Frequent Miler on the Air - Did the new Aeroplan lost its luster already? | Ep59 | 8-15-20

Episode Date: August 15, 2020

0:33 Reader feedback: A change in our ratings 4:57 What crazy thing did Citi do this week? Ritz-Carlton edition. 9:41 Mattress Running the Numbers: Choice 50K promo at all-inclusive resorts https://frequentmiler.boardingarea.com/get-50k-choice-points-free-night-with-500-all-inclusive-booking/ 21:41 Quick Hits: Southwest Travel Funds to points conversion: Do it or not and why? https://frequentmiler.boardingarea.com/southwest-travel-funds-conversion-live-its-a-great-deal/ 28:16 Quick Hits: Get 10K miles from United MPX 32:42 Quick Hits: An easy 20K Aeroplan miles, almost for free 36:08 The new Aeroplan: What's changing and why you may or may not be excited https://frequentmiler.boardingarea.com/the-new-aeroplan-award-chart-first-reaction/ https://frequentmiler.boardingarea.com/air-canada-aeroplan-guide/ 58:11 Post Roast: Greg picks at Nick's post https://frequentmiler.boardingarea.com/no-annual-fee-wallet/ 1:04:54 Post roast: Nick picks a few bones with Greg https://frequentmiler.boardingarea.com/lap-infant-award-tickets-for-less-new-aeroplan-fee-is-25-cad-or-2500-miles-all-classes-of-service-partners/ 1:11:20 Question of the Week Music credit: Annie Yoder

frequent miler on the air starts now today's main event is the all-new air canada aeroplan program that's gonna be coming out in november and there's a lot to talk about there first of course we're gonna nick is gonna drag out the giant mailbag and we'll see what kind of feedback we have here comes all right reaching over let's see what we have this week we've got something from apple podcast customer reviews page oh that's always exciting what we have is sort of a little summary uh feedback so this is kind of the the most recent three written reviews on that page are, and that's, it's all about this show, by the way, like this is our only podcast show. We have multiple YouTube podcast feedback is that that's always something I haven't seen because I'm not an Apple person. So I don't ever see the Apple store. So like if you pick something that came in via email or comment on a post and I, I might've seen that already, but now I have no idea what to expect because I definitely haven't

seen anything from the Apple podcast reviews, but I'm glad that people are leaving them. Uh, yeah. And you couldn't possibly do something like from your pc like like google for apple podcast frequent mylar and right it was up right now my pc would be allergic to anything apple gotcha okay all right but thankfully a lot of a lot of listeners aren't allergic to it because they're listening to us on apple podcast and leaving feedback so all right so i'm not going to read most recent three but I'm gonna read is the titles of the most recent three okay number one fantastic podcast one exclamation point number two wealth of knowledge one exclamation point number three great job exclamation point thank you three exclamation points three so so

you know why I didn't go into reading the whole details because it's all like that mushy like love you you're the best type stuff and we don't have time for that nobody got time for that but it's not it's not all good for for for the longest time we've had a 5.0 rating it's gone down to 4.8 4.8 some someone someone appears to have marked they didn't write anything but someone appears to have given us a one a one a one yeah that's you know that that that feels strong because if somebody gives you a one you know what that means it means they were confused about which way the scale went well i hope i did that once by accident to a to a delta employee and because at the end of the call they were like one to five and i wasn't

really paying attention i did the wrong one and then there was no option to correct it so i called back and tried to you know escalate the issue to get it fixed i don't know if oh man they're still a delta employee after that. Or fired after that. Or not. Sorry, I interrupted you. What were you going to say? I mean, if it was a one that was legitimately meant to be a one. See, the thing that a one says is, I would give you less stars if I could, but one is the lowest that they let me give you. That's right.

This is as few stars as I can give you. A one is a strong state. A two is like, this is pretty bad, but you know, not the worst thing I've ever heard. A one is like, there's no option for negative. So this is what you get. Right, so my advice to listeners, stop letting those kids that are in the backseat of the car

get on those Apple devices and review the podcast. It's not our fault that you're making them listen to it. It's yours. So just, you know, have a little control over your family there. Make sure you leave a review for mom and dad, kids. But no, more seriously, anyone listening, if you haven't reviewed our podcast by, you know, clicking the four or five, ideally a five, we'd sure appreciate it. I mean, we know it's good to get good reviews on there and attracts more listeners. And we know a lot of you love it. So please help us out by letting other people know you love it.

Absolutely. Same holds true on other platforms, by the way, not just on Apple, but on all the other platforms you're listening on. We're certainly on YouTube. If you hit that subscribe button and the like button, you leave a comment, all that stuff helps whatever algorithm it is that. Yeah, it all, it all pays. So we appreciate it. And of course, if you have your own, if you have your own podcast or YouTube channel or whatever, linking to ours would be, would be great too. And we'd appreciate that. So with that kind of, that's kind of advertising well we don't have advertising I mean it's you know unpaid advertising during or pandering entering pandering I mean I'm pleading pleading pleading pleading nicer than alright so

anyway so okay that's out of the way so we gotta get right into the the first major segment of the week what crazy thing did city do this week yeah wait so we've got we've got something good this week um this is this is a email i got from a friend who who uh says he called chase chase uh is ritz carlton customer service and uh he says he got a nice surprise they told him that or i'll just read it they told me they will be sending out emails shortly allowing for grocery and restaurant spend from July 1st to December 31st to be applied against the $300 travel credit.

Crazy that they're offering this accommodation yet not telling anyone as of yet. Sounds like something that City would do. So just, you know, not everybody who listens. Picked up this reputation. Right, right. So not everybody who listens to our podcast knows what date we recorded it necessarily. We're recording it on August, what, 13th, I think it is.

And so this might not be true, but at least some Chase rep thinks that it's true that the Ritz card is offering this great benefit during COVID times that started as of July 1st, but yet they haven't told anybody about it. Have we heard of anything like that before happening? Wait, well, yeah, we did, didn before happening? No, no. Wait. Well, yeah, we did, didn't we? Like, that's straight out of Citi's playbook. Straight out of Citi, yeah.

Straight out of Citi's playbook. Yeah, I mean, Citi did that exactly with the grocery bonus. Just recently when they instituted the three acts on grocery and dining, like, you know, two months early and didn't tell anybody until, like, I don't know, a long time afterward. I i mean even by the time they told the bloggers it had already started before that on some random weird day and then they didn't tell their reps or i don't think it took as long as this chase one if this chase story is true though this is this is like a month and a half no it is it is you know and and the crazy thing is this is not the first we've heard of this.

No, right. So we've received reports of this. We had somebody who commented just, I mean, weeks ago now at this point, probably early July. I feel like it must have been almost a month ago already. Somebody commented to say that they were told the same by a customer service representative, that it was coming, it was going to be able to be used at grocery stores, blah, blah, blah. So I called. I said, you know, let me give this a shot, take a swing at this and call. So I called to see if they were doing anything or had any plans to do anything. And of course,

the representative told me that they hadn't heard anything, but they were happy to put me on hold and go check with somebody. And they came back and they said, no, definitely not. There's no plans at this point anyway to do anything different. Now, we say lots of times, don't take anything a customer service representative says as like, you know, the final word. Right, right. Don't always know what's going to happen. So it still certainly was possible to me that it might be coming. It didn't, you know, when I was told no, that didn't tell me that it for sure isn't.

And, you know, obviously either those two people got the same customer service representative, or obviously there's some sort of a rumor going around that it's going to happen. So maybe it will. And when it does, it will be crazy if it started July 1st. Like, why aren't they telling people they're going to, they're looking at save a little bit by like, I don't know, not letting people use it. Maybe some people cancel because their annual fees are coming up

and they don't want to let them use it. I mean, they shouldn't want people to cancel, right? So yeah, I don't get it. I don't get it. It doesn't make any sense to me. It's definitely not automatic though, because I did try to put like a grocery purchase or something on. Yeah.

Well, I wouldn't expect it to be automatic since it never was before. So it'd be interesting to try asking them to uh to credit it before getting any information about it see what see what they say that'll that'll have to be the next move that'll be the next one yeah the other thing we could do is reach out to our marriott contact and ask about this the problem is last time i i pestered them with ritz questions i got dropped from the list right they cut you off they were like we're not talking about emailing greg they just emailed me and cut greg out totally and it was just today that greg finally got copied on an email again and i was like look at that he got back in the good graces so greg doesn't want to press his luck now we're

gonna we're gonna have to get ste Steven to do it. Right, right. That's a good plan. That's a good plan. He did Pester the Chase reps long enough to finally make that promo work for the Marriott registration for the 10X. For the 10X, yeah, he did. At the gas stations and everywhere else. So maybe he'll have some success with this. All right, we've got a plan.

Cool. All right. All right. Matt's just running the numbers. Yes. What's next? So tell me about, so you wrote all about this choice privileges deal where you can stay

somewhere. Just one stay gets you 50,000 points. That's crazy. That's a lot of points. That is a lot of points. That is a lot of points. So, yeah. So they've got this, this tie in with these all inclusive resorts in like mexico costa rica the caribbean panama uh so that general vicinity so there's a number of different brands of all-inclusive resorts that they've partnered up with and so you can stay at one of those it's like dreams and sunscapes and some others you can see it all in the in the post there in terms of which resorts

it is so so anyway they've partnered up, or these are part of the Ascend collection, these hotels. And so if you make a booking of $500 or more, so a stay that costs $500 or more, you get 50,000 choice points. Supposedly, you get a free guaranteed room upgrade when you check in. Kids are free, and you get a $200 resort credit for activities. And these are all inclusive properties again. So it's all inclusive places. And if you book certain ones of them, you get a free night on your stay now. So kind of, I don't know, I feel like it's a little misleading. When they show you the rates, they show you the rates with the free night already

baked in, but you get a free night anyway, right now. Okay. When you stay. And then when you check out, they give you a certificate for a free return stay that you can use at any of those all inclusive resorts that are within this promo at some point in the future, you get 60 days to book that return stay anytime through the end of whenever the booking calendar is at that point. Hold on. Let me just ask you real quick.

Could you check out and then immediately use that thing for that night so that you extend your stay one more night? I doubt it. I doubt, I don't know. I don't know for sure. I haven't done it, but I'm going to doubt it because you got to get a book it with a certain artist that I doubt you can do that. But Hey, listen, if somebody is going to do it, Greg will be the person to make that happen. So he'll let you know whether or not it worked when he does it.

It'll be way too late by then, though, because you have to book soon, right? You do. You have to book by September 30th. Yeah. Okay. But you don't have to stay by September 30th. Right. You can stay anytime through the end of the booking calendar, which I saw availability

at this rate at the places I checked all the way through the end of the calendar, which right now is the end of July 2021. Now, Greg, you looked at a resort that didn't have availability all the way through the end, right? Right. Yeah. It cut off bookings sometime in April, if I remember right. Now, the terms of the deal, though, say that it's good for bookings through near the end of December, but you can't practically book a place through the end of December unless it's available to book. I don't know whether it's possible to do this over the phone for a later date than what's available online. Maybe. I haven't tried that, but yeah, online, the booking calendar like grays out and you can't select dates beyond July and the,

beyond the end of July, 2021 and the dates that I checked. Now, of course you have until September 30th to book this. So by the end of September, I assume that you'll be able to book at least through August of 2021 at least some of the resorts anyway. And so, you know, you don't know what's going to happen. The deal says that it's free cancellation, although I showed an example in the post. One of the properties I looked at showed a $50 cancellation fee. So you're going to want to look at the fine print when you're going through checkout just to make sure you know what the deal is. It's prepaid, but cancelable. But here's the thing. In some locations, so you get a free night on this day right now. In some locations, you have to stay three nights to get the free night. Some it's four, some it's

five, some it's six. It depends on where you're going. So I used an example in Acapulco, Dreams Acapulco, where you can get the third night free. And so I found rates from 182 bucks a night on average over the three nights. So for $542, you get a three night all-inclusive stay, 50,000 choice points, a $200 activities credit, kids stay for free, blah, blah, blah. And then a free night certificate for the future

if you wanna go back. Now, I don't value that too highly because who knows whether or not you'll actually get to use that uh but the 50 000 choice points i mean based on our reasonable redemption values that's worth about 405 dollars and i don't know about you but i tend to get better value because our reasonable redemption value for choice points is only like eight tenths of a cent i tend to get better value better than one cent a lot of times yeah when i actually want to use my choice points anyway only like eight tenths of a cent. I tend to get better value better than one cent a lot of times when I actually want to use my choice points anyway. Right. So I mean, that's a pretty darn good deal. Yeah. So I mean, that's an awesome deal. So if you if you get if you can get a place that's close to $500, like you found, I mean, over 500, but not a lot over, right,

getting back over $400 worth of points that may be worth more than 400 when you actually spend them. But since you could buy points at around that rate, I think it's fair for us just to say it's around 400. And then that's an awesome deal. I mean, cause you're getting a stay that's almost, it sort of has an almost a hundred percent rebate. Now let's call it a 80% rebate on a $550 ish stay. If you can,

if you can work that out, is it worth going out of your way? So, so there's, there's a lot of things packed into this. So, you know, the more expensive your stay is, the less that rebate kind of matters, right? So like I'd say up to a thousand dollar stay, it's still extremely significant. But once you get much above that, it sort of becomes less and less sort of worth like constricting your, your travel options to finding this like ideal combination of a stay that matches the requirements that's in the maybe 500 to a thousand dollar range. And I mean, you're getting a lot, you're getting a vacation and presumably a nice place, all included meals, $200 credit for activities or whatever.

What do you think? Is it, would you do it? Yeah, I think I'm going to, I think I'm going to, I think so. Yeah. I mean, I want to look at the other properties. I only looked at a couple of them for the purposes of writing the post. I want to look and see what the other properties are like and take a look at reviews. Cause I only glanced at reviews of the post, I want to look and see what the other properties are like and take a look at reviews because I only glanced at reviews of the one, but the reviews look decent on the one I used as an example in the post. And so in the post, the example I used, it was $546, including tax for a base room. Now, if you want to stay in a room with like their club lounge

access, which you might say, what do you need club lounge access for when it's not all inclusive, but supposedly better food and drinks and stuff like that. And it's slightly better room and amenities. Yeah, that was, that was like two 50 a night. So that'd be seven 50 for, you know, pretty nice room. They had suites that were again, around the same price suites with club access around that price. So, uh, so I mean, not a bad deal, but even if I go with the base room at five, five 46 for three nights in the base room, all inclusive. I've got two kids now. I never thought I was interested in an all inclusive before I had kids.

Right. I'm not a big drinker. I didn't have my first alcoholic drink until I was 28. I'm not like I'll have a glass of wine now and then, but I'm not really into that. And that was the only aspect that my mind had ever considered of an all inclusive until I went with a kid and I was like, Oh, wow. So if the kid gets cranky dinner, I can go back to the room and order room service and it doesn't cost me anymore. That's terrific. So that's, yeah. So I'm gonna have two kids, you know, by next year. So I think that an all inclusive family friendly, some of these are adults only and some are family friendly.

So the one I use in the example was family friendly, but 542 bucks. I get to dream about the beach a little bit between now and then, because goodness knows I'm jonesing for a vacation to plan for, because I haven't really been able to book anything. I don't have to have too much buyer's remorse because it's cancelable. And I value the 50,000 points. I mean, like you said, it's worth, probably I shouldn't value it any more than $400. So 400 bucks, if I get a $200 activity credit, I'll find some activity to do. It seems like a really cheap vacation. I mean, it's a cheap way to dream about a vacation that

I can plan and I can start to look at airlines and airports and do some award searches. It seems like a win to me. You're getting me convinced. I wasn't thinking that for sure I would do it, but as I thought about, especially since I wouldn't be going with kids, if there are adult only, there are. It might be interesting. So to be clear,

we brought this up under the mattress run umbrella. We're not really talking about a mattress run where you check in just for the points because we're saying this is a deal. It's a really great deal if you're actually going to enjoy the vacation. It's basically a way to get a huge rebate on a vacation that you pay for. Yeah. You know, so for me, I think the places that only require a few nights are kind of appealing because I'm not necessarily looking for a longer stay at a place I haven't looked into before. And, you know, for a few nights, it seems like, again, a cheap getaway

and gives me something to plan for that I don't have to worry too much about whether or not the trip happens. We have no idea what travel is going to look like in 2021. So I don't know for sure that I'll be able to take this trip, but it's a pretty safe gamble, I feel. Right. Because you can cancel and get your money back, at least for most of these. At least for most of these, yeah. And the one I used, like I said, in the example in the post said it had a $50 cancellation fee,

which I could probably put up with if I have to. But this landing page says that it's free cancellation. So I'm going to take a look at the other ones and see if I can find one. Yeah, that doesn't, right, right. So answer one more question for you. On the landing page for this deal, it shows one of those two free nights, I'm not sure which one it is, that shows like, it says something like US, you have the third night free or the fourth night free under different circumstances, but it said Canada, seventh night free for like all these different scenarios. What are they discriminating against canadians or what what does that mean it does it does i think they think that canadians are willing to stay for seven days because they live in canada and they're like come on guys we're offering you sunshine you don't need

a free night after three you're not going away after three nights so you're kidding so you're literally reading it to mean that we have different rules for canadians yeah that's the i mean that seems to be the way that it is yeah it mentions that it's only for members in the U.S. and Canada. So I think if you live in Europe, you can't take advantage of the deal and get the points or that sort of thing. So I think it's just for U.S. and Canada. And yeah, I think the Canadians have to stay seven nights in order to get a free night on the front end on the first day.

So yeah, I don't know. It's bizarre. I don't know what the deal is. Right, right, right. Of course, you don't have to stay. You don't have to get that free night in order to get the 50 000 points that's to spend 500 bucks right just have to spend 500 bucks so you don't need the free night so i'm you know the is there a minimum stay requirement could so not that i saw so if there was like an awesome place that cost 500 a night

you could stay the one night get the 50 000 points and you got to experience a place that you wouldn't have normally been willing yeah now that now the terms do seem to kind of try to trap the gamers in the system by saying that basically what they said in some sort of a fancy way is that if my wife and I go and I book a three-night stay and check out and then she checks in, that it wouldn't actually count as two separate stays. So typically you can get away with that, but the terms sounds like they were anticipating that. Good for them.

Don't try that, guys. Good for them. You know, I dislike it when they don't have things like that in the terms and then they try to enforce rules like that after the fact. But having thought through it and have the rules up front, that's fine. You know, it's good to know ahead of time anyway. All right, so that's a good one. His mattress weren't run worthy enough to me in the sense

that you get so much back. Right, right. That it's not worth going just for the points, but you get so much back that it's like, why would you choose this? All right, so two thumbs up on this deal, right? Two thumbs up, two thumbs up, yeah. All right, so that then brings us into some quickness.

Yeah, yeah. We get some lightning round. We do. We've got some lightning round. We do. We've got two deals that we wanted to bring up quickly, say, are they good enough? Are we going to go for them? First one, Southwest. So finally, they're allowing us,

if you have a canceled reservation, so you have travel credits because you canceled a flight or whatever reason you have travel credits because you canceled a flight or whatever reason you have travel credits with them, you can turn in those travel credits for points. And it works out to like buying those points for about 1.28 cents each, which under normal times is a pretty good deal because normally Southwest points are worth more than 1.28 cents each. And it depends on the flight, like short distance flights, cheaper flights tend to, the points can be worth almost 2 cents each. But most regular flights, more around 1.4, 1.5, that kind of area,

but still, still more. And so the deal is that what you could theoretically do right now is take any of those cards that you have that have airline charge credits and buy a Southwest ticket, wait a day, cancel it, and turn that cash into points. And then your credit card hopefully will reimburse that charge.

Now, they all have different rules. So like if you're talking about Amex credits, go to our webpage that's called something like Amex Airline Fee Credits What Works and see what kind of things can you buy and get reimbursed with Southwest. Similar with Ritz, we have a page for that. But other cards have just straight up travel credits, any kind of travel, so they would just work. So, yeah. So it's a good, easy, short-term way

because they'll only do this for travel credits up until, what is it,ember 7 september 7 yeah so your your credits have to have an expiration date of september 7 2022 which would be anything that's canceled in the last couple of months here or if you create new travel funds by canceling a paid ticket before september 7 so you got to do it before september 7th which means you want to get on this a little sooner than september 7th because i think after you buy So you got to do it before September 7th, which means you want to get on this a little sooner than September 7th, because I think after you buy it, you got to wait a day or two to cancel it in order to, for it to convert into the travel funds, blah, blah, blah. So, so you want to get on this now, you know, if you're listening today, don't waste time. If you want to get rid of some

of your, some of your travel credits, get on that right now. and if you have the southwest priority card my goodness for the get a 75 southwest travel credit on that so buy yourself a southwest flight right now for about the 75 bucks and turn that into points i mean hello you're gonna get more value out of it and and that's a totally legit use because that is a southwest airlines travel credit on that card so it's not even like you're gaming that's a that. And as well, points that are worth more than the credit itself. And unlike your Southwest travel credits that you might have banked, the points never expire. And so there's a lot of reasons to prefer the points.

Now, it's not great for those seeking elite status with Southwest because the points bookings won't help you get there. But anyway, I did some of this for at least one of my cards that would have been otherwise hard to earn my travel credits. I probably won't do the other ones that are a bit easier to earn because I already have enough Southwest points, and so I don't really want right now to get more, and I think I have other ways of getting the credits,

but what about you? Are you going to take advantage of this? Yeah, some, yeah, I haven't done, I've been procrastinating. So you do,

as I say, not as I do, I need to, I need to get on that, but I'm going to do some of them. Like you said, I actually have more Southwest points than I'm probably going to need in the near term.

So I'm not in need of a ton of points, but I'd obviously rather have the points and the travel credits or anything else that I'm probably going to buy with the travel term. So I'm not in need of a ton of points, but I'd obviously rather have the points than the travel credits or anything else that I'm probably going to buy with the travel credits. So yeah, I'm definitely going to do it with some. And I think it just, it makes sense. And in fact, somebody, I think Jen from Deals We Like on Twitter was saying, well, they said it was going to be the same rate at which you could buy a flight and it wasn't quite. And I did the math and I showed that you could buy a flight today and turn that into points. And for like five bucks come out like a thousand points ahead. The example I gave was a $99 flight that right now would cost like 6,500 points. Let's say it was for $99. So instead of paying the 6,500 points, you could pay 99 bucks,

then convert that into points. And at the 1.2 cent, two, eight cents 6,500 points, you could pay 99 bucks, then convert that into points. And at the 1.2 cents, two, eight cents a piece in points, you'll end up with like 7,600 points. Go back and book the flight for 6,500 points and $5 and 60 cents. And for that $5 and 60 cents, you got yourself 1100 extra points. So, uh, so if you really have bookings to make with Southwest right now, you just print some points by buying them and converting them to points. So it's worth it, right? And if you're booking Southwest flights, you definitely want to be doing this. Well, all right.

So, I mean, don't forget that the margins like – Status. Well, it's not just status. You're not going to earn points on those flights. So when it comes out that close, it might actually be close to a wash, but if you, but your points still take most of the time, I'd think, or a lot of the time, anyway, you're gonna be well way better off by doing this rather than buying it

straight up. Yeah. Well, and you're a thousand percent better off because if you book a flight right now, who knows? I have no idea what next week is gonna bring. Forget about next month or next year. So your flight might get canceled, your trip might get canceled, and then you're gonna wind up with a,

if you paid for it with cash, you're gonna wind up with a travel credit that has an expiration date. I would much rather have the points that go right back into your account. So if you're booking right now in Southwest, unless you're hunting status, which if you're booking right now in Southwest, unless you're, you're hunting status,

which if you're hunting status with Southwest, I'm a little bit like, really, really? I mean, is it worth it? I don't know. It's not worth it to me over the flexibility of having the points.

That's for darn sure. So I would definitely be looking to make those. All right, good. By the way, just as an aside, any other week, this deal would have been our

main event that's just that we would have talked about Canada shocked us with their uh with their new program but anyway moving on with the lightning round stuff uh or with these quick hits are you going to go for uh 10,000 united miles I am and you know I didn't think I was going to be able to until a reader commented so the mileage plus app the united mileage plus app right now for united visa card holders has these offers you can link up with your united visa card it's got to be one of the personal cards I guess not one of the business cards for the united visa offers but if you have one of those even the no fee card you can link that up in the united mileage plus x app now that app normally you'd be familiar with because you buy gift cards like if you're at the, you can link that up in the United Mileage Plus X app. Now that app normally

you'd be familiar with because you buy gift cards. Like if you're at the registry, you can buy a gift card for the exact amount at some store, you know, you go to Sephora or Old Navy or whatever and buy yourself a gift card and earn some miles. But they have some other offers that also work in store. You can link up with your United card. And the thing is right now they have a deal where if you complete one out of a specific group of offers, you get like a thousand miles and two, you get some more miles. And so if you do five, you get 10,000 United miles, 10,000 total, 10,000 total. Yeah. Five, you get 10,000. And so those five offers, you just need to make a purchase of any type at those five stores at five of the

stores in that specific list. And you'll have to check out the link in the show notes here for the post that'll tell you more about what stores and where to find all that in the app. But you need one purchase at each of five stores during 10,000 miles. So that purchase can be any amount. In the post, we talked about how you can probably buy like a $10 gift card at each of those places. And so for 50 bucks, you end up with $50 in gift cards and 10,000 miles, but it gets even better because a reader pointed out the fact that with some of those places, see, one of the reasons I thought I wasn't going to do this is because none of those places are nearby. There's like in a list of places, it was like yard house and I don't know,

some Bahama breeze and stuff like that, but I don't have anywhere near me because I live in the middle of nowhere. You don't live in the middle of nowhere that, that I don't have anywhere near me because I live in the middle of nowhere. You don't live in the middle of nowhere, but you still don't have those places. I don't have all of them anyway, yes. Where you are, yeah, exactly. But a reader pointed out that some of those places were to-go type things where you could order something online to go.

And so he'd order like a bottle of water or soda or drink or something like that to go for pickup and just didn't bother going to pick it up. All right, so I'm actually a little bit confused because I haven't done this deal yet, though I want to. Do you like, is it like a portal where you click through from the app to place an order? Or is it because the card is linked and so you have to place an order that

gets charged to the card? Yes. The latter. You need to place an order that gets charged to your United Visa card. Okay. The United Visa card that you've linked up with the Mileage Plus X app. It's a card-linked offer. So one of those things that's on the list is Barnes & Noble. And so if you go, actually, when you look in the app, initially, the pictures of the deals all say that they're online only. But then when

you actually click to look at the details, it says in-store works too. So for example, one of those options is Barnes & Noble. And Stephen Pepper was able to confirm his wife walked into Barnes & Noble, bought a $10 gift card, charged it to the United Visa. Boom, that offer was redeemed and he got his 1,000 miles or whatever. So some of the offers though, like they said, the Yardhouse and Bahama Breeze,

those were specifically to-go orders. So you'd have to place those orders on the websites for Yardhouse and Bahama Breeze or you'll have to check the orders on the websites for yard house and bahama breeze or you'll have to check the app okay see what's in there so so in that case the reader that commented just went to let's say bahamabreeze.com i don't know if that's the right website you're gonna have to check in the app but and ordered a drink for pickup like i don't know probably two bucks or something like that just didn't bother to pick it up and that's nice for two bucks he picked up his his chunk of 10,000 miles.

So for, for theoretically five, 10, $15, you can pick up. I'm totally going to do this. I'm totally, I'm going to get on barnesandnoble.com and buy like one page of one book and see if that works. I don't need the whole thing. You can try. You just need the preview. Yeah. Just give me the appendix or something. Just sell me that sample. Yeah. I'm willing to pay 99 cents to read a page. And you don't even need to spend 99.

There's no minimum on any of them, really. I mean, if you could find something that was super cheap, then there's not even a minimum. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, if they have like any no shipping fees too for them, it would be good. Or pick up in store and that'd be okay. Anyway, I'm just trying to avoid driving around town to these things. So that's great.

You and I both. So that's an easy one. All right. So we both agree. Everybody ought to be taking a look at that and doing that. Take your 10,000 free United miles. My goodness. If you've got a United card, take it.

Right. Okay. Then one more deal. And this is going to lead into our next segment. But first, Aeroplan, Air Canada Aeroplan, is offering 2,500 miles. All you have to do, sign up new. So you have to, right?

You have to not be an existing customer, I believe, or a member. A new Aeroplan member. And earn one mile. And it doesn't matter how you earn it, whether it's like transferring in from another program or through a shopping portal. Wait, let me cut you off.

Don't stop listening if you're already an Aeroplan member, okay? Listen to the rest of what Greg has to say. That's right. All right, keep going. That's right. That's important. And so – I didn't want him to skip ahead to the next thing.

So before we get into it, I mean, let's just say there's super easy ways to earn a mile. So you get 2,500 miles. And what's so awesome is that they announced that in the new program, which we're going to be talking about soon, they're going to allow family sharing, which means you could have eight people all sharing the same set of points. So if you have eight people in your family that could sign up new, well, seven people besides yourself, then you can earn up to 20,000 miles almost for free and combine those all. And then you have 20,000 miles in one account, sort of one shared account that you can actually use instead of having a whole bunch of orphaned 2,500 point deals. So that seems like a great, great deal. Yeah, it is.

Yeah, it is. Everybody in your family should be signing up for this deal. And you know, Air Canada has been very progressive, has said that they aren't going to define what family means. They're going to let you define what family means to you. Now, they also said that if people abuse this, that they may, you know, take another look at it. So I don't recommend that you create an account for your dog or, you know, an account with your middle initial being

different or something like that, but rather create an account for like great aunt Susie, who's never going to fly her Canada. It doesn't matter. Like help aunt Susie create an airplane account, get her email address, you know, and, and, and create an account for her or help her create an account, send her the link to create an account, be like aunt Susie, you want to give me a little gift this year, sign up for an airplane. Pull that stuff together down the road because yeah, I mean, that's just an easy free 20,000 miles. And I mean, who,

who among us don't know some people in the family that have no interest in miles and points and are never going to sign up for an Air Canada airplane account anyway? So if we can beg them to do it for 2,500 miles a person, I think that transferring them from somewhere else. But because you could do things like click through to the iTunes store, buy a song for 99 cents, you could, what were some of the other examples that were like that? Oh, you could sign up for an Apple Music trial. I think it said it would give you a few, few points if you do that. It said it'd give you a hundred miles for signing up for the trial, for the free trial. It specifically said 100 miles for signing up for the free trial.

I don't know whether you're going to have to actually get your card charged in order to earn those 100 miles, but... It's at least a potential free way to do it. Potentially a free way to earn 100 miles. So you have about 2,600 per person. Well, check out the post. Read the comments for ideas. Right. Right.

Let's move on. Yeah. So it's time. post, read the comments for ideas. Right. Right. Let's move on. Yeah. So it's time. It's time for the main event. Aeroplan. Hello, Aeroplan. Aeroplan unveiled their brand new program this week, which Greg had speculatively transferred

some points to Aeroplan months ago in anticipation, thinking, expecting that the new program was going to be good because they told us it was going to be good. And we all know that loyalty programs, when they tell us something good is coming, it's always good. That's right. A hundred percent of the time. Yes. Yes. If you live in a dream world, it is. Yes. So, you know, Greg had all this faith and I was skeptical. I didn't transfer over the miles when I probably should have in hindsight

because, my goodness, the program came out pretty good. So tell us a little bit about it, why we're both excited about it, why you're excited about it. Let me summarize the pros and cons real quick, and then we can dig into some pieces of that. So one of the big headline pieces was no fuel surcharges on awards tickets. So today, if you try to book a Lufthansa first-class flight, you're going to be paying probably over $1,000 for the privilege.

Once this new program kicks in, it'll be $39 Canadian in fees. They've added the ability on one-way awards to add a stopover for 5,000 points. Oh, they're calling their things points now instead of miles, by the way. And I should mention on the stopover before you get to the next one, one thing to know about the stopover, they did email me, actually, and have me ask if I could update the post about the stopover because they wanted to make it clear that the stopover on one- awards can not be in the United States or Canada. It doesn't matter

if your flight is international or whatever else stopovers can only be outside of the U S. Okay. Yeah. Now, okay. I had that in my guide. So I, yeah. And I didn't gotcha. Gotcha. All right. So family sharing, we already talked about that. Easy elite status. So I had it really easy because they were running a promotion where if you get 50,000 points into your account, you get their lowest level elite status. That promotion's over. I had transferred membership rewards points in to get it. The new thing though, this will be starting next year, is 100,000 points in any year will get you that lowest level elite status. So might not be worth a lot, but it's something. And so that's super easy to do for anyone who has transferable points. Flexible routing rules. So they used to have a lot of

rules about, you know, if you go this way, you can't connect and blah, blah, blah. But the new program, very, very easy and flexible rules. Dirt cheap to add lap infants to awards. $25 Canadian, which is like, what, like a few US pennies. What's the next best after that? You've been paying attention to that, the programs you're aware of. Well, Virgin Atlantic is generally going to be the next best. And Virgin Atlantic, it's a little different with each partner, I think. But usually in economy class,

it's 1,000 each way. And in business class, it's like 5,000 miles each way. With Virgin Atlantic, that's probably the best deal, though. ANA charges 10% of the mileage, and British Airways charges 10% of the mileage. So I guess it depends on what you're paying and the mileage price. But as far as a cash price, $19 is definitely the cheapest. Especially because most programs charge more for first class. And so I just mentioned Virgin Atlantic and for an ANA first class flight, they charge 7,500 points one way for a lap infant. Whereas Air Canada is going to charge the same price in any class of service, whether

you're in coach business or first class, it's like the equivalent of 19 US dollars, 25 Canadian dollars or 2,500 miles. So you'd be kind of crazy to even use the 2,500 miles with the current. Right. It still sounds cheap, but you're better off just paying the cash because the miles are worth more than that. Now, the downsides of the program. So there are a few. They're now going to charge a $39, and that's Canadian dollars, fee for any partner award booking.

So, you know, that's not going to be an issue for those big international flights where you're paying hundreds of dollars in fees anyway because of various airline departure taxes and blah, blah, blah. But for, you know, if you want to fly a United Airlines cheap, you know, short distance flight, the $39 may make Aeroplan uncompetitive compared to some competing options you have. Low point earnings. So if you fly Star Alliance flights and want to earn miles for those flights, so they're paid flights, they're only offering two miles per dollar as the base earning rate. That was just kind of shocking because all the US ones offer five miles per dollar to the base memberships. And then the other thing is, their awards, depending on where you're going and from where the words could be considerably more expensive than they were before in, in terms of the miles you have to pay.

So, uh, you know, people on the West coast going to Europe are, are very unhappy. Um, people who are going, but the flip side,

people who, uh, want to travel really, really far. The nice thing is the new, uh, word chart has sort of a limit to how much it's going to charge. And so you could, that combined with flexible routing, you can really

make some sweet awards out of it, theoretically, anyway. Yeah, and that's a nice improvement, because in the old program, Air Canada had, still at the time we were recording this because this new program doesn't go into effect until november 8th so currently there's a maximum permitted mileage between any two cities so you can't go farther than the maximum permitted mileage and they don't tell you how much that is you can like google some ways to i don't know do some funny stuff in the browser bar to figure out how uh you know how far the maximum is but they don't tell you exactly

how far that is so it's kind of a pain i've run into it a couple of times where i expected to be able to book an award that was just like 100 miles too far out of the way so air canada just wouldn't wouldn't see that even though other star alliance programs let you book at air canada wouldn't so that's a nice improvement now that you're not going to have to worry about max permitted mileage at all. And the top distance band is great if you're looking to make a really complex routing and have some stopovers and that

sort of thing. But if you're not, on the flip side, if you were looking to go from the West Coast to Europe and you've really enjoyed the business class sweet spot there on Aeroplan 55,000 miles each way is what it has been for a long enjoyed the business class sweet spot there on Aeroplan 55,000 miles each way is what it has been for a long time for business class and Star Alliance. Yeah. You're probably going to be disappointed. Right. Right. Right. So, so let me sort of give you my,

my next day impression of, of all of this. So, you know, when we first learned of all, it was very exciting. Um, there, there's a lot of very innovative things about the program from family sharing and no fuel surcharges and whatnot. But a day later, like I look at this stuff and I say, when will I really be using Aeroplan to book flights? And the truth is, often for the flights I'll actually be wanting to book, often ANA will be cheaper. But I wouldn't want ANA if there's big fuel surcharges around. But then LifeMiles is probably cheaper. And then in many cases, if we could get Turkish to book it, Turkish would be way cheaper. So, you know, it's just some of the excitement went away when I thought about that. I was kind of like, this all sounds really good. Like, it sounds like a really strong program, but I'm just

not really sure I'm going to be using it that much. What do you think? See, I'm on a totally opposite end of the spectrum there. Yeah, because, so okay, the things you said are all correct. If you want to go from New York to Tokyo in business class, your best option is using ANA, and that's by far the best option now, and it's going to be by far the best option when this new program releases. Air Canada is not going to replace that with this new Aeroplan program. And by the same token, if you just want to go from Boston to Paris and back, again,

Aeroplan is not going to be your best option. It isn't right now. Your best option right now is probably ANA in most cases, and if not, Turkish. So it's not going to become a better option for that kind of trip. But it excites me because I tend to like to book more complex trips where I'm going to stop in more places. Now, not everybody has the time or the ability or flexibility to do that. So I can definitely understand that this won't appeal to everybody. But I look at it now and I say, okay, now Europe is one region with Africa, the Middle East, all the way out to India. That's all one region. So it's going to be the same price. Well, I shouldn't say that, not the same price,

based on the same award chart. Now it gets a little complex. If you haven't read any of the coverage, Air Canada is kind of combining a zone-based chart with a distance-based chart. So you're going to have to look at the two zones that you're traveling between, and then the cumulative distance of the flights that you're picking. But my point anyway in all of this is that at the maximum distance band, you could fly right now with the new program rather, you'll be able to fly from the US to Europe,

stop over for a few days and continue on to South Africa or continue on to New Delhi or continue on to South Africa, or continue on to New Delhi, or continue on to Abu Dhabi, or wherever it is you want to go with no fuel surcharge for an extra 5,000 miles on top of the regular price to just go to that long distance destination. So if you wanted to go someplace like South Africa, or India, or the Middle East, now you can build yourself in a stopover in Europe for like almost free. And they say the routing is going to be really flexible. So theoretically, I think you'll be able to potentially anyway, do that in the opposite direction and fly to Europe via Japan

and take a stopover in Japan for 5,000 miles on your way to Europe. So if you're interested in that kind of thing where you're like, you know what, I'm going to stop over in Tokyo for a week on my way to Paris from New York, then then aeroplan is going to be exciting. And to me, that is a pretty exciting development. And it may be a particularly exciting development for those looking to get to Australia and pair that with another trip. So I think the new aeroplan program is more exciting for people who are willing to or have the flexibility to put together larger trips that combine totally different destinations. The other thing is that supposedly they're going to debut a brand new website where you're going to basically be able to piece together the exact routing you

want. Now, I wouldn't ordinarily believe that that's going to be as good as it sounds because it sounds terrific to be able to just pick the flights you want and put it together and it's going to price it right and magically it's going to work i mean no website has done that you know never that way and and you compare to life miles and when you said life miles i thought well you're right life miles might be better in some instances if you can get the website to price it out if not if you've got weeks to wait for customer service to manually build it, then it might be better. But if you can actually go to aeroplan.com and piece together the exact flights you want, then this will be really valuable. And I am much more inclined to believe

that that's going to happen now that I see that they have made a lot of positive changes. So I think that's probably going to come that you're probably going to be able to piece that together the way that you want. Now, some of it, I said, this looks too good to be true. And I looked at it in terms of like, you know, flying from the U S to Europe via Australia and taking a stop over in Australia. I mean, theoretically based on the new award chart, that ought to be possible. That seems too good to me to pay a price. So there's part of me that's skeptical, but there's the other part of me that says, I mean, they, they seem to have people who know about miles and points running the program these days. So I think that they have to expect that

people would read between the lines and be like, well, we're going to have some fun with this. I guess they're okay with it. I don't know. So I'm, I'm pretty excited. I think that this is actually going to work out really well for the kind of trips that I want to take in the future. I don't know if it's going to work out really well for my vacation balance. Right, right, right. Well, and in a couple, a couple of comments that are, that are in favor of, of this program. Um, one is that, you know, yeah, there are other programs that lets you do stopovers and have other aspects that Nick talked about. But usually, like Alaska, for example, you can't mix partners on these awards. So if you want to build a complex itinerary where you're flying to Europe, stopover, and then going to Africa, good luck because you're stuck on one carrier.

And so what is that? Turkish, I think. Or maybe Lufthansa or Turkish, I guess. Well, no. If you're using Alaska miles? Turkish, I think. Or maybe Lufthansa or Turkish, I guess. Well, no. If you're using Alaska miles and you're on British Airways and you're going to have to pay an astronomical fee. Right, right. And so that's good.

The other thing is, one of the things I didn't think about when I was saying, you know, well, how is this better than using these other Star Alliance partners? Well, one reason is for anyone who wants to fly Etihad first again, which, hello. So these things go together, right? Because Etihad is an Air Canada partner. And since they'll say anyway, they'll let you mix the awards. So you won't be stuck on just

star alliance flights but you could go like you know star alliance to position to europe and then etihad first australia for example should be possible with this with this program and that would be uh that would be really great because you can't always get the whole way you want on just etihad and that's what you'd have to do if you're booking with like American Airlines miles, for example. Yeah. And I mean, imagine if you were able to piece this together to fly like Lufthansa first to Frankfurt and then fly Etihad first to Australia from there,

I guess it won't be apartments. I don't know if they actually fly to Frankfurt. I think they do. Yeah. So I don't know if it's apartments from Frankfurt to Abu Dhabi, but it is from Abu Dhabi to Sydney. So, and I have not flown the apartments, but I have flown it to Had First non-apartments and I was thrilled with that. So apartments looks, you know, 10 times better, but I think it'll still be fine if you want to fly first class from Frankfurt to Abu Dhabi and then continue on to Australia. So yeah, I mean, being able to book something like that'll be amazing. Now I say that and I know that there are at least, you know,

eight people out there saying, yeah, but Lufthansa doesn't release award availability until two weeks in advance. So that's not something that particular example I just gave isn't something you can really count on in the future. And they're totally right. You'd have to get really lucky in terms of finding availability on both Lufthansa and Etihad at the last minute. So there's definitely a lot of variables in there, you know, and maybe you'd have to choose it a little bit differently and fly ANA first class to Japan and then continue on from Japan to Europe on Etihad first class. Yeah, or I mean, I might be willing to slum it and go business class to Frankfurt on Lufthansa and then, uh, if you have first from there, you know,

cause they will mix awards. They won't, they won't price it at the lower level of price at all at the, at the higher level, but that's fair. That's what most programs do on like life miles. Yeah. And of course I'm particularly excited because I have another child on the way. So I've got two years of lap infant ahead of me. And, you know, so hopefully travel will return to normal during that time. And at, you know, 19 bucks to add a lap infant in like the apartments, for instance, if I could actually find that available, I mean, that'd be an amazing, amazing deal. Because I think I think anybody before this, I think anybody that's allowed you until Air Canada partnered with Etihad, I think anybody who was partnered with Etihad, you'd have paid 10% of the cash price to add a lap infant first. And forget it.

There's no way I'd ever do that. So this is a pretty terrific deal from that standpoint. So if you're a family traveler, I think that's really, really nice, too. It would be helpful. So, yeah, I'm pretty excited about it. And so we kind of touched on it, but we didn't really talk about it So within each region, there are different distance bands So for example, if you're flying to Europe and you fly under 4,000 miles, it's gonna be one price if it's 4,000 to 5,000 miles

Let's say it'll be another price 5 to 7,500 another price But then for each region, there is a max band like for Europe. I think from North America max band might have been like I can't remember now i just started to say i think eight thousand nine thousand something like that so you could just kind of continue on behind that right for the same whatever the top price is i'd say that seems to be the key to getting the best value because within the bands it doesn't look like at least at first glance that you you're getting better pricing than other programs. But once you go past that band and you go much further, then it gets extremely good.

Not unlike Cathay Pacific, which also has that type of thing where you go past their distance band and then it's all smooth sailing from there. Right. And the awards in general have gone up. So there's definitely some grumble about that. And I can totally sympathize with that. On the flip side, if you were looking to book, I often find that the best availability, especially to Europe, is on Lufthansa and Swiss and the different airlines that have high fuel surcharges. So when you look at the fact that, okay, well, yes, the price is going up. And especially if you were being able to book on United or a lot Polish or something like that, then it kind of stings. But you're going to get access to a lot more availability at a much cheaper cost when you

don't have to pay those fuel surcharges. So it's kind of a trade-off. Right, right. So the other thing that, that occurs to me about all this is it feels like that we, we have a new sort of program for, for people who, who don't, aren't into this stuff like really deep and want to, you know, want to know the ins and outs of all the programs.

Like used to be, you'd point everybody or I would unite and, you know, just go to united.com. You could book whatever you want. And, and, um, to some extent, a.com and delta.com are like that as well. That like, what you find on there is what you get. And so you don't need to know a lot to use those programs. Uh, that wasn't really true with the older Aeroplan program, because you had to know which, you had to avoid fuel surcharges by knowing which partners are okay to book with. And, you know, of course, you could play around and figure it out. But anyway, the point is, it seems like we have a new, easy to use program, maybe program maybe i mean we don't know what it's going to look like you know the actual interface yet but let's say that's true um does this make amex membership

awards and capital one which are the two transferable points programs that transfer to them besides i'm not counting marriott because that it's a slower process and everything but um does it does this make them more valuable? I mean, I think it does for me. I don't necessarily know that it will for everybody, but I think that's one of the reasons why I'm less upset about the devaluation in terms of needing to spend a few more miles to be able to fly to, to some of the destinations that will cost a bit more. If you just want that single easy trip to one

destination. It's going to cost a little bit more, but with the ability to earn membership rewards at a pretty good clip, 4X groceries on the gold card or 2X everywhere on the business plus, blue business plus up to the 50K per year, there's enough ways to earn membership rewards points relatively fast that I feel like for me, it's going to increase the value because like compared to, for instance, earning Turkish miles, the max I'm going to earn in terms of Turkish miles is going to be three points per dollar at the grocery store or at restaurants now with the premier. And that's relatively new. Before that, it was going to be two on the double cash. So I can earn the points a little bit faster.

There's more ways with referrals. You're referring your family members, your friends, people in your household or sign up for cards. So, and then of course, pulling these easy 20K points potentially from family members. A lot of ways to put together airplane miles.

So I'm less concerned about the little bit of devaluation there. It's going to definitely make it more valuable for me. I definitely see myself transferring. I'll probably hold off until January to transfer points to Aeroplan and plan a trip just so I can pick up elite status next year because I'll easily use 100,000 points

whenever I'm able to book travel again with Aeroplan. They're definitely going to be my next major trip. Interesting. Don't you think there's a chance, though, you're going to look at that trip that you're planning and say, oh, this would be much cheaper to book with Turkish or with whatever. And if it is, I, if it is, I'll do that. But yeah, but I think, I think the thing that's exciting is that the, the, the new award system excites me, you know, it kind of inspires me to

want to look at what kind of crazy thing I can do together, you know, how I'm going to be traveling with two young kids. So maybe I'm being unrealistic in terms of how crazy I can do together. I'm going to be traveling with two young kids, so maybe I'm being unrealistic in terms of how crazy I can get. I'm certainly going to think about it. That's going to be fun. I can't wait until it's live so we can play with it. Me too.

Lots of good news there. New era plan. Exciting times, I think. Greg says, kind of exciting, but at the same time a day later he's like maybe not as excited depends every time you have a different perspective so that's our plan right so now it's time for post roast it is all right so who goes first how do we do we flip a coin well let's let's see who guesses better so i want you to guess which post of yours um which post of yours i'm gonna roast and then you uh you guess what yeah the other way around okay so you're gonna you're gonna i mean

there aren't that many posts i gotta i gotta i got a decent chance here one way or another so i'm i'm gonna say you're gonna roast the post that I wrote about a wallet full of no-fee credit cards. And that's true. So I will let you pick. Do you want to go first or second? I'll go second. I'll go second. I want to see what's coming here so uh yes you wrote about um uh you put together the

the sort of a n ideal combination of no fee credit cards so i've got three little little roasts i guess um okay the first was is how in the world did you forget the blue business plus the first time around i mean i saw you updated the post after a reader commented, but that was like shocking thing. And I'm like, wait, where's the best no fee card. I don't see it. I get no excuse for that. Everywhere. You can now transfer to a new program. Yes. No, it's true. It's true. The Blue Business Plus

belonged in that wallet probably. I responded to the reader who brought that up because I said, you know, one of the... The real reason, if I'm giving you a reason why it wasn't in there in the first place, is I created that list by going through our best category bonuses page. And so I was going through each

category bonus looking for what looked to be the best card with no annual fee for each of those categories so i didn't even but i shouldn't say i didn't think to put in an everywhere else card because i mentioned in the in the conclusion that i was leaving out an everywhere else card and i knew that um but i i shouldn't have i should have included that because yeah that's all i'm gonna take that. Blue Business Plus should have been in there at first place. But you rewrite the post now. All right. I've got two more.

So, all right. You had the Wells Fargo Propel card in there. I get it. Three extra on dining. Makes sense. But you could have thrown in the Wells Fargo Visa Signature card to make those points worth one and a half cents each towards travel. But that's the only reason to throw that card in, right?

I mean, what else does the card give you? Well, yes, it is definitely free-free. So I wanted to somewhat limit how many cards I put in this wallet because of course, you could get every single card on the market and have everything. But I did wanna keep it somewhat limited in the sense that I didn't just, you know, fill it full of 15 cards. So, so that was the reason I

left that out now, free, free, right. And that is a good point that I think gets lost in the shuffle sometimes that the Wells Fargo cards, do any of them have an annual fee? I don't know. Yeah. Right. I can't think of one Wells Fargo card that has an annual fee. The fee is you have to deal with Wells Fargo. Right, right, right. A little weirdness. That's your downside. That's your downside.

So that's true. I don't know. It felt a little bit like cheating to me to include the Freedom Card 5X grocery bonus since that's more of a sign-up bonus than it's true ongoing like you know category bonus so i was kind of on the fence on that on that criticism you know yes and and i can i i can accept that i i kind of felt like it was cheating a little bit putting that in there because i didn't mention sign-up bonuses at all or consider them at all with the other cards. That's probably why I thought of that. If I were going to do that,

then the Discover It card would have also had to have been in contention for an Everywhere Else card or Discover It Miles card at least. Basically 3% back in the first year with cashback doubles. And for that matter, the Discover It card, which is going gonna double the rotating bonus categories

for the first year. There's so many to pick from, aren't there? Yeah, there are. There's tons and tons. So the reason why I kept that in there is twofold. Number one, it was by far the best grocery bonus with no annual fee. I was kind of surprised actually,

because I don't spend much time thinking about what's the best new annual fee. I was kind of surprised actually, because I don't spend much time thinking about what's the best new annual fee grocery card, but I was kind of surprised at how few good options there are for grocery store spend with no annual fee. Now that's not to say there are none. If you're willing to jump through some hoops, you got the everyday card, not the everyday preferred, if you want to avoid the annual fee. But if you do the 20 or 30 transactions a month, you get a little bit more points and blah, blah, blah. I mean, there are some options and there are some that are capped in terms of rotating category bonuses. You could get like a cash rewards card and earn 2%, but of course, 2%, you just get a double cash and call it a day. So there weren't very many options that were over

2% in terms of grocery spend. So that stood out to me as being a particularly good value for grocery spend, even though we've seen a lot of grocery bonuses in the last few months, it's just not that common on no fee cards. So that stood out. And then of course, I thought, if you're going to do one of them, and we're looking at it from this long term no fee wallet, you'd probably consider the freedom because in the future, probably those rotating categories will be good for you. And if that double dip works, which I'm interested to find out whether or not it does, I asked within Frequent Miler Insiders, and we don't have anybody who's got a data point yet. So I'm going to go to Whole Foods this week and see if the double dip

works. And by the double dip, I mean the fact that Whole Foods is a bonus category this quarter on the Freedom Card. And if you sign up for the Freedom Card now, you get 5x groceries for for the first 12 months so i'm wondering if you can double dip the quarterly bonus and the grocery bonus so we'll find out on that and and hopefully have a data point a couple days after this publish sounds good um so that's good yeah so all right i'll i'll accept that that's all right there wasn't a much better and you got roasted by a couple readers. So like the one who pointed out how you wrote it all to make money, right? Right, right. Hawking cards that we don't have any affiliate links for. That's right.

That's right. Yeah. I'm the world's worst salesman because I said twice. You're selling the wrong cards, Nick. What's with it? I'm like, yeah, I'm a horrible salesperson because I've been writing about all these cards we don't have affiliation for. So I'm selling cards and somebody needs to fire me.

I didn't say that correctly. I don't get any ideas. All right. So, all right. So it's my turn to roast. I'm ready. All right. So I got a mini roast.

I get two mini roasts too. You gave me three mini roasts. All right. I'm going to give you two mini roasts on two totally different things. All right. All right. So mini roasts. All right. I'm going to give you two mini roasts on two totally different things. All right. All right. So mini roast number one is that the era plan changes came out one day this week.

And so, you know, I started a little something and Greg started writing his complete guide and, you know, became a parent complete guide. It was going to take a long time. And so Greg was like, you know, I'm going to publish this tomorrow. Go ahead and publish a little something today. So I published a little something about the changes. Greg took all day writing the era plan complete guide, right? Yeah.

And in all that time, when he discovered the fact that lap infants were only 2,500 points one way or $19, he couldn't send me a text or a message or an email and say, Hey, by the way, they've got the best lap infant fees ever. If you want to get a post out about that before anybody else finds it, because that was an incredible, incredible find. Now, as it happens,

I think we did probably publish it ahead of anybody else. Cause I didn't see anybody else who mentioned it, but we could have been a day earlier. We definitely could have. I found it as I was doing the research for the guide and, and it even occurred to me, I was like, Ooh, I need to let Nick know about this. And I just forgot. Happens that way. You know, I think readers often assume that we know these things before they're

going to go live. And sometimes we do. Like sometimes we find out information before it goes. Sometimes they'll say, hey, listen, we're going to make these program changes or whatever. And they're willing to give it to us ahead of time for us to prepare and think about it a little bit. In this case, we didn't have the information ahead of time. So everything we found was stuff that Greg poured through all that information to find and read the day that it came out. And so that's why we had the things published two separate days. We had, you know, kind of first reaction and then the complete guide. But yeah, I mean, I would have loved to have had that in the first reaction or published on day one. All right, so that's mini roast's number one mini roast number two is that

we talked about a few moments ago about how you could you could get your family members to sign up for aeroplane accounts and if they earn one mile by the end of september then you get your 2500 points right and so you know we posted that and readers were like oh you know how what's the easiest way to earn a mile and and partially it, and partially it was like, well, it was, it was in the post. The easiest way to earn a mile is going to be via the shopping portal probably for most people. Otherwise you could transfer points. If you want just ease, like simple click, you could transfer points for membership rewards.

That's the easiest way to do it. But if your family members don't have membership rewards or capital one points, then they're going to need to buy something through the shopping portal. Right? So sorry, people are like, oh, what's the cheap thing through the shopping portal? And Greg's like, you can go to Amazon.ca and buy yourself a Kindle book for 99 cents. Right, right.

It's dirt cheap. You can buy one for that cheap, though. And I think that's Canadian, so that's like less US cents. 10 cents or something like that super cheap super you won't earn a single mile doing it but you can definitely so so there was one that one little issue with that approach was that you won't actually earn miles yeah right right that the terms the terms state that that is excluded so that so then greg says, well, buy a song from the iTunes store. And I'm like, oh my goodness, Greg,

like, did you not read the terms on Apple Music? It says you gotta sign up for the free subscription. And so I send Greg an email. I'm like, duh, Greg, read the terms here. Before you publish something. Right, right. And then he writes back and he's like, yeah, except I'm talking about Kindle

or I'm talking about iTunes and you can earn miles through iTunes. So I'm roasting Greg about not reading the terms, but then he roasted me right back via email and nobody got to see that. Right, right. So I appreciate it. So yeah, the iTunes store is different from the Apple Music Store, which is totally confusing. But there is an iTunes store still on the portal, at least for now. And so at least theoretically, you could go through and buy a song and I'm saying at least theoretically because it wasn't obvious from my PC how it how that's possible to do because you go through to iTunes

and it doesn't let you buy anything but I assume if I click through from my Apple product it probably would. Probably. And so I bring up that roast because I made the mistake of looking at it and seeing that I thought Apple Music was Apple Music. I didn't realize iTunes is a separate thing because I'm not an Apple person. Greg did realize that iTunes is a separate thing because he does use an iPhone. So he was paying attention on that one. And so I bring that up because here we are,

two people who write about miles and points all the time. And we write about these, you know, deals and shopping portals and everything else. And both of us within the space of eight minutes, just, you know, totally made a mistake and not looking. So it can happen to anybody. Take a look at all the stories. Take a look at all the options. That's one of the problems with these little deals. Like I often don't, I often skip them because it's so easy to make mistakes and you end up spending a lot of time dealing with these things all to get like a couple thousand miles or something and and uh this one i'm only interested in because it's actually a lot more than 2500 miles because of the family pooling if it wasn't for family pooling i'd skip this altogether yeah yeah if it was just 2500 miles

for one person signing up, exactly. Or you couldn't do it. Because let's say this has happened to me before. So let's say I sign up my son, got the 2,500 miles for him. Then two years from now, I'm worried about, how do I keep his points alive? Because you have to have activity every two years.

So it's like an ongoing problem you cause for yourself instead of a solution. But with the family pooling, I think think activating any account will keep them all alive. I actually don't know that for sure, but I think so. Because we didn't mention this on the show already yet, but I'm going to mention it now. With the family pooling, one of the things to know is that I read in there that anybody in the pool can then redeem the miles. It's basically like one pile of miles that everybody has access to. So make sure you only pull with people you trust

not to use all your miles. Yeah, so yes, I would assume that any activity resets it because all the points are gonna get thrown into a single pile that anybody can access. And you can also book anyone else. Like if you want Uncle Fred to fly somewhere, but Uncle Fred's not in the family pool, that's fine. It doesn't matter.

You can book a flight for Uncle Fred. Right. Okay. There we go. Post roast in the books. That's it. Now we're down to question time, and then we'll hit the road. Question of the week.

The question of the week comes in from Michael Michael or from the so-called fan. I guess that's how we should frame this. So the so-called fan asks us, I think, a pretty intriguing question. So he says, Greg and Nick, as always, love the end of the week podcast. I've heard you say over and over that it's not a great time to be booking travel right now, as you could pigeonhole yourself into a non-transferable currency. Now what the so-called fan is talking about there is that we've said it's not a great time in general to transfer your membership rewards points to a specific airline or your ultimate rewards points to a specific airline because, you know, who knows what the world's going to be like in six months. And if you have

to cancel that trip, now you're stuck with points in a specific program instead of the transferable currency. Okay. So we've made that point before. He says, I completely agree with this. However, many of us already have points or miles stuck in these non-transferable currencies due to the pandemic. Yes, we do. Yeah. Causing travel disruptions. So most people are in that boat, probably. Most listeners, I would say, are probably in that boat. He says, I'm also lucky to work in a hospital. So I'm thinking I'll be one of the initial groups to receive any potential vaccine. Thus, I'm very, very tempted to book travel late winter, early spring with some of my non-transferable currency with lenient cancellation policies. Taking award availability has to be

really good right now. Am I nuts? Would love to hear a discussion on this. So, so he says, oh, sorry, discussion on this is there has to be a lot of people in this boat, many people that have these, these currencies that are going to expire now. So, A, if you have points stuck in one of these programs, is now the time to find availability for like late winter, early spring travel and book it? And B, does the fact that he's a medical professional likely to get one of the first doses of the vaccine make it even more of a smart play for him to book that travel now? Yeah. Well, the second one I can't even talk to. I can't because I don't think that countries. Well, maybe they will. I don't know if countries will change the rules to say you have to show a proof of vaccination to come in.

Maybe they will. Well, I don't know. Maybe. I'm thinking it's going to be more blanket. Americans can or can't come to begin with. And then I think the vaccine will probably. We'll see. We'll see. So this topic is something I've been thinking about a lot and something I think could easily be the main event of one of our shows. Because yes, a lot of us book traveled before the pandemic, had everything canceled. And so we're stuck now with points having already been transferred to miles. We've got miles in these currencies. I have what feels like billions of United miles that I'm really not happy that they're in their United miles right now I've got a bunch of life miles I got you know all kinds of different specific

programs and I know a lot of people are in the same boat so so then the question really becomes if you use those miles what happens if you have to cancel the uh trip and and i know that like i haven't been paying like total attention to what every program's rules are so a lot of programs have had rules saying uh if you book for up until this date and you have to cancel we're going to waive all the fees and usually i think that applies to awards as well as paid flights, but I'm not sure. Yeah, it's not always clear. Yeah, so I think it really comes down to that, doesn't it?

So for me, so take my United example. If I want to use up a bunch of those United miles, I'm going to want to look at United's latest COVID policies and say, when are they waiving fees? And then dig in further and say, does that apply to awards? If it does, and the waive fees are when I want to travel, then it's a long way of saying, yeah, in that situation, I think this is a great time to book those awards. Yeah, you need to take out the magnifying glass for sure. You need to look at that fine print and make sure that you understand whatever those policies are going to be because especially with some of these

programs like United or American that have relatively, well, maybe not American so much anymore, but many of the programs that have high cancellation fees, you definitely want to make sure that whatever those waived policies are applied to award tickets. And I have no idea how like Iberia is handling that right now, or I use them as an example. Many of those other transfer partner programs. So that actually is probably a good idea for a post in terms of, you know, what those policies are on award tickets specifically,

because surely a lot of people are in that boat. That's true. See, I looked at it at first and I was like, all right, so let's imagine that that you would have to pay a change fee, right? Is it a good time to book travel now, speculatively, because you figure, in this guy's case, he's saying, you know, he thinks he's gonna be one of the first people to get a vaccine.

Is it a good time to book speculatively? And in that, I don't know, with that frame, I would say no, because I still don't know where we're gonna be allowed to go and not be allowed to go. I don't know if it's going to be, okay, well, if you have the vaccine, you can come or if it's going to be a no, we're not going to let anybody in from certain countries yet, because the rates have been too high, still not enough people are vaccinated. So that part wouldn't give me much confidence if

I'm the so called fan. But like Greg said, yeah, if you've've got those points and you're sure that they are offering a flexible policy for cancellation, then yeah, find that availability. I mean, Greg showed a couple months ago some of those great first-class flights that were available around the world that looked awesome. Right, a number of programs had two seats available. And so travel with a partner and get all these incredible flights that would be normally very, very hard to get. One that surprised me was that Cathay Pacific still did not open up more than one first class seat at a time when I last looked. I don't know if that's changed since, but they seem to be holding firm on their old policy of not releasing more than one until right before departure.

Yeah, it's kind of tough, I imagine, for them because they don't know how many flights they're going to be operating. So if they release too many seats on too many flights, then they only end up operating one flight. What do you do? How do you accommodate? There's a lot of ins and outs and things like that for these programs. So it's not probably easy for them either predicting what availability should look like. But yeah, if you can find something that fits your plans, hey, I mean, give it a shot. It's kind of like my example earlier when I talked about the all-inclusives in Mexico and the Caribbean and whatnot. It gives you a trip to look forward to. That might be a nice little bright note in the current time. That's absolutely

true. It'd be worth it just for that. Yeah. But yeah, so that's it in a nutshell. If you can book it with extremely low or no change fees, then go for it. I think this is a good time. Yep. All right, there you go. We agree. So I want to thank everybody for being out there with us this week.

We always enjoy having you guys out here listening. If you'd like to learn more about what we're talking about and get all the new posts, as soon as they come out, you want to go to the frequent miler.com slash subscribe. Again, that's the frequent miler.com slash subscribe. Now I also want to bring to your attention that we do have this card talk series going where we're taking on listeners who are interested in a credit card intervention.

You want to talk about which cards you need to trim from your portfolio or which cards you should add next, or you wanna talk about a plan that you're trying to formulate in terms of a trip that you wanna make happen and which cards you should get in order to make that trip happen, you can go to thefrequentmiler.com slash cardtalk.

So that's C-A-R-D, talk, card talk, not to be confused with car talk. So thefrequentmiler.com slash card talk and leave a comment there. Let us know what your situation is and maybe we'll pick you for one of those episodes. That's a bi-weekly series we're doing. So again, thefrequentmiler.com slash card talk. Thank you guys all very much. We will see you next week.

Thanks everyone. Bye now.