Frequent Miler on the Air - Discarding our card collections | Frequent Miler on the Air Ep342 | 1-23-26

Episode Date: January 23, 2026

In today's episode, we'll talk about a trick for getting great value with Delta miles, which has returned, how flying Emirates first with points has gotten harder, and the hard truth about how we have too many cards (and what to do about it).Giant Mailbag(01:52) - Using AAdvantage miles to book JetSmart and other tips for South America travelCard News(04:10) - Air France/KLM Flying BlueRead more about Air France KLM flying blue here(15:38) - Capital One Venture Rewards: 75K + $250 travel after $4K spend(18:35) - Bilt Cash details revealedCatch up on how Bilt bungled the rollout hereBonvoyed(21:06) - Qantas Nerfs Emirates First Class AwardsRead more about this hereAwards, Points, and More(23:34) - Delta trick lowering award prices by booking flights to/from Mexico, working once again(25:20) - Alaska $99 Companion Fares can be used with the multi-city tool on the regular booking engine again(26:35) - American Airlines Awards flying Aer Lingus Now Available OnlineMain Event: Discarding our card collections(28:14) - Find out which premium cards we think are keepers here(31:41) - Greg's thoughts about keeper cards(35:25) - $795 Sapphire Reserve® Card Example (read more about our thoughts here)(57:45) - $325 American Express® Gold Card example(1:04:44) - $895 American Express Platinum Card® example(1:14:58) - Cards Greg and Nick have discarded recentlyQuestion of the Week(1:24:08) - American Express® Gold Card with 4x dining vs Atmos™ Rewards Summit Visa Infinite® Card with 3x dining + status... which one is worth it?Subscribe and FollowVisit https://frequentmiler.com/subscribe/ to get updated on in-depth points and miles content like this, and don’t forget to like and follow us on social media.Music Credit – “Ocean Deep” by Annie YoderMentioned in this episode:Check out this month's sponsor and support our showJoin the loyalty program for renters at joinbilt.com/mileshttps://joinbilt.com/miles

This is a Voyescape podcast. You can find all of our travel podcasts from around the world atvoyescape.com. On today's show, a trick for getting great value with Delta Miles has returned. Sadly, a trick for Flying Emirates first class with Miles has departed. And we have too many credit cards. So we'll discuss how we're thinking about which ones to keep and which ones to cancel. Frequent Miler on the air starts now. Today's main event, discarding our card collections. Nick and I, over time, have signed up for lots of credit cards. And when it comes time for the second year annual fee to come due, we tend to look at the card benefits and say, you know what? The benefits just barely outweigh the annual fee. So I guess I'll keep it another year. And that's fine, one by one. But, that as the cards accumulate and accumulated and accumulate, it becomes a problem. And that's where we're at.

And we're both at the same point, I think, of like looking at our card collections and saying, what can we do to trim them way, way back? And that's what we'll discuss in today's main event. Yeah, you know, it's funny. I was just, it was at the Hyatt Regency Grand Cyprus recently. I ran into a reader named Lenny. Hi, Lenny, if you're out there listening to the podcast. And he was talking to me about cards and how many he has and how.

His wife thought he was crazy, but then, you know, when we talked about how many we all had on and ask us anything, he was like, look, see, see, they have more. And that's not what I want, Lenny, for the record. I don't want to encourage you to have more cards than what you should have for you. So this is important and an important episode, and I look forward to talking about it. Remember, if you want to jump forward to that where you want to come back to something else later on, you can always find the timestamps in the show notes. So just expand the show description box to find that wherever you're watching or listening. Don't forget to like this. Give us a review.

leave us some stars, all those things. We appreciate that wherever it is you're watching or listening. All right. Let's drag out this week's giant mail bag. All right. Today's giant mail comes from G.H. G.H wrote in with some tips from a trip to South America that they took. And I just want to pull out one specific thing that G.H.

wrote about. Jet smart flights. So in Argentina, G.H. took a domestic flight and said, I used Advantage Miles to book JetSmart. This is a new feature that JetSmart only brought online mid-year of last year. The pricing is dynamic, but if you pay attention, there's value to be had. To redeem AA Miles, simply log into JetSmart website using your American Airlines credentials, and then you can redeem your miles.

It's not possible to do it via the American Airlines site. Very interesting. That's a great little tip to have in my own. I did not realize, or I guess I had forgotten. I sort of remember hearing about this whole partnership at some point, but I think it kind of went in one ear and out the other for me. I mean, I'm pretty sure we talked about it on a show that JetSmart was adopting American Airlines as their currency.

And I'm sure at the time that we reported it, we had no idea how it would work. And I have to say, I've never followed up to find out how it would work. And so I find it really interesting because I can't think of really any other situation that's like this where you not only use a different airlines' miles currency, but you can't book it through that other airline. What you have to do is log into this airline, JetSmart, but use your American Airlines credentials. Is that like, that's just a sort of bewildering combination and something that like, I don't think I would have ever thought to do without hearing something like this. So I think that's a great tip. And, you know, JetSmart, I just looked at the route network.

They mostly fly all around South America. So if you're going to South America, it's worth taking a look and see if those flights can work for you, especially if you have American Airlines miles that you can use for those flights. Fantastic tip. Really good tip. All right. Let's move forward to this week's card news. We've got some card news out. First up, the Air France-KLM Flying Blue Card has now, well, that hasn't yet changed, but is due to change, is going to change. It's been announced that it's going to change from a master card to a visa to a visa. So it's long been a mastercard. Soon will be a visa. So they're kind of relaunching the card with a new set of benefits meant to apply to that, but many of them apply even for those that our current card holders. with the MasterCard. So it has a new introductory bonus. The Welcome bonus is 70,000 miles after meeting the minimum spending requirement. I can't remember if it's three or four or five thousand dollars in the first few months, something in that range. So 70,000 miles and 100 XPs, which is their metric for earning elite status. Think of it like their MQDs or their elite qualifying miles. XPs is what

they call them with Air France KLM Flying Blue. So you get 70,000 miles and 100 XP's. Key features of the card. It's got 3x dining, so that's decent. Also, 3x on Air France and KLM and what I missed when I first looked at this and Sky Team. So that includes like 3X on Delta, I guess. And so it's 3X on dining, 3X on all your Sky Team stuff, and then 1.5x everywhere else. That's long been the standard everywhere else rate of this particular card. But what they're adding now on top of the 3X Sky Team is the ability to earn more XP's. So if you care about earning elite status with Air France KLM or Sky Team Elite status,

then you can earn up to 160 XP's each year just from the card. You get 20 XP's at anniversary. Then you can earn another 80 XP's on top of that on anniversary when you spend $15,000 or more the previous cardholder year. And another 60 XP's on top of that when you spend 25K, the previous cardholder year. So when your card renews, you could end up, again, earning 160 XP's. And so that would stack nicely on top of whatever you've earned from flying. Yeah. And I want to talk a little bit about Flying Blue elite status.

So it works differently from like the American airline programs where, you know, that are mostly about you have one set year in which to earn status. And then you get it for the rest of the that year, all of the next. Next, this one's different. It's sort of a rolling year situation. And here's how it works. When you get to 100 XPs within a rolling year, that'll get you silver status. Then when you earn an additional 180 XPs, that'll move you from silver to gold. And then from there, you need another 300 XPs to get to platinum.

So that's confusing, right? Because you say 100 for silver and then another 180 for gold. So it sounds like I need 280 for gold. It's right. It sounds that way. And I guess you do, except if you do something. Yeah. But yeah, ish.

You know, I think that you don't need to get the 280 to renew gold because I think, I don't know. Yeah. No, you're right. Right, you're right. The key is it's a rolling 12 months. So you've got 12 months to earn 100 to get silver. And then you have silver for 12 months and you've got 12 months to earn another 180. So you essentially, you could take your time and earn gold status over like two years, depending on how you do it. So it's not a single year 280. It's 280 before your silver winds down. So I mean, if you earn silver from one trip somehow, I don't know how many XP's off the top of my head, you earn from what. But if you earn from what, but if you earn you. were to do that somehow, then you'd have a year and that's it to get your gold. But if you kind of slowly earn your 100 XP's over the course of the year, you're going to get a whole other year to earn another 180 to get to gold. So it's different in that way and probably requires some more time and thought and how you're going to earn them. But Craig's point there is that once you

earn gold, then you just need another 180 and 12 months to keep gold for another 12 months beyond that. And so it's it's different than other part. You don't need two. 280, you just need another 180 after that. So if you get to gold, the card could make it relatively easy to keep gold. That's right. That's what I was going to say. So since the card lets you earn 160 XP with 25K annual spend, if you can do that easily, then you're only 20 XP each year from maintaining gold status. And so if you're interested in Flying Blue gold status, that's interesting.

I'm kind of interested in it for another reason. I haven't fully thought through this whole thing yet, but there's a path to platinum status here. And I'm going to talk for a minute about why that platinum status is interesting. But the built platinum status, so why am I talking about built? Right, right. Why am I talking about built? Because if you have built platinum status, there's an option to get Air France,

flying blue gold status by transferring 10,000 miles to 10,000 points to flying blue. And I did that in January. So I have flying blue gold status now. So because of the way they do their status thing, I don't need to start over. I could, if I could earn 180, right? No, no. I'm at gold. So if I can earn 300 XP's, I would.

I will get to platinum status. And before, that seemed like totally out of reach. But now with this, you know, I could get more than halfway to that with spend on the, the Sarah France card if I sign up for it. Plus, it has this 100 XP sign up bonus. Now, what I don't know is the timing. Because if the sign up bonus comes. It just kind of depends when the sign-up bonus hits and when the annual renewal XP's hit as to whether that would all stack and make it happen.

But if it does, then, you know, I'm a spinning distance from platinum. Okay. So why do I care? The reason I care, but I don't care tremendously, but it would be kind of cool. There's two reasons. One, and this is the bigger reason for me, is that Flying Blue Platinum status gives you better access to saver-level awards on Air France and KLM. So that means that, you know, flying out of Detroit, there's a Air France flight to Paris that hardly ever has business class award availability at less than, I don't know, 200,000 one way, something like that. I should start to see availability at like under 100K, like often if I had platinum status

theoretically. I have no real good way of checking that without help. Anyway, assuming that's true, I mean, that would obviously be really valuable. It'd be a nice, easy way for us to get to Europe when we want to and in business class. The other reason is that Flying Blue, or Air France is known to have an incredible first class experience. and they don't let you use miles to book first class unless you have platinum status or above. So if I wanted to book Air France first class in order to experience all that, I need platinum status if I want to use Miles to do it.

I'm, you know, as much as a lot of people in this hobby, like, you know, see that as a big carrot. To me, that's not that big of a deal because, for one, Air France, doesn't fly their first class out of Detroit. So I'd have to position just to do this at all. And there are so many other good opportunities out there for flying like really great first class products that don't require getting platinum status with Air France. That it's just not something that I necessarily am going to go way out of my way for.

But again, the better business class awards base would be nice. Yeah, you know, I think I think it's worth a mention. here when we talk about earning status with flying blue, that it is Sky Team status. So to give you some benefits when you fly Delta, not the same types of benefits as having Delta status and not the same types of reciprocal benefits that you find with One World and Star Alliance in general. They're weaker with Sky Team. However, not absent entirely with Sky Team.

And also, if you're someone who flies Delta a bit and you don't really care about Delta elite status, you could be crediting those Delta flights to Flying Blue. and potentially bridging some of these gaps here. So, and Greg, you've got diamond status for years, right? So if you were to take one year of your Delta flights and just credit those to flying blue on top of, you'd probably get there pretty easily, right? I think it would be pretty easy. And in fact, you know, my wife also has diamond status, which one of the choice benefits you

get are these global upgrade certificates. And so what we do sometimes is we buy. premium economy for international flights, and then we use our global upgrades to upgrade to business class. So when we're doing that, I could put my Air France flying blue number on those reservations, use my wife's upgrades to get us in a business class. I don't know whether I would earn Air France XP's based on business class or premium economy, but either way, if we do that or a business class,

few times. That should be a lot of XPs. Right, right, right. So I think you can hit platinum and I'm curious to hear how that works out. So I hope you do it for the sake of science. But, but I think a big question mark that Greg mentioned is the timing. And if you get it, then you probably get why he's saying that. And if you don't get it, then it's complicated to explain. But it really just, it kind of depends on the timing of when those things hit because you don't know exactly when the 100 XPs from the signup bonus will hit. And more importantly, he's got. presumably you have gold status for 12 months, right? So you have gold status from whenever you picked it in January until January of next year. So in order to get the anniversary, you know,

point XP's from the flying blue card, you'd need to start spending like quick depending on if you have or already have the card, then just depends on when your anniversary is. If you don't and you sign up for the card now, I don't know when those points are going to, you know, are they going to be on a year from today? Are they going to post? Who knows? So exactly when. And And that's the hard part. Yes. Yeah, I don't have the card right now. So that is that is the thing. Yeah, yeah. All right. Well, we'll see. I'm curious to find out how it all shakes out. But that's going to be one of those long ones where we won't know the final answer for a while. Right. All right. Next step in card news, we got the Capital One Venture Rewards card out with a new offer.

This one's come around before. It's back again. 75,000 points, 75,000 capital one miles and a $250 travel credit after $4,000 in purchases in the first few months, three months, I believe. So this is, I think, the best offer we see on the venture card usually. Again, this is venture, not venture acts. So I don't know. What do you think? Is that good, bad? Are you indifferent about it? What do you think? Yeah, I mean, I think if it's a, it's a very good, solid offer, I would, if you have any interest in this card, I would definitely pick it up. It's, you know, for 95, You get 2x transferable points everywhere, no foreign transaction fee. So if you want to just really keep things simple with low annual fees, this is a really good option.

Now, for many people, that's not what they'd be interested in. And for a number of reasons, one, anyone willing to spend a bit more $3.95 on the Venture X, you get more benefits from it and even more credits that, you know, offset the entire. entire annual fee. So VentureX could be better. And for people who have a collection of different cards, the venture may not be interesting. But for someone who just wants to keep things simple, I think it's a really good choice. And so if you're interested in it, good time to get it. Yeah, you know, I met up with a friend just the other day that I hadn't seen in years. And he was asking about what I do and we were talking about it and blah, blah,

and he said, so what's the one card I should get? And I said, well, you know, starting out, I think I'd tell you the venture card. And that was before the offer even increased because they said it's really simple. It's easy. You're going to get 2x everywhere. It's not a huge investment. Because the Venture X, yes, is a better deal at $3.95 because of the credits and the anniversary miles probably. But for somebody who's just starting out, a $400 card is probably going to seem like too much of a hurdle. So I think this is a great place to start for somebody who's starting. I also think it's an interesting comparison point now with the built Palladium card because the Palladium card, you know, we've really been comparing it to the venture X, but as a comparison point to the venture card, you could have a lot less

complication for just $95 and still earn 2X everywhere. Now, I mean, there's reasons why you can compare them in more detail, I guess. But, but I think it's interesting. I think the $250 credit after 4K spend here that is added on to the welcome bonus, that's the part that adds on to the welcome bonus here. And I think that's a smart play for Capital One. They've been trying to get people to book through their travel center. I've long had a venture card. And I've got a got an offer the other day for 20x miles on my first Capital One travel booking. They really seem to be trying to push that. And that's really the big gap between this and the Venture X card. But anyway, I think for 2X everywhere, very simple, no hoops to jump through, nothing else

to think about. This is pretty good. Yep. All right. Next up, Built. We've been mentioned built a couple times in the notes here, but built has finally released details about built cash, or at least some of the details, there's more to come yet. And not surprisingly, it's kind of a confusing mess, just like their rollout. And if you want to catch up on the confusing mess that is Bilt's rollout of their 2.0 card collection. I really recommend you read Stephen Pepper wrote a post called Why You Should Be Cautious of their new card setup. Well, he called it Built 2.2. Doe. Like, Dole! Why you should be cautious of their new card set up. And so read that. It's a fun and interesting read. But anyway,

just a little bit about Built Cash. What we've learned is there's, there are as expected, strict limits on how much you can use and how often. So, for example, there's a number of ways you can use built cash only up to $5 per month. So you could use it for like Bilt's GoPuff delivery service or for certain parking structures. Basically, my understanding is you use the built app to get $5 credit towards one of these things. And then you apply that credit somehow with the, whoever the vendor is. Then there's up to $10 per month for credits for Grubhub, Lyft, and Walgreens.

There's $25 per month. These are limits now of how much you could spend and build cash at participating restaurants via mobile dining checkout, which there's very few such restaurants in the world yet. They do claim that the rollout is expanding to thousands of restaurants nationwide, So we'll hold our breaths and see what happens there. But there are some interesting things in there, like a point accelerator that lets you trade a bunch of built cash for earning extra points on your built credit cards. And we'll analyze all that in future posts and probably podcasts. But for now, let's just say that there's a lot there to absorb.

And I'm glad they finally have detail. I really wish they had this detail at card launch. And we'll see how that all plays out. So good stuff there. All right. Next up, let's talk about how we've been Bonvoid this week. Qantas has bonvoid us by nerfing Emirates First Class Awards. Uh-oh.

So I think the first question on a lot of people's minds is, what? You can book Emirates first class with Quantis Miles? Yeah. So last year, Emirates stopped allowing their members to use their Emirates points to book first class unless they had elite status with Emirates. But a really easy workaround was to use your Qantas points to book, so Emirates and Qantas are partners, and you could transfer to Qantas from a few transferable points programs. And so the workaround was to book first class Emirates flights with Qantas miles.

Now, not surprisingly, it seems Emirates must have leaned on. them to say, hey, you've got to stop doing that. So now you have to have Quantus elite status in order to do it. Plus, they raise their prices as well, or about to raise their prices as well. So there goes that easy solution. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Unfortunately, it just seems that Emerits doesn't want people redeeming miles for first class anymore. So which is odd to me because they got so much advertising out of that essentially. Like there were so many people writing about. Emeritus first class all the time and there were pictures of it and people sharing it on social media and I mean, not that Emirates probably wouldn't have gained some fame on their own,

but it just seems to me like, man, that was such a marketing tool for them that didn't cost them all that much probably. But right. Yeah. Yeah. You know, my guess is they felt like it cheapen the product. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe the paying customers don't like it when people are on the same flight bragging about how they got it for free kind of thing. I don't know. I suppose so. Yeah, there's still one workaround that I'm aware of. If you want to fly Emirates First Class with Miles, and that's to book with Emirates Miles business class. And then at the airport, I believe you can still upgrade to first class, if any, first class seats are still available. So I did that, yeah, I did that after Emirates made its changes and was

able to do that on my flight from Milan to JFK. And so as far as I know, that trick still works. Very good. All right. Awards points and more. So an awards points and more this week, speaking of tricks, we've got a Delta trick that you wrote about a while ago that's come back again. Yeah. So, you know, overtime, Delta has made award bookings on their own flights less and less valuable, more and more tied to the cost of the flight. And so it's not unusual. In fact, it's usual for, you know, business class international flights to cost hundreds of thousands of Delta Sky Miles. A trick that used to work to avoid that is to book Delta flights from and to non-US locations. So, for example, from Mexico to Australia. And the flights might actually go through

America, like you might start in Mexico City, go through L.A. and then to Sydney, for example. But they were pricing at much more reasonable rates when you did it that way. And that trick over time, like eradicated for most destinations, most from two destinations, but it appears to be back, at least between Mexico and the rest of the world. So there's some really good value to be had there if you want to position to Mexico or have your flight end up in Mexico and maybe you get off in L.A. Just saying. Okay.

Okay. So moving forward here. Let's talk next about Alaska. So Alaska, the Alaska Visa Signature card has the $99 companion fare that you can earn through spend. And we recently talked about how it no longer works on a multi-city booking. And Alaska heard our thoughts before we even spoke them out loud, I think, and managed to put this back. So now you can use your companion fair again with the multi-city tool with the regular booking. engine. Apparently it was working with the old legacy booking engine if you'd figure out how to get that to come up. But you can once again use the companion fares with the multi-city tool, which is certainly a nice addition for a lot of reasons, but certainly one of them for people who are

hunting Alaska elite status and want to do an old school mileage run, the ability to make a multi-city booking is nice, especially because both people on those companion fairs do earn Alaska miles based on distance flown if that's the metric that you're using for your Alaska elite status. Yeah. Alaska conveniently waited until we created a how-to video in which we asserted that you can no longer do the multi-city tool. And so now we have to redo that video. So thanks Alaska and thanks Alaska, both sarcastically and not. And finally, under awards points and more, you can now book Aer Lingus via American Airlines Advantage. And I think that that's been possible for a while, but it's possible to do online now, right? That's right. So that's a nice, you know, a new feature. So Air Lingus often has really good business class award availability between the states and Ireland. So having, if you have American Airlines miles, the ability to book that can be really nice. Plus, they should be able to let you do connections like, you know, maybe fly American Airlines to.

wherever the departing place is Boston and then onward to Dublin, for example. So that's a nice addition. Yeah, it's not the fanciest business class ever, but it's a flatbed seat. You know, I'm kind of with two minds on this, though, to be honest, because the overnight flights from the East Coast to Dublin, it's so short that it's hard to get any sleep. So I've done this, but I've flown airling as to Dublin in business class. And I said I probably wouldn't do that again, not because, I mean, it's a flatbed seat.

So it's not a bad way to fly, of course. Obviously, it's more comfortable than flying in an economy class seat. But it's such a short flight that I'm not terribly enthusiastic about it as a great way to get to Europe. It's better than not being able to lie down. But I would just say, think about that. And if you're looking at a farther distance, if you're looking at one of their routes that's a little bit farther than New York or Boston or D.C. to Dublin, then it might be a little bit more appealing. You know, sometimes people fly the other direction, though. And for those daytime flights, that could be a great deal.

For sure. Absolutely. Yep. All right. That brings us to today's main event. Main event time. Regular listeners know that we love transferable points. And Billet has a terrific set of transfer partners.

Hyatt, United Airlines, Alaska Airlines, Air Canada, Air France, and many more. You can earn Bill points paying rent and at restaurants, fitness studios, pharmacies, online shopping, and more. And now, starting in February, built members can earn points on mortgage payments too. Join the loyalty program for renters at joinbilt.com slash miles. That's J-O-I-N-B-I-L-T dot com slash miles. Make sure to use our URL so they know that we sent you. Discarding our card collections.

Over time, Nick and I have accumulated lots of cards. And when we look at them individually, one by one, each one could be worth keeping. But that sort of ignores the big investment in money, time, headspace for dealing with all these cards. Because usually a card is worth keeping because you can do something with it. Like, you know, use it to get a free hotel night or use it to, you know, get a discount off this, that, or the other thing. And when that's the case, it means there's a lot to keep track of a lot to do to make sure the card is worth keeping. And at that point, you got to wonder, is it really worth keeping if it's causing all that work? And the recent explosion in hotel credits

has really brought things to a head, at least for me. So all the new cards seem to have hotel credits with them. And so, of course, doing what we do, we get all the new cards. And now we're stuck with like, you know, we've got to book a two-night's stay with this card and book a fine hotels and resorts with this card and book, you know, the edit two-night stays with that card and so on and so forth. And it's mind-boggling. And it means it's time to trim our card collections. And that's what we've been working on. Yeah, you know, you mentioned the headspace that it takes up. And there was there was so much time near the end of the year and near the ends of quarters where I'm like, okay, what have I forgotten?

And I sit there trying to think through and double check and make sure I've used everything. And I think the thing for me has become that like, you know, in this game when you, when you have a big win, you know, you get that excitement. It's sort of like a runner's high, right? You're like, redeem points for a great business class or first class or a great hotel redemption or I use this or use that. And, and that's fun. But I think that the negative feeling of, oh, my goodness, I missed out on that credit has

become like something that weighs on me a bit more. And it's a bit more significant than. the winds at this point. So it's like, I don't want to, I don't want to experience that. I don't want to be like, oh, I forgot to use this again or I forgot to use that. So I'm definitely taking a closer look at things. I think it's important that we mention that this is not meant to be a recipe for you, the listener, necessarily. We're going to talk about our thinking and how we think through this, but it's important that each person should be thinking about these things differently. And in fact, you'll notice that there are some things where Greg's analysis doesn't necessarily match up with my

feeling on a benefit here or there or the other way around. And that's because we have different lives, different situations, and different ways of looking at some of the various credits. And you probably do too. So you should take a look at it and think about it yourself. But I think it's important that you do think about it because it is easy in this hobby to get caught up in the hype and end up with more cards than you need. And it's not just the fact that, yeah, there's a lot of cost involved in that. And that's certainly an issue in and of itself. But also a lot of the mental effort and using everything. And when you use it, if you're spending a whole bunch of money on annual fees, you should be getting far more in value. If you're spending a whole bunch of annual fees and just

getting the annual fees back, then it's like, oh, is it worth the time you're putting into making sure you get those back? It should be an outsized value situation. Anyway, let's talk more about this and your thinking on some of your cards. Yeah, sure. So some of my rethinking has involved what Nick was just talking about of like I don't like having to worry about did I miss out on this coupon or that coupon and so if if a if a card is only a keeper because I use those coupons then that's a sign it's probably ought not be a keeper at all right so what I've been doing especially for the most expensive cards is I'm looking at the perks that have real solid value without much thought or work that I have to put into it.

And there are ones, like the Safraer Reserve card, the $300 travel credit. I mean, I spend that every year. I get that $300 with literally without thinking about it. And usually within the first month that it's available because I use that card to book flights and hotels and stuff. And it just happens. So that's sort of maybe the most extraordinary. extreme example, but there's plenty of others where, you know, they take just the smallest amount of headspace, and so I'm good with them.

And the way I've been rethinking things is this. Like, if a card has enough value on those things that are like easy, and then I can lump all those other coupons, any that, there's a bunch that I value. you a little bit, but not enough to really assign a dollar amount to. So I kind of lump them all into a pile together and say, is this worth anything to me? This pile of benefits, if not, don't consider it as to whether to keep it or not. I'll give some examples and maybe it'll be more clear as I go on. Then after I do all the work of like the math to say, given the easy-to-use stuff, the stuff I really value, is this really worth paying the annual fee?

Even after that, I have to do another sanity check, which is, is the card more than a minor moneymaker? For example, if a card, let's say a card costs $500 a year and it has $550 and easy-to-use rebate, you know, ones that I don't have to think about, then it's a $50 moneymaker. But if the card doesn't give me any other benefits, then it's still draining my, my, you know, thoughts a little bit. And so I want to discard it then. So that's what that final check is about, that I'm not going to keep those minor, minor advantage ones. Yeah, you know, I think, though, that there's also finally one other thing to add here and I think about it.

And that's that Greg and I blog about these things. So for us, there's a career in having some of these cards. And so there's some minor value that, you know, like if the platinum card adds a new benefit, I want to be able to experience it and write about my experience with it and blah, blah, blah. And so there's like some little piece of holding on to certain cards where that comes into play for us and it shouldn't for you as listener probably in most cases.

And really good point. Keep that in mind also that there is perhaps in some cases even a little bit of bias on our part where we're like, oh, well, yeah, I like this benefit enough, but, you know, maybe subconsciously we're holding on to that a little bit because I want to get in the lounge too, so I can say whether it was good or bad, you know, so keep that in mind as all I'm saying. Yeah, yeah. All right, I'm going to give an example that this is probably the most complex example. It's the Sapphire Reserve card. It's been on my mind a lot. I posted my thoughts about it. And we'll include a link to that in the show notes.

It's super complicated because the card has become super complicated. That's one thing. They've taken away the simple earning and redemption structure and made it a complicated mess. The same time, there's things that I really like about the new card, and there's things I really dislike. And some things when the card first came out that I thought I would like, I don't like. so much. Anyway, so that's all why it's complicated. So let me try to explain my thinking about

the Sapphire Reserve card and whether it's a keeper for me. And again, I do not expect anyone to have the same math as me. Not a single person should have the same math as me because everybody values things differently. All right. So what I did, you know, when I originally looked at the card, I saw that it has these $250 credits for the edit, and I thought, oh, how much would I be willing to prepay for these credits and so on? And after time of using the edit credits, the answer is zero. It's so often that I look up hotels and they're more expensive through the edit to where the $250 credit is kind of meaningless, especially it requires a two-night stay. However, there are sometimes where the edit is not overpriced and it can give you a really good deal.

So I like having that benefit, but I don't really want to give it any value independently. So what I did is I took all of the travel benefits that I value a bit, but have a hard time giving a specific dollar value to and lump them together. So these are my bundled travel benefits for the Sapphire Reserve card. It earns 4X for flights and hotels. I value that, especially in the hotel side, being able to just use my Sapphire Reserve card when I'm checking into a hotel and know that I'm going to get great value from any spend at that hotel. 8X travel through Chase, so I value that a little bit.

I don't book a lot of travel through Chase, but sometimes when I'm booking flights, I'm willing to do that and get eight points per dollar on top of airline miles from a flight. That's a really good deal. Best in Class Travel protections. That's something that I also get through the Ritz Carlton card. But what the Ritz doesn't get me is when booking flights, good value from my point earnings when booking flights, whereas Sapphire Reserve gives you both at once. And that's why lumping these all together makes more sense to me than treating them one by one.

Similarly, points boost. So points boost is this thing where sometimes your points can be worth up to two cents each. through Chase travel, most of the time not. Most of the time they're worth one cent unless, well, I'm not going to get into the hole unless it's very complicated. But the idea here is that there are times where points boosts is at 2x or 1.75x and I look at it and say, oh, that's a good deal. So I like having it. But if someone came to me and said, hey, would you prepay for the ability to this points boost feature? used, yeah, right.

You know, of course not, no way, but I still value it a bit. So that's why I like having it bundled into what I'm calling my, the travel benefits bundle. And same thing with the $250, the edit credit, which you get to use two times per year. I'm not going to prepay for it, but I can't say it's not worth something. So put it in there and say, for this collection of things, I'm actually looking at it's like, if I could get a credit card that just had this collection of things, how much of an annual fee, would I be willing to pay for this card? And so I came up with $150 as a conservative estimate. It's possible I'd pay even more than that, but I want to be conservative with these estimates. So that's what I gave to this travel benefit bundle. So keep in mind, that's,

that includes $500 of the edit credits and all these other things. Only 150 is what I'm putting there. I don't know. See, I said, I told you before, we will disagree on some of these. And for me, I'm like, yeah, but four X flights and hotels, like there's other credits that offer three X. And so how much do I value that one X extra? And the eight X travel book through Chase, I'm not booking much travel through Chase. So that's not really valuable to me. The edit credits, yeah, I mean, they might come in handy, but I had a hard time using them. I did get kind of lucky. I made a booking on December 31st that seems to have triggered both my 2025 credit and my first 2026 credit, which was kind of wild and crazy. So I was happy with that. But overall, but I don't, that was a booking. I wasn't even really planning on that. I just was like, I got to use it on something. So I made a booking like in Dubai where I have no idea if we're going to go to Dubai. Probably not. So, so that's going to end up probably not being even something that works out. I don't know if I'd pay 150, but I like the way you're looking at it. I think it's an interesting way to look at it. How much would I pay just for those things over my next, my other options? You know, would I pay 150 for this? Because

I know I'm going to have some other cards that offer A, B, and C. And so you're like, no, this is the one I would have for 150. So, all right. Exactly. Exactly. That's how I'm thinking. And I would have been shocked if you came to the same number as me, right? Right, of course. That's not the point of this. The point is to say individually, what is it worth you. All right. Then I looked at there are coupons that the Sapphire Reserve card has that I do value individually. So I could look at each one like $300 travel credit. I'm going to say I would prepay $285 for that.

I mean, there's some loss because you don't earn points on that. $300 a spend. The free Apple TV plus, that's just sort of a gimmy for me because I was paying for it anyway. So I just value that at the $99 that you could book, that you could pay for an Apple TV annual subscription. And Sapphire Reserve Exclusive tables. This is the one I'm sure that Nick has a very different value than me. So Safari Reserve Exclusive tables.

It's a very limited set of restaurants available across the United States, mostly just in really major cities. And what you get is twice a year. So once every six months, $150 back when you spend from anything you spend at one of these qualifying restaurants. So this is one, unlike the edit, where I went from valuing that highly to. saying I wouldn't prepay anything for it. I've sort of gone the other way with this. I've used this now twice and I've actually found it fun. So I like, my wife and I like enjoy like going out of our way to, you know, highly rated fancy restaurants and trying trying out the inn chef and all that kind of stuff. And so I've had a couple very positive experience.

and so to me it's fun. I wouldn't obviously value it at the full $300, but I'm saying $200 here. Yeah, that's interesting. That's the one you thought I would feel differently about. So travel credit, I would say I would have a very similar view. In almost any month, I spend almost $300 on travel, probably. So one way, whether there's award taxes for even a speculative booking or one thing or another, there's always something that I'm spending on. So $300 travel credit I always find really easy. using 285 is good. The free Apple TV I value it nothing at all. I haven't even activated it from so we haven't used it at all. So we never had Apple TV plus we still don't. So that doesn't doesn't do anything for me. The exclusive tables though, interestingly, so I didn't like this at all

in the beginning. I was very much like a, because like Greg said, it's it was basically only available in the most major of cities. They've expanded it though some. So there are some more cities now than there were before. The reason why I don't disagree with Greg as much as he anticipated is because quite a few of these places, you can buy gift cards online and it, it tends to work. Now, I say it tends to work. It depends on the restaurant. You have to look around online, probably for data points in terms of what works and what doesn't. But generally speaking, if it's going through like the same sort of register system like Toastab or something, it's probably going to work. And so like in my case, I have a booking later this year in a faraway place, not for that far away, across the United States

anyway. And so we're going to take a trip. And so I looked around for restaurants near where we're going to be. And I found some place that was on there. And I was like, oh, well, you know what? They got a menu that fits. We're going to go out to eat anyway because we're going to be there for a few days. That works for me. Let me see if it will work. And I made, I ordered online. I ordered a gift card. And boom, it worked. And as a family of four, I'm going to easily spend more than $150 on dinner probably. So almost any time we go to a restaurant restaurant, obviously it depends if you go to like a mid-tier or a fast food place, I'm not going to spend that much. But if I go to like a nicer restaurant anyway, then it's easy to spend that much. So I thought, well, that's great. I could use

that. I use that in December for my 2025 credit to buy a gift card for a time I'm going to eat in July of 26. So I'll use the other $150 credit together with that. Now, I don't know how I'm going to use my January to June necessarily. But my point is that, you know, you know, you know, you can be a little creative like that to kind of combine forces and put it together. So actually, I don't disagree too highly with the $200 valuation here because we're going to go out to eat when we're on a trip anyway. And even though I don't live anywhere near any of the major cities, I'm probably going to visit a couple of them every year anyway. So I think maybe I'd pay to a 200 maybe a little high for me, but only a little bit. I actually think this benefit is improving.

Yeah. And the thing is, I think that people who live in areas, that don't have these restaurants nearby and who don't travel frequently to more major destinations than zero, yeah. Right. You know, you may use it once a year or whatever, but, you know, if you can't count on that, then zero. I forgot to mention another reason I started really liking it.

I haven't used it for this yet, but one restaurant that in Detroit that Pam and I tried recently and loved, it's called Ladder for Wine. it recently got added to the list. And so I was very excited to see it added to the list. And I also saw just yesterday, as we're recording this, that the chef has a James Beard nomination coming up. So that's, I don't know, that's not really relevant to that. But you know what?

I'm glad you mentioned all that because that brings up a good point that we probably mentioned at least once before on the podcast. But if anybody missed that episode, I'll remind you, double check that the restaurant you're intending to use with one of these is still on there before you make your charge because we have seen now restaurants added and subtracted and we've at least heard from at least one reader so far already that went to dinner at a place that was on the list but got removed before they went to eat there and then didn't get the credit because of that. So take a close look, keep an eye on that.

That's almost an argument in favor of seeing if you can get the gift card up front actually to make sure that it triggers before you go somewhere. But yeah, totally agree. I live in the middle of nowhere. And if I didn't travel as frequently as we do, then totally. This would be a zero dollar benefit for me because there aren't any restaurants nearby. And the chances of me like kind of squeezing in one of the qualifying ones into a trip might be low. And so I think a lot of people will value that much less.

Yeah. Okay. Then there are other coupons that I value some, but it's really hard to define how much I value them. That includes the $300 in Stubhubh rebates, you know, monthly $10 lift credits, monthly DoorDash benefits, free Apple Music. They all have some value to me, but it's more like with most of them like Stubhub, it's not that I'm saving money. It's that I'm getting extra experiences that I wouldn't have gotten otherwise is how I've been using it so far. lift it's like yeah I do lift enough that I'm probably going to use it two three four times a year but you know I'm not going to prepay you know right 20 bucks to maybe use it four times year so

that's that's the kind of thing and that's why I just said all right that collection of coupons all together if someone said to me here here's a subscription to get $300 stuff up blah blah blah all this other stuff, how much would you pay? I sort of out of there, I said, all of a hundred, hundred bucks sounds good for all that. I'm, I'm sure I'd get at least $100 in value. I'll probably get much more, but that's sort of the safe amount that I'd be willing to prepay. I think that's pretty fair. I like the subhub rebate more than you do, I think, not because I was using subhub a lot, more so because there are a lot of times when we're like, oh, we should have done this or we should do that, but I just, I don't prioritize it. And sometimes I

probably should. And my wife's been wanting to go to Dancing with the Stars forever. And I just kind of keeps saying, oh, yeah, one of these days, we'll go see the Dancing with the Stars Tour and it keeps going out of mind. And then I had this credit to use and I was like, oh, you know what? Dancing with the Stars on tour is coming through. Let me get tickets and I'll, you know, use that as a gift. And, like, it worked out well because it kind of forced me to look at it and use it. Now, that was money I wasn't going to spend. So you could argue with me. It's not worth anything. And I wouldn't argue too hard back with you. But on the flip side, I say, well, that's something, though, that at least put it front of mind and made me prioritize that. And she'll be all the happier for it. So it works out well.

Okay. And so my total, and again, I can't stress this enough. This is, you know, my estimates came up to $834 that I would prepay for this set of benefits. That's $39 more than the annual fee. So, you know, based on the calculations, it's a keeper. And before you scream, why would you keep a card for $39 dollar profit. I'm going to have, I'm going to talk in a few minutes about why this is not about profit at all. Profit is a different equation. This is, this is how much will I conservatively be willing to pay for this set of benefits? It's more than the annual fee, so I should be willing to pay the annual fee. That's the way to think about it. But let me get to that last thing. You remember earlier I said, is it a card more than just a minor moneymaker? So let's say,

I'm likely to get, I'll just make up an easy number, $1,000 in value from the actual coupons that I use and everything. And so I pay $7.95, so it's only a minor moneymaker of I would be earning like $205, basically, if I thought of it that way. in that case, you know, so if if that's all I was getting out of it was $205 in profit, then I don't know that I'd want to keep it. Because I've got to deal with all the coupons and everything. But for me, I really like the sort of peace of mind of knowing that for booking flights and hotels. I both earn really good point value from that and get best in class travel predictions.

That combination is valuable to me. And that's something I don't want to lose. So there's an incalculable thing that's like beyond the profit. You said it was $150. You already calculated it. What are you talking about? How much I'd be willing to prepay. But there's something, there's a, there's a,

a set of core perks in this card that I don't want to give up, I guess, as a way to say it. So it's more than just profit. Is that my sense? Yeah, okay. No, it's not very rational. You already said you would pay $150 for those things. So I guess what you're saying is really you'd be willing to pay more than $150 or, you know, or you value them more than you're willing to pay for them. Is that, I guess what you're saying?

No. I'm analyzing this part. it's not the math. So the math told me, told me it's a keeper. Right. Right. But then I'm doing a next level, which is like, just because the math tells me it's a keeper, would I lose anything besides like rebates by giving up this card?

Would I lose anything that I value, you know, by giving up this card? And I value that those travel benefits that I just mentioned. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm fighting with you a little bit here, but truth be told, I think that the, if you were to end up in a situation where you have to use the travel benefits once every five or 10 years, it would probably pay for itself in terms of like giving you far more than the $39 a year worth of profit. So I agree with that. That's not profit.

Well, okay. Well, okay. We'll get into that in a minute. All right. You're right. You're right. So the reason I'm getting. In the post I wrote about is Sapphire Reserve a Keeper for me, a number of comments came in overnight, basically saying, why would you do all this for $39 profit? And that's misunderstanding the point of the exercise. Let me just jump to that right now since we're talking about it. $39 means that I would pay $39 more than the annual fee to keep the card because I'm expecting far more value than that. that the extra value, that's the profit. So I know it's confusing. So I made up an, I made up an example. Okay. Let's say, let's say you shop at Kroger every week. All right. And someone comes to you and says,

hey, here's $300 in Kroger credits. Easy to use Kroger credits. How much will you pay me? You know, how much would you pay, prepay for the $300 in Kroger credits? And let's say you'd pay 200 you say I'd be willing to pay $200 all right now imagine uh there's a bank that has a $195 annual fee credit card that comes with $300 in Kroger discounts right um so you've already established that you would pay $200 for that so that's $5 more than the annual fee so that card is a keeper for you from that math but that doesn't mean it's a $5 profit right the profit is the fact that you're going to get $300 of Kroger stuff that you would have bought anyway for $195. The profit is $105. That's the profit. The equation that says $200 more than $195,

that's just a comparison to see, is it a keeper? It's not a profit. That's a submit at all. So we've landed on it. You're going to keep the Sapphire Reserve. you're finding that to be worth more than the cost of the annual fee. And I think that you've made lots of good points in there. You mentioned the Ritz card having similar travel protections. And that's something I've leaned on for years. But these last two years, I've spent more money on flights and hotels than I typically do. And it has pained me a few times to use the Ritz card to pay for an expensive flight or a hotel and earn less fewer points. And you might say why. My wife has a Sapphire Reserve. I know. I wasn't always organized. I have everything organized now, but I didn't always have the card number available at the time when I needed it, et cetera, et cetera.

So there are times when I put flights and hotels on the Ritz card that I wouldn't have necessarily wanted to. And so I think that that's an important calculation. That is worth something, that piece of mind. So all right. Okay. So your Sapphire Reserve, you found as a keeper, I'm not sure for the record, whether it would be a keeper for me. I've leaned towards no at the $795 price point, but it really comes down to me figuring out how much I'm willing to pay for the travel protections because not all the other benefits matter to me as much, but the travel protections do matter to me. So I haven't done the calculus on the Sapphire Reserve yet. I've got several more months. So we'll see as we approach the anniversary. But you had a couple other cards that you're thinking about.

Yeah. And last thing I want to say about the Sapphire Reserve is I expect that the majority. of people out there if they did the calculations like I did would decide it's not a keeper. I think that there's some of us that are in certain situations where totally makes sense. But if you're honest with yourself about how much you'd really be willing to prepay for these different things, I'm guessing the answer would be not that much. But anyway, I have no way of checking out. But for the record, I've been leaning towards, I'm at 424 right now.

I've been leaning towards applying for the Sapphire Reserve because in the first year, I think it's well worth it because you're going to be able to use all those benefits you just talked about, plus the welcome bonus, plus some of those benefits can kind of be double dipped into a second calendar year or a quarter half or whatever. So I think for the first year, it's easy to justify almost any card out there. They usually have welcomed an offer alone will do that. So, but we're talking on an ongoing basis here. Right, right. Okay. another one I looked at was the $325 Amex Gold Card.

So that comes with $120 in Uber credits, $100 Rezi credit broken up into six months, and other stuff like the $10 per month dining credit for things like Rub Hub. It earns four-ex at supermarkets and restaurants. It has refer-a-friend offers and Amex offers. There's all things that could be valuable. But when I looked at them, I said, all right, the Uber credits, I value that at about $100. Rezi credits, I value about $75, all those other miscellaneous things that I have a hard time like giving individual values to, but value a little bit. I said $50.

My total came up to $225. That would be willing to prepay for this set of perks. So it's not a keeper. In fact, I canceled our card yesterday as we're recording this. Wow, yeah, that's interesting. So yeah, I've been doing a similar thing here. And I value the Uber credits even less than you do on this. I've been using Uber because we've got platinum and gold cards. So I've been prioritizing making sure that we use it. But I don't live in an area served by Uber or Uber eats. So I have to keep in mind to use it whenever we're traveling. And there's been a time or two where we haven't used all of it. We usually use all of it. But now and then we haven't. So I don't really. care that much about the Uber credits on this one way or another. The Resi credit I like for very similar reasons. It's much more broadly usable than the Sapphire Reserve Tables credit and similar stuff there. But the other bundle stuff's been the stuff I've been struggling with,

like the 4X at supermarkets, 4X dining, you know, the ability to earn a good return on refer a friend or referring people. So that's been the stuff that I've kind of been struggling to value on this. but I've recently come to the conclusion that it's not worth $325 for me, that the extra 1X for supermarkets and dining over what I could earn on a multitude of other cards at 3X just doesn't give me enough to justify paying $325 for this. So I'm out on the gold card also. It's really hard, especially in those situations where you're earning an extra 1X on some span to really figure out how much do you value that.

I always struggle with that. In my case, it's not an issue. I still have the old city prestige card, so I get 5x for dining worldwide. And I have a few custom cash cards, which if I use them only for grocery, they each earn 5x on up to $500 spend. So I'm going to sort of juggle between a few custom cash cards and for my grocery spend, and I think that I'll cover most of it. So, yeah, really, the 4X wasn't much of a motivation for me at all.

Well, interestingly, so the 4X had been what's been weighing on me, 4X is because we just spent a fair amount at supermarkets. I don't have the old prestige card for the 5X dining, but I've got some cards that are in 3X dining, et cetera. For me, really, I think what's going to put me over the top here, I had a saver card for a while and then I product changed it, so I don't have that for 3X anymore. But really the, I think the built obsidian card is going to make the difference there for me because of some of the stuff we'll talk about in a future episode with built cash and the ability to to then do the point accelerator.

I think it's going to kind of replace my gold card for a lot less money and less headache because I can't tell you how many times we've had a discussion at home over, oh, we forgot to use the Uber credits or we forgot to use this or that. And I'm kind of looking forward to not because you have to do that. if you're going to pay $325 a year for the card, you've got to be willing to make sure you use everything in order to get value out of it. I'm not, I'm losing that at 320 or 225 or whatever at 250 that it was before. I was like, okay, but the increase to $325 has pushed me over the edge and said, you know what, I could pay $95 a year for a thank you premiere or for the obsidian and be done with it with much less headache.

Yeah, yeah. I don't know if I explain well enough when we were talking about the Safari Reserve how much bundling the coupons has really helped relieve my pressure about these things. So like by bundling the edit credits with other travel benefits and just saying how much I value all that, I'm at a point now where it's like I don't care whether I use that or not. I know I'm going to get more than the annual fees value from this card even if I don't use those credits at all. And with the other things like Stubhub and stuff, like, I mean, I do want to use at least $100 all the time. But I don't think that. Just through normal life, I'll easily exceed $100 in value from that whole set of coupons. So I'm not going to worry about individual ones.

Did I use this every month or every six months or whatever? I'm just not going to. And that's how I relieve the pressure on it. And that sort of works, sort of, except that I, I, look at it and I say, okay, but so if you took the $250 edit credit out, would you still be willing to pay $150 for everything else? Because when you say that you don't worry about using it at all, like, is that really true, though? Yeah, yeah, no, totally. You still pay $150 without that. Because, because, well, what it is, I'm thinking of it as it's a credit that's there in case,

uh, in case the occasion ever happens that booking through the edit is, is a good enough value to use that credit. And, um, that's going to happen sometimes. Um, um, that's going to happen sometimes. and other times it's not. I'm just not going to worry about whether it actually happens in a given time. It's curious. It's interesting. I'll be curious to hear what listeners think about that. Let us know in the comments. Is that a good move for Greg to reduce stress and be like, ah, it'll hit now and then and when it does great and when it doesn't. Oh, well, or are you on the boat that's like, no, if you're going to pay $100 a year, you've got to make sure you use that at least once a year. What do you think? Let us know in the comments. Let's see how the list is. Well, again, I'm pretty sure I would have paid the 150 for that bundle even without the edit credits. But it's hard to say because having the possibility of using it is worse something to me.

All right, right. That's the point. And so rethinking it to this way actually helped me at the end of last year because I had two of the edit credits that went unused. And when I reframe things this way, I was like, oh, yeah, it's no. big deal. It's something that that'll be totally cool. Okay. All right. So the gold card, we both agree. We're both out on the gold card, right? Yeah. Yeah. And I'll give you your 150 for the edit there. It makes some sense. I understand your argument there. All right. A big one in a lot of people's minds is the platinum card because at 895 now, I mean, that's an eye watering annual fee. Yeah. Yeah.

What do you think about the platinum card? All right. So I have started the year with six consumer platinum cards in my family. And when I look at the first one, just having one, it so easily pays for itself. It's absurd. So, you know, you get so many. It's not absurd, Amex. It makes a lot of sense.

Keep it up. There are so many. There are so many valuable coupons that are saving me real money that I very, very easily get, you know, well over $1,000 back and get to benefit by getting airport lounge access and Churian lounge access, escape lounges, 10 Delta lounge visits. I get elite status like Hilton Gold and, you know, rental cars and things like that. also you have miscellaneous coupons that I don't really see as getting money back but I see it as like free stuff like the Lulu Lemon stuff like yeah cool I got you know $75 free from from Lulu Lemon every every three months that's I've actually gotten some nice stuff so I enjoy that perk even if I don't consider it like a rebate because I'm not you know it's not

stuff I would have bought anyway so the real question for me is what about the second Platinum card because with the second platinum card you're not getting more lounge access with a minor thing about the delta lounges you get another 10 visits but let's just say no more lounge access clear credit which I value with the first one is irrelevant you know the elite benefits are irrelevant you don't get more elite by having a second one I have I value a little bit less the monthly digital entertainment credits. And that's because, like, for my first card, I subscribe to YouTube TV anyway,

which is more than $30 a month that that credit offers. So for the first card, it's just free, you know, free rebate, $30 a month. Boom. For the, you know, for the next one, though, I have, like, a bundle of streaming services that costs what like 21 bucks a month or something like that so i'm not getting the full value of that particular one so i value that one a bit less so when i look at the second consumer amics card

in my in my household um i have things like i value the airline fee credit let's say i'd prepay a hundred and fifty dollars for that two hundred dollars prepay three hundred dollars for the four hundred dollars resi credit i find those super super easy to use um and by the way that might not be true for you. I know people live in areas that don't have resi restaurants. So please, please, please don't say, you know, oh, why are you recommending, you know, valuing it that high? I'm not recommending it. I'm saying that's how much I would prepay. $150 for the 200 Uber, $200, oh, $200 for $600 hotel credit. So it's a interesting one. Yeah, why so low? Because it's sort of like what I was saying about the edit, but that I find these easier to use in the edit because you could book, find hotels and

resorts for one night's days. The prices don't tend to be as inflated as on the edit. But I often go long stretches without having any good use for them. And so I do think it's very, very likely that I will have at least one good use a year. And so, so, I do think it's very, very likely that I will have at least one good use a year. And so, you know, so I'm willing to pay $200 for that $300 discount once per year. Will I use it twice per year? Maybe. But I'm trying to make it so that I won't feel so much pressure to have to use it twice a year. And then for the $300 digital entertainment credit, I said $150.

So that totals to $9.50. and that's more than the annual fee. So once again, the second card is a keeper. However, you know, then I asked the big question, is it more than a moneymaker? Is it giving me something that I don't get otherwise? And this is where it's a little bit harder to sort of settle this. But I think it's right on the edge where having the ability of getting up to $600 in fine hotels and resorts credits each year. is a feature that I don't really want to give up.

So, like, because I'm going to be using it on the first card, I'm often going to be booking, if I'm going to be booking a knight with the first card, I'm probably going to be booking another night with the second card. And so, yeah, I'm having a hard time sort of articulating this, but it feels me like I'd be giving up something significant if I didn't have a second card. and that's wise. So I think a second card is a keeper. I'm not sure about a third. I haven't done that

math yet. Yeah, it's interesting because like you, I look at the collection of credits and on the first card, this just came up because the fee just hit on one of my consumer platinum cards. And I was like, oh, $900. I got to get rid of that. And I thought about it for a second. I was like, well, wait a second. No, that doesn't make sense. I added up the credits and how much I'm, I know I'm going to use. And again, this is not the ones like some of the ones Greg mentioned, like the digital entertainment credit, I don't even think I probably have set that up on a couple of our platinum cards and the ones that I have. There's one that matters to my wife and that's it really. So I don't care about the digital entertainment credits at all, but there's enough other stuff that I do use and care about that one platinum card was very easy.

I looked at it and I said, oh, wow, this is super easy for 900 bucks. I'll definitely get more value. And the question became, okay, well, how many platinum cards do we keep them? And I think your analysis here, like you came to $9.50 and what some people might say is, well, it's only $55 ahead. But like Greg made the point earlier, you have to realize it's more than that because like the $200 airline fee credit, he's valuing at $150, but he's still going to get $200 to use with the airline. And we'll soon in my household have two Southwest companion passes. And so I know I'm going to probably put those to good use to full use, because we'll have two passengers flying. quote-unquote for free with us once we have that. So, you know, a lot of those things, I say, okay, but yeah, he's really going to use the 200. He's really going to use the 400 Resi. So he's going to come out pretty well ahead. Now, am I going to come out as far ahead? It's harder to say without going through and kind of painstakingly doing that for yourself.

I think that one of the smart things that people would find surprising, and that's why I mentioned it, was Greg only valuing the $600 FHR credit at 200 because I think that's very. really the right way to look at it. I think the more and more hotel credits come up on cards, particularly these hotel credits that are tied to portions of the year, January to June and July to December, I think counting on using it both times is adding stress and difficulty and making you manufacture a trip that you maybe weren't going to take anyway. And so I think counting on using it once a year is a smart play in terms of how you think about the value. So I think valuing one of those $300 credits at $200, that's pretty spot on for me.

I like that analysis quite a bit. But then I also say, okay, well, he's paying $9.50 and he's probably going to use the 600. Now, if he wasn't somebody who is probably going to use the $600, then maybe I would, I'd be more like, it's only the $55. But I think it's likely he's going to use it. And so I would look at that and say, I think for Greg, the second platinum definitely makes sense. Does it make sense for me? I don't know.

You know, we have to look at that more carefully because as you get more and more into these cards, you start to say, well, would I spend this much on travel every year if not for the cards? And I don't know whether or not that's the case. Personally, I like the hotel collection benefit also. And I know a lot of people don't because if you're primarily traveling to New York and Paris and you're not somebody who spends $1,000 a night on a hotel, then those FHR credits might seem almost worthless to you. on the flip side, I have been able to find places where I've said, oh, that actually looks like someplace I'd be interested in going. And maybe it wasn't on my radar, but there is a good

value place and I'll find something interesting. And I like that. I don't look at that and say, oh, the credit's forcing me to go somewhere. I wasn't planning to go. I look at it and say, oh, the credit's going to encourage me to find a place that I may not have found otherwise. And so I like that. You might not. And so you should value less if you don't. Yeah, that's interesting because that's pretty similar to what I said about the Sapphire Reserve Dining credits. It was. It was kind of encouraging me to find places that I would enjoy. Yeah.

Yeah, no, good point. So, again, don't dwell on the fact that my number came up $55 more than the annual fee. If my number came to exactly the annual fee, that means the card I'm expecting to get more value than the annual fee. That's what it means because I wouldn't be willing to prepay. for equal value than I would get. I'm willing to prepay expecting more value. So anyway, so again, just don't get hung up on. And that's, and that was my point there with like the $200 airline fee credit.

You know, he's looking at saying, okay, I would pay $150 because I know I'm going to get more than $150. Exactly. Worth the value out of it. So that's where it gets back to his point before. He's willing to pay $9.50 because he expects to get more than $1,000 or more than $11.50 or whatever. Yes, maybe. All right, let's, I'm going to now just summarize what cards I've discarded recently. American Airlines executive card, you know, I done the math, and it has coupons that could, you know,

outweigh the annual fee, but it doesn't for me. For my, my wife, she had a JetBlue business card, a Wyndham business card, Alaska business card. All of those individually could be worth keeping, but we don't need second. of all those things in our household. I've killed off two business platinum cards in our family and planning to get rid of some more of those. Those don't tend to add up for me. I already got rid of one consumer platinum card and will be getting rid of a few more. My Bonvoy Brilliant card. That's the expensive Marriott card from Amex. I downgraded that for the $95 card. Business gold card I canceled. Consumer gold card I already mentioned I canceled. And I'm also

considering ridding myself of, I have a lot of Bonvoy cards and I don't need so many. So considering getting rid of a few of those, that's a whole other conversation for another day, as well as some IHG cards that I'm struggling each year to effectively use all the free nights from those. So those are, I'm considering as well. All right. All right. Interesting. Yeah.

So I'm in a similar boat in a lot of these things. So I just downgraded. In fact, just got in the mill my new $95 Bonvoy card. I downgraded my Amex Bonvoy Brilliant card. That was $650 a year. I was so excited to finally do that and get my pro rata refund because I didn't like paying for that card. I did it in order to get the lifetime elite status. So now I have lifetime platinum status. Once the nights hit from this year, I was able to downgrade that card. So

that was a good one to kill off. I will probably keep the $95 one though. The 35K free night certificate for 95 bucks to me is still enough of a win. We end up having enough nights every year where that would be a really good deal, particularly for airport nights because we'll stay overnight by JFK if we have a morning flight or something rather than a fight with traffic. And so I'm willing to pay 95 bucks. to have a certificate that I can often use for a hotel in that type of situation. But anyway, so we downgraded that one. We have four business platyums right now between my wife and I, and all four of them are getting downgraded because, like Greg said,

I just don't find the coupons worthwhile. And for a hot minute, I thought last year when they renewed, I was in a really lucky situation. When they made the changes in September of 2025, they announced that anybody who's annual fee was going to post within the next couple of months was going to get the old annual fee and then the new annual fee kicked in. It depended. It was different for consumer and for business in like December and January, January of 2026. And I was in the lucky fortunate circumstance where most of our business platinum's renewed in that window at 695. And so I was

like, oh, I'm going to get a year of the new benefits for only $695. I'm probably going to keep all of these. And then I realized, well, you know what? I mean, in January, I was able to use airline fee credits. I was able to use the first half FHR credit. I was able to use the first quarter Hilton credit. And so then I thought, well, if I keep these cards open, all I'm going to get is one more FHR credit and a couple of Hilton credits. It's not going to be enough to continue paying the annual fee. Whereas instead, it could downgrade. And because of, you know, MX's rules when you downgrade to a lower card, they give you a pro rated refund for the rest of the year. You haven't used and then charge you the pro rated annual fee on the card to which you're downgrading. So it just made so much more sense. for us to downgrade to business green cards. So that was a pretty easy choice for us when I looked at it and said, wow, we're going to get a whole bunch back. And it wasn't worth continuing to pay for the small minor bump we might get. Yeah.

Plus, you just got rid of a whole bunch of coupons that you have to keep track of. So that's awesome. Right. Right. It is. It is. Feels good. So our MX gold cards haven't, as we record this, gotten rid of those yet.

But we both have an Amex Gold card right now, which was always probably kind of silly, but at the 325 now, it's very silly. So we're going to get rid of both of those. So those will both be gone soon. We have two Aviator silvers right now, one in my name and one of my wife's name. But like you said, with a bunch of cards, we don't, we don't need two of them. We don't need to both have that. We might not even really need one. But one of them for sure is going. And the Bank of America premium rewards card. This is one we've held on to for years because I did have platinum honors status with with Bank of America, thanks to having some of our retirement investments at Merrill Edge. But I moved those. I wrote a while back, I don't know, it was probably

2024 at this point, I think, about Robin Hood offered a promotion long ago expired where you got like a 3% bonus for moving accounts over to there. And I realized, well, I'm going to get more from that than I would from the extra additional earnings on spend with their cards. So I moved my IRAs or moved our IRAs. And so, So I don't have status anymore with Bank of America. So I've realized that why am I holding on to paying $95 a year? The answer had been because the card comes with $100 travel credit that's really easy to use. And yeah, it is easy to use.

But I put some bags on it. We flew Delta and I had baggage charges. So I put those on it in late December. And they didn't get refunded. And I was like, what's this? Why didn't they get refunded? Well, I went back through old statements and found I hadn't even realized I had used that earlier in the year. And I was like, oh, man, I used it.

And then I paid, ah, it's just too much to track. Why am I trapped for a $5 win there? It's not worth. So I'm going to downgrade that to a different card. And that's an example, what I was saying before. Like, you have to, it has to be more than just the math working out. Like, it also has to be like something more tangible to be worth keeping a card. And in that example, even if, even if you could perfectly get the $100 every year without

much thought, it's only a $5 win. And so why have that on your mind at all? Yeah. Right. Right. Exactly. Whereas with the evaluations Craig was giving earlier when he said, oh, I'll pay $150 for a $200 airline credit on the Amex card. Well, that's because he expects to get that profit margin, right? That's why he would pay the 150 because he expects to come out with the 200. I'm paying 95 to expect to come out with 100 is not worth the mental gymnastics. So we're going to downgrade that to an unlimited cash card with Bank of America. I'll keep that because at some point when my hold period's done with Robin Hood, we'll probably move it back to Merrill Edge in order to get the bump on. those cards. So I'm not going to get rid of the line altogether. Not going to cancel it, but I don't think we need to hang on to it. And then finally, need to decide, we've got a bunch of Hawaiian cards that we opened, in part because we expected them to be collectibles. We expected the Hawaiian cards to no longer be available. And so my wife and I hopped on three of them total, two consumer and one business. And we don't really need to continue paying for three of those.

Yes, like Greg said, before you could make the math work with the discount. benefits they come with, but it's more mental gymnastics than I'm willing to do. So I think we might just end up getting rid of all three of those. I haven't made a final decision. At least two of them, I think, will go. Maybe I'll keep one for spending toward elite status with Alaska if I end up close to a threshold and just need to kind of bump over the top. But we definitely don't need three of those. And there's a lot more of that going on because we've got a whole bunch in our household. I mean, those are the few that came to mind right away that I was like, oh, we definitely need to get rid of those. I want to mention there are also cards that you'll

occasionally hear us talk about having that might on paper make less sense. And a good example for me is the Spark Cash card. My wife's had a Capital One Spark Cash card for a long time. It's a business card. And it doesn't make sense to pay $95 a year for two per, or even more maybe $150. I can't remember now for 2% back because there are too many cards on the market that offer that. So we wouldn't that long term, except that they're usually almost every year ends up being a time where the best public offers only available via referral. And so I'm able to just with one referral, I could pay for the annual fee on that card. And so that's a card that I'll probably keep and have. And maybe I'll mention at some point, you'll be like, how does the math work on that? And it doesn't. It's just

because of the unique situation I'm in. So there are some cards you'll probably catch us now and then and be like, well, how are you making the math work on that? Where it's like, well, in that case, that card's going to work out putting us ahead in the long run one way or another probably. So there's some of that. But I think this was important to talk about some of the big ones because, man, if you've hopped on all the bandwagons in recent years, you're looking at thousands of dollars in annual fees. And we didn't even talk about like the Atma Summit card and all the other new cards coming out here soon. So there's a lot more of these for you to think about. But hopefully it gives you a framework.

How to think about it yourself. All right. I think that wraps up our main event and brings us to this week's question of the week. So for this week's question of the week, we have a pretty relevant question that somebody wrote in with. It goes right along with today's discussion, something we didn't exactly talk about. So Judy writes in and says, so Annex Gold has been my go-to for dining, except Fridays and Saturdays because she's got a strata elite, of course.

So there's a city nights. But now, she says, with the Atmos Summit, I just mentioned that card. and this is why. With the Atmos Summit being 3x plus getting status points, it seems like it's time to pivot. What are your thoughts, Judy? So for somebody who has an Amex gold card and has been earning 4x dining, they've got an Atmos Summit that offers 3x dining plus status, how do you do the math between those and determine, well, which one is worth it and how much is it worth? Wow, that is so hard. there's so many factors beyond what was just stated there that I think are important. You know, so for example, if you highly, highly value MX membership rewards points because of where they transfer to different airline programs, you might, you know, prefer, never mind that it's like 4x instead of 3x, you might just prefer having MX points over more.

Atmos points. Conversely, you might be earning a lot of membership rewards points from new sign-up offers, from referring friends and things like that. And so the actual billy during Forex for dining might not actually be a significant part of your membership rewards earning. So even if you highly value them, it might not be how you're getting all the ones you need anyway. Flip side is how much do you value status with Atmos? Because, yeah, earning 3x plus getting the status points if you highly value the status, obviously that's really good. And, you know, I can't say how much you should value that,

but, you know, it might be helpful, I guess, to come up with a, an idea that like you know just for example maybe to you um stat the um status points are worth the same as like one atmos mile each or something like that and so since you'd be getting uh 1.5 from every three uh points you earn since you'd be getting um 3x on dining that's 3 X miles, you'd be getting 1.5x Atmos status points. So altogether, that comes to like 4.5x, if you value it the way I just said. But then you still have to decide is the 4.5X of this weird atmos status point hybrid more than 4x membership rewards points? I don't have a secret formula that would get you there. Yeah, you know, it's interesting. So to play into kind of

what you were talking about, but maybe change the framework a little bit. So the first level of Alaska status, silver status, I think requires 20,000 status points, if I remember correctly. And so we could kind of to make it simple, say, okay, well, let's imagine the silver status is worth $200 to you. You'd get some free check bags and whatever else. So your status points then are worth one cent each. That's only true, though, if you get 20,000. If you get any less than 20,000, they're not worth one cent each. And if you get 21,000, they don't continue to be worth one cent each

because that's really good point. And so, you know, whether you're looking at it in cents or you're looking at it in miles, the way Greg kind of framed it in a minute ago, either way, it's only valuable to the point where you exactly hit a status level. And then it's not valuable at all again

until you reach the next status level and then it unlocks the value, so to speak. So how much to value that is hard. It's hard to say because it depends on where you are and how much your dining spend is going to make up and how much of your dining spend is going to put you over the status level and not matter at all. And so that stuff that is very individual. But I think it's an interesting point anyway. If you do value Alaska status, I could see valuing that return at something more.

Now, is that something more worth losing the point per dollar on your MX card that's flexible and can transfer to a bunch of different programs? I don't know. Only you can answer that, depending on your situation. I think there are people for whom, yes, it would. But I think you do need to be careful and say, okay, well, am I overvaluing this because I'm not going to exactly hit the status level. I'm going to be, if you're somewhere in between, you know, then it's like, I can't even remember what the levels are, but let's say the middle is 50 and the next one up to 75. I mean, getting to 60 or 65, it doesn't matter any more than hitting 50 at that point. So, so yeah, that's a very individual calculation, but it's an important one to think about in that

context, I think. Right, right. No, that's that's a really terrific point. Now, you might, you might have a situation where you say, well, as it gets to the end of the year, I'm going to spend so much on pre-paying taxes or, you know, charity, whatever, whatever to, to sort of make sure you get to that next elite level. So if that's your plan and you know you're going to do that, then maybe you can value this spend at the full full amount. But if that's not what you're going to do, then what Nick said is 100% right. It's, you know, it's tricky. There's no good way to do that.

And then also add that it's impossible to kind of come up with realistic values for how much should you value each level of elite status. It's so hard to do. Yeah, yeah. But if you also spend a lot of money overseas, so you're going to get a lot of the three-x because it offers. first 3x on foreign spend. I mean, there certainly might be enough other reasons where you're like, oh, I'm kind of thinking about keeping this card no matter what. And so now it's a different calculation because then you're looking at, okay, well, I spend enough overseas that the 3x on foreign transactions makes enough sense for me to keep the Alaska card. And whatever,

the other benefits that the card has makes enough sense for you to keep the, if you do the math and you're like, all right, I'm going to keep the Alaska card. Now the question becomes different. It's like, okay, well, I'm paying this much and I could be getting 3x Alaska plus something towards status. The question, should be then, is it worth paying $325 for the MX gold card for the additional point per dollar and giving up the status benefits and then the other coupons? And so, you know, that's, I think, more the way to look at it. And I think if you've decided that the Alaska Summit is definitely a card for you, I could see saying, all right, that's going to become my dining card then also.

Sure. Then it might make more sense that way. But anyway, that's my thought. I'm sticking to it. All right, that brings us to the end of today's episode. If you've enjoyed what we've been talking about, you like to get more of this stuff. email inbox each day or each week, go to frequent myler.com slash subscribe to join our email list. Follow us on social media. Join our frequent miler insider's Facebook group. Wherever you're watching or listening, don't forget to give us a thumbs up.

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