Frequent Miler on the Air - Delta breaks up with its loyal customers. It's not you, it's Delta. | Ep220 | 9-16-23

Episode Date: September 16, 2023

Delta wants dollars: this week we discuss the massive changes coming to the Delta Sky Miles elite status program and what it means for flyers and cardholders alike. 00:00 Intro 01:24 Giant Mailbag 04:26 What crazy thing . . .did Citi do this week? 06:10 Mattress running the numbers 6:23 American Airlines elite status fast track for some Hyatt elites https://frequentmiler.com/american-airlines-back-with-instant-status-pass-for-hyatt-elite-members-targeted/ 10:25 Hyatt Globalist fast track for AA Platinum Pro & Executive Platinum members https://frequentmiler.com/new-american-airlines-hyatt-status-match-get-globalist-with-20-nights/ 17:51 Wyndham Shopping Portal Promo https://frequentmiler.com/wyndham-shopping-portal-earn-1k-points-on-1st-purchase-500-bonus-points-per-purchase-after-limit-3k-4k-points/ 19:54 Award Talk: Now book Star Alliance awards on Turkish Airlines website again https://frequentmiler.com/turkish-star-alliance-awards-online-once-again-book-united-to-hawaii-for-7500-miles-one-way/ 26:23 Main Event: Delta breaks up with its loyal customers (It's not you, it's Delta!) https://frequentmiler.com/deltas-2024-elite-program-it-aint-pretty/ 31:01 How do you earn MQDs in the newly-announced program? 36:00 No more rollovers 37:45 January 1, 2024 SkyClub access changes for cardholders https://frequentmiler.com/delta-announces-big-sky-club-access-changes-for-2024-and-beyond/ 40:08 Feb 1, 2025 SKyClub access changes 44:12 Who is the winner here? 46:11 What will be the best ways to get SkyClub access moving forward? 48:06 How did Greg do on his predictions? 57:51 What will Greg do about Delta elite status now? 1:06:16 If you're close to Million Miler status . . . 1:07:45 Question of the Week: Better rewards or more peace of mind?

Let's get into the giant mailbag. What crazy thing did City 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. Delta breaks up with its loyal customers.

It's not you, it's Delta. It still hurts, Craig. It still hurts. It still hurts. It's Delta sent what I'm calling a Dear John letter. It was an email to its members saying, coming in 2024, a simpler SkyMiles. And then the subtext said... And going, your elite status. Yeah, right. Coming in 2024, going as you're at least. Because the subtext says a simpler and more rewarding SkyMiles. And you know what? Yes, it's simpler. And you know what? Yes,

it's more rewarding. But guess for who? Not for us. Nope. Nope. Delta is the cash registers going cha-ching, cha-ching, cha-ching. That's right. It's going to cost us so much more to achieve the same levels of elite status going forward starting next year that it's kind of crazy. So a lot of us are saying goodbye, Delta. Yeah. So we'll get into that in the main event. First, of course, we have the giant mailbag.

I did want to remind everyone that if you want to jump right ahead to the main event or to any particular section in this podcast, that in the show notes, you'll find a sort of table of contents with the timestamps for each section. So you can jump to where you want. And I want to add to that right around where you find that in the show notes, you'll find the like button and the subscribe button. And you can do those things. If you enjoy this show, don't forget to like and subscribe, leave a comment. We appreciate all that stuff. We sure do. All right. Good, good reminder. Okay. Jumping to the giant mailbag. Today's giant mail comes from, and I apologize for butchering your name, I'm going to call you Adve. And Adve says, in a recent podcast, you all talked about the IHG Personal Premier

credit card. I think the fourth night free feature is such an underrated benefit because it works even when you book two rooms. I recently took my family to Scotland where we stayed at the Voco Grand Central. We stayed for a total of four nights and had two rooms booked. Since this was an award booking, the fourth night free got applied to both bookings, even though they were at the same time for the same hotel. This effectively gave me two free nights on that booking and the hotel also upgraded both the rooms to one bedroom suites upon arrival as part of the platinum status that came with the card the extra space was such a huge deal for us as we were traveling with a kid this one booking alone paid for the annual fee of the card through the fourth night free and

upgraded suite honestly think from a hotel card perspective this trumps the hyatt personal credit card okay i definitely agree with the last sentence there i mean the hyatt personal card frankly is not that great of a card it's just it helps you get to elite status quicker if you you know are chasing that and you need the the elite knights and the free night certificate can be valuable but but it's not like a great card on its own by any stretch it's a card that makes sense if you're a Hyatt fan, but it's not. I don't think it's one of the better hotel cards. So I will agree with that statement right away. Very interesting. I didn't know that you could get the fourth night free for two rooms at the same time. I mean, it kind of makes sense because it's just a fourth night free discount

sort of a thing, but I've never thought about it, never tried it, never knew it. So I appreciate that heads up. Yeah, same here. I didn't know that. And now wondering, is there a limit to how many rooms? A lot of times hotel chains, their loyalty programs have limits of three rooms for certain things like Marriott limits earning points on three rooms with one booking, for example. So I don't know. Is it limited to two, three, something more? Who knows? Good question. We should play with NC. Anyway, that's great.

That's a great tip. So thank you very much for sending that in. Excellent. Yeah. And a great way to get good value out of that card, for sure. So nicely done. Congratulations. That definitely does seem like a good use.

All right. So let's see. That brings us next to... Oh, I just looked over the wrong thing, I think. So we got to talk about Crazy Thing, right? What crazy thing did City do this week? Yeah, guess who's back? City is back in the Crazy Thing category.

This crazy thing came to the giant mailbag actually. And this is from Jeff who, uh, city had sent him a replacement city premier card, which is the $95, uh, city. Thank you card. That's an excellent card. Um, and the letter said, uh, at the top, your new city premier card is enclosed. Makes sense. Um, and then it said, you can earn points in so many ways with your city prestige card and went on to show the bonus categories that you'll earn with that card which are the bonus categories of the old no longer obtainable city prestige card rather than the premier card so what the heck is with that weird that's really weird i mean it would be less weird if it used one of the new long rumored names and you know they somehow printed

the wrong thing from the new city strata card that would be so cool if we got a hint of what's coming you know through a mistake like that but right but that doesn't seem like what this is right i mean because it says city prestige which is existing card, and it has the bonus categories from that card. So weird. I mean, I would call City and take them to task on that. Your mailer says 5X. I would push for that. Why am I not earning 5X?

Right, right. Yeah, that'd be interesting. Anyway, just kind of a fun little mistake City made there. It is fun. All right. So good luck to you, Jeff, if you try to try to earn your five X. All right. So thanks, Citi, for making a reappearance in the crazy thing segment. Let's talk next about mattress running the numbers. So this week's mattress running the numbers.

We got a few things. It's been a busy week. So first up, we have what? Well, which one do you want to start with, Greg? Well, let's talk about that. American Airlines, you can fast track to status if you have Hyatt elite status, right? So they're sending out through your American Airlines app or through an email to you or both. You'll see an offer to fast track to status there. Yeah. You'll have to go to the promotions tab. So if you're in the app, you have to go into your account and then find the promotions tab or on the website. You can find that in order to register for it.

That'd be your shortcut. You should get an email, but it's worth just checking the promotions tab because even if you got an email, you wouldn't be able to register if you don't find it in the promotions tab. So that's the shortcut. So I don't know how many different versions of the offer there are. So I have Hyatt Globalist status, which I got from the built fast track earlier this year. So the offer that I got was a fast

track to Platinum Pro status with American Airlines. So it's an instant status pass. What would happen is as soon as I register, I would get Platinum Pro status temporarily for four months. During those four months, if I earn 25,000 loyalty points, I'll keep Platinum status for four months beyond that. If I want to keep my Platinum Pro status, I'll need 42,000 loyalty points in four months. And if I earn 67,000 loyalty points in those four months, status I just mentioned would only last for four more months after the initial four-month trial period, during which time I would need to meet those requirements again in order to keep the status for an additional four months. So they're basically just splitting up the loyalty point earnings and saying, hey, we'll give you the status if you just maintain the pace that you would need in order to continue to earn the status naturally anyway. So it's not a shortcut in the sense that it's about the rate you would

normally need to earn the points at, but you don't need to earn the entire bucket in order to get status for four months. So a nice little fast track offer. It would be an upgrade for me to Platinum Pro. And I think I can probably hit the loyalty point thresholds for at least Platinum and probably Platinum Pro. So I'll end up with Platinum Pro for a little while out of this. Yeah. And for those of you who are thinking, well, who get this offer, but are thinking, well, I'm not going to be flying American, so it might not matter.

If you are flying One World Airlines internationally, one of the things that this will do for you is give you access to one world first class lounges in places where there's both a business class and a first class lounge. Getting into that first class lounge could be a big difference in how swanky and comfortable you are and what kind of food you eat. So that would be a nice little perk for those situations. You do have to connect your American Airlines account to your Hyatt account. I forget exactly how that works, but basically they have a partnership and you need to link your accounts for these kind of promos to be targeted to you. Yep. And then when you link it, you'll earn one American Airlines mile per dollar spent at Hyatt. So it's another little boost if you spend at Hyatt's often. So so anyway, yeah, I mean, not a bad little offer. The kind of weird thing about it is the timing, because American Airlines elite year runs out at the end of March. So as it stands right now, if you've got elite status right now with American, you have it through the end of March anyway.

So this four month trial period, if you register at the very end of this, would only give you status until February. So I'll move up a level until February if I want it. Beyond that, I'll drop back down to platinum unless I, you know, requalify one of these. You know, I mean, a lot of people travel over the holidays though. And so that could be really handy for a lot of people, even if you don't plan to meet the challenge and get your status extended. And it will be for me to be clear. So I'm happy to be able to get this because it'll come in handy for me during that period.

So, yep. Great. Agreed. All right. So that's the American Airlines side, which is targeted. You'll need to check the promotions tab, but there is also a Hyatt Fast Track for American Airlines elites. which is targeted. You'll need to check the promotions tab.

But there is also a Hyatt Fast Track for American Airlines elites. Tell us about that, Greg. Yep. Yep. So this one, I'm going to say it's only interesting if you have Platinum Pro or Executive Platinum status with American Airlines. And that's because so the deal is if you have American Airlines elite status, you can get a fast track to Hyatt status, but you have to have Platinum Pro or higher to have a chance of a fast track to Hyatt Globalist status. And Hyatt Globalist status is awesome, gives you so many fantastic perks, but the next level down status is kind of meaningless for most things. So I wouldn't even, I mean, if you're eligible for the

next level down and it helps you a little bit, it can't hurt to sign up for it. But same time, you don't want to go out of your way to try to meet the challenge requirements. But anyway, if you have American Airlines Platinum Pro or Executive Platinum status, you're eligible to get temporary Hyatt Explorer status. That's not the interesting part. The interesting part is if you stay 20 nights during the trial period, you, uh, get globalist status that's valid for, uh, all the way through February of 2025. So, um, that that's where it gets interesting. 20. Yeah. So 20 nights, we've seen similar challenges before I'm built, had one, and there have been other things. Certain businesses have access to Hyatt's 20-night challenge. This is another way of getting to that challenge. Yeah. And the timing is decent because like you said, there'll be a lot of people that'll travel over the next couple of months here, certainly over the November, December holiday period. So you may very well already have five

or 10 nights of hotel stays coming up in that time period. And so then it's a matter of determining, well, do I need another five or 10 or however many in order to bridge the gap to get you to 20? So yeah, I mean, I think the timing on this could work out well for some people. And if it does work out well for you, then great, because we obviously love Hyatt Global status. We talk lots about why you would be interested in that. So I think it makes sense to do it if it's if it's relatively easy. Now, whether it would make sense to mattress run nights for that is another thing altogether. But if you're going to consider mattress running nights for it, then you'll certainly want to register for the new Hyatt promotion because there's a

new promo out whereby you'll earn 3000 points for every three nights that you stay at a Hyatt property. And if you are a Hyatt cardholder, a world of Hyatt cardholder, and you stay at one of the right properties, whichever ones those are, then you'll earn an additional 1000 points for every three nights. So basically, 1,000 points a night across the board. And if you're a cardholder, you may earn an additional 333 points per night, essentially, if you're able to stay in exact three-night increments. I should emphasize that this is per three nights. So if you're staying two nights, you're not going to get anything. But if you stay the third night, you'll get 1,000 or maybe 1,333 points back a night. What do you think, Greg? Is this

worth a mattress run for the points? The Hyatt promo by itself is not worth a mattress run at all. It's kind of a lukewarm, in my mind, promo. I especially don't like the fact that cardholders get that extra 1,000 points only at select properties. And Steven listed which properties in the US are eligible and it's just like a handful out in California and a couple other states, I think. Which is surprising because it's not like... It'd be one thing if it was 10,000 bonus points or something. How much this is really costing high at the offer, right? Worth a thousand points and they're going to limit it to so few properties. I don't get that. But if you are mattress running anyway for the challenge to get to globalist status,

then that's fantastic to get some extra bonus points back. It can really make a difference in how much it costs you to do that mattress run. So whether or not you should take these two together and mattress run to earn high globalist status and get a few points back through this Hyatt bonus journeys promo, I think it depends on, I'd say, a couple major factors. The biggest one is how much are you going to use that globalist status once you get it and through the end of February of 2025. You'll get, if you're staying at Hyatt's a lot and you're going to get good use of things like free parking, free breakfast, upgrades and everything, then it's probably worth spending maybe even quite a lot for it. But if you don't know, you're going to spend, you're going to do it much. Then the next question is,

are you going to be close enough that it's worth? So let's say you have 17 nights planned over the trial period anyway. So going for three more nights, that's probably worth it. So everybody's got to use their own judgment under these situations. It's going to vary from person to person by a lot. Yeah, for sure. Pretty interesting though, when I think about it, because so if and this is such a big if because there's so few category one properties around in the United States anyway anymore. But if you had the chance to be able to do this at a category one off peak property at thirty five hundred points per night, if you mattress ran the whole thing, the 20 nights for the status, that'd be seventy thousand points out of pocket but you would get back i think if it did

the number ran the numbers right 18 000 points right because you you only get them back in chunks of three night stays right so you'd get 18 000 points back so your net cost to mattress run the entire thing would be 52 000 points for globalist status now i i think that if you're going to stay at hyatt's next year in the February after, even that could be worth it. I think there's a lot of people that would say, oh, yeah, I mean, I'd spend 52,000 points for globalist status. So, you know, again, it depends on whether or not the stars align for you on all of that. And hopefully you don't have to mattress run all 20 nights and then it becomes pretty reasonable if you only have to be part of it. I mean, another way of putting it, let's say you think you're going to do five Hyatt stays

next year. You're basically saying it's going to cost you about 10,000 extra points per stay to get all those great benefits of globalist status. That seems like a no-brainer to me at that point, if you have the points to spare. Right. If you have the points to spare, exactly. So I think it's fairly mattress run worthy. Again, it always depends on whether or not you're going to use the status. You don't want to chase status that you're not going to use unless you're us, and then we'll chase American Airlines status and you just mind your own business. But yeah, otherwise, yes. So I think there's a lot to be, to be said there. All right. So that's mattress running the numbers. I think that ties that up. Well, we got another bonus

mattress running the numbers. Don't we? We got, we got one more here that I tried to skip over. Didn't I? So the Wyndham shopping portal is back, baby. Sort of. We love, we love that portal for all its bad math and everything. This time, what they're promising is if it's your first time buying something through the Wyndham shopping portal, you get 1,000 bonus points on your first purchase. And you also get 500 bonus points per purchase after that with a limit of a total of 4,000 points if you're a new shopping portal user. If you're an existing shopping portal user, then you're only eligible for that second part of it, the 500 bonus points per purchase. So you're limited to 3K total bonus points. And this is through October 12th. And if you think about it, if you could find really cheap stuff to buy, you could knock this out with very little cash, buy some iTunes songs or something,

and you'll get the 3,000 or 4,000 points for almost nothing. So I think that's a great deal. And I feel like it's a little bit of a casino slot machine thing because we know from past promos how bad Wyndham's math is. So when they say you'll get 3,000 or 4,000 total points, what does that really mean? I don't know. You don't know. Nobody knows.

You don't know. And that sounds ridiculous, right? But, I mean, past promos were pretty clear about what it should mean, and it didn't mean that. So, yeah, who knows how many points you'll actually get but i i feel confident you'll get some and probably uh more than the cost of a few itunes songs i mean probably at least 489 points for every 500 that you're promised you never know it could end up being like you know 783 and and you know you might as well just give it i'm gonna give it a shot i mean'm going to give it a shot. I mean, why not? Yeah, yeah. All right. So, yeah. So mattress run that one. Have fun and best of luck. Let's all roll the dice and see what happens. Let's talk about award talk. So for

this week's award talk, I published a post because the Turkish Star Alliance online booking tool is back in business. So you can once again book Star Alliance Awards through the Turkish Airlines website. If you've been paying attention or maybe caught a segment recently where we talked about this, you have not been able to book any Star Alliance Awards on the Turkish Airlines website for months now, which is frustrating because they have a couple of great sweet spots on their award chart for flights to Europe and the Middle East. And so those haven't been bookable online on partners. And then, of course, obviously, United Domestic Awards cost just 7,500 miles each way in economy class, but they've not been available at all online for many months. But now it's back. So you can once again book online if

you're lucky enough to find the availability for the flight that should be available but likely isn't on their website. So, you know, it's, again, a gamble and certainly not something where you should feel limited to what you see on the website. Oftentimes things can be booked via email that don't show up on the website. Although that said, I did try to book a couple of things this week via email. And for the first time, I just got totally shot down. Nobody could find availability on any of the several itineraries that I sent where there should have been availability. And I sent it to like more than 20 offices.

So I was pretty surprised that I got shot down over and over again this week via email. So I don't know what's up with that. But I did find flights, by the way. A lot of people mentioned that it's impossible to find flights between the East Coast and Hawaii. I did find some not Newark. Newark seems to be like I can't find anything that goes through Newark, touches Newark, leaves from Newark, goes to Newark. Newark is involved. It doesn't seem to want to show that on the website, but I did find some availability to and from Hawaii from other East Coast cities. So not much, but it's out there. So you can find it

for $500. That's so interesting. And I understand they also, so it used to be that just to find the Star Alliance award search process on the Turkish website was like, I mean, I had to go to your post to Nick's post every time to to figure out how to find it. But now they they brought it front and center, right? They did. They made it a lot easier. Yeah, I should have probably led with that. So, yeah, when you go to the Turkish Airlines website, there is a little button in the middle

of the regular flight search tool where you would normally look for something to book award tickets. And it says award ticket. But if you've clicked that in the past and tried to search for an award ticket there, that homepage tool only searched for flights on Turkish operated, you know, only search for award availability on Turkish operated flights. So it never showed Star Alliance availability. If you found it there, it was much more complicated, like Greg said, to find the Star Alliance booking tool. But now when you click that award ticket button on the homepage, it brings you to another page, a new page with two tabs. One tab is for searching on Turkish metal and the other

tab says Star Award ticket. When you click click that it takes you to the old star alliance booking tool that has been around but hidden away somewhere so they kind of brought it front and center and made it a lot easier for somebody to find it's a little glitchy and weird though like if you're already logged into your account sometimes you'll click that button and it'll say you gotta log in again and it won't let you log in. So you got to be patient and time it right. Like give it a second to load and know that you're logged in still before you click the button. It's kind of a pain, but you can still get to the Star Alliance booking tool or you can

now get to the Star Alliance booking tool from the homepage, which is, I think, a great enhancement, a nice improvement. Hopefully, since they went through the effort to create that, hopefully they also intend to improve the booking process and make more stuff available. That was my thought when I saw that they changed the booking tool. I thought either they're going to change the award chart and get rid of the sweet spot here, or they've got to be making it easier to book. Right. I mean, they're they're finally doing something to improve the IT. It's like a miracle, right? I almost feel like the two are related, though,

that they can sustain their incredible award prices as long as they make it nearly impossible to book these awards. So if you persist and you find that award that should have been easy to find, but you finally find it on their website, then you can book it with the award prices. But I do have to mention that Turkish has yet another really big weirdness about it. When you go to redeem miles for a flight, if it's the first time you've ever booked with your miles, they won't let you book for more than yourself. Yeah. So weird. A weird error comes up saying, no, sorry. You'll have to go to a ticket office or something to do this because you've you've never it's your first time. And so you almost have to like book a like, you know, United flight just for yourself

just to get through this or something. I don't know. You know, and I don't even know if that'll work for everybody because we've had some people that have reported the fact that they've booked tickets like over and over again for themselves and for other people over the phone or via email. And still the online tool won't let them book for anybody else. So I don't know what's up with that because I'm able to book for the rest of my family and have been ever since they launched the online tool. I have speculated that like what Greg is saying that it's because I booked a flight for only myself first and then booked flights for family members after that, that it somehow unlocked the ability to book for others. But it seems like that doesn't work for everybody. So I don't know what the secret sauce is with Turkish, which is

a standing statement. I think the secret is send your Turkish miles to Nick and tell him what to book for you. He'll be happy to find your award space. Oh, yeah. Thrilled. Thrilled to do that. Exciting, exciting times. Send that to discard at frequentmiler.com. So it's all right.

I think that finishes up our award talk talk. So I think that means it is time for today's main event. All right. Today's main event, delta breaks up with its loyal customers it's not you it's delta well it's definitely not me because i was never a loyal delta customer but uh but unfortunately for people like you greg right this is yeah yeah news it bad news. It's big bad news. So the headline is that Delta is simplifying their program as expected. They're moving everything. Their elite program I'm talking about.

They used to have multiple metrics, MQMs, MQDs, MQSs, and an MQD waiver. And if you plug in all the numbers into the right combination, you could get elite status. But it was confusing. And so they're changing it all. They are simplifying it to all. It's all about MQDs, which are medallion qualifying dollars, which basically means your elite status going forward is based on how much money you spend with Delta. How many dollars do you spend? That's what it's based on. It's starting in 2024 for trying to gain elite status for 2025. And so that's OK news that they're simplifying it.

I don't know. I think that's really good. I've honestly long thought that airline elite programs were way too complicated. How can I explain that to somebody who's not familiar already with it? Like explaining that whole concept of the MQMs and MQDs and MQSs and MQD waiver. Like that's just it's so complicated for somebody who is not intricately familiar with it already and like wants to nerd out on it. So I totally think that simplifying makes tons of sense. I just don't think that simplifying by

taking all of our money is the way to do it. Yeah. No, I mean, along those lines, I believe that we talked about this on the show back when Delta introduced MQDs originally, I think we said, why? Sure, they want to reward their customers that spend the most with them. That makes sense. But why keep all these other metrics as well? Why not just base it all on MQDs? That's what they've now done. The bad part is that the requirements to reach each level of status, as far as how much spend is required, has increased from at least 50%, but to as high as 100% more that you have to spend. So for example, before to get to bottom tier silver status, you had to spend $3,000 with Delta. Now you've got to spend $6,000.

It's double. But the worst one, you want top tier status with Delta. You want diamond status. It was $20,000. And now 35,000. It went up by $15,000 more that you have to spend

just to keep that same level of elite status. That's insane. That's particularly insane to me because how many leisure travelers are spending between $20,000 and $35,000? I would think not very many that are spending that much on leisure travel. It's business travelers, right? And as a business traveler, do you have enough pull to talk your company into an additional $15,000 worth of travel per year? I mean, obviously there are some companies where this will be a drop in the bucket, but I think for anybody who was close to the $20,000 before, how are you going to justify in a world where there's a lot less business travel today than there was a few years ago? How the heck are you going to get $15, of status that it's just crazy. So that's why we titled this Delta Breaks Up with its loyal customers is that many of us who have been

loyal to Delta before and have earned elite status are now going to say, no, no more. That's not to say we're not going to fly Delta. It's just we'll fly Delta based on price, convenience, those kind of factors. But we're not going to go out of our way to earn elite status because it's just too expensive going forward. So speaking of too expensive, I guess we should talk about how you earn these MQTs because, I mean, we're talking about numbers and 20,000, 35,000, they're big numbers, but what counts, what doesn't count? How much does it count? How do you end up getting MQDs in this brave new world that we're looking at? Yeah. Yeah. Good point. So MQDs, as I said, it stands for Medallion Qualifying Dollars. So it's meant to be how many dollars are you spending with Delta?

And they expanded what that means by a little bit. So now it's not just for flights you buy through Delta that you get one MQD per dollar spent, but also vacation packages, Delta car rentals and Delta stays. Just forget I even mentioned those last two because that's where you book your car rental or your Delta stay through Delta's website. It really goes to probably Expedia or something on the backend, but the prices are higher. It's just not worth it. Don't do that. So I really think it comes down to, as far as spend with Delta, I think it really comes down to flights and vacation packages where it makes sense at all to earn MQDs. Now, the other way is through credit card spend. And you may remember that it used to be you could earn top tier Delta status with creative use of Delta credit cards

and spending a total of $250,000 on those cards. Today, or today, starting in 2024, if you have the Delta Reserve card and you want top tier status entirely from spend, you're talking about $350,000 spend in a calendar year. And if you have the Delta Platinum card and not the reserve, $700,000 spend. Hey, I mean, so if you get a reserve card, what's another $100,000 spend, Greg? I mean, you can't handle it. You can't take the heat. out of the kitchen greg uh yeah and seven hundred thousand dollars in spend on a delta platinum card oh my goodness i mean so so what's happening there is the reserve card is earning one mqd per ten dollars spent uh on the card um this is not spending with delta specifically it's with spending on the delta card uh and if you have

the platinum delta card uh you get one MQD per $20. And that's why it's half the earning power of the Delta reserve going forward. So it's always earned the platinum Delta card has always earned less than the reserve card as a percentage of spend towards elite status, but not by half before it was not nearly that bad of a difference before. So it's very interesting. If you want to continue to wasting your spend towards Delta Elite status, and I say that because there are so many credit cards that are much more rewarding for your spend than the Delta cards.

But anyway, if you want to continue to spend on your Delta cards, they really, and you want status from that, you have to have the reserve card. I mean, it'd be insane to do that spend on the platinum card. So they've really made a big change there, I think, with regards to those credit cards. They have. And that's not the only change. Well, before I get into that, we should mention that we're talking about spending $350,000 or $700,000, not realistically. But the difference, the slight difference anyway, is that whereas in the past, you would have potentially had to spend a lot of that if you weren't flying much because you weren't earning very many MQMs. You needed to earn lots and lots of these MQDs. The slight difference now, I guess, is that

you're going to be mixing MQDs that you've earned from Delta vacation packages potentially and from Delta flights along with this. So, you know, maybe that makes somewhat different. You know, you're not going to probably have to spend three're not gonna you're gonna probably have to spend 350 000 you're gonna spend some amount less because hopefully if you're considering spending a lot of money for delta elite status because you fly delta a lot so you know and in the past you had to juggle different cards greg mentioned you had to creatively spend 250 000 you had to juggle that over multiple cards and maybe upgrade and downgrade cards to do it and have a couple different, a platinum and a reserve and this and that. Whereas now, it'll be very simple. You just need one. You just need one Delta Reserve card. It doesn't really matter whether it's the business or the consumer card in order to get spend towards status.

So that's actually a great point. I mean, you know, if you're used to spending $250,000, you probably fly Delta concept, any MQMs you earned above what you needed for elite status still would roll over to the next year. And all the MQMs you earned from spend on the credit cards would count towards your lifetime elite status. Both of those concepts are going away. No more rollovers in the future. So if you earn more MQDs than you need for status, it's just wasted effort, wasted spend. And there will be no more way to spend your way to million miler status if that interests you because the MQMs are going away. So million miler status in the future, you base entirely how far you fly with with delta and its partners yep yeah and and so i i there was something else that popped in my mind while you were saying that

and then it just totally floated right back out so never mind i i'm sorry those are the the changes on the card front anyway uh but that's not it so we said that if you want to spend towards elite status oh i know what i wanted to say. It's for people that we should have probably made this a little clearer and stopped at the beginning. For people that aren't already Delta folks, if you haven't tuned us out yet, if you're getting confused by the MQM, MQD talk, MQDs is the dollars. Greg explained that that's essentially money you spent with Delta. MQMs were the medallion qualifying miles. So it was miles that you would have earned based on, well, now based on how much you spent on Delta flights.

Flying, usually. Yeah, based on flying, exactly. So the MQM concept, the miles earned from flying is what's going away and you're not going to roll those over anymore, et cetera. It's not going to matter how far you've flown or how much you've flown. Only matters how many dollars you earn. But we said that if you want to earn lots of MQDs from credit card spend, you absolutely are going to need one of the reserve cards. And the reserve card, one of the hot perks of the reserve card has always been Delta Sky Club access, right? I mean, if you live near a Delta hub with a great Delta Sky Club, that's been awesome for you probably,

but it's not going to be as awesome moving forward, is it? It's not. Before we dive into that, though, I just want to add one more complexity. If you're wondering about what about regular miles that you could redeem for award flights and everything like that, you will continue. That's not changed. You'll continue to earn them when you book and fly Delta, and you'll continue to be able to spend them exactly as today. There's nothing announced with regards to changes in any way about redeemable miles, redeemable sky miles earned from flying or spending to fly. Glad you mentioned that. Yes. Let's talk about the Sky Club. So big changes to how you get into the Sky Club. The one big one that's going to affect almost all Delta flyers, regardless of how you get into the Sky Club, is starting January 1st of 2024. If you've booked basic economy, you're not getting in. No lounge access for you. It doesn't matter if you spent 35 grand on Delta,

you book a basic economy ticket and get out of here and go hang out with the riffraff at the gate. Yeah. That's just kind of startling to me. Um, I, I get it. Their sky clubs are way overcrowded. They need to do something. But, uh, I think there are a lot of people who, you know, are happy with the experience of paying less for basic economy, but instead of paying more for things like the Delta Reserve card, so they have access. And now that combination isn't going to work for you. A smaller change, I think, I don't know how many people it'll affect. If you have the Delta Platinum card, also starting January 1st, 2024, the Delta Platinum card didn't give you free access to Sky Clubs, but it gave you the ability to pay for club access for $50 per person, no more.

You won't be able to get in at all with your Delta Platinum card. Okay. So those are the changes happening right away, January 1st. It gets worse. It gets worse, but the big, big changes don't start until February 1 of 2025. So keep that in mind that we have over a year before this affects us. But if you have either the Delta Reserve card or one of the Amex Platinum cards, not the Delta Platinum card, but an Amex Platinum card, the 695 card. You've been getting into Delta Sky Clubs for free with that card on days that you fly Delta. Starting February 1st, 2025, your Delta Reserve card will limit you to 10 Sky Club visits per year.

And that's not 10 days of Sky Club. So let's say you like to go to Sky Club when you get to the airport and maybe you have a layover somewhere and you go into the Sky Club and maybe you land somewhere and want to go into the Sky Club again. That would count as three separate visits. And so that would use three of your 10 if you did that. Amex Platinum cards are limited to six visits per year. If you have one of each or some combination of multiple cards, they do stack. So you will have more. So for example, you could have a Delta Reserve personal card and a Delta Reserve business card, and you'd then have 20 Sky Club visits per year. But that's how it works. You can, if you spend $75,000 on one of these cards in a calendar year,

then you'll get unlimited visits for the rest of that year and all of the next. So if you're spending a lot of money on your reserve card towards elite status, then it will essentially turn into business as usual for you. But if you're somebody who actually spends $35,000 on Delta flights, then you're in trouble. Then you're not going to get as much access as you would have in the past. And that seems nutty to me, that the customers that actually spend $35,000 on Delta flights that don't spend heavily on a reserve card, but have a reserve card are no longer going to have access, no longer going to have unlimited access, they'll get access

those 10 times. And I think the point that you made a minute ago is such a big one in terms of the lounge access thing. You know, if you're starting somewhere in Europe, I don't know if Delta has sky clubs in many different places in Europe, but I assume they must in at least a couple of the airports in Europe. So you visit a Sky Club there before you leave and then you have to connect in New York to get to wherever you're actually from. I mean, very conceivable to me that you would use two visits in a day and those things are going to then go pretty quickly. So that's a huge disappointment. Certainly a big disappointment for Amex Platinum card holders, I think, too, who weren't really invested in the Delta ecosystem, but maybe justified an Amex Platinum card in part because they live at a Delta hub. If you live in Atlanta and you weren't going to go after Delta Elite status and all that necessarily, maybe you weren't all in on Delta, but you live at a

Delta hub and whenever you fly them, you like to be able to use the sky club. Well, you know, hopefully you like to fly them six times per year or fewer because that's a big hit. You know, I, I suspect there's going to be an interesting, um, almost a market for authorized user cards because, um, so suppose you have a Delta Reserve card and you're spending big on it anyway, and you pay to add authorized user cards to your account. Those authorized users will also get into Sky Club, but also because you've spent $75,000,

they'll also have unlimited use. So there's an interesting just new math going on about how valuable the authorized user cards will be in certain situations like that. So look forward to- Everybody's going to want to be an employee on the big spenders Delta Reserve business card, right? A lot of applicants all of a sudden. So that's kind of interesting. As we said, though, won't affect us until February of 2024. Very good.

All right. So moving forward, is this an enhancement, Craig? Um, it is an enhancement to Delta's pocket because probably quite a few people, uh, will spend more to more to reach the level of status that they want. But maybe not, because if a lot of people leave and say, forget it, I'm moving over to United or American, maybe Delta will rethink this. But there is an enhancement here that we didn't talk about. So one, Delta has promised to add more choice benefits, which are benefits that today are benefits elites get to pick from once they reach platinum or diamond status. And so that'll be interesting. They haven't announced what they are, but apparently they're going to be doing something to make getting this expensive status even better.

The other thing is more of a conceptual thing that if you do what it takes to get this top tier status and to get unlimited lounge access. Theoretically, there will be less competition for those things. So, you know, getting into the lounge, it might not be so crowded. Flying and hoping for an upgrade, you may very well be starting in 2025, the only diamond on the plane, which will be very different for people flying from a Delta hub. Like, you know, if you fly from Atlanta, you know that you're probably the 25th diamond on any given flight. It's going to be very, very different going forward. And so, you know, you probably, I would guess that it's going to be a while, but that your

experience will be enhanced just because it'll be more exclusive. Yeah, that's true. All right. So moving forward, best way to get Sky Club access is going to be to spend the seventy five thousand, I guess, on a Delta Reserve card and or be an authorized user on somebody else's. Right. I mean, it's basically the your options for getting into the sky club uh and obviously no well what so yes i mean that's i think that's a good way um you know i was thinking now like in in my household we have we have a few platinum cards we have a few business platinum cards each one will give us six passes. The other thing is the Morgan Stanley platinum card. I'm thinking about more because let's say my wife and I continue to keep a regular

platinum card. And what if we each also get a Morgan Stanley card, which the interesting thing about that is you can add an authorized user for free. So we could add each other for free. And then we each have 12 visits from having those two platinum cards. So actually, we each have 18 because now at this point, we each have three platinum cards and we're each paying for two. So there's different ways of doing that. But I was going to say, you each have a lot of annual fees to pay too. I mean, it's-

David Collum Well, yeah, yeah. So let me back up and say, let's say you each just get one Morgan Stanley platinum card to keep it simple and you each add each other as authorized users, then you've got 12 passes each. So I don't know. That's one way of doing it. But there's a lot of permutations here. And so I think it's going to, you know, depend on a lot of factors. And yes, going back to what Nick said, if you're going to be spending

on that Delta Reserve card anyway, I think adding authorized users is the way to get it, not just for yourself, but for others as well. Yep. All right. So you made a lot of guesses about the new program.

And, you know, we've talked about predictions in the past. We've run prediction posts at the beginning of each year. And, you know, I'm not going to lie. Predictions have not worked out real well for any of us for the most part these last few years. I don't think for our New Year's Eve predictions predictions well i didn't say it but uh but but yeah did you break your streak craig i mean what what happened here with your predictions for the i think i did so okay so so before the before the announcement came out i posted what i thought it might be. And so I made both sort of high-level guesses, and I also

guessed at details of each thing. I got the details so wrong. Let's not get into that, but that's not surprising. I mean, I was very, very specific about what I thought might happen. But anyway, let's go over each of the high level things. I said there'd be one elite metric medallion qualifying dollars, MQDs. How did I do there? You know, you knocked it out of the park. And this is probably the thing that I was most skeptical of out of your guesses. And it's not because I don't think that Delta wants to measure its most valuable customers based on how much they spend.

I totally think that Delta wants to measure its most valuable customers based on how much they spend. I totally think that. I just feel like in the current climate, I feel like advertising your program in a way that just makes it clear how much money you have to give Delta in order to get elite benefits just didn't seem like the right marketing play to me. It seemed to me like calling them medallion qualifying dollars and emphasizing the fact that you have to spend 35 000 in a year to get elite set you know top tier elite status with delta just it didn't seem like a smart marketing tactic to me in the current climate but i clearly i was wrong you had that one you nailed it that's exactly what happened yeah i so so i i the reason i i thought this was going to happen is is a couple things one is they've spent years now teaching their members what medallion qualifying dollars are. So they have a user base that understands what they are.

The other thing is I think they actually want to be clear with their customers, spend a lot with us and we'll treat you right. And that wasn't the truth before. So before you could buy like around the world or whatever business class ticket for $25,000 or something. And that would have not been enough to get to top tier status because there were multiple metrics involved. Today, if you do that, you'll have, well, $25,000. You'd instantly have platinum status, but it would only be $10,000 more spent to get to diamonds. So for people who spend a lot, it's going to be very easy. So it's easy, just not cheap to get to top tier status in the new program.

And I think that's what they want to encourage, actually, is spending more. I said the MQD requirements will increase. So I got that right. But the amount that I thought, so this is where I got into the specifics. And I thought, for example, it would go up from that top tier would go up from 20,000 to 25,000. I was obviously way off on that. I was very close on some though.

So I thought silver would go up from 3,000 to 5,000. It went up from 3,000 to 6,000. So I'd say I did pretty well there. And I think the last point you made a second ago is another one worth mentioning. You said something about well, you mentioned the example of the person who spends like twenty five thousand dollars on a single ticket and doesn't earn elite status. And then you talked about how they want to encourage people to spend more. And that's part of it for sure. But I think maybe also part of it that we're not really thinking about is just looking for a way to reward those people more.

It's not even necessarily about because they have to be realistic. I can't imagine that they expect someone who is spending $20,000 to now spend $35,000. But now they have it set up. So somebody who was already spending $35,000 can get rewarded for it without a silly like, oh, but you needed to have flown this many miles and everything else. It's setting the program up to reward the customers who are the most valuable to Delta. So, yeah, I mean, I think it's less than an incentive. It's more of a reward for those people who are spending so much, which is splitting hairs,

but slight difference. I predicted that... Going on. I predicted that MQMs will still exist as a way to get to million miler status. I was wrong. They're gone. Bye-bye MQMs. Bye-bye. So I got that one totally wrong. I said that credit cards will earn MQDs with high spend. I was right. Again, I misjudged how many MQDs you'd earn with spend, but I got that idea right. I said you could say goodbye to rollovers. I was dead on correct with that. See you later. And even though I predicted it it it kind of surprised me because I would think like that they would they would want people who who spent 35 000 to have incentive to keep spending or people who spend you know 350 000 on the credit cards to keep spending

and they and and they've done that before with rollovers as a way, you know, incentive to keep spending. But what I predicted was that they would, as a way to keep incentives, is that they would add new tiers for getting choice benefits. So right now, you know, once you hit diamond, you get choice benefits. Well, what if they have, once you reach 45,000 MQDs, you get more choice benefits. That's possible. We don't know yet. So we can't judge that particular prediction. I predicted that they would convert our existing rollover MQMs, whatever rolls over into 2024, convert them into MQDs. I got that kind of right. The reality is that I thought it would be a forced conversion. The reality is that we're going to have a choice, either convert them to MQDs or

to redeemable miles. This is probably where I was way, way, way off is the conversion ratio. So your MQMs rolled over will be, you'll get, if you want to convert them to MQDs, in reality, it'll be 5% of your MQMs will turn into MQDs, whereas I had predicted 15% would be the conversion ratio. So wow, that's really, really harsh. If you want redeemable miles, you cut them in half. So you roll over 100,000 MQMs, it becomes 50,000 redeemable miles, which is a little more pal's why I'm asking. So if you change those MQMs, rollover MQMs into redeemable miles, and then you redeemed all the miles, how many MQDs would you earn from redeeming them? So let's say you had 100,000 and became 50,000.

No, not as much. Right, right. 50,000 becomes 500. So what it is, is when you redeem miles, they're like MQ pennies. So you have to divide by 100 to figure out how many MQDs you would earn. So yeah. So not nearly as much as you would by turning them into MQDs. 500, right. So if you redeem those miles, I had the same thought. So if you redeem those 50,000 miles, you'd have 500 MQDs from that flight.

If you instead convert your 100,000, you can convert to 5,000 MQDs and not have any redeemable miles. So you don't have a flight. Right, right, right. You lose that. If you value flying, you're behind. But if you value elite status, you're ahead. Exactly, exactly.

So something everybody will have to do the math on. Really, the key point there is, are you going to spend enough other stuff to earn a meaningful level of elite status or not? That's really what it's going to come down to and and and does that matter to you right more than what you could do with miles yeah yep so all right so i mean you did pretty well here you did i i'm kind of proud of pretty darn good my guess is yeah i think i you know i think i i kind of nailed it i i think uh

i think that you kind of nailed it you nailed it g- You kind of nailed it. You nailed it, Greg. I did. I nailed it. I think had Delta just sort of backed up and said, wait, Greg's got a better plan. Let's go with that. I think people would be a lot happier. I still said the MUD requirements would go up. It's just that, yeah, they went too far with things, I think. Their one improvement over my guess, as I said again, was the choice of what to do with your MQDs. But otherwise, yeah, I'm pretty proud. Yeah, well done. It's nice to get it right once in a while. Well done, except, you know, not well done, Delta.

It's unfortunate that you got it right. And by getting it right, Delta got it so wrong. So, yeah, that's the sad part. But well done on your prediction. So now all that out of the way, what are you going to do, Greg? Because everybody knows that you long spent your way to Delta Diamond status, even when they increase things. I mean, it used to be back in the day you could spend something like $120,000

creatively in order to earn diamond status. And then it's been $250,000 creatively to earn diamond status. And what are you going to do now, Greg? I mean, are you going to go after diamond again with $350,000? Are you going to go after something else? I mean, it's not that much less, really, to go after other things. Well, it is, but it isn't at the same time. What's the plan?

I'm done. I'm done. So here's the thing. I used to highly value Delta Diamond status because you get these four global upgrade certificates each year, and a couple years ago, they really tanked the value of those upgrade certificates. And so I was disillusioned then. And then when I went to actually use those upgrade certificates, it was even worse than

I expected because the whole system didn't work right. I ended up not getting upgrades that I should have. It was just a disaster. So I became very bitter about that whole global upgrade thing. I still value them, I guess, because under certain circumstances, they can be really valuable. But to reward your most loyal customers, your top tier customers with endless aggravation in trying to use them, in trying to actually check in on the day of your flight and not being able to because of these stupid global upgrade certificates. I probably lost a few years of my life just

dealing with all that hassle. Not worth it. I'm thinking going forward, to the extent that I want to manufacture spend to do something, why not earn the biggest cash back or cash equivalent? So for example, with Amex cards, if you have the business platinum card, you can indirectly redeem your points for flights for over one and a half cents each. With the Sapphire Reserve card, you can redeem your chase for flights for over one and a half cents each. With the Sapphire Reserve card, you can redeem your chase points that way. With the Altitude Reserve card, you can redeem your points for one and a half cents each towards travel. All those things. So I bet that if I want to fly domestic first class on Delta, that I can just pay for the flights when I need them using all those points

earned at much higher earning rates than Delta cards would give me. And I think overall I would do better. And so that's my basic plan. What I haven't decided yet is about the Delta Reserve card because the interesting thing there, so the Delta Reserve card, it's an expensive card, but it lets you book a round-trip domestic companion flight. So you get your companion for free. It lets you book in a first class. So if I find that my wife and I are traveling often and actually paying for first class, Delta Reserve card might kind of pay for itself. So you can imagine like, and plus, of course, the extra lounge visits we get by having it. So we'll see. I've got time to decide about that. But yeah, I'm done chasing

lease status myself. Let me say though, I am a million miler, so I have silver status for life. So that's good at least. Yeah.. Yeah, it certainly beats not having anything. And I think the thing that is most interesting to me is that Delta, I think, is making a pretty sizable shift here from being, to me anyway, in my mind, a program that rewards loyal customers to a program that just rewards high spending customers. And there's, I think there's a difference between people that are loyal to a brand and people that just spend a lot of money with that particular brand. They're not necessarily the same group of people. And Delta has clearly decided that what they want to reward is those

people who are spending a lot with them. And that's understandable. I mean, hey, from a business perspective, I can get why they would want to do that. It just changes the dynamic of the program to me. Whereas American Airlines shifted things in a very different way. The same end goal, they want to make more money, but I think they took a more holistic approach at figuring out how they can get people to become ultra loyal to their program, like focused on thinking about American Airlines when you're shopping online, when you're reserving American Airlines when you're shopping online, when you're reserving hotels,

when you're doing this and that. And I said, we use the reserving hotels example, and that might not be a good deal for all the reasons you said about Delta. But on the flip side, you can earn way more loyalty points with American Airlines on a hotel booking than you're going to earn MQDs with Delta.

So- Yeah, it's not even close. Yeah, so American, I think you used a word there. You said that American's new program is creating loyalty in their program. Delta, what they want is loyalty to actually flying Delta, I think. And that's why I didn't predict, I specifically did not predict that Delta would do what American did and reward like portal shopping and sort of miscellaneous stuff like that. Because I think Delta's, well, I know Delta is proud of their in-flight experience. They're more about like fly Delta. American's program is very valuable thing in itself.

And whether or not you fly American Airlines, you can earn top tier status, and you can get value from it elsewhere if you want to fly on partners and things like that. But I think it's just a different perspective that the two have. And I certainly much, much prefer Americans approach. And I wish Delta had gone that way,

but that's so far from their, I think, corporate culture of thinking of their, I mean, it just shows in how little value their SkyMiles have towards flights, right? That they just don't think of their program as the product. They think of their travel as the product, which it should be. Yeah, sort of. Yeah, but yeah, exactly. Oh, that's true. I mean, they've decimated the value of partner awards.

So they don't really want you to be looking at SkyMiles as a way to fly on other airlines. They just want you to look at it as a way to fly on Delta because that's where you're in the only place you have a chance of getting decent value for the most part. I mean, obviously we've, Greg's written about ways to get good value out of Delta miles on partner awards, but I'm talking in a general sense. You're right. They just want to make people fly Delta as much as possible. The whole idea of rewarding Delta vacations spend again is just focused on mostly flying delta so yeah yeah yeah so yeah so they did throw a bone to people booking like cars and hotels through them but yeah um but it's a small yeah someone in the comments wrote a funny thing about how like

they found that the hotel they were looking at through delta was so much more expensive than another one that then if they like booked directly that like they were betting that delta's own employees if they had to travel for work wouldn't be allowed to book through delta hotels because it costs too much right right right right right yeah yeah all right so big changes big changes there i was never somebody chasing delta elite status to begin with. I did briefly consider going after it a while back when I had gotten a match and had Delta gold status for a brief moment. I'm glad I didn't get too invested in that now because this would probably be more painful. I'm kind of on the outside looking in on this and saying, wow, that stinks, but it doesn't hurt me as much as I imagine it does a lot of people out there that were anywhere near the fringe of whatever elite status level you had. So my condolences to you if to them in the future, because I

have to imagine this is really going to thin the herd for Delta's elite customers. So we'll see how they feel about that. Last little point is that if you're close to a million miler level of status, it's worth noting that this year, until the end of the year, is your last chance to earn your way to million miler status through credit card spend, because for this year only, the MQMs you earn will count towards lifetime status. And so my wife is very close. And so I've been looking at that situation and trying to figure out, she's very close to gold. So she already has, so that's 2 million miler status. And so what I can do, and I'm still trying to figure out exactly how or whether we'll do this,

but not only can she earn MQMs from spend on her cards, but if I spend on my Delta reserve card, I can gift the MQMs to her. And so it counts towards her lifetime status. So I'm not close enough to do that for myself, but she is close enough. So just it's worth taking a look at where you are on your million miler thing know, it's possible that gold status that she'll earn with two million miler will become much more valuable in the future because there may be less fewer elites. And so it might be worth going for now. And anyway, regardless of whether it's worth doing, this is your last chance to do it.

Right, right. Yeah, that's a good point. I'm glad you brought that up because for some people that'll be really relevant, I think. All right. Well, my friends, I think that brings us to the question of the week. This week's question of the week comes in from me. I ran into a situation the other day and I almost popped a message in our frequent miler team discussion to ask what other people would do. But I made up my mind.

I made a decision, did it. But I wanted to check with Greg and see if he would have come to the same conclusion. So what would Greg do? What would Greg do? Yeah. So a judgment call situation. Now, we've frequently talked about before how we don't tend to buy travel insurance, but that we do tend to value credit card travel protections. So I found myself in an interesting situation. I usually book our family flights with the Sapphire Reserve card for its protections. But for some crazy reason, I booked the flights in both directions for an upcoming trip using my Ritz card. Now, the Chase Ritz card offers the same travel protections as the Sapphire Reserve. So that didn't seem like a problem at the time. However, I booked all of those through LifeMiles. So if for some reason I had to cancel the trip, I'd be looking at redeposit fees of about $1,800 for the whole thing. So it would be quite expensive if I did have to cancel. So it's nice having some travel protection. But then I ran into a situation to

have to book a hotel and it's a family trip, so it's not just us. So altogether, the hotel booking cost me about $2,000. So I went to book the hotel and I thought, well, great, let me put this on the Sapphire Reserve for 3X because it's $2,000 spent. It's an expensive, rather expensive stay. So I want to earn ultimate rewards points. I don't want to use the Ritz card. I'd rather use the CSR.

Kids get sick though or something, then what happens? So I started looking into the terms and the terms of the insurance on both the Ritz card and the Sapphire Reserve have this line in there that says for the trip cancellation insurance, it says, if you are eligible for insurance under multiple credit card accounts, you will only be insured under the account which provides the largest benefit amount for the loss that occurred. So I asked myself, do I book this hotel with the Sapphire Reserve? What's going to happen if I have to cancel the trip and I have to make a claim for the flights under my Ritz card and the hotel under my wife's Sapphire Reserve card? Are those going to be considered the same trip? Am I only going to be eligible for insurance under one? Would you have booked this with your Sapphire Reserve card for

three acts and earned yourself more ultimate rewards points? Or would you book the $2,000 hotel stay with the Ritz card? Because maybe Chase would only allow you to make one claim or the other since it's the same trip. So one thing you didn't mention is the hotel David Gardner Nonrefundable. Preston Pyshko Booking nonrefundable. David Gardner Nonrefundable. Preston Pyshko Totally nonrefundable. David Gardner You have to pay it up front.

Preston Pyshko Had to pay in advance. David Gardner Up front. Preston Pyshko Yep, absolutely. Yeah, you're right. I did mention that and I should have. Nonrefundable hotel stay. David Gardner Yeah, yeah. Preston Pyshko No other way to book it, by the way, unfortunately, because goodness knows I don't book nonrefundable hotel stays, especially with two young kids in school. But no option on this one.

Yeah, yeah. Oh, that's so interesting. So it's an this expensive stay under the Sapphire Reserve and hope that if I have to cancel the trip, I'm able to make both claims, one for the flights and one for the hotels under different cards. But I'm concerned because there's a line in there that makes it sound like it's all one trip. I think I would just do the I think I would in that situation, I think I would do the Ritz card just for peace of mind. Yep. That's exactly what I did, which that backs me up. All right. So and, you know, that's interesting for me because we talk often about insurance, like generally, like we don't buy travel insurance, even though a lot of people like that for peace of mind. We tend to not. And

I'm not saying you shouldn't. I'm just talking about what we tend to do. And yet, look at how much we're valuing the peace of mind here. Although I say that, and when I actually looked at it, I was like, okay, so either I'm going to earn 6,000 ultimate rewards points and chance that maybe the claims administration, since it's one claims administrator, right, they're going to see the same names and same dates and everything. So and chance that they deny one of these claims that are both going to be almost $2,000 anyway, or I could earn 4,000 Marriott points and not have to worry about one of the claims getting denied because it's all one trip and two different card accounts. So, that's exactly what I did. I sacrificed and used the Ritz card so that I wouldn't risk being in the situation where I would be out 2000

bucks on one of the two items. So did you do the math to see how much it's sort of costing you to, to, you know, based on how much you value the Marriott points, how much you would have valued the Chase points? Yeah, well, exactly. So I mean, if we just to keep it simple, we value the Chase points at one and a half cents each, I could have earned $90 worth of points on that $2,000 booking. If we keep it simple and value the Marriott points at one cent each, you can argue that they're worth less. But just to keep it pretty simple, one cent each. So it's 4,000 points.

So 40 bucks. So basically, it cost me $50 to make sure that I don't lose 2,000. And how much would it have cost you? Did you even bother looking how much it would have cost you to just like buy travel insurance for the trip overall i did i did not but i can't imagine that it would cost less than fifty dollars so yeah probably not yeah probably not so it seemed to me like it was i think that was the right move yeah all right job all right thank you all right i mean bad job originally booking it with the right but i understand that's what you used to use for all your travel so it's understandable yes yes yes. But it put me in a conundrum here. And I definitely was like,

oh man, that was silly because now I'm not getting the rewards that I should have for that trip. So I definitely will rethink that strategy in the future. I generally figure, well, it's $50 in taxes. Who cares which card I put it on? I'm not going to earn enough points on that to move the needle one way or another. So the Ritz cards in my wallet, I'll use that for this flight booking. I won't make that mistake again in case I run into a situation like this where I have a big non-refundable hotel stay that goes with it. Then I don't want to have to earn less. But the difference here was relatively small for quite a bit of peace of mind, I thought. All right. That, my friends, brings us to the end of this week's episode. If you've enjoyed this stuff and you'd like to get more of this stuff in your

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