Frequent Miler on the Air - Firesale on Amex points! | Ep103 | 6-19-21

Episode Date: June 19, 2021

00:32 Giant Mailbag 7:26 What crazy thing . . .double header! What crazy thing did the Point debit card do this week? https://frequentmiler.com/point-debit-card-rundown-referrals-bonus-points-access-deals-more/ 12:27 What crazy thing did Wyndham Rewards dot his week? https://frequentmiler.com/weird-wyndham-timeshare-offer-3-nights-15k-points-for-199-at-a-fairfield/ 20:17 Main Event: Firesale on Amex points! https://frequentmiler.com/bypass-amexs-lifetime-rule-when-you-expand-your-membership/ https://frequentmiler.com/20k-membership-rewards-bonus-with-new-authorized-user-and-2k-spend-targeted/ https://frequentmiler.com/20k-membership-rewards-bonus-with-new-authorized-user-and-2k-spend-targeted/ https://frequentmiler.com/up-to-40k-membership-rewards-points-with-targeted-business-offer/ http://www.alternativenation.net/foo-fighters-big-hotel-credit-card-bill-revealed/ 44:14 Post Roast https://frequentmiler.com/awesome-credit-card-combos/ https://frequentmiler.com/awesome-cash-back-combos/ 49:56 Question of the Week: What's the best way to get to Europe in first class? Thanks for listening! Don't forget to subscribe & enable notifications. Join our email list here: https://frequentmiler.com/subscribe/ Music credit: Annie Yoder

frequent miler on the air starts now today's main event fire sale on amex points points are raining down on us from amex coming out of the woodwork here 150k there hold out your hat points are coming right you can't miss them give us they're everywhere right now can't miss them can't miss them. They're everywhere right now. Can't miss them. Can't miss them. You better be collecting. We'll get into that after our regular segments. And we're starting with giant mailbag. Draw out the mailbag. Pull it out. Let me see the mail. I can't. What? I'm on vacation and I left the giant mailbag at home. Well, then you'd better have something really good to make up for that. I do.

I have yet again, confession time. Love confession time. This has been on my mind a lot this week because I'm at a Marriott property right now. And even though I paid with points for this day, it was five nights day, get a fifth night free, all that. So really good. We do have some charges to the hotel. Like my wife and I both got spa treatments and all right.

You remember Amex recently had a Marriott Amex offer for, I think it was $40 back on $200 spend. It sounds familiar. Yes. Yeah. So when that came out, I saw that it was available on a lot of my cards, but it wasn't available on any Marriott cards. And when this happened about a year ago or so, I waited a bit and that offer did later appear on my Marriott cards. So I loaded it to my Marriott cards and that's great because then you sort of double up because you get more points when you use your Marriott card at a Marriott property and you also get the Amex offer. So I waited and didn't show up on my Marriott cards. Waited some more, didn't show up on my Marriott cards. Waited some more, didn't show up on my Marriott cards.

Waited some more and found that not only was it not on my Marriott cards, it was no longer available on any of my cards. I could have really used that Amex offer today, but now I have to log in and see if the same thing happened to me. Cause I'm sure I did the same. I remember not seeing it on the Marriott card and waiting and thinking, I'll sync it. It doesn't expire until like July. I'll probably buy a gift card because of course I have a stay coming up at a Marriott eventually here too. And so I figured

I'd lock in that savings and now you're just breaking my heart, Greg. Oh boy. Yeah. Well, I mean, you can imagine how hard it is being at a Marriott where I'm spending money and not being able to use it like in a legitimate way. Yeah. I mean, I could have loaded it to my green card, which gets three X for all travel. That would have been totally good. Probably in many ways better than getting six X Marriott for the points. And yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Whoops. Whoopsie daisy. Whoops. Yeah. Yeah. Whoops. Whoopsie daisy. Whoops. Yeah. So the takeaway here is 40 bucks is 40 bucks. Just think that up next time. Right?

Exactly. I think just, just jump on it. It's, it's not worth the risk of losing, especially if, you know, it's one thing if, if like, I didn't know if I was going to be staying in a Marriott and the timeframe and, or have the chance to go pick up a gift card at a front desk. But this time I knew. Right. Right. Right. No surprise there. Yeah. Yeah. That, that, that stinks. I hope, I hope I'm wrong. I hope I just synced it up and it's been like out of sight, out of mind. And I, cause I haven't gone through the synced offers in a while. So hopefully I did, but I was definitely kind of playing the same move,

planning on getting a gift card, but there's like a Marriott property, 30 minutes from home that I pass often enough. And I was like, ah, you know, one of these days before it expires, I'll go buy a gift card for a stay later this year. And, and, you know, of course I may have made the same exact mistake as you. And, you know, recently I've had this issue where there are just so many offers. I've got like 99 in every card. And I sat there for like a couple of hours the other day, I think, just trying to add offers to things and trying to be careful that I didn't add it to the wrong card because I added a couple of things that I realized later on should have gone on the Blue Business

Plus. I was like, oh, I oh I put that on the wrong card I want to make sure the grocery related stuff ends up on the gold blah blah blah and so it took me a while going through stuff and I just kept having to refresh and I was like there's still 99 offers on all of these cards and so I took me forever I had the same thing happened about a month ago I did the same thing I was trying to get it under the 100 cards. And it's amazing how long it took to get it to drop down to 90, you know, 93, 94. Yeah, Amex offers have become harder to manage these days. I guess they're just spinning out a lot more than usual. Maybe they are. And there's so many garbage ones that I'm not really interested in, but I also don't want to have all of the garbage ones loaded up on one single card where then I can't see the good ones that are added to it

anymore. Right. Right. Right. Oh, what a pain. Yeah. I mean,

the best thing, if you have like a garbage MX card that, you know, you, you never going to use, never going to use, then you load all those garbage ones to it. But you know,

when I go through the list, I'm always like, well, is there a chance I might use this one? Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Of course. Of course. Right. And then there's also the part of me that says, you know, if I load up all the garbage ones, is Amex going to think I'm really interested in garbage offers and continue giving me more? That's probably what's happening. That's probably why we have so many. Yeah. So, so yeah, I don't even know what to do there, but the moral of the story is the next time there's a 40 back on 200 of Marriott, sync that up on some card and just go use it. So you don't, you know, not having it. But you know, you're so, you're so right about that. What you just said, because

I bet you anything that Amex goes to these vendors that are paying Amex something in some way, they're somehow funding these offers, these weird little vendors. They must go back to them and say, and give them stats saying this many people signed up for your offer. And so see, it's attracting business. And yeah, so we're kind of encouraging that. But there's no way around it, though, right? Because I don't know.

I mean, I saw that the master class 180 back on 180 offer came out again. And I saw Dr. Credit posted that it came out again. And so then I was like furiously adding MX offers, trying to see, hey, is that going to pop up and like the hidden offers on one of these? Because I'd love to get the 180 back on 180 on that. But of course, I didn't find it. I wasted all this on that. But but of course, I didn't find it. I wasted all this time adding, adding, adding, adding and didn't find that. Or they had these like plus seven X or six X offers for Amazon and Best Buy and stuff this week. Didn't get any of

those either. I don't know if I just had too many, you know, offers and they just decided to disappear those things before I added enough to get under. Yeah. Anyway, I've been on a cold streak, too, with the offers. It seems like I run hot and cold at different times. You know, sometimes there's these great ones and they're available on all my cards. And right. But yeah, cold, cold streak right now.

Cold streak now. All right. Well, so Greg confessed and I half confessed and everybody is listening. Learn from our mistakes. Do as we say, not as we do. There you go. So that brings me to what crazy thing now greg doesn't know it but i i made a game time decision we're gonna do a what crazy thing double header and i'm excited and greg is probably sitting there

saying game time decision we only decided on topics like eight minutes ago but uh that was eight long minutes ago that's okay minutes. So I had eight minutes to think about it. I don't know. I'm kind of excited because normally I, you know, I know what's going to happen in the show, or at least roughly, I don't know the specifics because we just, we just come up with basically a table of contents. But now, you know, even the table of contents is a mystery to me. So go for it. I'm about to switch it up. So the first thing in the double header of what crazy thing is what crazy thing did the point debit card do this week? Oh.

The point debit card. Now, Stephen Pepper wrote about this. Have you seen him? You've been on vacation. You probably haven't even seen Stephen's post yet. No, I did. I saw his post. I didn't really have time to read it carefully and absorb it, but I was intrigued by

what I read. Right. I mean, it's a $49 a year debit card, which sounds ridiculous on the surface. I mean, who's going to pay 49 bucks a year for a debit card? I mean, it seems ridiculous, right? But as Steven wrote about, there's some different things. I mean, this week, we actually haven't even written about this yet, but they've got 20% back at Etsy, like 20% cash back at Etsy on this debit card. So they've got all these little offers like that where you can earn cash back, blah, blah, blah. But the crazy thing, the what crazy thing is they've got a referral offer, and that's why it makes sense with the $49 annual fee. And the way the referral offer is written, when you are in the app and looking at your referral offer, it says our refer friend, like I refer Greg. And it says that when Greg

spends a thousand dollars in the first 30 days, he'll get a hundred dollars worth of points and I'll get a hundred dollars worth of points. Seems pretty straightforward and decent. You're going to get your a hundred dollars for signing up and making your purchases. And that takes care of your $49 annual fee and makes it a slight moneymaker. But the crazy thing is that for some reason, when I refer people like Greg, I'm getting $250. And it doesn't explain why. Does Greg also get $250? I have read some reports of people who did get a 250 for both sides, but I don't know, to be honest with you. I don't think so. When I signed up, so it gets even crazier. So I signed up through Steven's link early in the morning before his post published, I signed up through his link and it said, of course, I had to spend a thousand dollars in

30 days to get a hundred dollars back. I reloaded my Amazon balance with $10 and I got a hundred dollars back. So I didn't have to spend the thousand dollars first purchase got me the 10,000 points, the a hundred dollars back. So all I had to do is make a single purchase to get my a hundred. And then Steven got two 50 for referring me. I referred somebody and I got two 50 for referring them. Uh, now I'm only going to assume that they got a hundred. I didn't actually ask. So I'm going to assume that they only got a I didn't actually ask. So I'm going to assume that they only got $100 because that's what I got was 100

when I signed up to Steven's link. So if you sign up through referral, I would expect that you're going to get $100. And then if you have a player two and you refer them, it says that you'll get 100, but you might get 250.

I don't know for sure, but it seems like it's just happening for most people. Most people are just getting $250. That's kind of exciting and super easy to try out. So you're out just 49 bucks. Do they charge that first year? Yes, they charge that on your first deposit. So when you make a deposit, they charge it right away. So I put $ a thousand dollars on the card thinking that I had to spend a thousand dollars in 30 days and they took the $49 or the $49 out. So I had a $951 balance. I spent $10 reloading my Amazon gift card balance and I got a hundred dollars worth

of points. So is there a limit to how many people you can refer and get all this, all this cash back? I don't know. I've only referred one person. So I don't know if there's a limit as to how many you can do. I know that there are people in Frequent Miler Insiders, there was at least one person who said she was at $950 so far in free points. I don't know how that came about because if it was $250 a piece, I would have thought $1,000, but who knows? I don't know, but I know that you can get at least that much. And so if you've got a couple of people that are into free money, it's the offer is supposedly valid through June 30th. So kind of crazy, because like I said, doesn't say anywhere you're going to get 250. It's just been happening. So don't shoot the messenger if it doesn't happen.

That's really funny. I mean, because the whole point of these cash incentives is to attract people to sign up and spend on it. And so you would think if they're giving out 250, that ought to be a headline, not a hidden. People know, right? Yeah. It's not just like a surprise. You get 250. Yeah.

We have too much money here. So we're going to give you. We're going to throw away a little bit of it here and throw your way. Yeah. So, so crazy, crazy point. I don't, I mean, I like it. I like it. It's crazy. All right. That out of the way, the other crazy thing, what crazy thing did Wyndham rewards do this week? And did you read my post, Greg? Do you know what crazy thing Wyndham

did this week? I do, but mainly because you, you messaged us on, on a, through a different medium, the frequent miler team. So but why don't you why don't you describe it? All right. So Wyndham is offering a timeshare deal. And so the timeshare deal we'll talk more about in a minute, but it's three nights and 15000 points for one hundred ninety nine dollars. So I went to go take a couple of screenshots because one of the places was the Smoky Mountains. And those who've read recently know that I visited the Smoky Mountains very recently. I used Wyndham points to stay in a Vacasa vacation rental. I drove by the club Wyndham property in the Smoky Mountains and it looked nice. The location was decent. I said, yeah, you know, for $199, maybe I'd go back and spend three nights, especially

at 15,000 points. Let me do a search and just see if it's available. I knew the fall is an expensive time. So let me take a look at a fall weekend, see what it comes out to be. So I, I Google a far, I search a fall weekend to book the Wyndham timeshare deal, the three nights and 15,000 points for $199. I search for availability, put in my dates and the first hotel that comes up in the results. I expected that they'd say you can stay at the Club Wyndham property, you know, in the timeshare that they're trying to sell. That would be sort of a reasonable expectation, yeah. You would think, right?

That's the place to try. But no, the first result that came up that was available that weekend for the $199 is the Fairfield Inn Pigeon Forge. The Marriott Fairfield Inn. The Fairfield by Marriott, not Wyndham, $499. That is the way that Wyndham decided they would sell me on the idea of a Club Wyndham timeshare. They would put me up in a Fairfield Inn

and they figured that for sure I'd be like, I'm never staying at a Fairfield again. Right. So it's not crazy at all, right? I mean, they think this Fairfield is unpleasant. It must. It's gotta be like the worst Fairfield ever, right? They figure that you're gonna be just drooling

over their timeshares when you're stuck in whatever. You know, I shouldn't say this because I'm sure that Fairfield's perfectly nice. It's probably fine. It just seems crazy to me that they would put you up in a Marriott property. Now, there was, to be fair, there was another option. There was also the Ramada in Pigeon Forge, which is a Wyndham property. So I could also choose the Ramada.

I just think it's kind of nuts that Wyndham is going to sell me three nights at the Fairfield. And also, additionally, on top of that, I got to say, obviously, Wyndham has to pay the Fairfield something, right? And I don't know what it is they're paying them, but the cash rate for the three nights that I looked at was like over a grand for the flexible rate or 800 and change for the prepaid rate. And I've only paid $200 to Wyndham. I mean, I'm sure they're getting a deal from

the Fairfield end, but not that good of a deal. Right. Right. Right. Right. I mean, so that seemed kind of not so to me, but then readers chimed in and they said that they've seen that in a number of other cities. For example, if you want to do the timeshare presentation deal in Las Vegas, they saw Caesars in Paris on the list. And you know, I mean, Caesars on a weekend, weekend in Vegas, that can be pretty pricey. So, you know, especially if you happen to pick a popular weekend, now there are potentially blackout dates, but I don't know if they've got every fight weekend or whatever it is, you know, that's both concert that's going on blacked out. So if you're looking to go to Vegas for a weekend at some point and room rates are crazy, and maybe take a look at Club Wyndham.

That's really interesting. I mean, I would love to do that. Just find a weekend where you're struggling to find a great property at the place you want to go and see if Club Wyndham will pay for it. Will pay for it. I mean, they might. They might. I mean, you got to sit through a timeshare presentation.

That's the flip side of it, right? So you have to give up two hours of your life saying no in order to get that, but that might be a decent trade. You know, it makes me think that I have an idea of what's coming up on the show for Mattress Running the Numbers. Well, then let's talk about it. Mattress Running the Numbers, the Wyndham timeshare deal.hare deal so 199 for three nights plus tax so it comes out to like 250 bucks with tax more or less it's going to vary a little bit by location probably all right it's about 250 bucks with tax for three nights and 15 000 windham rewards points is that worth a mattress 15 000 15 000000. 15,000 Wyndham points and three nights. Well, of course.

But if it's a mattress run, then you're going just for the points. Is it worth a mattress run? Is it worth booking this? Even if you don't care about the hotel, is it worth booking this and attending the timeshare deal for 15,000 Wyndham points? No, not even close. I mean, if you don't care about the hotel, I mean, then you're paying more than a penny a point. You're paying almost two cents a point. When we've seen Wyndham points on sale

a couple of times recently for just under a penny a point. Still on sale right now, I think for 0.96 cents through the 30th of the month. There you go. Yeah. Yeah. So, so it's not, uh, yeah, it's not, not a, uh, not a mattress run deal. I disagree. Now keep in mind, you might be forced to stay at a Ramada. So go ahead. That's true. That's true. But, uh, so I'm going to say maybe it's a mattress, right? And here, here's why.

Hear me out on this. So I obviously had my first Vacasa stay recently. We've talked a lot about Vacasa and how incredible the value can be. So points can obviously be worth a lot. Greg is totally right that Wyndham has been selling them for less than a penny each. However, here's the catch. You can only buy up to 45,000 points per year. So you can buy 45,000 points. That'll get you three nights. So if you've got a Vicasa stay, you want to book somewhere, you can buy three nights worth of points and then that's it. You're cut off. Three nights is it. So if you want more than 45,000 points per year, there just isn't a way to buy them. Like you've got to earn them on the credit cards or earn them through stays. So if you don't want

or can't get a Wyndham credit card for whatever reason, and you want the points, need the points, want to book something right now, then maybe this is worth it. If you can book the right Vacasa stay, because we already showed, you can book up to $350 nights, plus the cleaning fees and everything comes out to nights that are worth well over $400. So for $250, you might get yourself a decent deal on a night if you need that extra night.

Now, if you need less than 45,000 points, just buy them direct from Wyndham. Right. Okay, so for the person who can't get a Wyndham card, for whatever reason, who can't get a Capital One Miles card because those transfer one-to-one. Right.

And who needs more than 45,000 points. Maybe you want to book something like next week. I don't even know that you'll get these right away. That's true. That's a good point. That could be a problem. I mean, I'm not saying there's no one out there. I mean, I think, you know, there's Sally who's listening to this saying that's me. I, you know, I already bought 45,000. I need it. I need a fourth night in my Picasso vacation rental. And there you go. Welcome. Yeah. Welcome. Let me introduce you to Lizzie. All right. So, but hopefully Sally will also enjoy the three nights at the, uh, hopefully Mata or Fairfield or wherever. I mean, to be clear, I'm not booking this, but I think it's possible. It could maybe work. It's a stretch. It's a stretch. I'll admit

it. Okay. All right. We mattress ran that. So maybe, probably not, but maybe it might be a fit. All right. So let's move on then to the main event. Talk to me about the main event. Yeah. Yeah. So everywhere we look lately, uh, Amex has been throwing points at us. I mean, I think it kind of started last year when two really big things happened. One was that I'm remembering anyway. One was the introduction of that 100K plus 10X offer for the platinum card, the consumer platinum card. 100,000 points after like 5K spend, plus you earn 10 points per dollar at grocery stores and gas stations for six months. Huge. They also did a refer a friend offer where if you successfully referred a friend within a certain time period, you would earn an additional three points per dollar on all your spend.

And so you might imagine I found a lot of ways to spend a lot during that time. Picking up lots of garbage Amex offers in the process, let me tell you. I was like, oh, this guy's a big spender. He definitely wants the deal on hand cream because he's got to be a hand cream guy right i mean that's what they're figuring you know that everyday card got so much use um and and so um but now recently they've they've been you know shooting everybody these 150k offers for the business platinum card and they're like you already have a business platinum card. And they're like, you already have a business platinum card? Great. Don't you want another one?

And then when you sign up for it, when they sign up for it and you get your 150,000 points, they send you another email or another Amex offer saying, expand your membership. Get the same thing again, the same exact deal. You know what they did?

You know, Amex hired Ellen DeGeneres. That's what they did. They hired Ellen to run the promo. They you know what they did you know mx hired ellen degeneres that's what they did they hired ellen to run the promo they're like points for you and points for you and points for you everybody gets points right right and you know oh you're not you you're not a business owner well how about you you have a platinum or a gold card just add an authorized user and we'll give you 20,000 points after they do some spam. And so, you know, just one after another,

we're seeing all these huge offers. I mean, they're, they're all, most of them are revolved around getting a new credit card or adding users. But it just seems nuts. I mean,

Amex has long had this lifetime rule where they've been trying to keep people from, you know, what they call gaming the system and signing up for the same cards over and over. But now they're like practically insisting on it. They're like, oh no, you need another one. Yeah, of course. Here's a boatload of points to open another one.

And I don't care that you've had it before. Have it again. Have it again right now. Have another slice of cake. Why not? You know, so, yeah, they're they've totally changed their tune on that in some ways. I mean, and they could make it even easier and just get rid of that lifetime language altogether. But instead, they've had these targeted offers.

We have to log in and see and make sure that they want you to have another one of those. But yeah, I mean, it's just been absolutely nuts. They've been doing this over and over again and they're big offers. It's not like they're like little piddly offers that don't appeal to anyone. They definitely do. I mean, we're talking 150 K, 160 K blue business. Plus we wrote about today, the 40K offer on that. I mean, 40K offer with only 5K spend and adding an employee card. And that's not quite as good as the targeted 50K offer that they've been sending out. It just requires a lot of spend, the 50K offer does. Whereas the 40K offer only requires 5K spend on a card that if you just go directly to

the Amex website website usually has no welcome bonus at all you know so right the blue business plus is the card that sort of everybody needs to have in in their portfolio because because it's no annual fee two points per dollar everywhere up to 50k spend per year it's a a great, great card just to have around. Plus, if you cancel your other membership rewards cards, because you have this one open, you won't lose any of those points and they'll still be just as valuable. Yeah, yeah.

So that's a fantastic offer. And that's the small one. That's the small one. Right, right, right. Because the rest of them are like 90K, 100K, 150, 160, 20,000 points for a single authorized user. You kind of glance over or gloss over that really quickly. But a whole bunch of people are getting targeted on platinum cards for 20,000 points after adding a single authorized user and having them spend 2000 bucks.

You can add that additional card holder as an additional gold card that's free. It doesn't cost anything. You could pay $175 for up to three authorized users on most platinum cards. That varies a little bit if you got some of the different various co-branded ones. But if you've got the plain vanilla platinum card, you can either spend $175 on three authorized users or just add one for free with a gold card. And if you can pick up 20,000 points on 2000 spend, I mean, that's 10 X 2000 spend. That's I'm half expecting,

you know, everyone who does this to then get another offer at another authorized user and get another 20. Yeah. You know, so here's the thing on that couple of pieces on that. First of all, the,

that 20 K offer, I wrote about it and included a link. My wife had it on her platinum card. The next day after adding that, she had a 10,000 point offer on her gold card for adding an authorized user, additional card member and spending $1,000. However, when I clicked to add it,

it said that they couldn't add an additional card online. And so I don't know, she got a message saying, we can't do it right now. Call if you have any questions. But then it popped up another day later in her Amex offers. Now it gave the same error again. I'm wondering if maybe it's popping up with that error because she just added an additional card holder and maybe she has to wait until that comes and she gets it activated or something because she didn't add the social security number when she was adding her additional card holder.

So I don't know. Maybe it has something to do with getting that one activated first, but nonetheless, she did get another offer right away. There was somebody in frequent miler insiders who reported that they added a user for 20,000 points a few weeks ago and then boom popped up again. And there you go. As in the terms that you can only get it once, but I don't know if they pop it up again. So, so do you think like Amex just has like too many points that they pre-printed and they're trying to get rid of them? I don't know. I mean, like what's going on here?

Are they going to turn into the new SkyPesos of the transferable currency world? Are they going to go the capital one route and all of a sudden start giving us different transfer ratios where it's like, you know, two points to 1.35 airline miles or something crazy like that? Boy, I hope not. But what are they going to do? So there's going to be all these millions and millions of membership rewards points out there. It does make me worry more about that Schwab rumor. So the Schwab Plat platinum card, that's the one way of cashing out membership rewards points for more than a penny each right now is you could get 1.25 cents per point to just cash out to your Schwab account if you have the Schwab platinum card today.

But people are worried that that might be going away because that feature kind of disappeared from the splash screen on the signup page. But it does sort of make me, as I think about how many points they're printing, it makes me wonder if maybe, yeah, like how can they possibly sustain the possibility of lots of people cashing out at that rate? Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I can understand the fear there. On the flip side, I've got to think that the vast majority of cardholders probably don't know. I mean, I can understand the fear there on the flip side. I've got to think that the vast majority of cardholders probably don't even know about cashing out via the Schwab platinum card, no less know about it and are willing to open the Schwab platinum card for 550 bucks to do it. Um, because that seems like you have to have a Schwab account in order to do it as well. Right. Right. So there's some barriers to entry there that are very low barriers to those of us who play

the game hard, but are barriers nonetheless that probably will stop the average consumer that'll just have no idea how it works. Right. So, I mean, I think of somebody like, I don't know, the Foo Fighters. You familiar with the Foo Fighters? They're a rock band, right? Yeah. I am elderly, but I've heard the children talking about them. The children, those kids and their rock and roll music, right? So I don't know if anybody saw this

story. Somebody shared it with me this week. They sent me a link to an article about how the Foo Fighters, I don't know, they were filming some documentary traveling on the kind of, they wanted to do something that was going to cost them a lot of money for travel. And so rather than, you know, borrow the money or get somebody to finance it, they said that they had been using the same Amex card since the band began for like all of their expenses. And they had something like 50 million Amex membership rewards points.

And they use those hotels for the crew and everything else for their trip yeah yeah so so i'm cringing for two reasons here you know and i think you know what they are one is if they use a single amex card for all their spend they almost certainly were only getting one one x point per dollar right everywhere for like 20 years i mean foo fighters been around a while you know right like 30 years probably at this one back then you know mx cards didn't have all these different uh category bonuses you know it was one mile one point per dollar right um and worse when you redeem points for hotels unless you transfer the points to like Hilton.

What you're doing is you're buying the hotel room for less than a penny per point value when you go through Amex to book it. Right. Ouch. Right. Ouch. Exactly. So what I'm saying here is if the Foo Fighters didn't know that their 50 million Amex points

were worth $625,000 via the Schwab platinum. I'm just betting that the average person probably has no idea either. So I'm still not that worried about the, maybe, maybe this Foo Fighter article got a lot of press and a lot of people are suddenly very interested in spending their points on hotels. And Amex is looking at that going, we need to give away more points. So more people can do this. The Foo Fighters want to go on tour again. We got to give out some points. We got to encourage them

to get another card finally after all these years, right? So yeah, no, I don't know. I'm not sure, but I do have to wonder somewhat about how many points are out there. There's got to be a lot of points right now. I know just in this last year,

I mean, my goodness, I've earned a lot of points without even like doing all that much spend. I mean, my goodness, I've earned a lot of points without even doing all that much spend. I mean, there's been some spend, but not nearly the amount you would think you would need to do to earn the quantities of points that I have. Right, right. You know, it has me thinking about things that I wouldn't normally have thought about. So, for example, Marriott points, like I don't have a great way of generating Marriott points at good value, except during like promotions. And I

wouldn't normally transfer Amex points to Marriott even during a transfer bonus. But it suddenly becomes like, if I had a high value stay I wanted to do with Marriott, it's just been so easy to collect all these Amex points that it makes me tempted. On the flip side, don't get me wrong. I do. Hey, Foo Fighters, if you're listening, don't call Greg. I do take this to the next level of analysis. And that next level is, wait a minute minute i do have the schwab platinum card i could cash out for 1.25 and i could probably you know either buy merit buy more marriott points

if i needed them with that 1.25 or i could just probably purchase the hotel room uh for net fewer uh amex points and i would actually earn um Marriott points on that stay because I, you know, if I paid with cash, basically. So what's going to happen here? I mean, are they just going to keep these big offers up and what kind of devaluations might we be looking at? I mean, so obviously the Schwab Platinum, that could go away, the 1.25 cents, which I'm definitely somewhat concerned about that because there are definitely people that I recommended Amex cards to with that idea in mind. You know, I said, hey, get this card now, pick up this bonus, spend for six months on

gas and grocery. And next year, I'll help you figure out how you cash out those points for 1.25 cents each. So you're going to earn a whole bunch of extra. And so there's part of me that's nervous. Man, if that goes away, then I'm stuck like playing the Foo Fighters game, I guess, because I don't know what, what else they're going to do with all these points. And so I am somewhat worried about that, but what else might happen and or change here? Cause I mean, a hundred K seems like it's the baseline now, right? I mean, it's gotta be 90 K a hundred K.

You can't, can't send me any 50K. For these expensive cards anyway, yeah. You can't send me a 50K offer anymore, right? Right, right. That would be nonsense. Right. Yeah, I mean, I don't see them getting rid of their one-to-one airline transfer partners, right?

I mean, do you? That's just too much of a long-term thing that made them the thing to go to as a, as a sort of points and miles hobbyist way back when. And, and I, boy, a lot of us would be so furious. I don't, I don't see that changing either. I agree with you. I don't see it changing, not because it's the thing that made them who they are, but because it's probably, I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that it is the one of the, if not the least common uses of points. I mean, obviously when you get stuck up in this game, you think, oh, everybody's transferring to airline partners. When in reality,

everybody's doing what the Foo Fighters did and they're just using their points to pay for hotels and flights at poor value. So maybe it's not that big of a deal for Amex at all. And if they're going to devalue something, they could just make the points worth even less for a hotel or a flight, right? And that's sort of what I'm expecting. Not really that they make the points worth less, but I think we're going to see more and more of the type of thing that we've already seen all the big banks do, which is encourage us to use our points to spend on Amazon and through PayPal and every which way, go to the gas station, it's going to pop up a thing. Do you want to use your Amex points or whatever? And it's all going to be terrible value.

And most consumers or business people who use these cards are going to be happy about it because they don't realize that they're getting such bad value. What they know, what they think is happening is that they're getting the stuff, whatever it is they want for free. And it's super easy and kind of fun. I imagine it's like a shopping spree. Go on Amazon and I could get anything I want. And it's free because I use my points. Right. No, totally, totally true. And I'm surprised that the transferable currencies

haven't gone harder in the whole experiences game. Like the hotels and airlines will try and get you sometimes to use your point hotel programs, mostly use your points for experiences. And I mean, starwood was popular for offering really unique and interesting experiences with that and marriott has kind of tried to keep some of that up they haven't put in much effort but i'm kind of surprised we haven't seen more from amex and chase in terms of use your points for an experience that you can't buy otherwise

and i could totally see that becoming a thing where it's like you know use your points for I don't know I remember Starwood did that thing the guy from Dan steals Dan they threw out the first pitch was a World Series game all-star I think it was yeah something big World Series game so he spent like a million

Starwood points which is basically equivalent to three million Marriott points today right um yeah i mean i'm surprised they haven't done more of that because that that's a really good point like an easy way to get these points off the books and make people happy to give up their points for something that's way overpriced and and generate a lot of press right i mean you know you see people doing something like out of this world, like, well, maybe literally out of this world. Why not? Why not get a ride on blue horizon or whatever

one of those spaceships are that, that are happening and, and, uh, say, you know, it's only 10 million chase points or whatever, whatever. Um, yeah, they should, they should do that kind of thing. Amex, if you're listening, you should do that and not devalue anything that we care about. That's right, that's right, that's right. Keep that up. Don't get rid of that 50% rebate on the business platinum card

when you use points to book flights with your chosen airline or business in first class or dem, leave that alone. Or 35% rebate, I said 50%. That's what it used to be, 35% rebate. But yeah, I mean, that's a benefit, by the way, in the business platinum that I could see changing or going away, I guess, if they're looking to devalue something. But I think it's more likely that we'll see those

experiences, things come up as we come out of the pandemic sort of, and people get back to regular life and attending events and things of that nature. I could see that becoming more of a thing. At least I hope. I think, A, it would be kind of fun, right? Because you're right. Right now, the points are just kind of flowing in so easily that maybe it will feel okay to use points even at a suboptimal value for one of those things

where you're like, oh man, I can throw out the first pitch at the World Series or maybe something smaller than that. But maybe it will be cool. I'd like to see that. You know, I mean, yeah, I would too, because the key to it is to offer things that you can't really buy because that way you can't look at it and say, oh, I'm getting good or bad value. It's just, you're getting something you can't otherwise get. And so then it's worth it. If you value that

experience, then a million points, 10 million points, whatever it is, if you have them, it's probably worth it to you. I remember seeing something in the Starwood days and it was something like you play like a softball tournament or a softball game or something on the field at Wrigley Field. And I remember thinking, how many chances am I ever going to have to play baseball or softball on a major league field? I mean, that should be like basically it, right? So sure, take my points. Let me give it a shot. And I didn't actually end up doing it

because the dates didn't work out for me, but I would love to see some of those types of things. So maybe we will. That sounds good. All right. We came up with a good plan for Amex. So they should they should definitely be thanking us with more 150k offers right right toss a couple more here so is there

any risk that that's a one other question i wanted to ask you for your opinion is there any risk in this so you get targeted for one of these and you know you've got a bunch of cards you've been doing some things that maybe you think amex may not appreciate if they looked closer at what you're doing. Is there a risk in accepting one of these expand your membership offers? A, just straight out of the gate and B, if you get like an additional one. Let's say you just gave that example a little while ago where you get an offer for a second card that you already have. And then, you know, what if a month or two down the line, you get another offer for the same card or something of that nature? Right, right, right. Well, I mean, boy, I'm wondering that right now with my own family,

you know, all three of us got those 150K offers, took them. And now we, all three of us have been offered the same thing again. And I'm very tempted to go for it again, but it does feel like there's some risk. But I don't like me. They're going to shut down all my accounts, including my bank accounts, everything. And who knows when I'll be able to sign up for a chase card again. I'd be very unhappy with that. I don't know. I don't, I can't think of Amex doing that, but, but they, they could claw back points, but what would they do? Would they really claw back the original 150 K or just the new 150 K if they decided they didn't like it and the you know the latter which i think is the most likely scenario if it happens at all is not a huge risk it means you lost out on some spend that didn't go to something you know as worthwhile yeah well as well i mean you might have lost out altogether if you don't

get the maybe they take away the rewards altogether. So I guess maybe there's low risk if you're doing legitimate forms of spend that aren't likely to be a problem in and of themselves. More so the risk if you're doing a bunch of legit spend. If you're a big spender, you got things to spend on that that makes sense. And probably the only risk is, yeah, that they may claw back the additional welcome bonus. Of course, the risk beyond that is that they may not let you get other bonuses for a while. You might start getting that pop-up

where you're not eligible for other types of bonuses, which is a potential risk. It depends on how many of those other offers you might open, whether 150,000 points today, you know, a whole bird in the hand, two in the bush, whatever it might be, you know, it's, is it worth risking getting the pop-up? I think probably it is. These offers are big and they're not going to be this big forever. So I think it probably is worth it, but I don't know. The second one, you are starting to play with fire. Then it does start to make me wonder why are they offering that again? Yeah. And how far do you go? Like

presumably if I sign up for my second one, I'll probably get an offer for a third one. Do I keep going? Yeah. At some point it's gotta be too much risk. Maybe, I don't know. Or is it, is it dumb? You know, as long as I could generate that much spend, is it dumb to leave all those points on the table? Yeah, that's a good question. I don't know. I mean, my wife signed up for the Blue Business Plus, got the 50K offer for 15K spend, went ahead, applied, got approved, got it. And that offer continued to show in her account for days afterward after she had already applied. And I thought, I said this last week, I think, could she do it again? And I don't know. I thought maybe it wasn't

worth the risk. But now with people like you receiving another targeted offer, I don't know, maybe it could have happened. Maybe we should. I mean, I would go for the 150K business platinum instead of that one. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. So lots of good offers out there. I would definitely go for one of them at least. And then if you're going to go for multiples or not go for multiples, I guess that's the question mark for some folks. But any way you slice it, a lot of points on the table, grab your slice of the pie, right? There you go. And one little tip about those pop-ups, they seem to be separate by Amex consumer versus Amex business. So my son has not been able to sign up for even a simple,

no fee Amex consumer card since his last Delta card sign up, but no problem sign up for business cards. So the pop-up does not appear on that side for him. And so I'm kind of generalizing from this one scenario, but I do think it's true that they handle those businesses pretty separately. And so you have different rules or something behind the scenes. There you go. All right. So get it while you can.

Get it while the getting's good. And check even if you think you might not be eligible because you've gotten the pop-up before. It's worth checking, especially on these business offers. So take a look for that. All right. So that then I think wraps that up and brings us to the post-roast. Post-roast time. Post-roast time.

So, Greg, you're on vacation, so you might think that you're going to get off scot-free with no post-roast. But you'd be wrong about that, Greg. You'd be wrong. It's time to roast. Turn on the grill. It's getting sunny. It's summertime. You're going to roast the post I didn't write.

Oh, shoot. I was trying to go for a triple rhyme there, but it didn't work. I'm going to roast this post. No, I'm going to stop right there. So anyway, so you wrote a post last week about awesome credit card combinations. And so you wrote about the best combination from Amex and Chase and Citi and Wells Fargo and Capital One. And you wrote that post about these great combinations and you left out something so

big that it forced me to have to write another post this week about the same topic. I didn't want to have to write about the same topic again, but I had to because you left out Bank of America. How are you going to leave out the cash back combos from your awesome credit card combos, Greg? What's up? No love for cash back? So first of all, do you not know about the statute of limitations on post roasts that post more than a week old no yeah there's no uh if you missed this roast last week then i should i should it's just done. It's done. No, no, no. All right. Uh, well, my way of answering is to do my roast. Oh, yeah. So in your awesome cash, uh,

cashback combos, cashback combos, you, you asked the question, this question that you just asked, why did Greg leave out cashback strategy? What is going on here? paragraph of his post, which was that it's possible to maximize value by combining the benefits of multiple cards. For example, you can use one card to earn more points and another card to get the most value from those points. So I was focusing on those combos where having a card like the sapphire reserve gives you more value from the points that are collected on the cash or the chase freedom because you move those points to the sapphire reserve and suddenly they're they're worth 1.5 each uh cashback combos cashback combos don't don't do that so that that's the reason why. And so my roast to you is you probably should have read the first paragraph before complaining about that. All right. Fair enough. Fair enough. I should have read the introduction instead of skipping right to the meat and potatoes. But

I think that a couple of people brought this up. And so you want to talk about combos like that. I think that the Bank of America combo then is worth mentioning because the Bank of America cards, if you have got the travel rewards, for instance, you pointed out to me something that I hadn't realized that those travel rewards points, which if you only have the travel rewards, you can use the points to redeem against travel purchases to erase travel purchases. But if you also have the premium rewards card, then you can cash those points out for one cent each and have them as cold, hard cash. So that might be appealing for some people. If you've, especially if you've had, we've said, if you've had the travel rewards card for years and years

and accumulated a whole bunch of points that you'd like to cash out, then that premium rewards, travel rewards combination might be pretty hot, Greg. It is. That's the one case I can think of where it kind of meets the rules. I mean, it doesn't sort of technically make the points more valuable, but it makes them. Oh, yes, it does. Yes, it does. I guess it does because they're easier to catch. Yeah, exactly. Use them for more things. Yeah. Rather than only on travel, that makes them more valuable. So, all right. So that does make them more valuable.

And I'm going to also say that I think it's worth at least having the Bank of America combination because the Platinum Honors status elevates the value of all of those different cards, makes it a little bit more interesting. And then we learned something

from a reader who pointed out that the AAA card, which I think varies regionally in terms of who issues it, but at least in the Northeast, it's issued by Bank of America. And the AAA card also earns the bonus, which is interesting because that card then, if you've got platinum honor status with Bank of America, gets you three and a half percent cash back at wholesale clubs. That's pretty darn good for a wholesale club card. Wow. Yeah. That's really good. Yeah. So yeah. No, I agree. Probably I shouldn't have limited that post to situations where specifically the points become more valuable as much as where the combination has some enhanced value by having all the cards together like that. And in the Bank of America case, it's a little bit different because you have to have $100,000, but it's still, I agree

that that belongs in that collection. There you go. There you go. But my other cashback combo didn't belong in there because those cards didn't enhance each other's value at all. They were just a collection of cards. All right. All right. Sounds good. Good enough. So let's move on then to this week's question of the week. So this week's question of the week came in and frequent miler insiders from Susan. And it was a great question because it reminded me of the first time I attended an FTU and it wasn't directly related, but it reminded me of the time I sat at a presentation. Remember it was Ben from one mile at a time talking. And he asked the question, how many people I've talked about it before, probably how many people here primarily redeem their miles and points for premium cabin travel. And almost every hand in the room went up. And I was like, what am I doing wrong?

Because at the time I was thinking, I just want to fly as far and often as I can. Economy class, the front of the plane gets there at the same time as the back end of the plane. I'll take economy, except that obviously I've since learned that there's some value in premium cabin travel. And Susan has obviously realized that also, but it reminds me of that time when I knew less about the difference because Susan asked, we found a great deal on a cruise leaving from Rome. I'm looking for airfare from Detroit to Rome in September. I have a certain number of

points, some Delta miles, some Amex points, some chase points. We've never flown first class. What airline do you recommend and what's the best strategy to get've never flown first class. What airline do you recommend? And what's the best strategy to get a deal on first class? And so she asked that. So for first class to Europe, Greg, you're based out of Detroit. So you're a perfect person to ask this question. She's got some Amex points. She's got some chase points. She's got just not that many Delta miles, but some Delta miles. What's the best option for first class out of Detroit? Yeah. Well, you know, if you value nonstop flights, then hands down, what you want is to see if

you could find award availability on the nonstop Delta flight to Rome from Detroit, because you could book that with Virgin Atlantic miles for only 50,000 points each way. And, uh, you can transfer your Amex points or your chase points to Virgin Atlantic to do that. So that's an easy one. Great redemption. But is that first class, Greg? It's what she's thinking of as first class so yeah yeah so international flights um usually distinguish between first class and business class so this would technically be business class more and more especially flights to europe uh from the u.s that's the most you're going to find on the plane anyway um there are some flights that have true first class where you're going to get

even more luxury. The beds are even flatter. The champagne is a little sweeter. Right, right. I mean, you're talking about, you know, getting caviar instead of whatever you're getting in business class and in first class. But if you want to go that route, then I think your best bet, oh boy, maybe to do Lufthansa first class. But there's just a lot of complexities to that because you're not going to be able to

book that until about two weeks prior to departure. And so that's a really tough one to do. Now, I totally agree. My first thought was, do you really want first class? And it's easy to get caught up when you're like, oh, all these people are flying first class. And if you haven't flown, and I could tell from the way the question was asked and then the subsequent answers that Susan just probably hasn't flown international business class before. And so she was just thinking, I want to sit at the front of the plane and not realizing that the first class is very limited. So if you want to fly to Europe, you're talking about Lufthansa flies a first class cabin. Emirates flies a first class cabin to Europe and just a couple of routes from New York.

And then it's like Singapore on a couple of routes. One route, I think, to. Yeah. Frankfurt has first class. Swiss does, but you can't use miles for that. Air France does, but you can't use miles for that unless you got elite status. And there's a whole bunch of different things there. So basically, first class to Europe is more or less just not even really a thing. I mean, if you can book Lufthansa two weeks out, great. But otherwise, it's not really much of a thing.

It's also on almost all those cases, it's really inconvenient flying from Detroit because now you're talking about at least weeks out. Great. But otherwise it's not really, it's also on almost all those cases. It's really inconvenient flying from Detroit. Cause now you're talking about at least two stops. Yeah. And so, yeah. So the, the, the one exception is if you could get Lufthansa occasionally flies first class out of Detroit, they don't always. So, you know, if all the stars align, you could get there in one stop, but yeah, too much, too much trouble. I start with business class anyway, because you don't want to get overspoiled for business,

which is really good by itself. It is international business class and is typically really, really good. So, you know, when somebody suggested to Susan, you know, do you really want first class or is business class OK? And she said, well, I don't know. Is it, is this business class like the first class? And, and so, yeah, it is. I mean, when you're talking international, like Greg said, business class is often, often, often the highest that there is on a plane. And it's usually international business class is usually lie flat seats. There are some exceptions there, but for the most part, lie flat seats. So out of Detroit, your best options are probably, like you said, Delta using Virgin Atlantic points.

Are there any other options that come to your mind to get to Rome from Detroit? Just out of curiosity. Yeah. I mean, you could do Lufthansa business class. You could do Air France. That would be a stop in, in Paris. Um, so what would you use to book those Lufthansa business class, Lufthansa business class and chase points you would use, you would use your Avianca life miles probably. Although, um, yeah, yeah. You know, unless you also have United miles sitting around, then you might want to do that, but that will cost a lot more. Um, yeah, yeah. You know, unless you also have United miles sitting around, then you might want to do

that, but that will cost a lot more. Um, and with Air France, I mean, I think you would still use Virgin Atlanta. Well, you would look at the price through Virgin Atlantic or through Air France and you could transfer to either one of those and book it that way. And the nice thing with both of those options, by the way, is that Lufthansa, Star Alliance, Carrier, you can book through LifeMiles, and LifeMiles is a transfer partner for Amex, but not for Chase. They are also

transfer partners for Citi and Capital One if you have any of those points. Air France is transfer partners with both Amex and Citi, and so is Virgin Atlantic partners with both Amex. I'm sorry, Amex and Chase is what I meant to say. So both Air France and Virgin Atlantic partner with both the programs where

Susan has points. So those would be good options to look at because then she can combine the power of all the points together to book those flights. So there you go. International business class, really good, probably going to be your only option in a lot of cases and certainly a good option. So that's what you want to look for. Yep. All right. All right.

That brings us to the end then. I want to thank everybody for being out there with us this week. If you've enjoyed today's conversation, you'd like to get our posts in your inbox. You want to go to frequentmiler.com slash subscribe. Again, that's frequentmer.com slash subscribe to get it on our email list. You can follow us on Twitter and Facebook and join our Facebook group, the frequent miler insiders, wherever you're listening to the show, make sure you subscribe, enable notifications, give us a thumbs up, leave us a comment or a little bit of feedback. Let us

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