Frequent Miler on the Air - Citi reinvents the 5x card. How will competitors respond? | Ep102 | 6-12-21

Episode Date: June 12, 2021

00:32 Giant Mailbag 2:09 What crazy thing...did Amex do this week? https://frequentmiler.com/bypass-amexs-lifetime-rule-when-you-expand-your-membership/ 9:36 Mattress running the numbers: Run Radisson for the United card-linked offer? https://frequentmiler.com/mpx-earn-25x-mileageplus-miles-on-a-radisson-stay-max-8250-miles/ 14:37 Main Event: Citi Reinvents the 5x card https://frequentmiler.com/citi-shakes-things-up-with-new-5x-choose-your-own-adventure-card/ 38:52 Post Roast https://frequentmiler.com/awesome-credit-card-combos/ https://frequentmiler.com/the-greenbrier-pigeon-forge-vacasa-rental-via-wyndham-rewards-bottom-line-review/ 43:06 Question of the Week: Can you use the Alaska companion certificate after you've canceled the card? Join our email list: https://frequentmiler.com/subscribe/ Don't forget to like this video and subscribe to our channel here as well. Music credit: Annie Yoder

frequent miler on the air starts now today's main event city reinvents the 5x card how will chase and discover respond we'll see we're rubbing our chins in curiosity what are we going to say later in the show nobody knows not even us not even us we'll decide when we get there first of course the giant mailbag and i do have my giant all right drag it out this is from d i think we've heard from d before okay yes d, this is a two-parter kind of, D said, I just stayed at the Hyatt Place Long Island City in Queens, New York. FYI, they do not give globalists free parking. And so I replied to her saying, wait a little bit later, I messaged Hyatt concierge on Twitter and they took care of getting the parking charges credited. Nice. So there you go. It's good to know what benefits you're due. And it's good to know that the Hyatt Twitter team is awesome, which we've mentioned many times on the show. They sure are. They sure are. And you know, that's a benefit that I think probably there are front desk agents that will get confused about it and think, well, no, we can't do

anything about the parking because it's a separate vendor here. It's not our own garage, blah, blah, blah. That's happened to me in New York City where there's been some confusion over it before, but I've always gotten it for free as a globalist or on a guest of honor stay in the end. So sometimes it's taken a little bit of doing like that to get it figured out, but I've always gotten it for free even when it's in a separate garage like that. So definitely your globalist.

So my understanding, as long as it's billed to your hotel room, then you can get it erased. Whereas if they have some kind of setup where it's a different vendor, and it's not even charged to your hotel room, then you're on your own. True story.

True story. Okay. All right. What's next? All right. What crazy thing did Amex do this week? Amex is getting crazy, right? What are they doing? Amex is getting bizarrely crazy. So we've written a few things about this, but basically they are targeting existing business card members to expand your membership. And this is coming in the way of emails. It's coming in the way of Amex offers that you see at the bottom of your login. And we posted a couple links where you could check yourself for yourself for these offers. And like one of them is 150,000 points, membership rewards points after a $15,000 spend for the business platinum card, which is a very good offer, but it's, it's not, it's not like out of this world. Like we've seen 150 K before for the business platinum in the past.

They used to be fairly special though. They used to be fairly like when you get that 150K offer, that was a big deal for a long time. Yeah. But this one is extra special because the people being targeted for it often currently have a business platinum card. And the offer is specifically saying, expand your membership. They're basically saying, we know you have a business platinum card with us. Why don't you get another one for the same business? And here's 150,000 points. So my son did this. You definitely don't need, because you already have it and 150,000 points to go with it. Right, right. So, my son did this for the second time.

He had been targeted for only 75,000 points a couple years ago to do the exact same thing, get a second business platinum card for the same business. He took that offer, got the bonus. And now it is, you know, a couple of years later, he got that offer, the 150K offer, took it. And then we found this link to check for yourself for this offer. And both my wife and I signed up under the offer. And so we were both approved for the card. I mean, none of us have received the, you know, the bonus yet, but it's, it's so early. I mean, we haven't done all the spend yet. So it's, it's nuts. I mean, let me do warn you, not everybody's eligible. And when you click the link and you're not eligible,

it gives a weird message about the offer being expired, but that just means you're not particularly eligible. Right. I mean, so this is nuts. You already have a business platinum. And in many cases, people are being targeted for another business platinum card. Why, why are they going to give you 150,000 points for a card that, I mean, presumably you're going to cancel one of these, right? I mean, you're not going to keep them. I mean, who's going to pay five 50 times two to double up on the same exact benefits, right? Right, right. The only thing I could think of is that they are hoping that people will sign up, get the points, and then forget all about it. And by that, I mean, pay the $550 annual fee.

You know, I said $550. $595. $595. $595 every year without getting any of the other benefits of the card. Because, I mean, it takes a lot of work to get benefits from two business platinum cards yeah keep track of which ones you've used and which ones you haven't and which card is the one that you use them on and which one is I mean if you're not meticulous about tracking this stuff or you know if you're not somebody who's doing it

in a way that you know like you're triggering the credit in a way that is testing the boundaries of what really should be done. I mean, if you're really using your airline incidental fee credits, for instance, the way they're intended for like checked bags or whatever, how are you going to remember which card you used to check the bags last time? I mean, it just makes it kind of difficult. So I can see you're right. Probably there will be some breakage there in terms of people who don't use all the benefits and pay the fee anyway.

So is that it? Is this just a moneymaker, you think, to rake in additional annual fees? They figure, all right, I got somebody who's already willing to pay $5.95 a year for the card. Maybe they'll pay another $5.95. That's the only thing I could think of. It just seems completely nuts. And this isn't the only one.

They're also doing this with the business gold card. They're offering people 90,000 points after, I think it's 10,000 spend, if I remember, for the business gold. And it's not just people who already currently have the card, but if you have any business card with Amex, even if it's not a membership rewards card, some people are getting approved for these expand your membership offers and even getting targeted. Some people are finding it in their, you know, Amex offers, for example. That's great. Yeah. Yeah. My wife found a targeted offer in her Amex offers that other people had previously reported, but just finally showed up for her on the first of this month was an offer for the Blue Business Plus to get 50,000 points on the Blue Business Plus. I mean, 50,000. Typically, the offer on that card, if you sign up through a referral, is 10,000 points. And that's the welcome offer on the Blue Business Plus. And if you don't sign up through a referral,

there's no welcome offer usually on the Blue Business Plus. So 50,000 points is a big difference. It requires 15K spend over the first year, a year to do it on this targeted offer. But the interesting thing was she went ahead and did that, applied, get approved, got the Blue Business Plus card. And for days afterward, the offer to get the Blue Business Plus card with the 50K bonus was still showing up under her business platinum card. Yeah. Yeah. Actually, I don't know. Yeah. My son's account, right. It probably would work. I don't know. But my son's account with the business platinum, when he logs in, he still sees he gets a pop up that says complete your application. Now, he already has the card at home. So so it's saying complete your application, get one hundred fifty thousand points. And, you know, I'm kind of tempted, like, we should go for it and see what happens. But I don't know, on the other hand, I don't really want to poke the bear. Right.

Some people are worried that, you know, there might be some risk here of the fraud and abuse team, you know, clawing back points or what have you. And I don't think that's likely if you do this, like, you get one business platinum this way, one business goal, but if you get a bunch of them, I'd be a little worried about that. And that's why I said, you know what? It's not worth trying again, even though it still showed up there and there was no lifetime language to it. And it even said, do you want to apply under a different business or something like that?

And so there was definitely a part of me that was like, I wonder if that works, but not enough of me to say, okay, let's risk creating an issue here. Like you said, I don't think if they're offering to expand membership, I mean, this is not like one of those no lifetime language offers where, you know, maybe MX is going to say down the road that you should have expected to have lifetime languages. Who knows what they're going to come up with down the road, but this is very different from that. It's specifically telling you expand your membership with another of this card. So these offers, I think, are totally legit. I don't think there's anything wrong with signing up for one of them. Great. I agree. So crazy. Right. Right. Yep. All right. We're in crazy

days with points just flowing everywhere. Everywhere. I mean, 100K offers all over the place. These crazy offers to expand your membership. It is definitely a wild time. So get in while the getting is good, as they say. Speaking of getting in while the getting is good, we got to talk about mattress running the numbers this week. Radisson makes it into mattress running the numbers, although it's not really Radisson. You'd so much be mattress running. Well, you would, but sort of you'd be mattress running them for United Miles, right? Right, right. So the United Mileage Plus X app, MPX app, has this thing in it where you sign up for visa offers that basically link these offers to your United Visa card. And when you enroll in the offers, which it sort of automatically does when you click in that section, and then you make purchases with certain vendors, you get bonus miles. And in this case, it's Radisson. And it says, whether you pay at Radisson online or in a hotel, you're going to get 37 United miles per dollar. Seven miles per, I mean, like that's not a typo, is it?

You know, it's pretty darn clear. Yeah. 37. That is a ridiculous rebate on any Radisson spend. And this is on top of any Radisson points you earn. I mean, Radisson, you know, if you have like gold status with Radisson,. And this is on top of any Radisson points you earn. I mean, Radisson, you know, if you have like gold status with Radisson, what you get for free with like their credit card, you're getting 25 Radisson points per dollar on Radisson stays. And then of course those points

are worth a lot less than United miles, but still getting that plus you're getting 37 United miles. Plus presumably you could click through a portal before booking your radisson and get additional points uh miles or cash back by doing that right i mean we've recently seen it as high as 11 steven wrote a post just i think a few days ago that it was 11 i'm not sure if it still is that it was 11 through top cash back and so yeah yeah i mean if so so is this worth mattress running all of a sudden? I mean, you can click through a portal, you earn points as a Radisson rewards member. Even if you don't have elite status, I think it's 20 Radisson points per

dollar that you get, but yeah, if you've got the credit card, 25 Radisson points per dollar plus 37 United miles per dollar. And you're going to earn that 37 miles per dollar, even on the taxes and everything, right? Cause it's a card-linked offer. It's just linked to how much you actually spend. Right. Yeah. So that's an advantage over the points you'd earn in a portal or from Radisson directly. Right.

Okay. So let's do the numbers now. So let's generously call the Radisson points you get, let's call that a 10% value. You know, um, that's, that's estimating really high at about half cent each. If you're not a elite member, a little bit less than that, if you are elite, but 10% generous. And let's, and let's say, and to do easy math, let's say you do 10% through a portal. There you go. Okay. All right. So you're getting 20% back from those two things. Now the question is, is the 37 miles per dollar from United going to make it worth doing a Radisson stay just for the rewards? Just for the rewards. I mean, the short answer is no, not quite, but I mean, at the same time, if you need a one night hotel stay or something, or even a multi-night, if you

need a hotel stay period, I mean, then this definitely makes for a fantastic rebate because we value United miles at what is it? 1.3 cents still. Right. 1.3. Yeah. So 37, I don't know. Do the math for me, Greg. What is that? About 50-ish cents? So 1.3 times 37. So yeah, just short of 50%. So you're looking at roughly a 50% rebate in a way. And we said you could probably sneak another 20% with those other things. So that's a huge combined rate of close to 70%.

Right. But it ain't matches run early. No, you're not going to go check into a hotel just to earn the miles on this. But man, I mean, I can't imagine it getting much better in terms of return on spend in the form of miles, particularly if you really value United miles for some reason, I mean, 37 miles per dollar is an incredible portal or card linked payout period. Right. I mean, that's, you just don't see payouts that high very often. So that's right.

Right. Now something to watch out for, uh, Radisson Americas is, is debuting in a, in very soon. Very soon. Um,

and, uh, they're going to have that whole new award chart and everything. They might introduce a big promo at the same time, right? And so if they do, and if the MPX app is still offering the set 37X, there might be, you know, we might have to redo the segment when that happens and discuss this again. There you go.

Well, maybe you'll make it on again, Radisson. Maybe you'll double dip on Mattress running the numbers. But for right now, free advertising for Radisson. It's crazy. Crazy. That's what crazy thing happened also, right? The crazy thing part two. All right. Well, that, my friends, brings us, I believe, to this week's main event event. Citi reinvents the 5X card so a little background first right so for years and years chase has had their freedom card with 5x rotating categories so and discover had the same thing the discover it card 5x rotating categories which means every three months, there were different categories of spend where you earn 5% up to a combined spend of $1,500 across those three months. Okay.

So there was that. And that's become sort of the standard over time of like the 5X card, you know. Citi, though, what did Citi just bring out? So Citi just totally shook this up. I mean, like you said, that's been the model for the 5X rotating category type of a card and lots of other people have copied it. It's worth noting that Discover and Chase

are sort of the main ones with the rotating category card. But there's lots of little banks that have copied that format with different versions of the same thing. But Citi said, we're going to toss that all out the window here. We're going to give you a 5X card that offers 5X on the same total amount of spend, but we're going to give you a lot more flexibility. So the Citi custom cash card now earns 5X on the category in which you spend the most, the eligible category in which you spend the most on up to $500 a spend each billing cycle. So essentially $500 a month, every three months, $1,500 spend per quarter.

So it's the same $1,500 spend per quarter. The difference here is that you're going to earn 5X on $500 per billing cycle, and it's on whichever category you spend the most money in. And so ideally, if you're playing this game the way it should be played, you're gonna get that card and use it for one single category. And the categories included are useful. There's grocery, there's gas, dining, home improvement stores, select travel. So you can pick a category

that you will easily max out your 500 spend each month, each billing cycle, and then just stick with it. Set it and forget it. And you have the same category all year long, every single billing cycle. I mean, if you know you're going to spend $500 a month on groceries, you can earn five points per dollar on that $500 all year long without having to track a rotating category, without having to switch out when Discover adds grocery stores and then Chase adds grocery stores and this other one you have adds something.

And without having to switch the wallet and print out labels to put on your cards, you can just make this the dedicated grocery card or dedicated gas card or dedicated dining card all year long. I mean, that's pretty incredible, isn't it? It is pretty incredible. And it's worth mentioning, despite its name, Custom Cash, it's earning thank you points. So it's part of the whole Citi thank you rewards ecosystem, just like how the Chase Inc. Cash is actually a Ultimate Rewards Earning card and the Chase Freedom, which is advertised as a cashback card, is also a Ultimate Rewards card. This is the same type of thing, but with city thank you points. So, you know, the points,

if you have a premium city card, like the premier, um, the points are transferable to airline partners. So, so that's a big reason why we're excited about this. Um, another thing I really like is for, you know, these are often advertised like to almost a starter cards, you know, they're advertised to students, to, you know, young working adults. And I think with most of these, the people who sign up for them, if they use them as a primary card, get kind of a raw deal, like, because, you know, how often do they really get the 5x value versus a lot of spend is at 1x, which is terrible. With this one, because it's automatically doing this, you know, whatever you spend the most in each month, I feel like people who aren't even paying attention are likely to average, you know, something like two X maybe, you know, it for low spenders for people not spending more than, you know, about a thousand a month or so, which is a lot of people, I think.

Sure. So I like that about that. I like that you can maximize it. You can play the game, but you can also at least not get totally hosed if you're just using it as your day-to-day thing. That's a great point because you'll only earn one X on all other spend. So anything over $500 in your, your cat, your main category is going to earn one X and all of your other spend is going to earn one X, which seems pretty awful, but that's a really great point that for low spenders that are going to end up getting that awful return, it at least won't be so bad here because you don't even have to, you don't have to select anything in advance. It's not like, like for example, the bank of America cash rewards card,

you can change that every month, but I think you need to change that before you make purchases on their cash rewards card. And that is, well, it's capped a different cap and I don't want to get things confusing with that card too. But the key here is with Citi is that you don't have to say in advance, I'm going to make this my dining card this month, or I'm going to make this my grocery card this month. It's just going to track it and do it for you. Right. And it's also worth saying it has awesome categories, like things you're really going to be spending in supermarkets, gas stations, restaurants, you know? So it's not like, it's not like the U S bank cash plus card, which has 5% categories, but they're not ones.

You're going to be spending a lot in every single month for most people, you know, the, the drug stores and things are all 2% with that card. And so, right. Um, so, so, so is this going to turn everything on its head? You know, you've got this totally new customizable card where you're going to get to pick the category and you can kind of set it and forget it. So to speak in terms of using it for that one category all year long and not have to track these annoying rotating categories. I got to be honest, I hate the rotating category cards. I think most readers were probably, if they ever heard me say it, were surprised that up until last August, there had never been a Freedom card in my household. Because it just wasn't worth it to me to track for $1,500 in spend and get the ink cash and get 5X at office supply stores all day long, or I have an ink plus. So the 5X on

only 1,500 spend didn't excite me enough to have to track it and remember, okay, do I have to go to a gas station with the card this month? Or is it a home improvement store or grocery? Or do I have to go to the movies to get 5X this month or which card is my restaurant? I hated it. It just didn't even appeal to me a little bit. So I was like, you know what? It's not enough points for me to get excited to have to track it. Citi here is very exciting because I don't have to do that with this card. And if I want this card, there's none of that. It's just, okay, this card goes in the wallet for this specific purpose. And that's it. It's dedicated to that. So I love that.

I would love to see that from other issuers. But my question is, is this going to turn things on its head and force Chase and Discover to change? Or is that rotating category card so ingrained in the game? Such a big part of credit card marketing already. Like I said, you've got like ABOC has theirs and Affinity Credit Union has one. And there's like Bank of the West with a rotating 5X.

There's all these like little entities with rotating 5X categories. Is that so ingrained that that's just not going away and the rotating category card is going to be a fixture forever? Or is Citi going to force them to respond with this? Yeah, yeah. You know, it's going to depend

on how the market responds to it, right? Because it's possible that people will just see the words 5X and say, oh, this is just like the other things advertising 5X and will not, you know, sort of know that this is special and not sort of take it to the next level. That's actually, unfortunately, my guess of the way things will go because, you know, the consumers who know enough to know why this is different, why this is better, have to be a very small minority. I'm sure. I'm sure they are. And so that concerns me that this

card might not last as long as I would like it to. I like that city decided to join this sort of rotating category ish card, this five X card game and decided to play by different rules and create something new and innovative. I like that shocks me. I mean, let's talk about what crazy things city did this week. They got innovative and interesting and made a really relevant sort of starter card. Like you said, I mean, I view the freedom cards and the Discover card as like a starter card, even though it's a card that people have been in the game a long time are likely to also have. I think these are marketed more so at people

getting into the game. And I think that this is a great introduction. So I'm really surprised that they did it. I'm concerned that it's not going to last because not enough people are going to get interested. And it's worth noting that there is at least some small complication here, whereas I'm sure there's some readers saying, well, yeah, but the Chase Freedom card or the Discover It card, you could just go and spend that whole $1,500 in one shot and max out your 5X, whereas with this new Citi Custom Cash card, you've got to do $500 each billing cycle. It's not even necessarily each month. It's each billing cycle. We talk about it monthly because that's a confusing way to say it. But yeah, I mean, if your billing cycle ends on like the 12th of the month or something, you have to remember, okay, well, did I do the

full 500 before the 12th? When did I go to the grocery store last and blah, blah, blah. So there is a little bit of a complicating wrinkle there. To me, that's easy enough to manage. I don't know. I think that's not such a big deal, but for some people it might be. Yeah, for sure. And I've actually thought about this too. I imagine people who spend a lot at grocery stores might also be worried about, well, how do I know when I've completed the 500 spend and should switch to a different card? And so my answer to them is if you shop at the same grocery store all the time, maybe just set a calendar appointment, a reminder to yourself to

buy a $500 gift card directly from that store every month. And, and then, you know, if you could buy it online, you don't even have to take your card with you, you know, it could just stay at home or you bring it once, you know, once a month to the grocery store. But aside from that, that is a downside to the card, I think, is to really maximize things, having to track that, track when your billing cycle ends, that kind of thing. Chase though, you know, they took a different approach to reinventing the 5X card a while back, which is when they introduced the Freedom Flex. They kept the 5X rotating categories, but still kept the old 5X. What do you think?

Is that a better approach or do you like Citi's approach better? I mean, I think that that's an interesting approach. I think that it's very rewarding. The Freedom Flex is very, very rewarding for a card with no annual fee. When you look at it that way and say, wow, it earns 5X travel book through M3X pharmacies and this rotating 5X and there's no annual fee. So, wow, that's pretty good. My problem remains, for me anyway, that there's always a quarter where the categories are something where I'm probably just not going to max it out.

I shouldn't say always. Maybe over the last year, there've been more categories with PayPal or with where I'm probably just not going to max it out. I shouldn't say always. Maybe over the last year, there have been more categories with PayPal or with something I can use online easily enough. But I feel like in the past anyway, there have been times where it's been like movie theaters and gas stations. And, yeah, I mean, I guess you can MS and go to the gas station, but I don't do it at gas stations very often. And that'll change with this Wyndham Rewards business card,

I'm sure. But anyway, and I don't go to the movies very much or when you make it a dining card, I'm like, oh, then I gotta remember to have that instead of the Amex Gold or the Brex card or something that's Forex. And is it worth the effort to rotate it in and out? So I'm still not totally enamored, but that is pretty solid.

I'm a little disappointed that Citi didn't offer any other bonus categories. I would love to have seen something that was 2X on this card, at least. I think that that's definitely a shortcoming. And it concerns me that the card may not make it long term because it just may not catch on. Though I think for a lot of people, if you spend $500 a month in whatever category it is, that's qualifying, you're talking about what $300 cash back a year as a starter person, somebody who's not looking to collect the thank you points and use those at $300 back a year on a card with no annual fee that requires very little effort. If you do have a premium city

card, then you're talking about 30,000 points. It's enough to fly yourself round trip to Hawaii twice or two passengers round trip to Hawaii via Turkish miles and smiles on United. So I think there's a lot of potential there for very low effort. I don't know if it's going to catch on enough. I don't know if enough people get excited about it because there's nothing else to it. It's just that 500. To me, that's enough, Siddy. I think you did well. But from a marketing perspective, I feel like it might not catch on. And Chase may very well say, listen, we got plenty of people in the Freedom Flex with the benefits that it has. We don't need to change anything. Discover, I don't know. Discover, I don't know. I mean, their double up is a good offer. So I don't know what they're going to do. Probably not. Well, yeah. So Chase, because they made changes and introduced the Freedom Flex not that long ago, I don't

see them responding in any way. And I don't think this will be a competitive threat. Discover is probably feeling pressure from the Freedom Flex on the one hand, and now this city's introduction. So, you know, they've had to discover it with its same structure for ever and ever. Are they going to change that? I, you know, it seems to me possible that there's been such an escalation lately of rewards for no fee cards. I mean, not to mention fee cards, but the fact that we're seeing many companies have 2% cards,

including Citi with the double cash, that is also can become thank you points. And Chase adding these stable 3X categories to their Flex card. Yeah, I would not be surprised to see Discover respond in some way. See, I would. But I don't really expect it.

I would, because Discover doesn't make any effort to be competitive. They're not really trying to compete. They don't really seem to care about courting people who already have other credit cards because they typically will offer very low credit limits for people who have a lot of other cards. Everybody knows that that's been in the game for a while. And they don't offer any variants

in their welcome offers. They don't try to offer different types of cards for different types of customers. Keep it very simple with like a two card lineup, basically, right? Three, if you count student and four, if you count business, maybe, but that's, I mean, you're stretching the counting here because they're basically all the same type of card more or less. I mean, the miles card is a one and a half percent cash back card. And then you got the rotating five X card. That's basically their game. And so I don't really think that they're particularly interested in competing. I don't think that they want, you know, maybe it sounds silly because obviously they're a company out there for a profit, but I don't really think that they want to expand their cardholder base wildly. I think they're happy with the crumbs that they get, to be honest. I mean, it seems to be the case with them. And

again, I mean, their first year double up offer is terrific. If you get that one and a half X Discover It Miles card, you're effectively earning 3% cash back everywhere for a year. That remains a terrific offer that we don't talk about very often, but maybe we should talk about it more often because, I mean, that is a really solid offer or the rotating 5X card that doubles up for the first year. I mean, you can do really well there too, because you're earning 10% then effectively in those categories for the first year.

So great welcome offer from Discover, but long-term, there's just not very much there, nor is there much of an effort to add anything. So I don't expect to see it. All right, so that's a good point. So I kind of feel like Discover is in a position where they ought to be responding to the combination of Chase and Citi,

but I kind of agree with you that they haven't really shown much inclination to do that. There's no getting in drive there. We'll see. There's no ambition, right? I mean, they're not trying harder. Come on. We want to see you trying harder.

That's right. They want to rest on their laurels and maintain whatever it is that they have. Yeah. So speaking of trying harder, do you find it fascinating? I do that city has been sitting out of this whole hundred K offer game entirely while they're, while they're like behind the scenes, like working on this new credit card. So, so they're going about their competition in a completely different way. Completely different. And that really is interesting to me because this card, obviously, like you said, is kind of marketed as a starter

card sort of thing. I don't think that they necessarily expect their whatever more valuable customers or people who are opening the prestige and the premier to necessarily go after this card. I imagine they're expecting they're marketing it as a 5% cash back card. They're expecting it to be more of a starter type of a card. So it's interesting, yeah, that in a time where their competitors are all going after the people who want those big 100K offers

and are willing to spend five or 10 or $15,000 and however much time on those big, big offers that we've seen. And here they are going after a $750 minimum spend requirement crowd with a card that I think is great, but I think that they're going to just market as being decent, decent every man card, so to speak. So yeah, that really is kind of weird. I mean, I guess I shouldn't be surprised. It's Citi, right?

But so in the meantime, they've quietly built up a sort of incredible wallet that you could assemble, which is the Citi Premier, which gets 3X and a bunch of useful categories and uncapped and no foreign transaction fees.

So you use that thing everywhere for dining and travel and gas stations and things like that. Um, you've got your, your two X everywhere, double cash card. Uh, so everywhere that you're not earning a bonus with one of the other cards, use that. And then you have the rewards plus card, which is giving you a 10% rebate on rewards, even, even rewards that are where you're using points earned on the other cards, as long as you have them all pooled together. And now they're adding this 5X option. So you add that to your wallet and you can get 5X in whatever category you sort of like the most

that you want to spend $500 a month on. We don't yet know, but it might be possible if you have a bunch of thank you cards to product change to the double cash i mean to the custom cash in the future in order to get multiples of them so you could do more than 500 a month but in the meantime if you're in two-player mode meaning you're working with like a spouse or significant other you know both of you could get this card and then that way you have a thousand dollars worth of five X per month, which is pretty darn good. Yeah. I mean, then that could easily cover probably grocery needs for most people. If you did them both with grocery, or you could have one for grocery and one for gas. And if you want to make sure that everybody's got

or dining or whatever it is, you want to make sure that everybody has the cards they need. You can make each other authorized users, label the cards carefully so that each of you can carry one for grocery and one for dining or whatever it might be. So I think that that, yeah, it does make for really intriguing and interesting combinations. So, you know, the problem is that Citi's thank you rewards ecosystem is, you know, playing third fiddle or fourth fiddle here now because everybody else is just surpassing their transfer partners, their awards program. So that's kind of the downside.

Although a big plus is that they do seem to be offering that one cent cash out on points to more and more cards. Now, obviously that's coming with the custom cash card. So that's a really nice benefit. That's something Chase has had all along, but Amex and Capital One don't, uh, so, and Amex especially doesn't, I mean, Capital One, you could sort of work around it, but, um, Amex, I mean, unless you have the Schwab platinum card, you know, it, it's very hard to cash out those points. Right. So, um, which is going to lead me well into the post-trust in a second, but okay.

And, uh, and I'm going to mention that, that the, the other negative that city city has done several negative things in the recent past one is they got rid of like all of their card benefits in terms of travel and purchase protections. That's really bad. Another thing they did that was not good is they got rid of the 1.25 cents value you get for booking travel with the Premier card. So you're really left with transferring to partners as the only really good way to get more than that one cent per point value.

True story. True story. And because they have a more limited set of partners, it may be more difficult to get that outsized value, although they still share some of the best partners that are up with everybody. So they do have some very good partners. Obviously, Turkish Miles and Smiles has been a favorite of mine for the last couple of years, but they do have other good partners too that are partners with other programs. So I think this is really interesting. I think this, this card, the custom cash card is a super easy 30,000 points a year. And that's, to me, that makes the card worth having

and holding if you're a thank you rewards person, because that's a decently significant number of points for very low effort. So that's right. That's right. And for those, you know, who have been holding onto the prestige card, the expensive prestige card, because they dine out a lot at 5x. Now here's a free fee free option to get those points at 5x up to 500 a month. So you're going to have to do the math on us on this for a future post and tell us who should still have the prestige for dining because yeah, you can earn five X on the 500 per month, but then obviously you wouldn't anymore. However, with the premier, you'd earn what three X on three X. So, so where is that cutoff point

where you're like, okay, you know, we should just downgrade to 95, you know, save ourselves $500 an annual fee and take the three X on some of the dining. So, right. I think, I think the prestige city has, has, uh, improved the other cards so much. The prestige has become irrelevant. And so it was a sad day when I got rid of the prestige. Cause I liked the card. I was super excited about it in the beginning, but yeah, it was just, uh, yeah, it was over. Sorry, city. Uh, all right. So that I think wraps us up. We think probably

chase won't do anything in response cause they don't probably feel like they need to. And they're probably right. Discover should do something, but probably won't. I don't know about, I don't know about all those other little rotating five X category banks out there, but because the big boys aren't going to do much different, they're probably not going to do anything different either. So I'm thinking that probably this won't make much of a splash or make much of a difference, except to those of you smart enough to pick it up and max it out.

Let's keep an eye on Wells Fargo. Cause they've, they've reported that they're coming out with a new rewards card next year. So that should be interesting to see if they respond to this. True. True. Very good. And Capital One, don't count them out because Capital One is continuing to surprise us and

they don't have anything along the rotating 5X category card and they have tried to be kind of different with everything they've done. So I don't count them out either in terms of doing something. So really good point. It's time to update that Quicksilver or something, right? That's right. That's right. That would be great. Right. Okay. So that brings us then to the post roast. And I'm glad that I was just talking about Capital One because a minute ago you were talking about how, you know, now Citi has the easy one

cent cash out and Chase has it, but Capital One doesn't exactly have it. And you're only kind of right about that because this week you wrote a post about awesome credit card combos and you did a great job laying out the best combination for each issuer except for Capital One. Oh man, what did I mess up there? I don't think you had the best combination. So in my mind, the best combination of Capital One cards does not include the Venture card, but rather the fee-free Venture One and the Spark Cash card. And here's why. If you have the fee-free Venture One, you can transfer all of your cash back to Miles and transfer those on to partners.

But I would rather earn the 2% as cash back on the Spark card, the Spark Cash card, because then you can use it as cash back for anything you want. And when it's advantageous to transfer it to miles, you can, rather than getting it stuck in the venture card where, yes, it's worth essentially 2% back, but only towards travel purchases. Instead, get your 2% back towards any kind of purchase. Use it to get your hair done or go get some new shoes or whatever it might be if you want, or when you're ready to travel and you want to transfer to partners, transfer to partners. So I think that the Capital One combo, the ideal combo in my mind is the Spark Cash card, the Venture One card that has no fee, and then one of the Saver cards,

like you said. So that's the change that I would make. That's my roast. All right. I agree. I think that's a good, that's probably is the best combo. Good luck getting approved for it all. One downside, exactly, is the requirement to. Good luck getting approved for it all. One downside. Exactly. It's the requirement to get approved for three capital one cards when it's hard enough to get approved for one. Right.

Right. Right. But I mean, if we're going to get theoretical here, I mean, you did set up like a three card combo or something, I think. I did. I had an alternate version that, that, um, I was like, Oh, this is going to be the alternate. No, wait, no.

I focused just on the, on the consumer cards on my alternate. Yeah. But it, but it was the same idea of, of earning. So in my alternate, it was a fee free version where you, where you, you spend nothing on annual fees, but you earn one and a half everywhere with the quick, I don't know, what is it? Quicksilver. And, uh, and then you, you have just, just as you said, you have the venture one just for the ability to transfer miles to partners. And then of course you have the saver. So, um, that's a good combo to, uh, either one would be good. And, and I think it really comes down to, is it worth paying the $95 annual fee for the cash card for the sorry, the spark card with your, with your example in order to get 2% instead of one

and a half or one and a half. And so it really depends on how much you spend each year as whether that's worth it. Good point. Great point actually. Yeah. Because it depends on how much you spend, not just how much spend how much you spend on bonus purchases purchases that wouldn't otherwise earn a bonus category of some sort yeah oh interesting interesting stuff all right so post roast i mean if you got something to roast go ahead but you have a very small sample set i do you wrote a you wrote a post i was like man i was only here one day come on right what could you

possibly be on you're thinking no you you possibly be on your, your thinking? No, you wrote a post on your, your review of your vacation, the Casa vacation rental. And I've been there. You said that it costs 15,000 points per night. True story, but that shouldn't be the case for anyone who is a gamer in this game, because you should have the Wyndham earner rewards card business card and

you should be getting a discount and so it should cost you 13,500 per night true story true story you're absolutely right game set matchy one on that I'm going to go back and edit that post because you're right and that is a huge benefit of having the card only 13,500 points per night that's I mean and that's incredible. It's incredible. I had a great time. Great stay. Totally worth it.

I'll go back to Pigeon Forge and stay in one of those cabins again. I don't know when, but the booking calendar goes out through December of next year. So I was already thinking about it. That's awesome. We might wait a little bit longer, but, uh, but anyway, so yeah, uh, totally, totally worthwhile. All right. You got me there. Wave the white flag. That brings us to the, yeah, totally, totally worthwhile. All right. You got me there.

Wave the white flag. That brings us to the question of the week very quickly here. So this week's question came in in the Frequent Miler Insiders, and I thought this was a great one. So David asks, says or states, I am attempting to use an Alaska companion code after canceling my Alaska credit card. The frequently asked questions on the Alaska website seem to suggest any card can be used at checkout so long as the name on the card matches the companion code holder. I'm just gonna jump in and say, not anymore.

I don't know if maybe you found something that was outdated, but you are supposed to pay with your Alaska Airlines credit card these days. So he says, however, Alaska's website is not allowing me to check out and insists that an Alaska Airlines card must be used. Is this right? Is there any way around that? So they did change that where now when you use your companion certificate, you can't use another credit card.

It has to be the Alaska Airlines credit card used to pay for the ticket. Is there a workaround, Greg? I'm betting that you know the answer to this because I don't. What's the answer? I didn't, but thankfully other readers and FrequentMiler insiders do in fact know the answer because it has been required now for a couple of years that you use that. And so let's see, somebody said, create wallet funds by booking and then canceling a non-refundable ticket. So you could book a ticket, cancel the ticket and put those funds in your Alaska wallet and use that. And then

somebody else said, yes, they recently had issues with the same thing sort of, and ended up buying a gift card from the website and applying it to their wallet. So from the Alaska website and applying it to the wallet funds, but Colleen notes, beware that there's a highly inconvenient 24 hour hold on gift cards. If you buy them from the Alaska airlines website, Costco would be a better choice, a better option because of course, Costco sells Alaska airlines gift cards. They sell a gift card for $450. Oh, wow. 10% in that way for probably almost a year now, I think. So yeah, so you can do that. And then a couple other people chimed in and said that that works. So if you have canceled your Alaska Airlines credit card, and you've got one of

those companion certificates, and you thought you couldn't use it because you have to pay with the Alaska Airlines credit card, there is indeed a workaround, you could pay with something else you pay with a gift card, or with other wallet funds and still use the companion certificate. That's something I did not know. And I learned from our frequent miler insiders this week. That's an awesome tip. Love it. Love it. It sure is. All right. Well, my friends, I think that brings us to the end for this week. So I want to thank you guys for being out there with us. We hope you enjoyed today's show. We certainly enjoyed being here. If you want to get our posts in your email inbox each day, you want to go to frequentmiler.com slash subscribe. Again,

that's frequentmiler.com slash subscribe to join our email list. You can follow us on Twitter and Facebook and join our Frequent Miler Insiders Facebook group where you can ask questions just like David did and get incredible tips from other readers. So thank you guys very much for being out there today and we will see you again soon. All right. Bye, everybody.