Frequent Miler on the Air - Citi has the BEST transferable points program* (for a limited time) | Ep108 | 7-24-21

Episode Date: July 24, 2021

00:21 All the things we got wrong last week 7:28 Giant Mailbag: Isn't Fine Hotels & Resorts overpriced? 14:53 What crazy thing.....did Amex do this week? 16:57 What crazy thing....did Amex do this week? 21:42 Mattress Running the Numbers: Best Western https://frequentmiler.com/best-western-amex-offer-spend-100-get-20-back/ 24:56 Main Event: Citi has the best transferable points program....for a limited time. https://frequentmiler.com/citi-thankyou-american-airlines-transfer-partners/ https://frequentmiler.com/citi-offers-an-aa-exit-bail-out-or-double-down-on-my-mind/ 57:05 Post Roast https://frequentmiler.com/citi-offers-an-aa-exit-bail-out-or-double-down-on-my-mind/ 1:02:43 Question of the Week: Why would you surrender the Alaska Visa? Why wouldn't you surrender it? Join our email list: https://frequentmiler.com/subscribe/ Music credit: Annie Yoder

frequent miler on the air starts now today's main event city has the best transferable points program wait what for a limited time okay all right well we're gonna have to discuss that we will we will uh and today first before giant mail, we are going to talk before the mailbag. Yeah. Before giant mailbag, we're going to talk about all the things we got wrong in last week's episode. So this is like confession time, but not the kind I enjoy because I enjoy it much more when it's just Greg confessing. Right. Although, you know, reading over these, I do think most of them were my mistakes in last week's episode. That may be true. I could be wrong.

Well, you were a few times last week. So last week's episode was all about fine hotels. And we were talking about how platinum cardholders now get a $200 credit when booking prepaid either fine hotels and resorts for one night or more, or the hotel collection for two nights or more. And here's just a list of things we got wrong. And I think it's important to know, because if anyone is out there with these credits, you're going to want to be booking these hotels and you'll want to know what's right and wrong about what we discussed. So, oh, and if you don't have a platinum card, get one because the all-time best offers are out there

right now. I mean, come on, you got to get that 125K and 15X offer right now. So go to our blog and find that. Okay. So first thing we got wrong. I asserted last week that, oh, if you have two platinum cards in your household, I bet you could call Amex and book one of these prepaid stays and split the charge across two of them. Two of your platinum cards. You're smarter than that, it turns out, huh? Well, smarter or dumber. One way or another, I called. They weren't able to figure out how to do it. So the guy I talked to said,

oh, well, I'm going to have to put you on hold while I ask around about this and came back and said, no, we can't do that. It has to be on one card. We're not usually ones to believe whatever a single, you know, representative tells you. But, you know, I got enough of an impression from that, that even if it is somehow possible, it's not going to be easy. It seems more reliable than what Greg, the frequent miler told you last week.

That's definitely the case, right? So, so let's just take that off the table for now, unless we hear otherwise. No, you cannot split payments for these. Okay, another wrong thing I said last week. I asserted last week that it should be possible to book a hotel collection hotel for one night and get the $200 credit. I mean, that seems reasonable. That seems like a reasonable guess, right? I mean, why not?

Right. We knew of going into this that you can't get the benefits of the hotel collection. You can't get the $100 credit or the room upgrade if you book for just one night. But I figured, hey, as long as you book prepaid, it should work. We heard from a reader who said he had booked it this way and with one night, and it showed up on a statement as just an Amex travel purchase, didn't get any credit because it would show up as a hotel collection purchase if he had done the two nights, which he had done before. So that pretty much proves that no, you're not going to get the credit. Another reader pointed out that it's not necessarily easy to book just

one night because depending on how you go to the hotel collection to book, it actually bars you from selecting just one night. But there are ways, I mean, I know I went in and went all the way through the booking process for one night before talking about it. So there's some avenues that let you do it, others that don't, but regardless, don't even try if you're looking for that $200 credit. And again, if you book fine hotels and resorts, you can do one night. You can. If you book the hotel collection property, you can't do one night. Correct. Correct.

Got to be two. Not only for the benefits, but also for the credit. All right. So just in case you were worried that we're out of things I got wrong last week. Oh, there's more. There's more. Another thing I asserted last week was that if you book through the hotel collection, I said you wouldn't get elite nights or hotel points if it was like a chain hotel and you put in your loyalty number. And I'm going to say for the record, I said I wasn't sure about this.

You did. I believe you did. Yeah. Yeah. And so you're not being sure was a lot more correct than my assertion. It turns out you do. So if you book the hotel collection for two nights or more, put in your loyalty number, you will, you should, even though you're booking a prepaid through Amex, you'll get your hotel points and your elite benefits. So that's really good news. That's nice. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. We're not done. Oh my goodness. Wow. We're never going to get to today's main event. All right. Well, we finally got to one that Nick got wrong last week where neither one of us. That's why you're smiling. Yeah. If you're listening to this, you're missing the big smile on Greg's face right now.

It was like super excited. I was like, how are you getting excited? That's why. Come on, I'm torturing myself up until now with all the things I got wrong. Okay, so last week, Nick said that neither of us remembered exactly what the hotel collection benefits were compared to fine hotel and resorts benefits. Clearly, we didn't. Nick said something like, well, I'm sure it has similar benefits like a late checkout and, and, uh, internet and things like that. No wrong. What the hotel collection gives you is only two things. Um, well, besides like

earning five X points with your platinum card,, it gives you $100 hotel credit for your stay, and it givesin when available, and 4 p.m. late checkout guaranteed and free Wi-Fi. So the fine hotels and resorts has way better set of perks that go with it. Yeah, yeah. Clearly much better. And clearly my mistake for making the assumption that the hotel collection was similar because it's only similar in the $100 credit sense. So yeah, I mean, see, that's why I've never booked with the hotel

collection. I've only booked the fine hotels and resorts properties because the hotel collection just doesn't appeal to me. I got to book two nights, don't get all those benefits, which of course, obviously I didn't know last week. But now that I know it, I'm even less interested. So I'll be looking at the fine hotels properties still. Right, right. So, okay. Now let's move on to our giant mailbag. Today's mail is very related to what we're just talking about. This is from JD via email. JD says, I recently booked three nights at the Ritz in Berlin through fine hotels and resorts. And, oh, let me just say, I'm paraphrasing some of what he wrote just to make it clear. The benefits seem amazing for $310 per night. If you book directly,

however, the cost is substantially lower at $260 per night. So he found a $50 difference per night booking through fine hotels and resorts. It was $50 more expensive. The price difference, he says, is the cost of daily breakfast. If you ask for a price guarantee, you'll be surprised that any booking with the fine hotels collection is not covered. So I think what he means is if you try to get a price match guarantee after booking, they're just going to say, no, that was booked through a private channel, which we know that would not be covered. He says, this is such a disappointing program. This simply means that the program only reshuffles benefits as if you actually pay directly through the hotel and opted for breakfast. Please do uncover more about Amex's programs.

And let me paraphrase that, which what he means there is, hey, guys, you got it totally wrong trumping this program. Please be more accurate when you talk about it. So that's my interpretation of that last sentence. That's more or less what it sounded like. Yeah, I think that paraphrases it accurately. What do you think, Nick? Well, so first, I'm not surprised you couldn't get a best rate guarantee. Now, I took it differently than you did. I thought that JD was saying that he was surprised that he wasn't able to get Amex to match the lower price available. And that's going to be an important distinction in a second. But so I'm not surprised about that. Amex is going to give you whatever the best standard rate for the hotel is. But if you go directly to the hotel's website, there are often member rates or buy two, get one free or blah, blah, blah, that may in fact drop the price.

And so sometimes it will be a better deal to book direct for sure. Other times, some of those cheaper rates are going to be like advanced purchase, no cancellation rates. And so you have to kind of weigh out the difference. Does that matter to you? Do you want the flexibility? And then, yeah, I mean, you have to add it up and see, do the benefits outweigh what I'm paying? Because if you're booking that for one night for 50 bucks more, it might be worth the $100 credit and the breakfast for two and the guaranteed 4 p.m. checkout. But if you're booking for three nights or five nights or seven nights, it obviously wouldn't be worth paying more necessarily unless there's something in there that's a big benefit to you. So you definitely do have to shop around a little bit in terms of the price there. But that's not, again, particularly surprising to me. If you book through like Marriott Stars or Hyatt Prevay, it's the same kind of thing. You got to book the standard rate, not any of the discount rates. And if you have access to corporate codes and things like that, you may be able to pay even less. So I mean, you should always shop around. So that's the first piece. Second piece, I would be interested in testing

whether you can get the hotel to match the price. And I say that recognizing that this is not a very likely scenario, but at least once in my life, I booked a hotel through the City Prestige Concierge when they had the fourth night free. And I was, in fact, able to get the hotel to match a lower price and to drop my rate, even though I had booked through the City Prestige Concierge. So I think because fine hotels and resorts seems to work in some different way, maybe there's a possibility if you're on a rate paid at the hotel, not a prepaid rate, but a rate paid at the hotel, maybe you could get a hotel to match the, whatever their lowest price is. That's a big stretch though. It's only a maybe at best. So.

Right. Interesting. That's an interesting thought. I mean, it's probably worth, worth a try to see what, see what happens. I mean, if you get a rep that knows what they're doing, they're probably going to look at it and say, Oh no, your rate comes with a bunch of extra benefits. We can't do that. But you might get a rep that doesn't really care, isn't really paying attention.

They're just kind of clicking around and looking. They're like, oh yeah, same room type, different rate. Maybe that would work. But yeah, I mean, what do you think, Greg? Is there something more that you would have to say about that? No, I mean, I think you pretty much covered it. There are times when hotels are maybe close to booked up where they don't offer any discounts and the rate through fine hotels and res a AAA rate, using the hotel's own promo rates, things like that. I had a chance to test this today with a hotel collection hotel.

So, you know, this was in preparation actually for calling to see if I could split payment across multiple cards. But, you know, I found a hotel that looked interesting to me that we might want to actually stay at. And I priced it both by going direct to the hotel and through Amex. And yeah, for a three-night stay, I'm sorry, for a two-night stay, the entire charge, you know, all in after taxes and everything was about $85 more using the hotel collection versus going directly through the hotel. And that's exactly, the reason is exactly what you said that, that when I went to the hotel's website, they did have the exact same price as Amex under their standard rate, but they also had like a, you know, book

early rate and, uh, which turned out to be the same as their triple a rate and probably the same as, you know, other discounts that they haven't. And, uh, so, so the 85 or whatever, 80 something dollar savings that I'd get by booking directly, um, you know, is, uh, is because there's, there's these promotional rates or, or, uh, codes. And, um, but even that, like, so, so I think it's important to know that going in, but that wouldn't necessarily stop me. Like if I really wanted that hotel stay and I have a $200 credit from Amex, you know, here's what's happening. Yes, I'm paying $85 more-ish, but I'm getting $100 property credit, which I wouldn't get by going directly through the hotel. I may be getting a room upgrade that I wouldn't get by going directly. It's hard to ascertain that. But I'm also getting $200 back from Amex because of my platinum card. So, you know, if that was the trade-off, I think I would take it. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, but that's a great example of where you have to shop around. And if you added a third night to

that, well, then the math might work out differently. So you're going to have to kind of weigh that out and see what makes the most sense to you. But there's definitely times when I've seen rates match, particularly with chains that don't offer a lot of discounts, like Four Seasons, for instance, doesn't offer a lot of discounted rates. So what you see through Amex is probably what you're going to see if you go to fourseasons.com or whatever. But if you're booking a Marriott or a Hyatt, well, then you're going to have to check because sometimes there will be much cheaper rates through Marriott or Hyatt. Sometimes there won't. So definitely look around. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So that brings us to a what crazy thing double

header. And we are just on an Amex kick today because we're talking about what crazy thing did Amex do this week? What did they do to you, Greg? So my wife has the Bonvoy Brilliant card and she got an email excitedly telling her about her card's perks, including, this is the one that just seemed totally bonkers to me. They proudly announced that her certs, her free night certificates that were earned in 2020, so last year, have the validity of them have been extended to August 1st of 2021. Which is hilarious for several reasons, right? So, yeah, I mean, one reason it's hilarious is we're so close to August 1st right now. So, you know, if they're just now telling us your certs have been

extended for like a week, that's nice. But it's more ridiculous because it's been quite a while since Marriott announced that all of those certs that had been extended till August 1st have actually been extended to January 3rd. Thank you of next year. So boy, you need to update that announcement. Right. Right. Somebody scheduled that announcement, which is bizarre in and of itself, because you'd think that somebody must've probably scheduled it in advance, I guess, except if they did, you scheduled it in advance to email people like a week ahead of time kind of thing, you know, two weeks before it's not, it doesn't make any sense. Crazy, crazy, craziness, Amex. So, uh, yeah, thanks for the heads up on that and the incorrect information.

I guess maybe Marriott was like, Hey, Amex, can you send this out? Maybe we'll get a few people to use their certificate right away on some suboptimal redemption because they don't know any better. I don't know. Who knows? But anyway, so if you got that email, moral of the story is don't believe it. Log into your account. You can see the expiration date on your certificates. Exactly.

All right. What crazy thing did Amex do this week? Oh, my goodness, Amex is just on the radar this week because Amex has clawed back this $200 credit that we're talking about in a situation that just baffles me, absolutely baffles me. So somebody reported, I think it was on Reddit, Dr. Credit had posted, I think it was someone on Reddit reported they had a fine hotels and resorts booking a $200 plus booking before Amex announced the new benefits. So this is before Amex announced that you can get the $200 credit. So that booking was existing already. So they of course haven't yet received a credit for it. They need to make a new booking since the benefit was announced. So what they did was they canceled their existing booking and rebooked the same hotel, right? Because, hey, the price was the same, I guess.

Figured, okay, well, now I have this card that's going to give me $200 back. Great. So they booked it. Of course, they got the $200 rebate. So as expected from the prepaid Amex Fine Hotels and Resorts booking. All good so far. What they didn't expect was that Amex would later claw it back. What?

Saying that it was an existing booking, not a new booking, because they canceled and rebooked the same thing. So they clawed the $200 back. Oh my gosh. What are you doing? I mean, why would they even care? But I have no idea why they would care. It doesn't make any sense to me at all. So theoretically, if this person had canceled and then rebooked like a different hotel for the same dates or had rebooked different dates, you know, then it wouldn't have been clawed back, but because they booked the same dates, maybe, I mean, I guess, I mean,

what would have happened if they rebooked different dates, got the credit, canceled their stay and then rebooked the original dates? Like, would that be a new booking now? Or it would be an old booking that got reinstated. I mean, it's nuts. What scares me about this is not this exact scenario because my guess is this will get worked out. But what scares me about it is it sounds like Amex has worked hard to make sure people don't abuse

this $200 prepaid fine hotel and resorts credit. And the reason that scares me is because people will legitimately get in trouble with the following scenario. They book a hotel for, let's say, next year. So they book it now for next year. They get the $200 credit. Then, let's say in January of next year, they realize, oh, that prepaid reservation isn't going to work for me. I'm going to cancel it. Amex is going to, and they're fully cancelable.

So, you know, there's nothing wrong with doing that. Yeah. It's totally legit scenario. And, but Amex is presumably going to notice that claw back the $200 credit. They gave them in this year. And you won't, that person won't now be eligible for somehow recovering that $200 credit from, from last year that that's just gone. So they're just moving forward. So it's basically like, uh, if you're booking for the future, you are risking basically not ever getting your credit for this year.

So I guess that's not the end of the world, but it's just not, not, no, it's, it's frustrating though. It's frustrating. I mean, you know, and like you said, it's, I mean, it's, I guess it's fair in the sense that if you book it and cancel it and get your money back, then they're going to be like, oh, we don't need to give you your money to that. And you're already getting your money back. So, I mean, I understand the perspective, but I mean, especially in the current world right now, I mean, how nutty is it that somebody is going to book a reservation then if they just can't go for some reason, Amex is going to ding them for it. So that doesn't make, I mean, you're totally right. That was what stood out at me too. I was like, wow, they are clawback happy. They are ready to

pull this one back. And I mean, clearly we both agree that it was a ridiculous clawback in that specific instance. I mean, that was nuts and ridiculous to begin with, but it makes it clear that we're going to see more nuts and ridiculous clawbacks. So that's the fear. Yeah. Yeah. So, so be prepared on that. Make sure you're using that on a hotel stay that you're pretty darn sure you're going to actually make. Yeah. Right. Or, or one, at least early enough in the year when you're booking it so that if you do change it, you'll have more time to book something else to use a pick. I wonder if that's even going to end up being automatic or if you're gonna have to call in and be like, Hey, I used it and I got caught back and now I used it again and I didn't get credited. Yeah. I can manually fail. Oh my goodness. Yuck. Yuck.

That's right. All right. So that brings us then to mattress running the numbers. So this week's mattress running the numbers. I can't remember. What is it? What are we? It's exciting. It's exciting. We always love best Western. Oh yes. Yes. Best Western. It's the best. I mean, there's plenty of good best Westerns out there. It's just that Nick and I don't have a lot of experience with them. But okay. So here's the deal this, this Best Western. Amex is out with a Amex offer. Spend $100 at Best Western, get $20 back. And that overlaps with Best Western's own promo, which gives you 5,000 points per night on a stay.

I think it's up to a max of three nights. And you can combine all that with going through a portal and portal rates vary from day to day, but we're going to assume that you can find a 10% cashback just to make the math easy for this. So let's say you book a two night stay for a hundred dollars. So it's a $50 per night hotel. You're getting back $20 from Amex. You're getting 10K hotel points from Best Western, which are worth 10K points based on a reasonable redemption values is worth about 50 bucks. So 20 bucks back from Amex equivalent of about 50 bucks back from best Western. And then through the portal, about $10 back. By my math, you're still about 20 bucks short, Greg. I think you're about 20 bucks short even.

So yeah, I'm thinking that, uh, wait, the sound effect didn't come there. That's a little better. There we go. Yeah, no, no, no not not mattress run worthy you know here here's where i'll argue that maybe it could be i guess not last year i don't think because of the pandemic but the last couple of years before that i think if i remember correctly that's western ransom promo where like all of the hotels in north america could be booked for 10 000 points a night am i right about that i i do remember such a promotion. Yeah. So, I mean, if you, if you're a gambler, I mean, if you're somebody who goes and puts money on the craps table in Las Vegas or

something, then you might be the kind of person who's like, you know what? I'm going to gamble on that. I'm going to pick up 10,000 points. Not going to cost me very much. Right. And maybe I'll end up being able to book an expensive best Western. If they run that promo again. There you go. I wouldn't do it, but maybe somebody, I wouldn't do it either. Somebody out there might, but I mean, given that, uh, best Western isn't available through any transferable points currencies, it's not that easy to get the points.

So yeah, it could make sense for someone wanting to gamble on that and who really, really wants to stay one night somewhere during such a promotion. At a really expensive Best Western. Yeah, I mean, I don't know. There's going to be some sort of eclipse or something, some weird event like that, and you want a hotel that's in the right area, and maybe it'll come.

Sure, sure. No, I mean, I don't even think it's all that far-fetched. It's just waiting for the next 10K scenario. Who knows when that'll come. Sure, sure. No, I mean, I don't even think it's all that far fetched. It's just waiting for the next 10K scenario. Who knows when that'll happen. And hoping that the stars align. Yeah, it's useful for you. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

We wouldn't do it. We wouldn't do it. Okay. So then let's talk about this week's main event. Yeah, yeah. Citi has the best transferable points program for a limited time. Okay. Citi has the best transferable points program for a limited time. Okay. All right. You got to convince me here. What are we talking? Citi has the best? I'm confused. which we've talked about before, which gives you 5X for up to $500 spend per month.

5X thank you points. That's their transferable points currency. And it's really easy to earn that 5X because it's in whatever category of the eligible categories you spend the most. Things like restaurants or grocery or gas gas okay so home improvement store various different things so so you know if you have a category like that that you know you always spend 500 on um you could easily just say that's the only thing i'm going to use that card on. Get 5X for all of that spend. That'd be fantastic. The kind of bigger news is that American Airlines is now a transfer partner.

You can transfer Citi thank you points one-to-one from your thank you account to American Airlines if you have the Citi Premier or Prestige card or Chairman's card, which I don't know anyone in the world who has one, but more likely people in the audience have the Premier, which has a great signup offer right now of 80,000 points, or they have an old Prestige card, which is no longer available. So American Airlines, it has long been one that we thought Citi would add as a transfer partner, but all these years never did. And the reason we thought they would is because they've long had a partnership with American Airlines because they issue American Airlines credit cards. And, you know, Chase, who issues United credit cards, offers transfers to United. Amex, who offers Delta credit cards, allows one-to-one transfers to Delta. So why wouldn't Citi, who has American Airlines cards, offer one-to-one transfers to American? And so finally, somebody in the Citi American Airlines partnership said, it's time. It's time to do that. And then some lawyer or someone said, limited time. Let's not do it forever though. Right. For a little while.

Exactly. Let's do it for about four months. So November 13th is, I think, is the deadline for transferring as things stand now to American Airlines from Citi. I mean, that's pretty big news, right? I mean, because I think you and I, one of us probably has predicted that Citi would get transfers to American Airlines. One of the two of us has probably made that prediction every year for like the last five years, except for this year, right? So finally, that's right. That's right here that year that we didn't predict it, but only for a limited time. So kind of interesting. We never predicted that. No, no, that's right. We never predicted it would be for a limited time, for four months. But American's a big deal because not only, A, are they not one-to-one

transfer partners with any other transferable points currency, but number two, they have a number of great award chart sweet spots. So you're talking about now, now that Delta and United are super variable in pricing, even with their partner awards, in some cases, having skyrocketed to much higher than they used to be in some cases, American has kept a great chart for partner awards, not necessarily their own flights, it's hit or miss as to whether you're going to get good value. But if you're looking to fly on Cathay Pacific or Japan Airlines, or maybe even Finnair, if you're lucky and you find availability or Iberia, you can do pretty well or Qantas, you can do pretty well with American Airlines. Absolutely.

Get a decent chart. So that makes Citi thank you points worth a lot more, right? It does. I think you nailed it. The combination of how hard it is to get American Airlines because they're not available as transfer partners from any other major program, unless you count Marriott, which has like sort of three to one transfers. So they're hard to get and, you know, super valuable for a number of different uses. I'm going to throw in another one, which is why I am particularly excited about this option, is that American has made their award bookings completely, freely changeable and cancelable. So you book an award from anywhere to anywhere on a partner or on American Airlines, and you can just cancel it, get any taxes and fees you paid back, and get your miles back. Or you can make a change to it and, and they'll charge you

the differential between the two. I think that's, that's an awesome thing. I, I, there's so many times with any award program where I hesitate to book things because often, like if I see a great award available, even if there's just like a $50 cancellation fee, like I'll hesitate to book that because it's like, I don't know if I'm really going to do it. And I don't want to kind of get locked in and have to hassle of trying to get my miles and cash back and things like that. And I love the fact that with American, you can do that now. I mean, for a long time, I trumpeted why I thought Delta elite status was good. So good to have, because it gave me this capability for free award changes and cancellations. American gives it to everybody now. And I think that's awesome. Yeah. I mean, I definitely, I think that's a big enhancement for the program. It's like you said, something that you for a long time talked about with Delta

elite status. And I would talk about with Southwest being a great domestic program because of the same thing, unlimited flexibility, the ability to make speculative bookings, to make a backup booking sometimes when you're like, Oh, I have this booking on another airline, but let me book this just in case I miss my flight or whatever. Super convenient to have that. So there's a lot of advantage there with American Airlines, no pun intended. But they're somewhat limited too, right? Because if you want to fly to Europe, you don't want to fly in British Airways because you're going to pay a ton of money in fuel surcharges. And if you fly Iberia, it's going to be a little bit better. If you fly Japan Airlines or Cathay Pacific, then OK, great. Those are decent uses, but not necessarily the best.

But you're not going to fly those to Europe. Right. No, no, clearly not. Yes. If you're going to fly to Asia, then those are decent options and they are quite strong. They're better than booking through United and Delta, but not necessarily better than booking through some other options out there. If you're going to fly Cathay Pacific, you'll pay even fewer miles if you book through Alaska.

If you want to fly or Japan Airlines, either way, you'll pay even fewer miles booking through Alaska. And then, you know, it depends on the situation. If you use Cathay Pacific Asia miles, for instance, you probably have better availability booking a Cathay flight than you will with American Airlines. So, I mean, there are some advantages, but it's not like unlimited advantages. No, not unlimited, but there, there are some like amazing sweet spots, like, like flying Qatar to Africa.

You can fly their business class, which is considered one of the best in the world and I don't know the prices off the top of my head but I know they're very competitive you probably think about 75 I think I think it's 75k I could be wrong you know it's 75k to the Maldives I believe to South Africa right yeah right right so I mean and those are those are very competitive but doesn't knock my socks off either because there are other programs that, I mean, ANA charges 105K round trip to Africa and Turkish charges, I think like 49K one way.

So, I mean, there are other options. Now, of course, like you said, Qatar has the reputation for having probably the best business class in the sky, especially with their Q suites. So, I mean, there are reasons why you might like the American Airlines miles, but does that one transfer partner really make city like the best transferable currency? Does it give them the best set of partners? I mean, Amex has got some incredible partners with ANA and an aeroplan as a partner. Chase is going to pick up aeroplan later this year. Of course, Chase has Hyatt, so he doesn't have a single hotel partner program. So, I mean, come on, even Capital One here. Capital One's got Turkish, and they have Aeroplan, and they have Asia Miles and other things that Citi has. I mean,

come on, is Citi really all that good here? Well, I mean, Citi is the only one that has one-to-one to Turkish. Citi is the only one that has, as we're talking about, one-to-one to American Airlines. You probably know better than me. I think they also have, oh, they have EVA. EVA, that's true. Who am I forgetting? Anyone else that they have uniquely? Those are the ones that come to mind. Maybe Turkish, or not Turkish, Thai Royal Orchid. I'm not sure not sure if they're an MX partner too, but nobody uses that. Not worth discussing. So, right. Yeah. So, so, so if you, they've cut, they kind of now for Cutter's program, they've Cutter's program. Okay. For airline programs, I feel like they kind of now have the two extremes for people's, how advanced they are in booking awards, right? So at the far extreme of,

I don't know anything, American Airlines is a really good program for you. I mean, previously, I used to tell people United was the best for that, but in a way they still are, but they just don't have good award prices anymore. Whereas American, you're more likely to find good award prices, I think. Yes, you're more likely to find good award prices. What I don't like about OneWorld is I just feel like there are so many fewer partners that I have a hard time finding the availability to where I want to go. Whereas with United, you got way more options. If you want to fly to Europe, there's so many different airlines you can fly if you're using Star Alliance miles.

So that's, again, why I get less excited about American. I haven't booked an American award the last couple of years. I mean, I just did recently. But before that, I hadn't for like a couple of years. Except for, oh, last week. Except for finally I did. Yeah, finally I did. But I hadn't because there's not enough availability to get me where I want to go. You know, so whereas I find with Star Alliance, it's much better, but you're right in terms of ease of use. Okay. I'll and you can use those miles to book things like even domestically,

American Airlines, you can use it to book Alaska. And I think you're soon going to be able to, or maybe you can already book JetBlue as well through American. I'm not sure when that's happening, but anyway. I'm not sure if that's starting yet. The reciprocal elite benefits are starting here soon, but's right i don't know if that's right so never mind that one i think it's coming at some point uh at the at the other extreme of course is turkish which has is the most complex hardest program to book awards with but has the most ridiculously awesome prices for certain routes which which we've outlined in various posts um which has only gotten more difficult to book this week because there doesn't seem to be a

submit button to pay when you want to book something online. So you don't know what's going on with that, but you can find it. Maybe you'll find availability online and be like, okay, great. I'm going to book that flight and you're going to click all the way through the payment page. And then there's just nowhere to click pay now. It's just not there. That's how hard it's got. Yeah. It's getting harder by the day. Okay. So, so anyway, so that was my point that they, they have sort of the full on from here to there. You're right about hotels, but you know they have made it so that you can now cash out. Thank you points for a penny each, which is if you're going

to book hotels, you're going to do better than Amex in most cases by just cashing out your points in order to pay for a hotel that you've paid for directly with your, let's say your premier card to get three X for travel. Um, and, uh, what I'm saying is pay back your statement charge with your own points rather than booking through the city. Thank you portal to get that same one cent value because you don't need that kind of headache of booking through the thank you portal. If you thought prices weren't good with fine hotels and resorts, then just don't even look

at this portal, close your eyes and stay away from that. So, uh, yeah, I mean, that's a good point. The ability to cash out at one cent each is decent. And I really do like the custom cash card as an option for, I mean, just about anybody because super easy, $500 each statement cycle to get your 5X. And so it's basically 30,000 gimme points every year. So that's pretty nice because 30,000 gimme points come in handy and that's not going to 30,000 gimme points come in handy. And that's not going to get you anywhere in business class on American. I mean, maybe the Caribbean or something like that. It's not going to get you to a different continent

in business class through American Airlines, but it's certainly going to help. So that, and with Turkish, that could be two round trips to Hawaii, if you're able to get the stars to align and get it booked. So, so I think the custom cash is very strong. What you're missing, what you haven't mentioned yet is the rewards plus. So the rewards plus adds something here because now you're first hundred. If you have the rewards plus, of course, you get 10% of your points back for the first hundred K that you redeem each calendar year. So if you transfer a hundred thousand thank you points to American Airlines, you get 10% of your points back for the first 100K that you redeem each calendar year. So if you transfer 100,000 thank you points to American Airlines, you're going to get 10,000 thank you points back.

So you're going to get your full 100,000 American miles and still have 10,000 thank you points. You can book yourself another one way with Turkish if you're able to get that to work, right? I mean, that's pretty hot. That is. it is. And even if you're not transferring to an airline partner and you're just cashing out, you still get that 10% back. So, you know, you're getting better than one cent per point value up to the, up to a hundred thousand points redeemed per year, which is, which is pretty awesome. If you're in, if you're playing in two-player mode where your spouse or your significant other also has city cards and also has a rewards plus card pooled in with their city cards, they too can get up to 10,000 points back a year by redeeming their points. So that's pretty darn strong.

We forgot to mention, I think that the premier card has like a hundred dollars back on five hundred dollar prepaid hotel booking so there's there's something there because neither of us are too excited about that and all that value well that's why we forgot to mention it but uh but but you're right i think right now the premier card is particularly interesting because they did this limited time thing with american where it's only four months but that that's plenty of time for you to get the premier card, meet the spend and get your 80,000 points. As long as you meet the spend relatively soon after getting the card, then get your 80,000 thank you points, transform to American airlines and still have 8,000 thank you points left over. Right. Yeah. And that's, that's really good. And, and Citi also has one of the best combination of cards that are available at

a low cost, total $95 per year to give you the most points per dollar for your spend. If you, for, I would say vast majority of people sort of typical round town type of spend, right? So, so with Citi, you get the premier card. That's the only one that I'm going to mention that has an annual fee. That's $95 a year. You get three X and a whole bunch of categories, including, uh, grocery gas, some travel categories, dining. So, um, those are, those are really strong all by itself. Then, um, throw in the custom cash card to get 5X in any one of those categories of your choice up to $500 a month. So now you've got 5X and 3X in a lot of good categories. And then throw in the double cash card, which earns 2X everywhere. And even though it comes to you as cash back, you can convert that cash back

to thank you points. So basically you're earning either 5x, 3x, or 2x for all your spend within the United States. You don't want to use some of those 2x or 5X cards outside the United States because they have foreign transaction fees. Thank you. There you'd use the Premier card outside the US. And then throw in the Rewards Plus card, which will give you the rebates we talked about. It also, if you have very, very small charges, it earns at a credible rate

because it guarantees 10 points per dollar. I mean, 10 points per transaction. So if you had like a one penny transaction, you're still getting 10 points, which is a ridiculous multiple, but it doesn't add up to much. So that's why we don't usually talk about it. Because you're spending a lot, a lot of pennies. Exactly.

Penny at a time. And then Citi's probably going to catch on to that. So yeah, I mean, I think for the average person actually that's pretty terrific and if you're playing in two-player mode and and you're able to do two of the the custom cash cards and so your bandwidth is a thousand a month on that and if you actually do spend that on groceries which super easy to do uh or gas or whatever it might be then you're talking about 60 000 points just off the custom cash card each year. Right.

So, I mean, and you can put them together. Remember that Citi lets you transfer partners or rather transfer points to any other cardholder. So if you're playing in two-player mode, you could transfer them over to your spouse, partner, or whatever. Now, keep in mind that when you do that, they're going to expire 90 days

after they transfer over, right? 99 days after you transfer them person to person. So you only want to do that when you're ready to then transfer them onto a partner. But I mean, if you're going to do that with American airlines here, great. I mean, if you're in position, obviously you haven't had the custom cash long enough to have 30,000 points each, but, but if you were in that scenario now, I mean, great. You can put those together, transform over to American Airlines, get your 10% rebate if you got the rewards plus. And I think for the average person,

that is a very strong combination. I mean, between the two of you, I think it's a pretty easy 60,000 points per year. And then three acts on your dining and the rest of your grocery or whatever it might be. I mean, that's hard to beat. It really is. It really is. It really is.

Okay. But for those of you listening who have already whipped out your computers to start applying for Citi cards, you need to hear the rest of the story. Okay. I've said about as much as I can with a straight face,

arguing that Citi has the best transferable points program. Reached the limit there. Right. They don't. Where do you even begin. Spoiler alert. Spoiler alert. They don't have the best program. I mean, there's a lot of arguments in favor. And so we made some of those arguments there, but clearly not. Let's go over some of the big reasons why they're not the best. I'm going to start. Let's take turns. So I'm going to start with one, which is just that their credit cards themselves are lacking some things that you generally want in travel rewards cards, like travel protections.

You don't get them. You don't have any purchase protections either. So these are not great cards for most types of spend. They do give you extended warranty. So it's not all travel purchase protections. But yeah, no travel protections. What's with that? It doesn't make any sense at all.

And the Premier, which gives you 3X on a bunch of travel and a custom cash you could pick for your 5X. When I say pick, you don't even have to pick. You just spend, travel, and get your 5X. When I say pick, you don't even have to pick. You just spend, travel and get your 5X. But why would you want to? You wouldn't want to book travel with those cards because you're going to get no trip delay, cancellation protection, no baggage, lost baggage, delayed baggage, whatever it might be.

No car rental insurance, none of those things. So if you're going to be a traveler and you want to have Citi's travel cards, you also need to carry some other travel card because the city's cards aren't going to do anything for you. They aren't going to help you out in a jam. So, yeah, I mean, that's, that's hugely disappointing and unbelievable. And I can't, I just can't fathom why they haven't done anything about that. Right. Right. Now, you know,

I guess for someone who always buys travel insurance anyway, maybe, maybe it doesn't matter. Yeah. I mean, if you buy an annual travel insurance policy that covers a lot of those things we just talked about, it is kind of redundant to book with a card that's got it. So yeah. I mean, maybe you're looking at, okay, well, I'm going to separate that cost out. I guess, I guess maybe, I mean, okay. All right. So I think the lack of purchase protections also is an issue, but because you don't want to buy something really expensive and valuable, and then I have no return protection, no damage or theft protection, blah, blah, blah, no price protection, which is not common anymore on cards. But, but yeah, it's just disappointing to not

have any of those things. All right. So that's one problem with Citibank. Right. So why don't you do the next? All right. So the next one problem with Citibank. Right. So why don't you do the next? All right. So the next big problem with Citibank is there aren't enough big signup bonuses. I mean, you can't accumulate a ton of points through signup bonuses, whereas there are a whole bunch of chase cards that earn ultimate rewards points. And there are even more Amex cards that earn membership rewards points. With Citi, right now, your options for a welcome bonus an intro bonus or what the premiere the custom cash um the rewards plus rewards plus gives you what 10,000

points maybe i mean it's small 10 or 15k i think 15 if you go in branch and you have a business i guess you could get that uh thank you business card that might have a bonus. Yeah, but you're right. I mean, it's very limited. I mean, it would be reasonable for someone to get about 100,000 points through signup bonuses, but not a lot more than that. Whereas with Amex, it would be really hard to get less than 100 hundred thousand points. Right. Right. Right. I mean, one single bonus, you know, more than what you'd get with all of the city cards combined right now. And you get that platinum card, even if you didn't do any of the 15 X spend, you just do the minimum spend for the 125,000 points. You're going to be ahead of whatever you're going to get with multiple city

cards. So that's right. And that, that same offer, that platinum card offer that we put on the blog has the 15X. If you do spend all 25K of allowed spend at earning 15 points per dollar, you're going to end up with, between the signup bonus and the 15X, half a million points. Half a million with one card. One card. Yeah, yeah.

And that so far blows away. Half a million valuable points too. I, yeah. And that's so far blows away. Valuable points too. I mean, because that's the next piece. I was going to say, and so I'm jumping out of turn here, or maybe I'm not. Maybe this is, well, no, I guess this is still my turn.

But so I'm going to jump out of turn here and give one more because the other thing in my mind is that you said that Citi is great for advanced people who are willing to put in the work to learn how to book Turkish or whatever. But I would argue that Amex is much better for someone who's got an intermediate or advanced level of knowledge of transfer partners and that sort of thing,

because Amex has a much wider range of valuable transfer partners. So they've got a bunch that Citi is missing. They also have Marriott and Hilton, which are programs I would not typically transfer to, maybe to top off an account or that kind of thing. They also have Marriott and Hilton, which are programs I would not typically transfer to, maybe to top off an account or that kind of thing. They also have Choice, which can be useful for at least a minimum number of points in order to be able to buy with their cash and points trick. So they've got a lot going for them that Citi doesn't. So not only can you run a lot more points with a single card,

they're more valuable points. They've got a better range of uses. Yeah, it's true. If I had to pick only to have membership rewards or only to have thank you points, there's no question I'd pick membership rewards. And, you know, before the American Airlines thing, it wouldn't even I wouldn't even feel like I'm missing out on anything really, because I mean, the Turkish thing is you are missing out, but I just, I haven't had occasion to book it, but you know, with American airlines on the table, I, even though I would still make that decision, I still feel a little bit like, Ooh, I kind of hate to give up that ability to transfer to American. Right. Right. So, okay. All right. Give me

another reason. Is there another reason why? Why city's not the best? Why city's not the best. So, you know, I mentioned, I argued earlier that it has the best easy to use program with American Airlines, but that's not really true because if you look over at the Chase side, you know, I talked a little about United. United is, I would say, arguably easier to use than American. You might end up paying more points, but easier to use because, as Nick mentioned earlier, they have so many more partners. And so you're going to find award availability often when you don't, through United, when you wouldn't find it through American. Also, United never passes along fuel surcharges in the award bookings where American sometimes does and and the, the big problematic one is British Airways so you're when you're when you're trying to book an award let's say to go from the US to Europe, almost all the search results that come back are going to be for British Airways. And if you click through, you're going to see you're going to be spending such a ridiculous

amount on those surcharges that it's not worth booking with miles. Whereas with United, that's not going to happen. But Chase has more easy to use ones. They have Southwest, they have Hyatt on the hotel side. So you transfer one-to-one to Hyatt and it's unlike other hotel programs, you don't really have to know what you're doing in order to get decent value with Hyatt. Whereas with the other ones, in extreme circumstances, it could make sense to transfer to them, but you really have to know what you're doing for it to work out where you're getting good value that way. So yeah, I think Chase, Amex on the more advanced side has the edge. Chase still on the less advanced side has the edge.

Good. Okay. Next reason to, you're totally right. Great on all that. Next reason that Citi is not the best program is because you can only cash, I'm going to sneeze. Hold on. Excuse me. Sorry. I felt the sneeze come on as soon as I started talking. So thank you. So Citi, you can only cash out points at one cent each, which you said was an advantage in some ways. However, those of you who have the Schwab Platinum card from Amex know that you can cash out Amex points through that Schwab Platinum card at a value right now of 1.25 cents each. Rumor has it, or I guess a notification they've sent out to at least some cardholders, has it that that rate is going to drop to 1.1 cents each on September 1st, but still that's 10% better than it is through. Thank you. So 1.1 cents each there. Great, easy cash out. And right now with the Schwab Platinum

offering the a hundred K offer and the 10 X it's worth picking that card up. If that's something you're interested in doing then on the flip side, of course, with chase, you've got Chase Pay Yourself Back, where you can pay yourself back for grocery purchases, I think home improvement purchases, maybe another category in there. Dining. Dining. There you go. At one and a half cents each. So one and a half cents. If you have the Sapphire Reserve card. If you have the Sapphire Reserve. Good point. And if you have the Sapphire Preferred, it's still 1.25 cents each. So still a better deal, 25% better deal than

through Citi. So any way you slice it, your Amex points and your Chase points are worth more cash in your pocket than Citi points are. Yeah. Yeah. Although I'd say with the Amex side of the equation, it's like, again, you have to be sort of advanced and know that trick in order to get that value. Because Amex, otherwise, it's really hard to get cash back in any form that unless you go through Schwab or Morgan Stanley, you end up with really bad value usually. That's true. So that kind of continues that story of like chase has won the, the beginner's side of the story and Amex has the more advanced side wrapped up. What else are we missing? Oh,

I know what we're missing. Go ahead. Oh, no, go ahead. Go ahead. I mean, the other big thing we're missing with city is what a confusing system for expiring points, because the points are each tied to the card that earned them. And unlike with Amex or Chase, having your points pooled is not going to help you keep your points alive. So if you've got an old premier card, for instance, and you're like, oh, all my points are pulled together. I still have a rewards plus I have this, I have that I can cancel my premier.

Well, you can cancel it. All right. But if you cancel it, any points that were earned from that old premier card will expire in 60 days. So the problem there is you have no idea which points were earned on that premier card. So it's not very clear, easy to know which points were earned with which card. So they expire quickly. If you transfer points from one person to another, again, they expire after 90 days. That's just not intuitive. And as we saw with a post from one mile at a time recently, even if Citi closes your account, if they close an account because you haven't been using it for a long time, they still expire those points after 60 days. And they are not good about reinstating

them. They didn't reinstate them for Ben. So they're probably not going to reinstate them for anybody else either. So that's a real risk and a real pain in the butt with Citi. Yes, it starts the clock ticking on when they expire, but that's, I think, a really nice feature. And so, you know, worth giving them kudos for that. Okay, I think that is enough. I think, yeah, that's enough to say this is good news, but don't get overly worked up about it. Yeah, I mean, right. I think I would summarize it a little different, which is that if city secures AA in the longterm, and if AA doesn't significantly devalue their program,

which is they're both really big ifs, then I do think that city is competitive at that point. Citi is transferable points per gram. It's competitive with Chase and Amex. In a way, it's not otherwise. And it's reasonable to have these arguments about which is best. Right now, as long as AA is temporary,

there's no good, I think, argument to say it's best. But with AA in there long-term, maybe, you know, some people would definitely see reason to argue that. And it's, it's not unreasonable. Okay. All right. There you go. Next up ladies and gentlemen is the post roast. Post roast time. So I've got, I've got-roast. Post-roast time. So I've got one coming in hot. Okay.

All right. I've got one roasting here. I'm excited. I'm waiting. I'm ready. Waiting on this. Okay. All right.

So we just got through talking about this whole American Airlines thing, but I got to go back to Greg's post from Monday of this week, where he talked about how Citi now has added American Airlines as a transfer partner. Is it time to bail out of the city? Thank you points program. And in that post, he said that if he gets to November and has not yet redeemed any thank you points that he would send a hundred thousand over to American Airlines in order to get his 10,000 point rebate. And I found that really interesting. And he said that maybe, maybe he would even transfer more. I think he was probably leaning towards not unless he finds a use for it.

But it almost sounded like he'd be at least tempted to transfer more than that. That's true. That's true. Now, if I remember correctly, a week ago on this show, you were talking about how years ago U.S. Airways had some deal where you could buy points and blah, blah, and it looked great and blah, blah, blah. But then all of a sudden you were like, okay, well now I have all these miles and I haven't used them.

And I think I've heard you say multiple times that you have this huge American Airlines balance that you haven't used for years. Am I right about that? What are you doing transferring another $3,000 over? What? Yeah. Points that you don't even use.

Well, it's not that I haven't, yeah. I did go years without using them. More recently, it's not so recent anymore, thanks to the pandemic, but I did use them for that fantastic Etihad flight, first class on

Etihad. Yeah. You have a good point there, which is, I have a strong, I have a strong American Airlines balance as is. And so why the heck would I want more of them? That's silly. Um, yeah. I mean, you know, if you aren't in that situation, if you don't have a whole bunch of American Airlines miles right now, okay, maybe, maybe that's worth it because of the 10% rebate. So if you're sitting there with a really low American Airlines balance, that's reasonable enough. Of course, obviously we never like transferring to a partner and making your

points no longer flexible without a use in mind. I'll give you a maybe at best on doing that because American is generally pretty good and you get your 10% rebate. It's still a bit of a risk because I think both of us feel like there may be a devaluation coming with American. So it seems risky to do that without a use in mind. But in your case, if you've got a lot of American Airlines miles, which maybe you don't anymore, but if you still do, I just don't get any thank you points. And so your rewards plus is sitting there saying, Hey, you need to get your, your 10% back. Aren't you going to use me? Would you just let it go? Or would you find a way to, would you transfer to something?

If I had the 650,000 thank you points that you cited, I would cash out a thousand, a hundred thousand. I would cash out enough for a thousand dollars. Just cash back. Cause you get your 10,000 points back still and you get a thousand dollars in your pocket and you're not using those points anyway. More than half a million thank you points is plenty to do whatever it is that I need to do for a long time. Still, there's no sense in leaving that and thank you points. I might as well take that thousand bucks and invest it, do something

with it. So you're getting around 1.1 cent per point cash back. Yeah. That's what I would do anyway. I think, I mean, I don't think I'd speculatively transfer to anybody because you've still got plenty of life. So you have 550 after that. So there's no, no reason to speculatively transfer in my mind. So if, if, if someone, if there was a sale on American Airlines miles for one cent each, would you just let it go? I mean, unless I had a, like a use in mind now. Yeah. Yeah. I would let it go. I mean, unless I was going to book something right away, I'm not going to convert my cash to American Airlines miles with no use. I mean, it kind of reminds me of a question or point

somebody made in Frequent Miler Insiders earlier this week. Somebody said something to the effect of, well, if Hyatt is clearly the best ultimate rewards transfer partner, should I just take the full 100K Sapphire preferred signup bonus and transfer it all to Hyatt because they're going to give consistently the best value anyway? And I was like, that's like taking your whole paycheck and buying Amazon gift cards with it because maybe you'll shop at Amazon someday. It just doesn't make any sense. Why make your money less flexible? So no, I wouldn't, I wouldn't even buy a penny each. I mean, you get down to like half a cent, maybe I'd be a speculative buyer, but even at a penny each, I don't think I'd just buy them willy nilly. Otherwise I'd end up in your

shoes. That's right. No one wants to be in my shoes. Yeah, no, actually, I think you have a great point, uh, point taken. And I don't have a post-roast for you this week because I felt like, you know, I've been winning the post-roast battle week after week. And so, you know, I feel like this week I should, I should go easy on you. Congratulations on winning this week's post-release. Very kind of you. Very kind. I appreciate that. Okay. So that brings us then to the question of the week. And so this week, I had a post that I wrote about the Bank of America Unlimited Cash Rewards.

And actually, I guess what I wrote was basically, am I going to break up with the Bank of America Premium Rewards card because of the new Unlimited Cash Rewards? The question of the week doesn't really have anything to do with that part of America premium rewards card because of the new unlimited cash rewards. The question of the week doesn't really have anything to do with that part of it though. Within the post, I mentioned at some point that I also had an Alaska card that I was going to look to see if I could product change to a customized cash card. Because Bank of America has sometimes allowed that in the past where you can convert a co-branded Alaska card to a customized cash card, what used to be the cash rewards card, the 321 card. And so my thoughts there were getting the 3% category with Platinum Honors and getting

5.25%. There's a lot of ins and outs there. But at any rate, somebody asked. And so what I want you to do is I want you this week with the question of the week to read minds. So I'm going to give you the chance to read two people's minds. So first, Alicia, you can read Alicia's, well, you have to read my mind, I guess, with Alicia's question. So Alicia's question was, why do you want to surrender your Alaska card? So that was question number one. Question number two,

the second mind to read is Frank, because Frank said, I cannot see why you would want to keep an Alaska card at all beyond the first year. Can you? So first of all, why would I consider surrendering the Alaska Airlines visa? And So why would I want to surrender it? Same reason I gave up mine when, when I had them, I assume, which is they have an annual fee and I wasn't getting any value from them year after year. So I, I product changed to whatever I product changed back then. And if it was today, I'd probably would would you know, change to that card. What is it called? Cash unlimited? Well, the customized cash is what I, the unlimited cash, if it's possible, I guess, but the customized cash is what I had in mind with that because I already have the card that earns a 2.65% everywhere. And the customized cash, if you've got platinum honor status, then that 3% category, which you get to choose each month up to 2,500 spend per quarter is a 5.25% cash.

That's right. Up to 2,500 spend. And in some cases, another reason to do that is if you already have one of those customized cash, you might be able to, to product change to another one and then have 5k of spend each quarter in that category. Right. And I mean, for a card with no annual fee, let's run the math here real quick. So the 2,500 in spend each quarter is what? 10,000 a year. So it's 525, $525 a year in cash back with that card on a no fee card, essentially, if you're able to pay that 2,500 per quarter. I mean, that's pretty terrific and probably beats the return you're going to get in an Alaska card. Cause if you spent $10,000 on an Alaska card, you're going to get 10,000 Alaska miles, which

even by the most generous valuation, it's not worth $525. No, no, no. I mean, if you valued them at a two cents each year, you're talking a $200. So, um, yeah. So, so why would, so, so Frank then asked the next question, why would anybody consider keeping it beyond the first year? Cause clearly you and I are saying it doesn't make any sense. Right, right, right. Well, the reason would be that you are getting value from the card and the biggest value perk that I can remember is that it has a annual companion ticket, which, um, I think we

have a guide for that using that ticket. Right. And I wrote it. Yeah. Nick wrote it. Um, and, uh, it can be a crazy valuable, uh, if, if you fly Alaska, um, so you get a companion for, you can add a companion to a flight for what? One $99, $99, $121 or something like that. There you go. Um, and what's so cool about it is you could do things like book, you know, uh, multiple legs to get to Hawaii and add your companion for that same price, even if the, uh, it would be very expensive. I think the Companion, if you have upgrade instruments or miles for upgrade, I think that even the Companion ticket

is upgradable. The Companion also earns, correct me if I'm wrong, earns miles and earns elite status from those flights, which is different from Delta's Companion ticket, for example, where they don't. earns miles and earns elite status from those flights, which is different from like Delta's companion ticket for, for, for example, where they don't. So it's, it's very valuable for you to use it. And, but some of us are in parts of the country where it's very hard to use those

because you do have to fly Alaska airlines to, to use it. And if you don't have Alaska flights nearby, then, then not so useful. Yeah. If you live somewhere served by Alaska, and especially if you're somebody who chases Alaska elite status with a partner, then I think that those are super, super valuable. Because like Greg said, you can book some really complex trips that don't really make sense. When you look at the companion certificate, you might just think of a very simple round trip, New York to LA kind of a thing, but you can get much crazier than that. And so I've written some examples where you could spend a few hundred dollars each and come out with well over 10,000 redeemable miles each and miles that'll get you

pretty close to elite status and blah, blah, blah. So they definitely can be super duper valuable. So I can certainly understand why someone would be like, I'm never giving up the Alaska card, but I don't live near an airport that's served by Alaska. I have used that benefit before. I've enjoyed thinking about how you could leverage it, but practically speaking, it's not useful for me. Yeah. Yeah. And for me, I mean, we have one flight a day out to Seattle from, from Detroit airport and I've just never had the opportunity to use it, I mean, we have one flight a day out to Seattle from Detroit airport, and I've just never had the opportunity to use it. I mean, theoretically I could, but it just hasn't worked out.

So yeah, same for me. There you go. All right, my friends, if you've enjoyed this week's episode and you'd like to read more about what we've been talking about, you want to go to frequentmiler.com slash subscribe. Again, that's frequentmiler.com slash subscribe to get on our email list. You can follow us on all the various social media, join our frequent miler insiders, Facebook group, where you can talk with other like-minded folks and get your questions answered. And then wherever you're listening to this, make sure you subscribe, you turn on notifications,

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