Frequent Miler on the Air - Easy Marriott elite status | Ep208 | 6-24-23

Episode Date: June 24, 2023

You can get Marriott Platinum status with as few as 10 nights actually spent in Marriott hotels per year with the right strategy. This week, Greg and Nick discuss easy paths to Marriott Platinum and Titanium status. 00:00 Intro 00:45 Giant Mailbag: The Bilt card's hidden bonus 03:28 Lessons learned from traveling as a group of 5 https://frequentmiler.com/points-for-family-travel/ 12:46 Card Talk: Marriott Bonvoy Boundless card https://frequentmiler.com/mrplus/ 20:20 Award Talk: Booking an IHG free night with a certificate when there is no points availability https://frequentmiler.com/reminder-ihg-free-night-certs-sometimes-work-when-points-dont/ 24:35 Mattress Running the Numbers: New Hilton offers include a free night certificate for a limited time https://frequentmiler.com/amxhilton/ https://frequentmiler.com/hilton-honors-american-express-surpass-card/ https://frequentmiler.com/amxhiltonbiz/ https://frequentmiler.com/amxhiltonaspire/ 31:50 Main Event: Easy Marriott Elite Status https://frequentmiler.com/which-marriott-elite-benefits-apply/ https://frequentmiler.com/marriott-bonvoy-choice-benefits/ https://frequentmiler.com/getting-the-elite-experience-without-elite-status-via-luxury-partner-programs/ 1:03:06 Giant Mailbag: Can you cover travel insurance given your recent loss? Music credit: Annie Yoder

Let's get into the giant mailbag. What crazy thing did City do this week? It's time for Mattress Running the Numbers. Ready for the main event? The main event. Frequent Liler on the air starts now. Today's main event, easy Marriott elite status. Everybody wants to be elite, but how do you get there?

And you don't have to do it the hard way. So we're going to talk about easy ways of getting there. And even if you're not a huge Marriott fan, I mean, Marriotts are everywhere. So it's worth thinking about how to get treated like you're elite when you stay at Marriott properties, because sooner or later, you're probably going to be at least one or two of them, I think. First, of course, we have the giant mailbag. Today's giant mail comes from Andrea.

And Andrea says, I love your podcast and look forward to listening to it every week. On a recent podcast, you mentioned a downside with the built card that it doesn't offer a sign-up bonus. However, it does. Hidden within the new credit card paperwork you get in the sleek black box is a welcome offer of 5x points per dollar spent, excluding rent payments, on up to $10,000 of spending for the first five days you have the card. Essentially, a 50,000 point signup bonus for $10,000 spend in five days. It was so that, yeah, that's a good point. So that offer, as I understand it is technically targeted, they don't advertise that offer publicly. And so that's why we don't mention

it either, because we don't have any guarantee that you're going to get that in our best offers page, we can't list a bonus that we don't know you're going to get. So that's why we don't list it, even though we know that most people seem to get that. But you're right. I mean, it is essentially a welcome bonus. I imagine most people probably won't do the full 10K spend in five days. But if you can, I mean, yeah, that is a nice little bonus, I guess. It's something anyway. I shouldn't say a nice little bonus. It's a bonus, right? Yeah. And I can't help myself, but correct the math a little bit. It's not really a 50,000 point signup bonus with 10,000 spend because when you get 5X, that's the total earnings, including like what you would have normally earned. So if you spent the $10,000 on in categories where you would only earn one point per dollar

with the built card card then it's more like getting a 40 000 point sign up bonus and sign up bonus actually goes down if you spend the 10 000 and categories we're in two or three x so yeah yeah just you know yeah but but as as andrea said it's a good point i mean most people get some kind of signup bonus. And we just can't promise you that you will, unfortunately, but it's there. Yep. Yep. So enjoy it. It might make sense, I guess, if you're around tax time, although I also think I would be cautious about spending 10k in the first five days on the bulk card. I feel like I've heard some reports of shutdowns on that card. So, you know, I guess I I guess I would tread carefully as to whether or not it's worth maxing that out in the first five days.

If you have some regular purchases to make, great. I mean, absolutely, earn your five X. But, you know, don't go nuts. All right. So that was this week's mailbag. So next up after that, we need to to well, actually, there's sort of another mailbag ish type of a thing, or at least we're going to move on to some lessons, a promise from last week, some lessons learned from our party of five challenge,

because last week, we had promised that we would talk about a couple of the lessons we learned about traveling with a group of five. So we've already, you know, talked about the whole trip, and we've had posts about the whole trip. So we're not going to rehash the trip again, but rather just a few of the lessons that we learned, the takeaways that we said, you know what? Traveling with a group, this is something useful for the future. So what do you think, Greg? What do you got up for a tip we picked out of this? Yeah.

So first up, having a shared document, a spreadsheet that we used with all the info we needed for booking flights and lodging. So having everybody's passport numbers, birthdays, full names, frequent flyer numbers when that was relevant, all in a spreadsheet was was clutch. I mean, it made it it was so hard to book almost anything without that information. But with that, you know, we were able to book easily. Right. Right. And, you know, in my household, I keep all the passports in one place all the time. So I usually have those within reach. But I think the idea of having them in a spreadsheet makes even more sense, because I just said I usually have them within reach. But

surely there's going to be a time at some point where I don't and having all of that in one spot. Huge. All right. Another thing we found or learned out of this is to make sure that enough people in the party have credit cards that offer lounge access. So make sure that either you've got a priority pass that allows for enough guests on your plan. Like, for instance, if you have the Ritz card, the Chase Ritz card, that allows for unlimited guests at priority pass lounges and restaurants. So if you've got a large family, great, you only need one of those. But if you've got a card that only allows for, say, two guests and you have five people, you need to make sure that at least two people have those. We ran into this actually

interestingly at the Centurion Lounge in Sao Paulo, which still allows the platinum card member to bring a guest. Unlike the United States, where you have to pay $50 for a guest, a guest was free internationally. So we were able to bring in Carrie who didn't have a platinum card because the rest of us did have platinum cards. So it was easy to guest her in. So make sure you're set for the guest policy for whichever lounge or lounges you want to visit. Also, by the way, I was able to guest her into the flagship lounge in Miami because we both flew into Miami, but I flew flagship first. So I was able to bring her in because flying flagship first, you can bring one guest. Yeah. Yeah. There you go. Another lesson learned is that it's always worth if you have elite status and it applies like through either directly or through a partnership with wherever

you're traveling. Let's say you're traveling with one airline and you have elite status with a partner airline get that frequent flyer number on the reservation uh the frequent flyer number where you have status because it can really help and we saw the the sort of inverse where we had uh flown uh one airline um i forget which one it was, but where we didn't put our frequent flyer number on there. I think it was Latam, right? It was Latam. Okay. Yeah. And, you know, well, we had like, let's say my Alaska number, but I don't have status with Alaska. And we could have put another partner of Latam's on there that where I do have status. And, but because we went on with no status, we,

we got a very low boarding group. We were forced to gate check bags as a result. And so it just slowed down everything. Um, meanwhile, on the next flight we took, put on my Delta number on the, uh, aerolineous, what is it? What is that? Aerolineas Argentinas. Aerolineas. Okay. And not only did we get boarding group one, but we actually boarded before boarding group one because of my SkyTeam elite status. And so these are small benefits, but any little benefits can really make a difference. So put them on. You never know when it will apply to the whole party of five or more, however many you're traveling with. So it can't hurt to do it. Yeah. I mean, I noticed that a few months back with JetBlue, with the American Airlines

partnership, that I can pick even more seating at the time of check-in for up to like eight passengers on a reservation on JetBlue. And they normally charge 50, 100 bucks or more for those seats. So that was nice in there too. So make sure you're always paying attention to that. Okay, next up, don't count on elite benefits applying beyond the rules. So this is something we've talked about. Lots of times people often ask, if I'm booking more than one room at a hotel and I have elite status, will the additional rooms get my elite benefits? And in some cases, there's ways to do that. Like with Hyatt, you could just put the additional room as a guest of honor. If you've got Hyatt globalist status, that is, you can make the

additional room a guest of honor booking so that that additional room will get globalist benefits, though you can only do that with a full award stay. You can't do that with a cash stay or a points and cash stay. So you don't know if the second room will get the benefits unless it's a guest of honor stay. Now with other chains, of course, it may vary some, but we ran into this with Marriott where they would not extend the elite benefits to a second room, even though that second room had people with elite status, they wouldn't extend the benefits because they were both booked from the same person's account. Yeah. And that's the thing that varies by property.

So I've been to some area properties where they have generously extended the benefits to everybody in all the rooms and sometimes it doesn't. So you just can't count on it. Next up, prepare for things like clear and global entry in advance. So if you're traveling with a bunch of people, some of them have ways to get through the airport quicker and others don't. Just, you know, try to prepare in advance. But if you don't, it turned out that we could get people signed up or use alternative methods to get through the airport pretty quickly. So do you want to talk about the two things we did specifically with Kerry, actually? Yeah. So with Kerry on to talk about the two things we did specifically with Carrie, actually? Yeah. So with Carrie on her way back into the United States, where we were entering

in San Francisco, and we wanted to move through and get in quickly because we had places to go and things to do. So I showed her how to sign up for mobile passport. And she signed up literally as we were getting off the plane walking towards immigration. It only took a few minutes to sign up for mobile passport. It's actually a really easy process. You download the app. I think it's called mobile passport control. You download the app on your phone.

And then it's like doing one of those customs declaration forms on your phone instead of a paper version. I don't even know if they have paper versions anymore, but I haven't seen one in a long time because I always use mobile passport. You scan your passport in the app. You take a selfie of yourself. You answer all the questions that you're not bringing in stuff that you're not supposed to bring in or declaring it if you need to. And then it gives you a QR code. And the nice thing is you get to go to the mobile passport line, which is usually like maybe two or three people long. And I mean, you had global entry, Greg, right? And like, how long would you say you had to wait for Carrie and I to go through the mobile passport line? Yeah, so I was through faster, but it was at most two minutes before the other two were

through as well. So it really didn't make much difference. So it took her like, if five minutes, if it took her five minutes to complete the whole process of downloading the app and scanning her passport and answering the questions, I mean, no more than five minutes to do it. And then it took us no more than five minutes to do it. And then it took us no more than two minutes more than it took the people with global entry. So that's something I've been using for years,

mobile passport. I picked that up at an FTU years and years ago. And that's the main reason I haven't done global entry yet because it's always almost as fast as global entry. Now, of course, when everybody does it, it won't be that way anymore. But that was one thing we did. The other thing we did is that we signed her up for clear.

So when we were flying back out of San Francisco, you know, we knew that things were going to be a little tight. Our timeline was going to be a little tight because we were getting to the airport late. So in the car on the way to the airport, we got her signed up for clear because a bunch of us have extra platinum cards. So we were able to help her get signed up for clear, get the and get that, of course, for free, since it's one of the benefits on the platinum cards. And then it's just a matter of visiting a kiosk to do your fingerprints and your eye

scan. And so, again, we were through the line there quite quickly rather than having to wait for the security line. So those are both things, again, that we did on the way to go through. And in both cases, they took five or eight minutes or something like that or less. Yeah, great. And I assume, I think you paid for her clear with one of your business platinum cards or something. Yeah, I just opened a brand new business platinum for one of those targeted offers of 150,000 points after 15K spend. So my wife and I already

have clear from one of our other platinum cards, but this was the one I opened about a month ago. So I hadn't used the clear credit on this. So it was going to go unused anyway. So it was easy to use that to treat her to a year of clear. Very nice. All right. So that is the lessons learned from the party of five traveling together. And we do have another episode where we talked all about like uh different ways you could use points and miles for family travel so uh maybe we'll put a link to that as well in in the notes here um sounds like all right so that's that that wasn't that was what i just want to say that was instead of our crazy thing uh segment so we're gonna skip the crazy thing this week and instead get into card talk card talk this week's card talk is the marriott bonvoy boundless card uh

that's i i like to make it sound exciting these be the alliteration i enjoy the alliteration they're fun to say the bonvoy boundless card yeah marri Marriott's Bonvoy lineup of cards is kind of ridiculous. All of them start with the letter B and it can be really hard to keep track of what's what. This one is the $95 card from Chase. That's a Marriott card. Both Chase and Amex have Marriott cards. So yeah, it's hard to keep track. Anyway, the $95 Chase Marriott Envoy Boundless card has no foreign transaction fee. It earns six Marriott points per dollar at Marriott properties. And it earns three points per dollar at gas stations, grocery stores, and dining, but only on up to $6,000 in combined purchases each year on those. So that's kind of weird. And then you get two points per dollar everywhere else.

So it's not a master of great earning power. No, it's not. It's not really a good card to spend on. I don't really think it's even worth the hassle to figure out when you've spent 6,000 in those combined categories, even if the return were very good. And the return isn't that good, right? Because it's three points per dollar and we value Marriott points at less than a penny per point. So you're talking less than 3% effectively in the form of Marriott points. So it's like, ah, there's a bunch of other cards that earn better bonuses at supermarkets. So, and gas stations for sure. So, and dining, all of the above. So I wouldn't be using it on those to begin with. And certainly not with the

added hassle of having to track where you are on the 6,000. So not a great card for spend. So why do people want them? Why? i mean well and to further the to let me just further the the the reasons that it's not a great card for spend is that you can get gold status if you spend thirty five thousand dollars each year on the card gold status with marriott's not worth much it doesn't give you much in the way of benefits i would not even consider trying to get gold status through thirty five,000 spend. That just doesn't make any sense. Where things get a little more interesting, though, with spend is that this is the only Marriott card on the market right now where you can earn elite knight credits.

So towards elite status from your spend. And so this one gives you one elite knight for every $5,000 spend on the card. So if you're chasing Marriott elite status and you get towards where you're like close to that next level that you want to get to, it could make sense to spend on this card. And in fact, I did that, I think it was last year. I was close to titanium status status i was about three nights away or something like that and so i put um fifteen thousand dollars spend let's say on this card in order to earn those last three elite nights i needed uh and so that that worked out well um the card also offers a each year that you renew you get a free night certificate worth up to 35 000 points and you can

add on up to 15 000 points marriott points to uh book a stay that that costs up to 50 000 points for one night um so that alone that that easily easily make up for the card's annual fee the 95 annual fee that's the one that makes this an easy card to keep, right? Because for 95 bucks, like, I mean, it's hard to not do better than $95 with a 35K cert, right? I mean, if you use it for any place that costs like 20,000 points or more, you're probably getting a good deal for your 95 bucks. Absolutely. Yeah. And it's very, very common to, at least in my experience to book rooms that cost 250 or more uh with these certificates and so um yeah it's it's easy little win and if if you if you're in a two-person uh you know household where both of you can get the card then you have like a little weekend you know stay at a mid-range-ish marriott basically

um the the card also gives you 15 elite nights automatically each year towards elite status uh but if you have other marriott consumer cards they don't stack so so if you have like the the um marriott the old what was the spg card but the 95 amex marriott um you still only have 15 elite knights total for example um the other cool thing about this card it's a really good path to later upgrade to the ritz carlton card which is one of our favorite cards yeah you know the ritz card is a great card to have. We've talked about it before, probably, I think, in the card talk. If we haven't, then we should at some point. But that's a great card to have because it's a fantastic deal. You get an 85K free night certificate and that card and $300 in annual travel credits for $450.

But you can't apply for that card new. You can only get that card by upgrading from another Chase consumer card. So if you get the Bonvoy Boundless, you have to wait until you've had the card for at least a year. But once you've had it for at least a year, then you should be able to call up Chase and upgrade to the Ritz card. I should note that some agents will say that you have to have a $10,000 credit limit in order to upgrade to the Ritz card. So if you don't have that on your Marriott card, you to upgrade to the Ritz card. So if you don't have that on your Marriott card, you may need to shuffle credit around from your other chase cards in order to meet that, but you don't need to keep it there at the 10,000. You'll be able to reduce it later on

if you want. I've long had a Ritz card with a lower limit because I don't spend much on it because like the Bonvoy Boundless card, it's not a great card for spend. It's just a good card for its perks. So I keep the credit limit in the places where it's more useful to me. At any rate, the Bonvoy Boundless, again, gives you a path to get to that long term. So between the initial welcome bonus, the annual 35k cert that certainly could be useful for you and the path to the Ritz card, I think the card is fairly interesting, even though it's a card you don't really want to spend money on. Now, I'm sure that Chase would rather you spend money on it. So I think that they seem to be shifting their strategy on a lot of cards to encourage more spend. And this is one of those that still could be an easy sock drawer card. So while that lasts, I guess I would say to enjoy it, get it and have it and hold it and or upgrade it to the Ritz while you can.

What do you think? Is it a card worth going after new, Greg? Mostly for the bonus, mostly for the upgrade path. What would you say? You know, it's not like an amazing card to go after new, except every now and then they have a really good welcome bonus for it. As we're talking, it's not currently at a high watermark, but when that happens, it can be totally worth it just for that welcome bonus. And then I'd say keep it either for the annual free night certificate or for the upgrade path. You know, either one, it's worth keeping for either of those reasons, I think. Yep, absolutely. So solid card. Yep,, solid, good one to have on your radar. Think about, especially if you stay at Marriott properties. So, and we're going to talk more

about elite status and how that could play into your strategy during today's main event. But before we get to the main event, let's talk award talk, right? I think we're done with the boundless, right? So let's talk award talk. So this week's award talk, I booked an awards day this week with an IHG free night certificate. That in itself isn't necessarily exciting. What was interesting was the fact that, so when I search for awards days, well, let me back up. I have the old IHG card, the $49 card that comes with a free night certificate valid for up to 40,000 points per night. But because it's from that old IHG card, I can't top it off with additional points. If you've got the IHG Premier card, the current version of the card that costs like $95 per year,

you can top that off with as many points as you need to. But because mine is capped and limited, I frequently take the lazy route and just look for points availability because I want to see which hotels cost 40,000 points or fewer. Since any of them that cost more than 40, I'm not going to be able to book with my free night certificate. But that could be a mistake because I accidentally stumbled on something that I knew to be true, but still ignore most of the time and I shouldn't. And that's the fact that sometimes rooms will be available with a free night certificate, even when they're not available with points, which seems counterintuitive and weird and especially odd when you have a free night certificate that's limited to a certain point value.

And there are no rooms available with points. But this happened to me just this last week. And I stayed at the Holiday Inn Oaken Spruce in the Berkshires of Massachusetts. It's a resort. It's a vacations club. So it's one of their timeshare resorts. And there were no awards available. Massachusetts. It's a resort. It's a vacations club. So it's one of their timeshare resorts. And there were no awards available. Couldn't use points at all for a room the night that I wanted to stay. But when I checked the box to use my IHG free night certificate, suddenly I was able to

book not just a room, but a two-bedroom room. So it wasn't even the base level room, which was a one-bedroom. Those were available with cash, but it was a two-bedroom room with my free night certificate that you couldn't book with points otherwise. So it's just a good reminder to check with your free night certificates. Now, I said that I get lazy because I have the old one, but even if you had a newer top offable and you've been searching for points, you would miss a stay like this where you could use your free night certificate. So it's always worth checking that box. And it's an extra step to search another way, but to see which properties are available with a free night certificate. I think that's a great tip. I mean, IHG, unlike most of the other major brands, do not

require the hotels. Most of the chains, if there's a base level room available for sale, they're required by the programs to offer it for points. IHG doesn't have that requirement. And so it's not unusual, at least in my experience, to look for a certain hotel, see it's not available for points. And so it's really good, I think, to now know that I have another way to look for it to see if maybe it's available with a certificate. That'd be really cool. Yeah. And another reason I look for the points availability first is because I don't want to use my

free night certificate that could be worth up to 40,000 points to book a hotel that would only cost 15 or 20,000 points. And so I started out by looking at points and I saw, oh, there was a different holiday in like 15 miles away or something that was 22,000 points. And I thought, well, if I'm going to book that place, I'd rather just use points than a free night certificate. So I had thought I wasn't going to use a free night certificate at all until, like I said, I accidentally stumbled on it.

I just accidentally chose the wrong thing out of the dropdown and the wrong thing turned out to be the right thing because I had chosen the IHG free night cert. And I was like, oh, wow, look at that place. That's exactly where I want it to be is available because I mentioned in passing in the post that I had booked my wife a spa day at Miraval Berkshires because you can book a day spa rate. This is a hot tip from a reader. You can book a day spa rate and you can use spot finder gift cards to pay for it, which you can regularly buy at a discount from Costco. So that's just a few miles away from this Holiday Inn. So the Holiday Inn was a great, cheap place to stay. My wife was able to enjoy a day at Miraval, you know, getting a few treatments. We got a good discount on it with the spa finder gift cards. And I got to play mini golf and in

the arcade and at the pool with the kids while she was off at the spa. So it worked out really well. So don't forget, check the box for your free night. Well, so that was two awesome tips in one. You had a hidden secret tip inside the overall tip. So that's awesome. All right. Let's talk mattress running the numbers. This week's mattress running the numbers. There are new offers out on the various Hilton cards. So remind me, what are the various offers on these Hilton cards? We got what the free night certificates on a bunch of them, right? Yeah. So, so what's, what's new is that, uh, all of the Hilton cards there, there are, um, four different Hilton cards on the market. Um, usually three out of the four do not include a free night certificate automatically as part of the welcome offer. But right now they do through July 19th.

And so here are the offers. The $95 Hilton Surpass card. If you sign up new and are approved and spend $2,000, you get a free night certificate plus 130,000 points. The Hilton no fee card also has a $2,000 spend requirement. You get a free night certificate and 80,000 points. And then the business card, which is also a $95 annual fee card, you get 150,000 points and a free night certificate, but this one requires $4,000 spend. So it has the best offer, but requires twice the spend of the other two I

mentioned. The Aspire card, that's the $450 card. That one still has the usual offer that we've seen for a long time, which is you get a free night upon signup, plus you get 150,000 points after $4,000 spend as the sign up bonus there. But so all four cards, you can get a free night certificate by meeting the spend requirements. Free night certificates with Hilton. This isn't IHD where they're worth up to $40,000. It's not Marriott where they're worth up to 35 000 or 50 000 or 85 000 depending on which card you have these are uncapped right anywhere basically any i think there's like a couple of uh timeshare properties that are excluded it's a such a tiny list that i mention it because if i say

anywhere i feel like i'm i'm uh leaving that detail out but but when i say anywhere i mean like the waldorf historian maldives that's. You can use your free night certificate there. Or the Conrad Bora Bora, you can use your free night certificate there. So it doesn't exclude high, high-end properties. You can stay at almost any Hilton property in the entire world any night of the week. These used to be weekend night certificates, but not anymore. Hilton had made them valid any night of the week from now on a while back. So, I mean, it's a fantastic, fantastic deal on the free night certificates because you can easily use those for rooms that

cost hundreds of dollars per night, depending on, you know, your palette and, you know, what you enjoy in terms of, you know, various Hilton properties. So, yeah, I mean, those welcome offers, that's a great, great deal. I mean, we talk a lot or I have talked a lot anyway about the Aspire card being a great deal because it comes with a free night certificate every year. But getting an additional free night certificate on these other cards, a free night certificate on these other cards that don't normally come with one, that's just pretty exciting. And the Surpass card, I would say is maybe the best one of the bunch in the sense that you can get another free night certificate at 15k spend so if you get the surpass card you'll get the free night certificate with the sign up

and you know with the new new card application and then also when you finish your 2k spend you keep going to hit 15k and you're going to end up with another free night certificate so that's i think that's pretty exciting the business card is obviously interesting since it's a business card and isn't going to count against your chase 524 status comes it also offers the the free night after $15,000 spend as well right plus i think another one after 60,000 if i remember right no you're you're correct about that the surpass card offers the supermarket bonus that may be more appealing but then the hilton business card has its own bonus categories too so there there may be reasons you want that one. So yeah,

I mean, those both are quite good. And really any of these, these are good deals. Am I right? Yeah. Let's say a couple is looking for a big stay in the Maldives or somewhere that would be very expensive. How many of these do you think they could reasonably pick up? I mean, Amex can often be pretty liberal with approvals. So, you know, I can't recall if there's a limit as to the number of credit cards, like the velocity in terms of what you can get, but I'm sure you could probably get at least two within close proximity.

So playing in two-player mode, you should be able to get at least four of these so that's four free night certificates and if you each did one of the either the business or the surpass that uh that comes with uh the chance to spend for another free night certificate and so you do 15k spend or 30k 15 on each uh side then you could be talking what that's four five six free night certificates uh you know, with the spend on those. I mean, that and all the points. So then you're talking also on top of that enough for several more nights.

I mean, probably almost two nights apiece with the welcome bonuses or more than two nights apiece. So you're talking maybe eight nights with two new cards each. Like at a place like the Maldives, that's nuts. It's pretty fantastic. And then, you know, if you have any room, so Amex will let you sign up for five or six credit cards total. These are considered credit cards and not charge cards. So if you have room, I mean, I could imagine a couple of them saying, you know what, I'm going to wait and sign up for the Aspire card when it gets close to when we're

going to actually stay just so we have diamond status for that stay. And then you could collect the $250 resort credit as well during your stay just by charging some stuff to your room. So yeah, I think this is great. I don't think there's any big downside. These are great offers. And the only reason I haven't personally or my family hasn't personally jumped on any of these yet is because we've been traveling. I've been busy with other stuff, but I plan to turn my eyes to these and see what I can pick up. Yeah. I mean, looking at this, I feel like either my wife or I will get the business because there's no reason not to with the free night certificate and the 150,000 points. It's pretty low hanging fruit and that extra

free night certificate plays nicely. So with the others and the timing is right for us in the sense that it's close to around when free night certificate time comes around each year on the Aspire cards. So yeah, I think we're likely to at least get that, but maybe a couple more. It's sort of a matter of planning, like you said, if we can figure out exactly when we'll use them. Because of course, the downside of the free night certificates is they're only valid for a year and Hilton doesn't have an exact official policy on extending those. I mean, the official policy, I guess, is that they don't extend them. However, we found that it seems that agents have a little bit of

latitude. If you've got a planned intended stay sometime within reasonably close proximity to when it's going to expire, they will extend them for a few weeks or maybe a few months. And it seems to vary from agent to agent. So it might take a few calls. But basically, you need to plan to use these within a year. That's the moral of the story. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. That's that. So then i think it's time for the main event main event time all right this is uh easy marriott elite status is our main event today so marriott marriott's the chain we love to hate. So, you know, we've talked before about how much more we love like Hyatt's elite program. But that's specifically for those who achieve top tier Hyatt elite status. Hyatt just gives unbelievable benefits and they're very consistent. And we've also talked about how IHG has recently upped their elite program.

And we think the elite program has leapfrogged marriott but but and i feel this very strongly there are marriott's almost everywhere i want to stay and there are nice marriott's most places you want to stay at also they're not only are they everywhere you want to stay they are places you want to stay at. Exactly. And so they just have such a big footprint that I cannot imagine. Well, I can imagine obviously, but I wouldn't want to go without some level of Marriott elite status, some meaningful level. And what I mean by that is you really need platinum status with Marriott for elite status to mean anything. You do. Yeah.

And like Greg said, I think the thing is that, you know, you can find an IHG property anywhere, but a Holiday Inn you may or may not like. Marriott's going to have a range usually. So you're going to have, you know, like a regular Marriott. You're going to have a residence in if that's what you'd prefer. But then you're also going to have a luxury collection or autograph collection if you like the more boutique-y stuff. So that's why I think we get a little bit more excited about it. But like Greg said, you need the platinum elite status because the platinum benefits are, I think, the bar that you need to cross in order to make it worth going after elite status

at all. Silver and gold Marriott status don't really get you anything that matters much. But at platinum status, which requires 50 elite nights, you get several good benefits. The first one that I often really enjoy is the 4 p.m. late checkout. And that's what I missed on my IHG stay the other day because they wouldn't extend my IHG stay beyond noon. And I know had I just stayed at a residence and I could have had the room until four o'clock in the afternoon, that would have made for a little bit more convenience. So that's a nice benefit to have. You get a 50% point bonus on your paid stays. And that means more points for you. So that's always nice.

A welcome gift. And the welcome gift gives you a breakfast option. And so at properties that don't include breakfast for everyone, you'll get the option to choose free breakfast. And that will usually be the clear winner between the various amenities. I remember checking in at the St. Regis Bora Bora a couple of years ago, and they told me I could have like a sarong or a coffee mug or a free breakfast for two every day of my stay, which was like $100 a day.

And we were there for five days. So I was a no contest. Breakfast is usually the best bet you also get and let me just jump in here uh you know but this is where marriott is so frustrating and that there are a number of brands where that elite breakfast option does not apply and so if you're staying in a ritz or an addition property or design hotel good luck which means no breakfast for you. No breakfast for you. Which is so frustrating. We have a post, which Marriott Elite benefits apply, and I'll put the link in the description here.

But it's annoying because I need to consult our database to figure out whether or not I'm going to get free breakfast unless I'm staying at a place that's like a flat out Marriott or a JW maybe. I probably still have to check JW. I don't even know. I think you get breakfast, right? There's so many things like that. A courtyard, you're going to get $10 per person rather than breakfast. AC hotels, I couldn't tell you if it's different between North America and the rest of the world, or if you get anything or not. I don't know. There's so many brands like AC and Delta and Moxie and who knows who can keep it all straight, right? But I know that you don't get it at Red's and that's a bummer because you do get free breakfast or the choice for free breakfast rather at a St. Regis. And so I don't understand the logic at all on this, but at any rate,

you get an option for breakfast at a lot of Marriott properties. A lot of Marriotts. And that's better than none. Yes. Yes. And then you get lounge access for the most part. If there's a lounge, usually. If there's a lounge and it's not a Ritz and so on and so on.

And it's not a Chambers Club at the St. Pancras. Mostly you get lounge access with platinum status. So Renaissance properties and Marriott properties that have a lounge and lots of autograph collection properties that have a lounge, you're going to get lounge access, which is nice. And then a room upgrade. You're eligible for a complimentary room upgrade, which can include a suite. And so that's nice because, you know, you may get a suite. Again, this is it. Most properties, though, because you don't get get a sweet again this is it most properties though

because you don't get that at platinum status at a ritz for instance right there's no sweet that's right yeah yep okay so that's platinum that's platinum yep 15 it requires 50 nights each year uh staying at marriott's but we're going to talk about soon about how you can avoid staying 50 total nights in order to get platinum status uh But first, let's talk about titanium status. That requires 75 nights a year. And instead of the 50% point bonus on paid stays, you get a 75 point bonus. You get all the benefits that platinums get. Plus, you also get united silver status.

So that's a pretty sweet little added benefit. And when staying at Ritz properties, you get the opportunity to get upgraded to a suite. So if you're just a lowly Platinum, the Ritz technically is not supposed to upgrade you to a suite. Although I kind of really doubt they pay much attention to that, but who knows? Yeah. Yeah. Well, I doubt they pay much attention to upgrading the platinums to suites usually either, but it may happen for you anyway. So that's nice. I mean, it's good to have that option. I think really the star of the show on the titanium benefits is the United Silver status. If you're not somebody who's going to regularly fly enough for elite status, it's nice to have that for a couple of reasons. First, for your free check bags, you don't need to have a United credit card then because you'll get free check bags. And then additionally, for the preferred seat selection, which can sometimes come in handy, being able to get a slightly better seat on the plane. So and again, benefits like that often will apply to other people in your reservation so it can add up yeah i've even

gotten free upgrades to first class on regional flights a couple times so it can happen yeah that's it's a really nice benefit okay so that's so all right another thing about elite status is separate from the having platinum status or having titanium status, there's another thing called choice benefits, which you are eligible for a benefit that you select. You have a choice of which benefits to select when you reach 50 nights or 75 nights. Now, I know those sound like the same numbers I told you before because they are, but the is like let's say you stay let's say you were platinum for so many years that you have lifetime platinum elite status well that doesn't get you a choice benefit each year you still need to stay 50 nights or you have to earn 50 elite nights every

year to get a choice benefit so um that's where the status and the choice benefit is a little bit different. But at 50 nights, there's various choices. There's various things you could pick from. Most of them aren't worth much. The two selections worth talking about is you could either pick five sweet night awards or five elite nights to help you get to titanium status, basically. So, you know, you're at 50 nights you already have platinum by then um so if you pick five elite nights it would only the only reason to do it is because you're trying to get to uh the next level um five sweet night awards what are

those um those are basically if you have a stay where you booked into a regular room with points or with cash. If the hotel is participating, you can apply your suite night awards for each night of your stay and you have to apply one for every night. So if you have a six night stay, you can't apply your five suite night awards, but if you have a five night stay, you could. And once you apply them, Marriott waits until five days before your stay to start checking whether that upgrade will happen. It checks like once a day, and if you're lucky, you'll get upgraded to a suite. That's how it works today. It's extremely frustrating for so many reasons, but I'd say number one frustration is that there are lots of brands that are excluded from this. And there are lots and lots and lots of individual hotels that opt out themselves from this. And then even if they participate, then you also have the situation where the suite might

be available five days before you check in, but it doesn't necessarily clear. I'm not really sure how they determine whether or not your upgrade clears because it's not just based on that room type being available, but it's like that room type being available and somebody decides you deserve a suite. Right, right, right, right. So according to various sources, it looks like Marriott's trying to improve these. So look for in 2024 for them to get better. I don't think they're likely to be as good as what's available from Hyatt or even IHG maybe. But if they get better, they could become more valuable than they are today, which would be great. And so for the 50 night choice, I, you know, most people, if you're just going to stop at platinum status, that's probably the choice to pick as the five suite night awards. At 75 nights, your choices, the two best choices you could pick from are five suite night awards

or a 40 K free night certificate. So the 40k free night certificate has a definite obvious value. The five suite night awards have potential value if you use them and actually get the upgrade. So it's a bit of a gamble. It's a big gamble, I think, because you're hoping that you get upgraded and you have no way to know whether you'll get value out of them or not. And if you wait too long in the year to try to use it and then you don't, you know, it doesn't clear, they're kind of a pain. You may have passed up opportunities where you would have been more likely to get an upgrade because you're hoping for one on some special stay. So I think at 75 nights, I think most people should, at least as things stand, choose the 40K free night certificate because it's easy to get hundreds of dollars in value. Now, that's not to say you can't do well

with the Sweet Night Awards. I mean, I got an amazing suite upgrade last year at the St. Pancras in London to Grand Staircase Suite. It was a couple of levels and a cool twisty staircase in it. I mean, it was an awesome suite that would have ordinarily cost lots of money. But so they do clear it from time to time, but often they don't. And so it's a huge gamble as to whether or not that's going to be worth anything at all, whereas, you know, the 40K free night certificate is definitely going to be worth at least a couple of few hundred dollars. So, yeah, I would probably pick that if I got 75 nights. But but I guess, you know, you pick what you think matters to you the most. So either way,

choice benefits require 50 or 75 elite nights. Right, right. I'm excited to see next year if they actually improve them, how that turns out. So we'll see. Yeah, and that could make a big difference. It'd be exciting if they would. Downsides of Marriott's elite program. I kind of jumped ahead with this earlier but uh here are just some of the downsides um no free breakfast at design hotels addition gaylord ritz carlton just platinum says or titanium does not get you free breakfast at those um inconsistency hotels are allowed to opt out of many different perks i mean mean, so you'll see like in the fine print, you know, oh, the free breakfast benefit applies, blah, blah. And there's a leap guarantee.

But then there'll be like fine print saying, here's a list of hotels that it doesn't apply to for no reason other than they opted out as far as I can tell. And we already talked about Sweet Night Awards being difficult to use. So that's some of the downsides of Marriott's elite program. You just can't count on consistency is really what it all boils down to, whether that's consistency of breakfast being offered, consistency of benefits being offered. It's unfortunate. I mean, there's so many Marriott hotels that that's almost a bit of a stretch. There is some level of consistency you can count on. But the problem is the exceptions. And there are just far more exceptions than there are with other programs. So so that's definitely the downside. But like Greg said, there's a

Marriott just about everywhere. And there's probably something that's not an exception, most places you want to go. So so, you know, there are opportunities to get very good value, which is why we still both maintain some level of Marriott Elite status. So speaking of us maintaining it, I'm not staying 50 nights a year at Marriott Properties. I don't think you are either. So let's talk about how we can get there without having to actually spend 50 or 75 nights in Marriott Properties. So our first shortcut up is the Bonvoy Brilliant card.

If you get the Bonvoy Brilliant card, which costs a whole bunch of money. What is it? Six, six, 95 now? Six, 50, six, more than $600 a year. You can tell we don't have this path. No, actually, I think you do have the Brilliant card, don't you? You have automatic, automatic platinum status. So that's nice.

I mean, that gives you the platinum status that we talked about. It does not give you the 50 night choice benefit. So you won't get the five suite night awards or five nights towards elite credit with just this card. But it does get you the free breakfast, the lounge access, the shot at a suite at most places. So a lot of the benefits we just talked about for $650 a year. And that card also comes with an 85K free night certificate every year.

So between the 85K free night certificate and the platinum status, that certainly may be worth it for a lot of people. Yep, yep. Another way you could get there with a credit card is if you have the Ritz-Carlton card, which is only available new to people who start with a Chase Consumer Marriott card and upgrade to the Ritz Carlton card. If you have that card and spend $75,000 on it, you get platinum status at 75,000 within a calendar year. And you also get our angry eyes for spending 75K on the Ritz card because there's other ways you could do it. 75K spend on a card that just doesn't have a very good return on spend is not something I would recommend. Yeah, I'm glad you pointed that out.

That's really important. So we're listing the options you have, not necessarily saying these are great options. I mean, I think the Bonvoy Brilliant is a really good option if you highly value the elite status, but the card is expensive, but it does also come with lots of perks and things that can help offset that big annual fee. But the Ritz card, we love the card, don't love the idea of putting $75,000 spend on that card. All right, next option. Marriott regularly offers a platinum challenge. And by regularly, I mean, they don't necessarily publish the dates of when it's available and when it's not. But if you're interested in this, call up Marriott and say, hey, I'm about to spend a lot of time at Marriott.

Do you have like a challenge going on? And basically, once you enroll in a challenge, the most recent challenges were laid out that you would get temporary. I think you'd get temporary platinum status. Actually, I'm not even sure of that. But in order to get platinum status for a year, you have to complete 16 paid nights in 90 days, and then you get platinum status. Finally, another all-in-one option where you could just get platinum status all at once

rather than through lots of elite nights is various timeshare ownership deals include Marriott Platinum status as part of the deal. So if you're looking to buy into Marriott Vacation Club or Vistana, you could look into that. That's another area where we don't recommend it. Mainly not because timeshares are bad, but because you're almost always way, way better off buying a timeshare on the secondhand market. And I don't think, I could be wrong, but I don't think you would get that platinum status that way.

But also because timeshares are bad. No, I'm just kidding. They can be bad. Yes, you're right. For some people it works out. Yes, I bad no i'm just kidding they can be bad yes you're right you're right for some people it works out yes i know i'm just kidding so i but yet like greg said i doubt it would come with the platinum status still on the secondhand market but i don't know that for sure so i guess look into the details pay attention to that okay so next up next so yeah so those are all like the the the big bang ways of just getting to platinum status in one shot. But let's talk about how you can get elite nights without actually staying at hotels. And if you have enough elite nights, you 15 elite nights every year or 25 elite nights every year if you have the Bonvoy Brilliant card. So either 15 or 25 nights just from having a consumer Marriott card.

They don't stack, though, so you can't have the Bonvoy Brilliant and the Bonvoy Bold or something and get more than 15 or 25 nights. It's capped at that on the consumer side. But a business Marriott card, which you can get new from Amex, will give you 15 elite nights, and that does stack with the consumer ones. So by having both a consumer and a business card, you'll have either 30 elite nights every year or 40 if your consumer card is the Bonvoy Brilliant card. So you are more than halfway to Platinum status just by having two cards in your pocket. Right. I mean, and that's every single year. And you get credit for those every single year.

So you're going to continue. As long as you keep the cards, you're going to continue to get them. And that's notable for a couple reasons. Number one, because unlike those other methods we talked about for platinum status a moment ago, this gets you closer to the choice benefits also, because these nights count towards the 50 or 75 you need for the choice benefits. So that's nice.

They also count towards lifetime status. So if you're chasing after lifetime platinum status because you want to have platinum status every year for your free breakfast or lounge access, then this will help you get there faster. So two cards, you end up with either 30 or 40 nights, and you only need 50 total to get platinum status and that first choice benefit. So again, like I said, more than halfway. So you're looking at either needing to actually spend 10 or 20 nights a year in a Marriott property just by having two credit cards to the right Marriott. Right, right, right. So it's kind of interesting that with the Bonvoy Brilliant card, which is the expensive card that gives you platinum

status automatically, it's kind of interesting that it gives you 25 nights instead of 15. So combine that with a business card and you have 40 nights each year. And you might wonder, well, why would I need that? And there's two reasons. One is only 10 more nights staying at Marriott hotels each year means that you'll get a choice benefit every year. And if they really do improve these Sweet Night Awards, that could be a nice combination because that's, I feel like for most people, it's almost assured you'll get those 10 nights in just from staying at Marriott. I mean,

why else would you have an expensive Marriott card if you're not going to be staying at them? And the other thing, obviously, is that it'll help you get to titanium status if that's your goal. So, so there are good reasons for those extra nights, I think. And, uh, that all works nicely together. Um, other ways you can keep in mind with Marriott that both paid and award nights count for your required elite nights. So if you're at, you know, you get your Bonvoy brilliant card and a business card.

So you're starting the year at 40 elite nights at the beginning of the year, you only need 10 more to get to that choice benefit. Those 10 nights could all be awards days. One of them could be a free night certificates day and nine awards days or whatever the case might be, or a mix of paid and awards days. So that's, I think, notable too, that people sometimes forget that the awards days do count. Yeah, no, exactly. And so if you think about that, these cards give you a free night certificate every year upon renewal. And if you're carrying two of them, that's two more elite nights each year just by spending those free night certificates that you're getting anyway. Another thing you can do is let's say you have a four night awards

day. Uh, Marriott has this, um, we call it fifth night free awards, but they now call it a book. They call them like something like stay for five, pay for four awards, something like that. Um, anyway, the point is you, the point is you can add another night to your stay. You could basically get the fifth night free in a way. They make the cheapest night free of your five nights, but let's say all five nights were the same award price, then you're

paying for four nights, you're getting fifth night free. So even if you don't need to stay that extra night, why not book it as a five night stay because then you'll get five elite nights instead of four i've done that before you know times where i needed four nights but i said well why wouldn't i pick up the fifth night of elite credit and just you know leave a day early and uh and you're unlikely to get checked out early that way so uh, uh, so yeah, I, that's certainly a technique that you might use. Another technique is to keep your eye out on the promotions because Marriott has several times now run double elite night promotions where each night you stay counts as two nights. And so then that reduces your path even further. So if you were starting with 40

elite nights, now suddenly you may only need five paid nights during a specific promotion window. Or if you were starting with 30 elite nights because you didn't have the brilliant, you had one of the other consumer cards and a business card, then again, 10 nights that are doubled would get you there. So those can be useful for bridging the gap. In fact, I am still short of requalifying my 50 nights this year, but I'm keeping my eye out for the next double elite night credit promo. And I'll probably be able to take advantage or at least hopefully got my fingers crossed. I do have quite a few nights planned that are going to be Marriott's this year. So I should be able to get there if I am lucky enough to catch any double elite night

promotions. And if not, then I'll do one of these, you know, stay five and pay for four kind of things if I need to fill the gap at the end. Yeah. All right, cool. So, so those are the, the shortcuts to married elite status. What if you, uh, don't want to get into this rat race at all? Are you out of luck for having elite benefits when you stay at, at hotels? No, you know, we, we have a whole post about how to get the elite experience without elite status at hotels, because there are a whole bunch of different hotel preferred partner booking platforms that offer very similar benefits to having elite status without elite status just by booking through the right channels. Now, you know, if you just go to Priceline or Expedia and

you book a room, not only are you not going to get any extra benefits, but even if you have elite status with the chain, usually you're not going to get your elite benefits or get elite credit. There are times some hotels may extend them. But as a matter of policy, in general, you're not entitled to get your elite benefits when you book through one of those platforms. But there are a number of these preferred partner platforms, like one that you've probably heard us talk about before is American Express, find hotels and resorts. When you book through Amex FHR, you put in your Marriott number so that hopefully you should be able to get elite night credit and points and all those things. But more importantly, when you book through FHR, you get a guaranteed 4 p.m. late checkout. You

get an amenity of some sort that's usually $100 resort credit or something of similar value. So we used those just recently at the Ritz Carlton Santiago. We used our $100 resort credit to buy lunch at that property. Did the same thing at the Four Seasons in Macau to buy lunch during our stay. So that can be a nice benefit. Free breakfast for two each day. There's another benefit that normally comes with elite status. So nice to be able to get that. And then a room upgrade based on availability, early check-in based on availability, stuff like that. And the nice thing here is that when you book through a program like FHR, let's say, you get those benefits at any of their properties, which often include things like RITs and addition. So if you're

someone who likes to stay at RITs properties or Properties, then it pays to book through a channel like this. And Five Hotels and Resorts is not the only show in town. There's a whole bunch of them. So Chase has their own version, Luxury Hotel Collection. MasterCard has their Travel and Lifestyle program. The MasterCard program often includes properties that you might not expect, though their search tool is really kind of annoying because they don't have a consistent benefit like the $100 credit that you see through FHR and other similar programs. Sometimes it's a $25 or $50 credit. They list a lot of properties that offer nothing at all. So that platform is a little bit of a pain to look through, but it is another one that exists that includes a wider

range of properties. There's Visa Infinite Hotels, Virtuoso. But if you're a Marriott person, you want to check out Marriott Stars and Marriott Luminous because they offer very similar benefits to those FHR benefits, but you're booking directly through a Marriott rep. And so you know you're for sure going to get all of your other elite benefits, your points for the stay, your elite night credit without any doubt there when you're booking through one of those programs. And you get a human point of contact that's reaching out to the hotel on your behalf. And that can be nice. On our recent trip to Santiago, in fact, we booked one room through Amex Fine Hotels and Resorts and one through Marriott Stars just to be able to compare the two. We were staying at a Ritz property, so they qualified for all the same benefits through

Marriott Stars that you would get through Ame MX Fine Hotels and Resorts or very similar benefits anyway. We both got the $100 credit, for instance. And so the difference that we found was that the Marriott Stars booking got upgraded to a suite several days before arrival, whereas the MXFHR booking didn't get upgraded to a suite until, I think, the day of arrival, right? That's right. I mean, it ended up we had similar or maybe the exact same upgrades. I'm not sure. So there wasn't really much of a difference, but there did seem to be better communication and earlier upgrade with the STARS program. So that was nice. Well, the nice thing with the STARS program is the specific property where we had used this had a couple of different types of suites. And so

they asked us if we got upgraded to a suite, if it mattered whether we got upgraded to a suite with one bed or two beds. And because we were traveling as a group of five and we needed the extra beds, we said, well, no, the two beds is important unless we're going to get like the presidential suite or something like that. And so they made sure that when we got upgraded on the Marriott Stars reservation, that it was indeed a suite with two beds, whereas Greg's upgrade was a suite with one bed, I think. So we needed a bed in a rollaway or something of that sort. So it mattered in the sense that somebody asked, whereas if you book through Amex FHR, nobody's going to reach out and ask you your preference on that. You may get an upgrade, but they're not going to in advance ask your preference. Whereas we get an email days before arrival asking about our upgrade preference. So, so that, that, that can be nice. Yeah. So, so at a high level, all of these programs, I think share a couple of characteristics. One is that you're not going to be using your hotel points for these days. You're going to be booking a cash rate. You're going to be generally

booking a cash rate. You're not going to be getting AAA discounts or various types of discounts. So you're going to be getting the best available generic rate basically, as opposed to what you could get with different codes and things like that. Yeah, that's a great point because you may be overpaying somewhat for the room, which you have to decide whether it's worth whatever that additional premium is to get the free breakfast and $100 credit or not, which depending on what codes you may have access to, if you've got a corporate code, for instance, then you may be able to pay much less and you'd want to do that instead.

Yeah. And it just depends on the hotel and the situation, how much the discount is and everything that you might be able to get elsewhere. But in some of these cases, we've found situations where you're paying only about $200 for the night and you're getting just the breakfast alone would have been about $100 and then you're also getting $100 property credit. So the benefits of booking through these things often outweigh the extra costs, but not always. So you definitely should look at that. Yeah, you have to look at it. And then obviously the price ranges really vary because there are properties we showed a couple during the challenge here, four seasons that cost less than $300 via Amex FHR, a Ritz property that was just over $200, $230, something like that through FHR Marriott Stars. So there are properties that

may be within a range you would consider. And obviously they can go way up from there. It all depends on how much it is you're generally booking your paid stays for. So yeah, wide range of possibilities there, but you should check out that post. I'll have a link to it in the description because it explains how these programs work. When I mentioned Marriott Stars and Marriott Luminous, to book through a program like that, you have to find an agent that's affiliated with Marriott Stars and Marriott Luminous, to book through a program like that, you have to find an agent that's affiliated with Marriott Stars or Marriott Luminous. It's not like a website. It's not done at the Marriott website. You're going through a third party, but you are

still getting your elite benefits. So there's information about all of that in our post. So you can check that out. And again, I'll link to that in the show notes. Yeah. And in that post, there's a link to a form that you could fill out if you want to go through. We're partnering with a group called Travelzork that has most of these. There's travel agents that have stars and virtuoso and all that kind of stuff. So with one form, you can get a quote from them that just filling out the form, you get a quote from them for uh you know what it would cost for example and what you get booking through marriott stars or luminous or one of these other programs yep very good all right well i think that wraps up our main event so there's a bunch of shortcuts

to elite status or if you don't want to lead status at all then you have all those various partner programs you can consider so that i think brings us to this week's question of the week so this week's question of the week comes in via the giant mailbag from miles maven who mentions our recent mishap in santiago so if you were following along in the party five challenge you know that greg had his bag stolen in santiago and so the question is given your recent theft in santiago can you cover travel insurance and the best way to get a claim paid? And then a secondary question that is unrelated that she tagged in here, but I think we should also maybe address is, given that points costs or rather points greatly reduce our cost of

stays, can you cover tipping strategies? That's another great topic. I thought these were two decent topics to talk about. So let's cover the travel insurance thing first. Did you have travel insurance? How did you go about recovering something out of that stolen bag? Do you wish you had had some different type of insurance? Can you talk to that or speak to that at all? Yeah. No, I didn't have any travel insurance. I've never bought travel insurance, except last year, one of the countries I went to required some like COVID insurance.

But so I spent like 20 or 30 bucks for like the minimum, minimum. My approach throughout my life with insurance has been, if it's not required, don't buy it. And it's kind of the opposite of what many people think. So you think of insurance as the conservative way of going about things like it keeps you safe and so on. But I think of it as a risky gamble. So let's say travel insurance costs, I'm going to make up a number, $400 a year to cover you for all your travels. That's a gamble. You're gambling $400 each year, and the only way to win is for something bad to happen, like been spending the $400 or whatever the amount is, have added up to where my backpack's probably already covered anyway.

If you think about all those costs that I haven't spent, that's been my approach. What I did, though, I checked with my homeowner's insurance to see whether I was covered for theft outside the home. And I was. I am. And so I filed a claim online. It only took me a couple of minutes. And a guy called me the next day, went through the details of the items that were in my backpack. And I got paid about an hour later. Um, and, uh, so they, they, uh, um, took off some

money for, uh, depreciation and they also, uh, you know, of course my deductible, um, wasn't included, but I got, uh, you know, enough to, to, uh, to buy back most of what I need from State Farm, in this case, right away. I do want to caution, when I posted about this on the blog, a number of people wrote and say, what about your premium? Won't that go up? And some people asserted, it will definitely go up without question. I don't know. It never even occurred to me, to be honest, before filing that I should think twice about whether to file it. Will my premium go up? My guess is that it's not going to because I've just been a customer of State Farm for many years.

I have many different, not just homeowners, but also auto and some personal articles. And they've already gotten more from me than they paid out for this claim. So hopefully they'll see that and won't raise my claim. But I needed to point out that warning because if someone is, well, first of all, I don't know for sure that my premium won't go up. But also, if someone's newer to the insurance company and files a claim like this, they might not just raise your rates. They might actually just cancel you altogether is a possibility. So there are some downsides to using your homeowner's insurance as coverage. Yep. Very good. And if this was something that was lost on the plane, then one of his cards that covers lost baggage would cover it. But

that wasn't the case in this case. It was stolen out of the back of the Uber as we were getting in. So that made it a more difficult situation, I guess. But it was good that you were able to get something out of it. Like Greg, I don't usually buy travel insurance. I have a couple of times before in specific instances. But generally speaking, I don't. And like Greg said, when you add up all that I haven't spent in travel insurance, it comes out to a lot more than what I would have gotten back since I haven't had to make any claims or been in a situation where that I think would have been helpful at all yet. So in years of travel, I've been pretty fortunate. Now, that doesn't mean that you should do the same thing. If you want to insure your stuff, hey,

by all means, there are lots of companies out there that will be willing to take your money and give you the peace of mind that you're looking for. So, and it can be worth it. I mean, there are people that have major losses where it's certainly worthwhile to have that insurance. Right. And I want to add to a lot of people reach out to us asking for our advice about travel insurance. And it's hard for us to give advice because we haven't bought it. So we don't have experience with it. We don't have an experience with filing claims with it or with which companies are good or bad or any of that. So sorry that we can't help there. Yeah, no, not a lot of insight there. You know, I just never it's not a habit I ever got into. So so that's that. All right. So I want to I do want to do that second piece, even though I know it's been a long show.

I want to do that second piece because I think that's an interesting question to explore quickly. So obviously, points cover a lot of our hotels and our flights and things like that. So how do you handle tipping strategy? Like, you know, hotels, is that something that comes into mind? Is it something you think about? Do you know what the right guidelines are these days in terms of tipping housekeeping or tipping, you know, people that carry your bags in or things like that? Who do you tip?

Yeah, I don't have a consistent approach personally. You know, I don't either. Yeah, it's not consistent. I hope that I have in situations where it seems like calls for it, like let's say I let the person carry my bags to the room or whatever. I hope I have about five bucks or something equivalent in the local currency, but I often don't have any cash at all. And then you're in this awkward situation. I hate tipping cultures

altogether. I'd happily just charge me extra for that service and add it to the bill. I'd much prefer that than having that sort of awkward situation of, I don't have any cash. What do I do? Well, that's the big problem because I just don't carry cash very often. And when I do, it's usually not a denomination that I'm looking to tip with. I have a $100 bill in my pocket. I'm not going to tip $100 on bringing the bags up. So it's a difficult situation to be in. So I try to remember before I go on a trip and I say that I'm ready to take off on a trip in a few days and haven't done this yet, but try to run to the bank and get, you know, like a hundred dollars worth of fives or tens or that kind of thing. Just so I have it for those situations, but not only do you have to get it, then you also have to have it somewhere easily accessible at the moment when you need it. But,

but the people that I generally tip are the people that carry bags for the most part. There aren't a lot of other tips I ended up giving out in a hotel or while I'm traveling in cash. Not that I can think of anyway. I guess if the concierge does something really special for you, you may want to tip them, but I haven't generally needed much in the lines of service there. Yeah. And we've been inconsistent to be honest about housekeeping. Like, so I often do tip, but often I just forget. And then I'm also feeling like uncomfortable about like knowing that whoever gets my tip is probably not who did most of the cleaning, you know, earlier in the, so, so they say to tip like every night, but definitely not going to remember to do that. So anyway. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So we need a better strategy there.

So feel free to chime in, in the comments with what you do so that we can improve our strategies in that regard. All right. Unfortunately, we are out of time for today. So we got to let you guys go. If you enjoyed today's episode and you'd like to get this stuff in your email inbox each day or each week, you want to go to frequent miler.com slash subscribe. Again, that's frequent miler.com slash subscribe.

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