Frequent Miler on the Air - Complete Guide to United's Couponized Cards | Frequent Miler on the Air Ep299 | 3-28-25

Episode Date: March 28, 2025

A few years ago American Express introduced this kind of model for their Platinum card where they increased their annual fee, but attempted to make up for it by offering a whole collection of credits and rebates that could be valuable if you did the work to make use of them and happened to have natural needs for them. In other words, these new benefits felt a lot like coupons, thus introducing the nickname for these kinds of card benefits. Now, United seems to be taking a page from American Express' book by "couponizing" their credit cards. (02:02) - Denbigh writes in about our "getting started with points and miles" episode saying "Thank You for an episode worth the time, even for an experienced practitioner." Find our Getting started with points & miles episode 298 here. (4:02) - As previously reported, Southwest is planning reduced earnings on paid flights, expiring flight credits, charging for checked bags, and changing the value of points (04:50) - Point value changes already taking place Read more about the variable points values here. (07:23) - Other Info revealed in Southwest's recent video Read more about their updates in that video here. (12:05) - No-go for Capital One / Discover acquisition. DOJ doesn't like it Read more about this DOJ decision here. (12:56) - Citi (seemingly) no longer allowing product changes between card families (15:53) - Greg apparently never got credit for one of his 15 flights... (19:38) - Air France / KLM saver availability from the US stinks (24:23) - Bilt April Rent Day: Up to 100% bonus to Avios (27:59) - Wyndham point sale not as fixed as we thought (thru April 15) Find our Wyndham’s Excellent Point Sale episode 50 here. (29:00) - Six United cards have increased annual fees, decreased benefits (slightly) and added "coupons" (30:32) - Summary of changes (45:45) - New Card Line-Up Overview (46:28) - "Coupon" Deep Dive (1:01:04) - If you still want a United card, which is best? Read more about which United card is best here. (1:05:42) - Which club card is best? (1:08:27) - How do you manage the fear of account shut-down? Visit https://frequentmiler.com/subscribe/ to get updated on in-depth points and miles content like this, and don’t forget to like and follow us on social media. Music Credit – “Ocean Deep” by Annie Yoder

Today's main event, complete guide to United's couponized cards. Frequent Mylar on the air starts now. A few years back, American Express introduced the coupon book. That is, they refreshed their platinum card and what that meant is they increased the annual fee and added a whole bunch of ways that you could get more than that back, you know, as statement credits or other kind of rebates and things, but they were all for like specific things you had to do that could easily be things that where you'd have to spend more than you would have otherwise in order to get those rebates. And so we looked at all those

things and we started calling them coupons. And we started calling the new platinum card the coupon book. But that term was like based on this idea that it was just the platinum card. And the problem is over time, Amex started doing the same thing to other cards, adding higher annual fees and more coupons.

And now the plague has spread to Chase and United, like in a big, big way. You know, Chase and United have embraced this idea and they've one-upped Amex in like every way with their new United card lineup. Never underestimate the appeal of the coupon book or at least the perceived appeal of a coupon book, I guess, is the moral of the coupon book or at least the perceived appeal of a coupon book I guess is the moral of the story because my goodness issuers seem to think we want

more and more of these coupons. We'll talk more about that today. If you want to jump ahead to a specific segment or you want to go back to something later on don't forget you'll always find the timestamps in the show notes. Just expand the description box so you can see the timestamps. That's also where you'll find links to more information about all the stuff that we'll be talking about. Of course, you can always just Google frequent miler and whatever the topic name is, and

you'll probably find it as well. Wherever you're watching or listening to this, don't forget to like the video or the podcast, give us a thumbs up, leave us a review of some stars, that type of thing. We appreciate all of that stuff. All right, let's drag out this week's Giant Mail bag. All right, let's drag out this week's Giant Mailbag. All right, this week's Giant Mail is in reference to last week's podcast called Getting Started with Points and Miles.

Denby writes in, Denby says, I'm a long time listener to the FM podcast and a player in this game. Long time player that means. My member since, so that's the thing that's on like your Amex cards. My member since, so that's the thing that's on like your Amex cards, my member since is 1985. So when I saw the title of this week's Frequent Mile Around the Air getting started in Miles and Points, I was kind of let down.

I thought, what can I possibly learn from a beginner podcast? And I almost, almost passed on the episode. But I remember how I've never, ever, got nothing from an FM podcast, even when the title didn't grab me. There's always something. And sometimes it's solid gold. And parenthetically, just like when I've written to frequent mylar about something and received an undeservedly patient reply from Nick, I've learned something I could take to the bank. So end of that that little aside. So, I listened and thank you for an episode worth the time, even for an experienced practitioner and for the terminology I can use to explain to the noobs in my circle. He's listing some of the terms that came up in the show. Welcome bonus only,

sock drawer, wallet. The FM podcast has officially maintained its 100% record for being worth the time to listen. Thank you. Thank you very much for that, Denby. We appreciate that. And I'm glad that you found something you enjoyed out of it. I mean, we try to have some nuggets of wisdom in every episode and we know not every title will speak to every person.

You don't have to listen to every single one. But at the same time, we enjoy doing them each time and always find something interesting. The podcast is driven by what we think is going to be interesting or would be interesting to us, so hopefully that will also be interesting to you, and I'm glad to hear that we're on 100% streak there and we'll try to keep the streak alive. Here's to that. All right, thank you. We appreciate that feedback. Let's talk about some updates because there's a bunch of new update information that needs to be discussed this week. First up, we've got Southwest updates. Southwest we previously reported or had been previously reported on the blog and other places that there's a bunch of changes coming. So they're reducing earnings on paid flights. That's already happened. They've reduced earnings on paid flights. Starting on May 28th, they're going to start expiring flight credits. Your flight credit right now, if you have a Southwest flight credit will never expire, but new flight credits created May 28th or later will expire. They're

going to start charging for checked bags. Your bags will no longer fly for free and the value of points is changing. That's all stuff that's already been reported, but there's some news on a number of those fronts. Yeah, first of all, I had thought the changing point values was also slated for May 28th, but it turns out no, they already kicked that in, and first looks aren't good. So just looking at the points, we recently, before this change, redid our reasonable redemption values

for Southwest points. In fact, Nick, you did it. Why don't you talk about what you did briefly and what you saw? That's right. I looked at a whole bunch of different routes and I had a methodology where I decided which types of routes to get a good representative

range of different types of things, major city, major city, you know, hub to hub, small town to hub, small town to small town, et cetera, different types of trips to try to get a reasonable idea. And the numbers were really close, depending on what matters to you, the average, the median, so the median, the mean, the max value, the min value, they were all in a pretty tight range. So the minimum value when I did that for a southwest point was 1.27 cents per point and the max was 1.64.

Both the average and the mean were about 1.37, 1.39, so pretty close there. About 1.4 cents per point you could have expected to get reasonably and you were almost always gonna get about 1.4 cents per point with a few small exceptions. point you could have expected to get reasonably and you're almost always going to get about 1.4 cents per point with a few small exceptions but now it's not that way anymore. Tim took a quick look at this to fire out a post for us and in his analysis so far the point value ranges from around 1.1 cents per point up to as high as 1.7 cents per point. Now

that might sound a little bit better because 1.7 is a little higher than the max we found previously of 1.64. However, he found far more at the 1.1 cent range and that's not a huge surprise to me. It's disappointing. He found far more in the 1.1 to 1.2 cents per point, which is below the minimum value that I had found previously for the value of Southwest Points. Yeah. So we're going to do another systematic look at it. So what Tim found so far was just his fairly quick look, but we'll do another systematic, you know, look at it the way Nick did before and come

up with a new reasonable redemption value for Southwest. But if Tim's look so far is any indication, I think we're going to be dropping the reasonable redemption value for Southwest quite a bit. And so that's, that's bad news if you've got your Southwest points. But that's not all. bad news if you've got your Southwest points. But that's not all. Also Southwest released a video that explained a little more about what is upcoming with things like check bags and assigned seating. And the video answered some of the questions we had about how things will work. And Stephen did a good job of watching the video and pulling out the nuggets that could be found there. So for example, we already knew that even though they're gonna start charging for checked bags,

there'll be some people in situations where you get free checked bags. So for example, if you buy a business select fair, you get two free checked bags. If you have A list or A list preferred status, or if you're certain Southwest card holders you would get at least one checked free check bag also they had other select customers which we don't know who those are yet but it

might be you I don't know anyway that's what we already knew now what we learned from the video is that if you do have a situation where you get a free check bag that applies to up to eight additional passengers on the same reservation. So that's good news. They didn't tell us what they're going to charge for the fees, but they did say it'll be in line with industry standards. So you could probably expect around thirty five dollars to check a bag if you don't get free check bags. Yep. Yeah, I thought it was interesting that every time I've

heard this discuss people have said that, you know, if you get a free check bag, it'll apply it up to eight passengers on the same reservation, which is totally true. But almost every time I've seen this discussed it, it includes all of the situations where you get a free check bag. Like if you have a business select fair, for instance, well, I mean, everybody in your reservation is going to be under a business select fair. So so so so it automatically apply to them. So, I mean, this is good news for

the, for elites and cardholders essentially that, that will get a checked bag and it'll be able to go on to the other folks. Um, or I guess companion pass holders too. Yeah. Uh, and in that, that situation, a little complicated, because the way, I think just the way their technology does companion passes, the companion pass holder, if they don't themselves get a free check bag, they have to pay for the check bag and then get a refund later, because if the primary person was due to have a free check bag.

Yeah, that makes sense because they're on a separate reservation. It's a separate PNR. So that's, I say makes sense. It doesn't make sense, but that's why, because they have the system set up so that up to eight passengers on the same reservation will get a free check bag

and your companion with a companion pass is on a separate reservation. So that's how it's gonna work. So it's gonna be confusing, I think, for the majority of people who don't watch these videos and read about this stuff. They're gonna be like, wait, they don't get a free check back?

And good luck on the phone calls on that one, Southwest. You just pay for it. We'll refund you later, I promise. Yeah, that's not gonna be too much fun. Although it just occurred to me, it should be very interesting for those who have credit cards that offer airline incidental fee credits because it makes it very easy to use those and get sort of rebated twice

if you understand where I'm going with that. Anyway, the other thing we learned from the video is that there'll be some, you know, they're moving to assign seating and away from that lineup at the gate type of thing, A and B and C seating or whatever, or lineups that they had before. And what we didn't know is would credit card holders who currently get early bird check-ins or A1 through 15 boarding get some kind of preferred seating, you know, select seating benefits. And we now know that something like that is coming, but we don't have any details. We don't. We don't. I just recently used the A1 to 15 boarding on my wife's Southwest priority card, because the interesting thing about that benefit is that it reimburses the charge for up to four times per year and

it's not a maximum dollar figure. That A1 to 15 seating used to be kind of standardized pricing but it's not anymore. It gets kind of crazy. So for four people it was like $220 that we got refunded recently for the A1 to 15 which wasn't totally necessary because if you're traveling with young kids you can get on after the A boarding group anyway, complicated, I don't wanna get into all the details to why we used it, but part of the reason why I used it was because I thought at some point here, they're gonna start selling the assigned seats,

and then this benefit won't be of any use, so I figured I might as well use it while I had a chance, because I wasn't sure I was gonna get another use out of that before that benefit changes, so I went ahead and did it. Makes sense. All right, that's Southwest Cart News. We've got some Card News to talk about. Speaking of the banks here, we've got, let's see, Capital One and Discover. The tie-up there, the acquisition, Capital One, if you don't recall, a while back had come to an agreement to acquire

Discover. But apparently word on the street is that may not go through. Yeah, apparently the Department of Justice is not liking it and so they're planning on blocking it, so it does not look like Capital One will be taking over Discover after all. I did see some sort of a press release though after that story came out last week, it's not some sort of a press release that came out this week that was basically trying to convince people that hey it's oh it's a good thing you should you should support this so i think they haven't given up but it doesn't sound like there's a likelihood that that's going to continue to go through other bank news city is apparently seemingly maybe no longer offering product changes between card families.

So Citi for a long time has had probably the most liberal product change policy among any of the major credit card issuers, where if you had a Citi credit card, you could usually product change it to almost any other Citi credit card that's currently available, sometimes even the cards that were no longer available in some cases. And so, for instance, if you ultimately wanted to have a double cash card, that card doesn't come with a particularly good welcome bonus, so a popular play for that was to open an American Airlines card that has a good welcome bonus and then a year later downgrade it so to speak, product change it to a double cash card so that you could get a good bonus to

start out, get the benefits of the AA card for a year, and then later on switch to the double cash card that you actually want to have long term. However, it sounds like that's not working anymore. Yeah, there have been a lot of reader reports, there's a chat on Flyer talk about it. This seems to be a really recent change. And so Tim gave it a try. He called Citi to see whether they would let him product change his Strata Premier card to an American Airlines card.

And no, they would not allow it. And a reader wrote in similarly going the other way, tried to change his American Airlines card to a double cash and no go there. So, I guess, maybe this is a temporary thing, but it seems to me very likely that this is a permanent change because it really goes along with what virtually every other card issuer does already. And so it was always kind of nice but strange that Citi allowed it.

Now it seems that they don't. So to be clear, like they should still allow changes within product family. So like I would still expect all the cards that are in thank you points, like Citi Double Cash and Strata Premier and Rewards Plus, as long as that's still alive, that you should be able to product change between those

because those are all thank you cards. But changing between like American Airlines and Citi thank you points is not an option. That's a no thank you right there. So I actually think that this makes sense not, well, yes, because of the point Greg made, other issuers don't do this, but the reason I think that this is happening in my bat

anyway my prediction is Because I think this this tells me that thank-you points are probably going to become transferable to American Airlines And they don't want people with American Airlines cards switching to a thank-you product now in order to earn their American Airlines miles That way so I think this is foreshadowing that that is going to happen, but we'll see. Interesting. It could be. It could be. Yeah. Who knows. Who knows? All right. Let's talk about craziness. What crazy thing did SAS do this week? So SAS sent me an email this morning saying they denied my missing flight credit.

What? Yeah, let me back up and explain. So as most listeners know, SAS ran a huge promotion at the end of last year where if you flew 15 SAS partners, including SAS itself, and credited those flights to SAS, you can earn a million SAS miles. And the three of us, me, Nick and Stephen, flights to SAS. You can earn a million SAS miles. And the three of us, me, Nick, and Stephen, all did it. I was the first one to actually receive the million miles. But here's a little backstory of this.

Of my 15 different carriers I flew, one of them had never credited. And I had filed a missing, you know, miles report and I'd even followed up later, but it never credited. I'd never got miles for that, but I got the email saying you'll get the million and then in January I actually got the million. So I kind of forgot about it until March 27th.

So that's today as we're recording this. I received an email about this and it said denied and it said, your flight... Well, all right. So I had filed a missing flight because it was China Eastern that I flew and didn't get credit for. And email to them said you know here's the details China Eastern this this and that and and booking class are and to be clear you had already received your million miles right so before this email came in so you already received the million for having flown 15 and this was one of the 15 okay Okay. Right, that's right, that's right. So the email said your flight with Shaman Air MU596 was booked in our class and tickets issued

in this booking class do not qualify for Euro bonus points. Wait, I'm confused. You said a second ago you were missing credit for China Eastern Airlines but they denied your claim for Shaman? What? That's where things get crazy. Yeah. So it is true that our booking class is not a fair class that sass Euro bonus awards points for if you fly Shaman Air. But they specifically listed my flight number as MU596. Well, MU is the code for China Eastern, not Chaminade.

And their website clearly shows that R is a valid booking class for China Eastern. So that's the crazy, you know, there's multiple levels of crazy in this whole thing. There are, there are. Yeah, there's a few layers there. Yeah, where it leaves me is like, do I even bother responding to this?

Like, I mean, you know, I don't even know how many miles I should have gotten, but it's probably, you know, well, well fewer than a thousand, probably a couple hundred or something along those lines. So I don't think I'm going to reply because I certainly don't want them looking too hard at my million miles that I've already received. Wait, I mean, did you log in

and make sure you still have the million? I did. Yeah, that was the first thing I did, yeah. Actually, the first thing I didn't really realize about them saying chaminade. So my first thing was like, oh no, they, you know, they, I was wrong about what fair class I booked. Oh yeah.

And I thought I had messed up, but no, they, they, uh, they just messed up. But anyway, it's all good. All right. It's all good. So all well, that ends well. So just some fun craziness, you know, never, never a dull moment around here. So very good. Thanks for that.

SAS. All right. So speaking of being Bonvoit by SAS, well, you didn't really get Bonvoit, I guess, but let's talk about Bonvoit news this week. So there are several ways that we have collectively been Bonvoit this week, but the biggest one probably is the Air France KLM post that Tim, I don't know if it's the biggest one, the Southwest is probably the biggest one, but Air France KLM certainly is a big story because Air France KLM Flying Blue had promised when they changed their award chart when they increased award prices that they would also increase award availability they used to charge from 50,000 miles one

way in business class between North America and Europe and they increase that to a minimum of 60,000 miles and at the time they said they said, oh, well, by doing this, we're going to, or it has enabled us to increase award availability, so it'll be even easier to book flights going forward at the lowest mileage levels. But it hasn't turned out that that's been true, right? Right, either that or it was so easy

that everybody did it already. All those seats are gone. Anyway, so Tim went through a full year of availability looking at all of the direct flights from North America to Europe, flying on Air France or KLM. And across this full year, so many, so many possible flights, he found only 19 where that saver level award was available. And 17 of those flights were during a two week period over in years. So like literally from December 28th to January 13th of 2026, 17 of the 19 flights were during that brief period. There were only two, like the whole rest of the year that were available to get that low level availability.

Now, let me caveat that with the fact that Flying Blue is known to have a word availability tied to multiple segments. So if you're flying a one-stop flight to Europe, like let's say you're flying from the US to Lyon, France through Paris, or then you might see more availability at that 60K level than we saw because they often do weird pricing like that.

They do, although the word often there, I hesitate to emphasize too loudly because they did often do that. But man, I've not been able to find much availability even on connecting itineraries when I've been searching lately. And I've been searching quite a bit. I have a particular itinerary that got all complicated.

I had booked an Air France flight through Virgin Atlantic. And so I've been searching a ton to try to fix my own problem. And I just have not been finding anything and it's been tough. And it's also been tough, like I said, without getting into all the detail. Virgin and Linux had a hard time fixing it and the latest that I've heard from them is that they're having an IT issue. So even though they've kind of got my itinerary sort of, not really fixed, but band-aided, they can't reticket it because of some IT

problem with Air France that they're still working on. And so I don't know what's going on here, but I know that there's some oddities somewhere. Something weird is going on and it's not safer award availability, that's for sure. And that's disappointing because they did sort of promise that, right, at the beginning that they were going to have more award availability. And I don't think it's that it right, at the beginning that they were going to have more award availability. And I don't think it's that it's just gotten so easy that everybody's scooping it up because we're just not seeing much at all.

I don't think so either. Yeah, so that's really discouraging. I'm hopeful that it's a sort of temporary thing and that, you know, that I feel like with some airlines, these things come and go in waves. And so I'm hopeful that this is not a permanent state of things. Because if it is, that would be very sad. It would go from, you know, flying blue miles have been one of my preferred currencies to like, you know, I've said in the past that if I had to get rid of like my transferable points for some reason, you know, flying blue would be one of the programs that I would would not mind transferring my my transferable points to because there have been a lot of good uses for them.

But right now I wouldn't do that, you know, based on the current state of things. Yep, absolutely. All right. Awards points and more news out this week. Built's rent day promotion this time around is going to be pretty good. So if you've got built points, be ready for April 1st, because of course, one day only we'll see the rent day promotion up to 100% transfer bonus to Avios. And Avios is another program that Greg has said he wouldn't mind transferring

quantity speculatively. So what do you think? Is it worth it? And obvious is another program that Greg has said he wouldn't mind transferring quantity speculatively. So what do you think? Is it worth it? Is it worth it for people at all levels just at the highest level? Is this a good opportunity to speculatively transfer? Yeah, I mean, you know, obviously, if you if you if you're about to book an award and could use the points, it's great.

You get the 100% bonus, I think, only if you have platinum status with built, otherwise it's successfully down from there based on your status. And yeah, I'm personally stuck with that question. Do I transfer my remaining built points? I don't have a ton of them right now, so it's not a big problem either way. I already have a good stash of

Avios so it's not like something I'm dying to do. At the same time, it's like, I don't think I'll have platinum status again after this year. So it would be nice to get that hundred percent bonus now, or should I wait for something better? But the question is like, what would I hope for among their partners? Now Alaska, I mean, if they did that again, I would definitely do it, which I did last time they did that. But the last time they did that was when they introduced Alaska as a partner. And it just seems unlikely that they'll do that big of a transfer bonus this year again, but maybe. And I don't know, Air Canada would be the other one,

I guess I would consider of their transfer partners. Well, Hyatt obviously, but they won't do that. Never gonna happen, yeah. Anyway, so I'd say if you have a lot of built points and you have the platinum status and you're not flush with Avios, yeah, I mean, I think that's a good opportunity to get. I would consider speculatively transferring in that combination.

All right. So I don't want to belabor this too long, but I think at the bottom end, if I remember correctly, with no status, it's a 50% transfer bonus. So same situation, you've got a lot of bill points. You don't have any obvious right now Would you speculatively transfer at 50%? I don't know. I don't think I could give like one rule you know for that personally because I Think it just depends on your you know situation, but yeah, I just like you're right. You're right It starts at 50% which is pretty darn good. I mean, that's a great transfer bonus It really is it's better than anybody else to my knowledge

My memory is ever offered for a transfer bonus to obvious But we do see 30% transfer bonuses to obvious somewhat commonly 40% every now and then so 50% is better There's no doubt. Is it good enough that I would speculatively transfer my bill points and Not me because I know that I can almost always get really good value out of Hyatt if I transfer to Hyatt. So for a speculative bonus, it needs to be something where I would never see a transfer bonus like that. I think the best transfer bonus we have ever seen

anybody else offer to Aeroplan is 15%. So if there was a 50% bonus to Aeroplan, there I might get speculative. Obvious, I'm a little bit less likely because we do see pretty frequent transfer bonuses of 25, 30, sometimes 40%. So, less likely, but still, 50% is very strong. So, we'll see.

Best of luck to those of you with a lot of bill points. Next up, we've got Wyndham. Wyndham's point sale, which we talked about on a Coffee Break episode. Coffee Break episode number 50, just the other day, we released one called Windham's Excellent Point Sale, where we talked about the fantastic rate at which you can buy Windham Rewards points, but it might not be as universal as we thought. Yeah. So we had reported that it's based on your elite status that blue and gold members

get a 70% bonus and platinum and diamond members get an 80% bonus, but readers have been writing and saying, I've got less than that. And so now I'm thinking that these are probably up to that, you know, that platinum and diamond members get up to an 80% bonus, but it's targeted exactly how much you get so that's my thinking right now I haven't had the time to actually track down exactly what's going on okay good to know so be on the lookout there for that make sure you're getting the rate that you're expecting if you're buying winning rewards points all right I think that brings us to this week's main event. Main event time.

Complete guide to United's couponized cards. United and Chase have gone coupon crazy. They have a lineup of six different United cards. That's not new. But what is new is they've increased the annual fees. They've in many, most cases, in in many cases actually decreased benefits or made them slightly worse in different ways. But to make up for all that, they've added coupons like crazy, all kinds of ways to get

back more than the annual fee if you contort your spending in certain ways to match what those coupons demand. Yeah, you know, that's the thing. If you can kind of contort your spending, and that's the part that doesn't excite me a ton because I don't like having to reach out of my normal patterns too much to jump through the hoops. So I say that as somebody who jumps through a lot of hoops, but I don't like the hoops that they have put out there, at least let's put it that way. We don't want new hoops, especially when there's not like huge rewards

at the other end. These are like kind of okay rewards for a lot of effort and it just seems like, ugh. Yeah, I mean, I guess if I were only gonna have a United card or only gonna have two or three cards, maybe it would bother me less, but as somebody who's kind of an enthusiast with a lot of cards, I'm like,

ah, there's just not enough reward here in some of the cases, but let's talk about it so we can, you can decide for yourself. Maybe you disagree with us. Let us know by the way in the comments if you do love to hear from you. So, so let's, let's kind of summarize. So summary of the changes for each card, high level here, the gateway card. And first we're going to summarize them without talking about the coupons first, because we've got a whole nother section where we're going to dive into the coupons. So these are just the changes before talking about the newons first because we've got a whole another section where we're going to dive into the coupons. So these are just the changes before talking about the new coupons. Great point. Great point. So the changes coming to the Gateway Card, the United Gateway Card is the no annual fee United card that has long been available and is a popular downgrade option from cards that do have an annual fee on the consumer side. Big changes there are that cardholders will no longer get access to expanded award availability

to cardholder award pricing unless they spend $10,000 in a calendar year. Now this is something that we had previously sort of found that only really applied to people who had downgraded from a card with an annual fee. I think if you had applied outright for the Gateway card, I'm not sure that you did get access to that expanded award pricing or better card member award pricing. Either way, now you'll have to spend $10,000 a year to get access to cardholder pricing. And now they've added a benefit. You can earn two checked bag certificates after you spend $10,000 in a calendar year or so, or cardholder year I can't recall which is off the top of my head now but either way $10,000 gets

you two checked bag certificates so that'll be a one-time use type of a situation for each certificate where you can use them to add a checked bag during the booking process. Yeah and the the Gateway card this is the only one that did not increase in price or for for math nerds, you could say it increased by a thousand percent or whatever percent you want. Because zero, still stays zero no matter how much you multiply it by. My kids have recently discovered that. And at the dinner table, they love asking me what A times B times C times D times E times F times zero is. They love it.

All right, so yeah, no change to the annual fee on that card, just small benefit changes. And this card didn't have a lot of benefits anyway, apart from potentially expanded access to awards. So really minor change there. The Explorer card. This is the card that was previously $95 a year. Now the United Explorer card has an annual fee of $150

So it's increased by 55 bucks card holders will no longer qualify for complementary elite upgrades on award flights as of August 1st of 2025 so that's a change previously you could have gotten upgraded if you had elite status But no longer gonna be the case on award flights Cardholders will still get their two United Club passes each year but that's changing so previously you got two United Club passes that you could give to somebody else if you wanted to but now the cardholder has to be, or cardholder or an authorized user has to be

present when using them so basically they're trying to make sure that you use it yourself rather than sending it to somebody else. And is the three hour rule a new thing on this? I believe so. So now, you know, your flight has to be within three hours of when you're entering the club. Unless you're you're in this trip, whenever you hear about lounge access, three hour rules, if you have a layover, this trip, whenever you hear about lounge access, three hour rules, if you have a layover and you want to go to the lounge during the layover, there the three hour rule doesn't apply. Um, cause you might have, you know, a six hour layover, you could still get in the club then. Um, there you go. So, yep.

And there's some new spend bonuses. So if you spend $10,000 in a calendar year, you'll earn $100 in United travel bank credit. If you spend an additional 10,000 in a calendar year, you'll earn $100 in United travel bank credit if you spend an additional 10,000 beyond that so $20,000 in a calendar year, you'll earn a 10,000 mile award discount So you can apply that when you're booking an award and get 10,000 miles off the cost of an award Yeah, yeah, and those discounts away I don't think we know much about them yet, but they sound great Like, you know as long as you book at least one award a year,

assuming that they work on all award bookings, which we don't really know, but assuming they do, they're almost as good as getting 10,000 miles, as long as you book relatively regularly awards. So that gives you some incentive to spend. I still wouldn't prefer spending on this card over spending on some other card that earns two transferable points per dollar, for example,

would be much better. Yeah, yeah, but like you said, if you do book United Awards every year and you know you're gonna use the 10,000 mile discount, you could kind of mentally account for it as being like sort of like one and a half miles per dollar spent on the first 20k in spend. I wouldn't quite value it at full face value since it's going to expire and you may not use it.

But but you could sort of do some mental math on that and consider it that way. Right. All right. That's the Explorer card. The United Business card is going up from $95 to now $150 for the annual fee. So the business card annual fee has gone up by $55 to $150. And they've changed some of the benefits here.

So first up, previously, if you took seven United flights, you booked seven flights on United that were $100 or more, then you would earn a $100 statement credit. Now they've reduced the number of flights that you need to take in order to get a benefit here. You know, you only need five flights of $100 or more, and they've sort of increased the value of the benefit, at least that's the way they're marketing it,

because now after five flights of $100 or more, you'll get $125, but now's going to be in the form of United Travel Bank credit not as a statement credit so it's arguable as to whether or not that's an improvement because your travel bank cash of course will expire after a year and it's limited to only being used on United operated flights etc so we'll talk more about United Travel Bank credit and a few, I'm sure. Card holders still get the two United Club passes, same deal as the Explorer card holders there.

The two global economy plus seat upgrades are the carrot to get you to try to spend. If you spend $25,000 in a calendar year, you will earn two upgrades to economy plus seating. I find this so funny. Like, how did someone think that was a big carrot? So economy plus, this is not premium economy folks. This is like three extra inches or something maybe.

This is regular economy seats, you know, exact same width as all the other economy seats, a little bit more leg room and that's about it. So, you know, spend 25,000 to be able to upgrade to that. I mean, come on. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, thanks. No, thanks. I mean, I would I would never almost know. I can't imagine a situation where I would pay for the small difference that economy plus is now to be clear, like Greg said, United has like a real premium economy product

on some of their planes I can't it's called premium plus I think and this is not that so like that's a different experience that might be worth paying for depending on how much comfort you want but economy plus is like it's a rare situation where I would consider paying for well to be clear these are called global so presumably presumably, they'll work on those flights to New Zealand or whatever. There's really long flights. And if you did, if you were planning on flying an economy for that long flight and had the opportunity

to upgrade for free, I mean, you have to put free in quotes though, because spending $25,000 on a card that only earns one point per dollar for most of it spent is not free. You know, there's so many cards that earn two points per dollar. So yeah, anyway, so if you, for some reason you had spent that anyway,

then yeah, you know, might as well apply it and get a little more leg room on that flight, but that's such a small carrot, small carrot. Maybe if I were taller, it would matter more to me. That might be the difference. We're two short guys that don't value this much. Alright and then finally on the United Business Card you're going to have an increased limit in terms of how many Premier Qualifying Points you can earn.

Premier Qualifying Points abbreviated as PQPs in the United ecosystem. So you can earn more PQPs now than you could before. From spend on them. So you can get yourself closer to status. Yeah, based on the current. So the rate isn't any higher. It's just the limit in terms of the number of PQPs you can earn from spend. So if you wanna spend your $25,000

on getting your two global economy plus seat upgrades, you'll be able to do that more times. Well, you won't actually get the economy plus seat upgrades multiple times, but you'll learn more PQPs in the long run. All right, so that's that. The Quest card, that has increased in annual fee by $100. So that went from a previous annual fee of 250 to now the annual fee on the United Quest card is $350. But it comes with a bunch of new benefits or change benefits. So the travel bank credit on that card used to be $125, but now they've increased that

to $200 in United Travel Bank credit. So that's a decent increase in terms of how much you get just automatically for paying the $350 annual fee. You get a 10,000 mile award flight discount each anniversary year. Now in the past, they gave two 5,000 mile rebates and they've changed that to a single 10,000 mile discount and that's a pretty positive change in my opinion because totally first of all you I mean you had to use two of them before instead of just having to use one of them so you relied on you booking two

different awards and previously it was a rebate so you had to have the miles up front to then get them back later on and in this case now instead. It's just a 10,000 mile discount right off the bat So you don't need to have more miles than you need in order to redeem and just get the discount off the top That sounds pretty good to me. Mm-hmm You can earn a second 10,000 mile award flight discount after 20k spend in a calendar year You can earn to a global economy plus seat upgrades earn two global economy plus seat upgrades after $40,000 in spend and you'll get a thousand PQPs each year starting in 2026. So you get a little bit of a bump of a head start towards elite status and just like the

other cards, you can now earn more premier qualifying points in total. The cap on that has increased similarly to the other cards. Yep. Yep. All right. Now let's similarly to the other cards. Yep. Yep. All right. Now let's go through the club cards. So both of the club cards, so there's a personal one and a business one. I'll talk about the personal one first, the United Club card.

It went from $525 to $695. And you would think for that higher amount, you'd be getting more. But let's start off with how you're getting less. So previously, your club membership that the card gives you lets you get into Star Alliance lounges, but no more. If you want to use your card to get into Star Alliance lounges going forward,

you'll need to either spend $50,000 on the card or have Premier Gold Elite status, which is kind of funny because that level status gets you into Star Alliance Gold lounges anyway. You already get the card. It's a little weird. It's a little weird. Previously, you could bring up to two adult guests into United Clubs. Now you're limited to one adult guest, but kids under 18 can come with you as before. There is a new 1500 premier qualifying points towards elite status that you'll get each

year automatically starting in 2026. So if you're into United elite status, that's a nice new benefit coming. And like the Quest card and the business card, the cap on how many PQPs you can earn from spend has gone up quite a bit. And finally, you can earn a 10,000 point award discount with $20,000 spend, and you'll earn it again at $40,000 spend. So, you know, you could sort of, again,

if you valued these at full face value, you could kind of think of it as like your first $40,000 spend is earning about one and a half points per dollar because the normal earnings for the card are just one point per dollar for most types of spend. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I mean, that's not really very good overall pretty negative But you know you can spend your way to

Decent level elite status with United's I guess if you're gonna spend a lot on one of your cards Then you can spend all the way to premiere platinum nowadays Or actually all the way to premiere 1k with the club cards I believe now so so you mean you could earn higher level elite status from spend if you want to spend a lot of money And then there's a business card. Yeah, so that one went up from 450 to 695 so that is absolutely massive increase This same club membership changes as I described with the personal card Same thing that they increased the

limit on earning premier qualifying points but they did not get they will not give you that 1500 premier qualifying point head start the way the personal card will. And they're less interested in incentivizing you to spend more because the only spend incentive they're adding is with $40,000 spend, you can get those two global economy plus seed upgrades. So however, it is worth noting that the business card has a base earning rate of 1.5 points per dollar,

unlike all the other cards we've discussed that have a base earning rate of 1.5 points per dollar unlike all the other cards we've discussed that have a base earning rate of 1. So that card already sort of had a built-in incentive to spend on it at least compared to other United cards so that's worth noting. The other thing worth noting is while they increase the price of these club cards to $6.95, they increased, they changed their membership rates even more. So they've introduced an individual membership. So if you didn't have a card and you want to just get a membership to the club, they made that $750. And that does not allow any guests at all. So getting one of these cards gives you that one adult guest and children for less than an individual membership directly through United.

So anyway, so United made these cards a deal by increasing the cost of the alternative. I love how you explain that. Made these a deal by increasing the cost of the alternative. That's so true. Yes. Well, at least you'll get one and a half miles per dollar spent on the club business card en route to your global upgrade

certificates to Economy Plus. So just very high level now. this is what the new credit card lineup looks like you've got the zero dollar Gateway card you've got the hundred and fifty dollar Explorer card and the hundred fifty dollar business card and you've got the three hundred fifty dollar Quest card and you've got the six hundred ninety five dollar Club cards so you've got four price points for for the cards and different benefits.

Mostly increasing benefits as you go up in value, but one thing I do wanna point out, the 350 Quest card does not offer you any club visits, whereas the $150 cards each give you two club visits each year. Interesting, interesting, good point to point out. OK, so that's the changes and benefits, but that's not at all the limit or extent of the changes.

In fact, there's maybe arguably even more changes coming on the next front here. And that is the coupon book model here. And let's take a deep dive into the various coupons from the various different cards, are I don't know an interesting bag here so why don't you walk us through some of them yeah all the coupons we're gonna talk about here are brand new to the United cards but they're not new to as an idea all of these are copied from somewhere and

usually made worse than wherever they were copied from. So someone had a flawed copy and paste methodology going on. Let's start with hotel rebates. So the Explorer and Business Cards are now offering $100 per year in prepaid hotel rebates if you book through United Hotels, but it's actually $50 per stay, not really $100 per year the way the, so what they copied from, the Delta Gold cards offer $100 back per year when you book through Delta stays, the actually the Delta Gold card, the personal one,

whereas the business one offers $150 back per year, but that could be on one stay. So it's much, much easier to earn the full credit with Delta than with United. Yeah, so you get $50 per stay for your first two stays that you book through United Hotels. So you can go up to $100, it's just you'll need to book two stays through United Hotels. And of course, you know, there's downsides

booking through an OTA like that. You presumably won't get elite credit with the hotel. You won't earn hotel points. You won't, you know, earn your elite benefits if you're staying in a chain hotel. So there's some downsides to booking through an OTA and you won't have access to your corporate codes or AAA or whatever other codes you might have to make the price less. So already booking through the airline booking platform is not my favorite thing in the world. And now you add the fact that you gotta do it twice a year

in order to max this benefit. I'm like, come on United. Yeah, yeah. This was also, it just occurred to me, it is exactly copied off of the Hyatt business card, gives you up to $50 back for two times a year as well. But that's, regardless of how you book your Hyatt stay, and you just have to spend it at a Hyatt property.

There you go. That's not it though. Next up we've got a renowned hotels and resorts credit that's been added to the Quest and club cards. So the Quest card receives $100, $150 rather per anniversary year in statement credits for bookings made through renowned hotels and resorts. The club cards increase that to $200 per anniversary year. So what is renowned hotels and resorts. The club cards increase that to $200 per anniversary year. So what is renowned hotels and resorts? Yeah, it appears to be a copy of fine hotels and resorts. It's one of those things where, you know, by booking through this Chase platform,

you get automatic benefits like $100 property credit, you get free breakfast, whatever. So very similar to fine hotels and resorts. Unfortunately, they've put it behind a paywall or a login wall. So you have to have one of these cards in order to log in and see what hotels are available. Neither of us have one of these qualifying cards. so we haven't been able to look at what's there. I think it's a safe bet that it's a smaller collection of hotels available than Amex has on their front, but I don't know. I'm also unsure, will there be hotels where you can earn, like if the hotel belongs to a chain that has its own points program,

will you be able to earn points in that chain? Will you be able to earn elite credits and use your elite benefits? With fine hotels and resorts, you usually can. With chase the edit, which is something with the Sapphire Reserve, it shows you when you can. It's explicit on the search results. I just don't know.

I think it's a good bet that they'll copy what the edit does, but I don't know for sure. Yeah, so maybe nice. It all depends on A, how many properties they have, and B, whether or not that lines up with your travel plans. So big question mark here as to how useful this benefit is gonna be, but if you're able to make use of it, great.

Sure, it'll be nice because you do get some of those nice benefits like the free breakfast for two. And I don't know if late checkout was included or not, but a hundred dollar credit, et cetera. Right. So one thing I don't like about it, I like it better than that. The two $50 hotel credits that, that the lower price cards offer, but, you know, cause I like that you can earn it all at once.

$150 all at once or $200 all at once. What I don't like is that it's based on anniversary year. You know, like it's hard enough for me to remember my own wedding anniversary. How am I supposed to remember my credit card anniversary? I mean, that's just not something. Don't admit that in the recording, right? Rookie mistake, rookie mistake.

Yes, no, totally, totally. I mean, how are you gonna remember when it resets? That's annoying, I agree. Although I'll argue the flip side of that is for the average traveler, it's probably easier to use a credit that works at almost any hotel than it is to use a credit that works at a very specific Set of hotels so, you know

I could easily use the prepaid United hotels credit for an airport hotel or something like that Whereas I don't know how useful these renowned hotels are gonna be it just depends on where they are and how much they cost Whether they're places I'll book or not. So totally. Yes So plus 100% agree with that. All right. Next up ride share credits. Again, these were copied right off of Delta's refresh lineup. Delta cards added $10 per month ride share credits

to their platinum and reserve cards. So United was like, let's do that too, but let's make it a wee bit harder by requiring you to opt in every year. And let's also make the rate you get paid back variable. So let me explain. So the Explorer card, the $150 explorer card, that one you get $5 per month ride share credit. So use it to pay Uber or Lyft or whatever. You should get $5 back

per month automatically as long as you opt in for the year. But with the rest of them, that's where it gets kind of variable. The business and quest card, you get $8 per month, but in December you get 12. With the club cards, you get $12 per month, but in December you get 18. So, you know, just more- It's colder in December, Greg, I don't wanna walk. There you go.

Obviously it's more in December. You know, they obviously did it to round off the amount so they could say how much you're getting per year as a nice round number, make it look good, but it's just kind of annoying. You know, just, geez. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, that's annoying because like you said, they just want to be able to show the nice round number and the average person's going to forget that it's more in December. So they're either they're not going to use it to the full extent or it's just an oddity in order to be able to pump up the numbers. But really, I think the most annoying thing here is that you, like Greg said a couple times, you have to opt into this annually. So you got to remember in January of every year to opt back in to do this again. I can't think of another card where you have to enroll in the benefit every year in order to keep using the benefit, right? I mean, you get like an Amish Platinum card.

Yeah, you have to enroll in a bunch of the benefits, but once you're enrolled, you're enrolled. Right, right. Well, I don't think that's the most annoying thing. I think the most annoying thing is just dividing these benefits up by little tiny bits month by month. And so I dislike that with the Delta cards. And I dislike it even more with these, because like $5 a month for the Explorer card. Like, is it even worth like thinking about it? I mean, I don't know.

Probably depends how much you do ride share. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So the ride share credits. Woohoo. What else? All right.

It gets worse. Are you sure? Can it? Yeah, in this case, it gets worse. Are you sure? Can it? Yeah, in this case, it does. So rental cars. So this one, they didn't copy from Amex this time. They copied from American Airlines executive card, which that card gives you up to $120 back per year on Avis or budget prepaid rentals. And that's based on calendar year and you could get it all at once. So for some reason they were like, ooh, we like that.

So let's make it worse in a few ways. First of all, we don't really wanna give people cash back that might cost us actual money. So let's give them United Travel Bank cash back that might cost us actual money. Um, so let's give them United Travel Bank cash back instead. Let's also advertise a bigger number, but divided up across multiple rentals. So the, the Explorer and business cards, the $150 cards, um, they'll give you $50 of United Travel Bank, uh, cash back per year, but it's actually $25 at a time for up to two rentals per year.

And there's even like minimums for how much, I think it has to be at least a two day rental to qualify and you have to book it through cars.united.com. So there's a bunch of hoops you have to go through to qualify at all. And then you're talking about, at most, you're getting $25 back for two different rentals that fulfill all those things. Quest card, you get two $40 coupons.

And the club cards, you get two $50 coupons. So I just find that like, it's just, I find it hard enough to use, I actually have an American Airlines executive card. I'm finding it challenging to use my $120 each year for, and that works against one rental, to break these up for two, only, and lower amounts and have to do a two day rental and only getting travel

bank cash back. Like all those things make it like not I would like if I was looking at is this card valuable to me this coupon I wouldn't even consider at all. I just wouldn't know. Yeah, I mean, who what it's I yeah, it's it's absolute insanity. It doesn't make any sense. And you know, the thing is, you have to end up booking through this platform and there's just too many hoops to get travel bank credit that then You know travel bank can only be used for United operated flights. You can't use it for partner flights You can't use it for the taxes on awards. It's like and and particularly since it expires in a year I'm just I'm really not impressed with that. And, and also worth noting that I, I just now, as you were talking about this,

looked up a specific situation because I have a three day Avis rental coming up and that I just booked last night. And so I wanted to compare the prices and the prices are not wildly higher via the cars.united.com than they were when I booked last night through rentalcars.com, but I could get 30% cash back through Capital One shopping with a targeted offer for rentalcars.com so the net price difference is pretty big you know having to book through this cars.united.com already reduces the value of it for me and then when it's in the form of travel bank cash on top of that I wouldn't even bother.

Don't, right. And I, you know, actually I feel that way a little bit with the ride share credits too, that like it's not, it's so little that it's hardly worth even like mentally like accounting for as the value of your card. But this is even worse. This is like a coupon that if someone was like trying to hand me on the street, I'd be like, no, no, you keep it. Right, right, right, exactly.

I don't need that one. And somebody would be handing that out on the street, right? Is that kind of a coupon? Yeah, exactly. So no thanks. Thanks, but no thanks on that one. All right. That's not it, though.

That's not all. No, no. And to be clear, we're not going to go over every single possible coupon, but what we're doing in most of the big ones. The last one we're going to cover is Instacart. So here's one that they, they borrowed not from another issuer, but from themselves, from Chase. So you used to get Instacart benefits, like free on the Sapphire Reserve card.

For example, you used to get, I think it was $15 a month rebate on, on Instacart. So they like that. And so the Explorer and business cards are gonna get $10 per month back at Instacart. All these cards, by the way, except for the free one gives you some level of Instacart plus, some of them give you three months and then the club cards give you the just free

all together I think until this benefit runs out the end of 2027. Anyway, so the Explore and Biz card as I said $10 a month back the Quest card. So they wanted to give you $15 a month back but they don't want to make it too easy. So it's $10 for one purchase and $5 back on another purchase. So you can't you can't get your 15 and one purchase and $5 back on another purchase. So you can't get your 15 in one purchase back. Club card, same deal, except they increased the total to $20 a month by giving you $10 for one purchase

and another $10 for your second purchase in the same month. So yeah, once again, just, you know, they made it. Like, you know, this is fine benefit for people who like to shop through Rensselaer Cart. It's just, you know, this is fine benefit for people who like to shop through Instacart It's just you know, they're they're trying to make it so that it's harder to get the full value and I find that really frustrating Yeah, for sure for sure. Yeah, I mean, I think this will be okay for folks who like Instacart a lot But yeah, like I said, I don't like the fact that it's harder to get it. Yep, you know and back to that Avis thing I remember the other day when I logged into my Avis account

that there's a partnership with Amazon where you can get 10% back on your Avis rentals in the form of Amazon gift cards. So booking directly through Avis, it's gonna be cheaper than booking through United and you can get 10% back in Amazon cash, even if you're not a Capital One shopping person. I just, I know we already said it,

but not an exciting benefit. So out of these cards, out of these cards, which one is the best one? So I mean, obviously we're not terribly enthused about the coupons, but between the coupons and the changes in benefits, maybe some of them are not terrible cards to have. I mean, we're not, we're not saying that you shouldn't consider a United card because there are situations where you might. Which one should you consider or which one? Yeah, I mean, and, and to be clear, so if you fly United a reasonable amount,

getting things like free check bags and priority boarding and things like that could be valuable to you. And so it totally makes sense to be looking at a United card for those reasons. If you're looking for a card just to earn United miles, sure, sign up for these cards to get the welcome bonus, but put your spend on other cards,

like the Chase Ultimate Awards cards that you could get like the Freedom Unlimited that earns a minimum of one and a half points per dollar for all your spend, and you can have the Sapphire Preferred or Sapphire Reserve or something to make your points transferable to multiple airlines and hotel programs, including United. Just for example, you could also get the built card to get points that are to earn points that are transferable to United if that's what you want. So anyway, long way of saying like when I talk about cards being good here, I'm not really talking about it for spend to earn from spend. I'm talking about the perks and whether they're worth it for those. So my favorite of all the cards in the United lineup, if you want a United card, is the United Business

card. That's the $150 card. It compares well to the $150 Explorer card, but it has the advantage of complimentary elite upgrades on award tickets that the Explorer card has lost, has lost that capability. So it has that leg up. The other leg up it has is that if you also have a fee-free gateway card or any personal United card, the business card gives you 5,000 bonus United miles each year.

So my recommended play with all this is to actually get the United business card, but also, which actually while after a year downgrade to the no fee gateway card because the first year on the Explorer card is free anyway. The way they do it is the first year free and then they start charging the second year. So that way you would never have to pay an annual fee for the personal card and you'd get that extra 5,000 miles each year for the business card and then all those other benefits besides you've got the 5,000 points, but you've also got free check bag, the two annual club visits, cardholder reward discounts, all of those things for a lot of people should easily add up to $150 of value, I would think.

And then if you could use any of those coupons that we discussed, like the $50 back on a hotel booking or two, you know, that can make it that much more worthwhile. Yep. Very good. So the United Business Card, you say that that makes sense. But is that the what if you don't want a business card? Let me ask you that. What if you say, I don't have a business,

I don't qualify for a business card, I don't want a business card, then what? Yeah, then I like the Quest card. So now again, this is assuming that you fly united enough to value like the Quest card, yes, it's a $350 card, but it comes with, for example, that 10,000 mile award discount. So if you value that a lot,

because you know you're gonna use it every year and it comes with the, what was it again? $200? $200 in Travel Bank. $200 in Travel credits, Travel Bank. If you know you're gonna use both of those each year, that's almost worth the 350 right there. I mean, very close anyway.

And so, you know, getting all the other benefits, it's sort of a superset of the $150 card benefits plus some more, except you don't get those two lounge visits. So that's still a deal breaker. Cause I would have probably put the Quest Card as my favorite overall, if it just had those two lounge visits or why not have four or five of them?

I don't know. Anyway, those are my recommendations. Finally, if you're really into club access, which I could only understand if you fly out of an airport like Newark that has the lounges and you want to be able to visit them each time, then it can be well worth it to get one of the club cards. As far as choosing which is best, there's not a lot of distinction, but I'll put it this way. If you're interested in spending your way to elite status,

which is very, very expensive with United, but if you still wanna do it anyway, the business card has an edge because it earns one and a half miles per dollar, not elite qualifying miles, but miles per dollar. So there's sort of more of a rebate for your spend with the business card. The consumer card though,

if you're not really into spending big for your elite status, but you do care about elite status, that's gonna start giving you those 1500 bonus premier qualifying points each year starting in 2026. So that one would probably be best for you. But you could see why it's a fine line between those two. It is. Yeah. Well, I think if you're somebody who spends a fair amount on United flights, you're going to earn towards elite status,

but not quite meet the threshold, then the consumer card certainly makes sense. I mean, that's a third of the way to silver status. Silver status requires 5,000 PQPs. So almost a third of the way. Well, it required, I think it earns, uh, it requires 6,000 if you're not accounting your flights, uh, your flight segments and then 5,000 if you have a certain number of flights, 15 segments. You're right. No, you're absolutely right. Yeah. Yeah. So, so it's a quarter of the way there. If you're not going to fly United at all, which then you probably wouldn't want one of these parts. Or you're not gonna do the 15 seconds anyway. 15 seconds, yeah.

But yes, correct. And then gold is what, 10 or 12,000 depending on how much you fly United. So it's a decent little chunk towards one of those levels of status. I mean any of the others also if you're gonna fall just short, this could be a way to bridge the gap, but wouldn't be spending a lot at one pqp per 15 or 20 dollars spent depending which card you're using like Greg said very expensive to spend your way to high level elite status with United. Yeah but if you are planning to do that that's another reason to get one of these club cards they both earn one premier qualifying point per $15 spent, whereas the

Quest and Business card earn one per $20 spent. So you know, your high spend would go a lot further with one of these club cards. So yeah, might as well infer, infer, what's that expression? Infer a penny, infer a pound? There you go. There you go. All right, that my friends, I think, brings us to this week's question of the week.

This week's question of the week came in several weeks ago. Greg, you're gonna think that this was inspired by an email from the last 24 hours or so, but this was a question that came in a while ago, and I couldn't find the exact question, but I'll frame it and give it to you anyway. So, you know, if you

become an enthusiast, a credit card or rewards enthusiast, there are a lot of different ways to kind of push the boundaries and maximize your rewards. There's a lot of tempting opportunities to get more rewards and more and more and more. I've I've said before, I feel like this hobby can be very addictive and appeals to somebody with an addictive tendency, I think because it is addictive to want to earn more and more and more and more and more but then like I said Sometimes you kind of push the envelope and push up against boundaries in terms of what's allowed or not allowed or what?

You may be okay or may not be okay And so somebody wrote in several weeks ago and said how do you manage the fear of account shutdown? Like how do you decide which opportunities are worth going after and which might be heading into a gray area that could cause you trouble or problems? Do you stress about this much? And how do you determine which things you think are okay and not okay to do?

Ah, yeah, wow. I don't, I don't know that I have a good answer for that. So personally there are some things where, because I do what I do, like I don't want to risk, you know, losing, for example, my access to chase credit cards, that, you know, chase cards and well, and Amex too are such an important part of the rewards

ecosystem that if like, I lost access to all of that, then I, you know, I, it would be much harder to do my job to talk about all those things. So, so I tread more carefully, especially, especially with Chase, but that's more because there've been lots of reports of Chase, if you do something that they're unhappy with, they'll tend to shut down all your cards, all your bank accounts and everything.

Whereas Amex, sometimes they'll do that, but often they are a little more like they might do a financial review, which it's possible then to get through that and come out on the other side and be fine. And so it's a little less scary there. So, you know, I'm willing to push the boundaries a little bit on the Amex side,

but much less so on the chase side. But that doesn't really help the average listener who's just doing it for themselves, does it? What do you think? Well, yeah, I mean, I think that it's definitely so we've often said before that different people draw lines in different places in terms of which things, which deals they're comfortable with. I mean, even when we talk about deals, oftentimes somebody will hear about a great deal and they'll be like, that sounds too good to be true. I'm out on that one. I don, that sounds too good to be true.

I'm out on that one. I don't think it's gonna work out. And I often say, well, you know, you gotta jump in when it sounds too good to be true because oftentimes then, you know, it is that good and you gotta get while the getting is good, so to speak. So, you know, so it's difficult though. There's not a universal answer there

because some people will get very frustrated if they end up jumping in on that deal and it turns out that it didn't work out the way that it was expected and other people will be able to accept that and say, ah, you know what, I win nine times out of 10. So if I lose one, it's not going to kill me. So I think that it's very difficult, like you said, to provide a universal answer there. I don't personally spend much time stressed out or worried about account shutdowns and that's primarily because I don't do many things that I think would lead to an account shutdown. I'm you know I'm sure that some listeners must imagine that Greg and I have found some

magic perpetual point machine that's you know hidden in a drawer somewhere that we take out to print points now and then and generally speaking that's probably not the case or at least less true than what you might imagine it to be. And so I just avoid the behaviors that I think are most likely to cause risk. And so we've talked before about how banks, if they see a huge sudden spike in spending, come out of nowhere. You're spending increases massively. You were spending before $100 a month, and now all of a sudden, you're spending to the $20,000 limit on your brand new credit card. That's something that would oftentimes raise a red flag and have an issuer say, oh, wait a second, is this person going to disappear to a tropical beach somewhere and not pay

their credit card bill? And so I tend to try to avoid looking like a scammer in that way. So I'll avoid anything that I think would be well out of the pattern. Now that's not to say that I might not spend $20,000 on a credit card if I find a way to spend that and get most of it back. If I'm able to buy something and resell it, for instance, then it costs $20,000, but I'm confident I can resell it for more than that. I still may do that but I tend to do that ramp up in those types of ways more slowly, more gradually, more intentionally to build my spending patterns in that way. So I avoid things that seem obviously risky but at the same time, no risk, no reward.

And so I just mentioned maybe I would buy something to resell it that cost $20,000 potentially and I've done things of that, cut from that thread anyway before. And so it's not that I wouldn't take any risk because that surely sounds like a risky behavior, but the reward has to be worthwhile. If I'm going to risk something, then there has to be a good reward at the end of it. And so, you know, I don't tend to take risks over very small rewards. If there's something kind of sketchy going on that I think is sketchy and the payout is 20 or $30, that's, I don't want to be involved in anything sketchy

for 20 or $30. Now, if you tell me it's 20 or $30,000, I might say, well, how sketchy is it? But is it really sketchy or what? You know, I might ask more questions anyway. And then that's not to say that I don't have any morals or standards, I certainly do.

It makes me sound more sketchy than I probably am. But, but the bottom line is that, uh, I don't, I don't fret about it very much because I'm not generally doing things that are way outside of the rules. And we talk about things like skip lagging, for instance, on flights, booking a flight that extends beyond the airport you're going to in order to get a cheaper flight to the place you want to go. Let's say I want to go from Albany to Chicago,

but I discovered that Albany to Chicago to Des Moines is cheaper than just Albany to Chicago. I might do that and save some money on my flight to Chicago and just get off the plane in Chicago and not go to Des Moines and if I do that one time I know that the risk of getting shut down is very very minimal. I'm not going to do that 15 times because I don't want my frequent flyer account shut down and I think there's a much greater risk that that's going to'm not gonna do that 15 times because I don't want my frequent flyer account shut down and I think there's a much greater risk that that's gonna happen if I do that 15 times. And so that's what I mean when I say,

I'll stop and say, okay, well, how much benefit is there? If I'm gonna save $30 on a flight and I think there's some risk that my frequent flyer account might get shut down, that's not enough savings for me to risk something that's really valuable to me. If I'm gonna save $3,000 on that skip-like flight then I might say well you know what if I lose this frequent flyer account I'll get another one with a different airline in

the future because of the savings is so much that it's worth it to me so that's I guess what I'm saying. I don't worry about a day and night and typically I find that people that do ask about being worried about shutdown probably are not at risk of being shut down because a lot of the account shutdowns that happen are when people really kind of blow past the boundaries. So anyway, that's some thoughts on that for the person that asked.

I can't remember who it was, but there you go. There you have your answer. Yeah, and let me just add one more thing. You kind of alluded to this, but I definitely have a line that I won't cross and it's not well-defined. It's just sort of like, you know it when you see it. I have a friend that every now and then calls me up and tells me about some scheme to earn lots of points

or get lots of money from something or other. And invariably from this one friend, I listen to it and I go, yeah, that's across my line. I'm not gonna do that. And it's not that these are illegal, it's just they're clearly, basically usually taking, costing some business a lot of money by doing something

that clearly wasn't meant to be within the rules and it just feels wrong. So if it feels wrong, I'm not going to do it. Yeah, there you go. And I think that that's really the moral of the story there. All right, my friends, that brings us to the end of this week's episode. If you enjoyed this and you'd like to get more of this stuff in your email inbox each day or each week, you want to go to frequentmiler.com slash subscribe.

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