Frequent Miler on the Air - Family vacation bookings on points | Ep56 | 7-25-20

Episode Date: July 25, 2020

Links & timestamps below! Go to thefrequentmiler.com/subscribe for more. 00:18 Reader feedback: Abbas wants to know hot we book hotel rooms for 4 people. 7:15 What crazy thing did Citi do this week? Issuers clamping down. 9:23 Confession time: How Greg might have lost a boatload of Citi points 10:58 Mattress running the numbers: Is the Cambria promo for 20K points after 2 stays worthwhile? https://frequentmiler.boardingarea.com/choice-privileges-book-2x-cambria-stays-earn-at-least-20000-points/ 19:18 Booking family vacations: Big suites, vacation rentals, etc. https://frequentmiler.boardingarea.com/ways-to-book-vacation-rentals-using-rewards-points/ 42:15 Post Roast: Greg rips me for my failure to take a stand https://frequentmiler.boardingarea.com/capital-one-product-change-dilemma/ 48:00 Turnabout: Greg's top picks for Hyatt suites were in pretty random spots. https://frequentmiler.boardingarea.com/the-most-exciting-hyatt-suites-bookable-with-points/ 55:10 Question of the Week: Is the Platinum card worth its annual fee?

frequent miler on the air starts now today's main event is booking vacations for families how do you get four or more people into a little hotel room when they often only allow two or three people first of course we're gonna we're gonna dip into the giant mailbag and see what kind of feedback we have for this week you can actually make a lucky winner i know you made sound effects but you didn't say anything all right you're right i didn't say i'm here i'm here guys i'm watching the mic is here that's it's not the mail bag in that's right he was busy um this week's mail is from abbas i guess that's how you say it a b-B-B-A-S. That seems like a good guess to me. Abbas says, love your podcasts.

Very enjoyable, funny, and insightful. Enjoy listening during long rides. Much to the chagrin of my wife and two kids. I just love that. He loves our show so much. He tortures the wife and kids with it. Well, yeah, and hearing complaints from them is less painful than not listening to our show. I like it. I'm a big fan of Office.

I'll say that right now. Right, right. So going on, he says, talking about my wife and two kids, here is a question for you. As bad as it is trying to find four premium class tickets on flights i'm now having as bad a time finding standard hotel awards allowing all of us uh to stay in one room are you getting an idea why i picked this one for this episode yeah yeah it seems like there's a theme going on there's a theme yeah uh he says either i have to book two award rooms or pay for a family premium room at exorbitant. Wow, that was hard to say. Exorbitant rates. And then parens, he says, check out Hilton for Conrad Tokyo occupancy of three

versus occupancy of four. It is truly mind boggling. You won't believe your eyes. Now that as an aside, so when you're looking specifically at awards with Hilton, what happens is as soon as you leave the standard room award price, you get into that specialty award pricing that they have. Premium room award. Yeah, which is going to be mind boggling most of the time. So that's what's happening there. Anyway, my oldest just turned 14, so I may have another year or two before needing to book two rooms or go the Airbnb route. You would think that most hotel chains would change their business strategies to move away from solo business traveler and accommodate traveling families.

Question, how have you handled the hotel booking for a family of four? So I know this isn't question answer time, but that question is so easy for, I think both of us to answer right now. It really is. I haven't. And neither have I. So I have a family of three. I have a family of three and like, you know, maybe, maybe a half. I don't know what you call it. Three quarters or like six weeks to go. Yeah. So I haven't had to book for four yet. Right. But, but but we're gonna do our best having no knowledge whatsoever about how to really do this we're gonna do our best uh further on in the show to answer that question right we sure are we sure are yeah i mean it's a good piece of feedback it's when we get pretend we know what we're talking about right right right right like

like we've done this before or help somebody with it anyway but yeah people ask all the time it's a good question. And it's definitely something worth addressing. So actually, you know, I don't know if we're going to talk about this later. So let me say the first thing that I thought of when you were talking about the difference in rate between three people and four people. Yeah. Because I've seen that going from two to three.

Also, I'm sure you have too, Greg, in places when you, I know you've mentioned it before having difficulty. Less common going from two to three, but yeah. But sometimes maybe in Europe, that kind of thing. Yeah. And so, I mean, one technique that I think is always worth giving a shot is booking. If you run into that situation, book for three and then reach out to the hotel directly to ask them, you know, tell them you have another person, a fourth person, you know,

want to know what you can do, blah, blah, blah. I approached it that way a number of times. I ran into places, even just two of us looking at a third, when our son was under two years old, that would add a bunch of money for the third person. And so I just looked for two almost every time and then sent a message to the hotel and said, Hey, I'm going to need a crib because we're traveling with my son also. And I didn't get charged for him in any of those instances. And in fact, I've written before that I've heard from others that have said that individual hotel properties have told them that they don't actually have an additional fee for the kids. But when you book online, Marriott adds it or Hilton adds it or whatever chain adds it. And so they said the only people who pay that fee are the people who book online for the extra person and choose to pay it.

The hotel doesn't actually charge it themselves. So that's just a tip if you are looking to book the third or fourth person that you might just want to try and book whatever it is you can and drop back 10 yards and pump later on. In my case, I figured if I show up with an infant, nobody's going to turn me away. Right. They're going to figure out a way for me to stay there. But if you have two teen kids, it might be a little harder, but I'd probably email in advance. Yeah. I mean, along those lines, I mean, I do know that it often does make sense to book the standard award rate,

which is for, you know, maybe a two or three person room, but contact them and just ask, maybe they would charge you a small, you know, daily fee to move up to the next category room or something like that. But it probably well worth it compared to paying for two rooms. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, and that's another great tip to that, you know, express interest in what it is that you want. And, and sometimes, you know, you'll get a great deal on that upgrade to a larger suite that'll accommodate everybody. Sometimes you'll get a really nice surprise. I had that a little over a year ago at the Conrad Fort Lauderdale, where I sent an email in advance. And I said, I'm wondering how much it would be to upgrade to this

bigger three bedroom or two bedroom. I can't remember what it was a larger residence sort of a thing because it's a family trip. And I was booking multiple rooms and wanted to see if I could pay. And I made it very clear that I was willing to pay and wanted to know how much, and they wrote back and said that they were able to upgrade us complimentary well in advance of the stay. Yeah, yeah. Nice surprise. That's awesome.

So you know what I was thinking for Abbas? What I really wanted to do for this show is stop talking about points and miles at all and talk about stuff that his family wants to hear about because they're stuck in the darn car with him. Apparently, he controls the media in the car, and that's just not fair. See, I have no idea what his 14-year-old kid wants to hear about. That's the problem.. So I don't know. See, I have no idea what like his 14-year-old kid wants to hear about. That's the problem. Sorry.

I don't know. Otherwise, we would have completely subverted the show and talked all about Pokemon or whatever. Right. But we don't know. And even mentioning Pokemon demonstrates how little we know. I'm not even sure if a 14-year-old has heard of Pokemon at this point. So it was popular a ways. Although maybe they have. popular a ways that maybe they, I don't know. It's either. We don't know. We don't know. Right. So, so what are we going to,

I mean, what do you, so, well, it's time for what crazy thing has city done this? Well, city didn't really do anything particularly notable on their own this week, but I thought it was really interesting that this week I saw headlines in the major mass media about mass credit card shutdowns, about issuers in general closing cards, and that's something that we've seen. I keep seeing reports periodically, anecdotal reports of people getting accounts closed

or inactivity, not being open. Obviously, issuers in general are tightening up. I mean, we've also heard anecdotally that a lot of cards have been more difficult to get. Just last week in my family, we opened a premium rewards card with Bank of America, and it took days before that was approved. And it was eventually automatically approved without having to make a phone call. But it wasn't an instant approval, which was a surprise in the situation. Although I say a surprise, it shouldn't be that much of a surprise when it's in the major mass media that issuers are closing accounts because of the pandemic and the fact that they're just concerned about consumer debt and people not having jobs and the economy. So I think that's kind of a crazy

notable thing because our hobby is usually confined to blogs about miles and points. I mean, the rest of Abbas's family is like, the only time I ever hear about this stuff is when I'm in the car with you, dad. But this time, this week, they might have seen a headline somewhere about credit cards, and that's just something that doesn't always make the news. So that's a crazy thing. It's not city-specific, but issuer in general. So you want to make sure that you're keeping your cards active first of all you know definitely recommend making sure that you're putting a charge on at least every six months or so because that's one of the triggers that often leads to an automatic closure of an account and also obviously you know i think we all just need to be prepared that issuers are tightening the belt and may clamp down some so you know you know as you're talking i i actually

forgot that this happened to my wife and it happened with city bank so she had a few cards that were downgraded way back when from probably the premier card and uh they just outright canceled them about two months ago i think um now this sort of flows into confession time oh because we got a double this week we get both feedback and a confession all right guys two for one um so it so uh what i realized i'm kind of sweating a little as as i'm thinking about this i did not check her thank you account to see, did she lose any thank you points as a result of this happening? Because I should have, you know,

done something about it right away as soon as the card was canceled. And now it might be too late after the show, I'll have to go check, but I don't know if I'll be able to tell, you know, that when things are pooled together, it's all a big morass you can't really tell but if i if if we log on to her account and see any uh points that are expiring uh then then we'll know it's because of that and that i caught it in time right right so and if you don't see any points expiring then you know you missed something you just have no idea how many it was well Well, I mean, hopefully I do try to keep, whenever we use points, I try to use them out of her account because I don't have my eyes as much on her account as my own.

And so there's a decent chance that she didn't have any. But boy, I'll be kind of pissed if it turns out there are a lot. So I'm kind of hoping that if there were a lot that I just never find out. I don't want to have to worry about it. In other words, hopefully there will not be confession time next week, guys. Hopefully there's a one-time confessional. Exactly.

Exactly. All right. Well, so that brings us through the crazy thing that you didn't do in confession time. And so I guess that probably brings us to the main topic, right? No. No. Did I skip over something? Well, something well wait a minute no i'm forgetting the order now does mattress running the numbers come before or after the main event you know we've been doing it after the main event but there's there's not a rule here i mean it's our show so we could do

mattress running the numbers right now you know what i vote that we do that let's do mattress running the numbers. New segment. There should be some music here and a little effect or something. The standard music people play when they talk about mattress running the numbers. So this actually came out a few weeks ago, uh, choice Cambria hotels, uh, which is their sort of upper middle, uh, range hotels. So they're nicer than, you know, your average, but they're not luxury. Right. Yeah. I mean, I remember you had that picture, like the magic mirror at the one. Yeah. I enjoyed that place. Yeah. I mean, I remember you had that picture, like the magic mirror at the one at LAX, right? Yeah, I enjoyed that place. Yeah, I stayed at the Cambria right by the LAX airport, and it was, yeah, it had a magic mirror.

So Google that, Frequent Miler, Cambria, magic mirror, I'm sure that'll work. You could probably even leave out Frequent Miler, and I bet it'll be on the first page of Google results. Look up Cambria magic mirror. I hope so. So, okay. So now they're having a deal where if you stay two times, you get 20,000 choice points. And we've talked before how under the right circumstances, choice points can be pretty darn valuable.

And so the question is, is this mattress run worthy? Should we book cheap Cumbria stays, single one night cheap stays and get those 20,000 points? So let's say you can find a $80 hotel nearby, check in two separate times, would you do that? Let's say with taxes, it comes to about 90 bucks. Would you do that to get the 20,000 choice points? I mean, if I didn't have any choice points already, then yes, I would. Or if i had a i don't know if i now and then find good choice deals maybe i mean if you're talking 80 or 90 bucks you're talking less than half a cent per point that's pretty good for chase points if you buy or not chase choice points rather you buy choice

points with the cash and points trick i think it comes out to three quarters of a cent per point if i remember correctly uh and so okay your math needs a little help because you have to do two stays to get the 20,000 points. Oh, no, definitely. It's really almost a penny a point. No, no, no, no, no. Point nine. Nevermind. Nevermind. I was thinking one stay. No, definitely I wouldn't then because you can buy them via the cash and points trick, three quarters of a cent per point. So yeah, you definitely wouldn't want to make two stays at that rate if you could get your two stays for $100. And for anybody who doesn't know it,

like Abba's kids in the back seat, the cash and points trick is you book a choice stay for let's say 5,000 points and 30 bucks instead of paying the 10,000 points. Those numbers aren't exactly right, but the, the idea is that then when you cancel that booking, instead of getting back the 30 bucks or 60 bucks, whatever the copay was, you get back more points. So you get back more points than you initially started with. And so that's a way to buy points quite cheaply.

And it's a great way to do it if you find a great award. Like there are times where points are worth well over a penny each. And so you can then buy them. And actually, it'd be a lot cheaper to book your stay with points by buying the points this indirect way and then and then enjoy it yeah yeah which by the way you can transfer from amex membership rewards points to choice so you can do that but you don't want to do that because you could buy the choice points for three quarters of a cent right now you you might want to move over six if you have zero choice points you may want to move over the 6,000 or whatever it is, the minimum you need in order to do the cash and points trick.

But do me a favor and don't do what I did last year. Don't transfer over more than 6,000 points because you can buy the rest of them. Right. Didn't you already do a confession time on that? I did. So now I'm going to go into that again. I don't even want to remember that. So that's the moral of the story.

Don't check into Cambria and buy the points. So that's Mattress running the numbers.'t check in to Cambria and buy the points Thumbs down That's mattress running the numbers So yes for mattress running It's thumbs down For a promo it's good It comes close to paying for itself For a cheap stay

Oh it does If Europe ever lets Americans back in again Choice points are really valuable In Europe and especially in Scandinavia and Northern Europe. And you can get great value out of 20,000 points in that part of the world. So it could be well worth mattress running. Maybe I say mattress running. It'd be well worth taking advantage if you have to stay anyway. You have to stay anyway. Well worth taking advantage of the promo. If you're choosing between a couple properties

and one of them is a Cumbria and you're going to do two separate stays, I don't know who's going to be in that position, especially these days. Right, right, right. Alright, moving on to the main event. You know what? Before we move on, let me ask you this.

Let me tag a question onto this. Now I thought of another scenario. We can't get away from this. I thought this was going to be the fastest mantras running the numbers ever because I thought we'd totally agree on everything and it'd be on. I mean, we haven't agreed, so it's okay.

People enjoy the banter, right? But let me ask you a different situation because you're right. I mean, who in their right mind right now in the current situation has two random stays that for a campria happens to work? So let's pretend for a second that you had one of those random stays where a Cambria fit your plans, right?

Yeah. So that already, I don't know, you were staying for work, you were staying to see family, whatever it is, you had one of those stays where, okay, now is it worth mattress running a second stay? I mean, if you're halfway to the promo. Yeah. Yeah. then it is. That's a good, that's a good scenario. Because, you know, assuming you can get a stay for less than about a hundred bucks,

you're actually getting a very good price for those points. So now, to some degree, though, it depends on how many points you earned on that first stay. Because the way they do choices, so weird in so many ways sometimes that benefits us sometimes it hurts us and in this way it kind of hurts it which is instead of giving you a flat 20 000 point bonus what they do is they say we're going to give you more points based on whatever you already earned so that you'll be up to 20,000 points. So if you got 10,000 points on that first day, you're only going to get 10,000 more on the second stay,

no matter how many. So even if the second stay, you would have earned 5,000 points because of the normal program, then you're only getting 5,000 bonus points over. Yeah, so it really depends. So if you earned very few on the first day then then the answer is definitely yes wow it just there's no easy answer here there are a lot of us a lot of us what have you yeah a lot of a lot of ins and outs 99.99 of our audience

it's not not worth mattress running right glossed their eyes over on that one they were like they heard choice points, Greg, and they were like. That's right. They pressed that little jump forward 30 and realized that's not enough. Jump forward 30 again. Right, right.

Okay. Thanks to Abbas and his kids for having to listen to that one there. And wife. So thank you very much for listening in because it was me, you, Greg, and everybody else skipped past. So skipping past.

I'm still hoping one of his kids takes over his account and messages us what he or she actually likes so that we can help them out next time. Anyway. That's cool, yeah. So on to the main event, so to speak, today. The main event. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the main event.

We're now going to talk about something we know nothing about booking for four people um so that i mean this week that's i think in general that's a topic of interest right now and i say that i guess i should say what the topic is right the topic probably shouldn't booking some sort of vacation rentals right finding a way to book places that are going to fit multiple people and be, you know, kind of isolated from others and that sort of thing. So the main event here is talking about that. How do we book places for families using points, whether that's rental properties, whether that's suites, whether that's, you know, condos or

Airbnb type things. So what do you think greg what are your ideas so if you got a family of four family of six a family of eight whatever it might be and you're looking to get away this year and you're not necessarily interested in staying at the cambria suites what do you recommend what are some options yeah so i mean first of all your posts that you put together has a great like selection of options. So I think we should, you know, touch on each of those real quick, but first let's talk about the traditional like hotel chains and what's kind of possible there. And so, as you know,

I've been writing a lot about Hyatt suites, how you could book the Hyatt premium suites. And,, as you know, I've been writing a lot about Hyatt suites, how you could book the Hyatt premium suites. And so, for example, there's that three-bedroom royal residence. If your family has been looking for a road trip to Zanzibar. To Zanzibar, right. That's not applicable to most people's summer travel right now. But it's an example that one room for only 30,000 points a night allows seven people. It has almost twice as many square feet as my house. It's incredible.

At 30,000 points a night. Right, right. Yeah, it's insane um so but so the point is there are situations where you can book suites at reasonable rates and and there are situations where those suites allow for multiple people so there's some in florida for example where some of those premium suites with hyatt that allow that have two bedrooms um other ones it's kind of funny that it is true most of them have the same rules as regular rooms that is three adults like that's the rule in looking across all these things and these are like thousand plus square foot

suites i mean do you know how big that is like so huge it's huge so if you look at um the pictures of my uh uh giant suite at the ventana big sur had this enormous suite that was not a thousand feet that was according to the website that's 760 or 770 so so that would not like qualify for for one of the premium suites that i picked to highlight in these posts because it's just not big enough. So my point is that you could put three families in one of these things. The question is whether the hotel would allow it. So you could book one of these and then contact the hotel and say, hey, I have more than, you know, the three people or whatever. Is that okay?

And chances are most of them are going to be like, well, of course, it's enormous. Why are you even asking me? Most people just throw the party and don't ask us. And a lot of these are like apartments. They have kitchens. A lot of them have kitchens. And, you know, usually there's two bathrooms and so anyway that's that's one approach um it mainly works well with hyatt because they have a fixed award chart for their suites and so uh even when suites are like

10 times more costly in in dollars it's only double the cost in in. And so it's a good way to go for a big double the cost in points for like the for the premium suites and the regular standard suites are even less than double. That's true. Yeah, yeah, that's it. You know, and funny, that place in Santa Barbara. So you know, we're laughing about it, because right now, it's obviously not going to be on anybody's docket for the near term. Right. But one of the things that came to my mind when I saw that was an FTU a couple of years ago, there was a speaker who said that on his honeymoon, he spent 30 days, 30 nights at the Park Hyatt Maldives. He said that he had saved up a whole bunch of chase points

and decided he really wanted to have a unique experience for the honeymoon. They spent 30 nights there. He said it was really unique because they really got to know the staff and kind of felt more like one of the family, so to speak, and build some relationships and had a very unique experience in a place where most people go for four or five, six, seven nights or something like that. And so I thought about that place in Zanzibar and I was like, can you imagine 30 nights in the royal residence there? I mean, that'd be not a bad way to spend a month, I guess. I mean, yeah, you'd be 900,000 points or whatever. So not very realistic for most folks probably,

but I'm sure there's a couple of listeners out there that have a million chase points. And you know, those folks, I look at something like that and I said, that would be pretty wild. Yeah. Yeah. But don't forget there are some enormous suites, like even in the U S like the, the one in Albuquerque, the presidential suite, enormous, only 10,000 points a night. You really could stay there a month if you wanted to. 300,000 points. I mean, yeah, a month. And so you could move to one of those suites for a month. Yeah. I mean, that's, and especially right now, probably more and more people working from home.

Obviously, more and more people are back at work now, but I have to imagine it seems like a lot of people have been able to work remotely now. It might be kind of an interesting way to have some different scenery, different walls to look at at some point. So yeah, I'm intrigued by the premium suites or something like that too, especially having a mobile lifestyle or work online that's kind of intriguing okay but but that's that's that's kind of off topic because it's kind of an exception like sometimes that'll work for you but but what you really want or what's what's more realistic is booking a vacation rental or a timeshare condo type of thing using using points which is possible as you showed you what you want

to kind of summarize what what are some of the better options anyway? Yeah, I mean, we talked about this during the live broadcast earlier this week, when the question had come up about using points to book vacation rentals and that sort of thing. And really, the best option right now, bar none, is going to be using Chase points. And that's whether you're using them through the Chase portal, because you have the Sapphire Reserve and you can get one and a half cents a point. There are some vacation rentals there. Now, I've definitely heard from a number of people that they've had a hard time finding any that are available. A couple that I

tried were available, but I'm sure that there are some that aren't coming up available. So that's one method. Or the other method. Is that just because they're all booked up because they're so popular right now? I've heard it so many times. So no, it's just before this began. I have a feeling that it just seems like the Chase portal is run by Expedia. And so it's displaying Expedia inventory. And it seems like there must be something that's not translating.

And I should say, actually, on that note, that I talked about using Southwest points, which I'll get back to in a second. And I found that in the Southwest results, there was one place after another that showed me the cost per point or per night and the cost overall. But when you click through to go to book it, it said there were no rooms available, even though it gave me like prices. That's kind of unfriendly. It is.

It is. So, and that, you know, that was connected with Chase too. So, so maybe there's something funny going on there. At any rate, the other way to use Chase points right now is of course to cash out, so to speak, via the grocery store or home improvement stores or that sort of thing. Because right now, you can pay yourself back at one and a half cents a point using your Chase Points. So you can go to the grocery store or home improvement store, buy some Airbnb gift cards and erase that purchase at one and a half cents each or buy Visa gift cards or something like that if you want to be able to use those or manufacturer spend, et cetera. One and a half cents a point is pretty good because I said, if you want to spend two grand on a week vacation rental somewhere, you're looking at 133,000 points, 19,000 points a night. Talking about category five Hyatt type

of a price, potentially book a vacation rental at 285 a night. I mean, of course, obviously- You're probably getting multiple bedrooms. You're probably getting a washer and dryer, you're probably getting a kitchen, all those conveniences that are great to have with the family. Right, right. And you can go up or down depending on where you want to go and what vacation rentals cost and those kind of places. But I think it's pretty reasonable to expect that for less than 20,000 points a night, you can probably get yourself a pretty nice vacation rental in a lot of places if you cash those points out. So you can cash out for gift cards, just buy your groceries and toss the money aside, whatever. That's your best bet probably. But then I went through some of the other options that you have using points because there are some other ways to book vacation rentals.

You can book blue-green vacations properties with choice privileges points. And those blue-green vacation properties tend to be more like timeshare-y type properties. So you're looking at condos there maybe one bedroom or two bedroom etc. One of the nice things about the Choice Privileges program is that for you know with no rhyme or reason really for some reason of some sort it seems that many properties not all of them but at many properties you can book any room for the same number of points. So you put the standard room that fits two people or the three-bedroom room for the same number of points. So you book the standard room that fits two people or the three bedroom suite for the same number of points very often.

So, and that happens to be the case with some of the Blue Green Vacation Rentals properties. Although I couldn't find any of them showing any availability when I went to search to write the post. So I don't know if that's a COVID thing or what, but I literally couldn't find a single night available at any of them right now.

I know they have been available and they've been kind of one of those hidden gems that family travelers have known about, but a lot of other people haven't been there. Okay. So what you're saying is the best options are completely unavailable. So looking through the Chase portal, best option, not you'll want to find anything.

Choice points. Choice points. Great option. Right. Great option. If you could, but doesn points choice points great option right great option if you could but doesn't seem to be there right now so let's say the blue green vacations place tomorrow good luck to you um so that's another option then a third option that i found that was kind of interesting is you can use windham points to book a number of different vacation rentals now we talked on tuesday about their partnership with Cottages.com. Cottages.com only has properties in Europe,

so that's not particularly useful for those looking to stay in the U.S. this year. However, they also have Wyndham vacation rentals. And that is through some site I've never heard of that I can't, but Casa or something like that.com. So they have this partnership. Now, you can use 15,000 points per bedroom per night. That's Wyndham points. You could transfer from Capital One to Wyndham. It's two to one and a half. You're transferring that way. So 20,000, uh, uh, Capital One points per night, questionable

value, but, but maybe you'll find something good. So that's a possibility. I did see some cool looking places when searching there. However, the gotcha on that one is that the terms say that blackout dates apply. And it says the blackout dates are determined by the price of the room. Essentially, what they said is when it's really expensive, you're not going to be able to use your points. So they didn't set a bar as to where that cutoff is. But somewhere there is a cutoff, which I imagine is probably different by each property, depending on how much the property owners are willing to take, whatever it is that

Wyndham reimburses them for the 15,000 points per night. So you have to call in to find out what's available with that kind of, you know, the good thing about situations where you have to call in is there's more likely to be like a gem that, that no one's, no one's found. And so you never know, like that incredible Wyndham promotion with cottages.com several years back, you know, it was like a couple of days after it started and they said they were only doing 50 of those. And so, you know, I didn't even think there was like a chance in the world that it was still

open. And then you were able to book a nine-bedroom mansion for 15,000 points a night. Now, that's a promo that's not available anymore. And then I was able to do the same, but only an eight-bedroom mansion. Totally. But where was I going? Oh, just the ideas. I think that lasted. I mean, partly because a lot of people didn't have Wyndham points, partly because you had to call the book there. You couldn't just do it online. And so I think a lot of people, because you couldn't tell whether it was still available online, they just kind of gave up, just like actually I was going to do. Right. Yeah. I mean, I was ready to give up right away too. And I saw the post and I thought, oh, I don't have time to do it right now. It's going to be gone. And then I went back to it a

little bit later because I think it was Angelina Travels where I had seen it originally. And I saw a comment from not that long, you know, just a little while before, so to speak, that said somebody had booked it. And I was like, you can't possibly still be available. And I called and yeah, sure enough, it was. So yeah, yeah, that's definitely a good point. And you know, the thing is, with Wyndham, with those vacation rentals, it's 15,000 points per bedroom per night. And so you can actually, after you click through, sort places by the number of bedrooms. And so that's how I ended up someplace in Tennessee. I used some example in the post in Tennessee. It was like Pigeon Cove, Pigeon Lodge, Pigeon Hole, Pigeon something or other. I can't

remember what it is. Pigeon Forge, probably. Pigeon Forge, thereigeon Lodge, Pigeon Hole. Pigeon something or other. I can't remember what it is. Pigeon Forge, probably. Pigeon Forge, there you go, in Tennessee. There it is. Near Dollywood, I think, and that kind of thing. Okay, so I'm not that familiar with that part of Tennessee, but I knew Dollywood at least. So anyway, in Pigeon Forge there,

I was able to sort it by number of bedrooms, and so I found a place that's a full cabin that's one bedroom. So I assume it's 15,000 points. Right, right. So that's probably full cabin that's one bedroom so yeah 15 000 points right right so so that's that's probably great for a family with like toddler babies that where they want to be in the same room not great when you get teenagers that want to be in their own room that place did

say that it's sleep six though got one bedroom but it was i think it was like a loft sort of a situation okay sofa bed yeah sort of thing so i mean they have a pool table and a foosball table and stuff like that. So it looked like it was big enough that you had kids that are willing to sleep on a couch or an air mattress or something would probably be doable for a few people. So, okay, that was Wyndham's another option. And let's see, we talked about Southwest points, which is a terrible option. But if you got a lot of Southwest points and you don't plan on flying anytime soon, you can take a look. They did have vacation rentals. And again, very similar to Wyndham,

you could sort and look by cabin or chalet or condo, depending on what style you wanted or hotel, et cetera. So I did the same kind of thing looking at cabins and found a horrible deal for the same cabin that I showed available through Chase Ultimate Rewards for a lot more Southwest points than it would cost you in Ultimate Rewards. But there were some places where there were multiple bedrooms. I included a place with three king beds and a twin bunk bed for 54,000 Southwest points a night, way more Southwest points than I would spend per night. But if you picked up a couple of credit cards, and again, if you're not planning on flying for a while, maybe because of this whole COVID thing, maybe that would appeal to you. So you can use Southwest Points.

Somebody also mentioned you can use Accor Points. Is that how you say it? Accor? I don't think we know. ALL. We debated that before, and I know that neither of us knew. Right. Nobody knows.

It's a French company or something. Accor. Accor. Accor live limitless. So you can use your points apparently. And I had actually tried to look into this and I didn't find where it told me that you could use the points

because I knew that I could transfer a capital one points to them. So, and I also knew that those points are worth a fixed amount generally. So it sounds like that actually could be a good deal. I didn't write about it in the post, but you can see the comment. It's through onefinesday.com, I think is what it is. That's their timeshare rental sort of place. I looked at the website and there's some ritzy looking

sort of apartment places that you can rent through them. And I think that the point value is not bad, 1.53 cents a point, I think. And so if you're transferring from Capital One, I mean, it's not amazing. It's not great because then it gets a two to one transfer ratio, but it's an option. So that's another possibility. What am I missing? Those are the ones that come to mind right away. Yeah, that's, I don't remember any others. So Hilton doesn't have any secret timeshare-y type thing that you could use points for or IHG? You know, not that I found. And I say that there are probably some exceptions. Like I know IHG, for instance, I remember looking a couple of years ago and in Saigon, Ho Chi Minh City,

they had a property that was like an apartment hotel. It was an intercontinental that was an apartment hotel. So it was an intercontinental branded, but each room was a total apartment with a kitchen and a washer and dryer and modern appliances, front load washer and dryer and that sort of thing. So you might find some individual properties like that. Or I mentioned the Conrad Fort Lauderdale where we had stayed and that place has one bedroom apartment sort of places with a full kitchen and all the, again, all the stuff you need to cook and that sort of thing. So there are some individual properties you might find like that, but I didn't spend a lot of time

looking for those types of places because I figured that a lot of people who are looking for vacation rentals are probably not looking to get in the elevator with other guests and be that confined with other people. So I didn't talk as much about those kinds of things. If you're comfortable with that, going and staying at a hotel and you've got a family, we've mentioned recently and mentioned again, the Hyatt family rate could be your friend. So that's a possibility to book one room and then get a second room for half off the regular rate with the Hyatt family rate. If you Google frequent mile or Hyatt family rate, you'll find my post about that from a couple of years ago.

So that can be a way to potentially save some money, but I'm not aware of anything else. Not that I know of. You know what you're, you're talking about the intercontinental thing reminded me of something. Another thing Hyatt has, which is they bought the destination chain. And a lot of those are residence type. They're called like destination residence or something like that. I forget exactly.

Yeah. Those are a lot of them are standalone units, just like a vacation rental and probably very, very nice. And that's different from, they don't show up as premium suites, but they're probably a lot of times as big or bigger than premium suites because they're actually intended for exactly that kind of thing. Yeah. So, I mean, that's definitely something else. And, you know, when you start looking at that sort of thing, there are some other like Marriott's vacation clubs, some of those, I know, like you wrote about the one in Kauai, right? It was like, I think you did. Right, right.

I want to say there's a different one in Kauai that again was an apartment style, sort of two bedroom suites with a kitchen and that sort of thing. So there are some individual places. I didn't go through the different major chains to look for those. I was like more so for vacation, rentally places. Another tip I didn't put in the post, but might be worth checking is something like Amex fine hotels and resorts. I stayed a couple of years ago at the, what was it?

The Stowe mountain in the Stowe mountain lodge, the Stowe something or other, which is like a ski resort that you could book those rooms via timeshare rental sort of places. People own the timeshares book a week or a few nights or whatever from the owners, or you can book it directly through the lodge itself. And you could also, of course, book through fine hotels and resorts, and then you get yourself a resort credit, some other benefits that might be worthwhile too. But I didn't note that in the post because I was

looking more so at ways to use points rather than cash. Right, right. Okay. Well, that's pretty good. I think that's a pretty good overview. And I think you're focusing more on vacation rentals makes a lot of sense because a lot of people who are road tripping aren't necessarily going to the places that have the timeshares and the hotels that are like timeshares, that kind of thing. So being able to rent from individuals basically, or, you know, gives us a lot more options. Yeah, I mean, I think chase points are the way to go on that in general right now. And a tip that I didn't note in the post, but if you're booking through Airbnb, something that I picked up from Scott at a mile value a

couple of years ago, was that it may be harder to do in the current environment, but it's worth negotiating. Send a message to the host ahead of time. I've been surprised. I didn't even know you could do that before I heard him say something about it. And now every time we stayed in an Airbnb, I've messaged ahead of time and I don't think I've paid the sticker price yet on an Airbnb these last couple of years since I got that tip from him. Now sometimes it's a really small discount. They might only give you like 5% off or something, but hey,

I mean, I prefer that 5% to be in my pocket. So I'm happy to do that when I can. So it's worth asking in the message and see. Yeah. Yeah. And another trick is that often the same property is also listed on VRBO and other sites like that. And in my experience, they're usually cheaper on the other sites. I mean, I haven't done any kind of like broad survey of that, but you know, if yeah, unless you're getting a good discount on the, on the Airbnb gift cards, you might be better off going through a different channel. So there you go. There you go. So lots of different options there too. So, and I haven't really done much on those other different channel. So there you go. There you go. So lots of different options there too. And I haven't really done much

on those other different sites. I mean, I use another one that I'm not even sure if it exists anymore. It was at HomeAway. I think they were folding that into VRBO or something like that. There was another one that was run by TripAdvisor a few years ago.

So there are some other vacation rental-y sites where you may be able to find something like that. And again, always worth asking and see if you can get a little bit of a discount. Never know. Yeah. Yeah, no, definitely. Also a lot of the, a lot of those properties are managed by a sort of management company that's, that manages a lot of properties. And usually that management company has a website where, where they'll rent the stuff. And so you might see better prices that way. So a lot of things. One last thing, a tip for if you want to stay in a timeshare cheaply, there are websites where timeshare owners will rent out their timeshares.

And I find that to be like way cheaper than going through like, let's say it's Marriott or whatever, way cheaper than going through them. Yeah, you know, and you mentioned that and that makes me think of the fact that i i know and i don't know anything about this i'll just plant the idea for the people who don't know about it you'll have to do your own research but i know you can also rent disney points from disney right your owners to get a discount on disney places right yeah so if you want to go to florida right now um well you know not right now no but in the future you might in the future at some point down the road okay so that's the main event and we're on to post roast post roast i don't know who's gonna go first this time are you new set well you know I'm talking so that I figured if I kept talking

that maybe I could throw it on to you really quick. All right. That's fine. Go ahead. Okay. So post roasts are a new segment where you pick apart somebody else's posts. So somebody else's usually being Greg's or mine, I guess. Each other's posts –

It would usually be, right. Because it would be really – It would be kind of mean of us to roast Stephen. He's not here to defend himself. It would be. It would be kind of mean of us to roast steven he's not here to defend himself it would be it'd be kind of fun though maybe but i don't have anything to roast no yeah okay we'll see we'll see what you do steven pepper why we should roast some random other blogs post i was reading this on view from the wing and no we're already changing the uh the format the whole format we just introduced

it last week it's a post rose so i mean i wrote some stuff this week greg wrote some stuff and and he is about to tell you why he thinks i'm crazy for whatever it is that i wrote this week so you wrote you wrote about capital one i did and you you uh you. And you have an old card where you've been paying like 39 bucks a year. For the Capital One. Yeah. And didn't you like confess about that last week or two weeks ago? I forget how, I don't remember the whole story. I don't know if I confessed it on the air. I confessed it to you. Was it just to me personally? All right. Now it's public. So you've been trying to figure out what to do about this thing for a while now. Yeah, yeah.

It's been on my mind. Then you did a ton of research, and you wrote a whole post about what your options are. And then you said, I don't know. I'm still trying to figure it out so my so my roast isn't really about anything specific you wrote as much as like get to it like take a stand right you're gonna do that much work like like just decide already and tell us why well i mean i think, I think I'm going to, I haven't done it. See, there he goes again. He's not saying what he's going to do.

He's like, okay, fine. All right, I'm going to go ahead and upgrade it to the venture card. And I know that nobody is going to support me in that decision. So it's not a good decision. It's not a decision I would recommend to anybody else. So let me ask, the only reason I could see, I mean, I read your reasons, but the only reason that makes sense to me is if you're counting on the referral bonuses. Well, right, right. I mean, there's, yeah, I mean, that's obviously half the reason because, I mean, if you can, if I can get five of them, that's $500. That's plenty of reason for me to keep the sure venture card so i mean that's that's certainly the heavier reason of the two i guess i would say i mean that would cover the annual fee for years

to come and if i can get them to waive it a couple of times and i'd be covered for quite a few years uh theoretically anyway so uh so yeah i mean that's half of the reason i'm in a really unique position in that regard obviously i work for the blog, and so I have the ability to use my referral link. So that's part of it. And I think that's totally legitimate, you know, that you have this opportunity. So, I mean, that's why I said I wouldn't recommend it to most people because most people aren't going to be able to get five referrals

for the Capital One Venture. I don't even know if I'm going to get five referrals for the Venture. And you especially wouldn't recommend it to people who are about to get the Bank of America premium rewards, platinum honors situation where they're getting 2.62% back everywhere. You wouldn't recommend it to them and you're in that position, but you would do it because you can get the referral bonus, which makes sense. That's a big part of it. But I will actually say that there are a couple of reasons why I'm still interested in having the venture card, even though I'm going to have that 2.62% cash back on the premium rewards card here soon. I'm still interested in having the venture card because

A, the gift cards for Marriott are still a slightly better deal, not enough of a better deal that I would use the capital one card instead of the premium rewards card. However, in my case, used to manufacture spending. I haven't been lately, but I generally do some manufactured spending and it's not usually a case of a or B it's a case of, I need to spread it over a and B. So I'm probably going to use both cards anyway. And then 2.8% back towards Marriott stays a little bit better than 2.62% on the Bank of

America premium rewards. Now, would I pick the venture card instead of the premium rewards for that? No, I wouldn't. But if I'm going to go to Simon mall and buy, you know, $20,000 worth of gift cards or something, I'd split it 10 and 10. So I think that in that case, I'm probably going to keep a venture card and it's much more convenient for me to have it. And then of course you have the mileage transfers as a, another possibility, which again, I could get decent value out of. So not a play I recommend for most. Right. Right. And, and before we get a lot of mail about this, Nick is very aware that he could take the 2.62 and buy Marriott gift cards when they're on sale, like they are right now.

And do even better than he can do with the venture card. He's aware of that. But there's only so, I mean, I can't. There's only so much he can spend on the... I have more capacity for spend than what Bank of America is probably going to let me get away with. Right. I may as well get a little bit of... Very good.

Moving on from post-roast to the next thing. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. We're not done here. This isn't over. Abbott says kids even know. They're even in the back like, wait a second. Nick gets a chance to roast Greg here. All right. What do you have?

So this week, Greg wrote a post about what was like the fanciest Hyatt suites bookable with points in the U.S. Because, you know, many of us are looking to travel within the U.S. this year, probably. Most of us probably aren't going to be able to travel internationally. So you took a look at the most interesting premium suites you can book with points. Now, I like the fact that you took a look at the most interesting suites. But Rochester, New York made the list of the most interesting. You couldn't find a more interesting destination in Rochester, New York. I mean, no offense, Rock City, but come on out of the entire United States, is that the best I could do?

Was Rock City? I mean, what is there to do in Rochester? So that's your roast? That's sweet. Right. So totally agree. I don't know anything about Rochester, but, I mean, take a look at this. Sweet.

Off the top of my head, I think it was close to 3,000 square feet. 2,100. That's still huge. It's got a pool table. It's got a huge, huge outdoor balcony thingy. It costs, I think, 16,000 points a night, But I read that this hotel is going down to category one. So it's going to cost 10,000 points a night in the future. That's a pretty terrific find then. All right. So I live in New York State, of course, for anybody who doesn't know.

So I have friends in Rochester. So I'm roasting Rochester lightly here too. But I'm buying it. So are you gonna are you gonna book it so you go visit your friends and and stay in this awesome suite i mean probably not this year but but in the future actually funny enough i chose to roast that one because this place had already been on my radar because you wrote about this place a while back i did i mean this is in a post a long time ago. So I already knew it was there and I had it kind of in mind. We normally stay with friends when we go out,

but I had it in mind that one of these days I was gonna book it and we'd all kind of hang out and have the pool table and all the rest of that. So I'm kind of interested from that perspective. It was mentioned on Twitter. Some people may have seen that the Strong Museum is a great place for families.

So if you've got kids and you like a children's seen that the Strong Museum is a great place for families. So if you've got kids and you like a children's museum, the Strong Museum is amazing. Best children's museum I've been to. Very surprisingly good. I think Abbas' kids might be too old for it, though. You know, I don't necessarily think so. There was a room

with pinball machines, like a little pinball museum display, so to speak. Things for older kids, too. So definitely aimed towards younger kids. And right now. And the pool table will be fun for teens, I would think. Yeah, I would think so. Maybe Rochester after all.

And how cool would it be to be in a presidential suite like that, regardless, right? Regardless of where you are. Glad you mentioned that, because when I was doing the prep for the post, I posted about the timeshare places. I came across a place where you could book the president. It was a two bedroom, two bedroom presidential suite is what it said.

When I was in the search results, this was a choice point. Oh, two bedroom. I think it was two bedroom presidential. I was like, right. Whoa,

whoa. The two bedroom presidential. Right. Then I went to that particular places, individual website. Every room is a presidential suite. There's a one-bedroom presidential suite, two-bedroom presidential suite, three-bedroom. It's all presidential suites. I love it. I love it. Yeah. There's great marketing there. So I published both the best resorts in the U.S. and then worldwide. And now I'm saying that the day before we're actually publishing it,

but the day after this video and audio is released, so I believe that I will publish this. But anyway, the funny thing is, so we had looked into premium suites a year ago and written a post about it, about all the best finds we had found. But now that we can book them online, it's much easier to go through and really identify all the ones that are out there. And what really surprised the heck out of me is that a lot of the most interesting ones we had already found.

And so I expected to find, you know, because we did sort of a scatter shot, like, oh, look here, let me look there, whatever. Yet somehow, even when I did, you know, very formal, like looking through all of them, I did find some like the three-bedroom royal residence. I love that name. Three-bedroom royal residence. Royal residence.

Some of these names are hilarious. The one in Morocco, which I had also found last time and re-uncovered this time, is now called the Yoga Studio Suite. The Yoga Studio seems like seems like they got a new marketing team they went with city's marketing team didn't they we know where we know the marketing team we know we know what happened to city's marketing team yeah um that's our because i mean it looks like an elegant, gigantic suite in the pictures. Yoga studio? I don't see it. Yoga's elegant.

It's too elegant for me. That's why you don't do it. That is. I'm glad we brought this up, though, actually, because now that you mention it, that makes me want to go back to something when I was talking about those vacation rentals before. One thing that I found really interesting, and I have no idea whether there's going to be a great value to be found in this because I didn't do enough research on this yet, but the Park Hyatt Beaver Creek, I saw you had in there for its premium suites at 60k a night,

and it's in Colorado, famous, really well-known, great looking spot. I haven't been there myself, but I've seen pictures and friends and things. It looks terrific. One thing that I found really interesting about booking through Southwest, and this is likely going to be true with Chase Points as well, that you could book just about any suite that's for sale using your points. So those premium suites with Hyatt, you are sometimes limited. You may not be able to book the presidential or the 19 bedroom, whatever it is. Whereas keep in mind, if you're using Chase Points through the portal or maybe with Southwest, you might find a deal on one of those other crazy suites because you can book them all. Right. No, that's a great point. And you could get a deal when they're less expensive.

Exactly. When they're less expensive. Relative to how they normally would be priced or maybe some places often price them uh within range which i did find occasionally like sometimes i was surprised like i'd find like what sounds like an amazing suite and then look at the prices and say wow it's not you know it's not more than twice what a standard room would be which yeah usually it's much more than twice. Right. Right. So there you go. So some interesting stuff to look at there. All right. So I think that brings us past post-roast and into the question of the week, right? I think you're right. Okay. So the question, did I answer that question correctly? It wasn't the question of the week, but you got that one right. So the

question of the week, actually, I'm going to cheat a little bit. This is a little bit, it's really probably ought to be reader feedback. However, I'm going to cheat a little bit. This is a little bit, it's really probably ought to be reader feedback. However, I'm going to turn it into a question. All right. And then you can confess about it next week and we'll cover two birds with one stone or something. I felt like this piece of feedback lended itself very well, lent itself very well to a question. Is it from Abbas? It is not.

It's Greg. But not this way. Okay. Not me. Not me. Greg Coleman. Greg, who comments from time to time in the blog and commented on YouTube, on the discussion we had recently on YouTube. And he was talking about the post you wrote about why there's no 2x earning cards in your wallet, although really I don't even feel like the meat of his comment had to do with that. He mentioned the platinum part and how you can cash out points using the Schwab platinum part. If you have the Schwab platinum, then you can cash out membership rewards points at a value of 1.25 cents each. We talked about that a few times recently. And so he said his problem with that method, and this was Steve actually, he was commenting on Steve's comment that we talked about last week.

So he said, the problem with Steve's method is you have to spend $550 a year on a platinum card. Ignoring the recent pandemic benefits, I find the value of the Amex platinum cards to be well below the $550. Most of the benefits of those cards that you probably already have elsewhere, like global entry reimbursement, mid-level hotel status, and you're left trying to use awkward credits like Saks Fifth Ave or $15 a month for Uber, et cetera, to try to recoup only a portion of the annual fee. To me, Platinums are only worth it for a year for the signup bonus and only worth keeping if you have a million dollars with Morgan Stanley. What do you think about that, Greg? First of all, do you have a platinum card?

I do. Are they worth keeping for more than a year? If they are, who's it worth it for? 550 bucks. Greg has a great point. I think he's right on all accounts that you have to work hard to get the credits during normal years. Right now they're making credits very easy to get.

But during normal years, you have to kind of work hard to get your credits. They don't add up to the full. Well, I guess they could if you got all your Uber credits and your Saks credits and you value them fully. But in general, you're not going to be getting back the full annual fee. So you're paying something, probably hundreds of dollars net for this card. And so what does it get you? It's primarily, to me, I think that the primary value is around the airport experience. And that depends on where you live and where you fly out of. And right now, obviously, that's useless. But luckily, they have given us other things in exchange. But, you know, so for someone who flies Delta a lot, you could get into the Delta Sky Club when you're flying. You have the Centurion lounges. So if you happen to either fly into or fly out of an airport that has Centurion lounge, I get a lot of value from that because they have good food and drinks. And they have the,

they have a couple other airline club access things. So like a couple other small groupings of airline clubs. So if you're in any of those places where it's covered, that's great. Priority pass is not great with, with A i mean it has it but it doesn't let you do the restaurant so so that you know if that's your main thing is you want to get into prior pest lounges i would look for a different card to get there um not the platinum card but uh yeah i mean i, I think that the Platinum card long-term is worth it for someone who values those lounges. And, you know, there are other things you might value, but that to me is my guess of like the main driver for most people.

I mean, there are other perks though that are valuable. But so anyway, so I'm guessing Gregreg doesn't value that the lounge access aspect fair totally fair um and so i guess what i'd say is i don't think that the schwab approach is necessarily still out of the question for greg because he could what he could do is is build up membership rewards for several years and then sign up for the bonus for the Schwab card. And then he has a year to keep building up points and cash out before giving that card up. And then if he's – no, that's not true. I was going to say that if he has a spouse who can get a card in the future, he could do that again.

But you can't move membership rewards points around so he's got one chance to to cash it out sort of for free because the the signup bonus offsets the uh the annual fee but yeah more than offsets but i i absolutely agree with greg's uh overall assertion which is that that's a big downside to that overall approach of, of the getting two X membership rewards and planning on catching them out at, at a 1.25 each because yes, you need a big investment, which is that drop card. Right? Yeah. I mean, I, I agree. I think the, I've never had the personal platinum, which I should because to get the welcome bonus on each of them at some point,

but I haven't yet. And I, cause I, and I wouldn't keep it longterm because I don't find it to be worth $550 a year. Excuse me there. So yeah, I mean, I, I, I agree with you in general. There are perks that I like about the platinum cards. We still have a business platinum in my household that I intended to cancel this year and ended up keeping. And then, you know, luckily these extra credits because of the COVID situation

made that a worthwhile decision. But, you know, I don't think I'll probably keep it long-term. Love fine hotels and resorts. Nice having some of the other ancillary benefits. But I think Greg's point, that you likely get some of those benefits from another card is good. Do you think that there,

I know you said that, you know, if you live near a Delta lounge or you live near a Centurion lounge, the platinum card is good. Is there a person, is there a use case, do you think that there, I know you said that, you know, if you live near a Delta lounge or you live near a Centurion lounge, the platinum part is good. Is there a person, is there a use case do you think, and I guess the obvious answer is yes, but I'm still wondering your opinion where the platinum card is the only premium card that somebody would carry. Like, does it make sense for that to be the only premium card?

Cause I feel like if you already have the Sapphire reserve, you got priority pass nailed down, got entry you got you know your national executive elite status you got a lot of those little perks and slightly better in some regards and a card with easier to use the annual travel credits etc is there a use case for having only a platinum card is your only premium or ultra premium card do you think that might make sense for people i think so why not so so uh you know i think a great combo is have the it's what we were just talking about have the 2x everywhere blue business uh blue business plus i always say the name of this card wrong anyway um so i was actually about to say correctly, and I stopped myself

because last week I said it wrong a couple times. Or no, two weeks ago. Anyway. So if you had the 2X everywhere in your wallet for your spend, and then you have the platinum card in your wallet for spend when you're out of the country because you don't want to pay a foreign transaction fee, and for all the perks uh you know i i think that's totally fair i mean uh i think problem with amex in general you also need to have a visa or master card for all the places that

don't accept them right yeah i mean certainly for a lot of your international travels you may need that yeah you know and i i don't know I'm questioning the math on it because they say, okay, the Blue Business Plus, yeah, it's 2x everywhere on up to $50,000 in purchases per year. And you have to pay $550 if you want to have the ability to cash that out at 1.25 cents each, right? So, you know, it depends on, very highly depends on how much you value the other perks of the Platinum card as to whether it's worth paying that much to be able to cash out the points so because it's a finite number it's not an uncapped card like so you double cash right right so yeah no i mean i would not do that combination if that was my only purpose like so if you didn't value the platinum card on its own

i don't i would i would totally just go with yeah, a cash back card like the Bank of America Premium Rewards, or if what you want is transferable points, the double cash and the Citi Premier combo is awesome. Yeah, I mean, for $95 a year in annual fee, I think that's a pretty strong combination. Right, and the earning power is just great. 2x everywhere plus 3x restaurants, grocery, some other stuff. All right. So we got to wrap this one up. My lingering question coming out of that is going to be,

so is, I mean, it does sound like a great combo, but is Chase not a better combo with a Sapphire Preferred and an Ink Cash? I mean, which one's the better $95 combo? I think that's a good question. Let's tackle that next week. All right. sounds good. All right, well, I want to thank everybody for being out there and listening along with us.

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