudulent or you know people uh stacking the votes um and then they said they weeded out ones that didn't have enough votes in there okay so how did necker island get on this list right right because there couldn't have been too many votes for necker Island, right? I mean, all what, 10 of them that stay each week or whatever it is? Necker Island's only open to guests for celebration weeks, like about eight weeks of each year. There's like 15 rooms. And so, I mean, there's not a lot of potential people so like eight weeks were there enough

people that filled out the survey that also went to negro island that's that's just seems unlikely questionable but you know but maybe travel and leisure uh skews heavily towards the rich crowd and uh i can believe that and uh and and so maybe, maybe they have, I don't know. I don't know. Did you complete your travel and leisure survey when you left? You remember seeing that one? No.

Didn't leave it on your pillow there on the way. It doesn't seem like a very Necker Island thing to do to give you a survey from travel. I don't, I don't think they give any of these when you're leaving a hotel. I think it's something they reach out separately and say, which of these have you been to and blah blah blah but um anyway yeah no that's that's so that's a very legitimate point the source is questionable but i do think it's fun to look at which ones are bookable with points which ones give you good value with points things

like that so and it it is and a couple of those places look really cool that hotel emma in san antonio looked really cool yeah i looked at the pictures stuff i was like there's a number one that looked really awesome uh i was disappointed that so in my list uh i found 10 out of 45 that were points bookable eight of them were city hotels which is not really what i'm looking for right now i wanted to find res. None of the resort lists showed up. And then two of the spas and that was the two Marival's that were on the list. Of course, if they redid the survey, I'm sure in 2021, there's a good chance that the new Marival will show up on that list. The top 15, we'll see. I thought that their lists very heavily skewed towards places that sound indie and boutique-y, which, you know, it's great if you like those kinds of

things, but it seemed like either they were doing something on a kickback basis or they were looking to specifically avoid, you know, the Marriott, whatever city. No, I mean, I thought you had a great point about how, how could it be that there's no park Hyatt's on this, you know, what, or St. Regis? I mean, come on. Yeah, I mean, what, or, or St. Regis. Yeah. I mean, I had a hard time believing it. No, it's Carlton. No,

no St. Regis. I mean, there's gotta be one of them. Everett's Carlton half moon day looks amazing out in California. I mean, yeah. Fairmont and San Diego. You said there's plenty of places that I felt like very well could be near the top that, uh, that weren't on the list at all. Right. So, uh, that weren't on the list at all. Right. So, um, in the,

I'll give you a preview of, of upcoming the, uh, top hundred list, uh, does include some St. Regis is some Ritz is some, um,

uh, Waldorf's. So, uh, you get a little hit and action in there. Um, places where you can use a free weekend night certificate. All right.

I like that. The actual free night kind IHG, if you're listening, right. Places where you can use a free weekend night certificate. All right. I like that. The actual free night kind, IHG, if you're listening, right? It's not a buy one, get one coupon that Hilton gives you, IHG. All right. Keep going. So on the 100 list, there's more a hundred, you're going to have more than the 10, but it's kind of fun going through them. Like I look up each property. I mean, some of them I know if I see St. Regis, okay. I know that's bookable with Marriott points, but there's a lot of them where it's more like a treasure hunt. And like, so I, I, I Google for the name of it. And what I do, here's, here's what I do is I, look at the Google results, and I actually scan past the hotel page to see if any of the pages advertising it are something I recognize like SLH. So often that'll be my first indicator, ooh, this is an SLH property. Then I have to go to the website that shows all the SLH properties that participate

in the Hyatt thing and try to find it there. When I find both of those, it's like, Eureka, I won. I found another one. It's a fun treasure hunt. It is. It is. Same thing with the I prefer program, which is what Choice has some of those I prefer properties. Same so same exact thing,

you find that it belongs to that, then you got to go check, okay, is it a participating one, and you win when it is. In both cases, I find both kinds, you know, ones that are and ones that aren't participating. Anyway, yeah, yeah, that's, that's neat. And also a lot of the other places that are autograph collection or luxury collection or whatever else you might not initially see in the title on the travel and leisure site i think so ones that are bookable with marriott points so yeah that that's fun and neat and uh so there's good hunting to be done there and nothing else it's kind of fun to imagine future trips at some of those different places. So my roast there was very light.

It was just that I thought that the original list itself was kind of questionable in terms of whether or not those are really the best places. I wouldn't get too excited about that because it appears number four. Totally agree. All right. So you can't delay any longer.

It's time to roast you. Okay, I tried. All right, here we go. You wrote something like chase freedom versus freedom unlimited which should you get yeah and it's so true okay okay we established that we're done pretending i'm a reader who's thinking about getting one of them because it's they are the best ever offers we've seen for these guys. Assuming you could do a fair amount of groceries. Not even an unreasonable amount of groceries.

You don't have to do all that much grocery spend. It's an amount, $12,000 worth of grocery spend over a year is something that most families could do naturally without any gift cards. But Chase is not hard with gift cards in these situations, so you could throw those in as well. Anyways, so I'm picturing i'm someone in that situation i want to apply for one i want to i need some help making that decision so i go to your post thinking there's going to be like a nice little summary saying here's the advantages of the freedom here's the advantage of the freedom unlimited what no i had to read paragraph after paragraph after paragraph and you did have that information in there but it's kind

of buried and i would like to see a little you know summary like you know overall freedom here's the advantage of getting that freedom unlimited getting that and then that's a great idea so that's a little there you great idea so that's a little there you go that's that's my little wrestle there i have one little bonus roast which is okay all right bonus roast is is uh you know you really should have supported today's content by signing up for the chase ink card instead of the freedom Well, given the fact that the credit limit granted on the Freedom was $500, I'm not really sure that the Freedom Unlimited

or the Chase Inc. Business Unlimited had much of a chance in that case. I'm thinking that they weren't particularly generous on that. Right, probably not, yeah. Yeah, so not much of a chance there. But yeah, you're right. That information was in there and it wasn't necessarily in a very clear,

standout-y kind of a place. I mean, there's that place called bottom line that kind of summarizes the main idea down at the end. And so I think I did kind of explain. But in the bottom line section now, I'm not looking at the post. I think that I just explained that I would earn more points with the Freedom Unlimited.

Yeah, I think you sort of explained your decision at a high level, but you didn't give a summary of the... No, you're right. I wish I could fight back. I'd like to be able to fight back at my post-ros, but I think you got me there. All right, zing.

I'll agree with you there. Zing, ouch. Okay, done. All right, let's move. We'll improve that for round two of that. Let's move on to question time. Question of the week. Okay, so question of the

week here, I got to pull it back up because I, we talked about one of them that I had kind of earmarked earlier, but I have another one that actually goes to the question about the freedom or freedom unlimited that we were just talking about here. Sorry for the momentary stumble because I forwarded it to myself, but apparently, oh, I did do it right. There we go. All right. So the question has to do with this. So the new Freedom and Freedom Unlimited offers that Greg just mentioned that I wrote about, if you missed it somehow at the end of last week, those cards are offering for the first year, 5X on up to $12,000 in grocery spend, plus the usual 20,000 points after you spend $500. So altogether at the end

of the year, you could have a whole bunch of chase points. If you just did the five X grocery spend, you'd end up with 80,000 points on either offer, right? Neither offer exactly freedom or freedom unlimited. So, and a lot of people have asked me, by the way, if you have the freedom, if you can get the freedom unlimited, or if you have the freedom unlimited, if you can get the free, yes, you can. If you don't have the card right now you can get it the rule on chase cards is you can get the welcome bonus once every 24 months and you also cannot currently have that specific card open and open it again so if you have a freedom card right now and that card is still open you can't open another free so just be clear that's different than the sapphire rule where the sapphire

rule they look across like you can't you can't have opened a sapphire preferred recently and then and then hope to get the sapphire i don't remember what i said first you can't get open the sapphire preferred and then get the reserve or vice versa like you have to wait the 48 months in either case with that and you can only have one or the other whereas the freedom cards you can have both freedom cards and you can get the welcome bonus on both cards. So if you have the Freedom right now, you can open up the Freedom Unlimited and get the welcome bonus. That's fine. As long as you haven't had a welcome bonus on that card in the last 24 months, you can get Freedom Unlimited. So they're totally separate products. I just mentioned that because I feel like that question came up a number of times in different

forums this week. So hopefully that's clear for people now. So, so that out of the way. Larry K asks, Nick, isn't one important consideration for these offers, whether or not you or your player two already has an Amex gold card? For many people, the opportunity cost of shifting grocery spend to take advantage of these new offers will swallow up the value of the offer for those sensitive to 524. I think the people this is ideal for are those who do not have or whose family member does not have an Amex Gold, and you can put the 12K in groceries on it fairly easily. So, oh, I'm sorry. He went on to say, in things like grocery stores that they value almost like cash and are afraid to do so with Amex or who use up their 25K with Amex. So basically to boil it down,

Larry's question was, are these offers worth considering if you've already got an Amex Gold in your household because you've already paid the annual fee, paid the 250 for the Amex Gold. So is it worth opening up one of these cards when you already have 25K at 4X? Should you still consider this

is it not worth it at all I think that's a great question sort of like if we simplify things and say imagine that Amex points are worth the exact same to you as Chase points then basically the question is like is it really that great

of an offer when all you're going to get is 1x more than you would have gotten otherwise because you already have the gold card right and so that's so you're talking about a total over a year of 12,000 more points than you get spending that same on the gold card I don't actually think the fact that you spent the 250 on the gold card is really relevant to figuring out whether getting the freedom card is a good deal or not either way like i mean the question is just is this card going to incrementally get and end you up with more rewards than you would have if you kept the spend on your gold card that's that's the important piece of it and so the answer is yes you're going

to end up with assuming you do it exactly up to 12K and then move back to your gold card, you'll end up with 12,000 more points than you would have had you not done this, plus the sign-up bonus, which sign-up bonus was 20K before, which was actually decent for a no-fee card. No-fee card that only requires 500 spend to trigger the bonus. So that was decent. So now you're talking about sort of a

32k bonus which but it does take up a 524 slot. So it kind of depends how sensitive to that. So at a high level I'd say it goes from sort of

an almost no-brainer great deal to a it's a good deal signing up for this to get this if you think of it as like a 32k bonus instead of a uh i don't know what what it comes to but 60 something it depends on which one yeah 60 something 62 or 68 yeah yeah um figure. Um, figure it out. Yeah. So yeah. And then, you know, of course there's nuances, right? So like if you, um, if you're someone who manufactures spend, but don't want to do that with your Amex card, then you could call this all upside because you can use your freedom card to buy a thousand dollars a month of gift cards at the grocery store and continue to use your amex gold for all your regular grocery store

purchases in fact i would i would argue that it's probably easier to make sure that you spend exactly up to your 12 000 on your freedom card and without going over uh by doing it that way than using it for your everyday grocery spend. And so, you know, and then, and if you, so if you do that, if you do that plan, then it's back really to as good of a deal as we were talking about. Do you agree?

Yeah, yeah, I think I do. You know, I initially, I did think that the $250 you've spent on the gold card matters to some extent. I mean, you're right. It's already gone. You already did it. You decided that it was worthwhile.

But then if you get this card, you're not essentially throwing that away if you don't max out your 4X on the gold card. But I think that the way you just put it there at the end is particularly relevant because we are seeing those stories of clawbacks on the gold card. We're not on the gold card specifically, rather amex cards for gift card purchases i think it's a great point that there's literally no downside here it's all upside in the sense that you can feel pretty safe that the points aren't going to get clawed back i mean who knows chase could always change their mind on that but the way things historically have been certainly hasn't been a problem on other cards so uh so i

would think that it's relatively 12k of relatively safe MS. So 60K points, pretty easily, pretty safe MS. Yeah, there's very little downside, I think, to it. And I think that the upside is pretty substantial. Now, what I said in the post, and I think this is a key point also to Larry's question, was that I didn't think we would probably be getting a freedom or freedom unlimited new in my household probably ever because we would apply instead for a Sapphire card and eventually downgrade it. I wasn't going to burn a five 24 slot for an offer that it was only worth 20,000 points. This makes things a little bit different because before I was going to have

to wait until like the Sapphire reserve reaches the four year mark here pretty soon and downgrade that open a new Sapphire Reserve, and then what, wait another four years to downgrade that to end up with another Freedom card in the household? Or I downgrade it sooner, maybe, and I have to wait a few more years to get another Sapphire card. It's kind of annoying. So there wasn't a realistic way that I was going to build up very many Freedom or Freedom Unlimited cards in the household. This makes me not feel bad about adding Freedom cards. It's a totally solid deal. It's right up there with, I mean, yes, it burns a 524 slot, which an ink card wouldn't do.

But other than that, it's right up there with the ink card offers, I think. Yeah, I think so too. So Larry, I think it's worth a 524 slot. And I think that I agree with Greg, even if you have the gold, I think it's still worth it. If you know, if you, if you can do that 12 K spend at the grocery store anyway, which should be relatively easy. Like Greg said, I think most families probably spend at least most families in this game.

Anyway, probably spend somewhere in that realm on groceries to begin with. And then grocery store has so many gift cards, super easy. Right. Fill that one out. So, all right, that's it. That's your answer.

There you go. Done, Larry. So that brings us to the goodbye song. So I want to thank you guys all very much for being out there with us today. We always enjoy having you here each week. If you'd like to learn more about what we've been talking about,

you want to read more of these posts and get emails from us and join our Facebook group and all that fun stuff. You want to go to thefrequentmiler.com slash subscribe. That's thefrequentmiler.com slash subscribe in order to get on our email list and join up with us in various social media platforms. Thank you guys all very much for listening in this week and we'll see you next week. Thanks everybody. See you next week. Thanks, everybody. See you next week.