Frequent Miler on the Air - Chase steals the Joy of Free, extra sweetness with Etihad and more | Ep49

Episode Date: June 6, 2020

Like, subscribe, and comment! Greg & Nick discuss: Reader feedback: You can't take my Joy of Free Ricardo's comment: https://frequentmiler.boardingarea.com/is-it-now-irrational-to-hold-ultimate-rewards-points-on-nicks-mind/comment-page-1/#comment-2263474 See also: https://frequentmiler.boardingarea.com/why-the-worst-rewards-are-the-best/ 9:16 Baby in business class debate (feedback rekindles an old discussion) Greg's old post: https://frequentmiler.boardingarea.com/the-baby-in-business-class-debate/ Nick's response: https://frequentmiler.boardingarea.com/why-travel-with-a-baby/ 11:02 What crazy thing did Citi do this week? Benefits added are too little, too late. See: https://frequentmiler.boardingarea.com/citi-joins-the-party-5x-prestige-online-3x-groceries-on-premier-starts-now/ 18:05 Exciting opportunities in Aeroplan/Etihad partnership See: https://frequentmiler.boardingarea.com/etihad-partners-with-air-canada-opportunities-abound/ https://frequentmiler.boardingarea.com/aeroplan-etihad-sweet-spot-first-class-to-australia/ 36:13 How Chase introducing a customer-friendly use of points ironically takes away the Joy of Free See: https://frequentmiler.boardingarea.com/is-it-now-irrational-to-hold-ultimate-rewards-points-on-nicks-mind/ 52:56 IHG 4th Night Free: Good enough to upgrade the old credit card or consider applying for a new one? See: https://frequentmiler.boardingarea.com/ihg-sweet-spot-dynamic-pricing-4th-night-free/

Welcome to Frequent Miler on the Air. Hey, Nick, how's it going? Going great. How are you, Greg? I'm doing well. So you've been running for exercise, right? You just went out for a run and just got back and just in time to do this. Just in time. Yeah, yeah, barely.

It made me run just a little bit faster knowing that I had to be home for the podcast and it's my excuse for not running that extra mile because I actually ran a little faster today than I have been. And I was like, oh, man, I feel like I could keep going. But you know what? I got to get home for the podcast.

So there's a joke in there about you not going the extra mile. But I can't quite put your finger on it there. Yeah, but trying to, you know, I ran a couple of marathons years ago. And when I was young, I was a competitive runner. By the time I ran the marathons, I was definitely not. I hadn't run in a decade or so. So then I haven't really run a step since a marathon in 2016. So it was time to start getting back in shape. My son is like running circles around me. I swear he's two and a half. And I swear he could run a mile right now. And I think he wants to. And the other night after dinner, my watch is calculating distance. It was about a half a mile we did in the yard running around like nonstop. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. So I figure I got to get in shape so I can keep up.

There you go. So are you going to, are you going to run marathons? Or is that your goal? I mean, if I do, I sure hope I get a sponsorship from Frequent Miler. I'm sure that's in the works. Have you talked to our marketing and promotions department? Yeah, I mean, I approved that already. Oh, okay. Hope you appreciated that. Hope that was okay with the boss.

But yeah, the marketing department said yes. We'll give you an extra heavy water bottle to carry the whole way. Great crossover marketing. All 26 miles, there you go. All right, it is time for feedback time. Reader feedback, all right. Yeah. Looking forward to it.

You know what? This week, if you want, we've got three feedbacks we can do. Three? Wow, it's a big week. Yeah. Three feedbacks. They go increasingly from positive to very, very negative. Not in your favor. Not in my favor. So I'm going to leave it up to you. How far down the list of these three do you want to go? Oh, I mean, I feel like we got to go all the way, especially after the joke about me not

going the extra mile. I feel like we can't, can't slow down now. Pedal to the metal. Nick is ready for abuse. All right. Well, we'll start off with, with one. It, I mean, it's not really positive towards you per se. Because it's actually arguing against something you wrote. But it's a very positive comment overall, very positive about things. So this was your post about cashing out ultimate rewards points for 1.5 cents each. Basically, you had your on my mind post where you basically were saying, you can't sort of logically justify keeping the points as points

when you know you could have that cash. And I loved, well, I loved a lot of the responses but one of my favorites was Ricardo and he's actually assuming this is Ricardo I think it is he's actually a friend of mine who lives in Ann Arbor but I I copied Ricardo's post here and I'm just gonna read it it. It's pretty long, but I think it's, I think it's great. All right. He says, your post makes perfect sense. And I agree with you, but I will play devil's advocate here. You are trying to rationalize the very nature of this hobby, which I'll try to translate for my native Spanish. He's Venezuelan. And this is where I

actually tried to get him to leave me a voice message with the pronunciation for this because I don't know how to pronounce Spanish. So I'm going to do my best. You can correct me if you know it. But he says something like, Aminadimekitalovilavo or something. I have no idea.

You're doing well. It doesn't really matter what, how to pronounce all that. He says, but I'll go on. He says, which translates to something like no one will ever take from me all the dances I have had. There's a metaphor for the ultimate price of this hobby, the memories you'll make, the stories you will tell, et cetera. You're trying to put a price on the adrenaline you get when you see that OfficeMax has Visa gift cards on sale, on the high you get when you find four seats on Cutter Q Suites, or when you get a week in a suite at the Paris Vendome because of your high globalist status. I understand the purpose, meaning the purpose of your post. Those things make no sense in times of

rampant unemployment when cash is king. I not only respect your post, but there is no refutal that you are right. But I prefer to use my points to keep on, to keep dreaming and to plan new dances. This is a hobby that never made too much monetary sense anyways for me. I play the game for the dream to keep me looking I play the game for the dream to keep me looking forward to the next adventure or memory. And I don't want to exchange that for a pound of cheese or a gift card. I'll pay the price.

I mean, I thought that I read that. So I did know when she started what we were going for there. And Ricardo made great points. And you've talked about the joy of free before you've written about the joy of free, how there's that extra value of some sort that you feel when you step on the plane, and you know, you didn't pay for that business class seat, you look around and you're like, which of these jokers paid for it? Because I sure did. You know, so there is definitely a joy to that. So I get that, for sure. I guess, you know, on the flip side,

I was looking at it from the sense that you're paying for it now. Like now, now when I look at it, I feel a little bit like I'm paying for that seat, whereas I may have felt less like I was paying for it before the one and a half cents a piece. But at the same time, like I said, I do enjoy that feeling too. So if you enjoy it, Ricardo, great. I want people to keep playing the hobby. I, you know, playing the game and enjoying the hobby. I enjoy it too. And I guess that's where my dilemma is. And we'll talk a little bit more about that this week too, but that's where my dilemma is with it. But I mean, it's a good point that joy free is worth something. It's worth quite a bit to you, isn't it? Absolutely. Absolutely. That's what makes it exciting. Getting cash back feels more like a job, but getting points that promise these amazing things to fly first class on Etihad in their apartments or to spend a week on Necker Island. You know, those kind of things are incredible and things that most people

would never ever do if it wasn't for those, you know, points and miles, the advantages of points and miles that you sometimes get with those extraordinary redemptions. So. For sure. And it's a lot of fun and it's important not to, I guess where I was coming from in part this week was it's important not to overvalue those things because you'll see some people say, oh, I guess where I was coming from in part this week was it's important not to overvalue those things because you'll see some people say, oh, I got, you know, 10 cents a mile or 15 cents a mile or this or that. And, you know, you can't measure it that way because you wouldn't have paid that much. And that, you know, that's always a factor to keep in mind. But at the same time, yeah, it is a lot of fun. And I've been a lot of places and done a lot of things that I never even would have thought about doing if not for this. So.

Exactly. Exactly. So as you said, we'll talk about that more in a bit, but we're going to move number two. Number two. Okay. Sliding down. It's all downhill. Okay. Yeah. It's all downhill from here. So, so a slightly more negative one is from Christina. She says to Nick, you're an absolute piece of garbage for bringing a baby to Bora Bora. Thank God you were not there the same time I was. I mean, I'm thankful too, I guess. But I read that and actually I read it out loud to my wife and she was more upset than I

was. She was like, what? And then we kind of laughed about it. She's like, wow, an absolute piece, not just a piece of garbage, an absolute piece of garbage. That's a strong reaction. But you know, everybody's got their opinions, that's for sure. So Christina is certainly welcome to hers. But I definitely was impressed that she felt passionate enough not just call me a piece of garbage but an absolute piece of no doubt there was no like gray area and she went the extra mile she did she did no black and white there so i love how passionate people get about this stuff right this comment reminded me the funny thing is too i mean your post had very little to do with very little bora bora trip but you did mention it how passionate people get about this stuff. Right. This comment reminded me, the funny thing is too, I mean,

your post had very little to do with Bora Bora trip, but you did mention it. This reminded me of the other controversy that came up about probably about a year ago where you had written about bringing your baby on business class flights. And some people were vocally, you know, adamantly against that and said things that maybe not quite as harsh, but well, maybe they were, I can't remember exactly, but somebody did threaten to throw a drink on my son the next

time he saw us on a plane. So, so they were, they were, they were passionate also. It was another passionate crowd. That's yeah, that was pretty bad. And, so they were, they were, they were passionate also. It was another passionate crowd. That's yeah, that was pretty bad. And, and, uh, lest anyone doesn't know where I stand on the issue. Uh, I was so upset by the, those comments back then that I wrote whole posts about why I thought it was good and why, why, you know, uh, I fully supported, you know, um, what Nick chose to do and what anyone chooses to do in that case.

And I think maybe you wrote another post as well on that topic. I can't remember how that all went. I guess I did, yeah. I don't think the first post was really all that much about traveling with a baby. It was just like in there. And then there was such a strong response that, yeah, we, we each ended up writing a little. Oh, now I remember your, yeah. You had a fantastic post about building memories and everything. Yeah. I thought it was

fantastic. Yeah. So, so if anyone's listening, try to dig that up. Maybe we could get that in the, in the notes of the video and the podcast, link to link to those posts that was a fantastic post okay should we move on to real stuff we should so what what's going on this week what well it's oh go ahead you know you were about to do it i know well i i was i was i was about to ask well i'll i'll ask the question you'll ask, right, right. What crazy thing did Citi do this week? Well, Citi this week decided that they're going to move up the new benefits on the Premier. And by that, I mean the 3X at grocery stores and 3X at restaurants, take out all the rest of that too. And so they decided they were going to implement that in August, August 23rd, I think, and they

decided on June 4th to implement that as of June 2nd, two days prior to that. Why June 2nd? I have no idea. Why not the 1st? Who knows? They picked the 2nd and they decided not to announce it until a couple of days later, but the crazy thing is like, too little, too late, Citi. I mean, where have you been the last two months? At this point now, everybody's got a card in their wallet that earns better than three thank you points at the grocery store. So crazy in that they were really increasing the value of this card, but it's too little, too late at this point. Now in August, when they were originally going to launch this,

it probably still would have been a fairly big deal because at that point, they wouldn't have had very much competition. But this month, who's pulling out the premier at the grocery store? I mean, there's just too many other things that earn more than that. 5X on the CSR up to 1500 bucks. 6X Marriott, I would probably value around the same as the 3X, if not better, depending on how you're going to use them. Could go either way on that, I guess. Hilton, 12x. I mean, my goodness, come on. The 3x in the city is not going to do much. How fast things change, right?

I mean, it is amazing. Because when Citi announced these upcoming changes for August, we were very excited about. We were. Finally, there's a transferable points currency that gets heavily bonused at grocery stores uncapped, whereas the Amex Gold was the only other player in that game, and that one's capped. And so we were excited, but now, as you said,

everybody's bonusing grocery stores this summer, so 3AX is pretty much the worst you can do. It's just not like, yeah, I mean, the worst you can do apart from having a card that earns no bonus at the grocery store, basically. And they also added 5X on the Prestige card for online shopping. But a couple issues with that.

Number one, the cap is 7,500 points. So it's up to $2,500 in spend. It's only for, well, I guess it's, I can't remember exactly what the timeframe on that was now that I started to talk about it, but I don't remember a relatively limited amount of time on that. But not all that high of a cap. So hard to get super excited about it. And like too little too late yet again, not that people aren't going to continue to shop online. Of course they are. But the bulk of everybody shopping online for everything is like over at this point

in most States, right? I mean, here, here in my state, things are still slowly opening up. But I think as of today, restaurants, today or yesterday, restaurants in my part of the state are open again for inside or no, I think they have to have outside seating is what it is. But they're open again. And most businesses are slowly opening their doors and things. So at this point, there's probably less of a need to shop online for a lot of people or at least a perceived reduction in need. So too little, too late, Sadi. Great ideas.

They just should have been here like two months ago. Like, where was your response? When everybody else was responding like lightning quick, when Capital One was on it like 10 minutes later, like, here we go. We're going to give you a new way to redeem your points. And we forgot all about it because it happened so, so far back in the beginning. We forgot about it by May 1st when everybody else came out with their stuff. And now here's Citi a month later, like, oh yeah, guys, we're playing this game too.

Well, to be fair, they did do some stuff with the prestige card with the making it easier to earn the travel credit, right? They did. They did. I guess. I mean, that travel credit is already super simple to use. So I feel like probably most folks would have found that easy to use this year anyway, but they did make it easier. So you're right. They just didn't tell anybody, I think. Well, right. They didn't put it anywhere on their website. No, somebody just asked us about that just the other day or last week. Told bloggers, but didn't tell any customers. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

They still haven't announced it anywhere officially, I don't think. And even that announcement today about moving up the 3X, or yesterday it was, I guess, or this week anyway, that it came out. I don't think I've seen that on CitySite anymore. That just came from there.

No, in fact, ironically, my wife has a premier card and she just got a letter in the mail two days ago about the changes that were supposed to come in August and it had the August date. Yeah. Yeah. I got that letter too. It's got the August date. So like so many cardholders wouldn't know unless they happen to read points and miles blogs, which I mean, let's be real. There are a lot of people they market these cards to that are not reading blogs to figure out how to use their points. I mean, I have family members who have earned millions of points over the years and always use them to redeem for gift cards because they have no idea how to use them points and miles

for transfer partners. I've got to imagine that many, if not most of Citi's customers might be in that boat. So lots of people that would have no idea unless they happen to read Points and Miles books. Right, right. Why would you not want the benefit of that? Right, I don't understand. Like emails don't cost anything. I mean, just send all, you know,

maybe you have some customers where you don't have email addresses for them or something, fine. But just email everyone where you do. Let them know. I mean, they want to know. Take some credit for everyone where you do. Let them know. They want to know. Take some credit for doing something good. That's the thing.

You'd think they'd want the marketing boost from that, right? I mean, they're paying a PR company to email the bloggers. You would think that they could pay their own marketing department to email their own customers, right? Yeah. I don't know. Who am I? Crazy, crazy.

I don't know. We love you, Citi. But, Citi, if you're listening, I'd also like to see you do something like Chase did, make your points redeemable for cash for 1.25. You know, I got excited for a hot second because at the bottom of that email from the PR people, it was like, just a reminder, you can use your points to pay for purchases. And you can read more about it here. And I clicked the link and there was nothing specific about it at all. And it didn't explain there even what the rate is. It doesn't tell you anywhere what the rate is for redeeming your points for purchases,

which I mean, I know it's bad, but I clicked it thinking, well, maybe they decided to do something and they're not telling anybody about it because that would fit in for Citi, right? So I did click on it and look. But no, it doesn't even tell you how much you're going to, like what you can redeem them for. It's like, oh, you can redeem them for purchases. We won't tell you how much value you're going to get, but you could. You'd be surprised. Well, in general, they don't tell you that.

None of the companies tell you that because it's such a bad redemption rate. Right. Well, I suppose, but at least with capital, actually capital one tells you when you go to redeem for gift cards, it shows right there, 0.8 cents per point, one cent per point, et cetera. So that's very good. I'm glad they do that. I didn't know that you wouldn't because nobody can get a capital one card except those of us who happen to have had one forever, but that's right. That's fair. Not your fault. So what's going on this week? We had a few topics to talk about this week, right? We do. So I think by far the most exciting thing this week is Air Canada adding Etihad as a partner. And so now we can use our Air Canada Aeroplan miles to book Etihad apartments,

which is their first-class suites on their what is it it's on their a380s right yeah and and I flew that back in October and it was just absolutely incredible you have you have a that it the the suites are so big they can only fit two width-wise across the plane. So you have an aisle, and then on the right is one suite, on the left is another. You go into your suite, you have a long bench along one wall. You have a vanity and storage area along the other wall. And then you go past that vanity and there's a big, big like captain's chair type of thing to sit in with a TV facing opposite.

At night, they convert the bench into a single bed and you still have some room to move around if you want to get up and go out of your suite or go sit in your captain's chair or whatever there's still some room to move around even with it with it put down as a bed which just contrast that to singapore suites before this was the best thing i'd ever been on but when they had this went in those, the old style ones, when the seats were made out as a bed that took up the entire space of your suite. So,

uh, this is incredible as far as how much space and, and, uh, everything. And then also I was lucky, I think, but,

um, the service was unbelievable. So now, I mean, that's amazing. Let's, but before you even say now, before you can get to that,

you mentioned this, but you glanced over it. You have half of the width of the plane. Like you got to figure, I don't know. I've never sat in economy class on an A380, but they must fit what 10 or 11 across or something like that. I bet.

So you've got like the space for at least five people in one seat, right? I mean, your one seat is at least the width of five seats. I mean, seriously, I think you could- Like an aisle and five seats. I think five people could pretty comfortably sit along the bench. I mean, I wouldn't want to do that for a whole flight,

but, and then you have another person in the captain's chair. I mean, if you wanted to do that for the whole flight, you would have flown an economy class. No, I mean, that's, that's amazing. I mean, that's amazingly spacious and comfortable. It sounds, sounds terrific. So, okay. So if you wanted to be able to enjoy that now, you can. Now you can. So now you could be four with American Airlines miles. We're actually pretty good way of booking it. And there were some other ways as well, but American was the best option for most. But American and the other good options were not,

you couldn't transfer from anywhere except Marriott Bonvoy, which is only a three to one transfer. So now we have Aeroplan where Air Canada's Aeroplan, where you can transfer from membership rewards one to one or capital, capital one thousand to seven 50. So that's their sort of normal transfer rate. So we've got two options for transferable currencies to get those aeroplane miles,

plus they've been selling them cheaply lately. So there's plenty of opportunities to get those miles, and they actually have the awards bookable online to some extent. So the more complicated itineraries are hard to find, so you will have to call. And to sort of make things even better, you can mix and match with other Star Alliance partners when you're booking these A&A, sorry, not A&A,

Aeroplan awards. So you can have part of it be Etihad and part of it other carriers. And the reason that's so great is Star Alliance has an incredible network. And so, you know, piecing together a trip can be pretty hard when you're stuck on, you know, one airline or particular or even some other alliance. But having that combination of Star Alliance, so you can feed two of those Etihad flights and everything all on one award, same award pricing as their Star Alliance

flights and no fuel surcharges on the Etihad flights. Incredible combination. Yeah, I mean, it really is, you know, and you touched on the fact that Star Alliance has such a large network and really you can't minimize the importance of that because that means you have so many options. So, you know, Etihad flies from just a few gateways in the United States, but of course you can fly United to those gateways on the same award. You could fly Air Canada to one of the Canadian gateways that they fly to. You could fly any of the billion Star Alliance carriers to Europe to connect to an Etihad flight.

I mean, my goodness, there's so many different options to get to Europe or to Asia on a Star Alliance airline. So really super easy to piece together a big award now. So that's exciting. And the fact is that at least in some regions, their award rates are pretty darn good. So, you know, the one that we wrote about this week that's particularly exciting for a lot of people is Australia is 110 miles each way, 110,000 miles each way, 110,000 each way. So 110,000 miles could get you from New York, let's say to Abu Dhabi in a first class apartment and from Abu Dhabi to Sydney in a first class apartment. That's a heck of a lot of flying for 110,000 miles. And then if you do a round trip with Air Canada, with Aeroplan, you can do a stopover or you can

do an open jaw. So for example, you could fly, let's say from New York to Paris, spend a few days in Paris, then take an A380 from Paris to Abu Dhabi and from Abu Dhabi to Sydney from there. So you get a stop in Paris on the way and still have only paid 110K each way. So that's a pretty terrific price and it gets even better than that. It does get even better. But a couple of things I want to mention, some people might say, oh, 110,000, that sounds like a lot to me. and depending on the the context that might be a heck of a lot to you but keep in mind you know we already mentioned amex membership rewards points transfer one-to-one to air canada and amex has something like a dozen maybe more cards that earn membership rewards points and so it doesn't and a lot of

them have really good welcome bonuses so it doesn't take many cards new cards signups you and a spouse or whoever you know can each sign up for them to get enough points for a flight like that and believe me two cards give you enough for a flight like two cards yeah i mean right way uh absolutely and you know believe me it's worth it i mean the how incredible that trip would be uh for that much flying in that apartment would be amazing and um so yeah anyways i just wanted to point that out that yeah that's that the points are easy to get. They are, they are. And, and, you know, in the MX gold earning 4X at grocery stores on up to 25K per year means that all your groceries on that you can accumulate points relatively quickly.

We talked about Rakuten a bunch lately, and Greg has talked about how the Rakuten visa, he got targeted for a 6X promo at the grocery store this month that appears to be uncapped. And at 6X, he's earning his membership rewards points because you can earn membership rewards points through Rakuten, through their shopping portal also. So a lot of ways to rack up membership rewards points, a relatively easy currency to rack up in large volumes. So great point that it does seem like a large number, but at the same time, it's much more attainable than it is in other currencies. So it is a big number, but if that number intimidates you a little bit, the story can get at least a little bit better. Because we showed this week in a post how you can actually fly. If you play with the different legs with Air Canada and you don't have them all in the same class of service, then you can reduce the price of the round trip.

And so if you book it as a round trip, again, you get a free stopover somewhere. And I had showed in the post that if you flew first class on the way to Sydney, to Australia, that is is and then you flew back in business class so you flew back from Australia in business class which you can do on Etihad if you found availability or again you've got all the different starlands yeah could be ANA could be Air Canada could be whatever it is you find so and you fly back in business class that's 160k round trip and there's no real rhyme or reason why it prices out that way and And truth be told, I haven't tried to ticket it. So maybe there's a chance it won't ticket. But that's the way the tool is pricing it out. So if you fly first class one way in business class, the other way, 160k round trip. Now that, to be clear, is the normal round trip price of a

business class ticket. So if you were to use Aeroplan Miles, it is normally 80k each way in business class. But for some reason, if you fly on the wayoplan Miles, it is normally 80k each way in business class. But for some reason, if you fly on the way there in Etihad first class and on the way back in business class, it is pricing as a business class round trip, which is... You don't think it requires that stopover that you put in to cause that pricing anomaly? I don't know for sure. Well, okay. So I would say I don't know for sure whether or not it requires that. And this is why. So originally when I went looking for it, my goal wasn't to build a stopover. But so here's the thing. If you want to try and fly Etihad and you want to price out Etihad with the Air Canada tool, the problem is that it's very difficult to find Etihad flights

with availability leaving the United States that show up as available online. Now, some people have called in and agents have been able to find more availability over the phone than what you can see in the online tool. So it's worth calling in, but it's just a fact of life that it is much more difficult to get availability on those Etihad flights leaving the U.S. So instead, what I had looked at was positioning to Europe to then fly Etihad flights leaving the US. So instead, what I had looked at was positioning to Europe to then fly Etihad the rest of the way to Australia. However, the aeroplane tool just won't seem to route you that way unless you build in a multi-city trip. It'll route you the other way over the Pacific to get to Australia rather than sending you via Abu Dhabi. So I had to do a multi-city. So you use the multi-city tool. And when you use that multi-city tool, you put in three city pairs. So what I did was,

I think, Washington DC to Paris, Paris to Sydney, Sydney back to Washington DC. Now I priced that both with a stopover in Paris of a few days and also with a stop in Paris of only a few hours. And so even with the stop, that was only a few hours. And so even with the stop that was only a few hours that I think would not actually count as a stopover, I don't think it would because if the layover is only three or four hours, I don't think Aeroplan considers that to be a stopover and it's still priced out at the same 160K

with business class on the way back. So I don't think that it requires you to stop in Paris or stop in Europe ahead of time. But I don't actually know because of course we haven't booked it yet. So it gets a little bit better in economy class. And I shouldn't say that. It gets a little bit better if you add the return in economy class. So now you don't have to stick with me. You don't have to fly back in economy class. But let's say you're building in, building that round trip ticket. So what I had initially found was I was doing economy class for the first leg and the return, but then somebody in our frequent miler insiders pointed out that you could fly business class from the US to Europe, first class on

Etihad from Europe to Australia. And then the return leg, if you choose economy class, which if you're pricing this out on the aeroplan tool, there's a little drop down when you're picking your flights where you're going to have to pick economy out of that little drop down. If you pick the return flight as an economy class, then the entire itinerary prices out at 90,000 points. Now, why that is particularly notable is A, you're getting first class for 20 hours on the way to Australia from Europe to Abu Dhabi to Sydney. So that's amazing for 90K in and of itself. That sure is. And you can do it with a business class flight to Europe and a stopover in Europe on the way. So you could stop in London or Paris or Zurich or wherever it is

you want to go in Europe and continue on to Australia from there for 90,000 points and then throw away the return. If you don't want to fly an economy class on the way back, throw it away and book something else. You're paying 90K one way, mostly in first class to Australia. I mean, that's a terrific price for first class to Australia. So especially for a currency that's super easy to put together. So I think that this is definitely worth a look and there's gonna be links in the notes of this episode, both on YouTube and on the various podcast platforms. So check the notes for links to the posts because that's a great, great deal that we didn't actually highlight

the 90K option within the post. That was something discussed in our Frequent Miler Insiders Facebook group, which is a good idea to join that because I found the fact that, A, you could return in business class for 160K round trip for the business class price. You can fly a lot of first class, but we didn't put that in the headline on purpose. Rather, we posted that into our Frequent Miler Insiders group so that our Facebook fans could

find some of that information and get a chance to book that hopefully before it gets too blown up out there. So some of those details, you're going to want to join our Facebook group and read our posts carefully and take a look at the comments to find those types of tips. That's a great point. So let me ask you something else about Aeroplan. If I remember right, they used to allow more stopovers than one on a round trip award. And I think they've promised to bring that back. They had said that they were going to, yeah, but that was last September when that changed. So they used to allow on a round trip, two stopovers and an open jar or something ridiculous like that.

So you could really set up like a little mini round the world tickets. That's what I was thinking that even without these tricks to reduce the price, getting a round the world ticket for 220,000 in first class. Yeah. Yeah. It is fantastic. It is. I think that's, that's cheaper than, than ANA's first class it is probably yes it is i priced out the distance band and yeah it would be significantly less than the a and a first class around the world so if you could do two stopovers that would be pretty big now the difference is with a and a you can do eight stopovers on right right right so you'll love more stopping on that but still yeah but two stopovers in an open jaw would give you essentially three uh three cities right that you could go to so yeah it's still not right it's not quite as good

as good but it depends how much time you have and how many places you want to visit or can visit i mean realistically how many people have time for a uh around the world with all those extra stops so not many not many so yeah i, that's a great point. And also, you know, I brought this up, but I didn't actually highlight the fact that you can fly ANA. I think it's pretty cool. You could fly for that 220 round trip

if you're flying in first class, then you could fly Etihad on the way there in first class and fly ANA first class on the way back. I mean, ANA is no slouch either. And if you fly a new first class, it looks pretty terrific too. I mean, it may not be A380 apartments, but it looks pretty terrific. I would take that in a second. Yeah. Yeah. And if you could do a stopover, if you

end up being able to do two, if they re-implement the ability to do two, I mean, then you're talking pretty terrific. You could really do a pretty true around the world. Now, when I looked at the routing rules of Air Canada, it seemed to suggest that you couldn't cross both oceans on a regular round trip, except the tool was pricing it out to do that. So I think it'll work. Again, I didn't try to ticket one of these because I'm not ready to book yet for next year.

So I didn't do that myself, but I think that there is a lot of fun to be had there potentially again, particularly if you want to go to Australia, although Asia is also decent pricing, Asia one, Asia two. So, uh, you're not going to get a three 80 to most places. I think they only fly those eight, three 80 apartments to soul in Asia. I think I remember correctly. So it's New York, Paris, London, Seoul. Maybe there's one more. I can't remember. But Etihad's first class that's not the apartments is also pretty nice. I've flown that and it was also pretty terrific. The service was amazing on

my flight. I think it's hit or miss with Etihad. Definitely a hit in my case so i would i would chance it even if it wasn't the apartment i'd chance i mean worst worst case you get you get the best or one of the best uh inflate hard products right and and you know so so uh uh service but but yeah you if you're lucky like we were it sounds like right you'll get fantastic service too. So that's exciting news. It is exciting news. And it further cements Amex points comes to wanting to redeem for that kind of travel. Meanwhile, we've talked before that Chase's transfer partners are particularly good for domestic travel, but not so good for this kind of luxury international travel. At least

there's not many sweet spots in Chase's transfer partner collection. I think it's even a bit of a stretch to say they're particularly good for domestic travel. They're fine for domestic travel. Southwest is okay. You're not going to get amazing value, but you might get better value than you will with the big programs. But I think Amex has them beaten in a number of places there too. Maybe not beaten. I guess it's matched because you got Iberia, you got LifeMiles, a lot of different programs that have potentially better domestic pricing than United. But if you're looking to fly during school holidays and that sort of thing, then you may just need to book through United and having that

as a partner certainly is helpful for Chase. So you're right. I think that Amex's partners for luxury international travel are much, much better apart from the fact that they're missing a great hotel partner. Right, right. And so Hyatt is, we always come back to that, that if you like that option to be able to transfer to Hyatt and stay in some incredible properties, Chase has that one, like, ace up their sleeve.

Because the other transfer, they support other hotel partners like Marriott. Well, MX does too, but that's not a particularly valuable partner. And IHG is, you can buy IHG points whenever you want for 0.7 cents each or less, just by booking points and cash rates and then canceling, and you've essentially bought points for less than a penny each. So it's a waste of money to transfer to IHG, even if you're

getting a really great redemption. And so, yeah, it really comes down to, you know, Hyatt is the one key thing. But so you've been talking, so sort of circling back now, we talked last week about the fact that Chase now is letting us, if we have the Sapphire Reserve card, letting us cash out points for one and a half cents each. So the trick is during a certain time window, you have to use your card for grocery. I think it's home improvement and dining. Is that the three?

And as long as you use it for those three things, you can look back in time on your statement up to 90 days and erase those charges. And basically what you're doing is you're getting a statement credit and you're paying points such that you're cashing out your points for one and a half cents each. And so you raised the question like, shouldn't you be doing this? Have we been overvaluing our points all this time? Yeah, I mean, it's a good question. And I wrote it basically suggesting that, yeah, I mean,

we should. And I wrote it because I saw a lot of people both in our Facebook group and in posts saying that, you know, this is nice to chase to do if you're cash strapped, okay, but I don't need the money, so I'm not going to cash out. And I thought to myself, I'm not in the position where I need to cash out for groceries right now. Thank goodness I'm not in the position where I need to cash out for groceries right now. Thank goodness I'm not in that spot. But boy, it still has me thinking about doing it because I look at it and I say, well, wow. I mean, we talked last week about how you're not really getting much of a discount on tickets to Europe, for instance. And in the post that I wrote, I talked about how I was pretty tempted by the fact that you can now redeem Emirates miles for first class without much in terms of

fuel surcharges. They reduced the fuel surcharges by like 90%. And I was pretty excited about the thought of flying Emirates first class round trip to Athens for like 135,000 miles. And I said to myself, well, that 135,000 miles could buy me $2,000 worth of groceries right now. Would I spend $2,000 per person for me, my wife and my son to fly to Athens? I mean, would I spend 6,000 and change $6,400 by the time you add in the fuel surcharges or the taxes rather? And I said, no, I wouldn't spend $6,400 on that. I'd buy economy class tickets. I keep the rest of the money in my pocket. be like, and I, I gave the example, like if you gave me a bag of your money, you're like, here's $6,400, you know, spend 1400 bucks on economy class and keep the other five. Or are you going to spend it on first class? Of course I would

take the cash. I mean, I think it would be kind of crazy not to, um, for most people, cause you could do something with the cash. That's probably worth more than that one flight that's like eight hours each way. Right. So, um, so yeah, I looked at it and I said, wow, well that's basically what I'm doing because if, if I spend money out of my pocket right now on groceries, instead of those points, I'm saving those points. Boy, I better be getting a lot more than one and a half cents each out of them longterm because otherwise I should be doing something else with that cash right now and put it in a side for a rainy day or something and using up my points. So the more I thought about it, the more I thought just logically, it seems to make sense to cash out these points at one and a half cents each, unless I have a use that's much

more valuable. And when I say much more valuable, like I said before, I'm not talking about how, oh, I got 15 cents a point because I flew Emirates first class. That's BS. Because like I said, I would not spend $6,000 and change for me and my wife and son to fly to Athens. So I'm not getting 15 cents a mile just because they charge $15,000 for it or whatever the case may be. I wouldn't spend that much. So it's obviously not a great decision for me to use the points on that when I could use it to erase my groceries and that sort of thing right now. So I say all that, but of course, I don't really want to use

my points for groceries. I don't want them for the block of cheese, you know? I don't want to erase them for the block of cheese that I could buy. Right. Those things are just not exciting. They aren't. They aren't. So it's a big dilemma for me right now. I mean, I don't know. What should I do, Greg? Should I be redeeming and stocking my money away for a rainy day? Because I mean, let's be real. I can probably, I mean, I can obviously fly to Europe for less. So you take it right now. And okay, Europe, probably 120k round trip. And Europe I'm using as an example, because it's a pretty popular destination for a lot of americans that are going to travel internationally right so about 120k round trip with most programs this is about 1800 worth of groceries now if i shop around i can probably

buy a business class ticket for 1800 bucks if i shop for a good deal and i don't do that i don't buy an 1800 ticket right now because i'm like oh i, I'm going to use my miles or I'm going to pay less for economy. So should I be redeeming my points? Should I redeem it for my groceries or what? What do you think? So I introduced this segment by talking about how Amex is the program that's particularly good for international first-class travel and everything. Chase, not so much. We're not talking about you cashing out all of your transferable points. You're asking about Chase. Chase, yeah. And so I think it comes down to for you to ask yourself,

how much, like what, if you, if you cash out your chase points, are you going to be missing out on experiences you wouldn't do otherwise? Because for example, you, you would have the opportunity to stay in a, in an incredible Hyatt suite. If you had the points, but you don't have the points. So I think it comes down to that. And, and so, you know, for me, I w I would want to always keep enough chase points so that,

uh, when I'm ready to do that, that trip that involves, you know, an incredible Hyatt stay that I have enough points for whatever that might be. But I wouldn't, I don't think I'd feel bad past that point of using my, my chase points because I know I have Amex and city points for others. That's a great, great point. And actually it's a good way of thinking about it for me to pick like a category level and a number of nights and say, okay, I'm going to keep that much.

So I have that in case I want that and then cash out the rest. So I think that's a really interesting point, but now, so, okay. So stay with me for a second. So you're going to go to the grocery store because you want to keep that, right? So you're going to go to the grocery store right now, and you're going to spend money on something at the grocery store right now. So you can hold those points and redeem them later. So realistically you're spending the money, money's leaving your pocket, whether you're paying the hotel or you're paying the grocery store, either way, the money is leaving your pocket at a rate of one and a half cents a point, right? So for every 20K points, every 25K points, you're talking about $300,

$375 a night. You're going to spend the equivalent of that right now on groceries so that you can not spend the $300 or $375 later on, right? So is this kind of like the DoorDash situation where you were like, I wouldn't pay is this kind of like the DoorDash situation where you were like, I wouldn't pay $60 for a $60 DoorDash gift card, but you're going to pay three or 375 for a hotel stay somewhere down the road by keeping your chase points right now.

You mean, oh, by keeping them, by not doing it. By not redeeming them. Right. I mean, are you willing to pay the 20 or 30000 or $30,000 or $40,000 or $60,000 for a Miraval? I mean, we're talking $900 worth of groceries that you're essentially prepaying to hold those points. You're paying $900 to keep your $60,000 points to go to a Miraval or something. Or if you want to go to one of those top tier small luxury hotels of the world at $40,000, you're paying $600 in groceries now to be able to stay one night at that place down the road.

It's a really good point. I mean, if somebody came to my door selling points, I wouldn't buy them at one and a half. But part of the reason for that is because I don't have an immediate stay coming up. So if somebody is selling the points, you are, you're at the door selling the points to yourself right now, basically, right? I mean, you're buying them from yourself by spending money on groceries, right? You mean by not redeeming the points? Exactly.

By keeping your points instead of taking yourself up on the one and a half cents each. Like you're basically, every time you go to the grocery store, you're basically the salesman who's saying, okay, or the person looking to purchase, you're like, here's my one and a half cents per point. And you're turning yourself down by not cashing them in, aren't you? So are you willing to pay? Up to a point. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, if you want to look at that way, sure. So what I'm doing i guess is saying i mean it's a little different in my case because because i do want to redeem points because i have more than enough for that scenario but but yeah if i if i if i only had the amount that i think i may need for hyatt redemptions um and so i decided not to do this, not to cash out the points. Then I think your analogy holds that, yeah, I'm essentially buying those points for one and a half cents each. Yeah, I'm okay with that. I don't know. I don't know. I mean, I say all that and I haven't

redeemed any points for grocery purchases yet. And I'm not sure that I'm going to. I don't know. I don't know. I mean, I say all that and I haven't redeemed any points for grocery purchases yet. And I'm not sure that I'm going to, I'm making the argument for why I think people should think about it. Because again, I don't, I generally wouldn't pay $300 a night for a hotel. I've been happy to pay 20,000 Hyatt points a night for a hotel before, but I generally wouldn't pay 300. And that's essentially what I I'm doing if I don't redeem those points now. I'm essentially spending $300 at the grocery store in order to keep 20,000 points that I'm hoping to redeem for better value than that down the road. And yet, still, again, that $300 is going to leave my pocket. So it makes me look at the redemptions differently.

And so I enjoy the dance less that Ricardo's talking about. Exactly. I think the dance is less fun. I think Chase, ironically, by giving us a really good way to redeem points, they have ironically made it less fun to have the points. They have. They have. They have reduced the joy of free by making it seem like it costs us something.

Right? Right. And so the more you hide that it costs you something with the points right the more you can enjoy the free uh because it's not money you don't have to make that choice but now so now what's happened chase did this great thing great consumer friendly thing and we're suffering as a result of it by having all this angst about should we cash out or not when uh and and the reason it it causes us angst is that we we enjoy it we enjoy spending points for luxury right for sure and uh the more it And the more it seems like we're paying

as opposed to just using points and getting the stuff free, the more it feels like that, the less we're going to enjoy doing that, the less likely we are to do it. Right. Well, yeah, definitely less likely. And you made the point last week, you said that points that are already in a program,

like already in Marriott or already in Hyatt, the best use of those points is for the hotels. So of course, you're going to use your Hyatt points that are already at Hyatt for a Hyatt hotel, right? And I think it's probably, I feel like I've looked at it before, like those programs are trying to hide the value of the points from you to some extent, right? By not giving them any sort of monetary value, it's sort of like making the value murky. And that's where we get opportunities to get outsized value, so to speak. But now I look at it and I say,

if they gave me the option to cash the points out, it would make me look at the redemptions differently and probably not in a favorable way. Now that I see what it's like with Chase, because yeah, now all of a sudden, it definitely is less fun. My next 20K stay per night at a Hyatt or 25k stay at a Hyatt is going to have remarkably less joy of free because it's not going to feel

free, because my groceries sure aren't free. Damn you chase for doing such a customer friendly thing. I know. I know. Yeah, it's funny how that happens. Making it Monopoly money makes this game much more fun than when it's dollars and cents. Yeah, yeah. It's sort of, it's not logical, but it's definitely there. That there's, the less valuable a currency is because it's not redeemable for cash and only for specific things. The more value we get in it sort of emotionally

because it feels more like free, whatever we're getting free. It's more like a shopping spree versus here's a hundred bucks. Now go into the store and buy things. It wouldn't feel like anything in stores free. It'd feel like the hundred dollars you got was free, but not anything you got in the store. Yeah. It's an interesting dilemma. So they've

definitely given me something to think about. And I think that at the very least, as I said in the post this week, I'm going to think about my next redemption of points or transfer to a transfer partner differently than I would have. And certainly if that transfer comes anytime soon, because I'm trying to look at 2021 travel now. So there's certainly a chance that one of those transfers will come soon. So if it happens during this time when I could redeem for one and a half cents

towards groceries, it's definitely gonna make me think about it a little bit differently and say, I don't know, should I just go to the grocery store and buy some groceries or buy a gift card or something and redeem the points and then just pay less for something a little bit different?

Maybe I don't stay at the Hyatt. Maybe I stay at someplace else. That's good enough. Stay at the motel six. I mean, it was good enough for me at one point in my life. It's got the bed and the light and the bathroom, you know,

I mean, that was all I needed originally when I started traveling. So I don't know. I mean, I, I don't want to stay at motel six. Chase, you're making me think about it. goodness thanks chase thanks for that making me look at motel sex yeah so all right i guess we're lucky that city and amex haven't followed followed suit i guess you know it's funny because we kind of complained about amex

not doing something like that a couple of weeks ago. And now I feel like I'm complaining about Chase doing it. Are we just like cranky old men at this point? Are we just going to complain about whatever they do? Maybe that's what we're doing. Yeah, we're cranky old men for sure. But something that Steven Pepper found at the beginning of the week made me very much not cranky. Very cool. It turns out monkey miles also discovered the same thing, which is that now that IHG has variable point pricing for their hotel stays,

the fourth night free benefit that you get with certain IHG credit cards now can be gamed in some really fun ways. Right? Yeah. So tell us about that. It looked really when steven emailed us i was like oh this is a really interesting proposition here yeah so what he found out is that it the um fourth night free benefit that you get with the IHG Premier and the IHG Traveler cards, it literally takes away the point price of the fourth night. Now, as opposed to doing like an average, as opposed to taking away the average. And so City Prestige Card used to do that as far as with hotel stays, and it actually took away the cash price of the fourth night but so this is like that but with points and so if you have a hotel where you know maybe it's really

cheap during the weekdays and really expensive on the weekend weekend with points then if you but you could book a four night stay where the first three nights are i'll make up numbers 20,000 points a night fourth night might be 60,000 points a night. Fourth night might be 60,000 points for that fourth night. But because you have one of those credit cards, that fourth night is free. So you're getting those four nights for 20 times three equals 60,000 points for four nights. You're basically getting, you know, the, for the price that you would have paid just that one night, the 60,000 points in that example, you're getting all four nights, which is just nuts. And so that's pretty darn exciting. That is. It's very exciting. I mean, everybody was thrilled with that benefit from

City Prestige when it existed that way. Of course, that was on paid stays, so it was a little bit different. But everybody was thrilled with that benefit because it enabled you to find opportunities to use points for or to use cash in that case, but rather to use the benefit, I mean, to huge value. And so, you know, one of the things I like using points for special events and times a year when it's particularly popular to be somewhere for something out right now with the coronavirus pandemic over the last few months, maybe you're less excited about being there for a crowded large event than you would have been, you know, last year or the year before. But nonetheless, you know, you look at big events, whatever it is, Super Bowl or Indy 500 or whatever

those types of things are. And there's usually one night on those types of stays that's, you know, exorbitantly expensive. And if you can find that night now, you can essentially make that night free if it's the fourth night of your stay. So it enables the ability to get really outsized value potentially from IHG points in that ability to pick up that night for free. So you can do things like New Year's Eve, et cetera, stuff where those are your fourth night, then that could be pretty cool. So I know both of us have the old IHg classic card that does not have the fourth night free benefit

right does this like really amp up the value of the ihg traveler or premier cards those two newer ihg cards both have that fourth night free benefit i mean are those is it worth upgrading to one of those now are those suddenly a hot new hotel card with this benefit? What do you think? Well, certainly it ups the value of them, no question. Is it enough to give up the old club card that you can't get anymore in order to get this? And when we talk about that old card,

we're talking about the $49 a year card that still gives the 40,000 point free night certificate every year. So 49 bucks a year for a free night still gives you a 10 rebate on award stays still gives you platinum status which the premier also does um i feel like there's one other big perk that i'm forgetting but anyway that uh so that is that would be hard i don't think i would give it up i mean so 10 back on all stays versus i guess it's more than 25 but let's let's just call it on average 25 back on four nights days and but i'm much more likely to have non four nights days. So that's tough. What about you? I don't want to get rid of that $49 card because I feel like 49 bucks for a 40k cert is a worthwhile

trade. And I don't typically stay at IHG properties very often. So I don't think so when you were just talking about it there, I was saying to myself, okay, but you're not going to use it for 25% back, you're gonna you're gonna use that fourth night free when you can get better than 25%. Number one, number two, the 10% rebate, how often are you really using IHG points right now? How many points per year do you get back at 10%? So I mean, if you can find one instance where you get a 50k free night, you'd have to be spending 500,000 points a year to get that much at 10% back. So I don't feel like the 10% is a good point to use a lot of IHG points. I don't think the 10% back is necessarily a benefit

that's important. Now I say that if you're under 524 and you are interested in using this fourth night free thing and you have that old IHG card, you might not want to get rid of the old IHG card. You may just want to get one of the new IHG cards. You can stack those benefits and get the 10% back in the fourth night free. So I think I would be less inclined to get rid of the $49 card by upgrading than to consider applying new for one of those IHG cards. But I don't think realistically I'm going to apply for an IHG card. I just don't

stay at IHG properties. Their loyalty program doesn't give you anything. Nobody gets free breakfast unless you stay at Holiday Inn Express. And there's just not enough benefit of the program, not enough properties where I want to stay. However, if there are properties where you want to stay, and I mean, let's be real, IHG is everywhere. There's a Holiday Inn almost anywhere you go, it seems. So I mean, if they fit your travel patterns, and certainly if you work for a company where you're getting reimbursed for a lot of IHG stays, you can earn a ton of points. That's where the value in their loyalty program is.

It's in points earned on paid stays. So somebody else is paying for your paid stays at IHG properties, then yeah, I think suddenly that fourth night free could be really interesting. I mean, if you're able to use it once a year to the tune of 50 or 60,000 points back, that's pretty hot. It is. It absolutely is. And I'm a fan of Kempton properties and they do own Kempton. And so there's a lot of opportunities there. And so it does have me interested. And I think if I had enough 524 slots to get both the Hyatt card and the IHG card, I probably would do it. Well, so let's stop and think about this for a minute. I know that you really like the Kempton

Seafire, right? The one in Grand Cayman that anyone I've ever met who's been there just rants and raves about that property. Yeah, that's great. You liked it, right? How many points per night does that usually cost? 70,000. That's what I thought. And I just looked earlier today. I don't see any variable pricing on that. At least the few scatter dates I looked at. So, okay. Let's say there's not, which obviously the variable pricing is what makes this benefit particularly interesting now, because now you can get an outside. But it's still a solid 70,000 points off your trip. I mean. Right, right. So so i mean that's what i was thinking i was saying okay so if you buy your ihg points at about a half a cent each

because they toss them on sale all the time for that so if you buy them for half a cent each so what three nights so you're talking about 210 000 for the three nights right so thousand five dollars for a four nights day 250 bucks a night for the kimpton sea fire that seems like it's probably a slamming deal for the it actually i mean that's especially when you compare to the the paid rates i mean paid rates are usually about that per night so right that's an amazing deal absolutely yeah and the paid rates then would normally be subject to what like a 10 resort fee exactly so you'll still pay the resort there's a fixed resort fee and a 10% on top of it.

So if you're paying with points, you don't have the 10% piece of it. So you definitely save a lot with points. Yeah. Yeah. And then if you find a place where there's variable pricing, where the fourth night is 70,000,

but the first three are 50,000, then you're talking about $750 for four nights. Suddenly it starts to become a pretty good value that could save you quite a bit of money. Absolutely. Yeah. So it's interesting. Not for me, because I just, I don't get that excited about IHG properties, but I could see how it certainly might work out for people that are IHG fans. Yeah. And for me, I mean, there's just not enough.

So the Kemptons, they tend to, there's a bunch of them in Chicago there's a bunch in New York but there's not a lot sort of around the world outside of like some cities that they chose to populate so they have like families of hotels in certain cities so if they were more spread out I'd be more

you know more interested but you're right as far as other uh ihg properties i mean i like intercontinental hotels but they're i don't know they tend to be kind of they're nice but not not very um personal person yeah i find them very usually very impersonal i associate the intercontinental is more businessy and everybody's kind of like doing their own thing. Right. Not usually a place where you're not going to walk away being like, oh, wow,

the amenities were amazing and the service was incredible. You're going to walk away being like, ah, it was a comfortable bed and the lobby looked nice. That's pretty much it. In my experience. True. Although I have heard from people who stay in,

in intercontinentals in other parts of the world where they rave about them. So I haven't been to any of those. But so, I mean, again, a great point that if that fits your travel patterns, then the IHG card suddenly might be more interesting than it once was. For sure. And that variable pricing, I feel like, especially over the next year, might have more opportunity to do particularly well because there are a number of places that seem to be dropping somewhat in price because obviously occupancy is way low. So prices have been varying. I think a few posts on some nice Kemptons around 25,000 points a night now. Again, variable. So it depends on the night, but you might be able to really score there.

Yeah, and I'm excited about the ability to use the 40K free night cert that I get, we get with the old card, at places that have been priced out of our range now. Now, because variable pricing, every now and then we will be able to stay at them. And so I think as long as we don't get to a point where variable pricing is only up, that could happen. But at least for now, I think we have more opportunities than we had

before. Yeah, that's a good point. That's a good point. So I'm looking forward to that too. I feel like I'll probably use a 40k to stay at a Kempton. Now, I've only stayed at, what, one Kempton before. And I didn't love it. But everybody else raves about Kempton. So I'm really kind of curious to give another Kempton a shot. Because I was like, is this it? I know everybody loves these places. And I was like, I didn't love it, love it.

But I'm curious because lots of people that, I mean, I feel like anybody who's a Kempton person is like an adamant, vehement lover of Kempton. I feel like there's very little fervor that matches that. Apart from Hyatt, Hyatt people are usually very Hyatt-y. Right. You don't get that kind of love for Radisson or Hilton or anybody else really. Kempton and Hyatt are the two that people who like.

Yeah. Yeah. Although my wife and I stayed in a Kempton and Sedona and that was not very good. Yeah. Yeah. So they're, they're not all perfect. So I got to find the right one next time around. All right.

So we talked about how, how that IHG card might work if you are the type of person who likes to stay at IHGs. And so that niche product might fit a niche group of people. And that transitions me into the question of the week pretty nicely because I changed my question of the week, like right at the last minute before we got together for this, because a question caught my eye in a Facebook group that I belong to. So I think it was in Stop the Madness and Travel More in the Facebook group that I belong to. I saw somebody posted about the GM credit card. And so this is a question that wasn't asked directly to us. But in this post, the person had mentioned how the GM credit card might be worth thinking about because one of the key benefits of the card is I think every year,

the first $5,000 you spend, you earn 5% back that can be used towards the lease or purchase of a GM vehicle, or could be used for service at a GM dealership. And so they said, oh, you know, they got this because of that benefit, that 5%, then it's 2% after that. And so they were pretty excited because they figured they're going to buy a GM vehicle. And so there is a question in the comments. Shuby asked the question, is there enough meat in that sandwich? And I saw that question. That's a really good question. And I laughed. I laughed at it. I said, you know, that was a great way to put it. Is there enough meat in that sandwich? Is that worthwhile? I mean, what do you think? Because I feel like we often look at these very niche products and things, and sometimes people will

be like, oh, but this and this and this, is there enough meat in that sandwich? And you said, no, why not? That's an easy one, I think. So, I mean, if I did the math in my head, right, we're talking about $250 a year. So even if you value the 5% at full cash value, 250 bucks a year, not a month, you know? So it's not going to cover your lease. It's, it's going to give you a discount on your lease. I mean, it, you said, Oh, but I can use it towards service at the, at the dealership. Okay. So it'll pay for your annual servicing, I guess. But, um, yeah, so so I mean, it's, it's like, you're getting a little discount on your on your GM purchases is all that's amounting to I, I don't find that interesting at

all. Yeah, I didn't either. But and I saw in the comments, I think it was also should be like when when the conversation continued, said something to the effect of, so I'm doing the math right here because if you had a 2% cash back card, like the double cash, right? Then you would earn on that $5,000 spend $100. So instead with this 5% funny money, you're gonna get $250. So it's an extra $150 that you're gonna get

out of having that card over some other card. Now, I guess it's an extra $150 every year. So maybe, I guess, that's worthwhile or something. But I looked at it and I was like, I wouldn't even consider applying for a card with that little benefit because if I wanted an extra $150, my goodness, there's a whole bunch of cards that offer $150 welcome bonus for a lot less spend

or a better welcome bonus that's worth two or three or four or $500 or new bank account bonuses that you could easily get that much without even having a credit pull. So I feel like a lot of times people get sold on those ideas, though. I see people that have said they've applied for this card or that card, or you see people in line at the store that apply for a store credit card in order to get some small discount. You really have to do the math a little bit and say to yourself, is that worth it? Yes. Okay. Maybe I'll use it, but that doesn't necessarily make it worth it. Let me play a little bit of devil's advocate now, though, just real quick. So it occurs to me, so we don't have any problem paying almost a hundred dollars a year for a hotel credit card where you get free night certificate in exchange and then you might get

a 250 hotel stay right right so um for somebody who's going to be paying for gm stuff anyway you could think of you could think of so it's a fee-free card so you could think of, you could think of, so it's a fee free card. So you could think of the fee, the a hundred dollar fee that I talked about before. You could think of the fee is that you're, you're putting your $5,000 spend each year on this card instead of on a 2% card. Yeah. You're with me. So that's a fee. And what you're getting out of that is $250 worth of exciting service. I mean, you're going to pay for it anyway. It's not as exciting as staying in a nice resort or something. But it's money that was going to go out of your pocket potentially, right?

Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. So again, I think there's an argument made for someone who's a regular GM, has a GM car, is paying for that kind of stuff anyway. But I can't get excited about it. And I certainly wouldn't decide to go with GM cars because of this card right right right well you know we came back full circle though to the ihg type of a scenario then though right like if you are a gm person who always buys gm vehicles and you do your service as a gm dealership that's a great point that the way of looking at it well okay it costs you about a hundred dollars a year in order to have this and in return you're going to get 150 of free service or you know maybe tires okay, it costs you about $100 a year in order to have this. And in return,

you're going to get $150 of free service or maybe tires or whatever it is you can use that on. Well, $100 to get $250 of service. That's a great discount that you're getting every year, as long as you remember to spend exactly $5,000 and no more on that card. Right. You have to keep track of that. And you can't let it stack up too much on that. And there's another key point. When you're looking at those really niche cards like that, make sure you read through the details on how the rewards work. Because I remember on that card reading through the details at some point last year and seeing that I can't remember what it was, but those rewards expire relatively quickly. I can't remember how long it is. You only have so long to

use it or lose it on the rewards. You may have been able to stack up two years or something like that together. Okay. You don't get it forever. So yeah. Yeah. Back in a year after year and get a free car down the line. It doesn't work that way. That's too bad because I can imagine someone, you know, someone's dad has, has that card

for the last 30 years and, and, and then it's like i'm gonna buy my son a car you know and that would be pretty cool but you know i think that actually that's where i originally ran across this card and started looking at the details because somebody had made a comment about the gm card and about stacking that up and saving up to buy something or something along those lines and i yeah i looked into the details and i was like i know you can't even do that you can only use it for like two years or something like that. So definitely worth looking through all of those details and then comparing against your other options.

Because I mean, if you opened, Greg's right. You could look at it that way and say, okay, so I'm getting a little discount on the service every year. If you're willing to open one credit card a year, you could probably do significantly better, I think, with most cards. Oh, without question. So, all right. So that brings us to the

end of today's episode. So thank you very much, Greg. Great to have you here. If you've been listening in and you want to know more about what we've been talking about, see the links for the posts that we've been discussing today. You'll want to go to thefrequentmiler.com slash subscribe. Again, that's thefrequentmiler.com slash subscribe. So you can get on our email list. You can join our Facebook group and that sort of thing. And then see the show notes for links to the posts that we discussed today. Thank you very much, Greg. Thanks for all the listeners out there listening in.

And those of those of you watching us on YouTube, we'll see you guys again next week. Thank you, Nick. It was fun. See you. See you everybody. Bye bye.

Bye bye.