Frequent Miler on the Air - COVID-19's impact on our business, Hyatt & Simon surprise, readers delight

Episode Date: April 4, 2020

Greg and Nick discuss: -How COVID-19 is impacting the business of Frequent Miler in a major way and what we and you can do to weather the storm. -Awesome news from Hyatt -Simon $1K VGCs are how online, but are they worth it? -Going live: get notified the next time we're live on YouTube. Read more at thefrequentmiler.com/subscribe Timestamps: 1:36: Reader feedback: Clarifying Citi application rules 7:12: How Frequent Miler makes money and will survive the COVID-19 crisis despite big hits to income 18:20: A very special thank you 32:00: What can readers do to support Frequent Miler given the current environment? 36:36: Good news: Hyatt keeps Greg's wrong prediction streak alive and now I've caught his bug. 44:33: More news: Now register to buy $1K Simon Visa gift cards online, but is it a good deal? 57:52: We were live and will be again. Join us. Subscribe. 1:03:43. Question of the week: Are gift cards FDIC-backed? Should we be concerned about holding them right now?

Welcome to Frequent Miler on the air. How are you doing, Nick? I'm doing great. How are you, Greg? Doing well. Doing well. Today we're going to talk about... What are we going to talk about? We're going to talk about how Frequent Miler, as a business, is going to survive COVID-19.

It's not the happiest topic, but we are going to survive, so I guess it is a happy topic. Anyway, first, let we are going to survive. So I guess it is a happy topic. Anyway, first, let's jump into reader feedback. But before we do that, I just wanted to mention to anyone watching or listening that we're changing up our technology this week. So we don't really know how well this is going to work. In the past, we had been recording the video using something called OBS Studio, and now we're using Zoom.

And we're still trying to record the podcast sound with Squadcast, which is the thing that kept crapping out on us before. So luckily, Zoom seems to be recording the sound pretty well. So it should be a good backup for us. We'll see. But if there's any glitches or anything or any, I don't know, unpolished segments to all this, we'll blame it on the technology being new.

All right. Sounds good. It's not a good excuse to me. So our audio engineering team appreciates your patience. Yes, they do. our feedback comes from david david says guys i'm really enjoying the podcast and appreciate you guys putting it out there just a quick point of clarification from the most recent episode i think greg mentioned a couple of times about a 48 month clock between between thank you point card sign-up bonuses. But I was under the impression that the clock for these bonuses was only 24 months.

I'm newer at this game, so I'm not sure if I am right, but I was hoping for some clarification. Appreciate it. So, David, first of all, I'm glad you're enjoying the podcast. We're enjoying doing them. So that's a good combination. And I think he's right. If I indeed did say that it's a 48-month wait, which I probably did say that last time, David's right. It's not.

It's 24-month. And Citi is really confusing. And I just recently updated our best offers page to show the rules more clearly. So on our best offers page, you can click to jump to any of the banks, any of the credit card issuers, like jump to Citi Bank or Chase or Amex. And at the top, there's app tips. And there we show the signup rules. Like if you go to Chase, you'll see the 524 rule. If you go to Amex, you'll see the different rules

about how quickly you can sign up for more cards. And so with Citi, I finally got around to spelling out the 24 month and 48 month rules because they vary by product family. So the thank you cards, if I'm remembering right, they're 24 month from the date at which you got the bonus or from the date you canceled any other thank you card, which does not include the double cash because that's not considered a thank you card, even though you can move your points to thank you points. American Airlines is where they have the 48 month rule. And I think that's from sign up, not from bonus. And then they have, again, they have like a 24 month rule. I think it is for their Expedia cards, but it's not from the bonus. It's from sign up, I think. So so every fan every product family they have has

different different rules which is they continue to make very little sense right right do which which is okay for the most part for us but the thing is the thing about this is i can't memorize those things either so what i always do and i'm sure what greg did in this case initially anyway before he went and made the changes was he went to our best offers page because we do have the application rules under each bank. So if you just go to our best offers page, you can get there from any page on the website on thefrequentmiler.com. You click best offers, then each bank section, there's their hyperlinks to each bank, Amex, Citi, Chase, etc. It's got the application rules. It's got the phone number for reconsideration if you don't get approved right away so all of that kind of information is really easily accessible on our

best offers page and also on the individual card pages for each card right right right so and what i was saying earlier it wasn't before all that clear with those city cards you know so that's cleaned up it's now i, I think, crystal clear. If you go to an individual card page, in fact, there's a lot more detail about those rules than there is on that best offers page. So I think we're good to go there. And it's a good idea to use our website

to fact check anything that we say here because the things we say here are completely unscripted and also completely on fact checked, except for, you know, bright listeners like, like David. So, well, and I'm glad that you brought that up because we had a piece of feedback somewhere this week where somebody mentioned how they enjoy the fact that the podcast sounds like it's unscripted. Like we're just kind of have a few topics in mind and, and it's just kind of off the cuff and that's exactly what it is. I mean, that's totally true. I mean, you come up with a couple of topics who say, okay, we're going to talk about ABC and, uh, and whatever comes to mind comes to mind. So it's not like definitely

not scripted. We don't have this written. Right. Right. And, and in fact, uh, we just have a few notes that we each put up on our, on our screens and they have to just have a few notes that we each put up on our screens. And they have to be just a few notes because both of us take off our glasses for these things. And so the notes have to be written big enough that we can see them without our reading glasses on. Well, you know, actually, in my case now, so I lost my glasses a couple of weeks ago. So I'm going contact lenses all the time now so i'd really like to get a new pair of glasses but these days ordering anything seems to take like a month so um so i i haven't done that mostly because i figure i'm not going to get

them forever and my wife just before this uh just before we started recording this said well uh if you keep waiting it's going to be even longer you should probably order those soon but it's true it's true we usually even longer. You should probably order those soon. But it's true. It's true. We usually haven't blown up really big. I'm sometimes using two monitors. So, you know, we've got just those basic, basic notes, like Greg said.

And it's off the cuff. It's live TV, so to speak. So every now and then, if one of us misspeaks, we do appreciate it if somebody catches that. But like Greg said, the key details are usually on the website. And if they aren't, then comment and let us know, because then we'll fix that up and make sure that it's clear right so just basically a safety warning don't believe what we say but hopefully what we write is correct right there you go there you go do as we write not as we say that's exactly right yeah okay so the topic for today right so yeah yeah are we are we gonna make it through i mean that's are we gonna make it through we're gonna make it let's talk for a minute about how we

we as a business how frequent miler makes money we're a business that we we're full-time i've been full-time actually on april 1st was my eight eight year anniversary of being full-time as a blogger. Thank you. Thank you. And so that's, I mean, that's amazing in itself. Like who would have ever thought we would have been bloggers for a living? It's crazy, but that's what we've been doing. People don't really believe you when they ask you what you do for a living and you're like, well, I'm a blogger. They're kind of like, Oh, well,

yeah. People who don't know the blog, there's kind of a reaction of you know i could tell they kind of pity me you know like right like like oh he can't find a real job right exactly exactly yeah yep yep so you definitely get a fair your fair share of that which is a okay i mean hey you know i didn't know you could do it full time either. And I've been full time here for Greg, um, you know, salaried since I started. So, uh, now it's been what? Three years, I guess. Right. So it has. Yeah. Yeah. It does. It does when you're having fun and we've been having a lot of fun. So sure. Okay. So anyway, so, so the way the blog makes money, there's two major things that the easy one for people to understand is we do display ads on the website. Um, that finally started becoming significant money about six months now, not even six months ago, maybe about six months ago when boarding area who boarding area is the, is the technology hosting platform that they host our blog.

And in exchange for us, in exchange, they sell advertising space on our website and they keep a percentage of that advertising space. And so that's how they make money by hosting our blog. And we actually, it's great for us because we don't have to do any work in trying to get the best advertising dollars. Yeah. I mean, I can't imagine the extra hours that would take every week to pour into that aspect of it that neither one of us would probably enjoy. Exactly. That's not what we're here to do and not how we want to be spending our time. So anyway, they sell the ads. They recently changed things so that the ads show up in the blog posts because before they were just sort of on the sidebar and not many people saw them and you don't get paid unless people actually see the ads. So that might be a little bit more annoying for readers that they're in the

posts, but I think that people are used to it. And so I think so. I don't think anybody's mentioned any negativity. Right, right. We haven't seen it everywhere. Yeah, exactly. We haven't heard any negativity about it which is which is nice um and you know i just think almost every website does that these days so

it's not like we're doing something egregiously bad in fact one of the nice things that we do by not doing is we don't do those pop-ups that pop up over the thing you're trying to read, trying to tell you to sign up for the newsletter or whatever. We don't do that. So if you haven't signed up for our newsletter, if you haven't subscribed to our YouTube channel, those kinds of things, go to our subscribe page and subscribe to those things as a thank you for us not popping that pop-up. I've refused that from the beginning because I hate those things. I hate it when I start reading something and then something pops up over me, especially when it shakes a little. But anyway.

Not calling anyone out by name there. So I don't want to flick that upon anyone else. Anyway, so I'm getting off track here. Right. So we got the ads. So the ad revenue. and that's a percentage. But a bigger percentage is our credit card affiliate links. What that is, is with certain credit card offers, not all of them, we have links where when you click through our link and you apply and you successfully get approved for the card, all three of those things have to

happen, then we get a commission as if we're like we're salespeople. And I say like we're salespeople because we handle it very differently from salespeople, right? We do put those links there, but if there's a better offer that we know about, a better public offer that we can put in there instead, we're going to put it in there instead, even if it means no affiliate commission for us. And we don't try to push these offers or anything. If we're writing about a offer, it's because we think it's a great offer regardless of whether there's an affiliate commission attached to it or not. And so we don't think of it as selling cards, but the, the affiliate networks do. Well, and I should, I should, I should pause you for a second. Cause

you were talking about putting the link in there and whatnot. And I want to be clear. I'm sure you were going to come back to this, but I think it's worth mentioning now that when he talks about putting the affiliate link in there, there is on the card specific page, which you can get to from our best offers page, we do not put those credit card affiliate links within posts. And I think that's an important distinction. You're not going to find a post with, you know, 40 credit card affiliate links in it about, you know, 90 million reasons why you should get this particular credit card. If we're writing about a credit card we think is worthwhile, we're certainly going to tell you why you ought to take a look at it and why you ought to think about it.

But we don't put those links into posts. So you have to specifically want to apply through our link. And that's important too, because when we're writing the posts, again, we're not thinking about the affiliate commission. We don't even know if when you read it, there's going to be an affiliate link on that card page or not.

We will probably, if we're writing about a card, we will link to that card page. We may even use a short code that's sort of a tech speak for how we embed little bits of information. But we will put a short code that embeds a little piece of that information from the card page right in the post. But we don't see that at the time we're writing the post. So if we're including the offer in that shortcode, in that little blurb that shows up in the post, it's because the offer is part of what we're writing about. Like we're writing about that. There's a new offer out, but the truth is it's just pulling from our database. And if later you read that post later, when that offer has changed, you're going to see the most recent offer, not, and it might not be an affiliate

offer. We actually just don't know at the time when we write it, whether it'll be an affiliate offer or not when you see it. Anyway, I'm kind of getting off track from the main point, which is that's the majority of our income, despite all the things we do to not push the things and not, not be, uh, you know, to make sure that the readers are getting the best, uh, offer. It still has been by far the biggest source of our revenue. And so ad revenue and affiliate credit card revenue are two biggest sources of revenue. There's little bits of other stuff like a little bit of Amazon affiliate links, very little of other stuff beyond that. So what's happened recently? One thing that's happened is the advertisers who pay for the ads on our website have been not bidding as high. So there's this whole automated bidding process that happens. I don't understand it. I haven't paid a lot of

attention to it. All I know is the bids have not been high. So that means that even if we have just as many page views as before, just many people viewing the ads, we're not getting paid nearly as much as before. Okay. The other thing that's happening is credit card companies are starting to pull their cards out of the affiliate network. They're saying basically, we don't want to, we as the banks don't want to pay someone to advertise our cards right now. So the whole affiliate

networking thing is a way it's a marketing channel for them, how they pay us to market their cards basically. And, and right now they're saying in this current, um, economic climate, that's not the right thing for us to do right now, which I totally get it. I mean, I'd probably be doing that too, if I was a credit card issuer. So the thing is, the banks that have pulled out already represent more than 71% of the affiliate commission we earned in the last rolling 12 months. So it's not a small change we're talking about. And I'm saying more than because when I checked the numbers before, it was two banks had pulled out. And by a day later, at least one more major bank had pulled out. I can't remember if there was another one, but anyway, that's,

that's what we're facing right now is, is a sudden, uh, huge decrease in, in our revenue as, as a blog, as a business. I'm not saying all that to complain. I, I feel like I, I, and we are just so incredibly fortunate. And part of, and, uh, part of that is, is we did really, really well this past rolling 12 months leading up to this. So I look at that, the extra money earned as money, that's going to get us through this because, um because while keeping the blog running, the actual electronics of the blog running doesn't cost me anything. There are salaries to pay. So Nick is full-time employee and we have two other part-time employees. And so I just, I, I'm happy that we have so much in reserves, basically, that we can keep things going, even if, even if, uh, revenue drops to nothing,

which it's not going to drop to nothing. For the record, I'm pretty happy about that too. As are my wife and son. Okay. I'm sure, I'm sure you consulted your son about it first. And I did. I was like, listen, are you sure you want another apple juicy? And, and he was like,

yeah. And I was like, you better thank Greg for that later on. All right. Good. I reminded him. So anyway, um,

no, we have, yeah, that's going for quite quite a while which is i feel very fantastic i wrote a long post about which probably most listeners read it i don't know but there's some number of listeners and watchers that probably didn't read it so if if you're interested in more about what i'm talking about right now, look for our post, my post on how frequent my alert, the business is surviving COVID-19. But what, what was so cool is,

is that in response to that post, there was just an outpouring of love from readers, basically. I mean, it was fantastic. It really was. It really was very meaningful, you know, and I was, I don't know why I was surprised, but I was taken aback, I feel like with the number of positive comments. And it was very uplifting. Because, you know, like, like Greg said, I think both of us feel very fortunate

to be able to do what we're doing. I mean, my goodness, like day after day, I feel like at the dinner table, I've mentioned how lucky we are, you know, that I've got a job still because, you know, I'm from New York and lots of my friends and family all of a sudden, like on a day's notice, had no more job. And, you know, I'm not in that position. And I feel really, really fortunate for that and fortunate to work for Greg. And Greg's been a fantastic boss all along. I've often told people I won the employment lottery here. And I really feel that way because here we are in a position where revenue is going about to zero and Greg's saying, that's okay. I'm still going to keep everybody employed and we're going to keep tracking through this. And that's pretty amazing. So I feel pretty fortunate. But at the same time,

I'm as nervous as everybody else in the know, in the sense that, like, obviously, I'm nervous about the virus. And I've had I have a family member who's positive for it for a few friends who've been fighting it. So I'm nervous in general, just like everybody else is watching the news at night, that kind of thing. So I'm a little anxious. And it was just very emotional to read all of the positive comments there in an environment where we feel a little uncertain about everything, not just money and the blog, but the world in general. It was really comforting in a, I don't know, special way. So thank you very much. It sure was. It sure was.

And, you know, a number of readers offered, they said, put up some way that we could contribute, which we totally do not need, at least not now. And I really don't foresee us ever needing that. But it's so nice that people are so appreciative of what we do that they're actually willing to go out of their way and even offer up their own resources for us to keep going is amazing. And yeah, so that's something. Now, a few people offered advice about applying for those, the federal loans now, the, oh shoot, what is it called? The Paycheck Protection. Payroll Protection. the federal loans now, the, the, the, um, Oh shoot. What is it called? The, um, paycheck protection, payroll protection, payroll protection. That's it. Yes. Yes. And I look at that being protected. Right, right, right, right. So at first, those of us on the payroll are big fans of that one. So, so honestly, at first I was hesitant about it because I was worried that

if I apply for it, like, again, I don't feel like we need it, but I felt like if I applied for it, does that mean that businesses that are really need it are going to lose out? And, um've been, I actually, one of the people who reached out to me is Gary Luff, who writes View from the Wing. And I voiced via email my concerns about that. What's the right term instead of voiced? I don't know. Expressed, I guess. I expressed my concerns. I emojied my concerns.

And, you know, he wrote back basically saying, you know, first of all, with numbers saying it's pretty unlikely that I'd be taking from anyone else. But his other kind of view was, you know, I could apply and just, and if it turns out that I don't need the money, I could just set aside the equivalent amount of my own money to donate to a business or charity or whatever. And his view was that he thinks I would do a better job of finding someone, you know, who really needs that money than the government would do. And because right now it's basically self-policed. And so whether or not I'd be better at that than the government, I do feel better about that approach of saying basically, yeah, you know, I think, I think by the letter of the agreement, I have to use that money towards

payroll, which is fine, but I can keep a equivalent amount of my own money aside and just say, if it turns out I don't need this, I'm donating it to a worthy cause. And so that's, that's my plan. We'll see how that goes. Yeah. Well, I think that is a very reasonable plan. Like you said, I think we feel very fortunate to be in a position where we can keep on keeping on for a while here through tough times that we expect for the next few months as far as any kind of income for the blog goes. So I feel very fortunate for that. But at the same time, none of us know how long this is going to last. And that's what this kind of program is set up for to be able to keep people, you know, making it through this time. And, and so hopefully,

you know, if that that keeps us helps keep us, you know, in business and, and employed, then, you know, then that's, that's what that kind of program is, is obviously meant for. So, so I think, I think it makes sense to have done. I think it makes sense if you're listening out there and you're kind of teetering on that, should I or shouldn't I? That argument made a lot of sense to me and was actually the first thing that came to my mind too when I saw the program and thought about it. I thought to myself, well, we may not need it. But if it turns out that, you know, things return back to good again, then, you know, we can certainly pay it forward and make sure that people are taken care of that need it. So, I think that that seems like a wise

decision. So, of course, that sounds good coming from the guy who's staying employed, right? It does. And, you know, there's a few little glimmers of encouragement in our business. So Citibank decided, oh, this is a great time to raise the standard offer for the American Airlines business card, which is just so funny because business cards are what the other major banks are pulling from the affiliate networks and and us bank dare to be different city nice job but us bank was like hold my beer because i've got a card that was previously useless but now i'm going to give you a 750 cash sign up bonus for this small business card and not only, I'm putting it through the affiliate network. So how about that?

Right. Right. I mean, who, who saw that coming? Cause I, you know, I sure didn't. No, no, no. It's like, what, where did that come from? So maybe they, you know, maybe they're smarter than Chase or Amex, but either way, probably not. I didn't mean that.

I'm joking. I'm having a joke at your expense, right? Don't get angry at us and take those away now. That's right. We love you, U.S. Bank and Citi. Right now, we love you. Right. Very much.

Very much today. Despite everything we say about you. Okay. Right. Oh, man. So, I mean, that is good news. And hopefully there'll be more glimmers of good news like that along the way. And at the end of the day, I mean, we're going to continue writing about the stuff that we enjoy writing about, because that's what we like doing. And, you know, I think that we believe in frequent miler. And I think, you know, we already believed in frequent miler, I think that, you know, when you email,

you said you believe in the business. And so you're willing to invest in the business even if we're not bringing in revenue. And I felt the same way. I believe in Frequent Miler. I enjoy what we're doing. I think that hopefully it provides some value to people who are reading the blog. And I felt even stronger about that after reading the comments on the post this week. So I felt even better about the fact that we're going to keep on keeping on and hopefully doing something that helps people. I mean, I think obviously we write about miles and points. And so I don't want to make that sound too grandiose. But at the same time, I hope that the things we write about help people enjoy travel trips, fun with their family, the ability to expand their horizons a little bit and experience a little bit of the world.

So I like to think that we do something good along those lines and help people stay financially healthy and that sort of thing. So I'm glad we're going to be able to keep doing it because the alternative wouldn't be as good. So that's awesome. So thank you to Greg for continuing to make it possible. And it's great to have Stephen and Kerry. Stephen and Kerry have been great additions. We should not fail to mention that because, you know, obviously, Greg said, I'm not the only person here. And Stephen does a fantastic job finding different things for quick deals and offering a different perspective on travel and on point redemptions and on promotions. And Kerry has been so helpful behind the scenes.

If you watched our youtube live yesterday you probably saw carrie for at least a couple seconds right behind the scenes making all the magic happen so uh so that was very helpful and it has been very helpful it's been a great addition too yeah in case anyone uh doesn't know so carrie is married to drew who is the brains behind the blog Travel is Free. Now, Travel is Free sold to the Points guy not too long ago. But despite that, we still love Drew. Yes, we do. And Carrie has been contributing to this blog on small projects for years.

And the biggest thing she did was when I went to Necker Island for a week. I don't even know. Were you aware of this, Nick, that she? Yeah, I do know that. And I guess I probably hadn't thought about it for a while. But yes, I do know that. And I guess I probably hadn't thought about it for a while. But yes, I do know that she. So she made she produced like everyday videos that we put out on YouTube about about my experience on Necker Island. And the way we did it basically is I just I took videos from my phone.

I had my phone syncing up to Dropbox, had her on that same Dropbox folder, and she would just go through all these miscellaneous videos and pick out ones to make a kind of story out of each day. And she did a fantastic job there. Yeah, this came out great. Yeah. And she's also done, you know, just miscellaneous things for us with when we needed graphics. She did a infographic. I was having trouble remembering that name word for a second. A cool infographic once about how, how points transfer among chase credit cards and things who,

who you could transfer points to. Cause it's, it's kind of complicated, but anyway that team's been terrific. And we just hired Carrie as a every week employee. Just she started a few weeks ago and it's been great having her. So, yeah. So that's all. That's good news. Yeah, it's great.

It's nice to be able to keep the team together because I think we've assembled a pretty good team. And, you know, you talked a little bit about the business of the blog. And so I think it's also kind of interesting to note that there are a lot of those things that happen behind the scenes. So obviously, there's the posts that you see every day. But then there's a lot of those other little things like designing the way things look. And we've been working on moving to a new theme for a long time now. And so getting that all tweaked and you talked about those affiliate links and maintaining those and trying to make sure that the best offers are where the best offers need to be. There's a lot of those other little things that go along with the blog. And so it's it's great having all the extra help. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. And Stephen's been, you know, incredible on working on the something we call the tag project. I don't need to get into details here, but, you know, he's working on the, something we call the tag project. I don't need to get into details here, but you know, he's really taken that on himself. It was based on his own suggestions and he's, he's, uh, gone wild with it, which is fantastic. He knows what he's doing,

has great ideas and, and is willing to put in the time. So, uh, love to keep that brain trust. I mean, cause Steven's got a lot of experience too, cause he's had other sites for years. So Steven's got a lot of experience with sites in general and, and having more than one, having multiple, I think probably gives him a lot of perspective in a way that, uh, I think is helpful to have. It sure is. Absolutely. And, and Carrie too, because she's, she's worked on the Travelers Free website.

She was the technical team behind it. She did the HTML or, you know, all the graphics. And she would get into the HTML, although that's not her thing particularly. But certainly did, you know, the design and would research things about how to improve the search engine optimization and all kinds of things with that blog. And so she knows a lot about it too. And a lot of stuff that I've never taken the time to learn. So having both of them along with their expertise is fantastic. So that leads me into a question to ask you, because I feel like this question kind of came up a few times in the comments and maybe we've touched on it a little bit, but I think that it's a question that probably a few people

have going through their mind right now. So if they want to see the FrequentMiler team stay together and get through this, and then we obviously all do, what can people do if they want to support FrequentMiler? Like you said, you know, we certainly don't have any intention to go to some sort of a subscription model or that sort of thing. You know, we're certainly hopeful that those kinds of things aren't ever. But but what can people do if they want to support the site? Yeah, well, I mean, the what people have been doing all along since I started the blog, I think is, is when people are really into the site, they encourage others. They tell others about it and get them subscribed to the

blog. And now it's not just a blog, it's also the YouTube channel and the podcast. And so whatever your friends, however your friends like consuming information, if you think they would like this stuff, recommend it and see if they can get it. Also, a lot of people, I love hearing this, will say, I trust you more than any other blog. So I tell all my friends and family to sign up through your links. Now, probably 90% of the time, our links are not actually links that pay us.

But the truth is, the 10% has been enough to make us a very successful business. And so. And that's, he's saying before, like 90% of the links before they started getting pulled. Yeah. That might be an exaggeration. Probably before it was more like, uh, 50 or 60%. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But, and but and still you know we've been able to make it through with that so and and uh be very fortunate so so yeah i mean i i would that's kind of the things that i would say so i mean the first thing you can do is read the blog right so you check out the posts and when something interests you you know read through you get the email or

that sort of thing if you're subscribed and you want to click through the site and read it that's obviously something that's good and and like Greg said, sharing it with friends and family, subscribing where you can, whether that's via email or YouTube or the podcast, if you're listening on this, obviously all of those things are helpful. So, and then obviously using our links when you can. And, you know, I think that a lot of times, like you said, if there are even banks where we don't necessarily have affiliate links for, in those cases, if you take a look at our best offers page and you don't see an affiliate link for something, then, you know, obviously look for other sites where you might be able to support folks. Although in a lot of situations, I imagine that if we don't have them, they're probably just affiliate links for those. Yeah.

Yeah. What occurs to me that we should do? So we now for, for the links that are not affiliate links and that are also not refer a friend link. So sometimes we just use our refer a friend links cause they're better than the affiliate links or because we don't have affiliate links. But, uh, when it's neither of those, we actually put a note next to the link saying, this is, this is not an affiliate, just to let people know that in case you were about to sign up because you thought we'd get paid, we wanted to make it clear just so you know that you won't. But we should probably also do the opposite, say this is an affiliate link. Because right now it's kind of subtle.

It's like you have to know that when you see the realistic credit card image, then you know it's an affiliate link. Yeah, and that information is at the bottom of the best offers page, but it's all the way at the bottom. You'd have to scroll all the way to the bottom. Right, right. I think it should be right next to the link or right under the link, something like that.

So maybe we'll do something like that just so people know that by signing up for that card, they're helping us out. That might make it easier for people who deliberately want to. We've got to help frequent mylar. And, you know, we're lucky to have a lot of people out there who do read and who are listening. And so thank you to the people who are doing it, because that, you know, that's why we part of or part of the reason why we do it. I guess most of the reason why we do it is because we think people enjoy it. And that's why we do this and why we do most of what we do. So we write about what

we're interested in. And that's always been something that I've enjoyed about Frequent Miler even before I worked here. I feel like you've always just kind of written about what you're interested in. And most of the time it's interested me. And that's all we could do. And so, all right. That's enough of that topic. All right. We're all set with that. So let's talk about some other good news. Since we kind of turned that around to the positive and look at the positive, let's talk about some other good news.

So good news this week. Hyatt totally made us into bad predictors again. So Greg's streak of being really bad at predictions is remaining alive. And he's drawing me into it now i'm starting to catch whatever this is that craig has because man not 24 hours after i i on our live stream went on about how we're not gonna hear anything from hyatt or marriott for like you know a month or two or more hyatt just turned right around and they were like, ha, hold my beer. Here you go. That's right. Here we go.

So what are they doing? Remind us what's changed with Hyatt. So this week, Hyatt announced that they are going to extend everybody's elite status for free. You're going to get whatever status you had on March 1st of this year. So whatever status you earned in 2019 based on your stays in 2019, whatever status that was, is going to get extended through all of next year. So you're going to maintain your status until instead of your status expiring February of 2021, your status is going to be valid until February of 2022. So if you earned a global status in 2019, you're going to have that status throughout all of next year and all of the year after that so that's pretty or not all of them i'm sorry all of next year until february of the year after that i just misspoke see that's why you have to fact check and look at the post also that's right

so they're they're going to extend your status so you're going to get an extra year of status so you're not going to lose that you're going to get an extra year to enjoy that and then also also awesome they are extending free night certificates for another well even more than a year in some cases if you had a free night certificate that was expiring now you're gonna have to check the post in fact check me on this okay i think if it was expiring between march 1st of uh of 2020 and december 31st of 2020 it's now getting extended to december 31st of 2020 and December 31st of 2020. It's now getting extended to December 31st of 2021. All right. So that includes those six-month ones, right? Right. Right. That's why I'm super excited because you stayed 30 nights last year, you got a milestone reward, you got a free category one to four certificate,

but it was only valid for six months. And so mine was set to expire in another couple of months here. And now it's going to be valid, not just for like another six months, but for like another year and a half, basically until the end of 2021. So that's terrific. By that point, I'll certainly be able to find a use for that certificate. So that's great news, I think. Oh, absolutely. So going back to the elite extension, right? I'm going to, I don't know why I'm going to predict anything given how bad my predictions have been, but. I hope you're going to predict the opposite doesn't happen. But my prediction is that American Airlines is going to do the same thing, that whatever status you have now with them, they're going to extend a whole nother year. And the reason I'm picking on American Airlines is because I'm so mad that I didn't go for Hyatt Globalist last year, because had I gone for it and and succeeded not only would i have high globalist that's their top tier status for x two years based on earning it for one year

at the end of last year or maybe the beginning this year i forget they gave the globalists american airlines top tier executive platinum status so I'm just thinking that that free gift is going to just keep on giving. And that's why I'm picking on American is like, they're going to extend that for a whole nother year. So Stephen Pepper, who was one of the people who benefited from that executive platinum thing. I'm sorry, I just jinxed you steven but because i'm predicting you'll have executive platinum for another year which

for free which means you you won't because my don't my record has been so don't be don't be don't be too sorry when that prediction doesn't come true steven pepper is a man on a five-year 50 state road trip he's like the least likely person to take advantage of American Airlines executive platinum status. The man drives everywhere. He's got American Airlines executive platinum status. It's not fair. No, it is fair. But yeah, I think that's probably a good prediction. And I hope that we see something similar out of Marriott because I have titanium status right now. And so that gave me United silver status, which isn't amazing, but I did get to take advantage of a free same day change earlier this year. And I was like, Oh wow, that's actually kind of convenient to have. So

not enough that I'm going to fly United often enough to earn it. But Hey, if Marriott extends status and I can get another year of United silver status out of that, uh, I'll be happy enough anyway with, with that result. So hopefully Marriott will follow suit. One thing though, about the Hyatt announcement that didn't make any sense at all. And I, my bet is that it just was people within the loyalty program that weren't thinking because they don't focus on how this is going to, uh, you know, how, how, how it would have played out as much as you and I will. Uh, But one of the things they announced was that if you have Sweet Night Awards or the Sweet Night Upgrades as a globalist or Club Lounge Awards that are expiring between March 1st and December 31st, that those are going to

get extended also basically for another year. But that doesn't make any sense at all because nobody has any of those that are expiring this year. If you have Sweet Night upgrades right now or Club Lounge certificates, those are valid until February of 2021 right now. So they should have extended those until 2022. And I bet they probably will when they realize that the way they did it didn't make any sense. But right now, as of now if you if you're a globalist and you have sweet night uh or those sweet upgrades i keep saying sweet night awards that's what marriott uses if you've got those globalist sweet upgrades then right now those are only valid until february of 2021 even though your status goes another year right right and so

sure do you have any of those in your account? I don't. I'm an explorist. So I did get to 30 nights last year. So I have club lounge upgrades that would expire February of next year. And that is a little annoying because I, while I don't often do that, and generally, if I'm going to book a Hyatt stay, I'm usually going to book it as a guest of honor with somebody who's a globalist for you that's willing to help me out with that. However, I talked recently about Hyatt purvey and Hyatt purvey is pretty interesting. And if we come out of this and there ends up being some really great rates at places with club lounges, then I may end up booking through Hyatt purvey and wanting to apply those club lounge upgrades. So I would like to see those extended another year or if my status is getting extended so yeah so i'm still

hoping that hyatt will also reduce the requirements for getting to globalist for next year so for for those of us who are not already there i still think they probably will because i think they probably will too but obviously they wouldn't make any decisions this early. No, no, obviously not. By the time you hear this thing, by the time I get this uploaded, they're going to have announced their reduced requirements probably if our prediction skills keep up here. But no, I think it's likely that they will reduce them because obviously, like I said the other day, I don't think I was wrong in the sense that they need to do something to encourage business when travel is safe again. And so I think they're going to incentivize people who don't already have that status. It's just nice that they've also extended people who who had the status already for another year. So lucky.

Big win. Big win for globalists and even explorers. Right. Right. So there was more good news this week, which is there was, which is Simon mall, which we've written about a lot that, that they've had these thousand dollar gift cards that you could buy in the mall, but now all the Simon malls are closed at least for now. And so they, they finally made it so that you can order those $1,000 gift cards,

Visa gift cards, online. And you wrote all about that. I think it's the same card activation fee, right? $3.95 per card. But you also have to pay $10 per order and a shipping fee, which if you pay for ground shipping, somewhere around $10 to $12 probably, but maybe more depending on where you live. Right. Right. So that's the good news that we now have a way to, we don't have to go to the mall to buy those thousand dollar gift cards, but how the heck do we liquidate these things? Yeah. I mean, that's, that's, that's tough stuff for people. We shouldn't, we shouldn't understate the, the I think the, the advantage of having those to order online. Now, obviously

right now the malls are closed, but the malls will open back up again. If you live near a mall, you're going to want to go to the mall because you're not going to want to pay the shipping fee and the processing fee. But for those of us who don't live near a Simon mall, and believe it or not, there are many of us out there who don't, that's a pretty awesome ability to buy in bulk. So when things open up again, and it's safe to go out and liquidate again, I am really excited about that. It's not the cheapest. I wrote a post this week about the best cards to use. It's not the cheapest form of online MS out there that you can do better buying other gift cards. And if you're going through a shopping portal and whatnot,

there are better options out there in terms of the cost per card. But the convenience of the thousand dollar cards is huge for me. Yeah. And the quantity that you can buy in also huge for me. So, and the fact that Simon is very welcoming, I'm not going to have trouble with orders getting through and that sort of thing once you get approved for the program. So all of those things are big pluses for me. But obviously, yeah, right now, everybody was asking the same thing.

And I don't think we have a magical answer to it. You know, what do you do with those cards right now? Right, right. Not much. No, no. So the other thing, the other thing that I'm not happy about, I mean, I, I'm not blaming anyone. It's just one of the reasons why I don't, I'm not excited about the Simon mall thing is, is that they only let you use one credit card per order. And so if you want to do anywhere close to $25,000 worth in a single order, you have to have a huge credit limit available on your card. And it just happens that some of my best cards for getting, you know, getting the best rewards for my spend at a place that where there's no category bonus involved, they don't have credit limits that high. So, uh, and, and so when you, when you're talking about a lower credit limit, uh, the $10 and the $12 shipping fee, those things add up to quite a bit per card. So suddenly you're,

you're as a percentage, it's becoming not just a little bit more expensive than buying through giftcardmall.com or giftcards.com, but actually a lot per as a percentage of the card value. Right, which is it is definitely true. So like we said, it's definitely not the cheapest method out there. And it's not the only method that you can personalize with your name. You know, that's obviously also a big, big thing here is that these cards can be personalized with your name. But you can also do that on other cards that you order online. But here's what I'm going to say about it. A, the $1,000 cards are much, much easier for me to liquidate.

The $500 cards are not bad. They're much better than the $200 and $100. But the $1,000 for me, I can liquidate really fast and easy because splitting tender once or twice doesn't tend to get nearly as much skepticism. So it's faster, it's easier for me. And at the end of the day, I did the math in the post. And if you're, if you're ordering 10,000 at a time, you're paying $6 and 15 cents per $1,000 card. So essentially, that's like, you know, if you're comparing to $500 cards, it's a little over $3 a card, uh, comparatively per, per 500. Right. But the thousands are much more convenient for me. So I'm happy to, to get the thousands. Uh, and I had a

lot of trouble getting orders through on those sites that sell the $500 cards. So, uh, so I'm, I'm still happy with it, even though I know that not everybody who I'm asked is, is going to be, it's also a quantity thing because you're limited to what is it? 60 K a month that you can get a cash back. Right. Yeah. That's what it is. Yeah.

So 60 K a month, it should be able to go through a portal to get those $500 cards cheaper. Otherwise they're not going to be cheaper anyway. Right. And with Simon, you could be doing, you know, 60 K every two or three days.

If you, if you wanted to. So, so if you have the capacity to liquidate to do more volume then you know that becomes different and i i can typically liquidate when i when things are okay at home obviously when i can go out and do it i can't right now but but when i can i can typically liquidate 20 to 25 in a day uh pretty easily in a couple hours so so for me being able to do that,

I'm not going to do that seven days a week, because that's not what I want to do with my time seven days a week. But once a week, you know, that's pretty doable, if I wanted to, or at least twice a month. So I'd probably do more volume through Simon. So I like that. And when I break it down cost per point, too, again not bad not as good and so if you're only going to do a few thousand that kind of thing you're not even going to want to bother with this if you're looking to do two or three thousand dollars at a time exactly turn it off like you're not you're not don't even bother applying for the program a they're manually processing the applications so it takes a bunch of time and you know there's just a few people right now for simon

that are working on this so it's going to take probably a week two. They originally said it'd take a few days to get approved, but they've had so many people signing up that it's probably going to take a week or two to get approved for the program. And don't even bother wasting the time if you're only going to buy two or 3000 because it's too expensive. But if you can buy 5000 at a time or more, it's not terrible. It comes out to like six tenths of a cent per point for a five thousand dollar order uh if you're using a card that earns 1.5x and if you're using a card that earns 2x then your five thousand dollar orders are less than half a penny a point i mean it's still pretty profitable especially if you can handle the volume it all comes down to how much you can liquidate

so but if you're if you're not going to be liquidating more than 60k a month right then isn't aren't you better off if you could get your orders through giftcardmall.com and getting and earning those membership rewards points through the Rakuten portal? Mathematically, you certainly are. It's a matter of, you know, I already get an eyebrow raised now and then when I go to buy $2,000 or $3,000 in money orders and split two or three ways. If I were to try to split that six ways, I would get more eyebrows. So, you know, it's speed of being able to, cause I would, I would not be able to probably do as much because I still only be able to split two or three times before, you know,

they call the manager and the second manager and the third manager at the places where I'm liquidating. So, so yeah, it, if you're only going to do 60 a month and if you've got places that are super friendly and easy where you can liquidate and you can liquidate more often than once a week, if you have opportunities where you're driving past grocery store, that sort of thing more often than yeah, go through gift card mall, of course. Okay. So yeah. So, so basically this is really great for the real heavy hitters. Yeah. I mean, I'd say medium or, or if you're looking at a hundred K or more,

um, I mean, I think you're looking to do, I think most people who are not right. Super heavy into this would look at 60 K a month and say, Whoa, that's an insane amount of money. Oh yeah.

Yeah. I mean the thousand dollar card in general yeah are only only for uh people who are looking to hit heavy right i mean like this isn't something well not necessarily so when you when you can buy them from the mall you know those who those i think for a lot of people it makes a ton of sense for the reasons you said that it's easier to liquidate when there's far fewer of them you know let's say you're just let's say you just um try to hit your minimum spend requirements for some new credit cards you go to the mall buy five or six of these thousand dollar things you've met

your minimum spend on maybe two cards however many uh depending on the minimum spend uh requirements but and then you go about your business buying money orders with them or paying your taxes with them, whatever. But no, I think it's the online one that is pretty much for the heavy hitters. I'm going to run the other side of that then. Like if that's your deal, if you're just looking to spend $4,000 or $5,000 one time to hit a sign-up bonus now and then, so what are we talking about in total cash difference, like $ 10 or 15 dollars or something that you're going to pay more by buying these

online than gift card mall and and you can sign up and know that you're not going to have an issue with i mean obviously if you could do it cheaper if you can get it at gift card mall fine but like it's we're talking about a really minimal difference overall if you're only buying if you're going to buy four or five thousand once or twice or three times i don't know i mean i wouldn't waste the time to sign up for simon and give them all the personal information that's required but in terms of the difference in costs if you're if you're triggering a $750 sign up bonus on a new card and it costs you an extra 10 or 15 dollars it's not i don't i don't think it's a i wouldn't do that over saving 10 or $15, but it's not. I think you're minimizing how much more it is because so giftcardmall.com, if you, if

you value the, if you get membership rewards from Rakuten, you value them at 1.25, then, then you're actually, there's like no fees. I mean, it's, it's actually almost negative fees, but let's just call it zero fees. Right. Okay. With Simon, you're talking about the $4 per card fee. So let's say you're just doing five cards. So that's $20. $20, yeah.

$10 fee to make the purchase overall. That's $30. And then $10 or more for shipping. So $40. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. You're right.

You're right. If you, if you're going to value the points and I, I certainly value the points at one and a half cents each. So, um, so if you're going to value the points as like a cash equivalent, then yeah,

you're right. So I'll give it to you. Greg won. Greg won. Yay. Given last week, uh, that's,

that's a big, uh, relief for me. We had Nick winning three times last week i did i did so craig is is working on evening the score here he's got me once but of course we both lost a hyatt this week so i don't know right right yeah but but for a good cause so it's okay right right and and to go back by way, to the liquidation question, a lot of people ask how you liquidate. And obviously, taxes are a way to liquidate right now online from home. You can't use them anymore on plastic or plastic, however you say the service,

where you can use a credit card to pay ordinary bills. You can't use the Visa gift cards for that. So that's out. So really, you're limited in terms of how you can liquidate these. You could use them, I believe, to fund Kiva loans, right? You can, but that would be kind of silly because you could use your credit card directly to fund Kiva loans. So unless you're getting 5X when you're buying gift cards, which you're not going to be doing with Simon Mall, unless you have a secret that we don't know about, then you might as well just use your credit card directly to fund those loans. Yeah. So there really aren't many great options in terms of how you're going to liquidate online. So I wouldn't hurry out to buy those this week if you don't have, I mean, if you have some magical solution, if you've got the unicorn way to liquidate them online great uh but whoever has those solutions is probably not going to shout

them from the rooftops so uh so you're most likely going to want to wait until you can safely liquidate them right right hey nick if you have any of those solutions you can you can whisper it to me right now i won't tell anyone i promise i don't have them pay your taxes yeah well so all right so that that then brings us next to talking about frequent miler live we were we were live this week we were and i did a a bane impression about midway through you did his voice got very low all of a sudden it turned out that the microphone had a loose connection or so i just unplugged and plugged it back in and fixed it but people were kind of bummed that that i uh went back you sound like a totally different person.

I was like, Whoa, is there something at first I thought it was something wrong with my ears. I was like, Oh, am I okay? Like, is this a symptom I don't know about?

Like, do your ears start doing funny things? But, uh, so at first I thought it was me. And then I thought maybe it was my headphones or something or my connection. And then I saw. That's how you spread coronavirus um hopefully not i think i think i'm feeling okay um so we're at least six feet away from each other

so exactly more more than six our faces are close but luckily you know we've got a lot of distance so so i thought it was me and then i realized that other people were hearing the same, and they seemed pretty entertained by your voice. Yes, they did. That seemed to be a highlight of the show. So we can't promise that every week, but we are going to repeat this every week. At least that's our intention. It seemed to go over well. People enjoyed it. People at least claim they did. So they were being nice. They seem to. it seems true i as best i can tell people seem to enjoy it and we enjoy doing it so we're gonna go live again so when we say doing this not doing this but doing that right doing that not so this show will continue every week and the new show which is frequent miler live, will happen every week.

Now, right now it's scheduled for, we're planning on doing Thursday afternoons. Now I saw that One Mile at a Time is doing theirs every Thursday evening now as a set thing. So we might want to talk about another day, but at least for right now, that's what we're thinking. But you'll you'll see us announce if it's something different but the best thing to do uh so that you're alerted when we go live is what do you want to tell us subscribe to our youtube channel so get on youtube the frequent miler youtube channel which you can of course, all the different ways to subscribe to FrequentMiler are at thefrequentmiler.com slash subscribe. So you can go to that or click the subscribe link anywhere on our site.

And so that'll give you all the different ways. And so you want to go to YouTube and subscribe to our YouTube channel. We would love to have more subscribers on our YouTube channel so you can get all the content that we're putting out there and get notified when we go live. More importantly, as Greg's saying here. So if we decide to do it at some other time, you get a notification and know that we're live or get a notification and know that we uploaded something new because we're working on a few different things right now. So that way you'll find out if we do post something there. So. So thank you.

That would be great if you want to get on there and subscribe to our YouTube channel. That would be awesome. Please do that. Also, even if you're just on YouTube, you could search for Frequent Miler on there and I'm sure you'll find our channel and then just hit the subscribe button right there. That's right. That's right. So please come out and check that out and we're going to enjoy that. So do we, do we, do we remind people to subscribe to our YouTube channel, Craig? I don't think we did. But during, during those live shows, what we do is we take questions from the audience live, real time.

We have Kerry behind the scenes reading through the questions as they happen and then feeding us select ones. And that way we can spend our time answering questions instead of reading, which would be really boring for everybody. And so are we going to change that up this week a little bit? I mean, I think that if people didn't read the posts, they might not see that we had some thoughts about how we're going to switch that up. Yeah. So, so because you and I tend to just blab on for a while about things, we only got to a handful of questions and I kind of felt bad about that when I, when I afterwards read through all the questions that popped up, I was like, wow, not, not only could we have been, should we have gotten more of them? A lot of them would have been really easy. We could have done very quickly just

and, and, and, and what would have been nice about that too is I think it would have been more interactive. There could have been opportunities for us to quickly give an answer and then for someone to ask a follow-up. And then it would have had a more interactive feel to it. So we're going to try that next week. We don't know exactly what the time limits are, but we're going to have Carrie, who's behind the scenes,

basically say we've blabbed on too long and time to move on to the next question. And hopefully she'll pop up every now and then like she did. She sort of did her parents a few times where for some reason her screen popped in the video. That was fun, Tim. Fun. Yeah. And that way she'll keep feeding us feeding us those questions and so we'll try

to make it through those a little bit faster this time exactly obviously this is something new to us so you know we're trying to to find ways to be able to keep it moving keep it interesting and also maintain it because of course you know if we're talking it's a little hard to be reading at the same time so that's why it was super helpful to have carrie there reading and feeding us your questions as we went so we didn't realize during the broadcast necessarily quite how many questions there were. So this time around, we'll try and switch that up and get more of the questions in. So please join us. Subscribe and join us so that you'd be notified and come out there and ask us your questions.

And please do feed those questions in. And if you have a question that doesn't get answered and you've been waiting a while, feel free to pop it in there again. And, you know, Carrie will realize, oh, OK, let's do that one next. All right. So speaking of questions, I have a question for you. You have a question for me? Yeah. The question is, do we have any questions from our audience that you're going to feed to me? We do. We've got a question of the week. So the reader question of the week brings us back to the Simon Maul gift cards.

And I thought it was an interesting question. We've gotten similar questions from a few different readers over time. And I thought it was worth talking about anyway, or worth asking you for your take on. So Joe, reader Joe, asked a question that has come up in different forms from different people. He said, I've been skeptical about Simon Mall gift card policy for some time, but it seems pretty clear this is a move to increase liquidity and pad their balance sheet, right? Simon surely must be desperate and on the verge of bankruptcy now, might be a lot more profit in shorting the stock than buying the gift cards.

And somebody else chimed in, Marco Polo, to say, I'd be more concerned about the vi than buying the gift cards. And somebody else chimed in Marco Polo to say, I'd be more concerned about the viability of the issuing bank, MetaBank. If you read the terms and conditions, your funds are only protected by FDIC insurance. If you go online and register your cards, otherwise any funds on the gift card could be lost in the event that MetaBank goes bankrupt. So if you float a balance, that could be a lot of exposure. So my question for you is, are you nervous about that at all? Should people be nervous? And if you're sitting on gift cards, is that a risk that the company that backs these gift cards could go bankrupt? I mean, if you bought some before things got locked down, raise your hand. And so if you've got some now, in the current economic environment, do I need to be nervous? And what can I do to protect my money?

Huh. Well, I mean, why are you asking me? With how bad my predictions have been, that's... I thought it was a pair of good questions. It was a pair of good questions. It was a pair of good questions. You know, geez, I'm not a financial expert on anything, so I don't know. How would I know? I mean, I think the second person's right, though, that I'm not worried about Simon Maul going bankrupt.

I mean, they might, but that shouldn't have any bearing whatsoever on the gift cards you've bought because because you're not actually giving your money to simon right i mean you are in a sense but yeah it's going through simon but to uh the bank that's issuing the gift cards so so really the only question is are the funds that are sitting around on these gift cards that are sitting around in a drawer or wherever, because we don't have liquidation methods right now, is there a chance of those being in trouble? Of course, there's a chance. I don't know how likely it is. It seems to me pretty improbable, but what do I know? What do you think? I don't know. I have the same feeling, I think, that it seems improbable that that would be at risk at all. But I honestly hadn't given it a

moment of thought before that came up. And I don't know why I hadn't because, you know, we've been talking about are all the companies going to make it through and we think the airlines will and probably most of the major hotel chains but of course there are some businesses that won't make it through the financial crisis that we could be facing here so i don't know i don't know much about you know the the financials of metabank or uh yeah or the gift card i mean if you only have a little bit of gift cards and you're worried about it maybe you know you use the gift card to buy a gift card to a vendor that you know is not going to go bankrupt, but and and where you know, you'll use their gift cards, you know, over time, like, you know, let's say there's a Kroger that you visit all the time,

you could buy $1,000 in Kroger gift cards, and you know, you'll use it up eventually, that kind of thing. That's just a way of kind of hedging your bets and making sure that the you won't have lost you know your investment basically now i didn't check into marco polo's claim about the funds being fdic insured if you register the cards online is that something that you've heard about or or thought about before i don't know anything either yeah so now i'm gonna have to look into that. Sounds odd to me. I wouldn't have expected that. But I mean, you would think, and this is just me speculating here,

that they would be insured regardless, but that maybe there would be something saying, there's not really anything we could do to get you the money back if things if bad things happen if you haven't registered your card because how would they find us but uh i don't know yeah that's something i'm gonna have to look into because i i honestly i didn't even consider the money being fdic insured or not so hadn't ever come to mind before, but not totally unreasonable, especially if you're buying 25K a day. And so if you had 25 or 50K lying around and all of a sudden,

obviously things are closing down and you should be staying at home to stay healthy and prevent the spread, then yeah, I mean, some people could be sitting on a substantial stack of those cards. And so I think what you can do to protect that is an important topic. So that's something I'm gonna have to look into a little bit. Great questions. Thank you, Joe and Marco Polo for asking those. So even though we couldn't give you the answer you were looking for, perhaps in the sense that, well, I guess we did, right? Because we said, no, I'm not worried about Simon going out of business. And I don't feel like it's a play for liquidity. I mean mean what do i know about simon's in our financials i guess but uh but that's not a that's not a particular concern

but i thought that was a really good point about the fdic insurance so we'll look into that yes will we i guess well i'm going to i don't know about where i'm not i'm one of us well i got some of those gift cards so So I'm going to, yeah. All right. Great. Great. So I think our time's done here. It is.

It is. This Saturday, the show's over or got to say goodbye. Only for a short time. It's going to be almost a week before. We're not saying goodbye. Cause we're going to, we're going to survive this. We're going to make it through.

So that's right. Greg wrote about this week. So, so please come. Please come see us for the live broadcast. So if you want to hear more about what we've been talking about, you want to read the posts that are all about this, you'll want to go to thefrequentmiler.com slash subscribe. So again, that's thefrequentmiler.com slash subscribe so that you can get on our email

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