Frequent Miler on the Air - Credit card strategies for low spenders, medium spenders, and big spenders | Ep152 | 5-28-22

Episode Date: May 28, 2022

Let's get into the giant mailbag. What crazy thing did Citi do this week? It's time for Mattress Running the Numbers. Ready for the main event? The main event. Frequent Liler on the air starts now. Today's main event, credit card strategies for low spenders, medium spenders, and big spenders.

Hey there, big spender. It's not all the same what you need to do to maximize rewards. So we will get into that all over that. But first, giant mailbag. Today's giant mail comes from Amy. Now, apologies in advance, Amy. I shortened your email to us, but I think the gist is preserved. Amy says, and I paraphrase parts of it, in a recent episode, you discussed the Amex Platinum card's medical evacuation coverage, even when travel wasn't purchased with the card. You also asked if anyone has a real data point for the Chase Sapphire Reserve medical reimbursement claim. I have one.

My husband got sick while we were in Orlando and spent two days in the ER during this trip. We filed a claim for his medical expense with his Sapphire Reserve card. The claim took almost three months before it was finally paid, minus a $50 deductible. Wow. So there you go. We did. We asked on that recent episode.

We said it's unusual that the Sapphire Reserve has travel medical coverage. It's limited to a couple thousand dollars, but that's unusual. Most cards don't have that. Um, even, even most high end cards. So, uh, you know, we said on a recent episode, we'd love to hear some data points. Does it actually work in reality? And here's one data point saying it does takes a while, but it worked for her. So, and her husband, so that's great. And I'm not surprised that it took a while. I mean, anybody who's ever filed or any kind of an insurance claim knows that insurance claims often take a while. Car insurance seems to be quick, I think, from all of the cars that I've wrecked.

Not that many. A couple. We should get Tim's opinion on that. Apparently, he wrecks a car in every country he goes to. But everything else takes a while. So I'm not surprised. I mean, it's too bad that it took three months, but not a bad outcome. That's That's for sure. So, so very good. Not at all. That's great. That's great. All right. Well, let's talk then what crazy thing did Hyatt do this week? I have no idea. I've been on

vacation. What crazy thing is Hyatt? You're relaxing. Well, if you, if you, if your vacation were originally planned to be an all-inclusive Hyatt, but you had to change plans, then you would know what Hyatt did because Hyatt added a cancellation fee or at least is passing on a cancellation fee. They recently added all of those all-inclusive resorts. We wrote about that. They added a new award chart for all-inclusives and added a whole bunch of all-inclusive brands to the portfolio. But Market Miles to Memories noticed, or his readers had pointed out, I guess, that there is a $50 cancellation fee with no deadline, just period. When you cancel, it costs you 50 bucks, whether you cancel six or eight or 12 months in advance or whenever the cancellation deadline is. So there is no free cancellation on those, which seems absolutely nutty. And he reached out to Hyatt to confirm that. And Hyatt confirmed that indeed, that's the case. There's

just a $50 cancellation fee. Now it sounds like Hyatt would like to get that changed. And maybe it's not all immediately within their power because of course, I have to imagine there are a lot of different agreements with different hotel owners and groups and blah, blah, blah, and whatever the old agreement was. So I assume it might take a while. I expect Hyatt will eventually fix that, but it's worth knowing because, I mean, in this game, you're so used to making speculative bookings, right? You say, oh, there's availability. Let me book this now.

Lock it down. Have it right. Of course. Yeah. I mean, that's how we play the game. I mean, you know, getting the best awards is so dependent on their availability. And so the chance of you knowing that you could commit to a place at the same time as you find the availability, I mean, it's just not good if we have to pay a fee. So

I don't like that at all. No, me either. That's like borrowing from the worst of what airlines do into the hotel sphere. Right, right. And on an awards day, that just seems so strange. It's just like you said, it's just not common. I mean, if you've booked an award anywhere, that's just not the way that awards typically work. Now, some hotels do have ridiculously long cancellation policies, especially Marriott. They're known for that with the really highly desirable properties. There tend to be cancellation deadlines that might be 14 or 30 or 45 or even I think I've seen 90 days in advance. And if you don't cancel, yeah, I think the Deer Valley property, St. Regis out there, something's like 90 days. So, yeah, I mean, there are some that are very long or at least it used to be anyway, and the penalties can be quite high, but that's a

whole different ball game from, you know, okay, well I see there's availability next March and I think my kids are going to be on break at that time. I don't have the school schedule yet, but let me grab it now. You know, and then later on we can modify if we need to, well, it's going to cost you 50 bucks and that's not so high. Fix it, fix it. Hi. Yeah, seriously. So, so what do you think? Are you like done with Hyatt because of this? Done with Hyatt. Forget it.

Moving on. Going over to Best Western now. Forget it. Hyatt. I mean, no, probably not. I mean, it's an itch thing still. It's just those all inclusives. I don't want to say it.

Catch on. So let's nip that in the bud. It doesn't change our general approach to hype, but certainly before booking an all-inclusive, we're going to be careful going forward. I'd be far more hesitant. Yeah. I mean, it's only 50 bucks. It's not the end of the world, I guess, but I can't be too willy-nilly then. I can't book it for three sets of dates, which I don't know, maybe some people think that's good so that people like you and I don't scoop up all the availability, but I don't like it. Right. So is this only for the new all-inclusives and not their old all-inclusives or did they add

this fee to the... I believe so. I believe, no, I believe this is only the new all-inclusives. And again, that's why, you know, when Mark... I don't remember what those brands are, but those things. Yeah. That's why when Mark reached out to Hyatt, I think they had said that this is kind of a, they didn't say it in so many words, but it sounded like this is kind of out of our hands and we know it's there and we're aware of it and working to, didn't say they were working to fix it necessarily, but kind of insinuated to me from the sounds of it. Like they knew this was there. They knew it was kind of a problem. They couldn't change it right away, but they're working to fix it necessarily, but kind of insinuated to me from the sounds of it. Like they knew this was there. They knew it was kind of a problem. They couldn't change it right away, but they're hoping to negotiate a solution. So hopefully it'll get taken care of.

So it's just the new ones to my knowledge, but let's keep it that way. Let's keep it that way. Okay. So let's talk mattress running the numbers. We just talked Hyatt. Let's talk about Marriott. So there is currently a transfer bonus

going on from Aeroplan to Marriott, a 20% transfer bonus. And so with this 20% transfer bonus, you can, well, let's just break it down to what you would actually do. What you would do is you would transfer 60,000 Marriott points to Aeroplan because you ordinarily would get three to one. So you'd get 20,000 miles, except that Marriott also includes 5,000 bonus miles when you transfer 60,000. So if you transfer in 60,000 increments, you ordinarily end up with 25,000 airline miles, but with the 20% bonus, you'll end up with 30,000. So you have the opportunity here to turn 60,000 Marriott points into 30,000 Aeroplan miles. What do you think, Greg? Should we all be converting all of our Marriott points into 30,000 aeroplan miles. What do you think, Greg? Should we all be

converting all of our Marriott points? I mean, now that they're dynamic and you don't know how much they're going to be worth and the prices are all over the map, should we just get out of Marriott and say, we're done with Marriott. We're moving to Best Western. Should we just get rid of all of our Marriott points? What do you think? I mean, if your only goal with Marriott points is to stay at the most high end, most luxurious properties, then yeah, maybe you should be looking at an exit strategy. For people who are interested in sort of mid or even upper tier Marriott's, I mean, when I researched it, I found that you're actually now getting better value on average from your points than you were before. It's just at that top end, it's going to go out of control.

So, yeah, I wouldn't do it because of them moving to dynamic pricing, as I said, unless you're hoping to spend your points at like the Ritz and the Maldives or something like that. I mean, then yeah, the price is going to be through the roof. And so the points aren't going to be very helpful in the future there. So then there's also people who just have Marriott points for whatever reason and don't want to, or their situation is such that they don't expect to stay at Marriott's regardless. And so transferring to airline miles is always a sensible thing in that situation, I think. In this case, I think you have to look at at the fact that there's always a 10% transfer bonus to United. And so if United is as good for you, for your purposes as Air Canada Aeroplan, then this isn't like a huge win over that. And United, you could do anytime and you don't have to rush and do it. And remember, like I compared a bunch of award prices between United and Air Canada.

And in a lot of cases, United was actually cheaper, you know, except for when you get to international first class. So international business class, United was often on par or cheaper, but when you get to first class, Air Canada is way, way better. So it depends what you want to do with your miles. Also worth noting though, that Aeroplan is known to offer better pricing

for members of their own program, right? So for Air Canada flights. For their own flights. Yeah, so you may save some there. But I think that's a really good point that I didn't even consider with this, that the bump is only 2,500 miles over what you would get with United.

Normally, any day of the week, if you transfer 60,000 Marriott to United, you'll end up with 27,500. With this bonus, you'll end up with 30,000 aeroplan miles. So yeah, really, you just have to value aeroplan specifically. And there are some specific instances where they have better pricing or their lap infant pricing is really

good. So if you're going to travel with a lap infant, they may be more attractive for that. Or you want a really complicated international itinerary, then aeroplan is going to be better for that. So there are some situations where they'd be better. Is it a good trade? 60,000 for 30,000? I mean, I think so. I think if you're interested in miles more than hotel points, it's a pretty good deal. And especially, like you said, if you can use the Air Canada miles for good purpose. I also have to add or want to add that if I were to be stuck with any one airline program, if like for some reason I could only have one, I think it would be Air Canada, actually. Oh, yeah.

Yeah, because so first of all, they're Star Alliance. So that gives you a huge number of airlines you could redeem for. And second, they have a number of other partners, too. And it's all integrated together, which is unusual. Like a lot of programs that have a number of partners outside of an alliance will let you book, use your points to book one or the other, but not all together. And you can totally do that with Air Canada. You could book a single award to fly like their partner, Etihad, you know, halfway around the world and fly another airline, you know, further. And I think that's really strong in their favor. So I do like Air Canada.

I'm just saying that for a lot of uses, it's not necessarily better than United, which you can get close to the same bonus anytime. Great point. Great point. Yeah. And then their executives, when they did their last media event, were particularly proud of the fact that they have the largest number of airline alliances of any airline in the world. So there are more airlines that you can redeem airplane miles with than any other airline program. So they were very proud of that. So that's a great point that I wouldn't have even considered, but it really makes a lot of sense. So yeah, I think I'd be in the same boat if I had to have one. That would make a lot of sense for me, too, because I tend to like to book complicated itineraries.

But I feel like for a lot of people, United is probably better and easier to deal with in terms of user friendliness of United.com. And just as you said that Air Canada often charges less for their own flights than partners. United often does that as well. And sometimes, often. Usually. Sometimes often. If you want to book a United flight, you can only book it with United Miles because they price it out of saver level. So the partner miles can't be used for it anyway.

So depending on how you fly, United is often, especially for those based in the US, a better fit. I think United miles. There you go. All right. Excellent. So I think we're both saying it can be a good deal, but it's not a compelling deal. You don't have to rush out and do it. There's not really a circumstance where I think either one of us would be like, yes, do this no matter what transfer. That's not the case with this one. But at the same time, if you decided for good reasons, you want to do it, we're certainly not going to say, oh no, that's a bad deal. Wouldn't talk you down from that ledge. Go ahead. It's definitely a decent transfer. So yeah. Right. Okay, great. So we won't make fun of you.

At least not publicly. All right. So, so welcome to the main event. It's time for the main event. Main event time. All right. So let me just say that, you know, as I mentioned earlier, I'm on vacation this week. Nick came up with the topic. I looked at it quickly, said, that sounds good. Haven't had any time to really think about it. So Nick's going to take the lead. And, you know, I should jump in and say that I've had a couple things on my plate this week, too, because totally unrelated to miles and points. But my my I played in a previous life, I played in band in school. And my high school band teacher is having like a Mr. Holland's Opus send off this week.

And so long ago, I had committed to play in the jazz band for the send off. And the short version of the story is that I bought a saxophone last Thursday and I've been trying to play it this week. I've spent a little bit of time this week playing the saxophone. Today's main event is Nick playing the saxophone. Exactly. Both of us are in a

situation where we didn't commit to talking points ahead of time. We didn't do our homework. We're going to see how it works out. I think think I think between the two of us, we'll have some good answers here. So that's why this topic has been fresh in mind. So I've been thinking about it on and off all week. So let's talk about best strategies. And this came from a comment, by the way, from a reader. Tim wrote a post last week about how Greg and I were award heretics for redeeming points differently. And there was actually a

totally unrelated comment from a reader on that post, I'd say, who asked, you know, that they thought a good topic for us to cover would be what's the best strategy depending on how much you spend. And so today I wanted to kind of explore that because it really does differ. So I want to start with really low spenders. Say, okay, if you're somebody who spends like $1,000 a month on credit cards, so it's about $12,000 a year, what would your strategy look like? And then as we go on, how does that differ from the strategy for someone who spends $2,000 or $4,000 or $10,000 a month because the strategies are quite different. So if you spend about $1,000 a month,

I think the first thing you need to consider is that you really, really need welcome bonuses to collect a meaningful quantity of points. I don't think category bonuses really matter at all at that level of spend, or at least not very much. What matters the most is being able to earn some new welcome bonuses, but that's not without challenge because if you're only spending a thousand dollars a month, that's $3,000 every three months. And that won't cut it for the minimum spend requirements on a number of cards. So what to do, where would you recommend somebody start? I would say, Greg, like if they're trying to figure out, all right,

I don't spend very much. What are the best bonuses for me? Yeah. Okay. So we have a, we have a page that is best bonuses for small, low spenders, I think it's called. And it's broken down into, you know, those that don't require any spin and those that require like $500 or less and so on. So, you know, that's a great place to start. And then of course you

should use your judgment. I wouldn't just sign up for a card that earns, you know, I don't know. Well, I'll give you an example. The first card on the list. So that way that page is, is like Greg said, it's best offers for low spenders. And so the first category on that page is zero to $500 spending requirements. And so the card with the highest value, because remember all of our various lists of cards are sorted by spreadsheet. This isn't something we manually decide which card goes at the top. It's all sorted by first year value, which depends on how much the bonus is and how much the annual fee is and

blah, blah, blah. So the card at the top of that list is the advantage aviator red card because it awards 50,000 miles after first purchase. Is that something that a low spender should definitely go after? I mean, I do like those kind of bonuses for low spend. The way you asked it made me almost feel like, wait, that's not the right answer. Do you have a reason to think that's not a good choice? No, but I think, well, okay. So I think that's something you need to consider. If you're at this low end spending end of the spectrum is, do I need or want to worry about collecting individual miles and points from various airline and hotel programs? Now,

I say that, but this card, that aviator red card awards the miles after first purchase. So in that case, you're not committing anything to it. So yeah, I mean, I think it does make sense to get that because that's going to give you a meaningful number of miles, 50,000 miles, something you can do something with without having to commit any of your thousand dollars a month, spend, you know, $1 on something and you've got the miles. So I definitely think that one's worth opening, but, but it's an exception to the rule, because when we get to the cards with a thousand dollar spending requirement, which theoretically you could meet the top one in that category is the Spirit Airlines Travel More MasterCard.

And that's a great example. Yeah. Of one like me., right, right. Of one, like, you know, if you're not, if you, if you're a spirit flyer, great. Uh, and if you're not like, don't just go after it because it has a low spend requirement. That would be silly. Like why collect points that you're not likely to use? Uh, you know, I was going to use Amtrak as an example, but then I remembered the Amtrak cards aren't currently available. So is another example that that card has a $1,000 spending requirement and it has a great bonus right now, 75,000 points. And it offers some decent spending categories, 5X phone, you know,

and it's for the business card. You know, I said that, but I'm looking at it. Oh yeah, it is the business card, the 5X phone. And that's a good point too. You know, do you need a business card? Do you have a business? Can you do business cards? Should you? Because those won't count towards 524. But the Wyndham card popped into my mind as I scrolled the list

because I thought of that as, well, there's something you can get great value out of for Vacasa and you can potentially get decent value out of Wyndham. But do you want to start to split up your strategy into earning different points or do you want to focus it on one type of point? So which way would you lean? Right, right. Well, yeah, I mean, we always prefer transferable points currencies. So, you know, if you're limited to

how many cards you can sign up for, you have to be thinking about that. The other thing, in almost all these categories, you have to be thinking at least vaguely about your chase strategy, right? If you're planning to sign up for a lot of cards, then you need to be thinking about signing up for some key chase cards first before you get sort of locked out of the chase ecosystem because of their 524 rule, which is that they won't approve you for a new card usually if you've signed up for five or more cards in the past 24 months. Now, it could be that in this level of spending, you're unlikely to sign up for five or more cards in 24 months. And so it

might not be an issue, but it's still something I think you ought to consider. All right. So I'm going to disagree with you, but I'm going to let you figure out the disagreement. I'm going to say no chase cards at all, because I'm going to ask you what chase cards should they get them? Like if you're going to prioritize chase cards and you spend a thousand dollars a month, which chase cards should you get? Well, I mean the,

the freedom cards have low spend requirements for their signup offers. I don't know what they are. No, they are. They're $500 usually. Yeah, they do. What are you going to do with the points?

You're not going to, you're not going to be able to meet the spending requirement for a Sapphire do with the points? You're not going to be able to meet the spending requirement for a Sapphire Preferred, right? So you're not going to be able to transfer them to partners. And so they're just cash back then essentially, right? So if you're going to focus on cash back, then do you need ultimate rewards cards at all? Right. I mean, they're cash back in less.

One, if there's someone else in your household who has other chase cards, then you could transfer to them. And, and if they have a Sapphire preferred or Sapphire reserve or ink business preferred, then they could transfer it to, um, airline and hotel partners. Okay. Um, two, two someday you might, uh, you know, in the future be a bigger spender and sign up for the Sapphire preferred and, Preferred and then be able to transfer.

Three, if you're really stuck, you could potentially upgrade your Freedom Card to a Sapphire Preferred and then your points become transferable. So it's definitely not locking you into cash only for the long term. Yeah, I think the upgrade strategy, too, is a good point. If you just can't possibly meet the spending requirement for the Sapphire preferred to get the bonus, you could upgrade. You're not going to get a bonus for that, but you could potentially upgrade one of your freedom cards. And the nice thing is with chase, and this is not true with American express, but with chase upgrading to the Sapphire preferred does not lock you out of a future signup bonus for the

Sapphire preferred. You would just have to, you know, if later you're ready to sign up for a signup Sapphire preferred in order to get the bonus, you could then downgrade back to the freedom and sign up for the Sapphire preferred to get the bonus. So, so yeah, there's, there's very little downside to that if, if they'll let you upgrade. And I say the if because there's a minimum amount of credit line that you have to have in order to be allowed to have a Sapphire Preferred. That's a good point. That's a good point.

Well, so now the other thing I think about here is does the Chase ecosystem make more sense than the Amex ecosystem for somebody with low spend? Because a lot of us that have higher spend, I'm sure, are used to earning lots of membership rewards points, especially these last couple of years. We talked about the points parade marching on because they've had all these great offers. But all those great offers, or many of those great offers, have really high spending requirements. So initially, my first thought was I would lean towards an Amex centric strategy in order to take advantage of the many different bonuses you can earn. But then I quickly came to realize that there just aren't that many of them that you would earn with low spend. So so OK, so we would probably go after a freedom, freedom,

unlimited type of a card, go after the American Airlines card or anything with like a very negligible spending requirement that's going to give you significant benefit. If you're at that low level of spend, also some of those ancillary benefits like the free check bag on American Airlines might matter to you if you're going to be flying American because the savings may be a significant and important thing for you. So it's something to consider too. Last thing I want to mention on the low spenders is if you're in this category and you rent an apartment, because I imagine a lot of these people are renters, is you should almost definitely,

I'm going to say almost, I'm going to qualify this, but almost definitely get the built rewards card. And that's because the number of points you're going to earn on your rent is going to be significant when you're not earning very many points. It's going to be a significant chunk of your annual points. The built rewards card, of course, allows you to earn points for paying rent with no fee, whether your landlord accepts a credit card or not, they'll send them a check if that's what they need. So that's definitely, I think, worth considering because

I assume that that is not part of the thousand dollars a month and spend what we've been talking about here, your rent. Uh, if you're only spending that much, then obviously it must be mostly utilities and food and that kind of thing. Uh, so yeah, I would, I would definitely consider the bill rewards card. Now, the reason I say consider and not, you definitely need to have it is because if your landlord accepts a credit card, even with a fee, then maybe it's worth considering not getting the built card, but rather going after a Sapphire preferred welcome bonus and paying the two and a half percent fee that the landlord charges to pay

with a credit card, because you'll earn a significant number of points that will dwarf the points that you would otherwise earn throughout the course of the year at this spend level. Yeah, that's a great point. And, you know, even if your landlord does not accept credit cards, but if they'll accept a check, you could go through a service like Plastic and pay 2.85%. Now, this would only work with MasterCards and Discover cards. Discover cards don't have like huge welcome bonuses, but there are some MasterCards that do. And so it could be totally worth paying that. If it's between getting a big welcome bonus and not, it can be totally worth paying that 2.85% fee in order to get like an 80,000 or 100,000 point welcome bonus. So I think that's a great strategy of a way to bump up your spend

by using, it's not really bumping up your spend, right? It's taking spend that is usually not on credit cards and finding ways to put it on credit cards. And so that brings me to the last point that I'll make in this category is considering ways to time shift your spend. And we talk about that. And what we mean is that you may be able to do things like buy gift cards that you're going to use later on. Now, I assume that if you're spending $1,000 a month, you don't have a whole large fund of money that you can afford to float. But again, if it means meeting the spending requirement on a new card bonus and you are able to be able to pay it off, then you might consider things like when OfficeMax or Staples runs a fee-free Visa card deal, then you

can go and buy a few Visa gift cards and use those to then pay your electricity the next couple of months or one bill or another. And that's the strategy that people use at all sorts of different spending levels. But it's worth mentioning here because that might make the difference if you're looking at, I think the Sapphire preferred is a $4,000 spending requirement, right? I'm pretty sure. Yes, it is. And so if you're in this category where you're spending $3,000 every three months, but you've got to spend four, if you've got the $1,000 to be able to front, then finding a way to time shift spend like that by paying something in advance is worth it for you. Right. So just to make the example more concrete. So let's say you sign up for the Sapphire Preferred, you use it for all your regular

spend for three months, and you're getting to the end of the period in which you have to meet the $4,000 spend. You're getting to the end, You look at how much you spent so far. You subtract out the first year annual fee, because that does not count towards your spend. And you say, oh, I'm short. I'm going to make up a number of $500. Go to a grocery store. You buy a $500 gift card for $506 approximately. And then you use that gift card next month to pay for things that you would normally put on your credit card. So you're not really spending more overall except for that $6-ish fee for the gift card. And you get that big welcome bonus. So that's a great way to do it. And I think that the last point we'll make here actually with the low spenders is that generally, apart from things like that American Airlines card that only requires a

single purchase, I think generally you want to focus your effort here on a single rewards currency. So whether it's Chase or it's Citi or it's Amex, you probably want to focus on one currency at this level. Don't spread yourself too thin and have like, you know, 50,000 Marriott points and, you know, a hundred thousand Hilton points and a hundred thousand might be useful, but, uh, but don't spread yourself too thin just because you see headlines. Oh, this is a great offer. Oh, this is a great offer. Don't get too drawn into that and think more so about your strategy. Like what can I do long-term? Because if you end up with a whole bunch of different transferable currency cards, but you're not earning enough points in any of those programs for a meaningful award, then it won't matter. Now, of course, those transferable points programs

have partners that they share. So it's not necessarily bad to have multiple. I just would focus, like Greg said, if you want to focus on your chase strategy first, then go ahead and do that and try to focus your efforts. All right. Yeah. That said, going back to the built example, I do think actually a combination of Chase Ultimate Rewards cards and built makes total sense. They share a lot of partners, including the one I love, except for when booking an all inclusive, which is Hyatt. And so, you know, that alone makes them very compatible, but they also have other partners. Well, and that's a great point for low spenders, because if you're only spending a thousand dollars a month, you're not going to earn these hundreds of thousands of points per year necessarily. And Hyatt's got an award chart where category one starts at 5000 points standard or 3500 points per night off peak. So that might be a great fit because you can earn a number of points, even with this low level of spend to get multiple free nights each year. So, and you know, take your

American airlines miles and fly somewhere and stay with very low spend, you know? So I think that that's a, that's a good point. The, the, the, the utility of Hyatt through built and chase. It's a good point. Okay. What about if you spend like $1,000, $2,000 a month? So we're talking 12 to $24,000 annually. Now you're at a level where you can meet a couple of new welcome bonuses per year easily. So how many new cards should you be considering? Cause you're looking at here now three to $6,000 and spend every three months. So that, that meets most spending requirements, at least on, on, uh, at least on the more average cards, maybe not the ultra premium or some of the business cards, but most cards on the market

are in that range in the first three months. So how many new cards per year should you be considering at this level? Yeah. People can totally at that point, look into signing up for one to two cards every three months and, you know, meet the spend requirements to do it again. I do think it's important for us to back up a little bit and say people who aren't used to this approach to earning lots of points and miles have heard, have been told over their lifetime that signing up for lots of cards is going to ruin your credit score. And so why are we talking about that? What do you think? Are we just driving people down a hole here? Right. Yeah. Driving them down a hole to financial ruin. No, I mean, no, no. It's such a misconception that unfortunately has gotten perpetuated by mainstream media that oversimplified things. I think in the beginning when people were applying for credit cards and you get like

the financial expert that goes on and talks from the perspective of people who are going to get in over their heads in debt. And so then if that's going to be the case for you, then yeah, opening a lot of credit cards is a bad idea. But what they often don't get to is for people who can manage the finance end of it, opening a lot of credit cards is a bad idea. But what they often don't get to is for people who can manage the finance end of it, opening a lot of credit cards is not going to be harmful to you long term. In fact, a lot of people find that their credit scores will improve when they have more credit cards. People have one or two cards typically won't have as high of a maximum score.

I know you've seen the score ranges, but there's different buckets based on your history. It gets a little complicated. There's a lot of algorithms that the credit bureaus don't share. But I can tell you that the general idea is somebody with six or seven credit cards has a higher potential score than somebody with one or two in most cases. So having more cards is actually going to help. There's a lot of different ways that that comes into play with utilization percentage and blah, blah, blah. New accounts are going to drag down your score a little bit for a short period of time, but it's a temporary effect. And it's something that is easily mitigated by having a few old accounts that you keep around for a long time. There are plenty of people in this game that are opening five, 10. There are people we know that probably open 20 cards a year, or at least did

for a long time without any significant impact to their credit score. Now, I'm not saying that you need to go out and open 20 cards. Let's be clear. That's not necessary for most people. Right. 19 is plenty. Right. Right. You'll that's the sweet spot. No, I mean, you know, one or two or three or four or five or six is not going to hurt anybody as long as you're responsible about paying the bill. And that's so important to mention that, that, that when we talk about earning rewards from credit cards, whether it's from spend or from signup bonuses, um, we're, um, we're assuming you're paying the bill in full every month. If you're not, then you're not winning the game. The credit card company is, cause you're going to be paying these big interest rates.

This game is not for you if that's the case. And I've had friends that have asked me about new cards before, and then they've asked me about the interest rate. And I'm like, oh, whoa, whoa, whoa. Like if we got to talk about the interest rate, then this is not something that's a good thing. You're playing the wrong game. Yeah, like don't.

That's right. That's right. So, I mean, yeah. And the other thing I should mention, the next question is usually, well, what do we, so do we have these 19 annual fees that we have to pay every year? You know, that's going to get ridiculously expensive, right?

I mean, it could if you paid 19 of them, but we're going to talk about strategies. A, number one, there are a number of no annual fee cards that are good cards to have, but B, a lot of the cards that have an annual fee can later be downgraded. So you open it in the first year and a lot of them will waive the annual fee for the first year, not all cards, but some do anyway. So you may not even have to pay a fee for the first year, or you may have to pay a fee for the first year. But then when it comes up for renewal the next year, if you're not getting enough value to justify the annual fee, in almost all cases, I say almost because it's not necessarily 100%, but the vast majority of cases, a year later, you can downgrade to something that has no annual fee if you want,

or you can always cancel after a year. If you decide this just isn't the right card for you, there's nothing that says you need to keep it open and continue paying the annual fee. It wouldn't make sense in that case. Right, right, right. We like the strategy of keeping the cards as no-fee cards, keeping the accounts open as a general strategy, but it's not like a big deal if you cancel instead. That's fine. Right. You want to keep a couple of old cards around, a couple of your oldest accounts, because that's going to help your average age of account, which is one of the factors that determines your credit score. So if you got some really old card and you're like, oh, I don't need this anymore. I opened this in college and I haven't used it

forever and it doesn't really give me any benefits. You may still want to keep that one because that's going to help when you open a new card today. If you have a card that's 20 years old and you open a brand new card today, and those are your only two credit cards, then you've got a card that's 20 years old and a card that's zero years old. So your average age of account is 10 years. That's great. You're still going to have a very good credit score based on that average age of account. And then you open another card tomorrow and now you're down to what? Six or seven, between six and seven years average age of accounts. I prefer not to try to do math in my head during this show.

Still good enough. You know, you could have opened two cards yesterday and one card 20 years ago and your average age of account is still going to be decent. Keep that 20 year old card. So don't get rid of that. Product change it if you need to do something else. And that's a point worth making. We just talked about downgrading, but the terminology perhaps that you'll want to know is product changing. You'll call and tell

the bank, okay, I'd like to product change to something else. What are my other options? Or hopefully you've done the research in advance, so you already know what your other options are. Right, right. And when you product change, that doesn't change the age of your account. They keep the account, you know, as it was opened when it was originally opened on your credit report. And so that, that won't hurt you and it'll benefit you obviously by you not having to pay an annual fee. Right. Okay. So we're back to this $1,000, $2,000 a month spend can easily meet a couple of welcome bonuses each year. And you said, well, maybe consider opening one or two cards every three months because that's what your spend would justify. So now, first question before we talk about which cards to open is, do category bonuses matter then at this spend level? If you're at the $1,000 to $2,000,

because we talk all the time about cards that get a good dining bonus or cards that get a good grocery bonus or cards that get a good gas bonus. Are those things important at this level of spend? Do you need to focus on the right cards for what you spend money on or should you just be focusing on welcome bonuses? Yeah, I mean, that's a good question. I mean, you know, I think everybody wants to think that they're getting good value from their spend. But to the extent that you're signing up for new cards regularly, the bonus is going to far outweigh a category bonus. Meaning like, all right, if you have the right card, you can earn, let's say, 3% to 5% at a grocery store, let's say, you're spending, I don't know, $500 of your $2,000 at a grocery store. Yeah, you could have,

so you could have earned a decent percentage if you had just the right card, but the amount you're going to get from meeting the spend requirement for signup bonus is going to be so much better. So I don't think it's important even at this level. No, I don't. And I think that's worth mentioning. It doesn't matter which card you use at the gas station or the grocery store at this level. Because, you know, if you're at $2,000 a month spend, right, so you're talking $24,000 a year. Even if half of that is at the grocery store, it won't make enough of a difference to justify not getting new welcome

bonuses because your new welcome bonuses are so valuable. Typically, you know, most welcome bonuses are between 50 and a hundred thousand points, I'd say for three to $6,000 spent. So you're talking well over 10 points per dollar in return on your welcome bonuses. I mean, a 10% return is pretty much the floor level of a welcome bonus. And some are significantly higher percentage-wise depending on what you're opening. So you're looking at at least 10X everywhere if you're

opening new cards and using your new cards all the time. So by not using the right card at the gas station kind of a thing, you're just not missing out. You could be earning more, in fact, if you're working on a new card welcome bonus. What about people who aren't interested in signing up for lots of cards? Is that enough spend to worry about which cards are in their wallet for everyday spend? What do you think? Yes. I think if you're not going to focus on many welcome bonuses, if you're going to do like one or less a year, you know, one or none a year,

then yes, I think category bonuses do matter only because you're not going to earn enough points to book reasonable awards with that level of spend unless you do focus pretty sharply on using the right cards. So, you know, if you're talking again, let's say 24, let's pick something in the middle or $30,000 a year spend, then if you're earning 1x, that 30,000 points is not really going to get you far on vacation. So you're going to want to be earning 3x on gas or 4x or 5x on groceries and that sort of thing. So yeah, then I think you need to consider the strategy. And so what is it? What's the strategy? Which strategy at this level of spend makes the most sense? Should you go after the city custom cash and spend your $500 a month on the custom cash card in the category of your choosing,

whether that's grocery or dining or that sort of thing, or should you be going after like an Amex centric strategy where you get 4X on, on your dining and your grocery with the gold card and a 2X everywhere with the blue business plus I, what would your strategy be? You know, I think it's going to depend so much on your spending patterns. So,

you know, one person might spend majority of their money at restaurants. Another person might spend a majority of money on, I don't know, on gas or something. And so I think that the, you know, the right answer is obviously going to vary, but I'm not sure that I would, you know, we talked before about deciding up front, are you going to do sort of a chase strategy or a city strategy? I'm not sure that I would, that the category bonuses at this level spend are going to be compelling enough to change over to do a mixed approach. I mean, you know, you could maximize your wallet by having, you know, an Amex card for groceries and dining and, and a city card for, I don't know, gas and something else, you know but then you're getting these different types of points. And as we said before,

it might work for you because you could potentially transfer to the same partners. But it's just going to make things complicated. And I don't know that you're going to be earning enough extra points that way to make it really worth it. I agree. I agree. Because if you're looking at $30,000 a year spent, if you average 3x on that, that's 90,000 points. That will get you a decent vacation probably of some sort anyway. Probably flying an economy class. points that will get you a decent vacation, probably of some sort anyway, you know, probably flying an economy class. And depending on which program you're with, maybe it'll get you a few

nights, a hotel, again, also obviously depending on what kind of hotels you want to stay in. There's a lot of variables here. So it might be reasonable, but you're not going to be earning enough that if you split that up and you're like, okay, well, I'm going to earn 30,000 Amex and 30,000 chase and 30,000 city that I think is just going to, you're going to earn 30,000 Amex and 30,000 Chase and 30,000 Citi. That I think is just going to, you're going to earn them in dribs and drabs in a way that's not going to be productive. So I agree. I think at this level of spend still at the $1,000 to $2,000 a month spend, you really want to focus on one transferable currency system and any airline or hotel cards you open should be opened, I think, with some eye towards, do I stay there? Am I going to use this? Which I

guess should always somewhat be your strategy. But if you're going to expand into other things, it would probably be the airline and hotel cards that you stay at and frequent and not a different transferable currency. Right? Yeah. I think that that makes a lot of sense. The, you know, the airline cards are compelling for airlines that you fly a lot, you know, for nothing else, they often have approximately a $95 annual fee and a few check bags or whatever, you know, that they usually come with free check bags. And so they can easily pay for themselves and same thing. Most hotel cards can easily pay for themselves with, for example, an annual free night that you get. And so I do, I like that as an option for kind of filling in the cracks. If you're looking to sign up for, you know, more cards than are available in the main program you're working on, main transferable points program, adding some of these low-hanging fruit ones, especially when they have bigger than usual signup bonuses, great time to attack. I agree. And I want to mention on this note that

when you talked about that, one of the things that came into my mind was the Hilton cards, because they currently have higher bonuses than normal and because that surpass card has six acts at the grocery store. And so I think you might look at that and say, oh, wow, I can earn six Hilton points per dollar at the grocery store. Maybe I had to get that and make that my grocery and gas card because it earns gas and dining. But I think both of us would tell you that is not a strategy to pursue at this level of spend because those points, A, are not worth a ton. And B, you're going to want to focus that type of spend on transferable currencies where you can get more value out of them long term. Those kind of plays are plays, I think, at higher spend levels.

I think at this spend level where your spending is quite limited still, it's not worth putting your dining and grocery spend on a Hilton card. Right, right. So, okay. So now I'm going to disagree with us potentially. All right. Let's fight it out. We just said, don't spread around the transferable currencies, but what about when there's better than average signup bonuses? So let's say you're on a Chase approach and you see that- There's an Amex Platinum card for 150,000, right? 150,000 points. Right, 150,000 plus earn 10X at restaurants for six months. Yeah, it's a fantastic offer.

Do you ignore it because you're on a Chase approach? No, I mean, you can't ignore that offer. I mean, that's a fantastic offer. Do you ignore it because you're on a chase approach? No, I mean, you can't ignore that offer. I mean, that's a unicorn offer. So yes, I mean, I think you probably still have to go after the unicorns, though. I also look at it at this level and I say, OK, well, if you're spending one to two thousand dollars a month, then I'm assuming that you're constrained by budgetary concerns. And so at that level, does a seven hundred dollar a year card make sense? Well, I mean, we've talked about how the bonus is worth far more than the annual fee, but you also do still have to lay out that $700 upfront. So do you have that $700 to lay out?

If you do, then yeah. I mean, I think when it's something that's way outlier like that, then yes, but you need to have a strategy and an exit strategy, especially because we've had so many questions from people who've been looking to cancel a platinum card and didn't have an exit strategy in mind in terms of just having a no annual fee Amex card in order to keep the points transferable. So I think you do need to consider how you're going to handle that a year from now. But yes, a unicorn offer like that probably makes sense. I think that you quickly, though, can get yourself into trouble. We talked about how the hotel cards often have free night

certificates that are worth more than the annual fee. And that's true. But again, at this budget level, how much of your budget do you want to dedicate to annual fees for free night certificates? If it's going to save you money each year, then go right ahead and get a bunch of them if it's going to save you money, but don't stretch yourself extra thin to get a free night certificate that pigeonholes you into one program and one type of award and one place to stay. I think at this budget level, I'd be concerned about that, but Greg's right. A unicorn offer, you probably still have to go after. I don't know how to define a unicorn offer. I know it when I see it. And that Amex Platinum one is certainly one that I think is worth considering. At this spend level, I feel like right now, you kind of have to consider it, right? So you really have to consider how many annual fees you want to pay. Is that going to save you

money? If it is, great. But otherwise, you got to consider the budget a little bit. However, that Amex Platinum card is certainly a unicorn. And I think that at this spending level, $1,000 to $2,000 a month, because you can meet the $6,000 spending requirement, you almost have to go after that Platinum card, I think right now, right? I agree with that. But I disagree with the statement that it has to be only the unicorn offers. So take, for example, the city premier card. That's, I think the current offer as we're recording this is 60,000 points. We had an that you can probably afford to pay at least one year of. Why not go after that offer? And if next year you don't want to keep paying the annual fee, you could downgrade to a no-fee Citi card. You could.

And then you could upgrade again if you want to transfer the points at some point. So you certainly could pursue that strategy. And if it's going to play well with transfer partners that belong to both programs, both Citi and whatever other program you're focusing on, okay, then not bad. I question this strategy, though, in the sense that if you're not a lone wolf, if you're trying to fly at least two people anywhere, then I look at it and say, I don't know how valuable it is to get too fragmented in terms of where your points are. Though, like we said, if it's a shared partner, if you're going to transfer to Singapore Airlines, for instance, well then great. It's another 80,000 points and that's a nice bonus. So, and like Greg said, the downside is limited if you strategize in terms of downgrade. Okay,

fine. I'll go with you, Greg. Maybe you can say the ones that aren't unicorns. And don't forget, you could worst case cash out those points for $800, 80,000 points. So it's not like you're stuck with just city transfer partners either. You're not. You're not. Good point. Okay. So that was our one to two.

Now, let's say more common medium spenders. Let's go anywhere between like $2,000 and $10,000 a month. I'm going to make this kind of broad. That's a big range. Okay. It is. I originally had it written separately as like two to four and four to eight. So feel free to talk about the lower end of this or the higher end of this. Cause I originally had it out as two to four. You can meet spending requirements on at least one card at any given time, pretty easily at this level of spend. And so now you can definitely cherry pick those offers that come around that are good, like the Citi card offer that you just mentioned, if the 80K offer comes back around, great. Get yourself the MX Platinum, the Hilton card bonuses are up. Okay,

awesome. Grab those. So you have the ability to kind of cherry pick outside of whatever your preferred currency or plan is. And you can probably, I think at this level, start to diversify, right? I mean, if you're spending two to $4,000 at least a month, you can afford to have Chase points and Amex points or even City points or Capital One also. Right, right. And I think it's reasonable to assume too that you, at this level spend, you're probably not spending everything on new signup bonuses. So your category bonuses are going to start to be important. And maybe you could start building out a mixed wallet where you're getting five points per dollar at this place and four points per dollar at this other type of place. And even if the currencies aren't the same, that's how I operate. And I expect that most people in these higher spend ranges are going to be moving towards that type of approach.

I agree. So yeah, I think that at this level, if you're at the $2,000 to $4,000 a month kind of level, then a Chase Inc cash card, if you can get a business card, is almost essential at this point, right? Because you're spending enough that you can meet the spending requirement, number one. Number two, you probably have the ability to time shift some spend if you want to. When those Visa gift cards go on sale, go earn yourself 5X points and use those Visa gift cards to pay for ordinary stuff all the time and kind of essentially earn 5X everywhere. Now, Greg and I don't do that because neither one of us likes to track a bunch of gift cards with a whole bunch of tiny balances on them. But we know plenty of people that do this, that carry these Visa gift cards all the time like that during five X. Tim

wrote about that, right? About doing that, I think. So plenty of people do that. And that is a very viable strategy at this spending level. It is. It is. And I think we're also making the assumption that having several annual fee cards in your wallet is not going to break the bank for you. A lot of them are sort of pay for themselves if you know how to take advantage of all of the extra benefits they have, like especially the platinum card is very hard to justify unless you're taking advantage of all the miscellaneous sort of coupon book features where you get $200 back for this, $200 back for that, $20 a month back for this other thing. You know, so this is a point where either you don't care, you're not worried at all about paying annual fees, or you are playing the game enough to make sure you know what these benefits are and are taking advantage of them. I think that that becomes

kind of important because you're going to be keeping these cards in your wallet long-term. It's a good idea to be getting more value out of them than you're paying the company. Yeah. And I think that that is an important differentiator when you get up to this type of spend level is two to $4,000 even spend level over a $1,000 spend level. Because at the $1,000 spend level, any new cards you're opening that have an annual fee, you're probably only keeping one of them in order to be able to transfer to partners and the rest of them, you're probably going to be downgrading or canceling. But at this $2,000 to $4,000 spend level, you're definitely, I think at this point, focusing more on, okay, what long-term

benefits can I get? Now, speaking of long-term benefits though, at this level of spend, so let's say the $2,000 to $4,000 that I had originally kind of come up with as an idea. So that's $24,000 to $48,000 a year in spend. So at this level, should you, or wait, did we already do two to four? Maybe we were four to eight now. Four to eight is what we should have been. So 48 to, I don't know, so a hundred thousand, 40, 50 to a hundred thousand dollars a year in spend. Should you be doing big spending bonuses at this level? Like, uh, you know, which big spending bonuses matter at this level? Yeah. I think that's a great question. I mean, you're, you're now also at the point where, um, the really big sign-up bonus spend requirements are within range, I think, because there are things like the business platinum card. Sometimes the best offer requires $15,000 or $20,000 spend.

And those kind of things are not uncommon with very high bonuses so suddenly you're looking at that as well as as as you said you now can consider is it worth uh spending fifty thousand dollars on this card in order to get jet blue mosaic status or to get spirit gold status or aeroplan elite status or a bump. There are so many big spend bonuses usually have to do with elite status. Not always, but usually. And I think those are great. If you're in that level of spend anyway, and if you really value a particular status level, and that's going to depend on your personal situation, whether you do, I think it's great to have the ability to pursue some of those things. Yeah, I agree too. And we have a page for that also, the best big

spend offers or the best big spend bonuses is what it's called. And so that page has a number of different offers that are more subjectively ranked there or more subjectively put on the page because the value of those really varies. Like, do you want to spend $25,000 to get an MQD requirement with one of the Delta cards? Well, that's just going to depend on whether or not you're a Delta flyer. There's not really an objective way to value that over spending $40,000 on an IHG card for platinum status, right? So those things are just going to depend on your situation. For diamond status with IHG card for platinum status, right? So those things are just going to depend on your situation. For diamond status with IHG. For diamond status, rather.

I said platinum, didn't I? So for diamond status. Yeah, exactly. And you've got, of course, the Hyatt free night certificate that you can consider. If you get the Hyatt card and 15K gets your free night certificate there, they help them surpass free night certificate with $15,000 spent each year. So there's a whole bunch of those. So now if your total spend here is let's say up to 50,000 and then over 50,000, if it's up to 50,000, is that worth going after a big spend bonus? Or are you at that point where you're

like, okay, well, if I dedicate, if I have $50,000 spend and I dedicate 15 to a big spend bonus, that somewhat limits what I can spend on other cards for new bonuses, is that worth it? Where's the cutoff point where you're like, it's not worth a big, because big spend bonuses typically are at least $15,000 spend. Some of them are 20 or 25 or 30,000, like the American Airlines ones. So what level of spend do you need to be doing to justify a single big spend bonus? Yeah, that's a good question. I don't know that there's a good answer to it, except to say that if going after these

big spend bonuses is preventing you from getting big signup bonuses for new cards, you are probably losing out on better rewards by doing that. I think that's certainly the answer. And I think that if you're spending, honestly, if you're spending less than $50,000 a year, there are very few big spend bonuses that I think are worth dedicating it all to. You look at the IHG card and the 40,000 spend required for diamond status. And Greg wrote that the math works out on that. It can be okay. But then if you're only spending $50,000 a year and 40 of it is on an IHG card, you're really pigeonholing your rewards there. You're going to get a lot of value at IHG because you're not going to get nothing else. So then that wouldn't be worth it to me at this level

of spend. Now, a $15,000 one is like, okay, that still leaves you 35K spend for other stuff. So 15 is probably okay. But these big spend bonuses that require 20 or $25,000 spend, again, you have to really be able to eke a lot of value out of that to justify losing out on other cards that you could potentially be opening, unless you're not going to open those anyway. If you're not going to open new cards anyway, then it doesn't matter. Right, right, right. And, you know, one of the things about elite status is people are often, you know, not very logical about how much they value it. And I'm not saying that meaning it's not intending to put you down if you're in that category. I think that everybody values things differently. And if you just highly, highly value the perks that come with a particular, you know, IHG diamond or Delta platinum, whatever, then the answer could be different. And it could be that, yeah,

you don't highly value getting all these points that you would have come from a signup bonus, but you do highly value something else that comes with elite status. Fine. Yeah. Go for that. Okay. All right.

And I think that at that 50K level, like I said, I would consider those. I think the ones I would consider, I'd be most likely to consider, big spend bonuses I would consider those. I think the ones I would consider, I'd be most likely to consider. Big spend bonuses I would most likely consider would be the 15K for the Hyatt free night certificate or the 15K for the Hilton free night certificate, depending on which meets your hotel needs better. And maybe the $25,000 requirement for the Delta MQD waiver. I don't think there are many other big spend bonuses at that level that I would consider. I mean, there's obviously a $30,000 American Airlines one, but I probably wouldn't do that at this level of spend. I probably wouldn't do the IHG one. So if you're at like

50K or less, I think there are limited big spend bonuses that probably make sense. Yeah. Well, you know what? The American Airlines one has gotten more interesting now because it not only gives you that companion ticket, $99 or whatever companion ticket, but also you would get enough loyalty points for silver or no, they call it gold status with American Airlines. So if that's valuable to you, that's not a bad combination. All right. Okay. You're almost there. But again, I still say that for most people earning the big welcome bonuses with that 30,000 spend, you're going to get way more value from those huge bonuses because 30,000 spend, that's a lot of signup bonuses. Yeah, it is. It definitely is. You're talking probably at least four or five and potentially 10, depending on which kind of cards you open. So yeah, lots of potential points there with that amount of spend. Okay. So now what

about if you're a really big spender? So you spend like, let's say $10,000 a month or more. So spending requirements are really no obstacle for you. And big spend bonuses are pretty easy to hit. You can kind of pick the ones that you want, which are the ones that are really worth spending for. And I know you're going to say it depends on the person and it depends on what you value because we just talked about that, but okay. So then fine. It depends on the person for you, Craig, if you are doing an unlimited number amount of spend, which are the big spend bonuses that you either a go after or B think you would go after if there were absolutely no limit. I mean, I know you already do a lot of spend, but if there was absolutely no limit as to how much you could spend each month, you're a manufactured spender, we have a business, whatever it may be. What are

like the dream big spend bonuses that you would go after? Right, right. Well, you know, the, the, the ultimate one it's, it's almost ultimately ridiculous, but is the, is the, the aeroplan one that, that requires, is it a million dollars? So, you know i was trying to remember is that right it just sounds absurd but um it does because who would have a credit limit high enough to spend a million dollars although it's been a million people do some people um okay so so if you spend a million dollars in a in a calendar year i think or, you, you, you get a year of being able to add a companion for free to any awards. I think. Yes, that's right. And, um, so, so it's, it's, um, it sounds amazing because it's, it's sort of like the ultimate companion pass you could, cause you

could book first-class international flights and add your companion for free. On the other hand, if you think about how many points you would have earned with a just a 2x everywhere card, you could just book your companion with those points. Right. How many points can you possibly like that? That thing is sounds cool, but how many points can you possibly save? Like how many award tickets are you actually going to book per year to save enough points to justify a million dollars spent on one card? It seems like such a gimmick to me because you have to travel most days to earn enough points. If Delta had this deal, then that would be one trip to Australia in business class. I mean, it would save you more significantly, right? Having that pass. You'd be like, wow, I've saved a million points every single award I've booked. Right, right.

So yeah, yeah. So I think it's really hard to justify that one. I mean, obviously it's a silly, ridiculous thing that most people are never going to be able to do anyway. But even if you could, I'd be like, how many trips are you going to book each year? I mean, you have to be flying a lot to save enough points for it to matter. Right, right.

So I don't think there's any situation where I'd go after that realistically. I like spending my way to Hyatt top tier status because the card gets you, well, there's two different cards, but the personal card gets you two elite nights for every 5k spend, plus gives you five elite nights every year. And so Hyatt requires 60 elite nights to get to globalist, which is their top tier status. You get all kinds of extra bonuses along the way. And we've talked many times, so I'm not going to get into it about why we like Hyatt type tier status so much. So that's one that would definitely be something I would do. Um, okay. I like, I'm sorry.

Go ahead. No, go ahead. Well, I was, I was, I was going to kind of switch gears with a different question. So if you have, if you had another one you liked, go ahead and pop it in before I, I switch your gear altogether. But if not, then I can switch it up with... My next question is, at which level... First of all, I guess at which level? At this level or the level before it? When do you start considering... Or you definitely should,

at least by this level. Maybe... I'm not even going to ask that part of it. Maybe you should start at the $4,000 to $8,000 level, but certainly by the $10,000 a month level, you should be considering cards that are not necessarily at the top of everyone else's radar. This is where you can start looking at those things that are a little bit more obscure maybe because you have the ability to hit just about any welcome bonus. And so this is not the most obscure of the obscure things by any stretch, but the US Bank leverage card, business card has had a welcome bonus for quite a while of $750 after $7,500 spend. Now, the US Bank leverage card doesn't have enough benefit that I think it's worth considering, even at a lot of levels where you can meet the spend. It's like, yeah, but what else does it

come with? And there are other cards that have good bonuses. I think the ink cards and their 75,000 point bonuses, that could be 750 bucks. But once you hit this like $10,000 a month level, or again, maybe even in the four to $8,000 a month level, you're at the point where you've probably earned the ink bonuses and you've earned most of those types of bonuses. And so you should think outside of the box a little bit and be like, you know what? This is 10% cash back. 750 bucks is certainly not a bad deal. So we need to start considering that or seeing these things that come up like this capital on tap thing that came up recently here. It's again, another $750 bonus. That's a business card. It's kind of a non-traditional weird thing, but $750 bonus on $7,500 spend. And so I think looking at those things and saying, okay, well, which of

these can I eat some value out of and stack these up? Starts to make sense when you can meet a lot of welcome bonus requirements. Yeah. Yeah. Do you think that those kinds of things, the cashback things are going to be as motivating to people who routinely spend $10,000 a month as things like elite status? I mean, I know that the answer you're looking for is no. And that's, I'm sure that that's the case for some of the people in that realm. At the same time, I think a lot of people like to maximize and stack up more, you know? So I think that, you know, the good old fashioned greed and if things is going to be like, okay, well, I mean, I could just easily make $750 without really doing anything, just grabbing a new card that I'm going to put the same charges on. Why not? And I can help pay for this or that so that

I could cover the fees for all the manufactured spending I'm doing for Delta Diamond status or whatever the case may be. But I think that there are a lot of those types of outliers. I think also that should come into play for those people in the $48,000 range in terms of cards that are in good category bonuses that might not be on your radar because there are some other cards out there that we never write about because they're not necessarily interesting to the greater masses,

or maybe we just don't know about them. I know there's this Bank of the West card that has some 5X categories or whatever, and that's not a great example in the big spending bonus world, but it's limited to a couple of states. It looks kind of interesting, but it's like, ah, I don't live in one of those states and it's very limited, so it's limited to a couple of states. It looks kind of interesting, but it's like, ah, I don't live in one of those states and it's very limited. So it's not something

we write about, but there are some of those weird outlier cards that I don't know, certainly I think could be worth a look at this level. So seeing what other cards you can find, what local bank cards, once you've kind of run through all of the cards, because we get that question all the time, what do I do when I've opened all the cards? I mean, first, there's more cards. You probably haven't opened all the cards. There's a lot of different cards on our best offers page. There's like 150 different cards, I think at least. And that doesn't cover every single credit card in the world. That covers the ones that we know about that are available nationwide that have bonuses that are interesting, we think for one reason or another so

there are always some other things out there too so i think that there are more cards to consider especially if cash back is a motivator yeah yeah good point uh and you know just finish up the the leap things that i would consider you know uh 10k a month would be enough for, uh, to get high level, not top tier Delta status. Uh, it's more than enough to get IHG top tier status. Uh, you, I guess you, uh, I was going to say Marriott has, has the spend towards, uh, leap nights, but I don't think I would bother with that. Um, so yeah, I think those are the ones that come to mind as the most desirable. All right. There we go. All right. So I think that hopefully wraps up and gives you at least some idea wherever you are spending

wise, how much you should or what you should be considering for your strategy based on how much you spend. All right. We're going to skip over post-rosa this week, and we're just going to go right into a quick question of the week that fits in with what we've been talking about. So I want to squeeze this in here before we're done. And this is a question that came in about the AA shopping portal. And so the person who wrote in has something to buy at Home Depot. And so their question is, let's say they want to spend $1,000

at Home Depot. So his question was, if the portal says 2X, so if the American Airlines shopping portal says you can get 2X miles, and I use my Barclays Aviator Red credit card for the purchase, would I earn 3,000 loyalty points and get a double dip, earning 2X through the shopping portal and 1X on the credit card? Or would I just get the 2X that it shows me on the portal on that individual purchase? You would get a total of 3X because the Barclays card earns one point per dollar for that purchase. You would get a total of three X because the Barclays card earns one point per dollar for that purchase and the portal completely separate. You don't have to use an A card at all to shop through the portal. So you're going to get the 2000 points from the portal and whatever your credit card offers. In this case, that's 1000 points. So easy to answer. Easy answer. There you go. So shopping through the portal is like you said, totally

separate. He also went on to ask about what if I buy gift cards somewhere else with a card that earns a category bonus. Again, you're going to earn whatever the shopping portal says on whatever the purchase price is. And that's totally independent from the card that you choose to use. So however you buy gift cards or whatever credit card you use, you're going to earn the stuff on that. All the American Airlines cards, the ones available in the United States, I think, earn one loyalty point per dollar spent, even if you got a category bonus. So don't try to get slick with it and go buy gift cards at the grocery store with your mile up card and think you're going to get two X loyalty points. You'll get the redeemable miles, but you won't get the extra loyalty points. But certainly in

the case that Mark gave us as an example, there are 3000 American airlines miles and loyalty points. So if you're chasing American airlines, elite status, the shopping portal can be worthwhile. I've used it quite a bit lately for a family that have needed things and said, Hey, can you order me this? Can you order me that? I've pretty frequently gone through the American airlines portal for those things. When it's something that it's really a purchase for a family member and they're going to reimburse me for it anyway, and they don't care about the rewards, then I'll use the portal for that. So, okay. That, my friends, brings us to the end of today's show. If you've enjoyed what we've been talking about and you'd like to get posts in your

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