Frequent Miler on the Air - Game Changer: Curve promises but can it deliver? | Ep141 | 3-12-22

Episode Date: March 12, 2022

1:07 Giant Mailbag: What about Wyndham? 5:52 Mattress running the numbers: Wyndham promotion for up to 5x points https://frequentmiler.com/great-new-wyndham-promo-earn-up-to-5x-points-on-one-stay-by-5-31-22/ 9:30 What crazy thing double header! What crazy thing . . . did Greg do this week? https://frequentmiler.com/approved-for-venture-x-am-i-nuts-on-my-mind/ 14:44 What crazy thing . . . did American Express do this week? https://frequentmiler.com/huge-gold-card-offer-earn-90k-points-and-up-to-250-in-statement-credits-with-qualifying-activity/ https://frequentmiler.com/150k-platinum-card-offer-via-referral/ 26:32 The Main Event: The Curve Card promises, but can it deliver? https://frequentmiler.com/curve-is-here-and-its-real-it-wont-rule-them-all-but-itll-rule-player-2s-wallet/ 55:00 Post Roast: Why didn't Nick tip Greg off to his strategy for the Curve card? 1:00:22 Post unroasted https://frequentmiler.com/approved-for-venture-x-am-i-nuts-on-my-mind/ 1:01:02 Question of the Week: Is this a good strategy to replace the Sapphire Reserve? Subscribe to our email list: https://frequentmiler.com/subscribe/ Music credit: Annie Yoder

Let's get into the giant mailbag. What crazy thing did City do this week? It's time for Mattress Running the Numbers. Ready for the main event? The main event. Frequent Liler on the air starts now. Today's main event, Game Changer. Curve promises, but can it deliver?

They threw us a curve this week. They did. Curve is a credit card-ish thing that stands... That's a great way to describe it. You use it to buy stuff just like you would with a credit card, but behind the scenes, it actually charges other credit cards that you have. So the idea is you just carry around this one card and it magically charges the other ones so that you can get your best category bonuses. You can direct your spend towards sign up offer, spend, things like that. But not worry about juggling what's actually physically in your wallet because you just use this one thing. So that's our topic for today. First, of course, we have the giant mailbag. Jeff wrote in after our show from a few weeks ago about the hotel loyalty roller coaster.

And he said, I was listening to your podcast. I noticed that you didn't include the Wyndham hotel program, which I was surprised since you seem to love the Vacasa Vacation Rental bookings. I checked online and also didn't see any additional post on Wyndham as a follow-up. Just curious where you stand on Wyndham Hotel Program as well as if there was anything new coming in 2022 that you knew about. Thank you. Very good. So that's a great question. How do you feel about the Wyndham Rewards program, Greg? Right, right. We didn't talk about it going up, down or up and down as some of the programs have been going. Maybe that's because there hasn't been a lot going on. I mean, that I can think of, you know, they haven't really been in the news

or one of the few that in March didn't announce that they were going to be doing major changes. That doesn't mean they won't, right? It's just we didn't get an announcement about it. So they haven't been top of mind. I'm not aware of any big changes planned, but I also wouldn't rule them out. You know, so yeah, I think that that's spot on for the most part, though. I'm going to say maybe trending slightly downward for two reasons. No, for one reason, really, because because of the Caesars partnership. And I say that because this week we found that Caesars added some terminology on their side, basically saying that you're not going to be able to stay on the status match go round and match between Wyndham and Caesars back and forth.

Now, whether or not that's actually going to be enforced, I don't know. But status matches this year have been uncharacteristically slow from Wyndham to Caesars. And the reason that matters is because Caesars diamond status comes with a bunch of great benefits, even if you're not a gambler, but you actually go to Las Vegas or to Atlantic City or there's a Caesars property outside of Baltimore. And so in all of those areas, all those places, you get access to a number of benefits. Actually, I say that and I don't know for sure in Atlantic City, but I know the one around Baltimore you do, like $100 diamond celebration dinner. So if you've got one of diamond status and you match that over to Caesars, you get a free hundred dollar dinner out of the deal. So that has been really valuable, but for sure, it seems that maybe they're devaluing

that. And some people have reported not being able to access that a hundred dollar celebration dinner this year. Now, not clear to me yet whether that's for sure, for sure, because I saw some positive data points. Also, my diamond status matched over eventually, and I've gotten benefits like the free bets in the sports book actually just posted to my account finally yesterday. But I tried to book the Atlantis Day, the free Atlantis Day. And when I called, they said that they couldn't verify my Caesars diamond status and they'd have to email

Caesars. And I'm thinking Caesars is going to email back and say, oh, this guy is just a status matcher. So that makes Wyndham trend downward for me a little bit. That said, Vicasa has been good so far. So as long as Vicasa is there, Wyndham is good. But I feel like that puts it on footing where I can't be like it's trending up. It's like- No, I agree. Also, you need to remember that there've been a lot of, I don't know if a lot is the right word, but there've been good deals with Wyndham in the past that started out at the fixed 15,000 point rate, which is what we like about the Vacasa vacation rentals, 15,000 points per bedroom per night. And then later changed to, well, it could be 15,000, it could be 30,000. It's whatever we want. So if that happens, that could

really, I don't know that it would completely tank the deal, but it certainly would make it a lot less exciting. A lot less exciting. And so that's the thing. I feel like we probably haven't talked much about Wyndham because yeah, I'm really happy with the ability to use Wyndham points for Vicasa vacation rentals right now. But if that changes, I'm not going to be too excited about all the Wyndham points that we've gathered. That's right. What are we going to do with them? I don't know. I mean, there are some places, some resorts in the Caribbean and whatnot.

There are some places that are not terrible deals on Wyndham points, but I don't get as excited about Wyndham. Exactly. No, no, there, there are definitely good uses of Wyndham points at Wyndham properties. Uh, but you know, it's, it's just, it's not a slam dunk and you have to look for them. Like they're not, they're not necessarily where you want to want to be. Um, or you have to get lucky to be at those places. Yeah. It's a niche thing. That's why it's a niche. It's very niche. And if you're into that, then great. So that actually is a great segue into this week's mattress running the numbers. I know we're going to skip it around here a little bit. We'll get back to crazy thing, but the segue is nicely into mattress running the numbers because this week we're going to talk about the Wyndham promotion. So there's a new

Wyndham promotion out to earn up to five points per dollar. And now that we just talked about Wyndham the way we did, I'll be curious to see what you think about it. So this promotion is pretty simple. You said up to five points per dollar, but I don't mean up to five times the points, right? I certainly do. Up to five times the points.

Misspoke. Thank you for correcting me there. So if you stay two nights, two consecutive nights, you get double points. If you stay three consecutive nights, triple points. Four consecutive nights, quadruple points. And if you stay five consecutive nights at a Wyndham property, you get a gold star and quintuple points. I want that gold star. That sounds good.

I don't know if they really give you that, Craig. They give you two bottles of water and that's about it. But you would give me a gold star, though, right? it. But you would give me a gold star though, right? I would. I would give you a gold star. I'd have my son draw it. So it might not look anything like a star. So the deal here is that if you are going to stay for a longer period of time, this,

I think, perhaps gets more interesting. I mean, of course, it's proportional. So it's more or less the same deal. But let's talk about a five-night stay. When Steven Pepper wrote about this this week. He used a five night stay as an example, said if you could find a five night Wyndham property for a hundred bucks a night, which is a totally reasonable find, I think it's been about 500 bucks.

And because you are in 10 points per dollar, normally with Wyndham, you'd earn instead 50 points per dollar. So you'd be looking at 25,000 Wyndham points with your $500 five nights day. What do you think, Greg? Mattress run worthy. Yeah, that's pretty amazing. And wouldn't you get some more bonus points as well for being like gold or diamond or whatever? You might. You don't know the details right now. That's okay. So yeah, I mean, is it mattress run worthy? No, not by definition mattress run because 25,000 points for $500, that means you're buying points for 2 cents each. That's if you're

literally checking in for only the purpose of earning the points, don't do that. Right. That wouldn't make any sense. You just buy the points when they go on sale or something. It wouldn't make any sense to do it just for the points. But if you value this day a little bit, then it certainly could. It's a great rebate on a five-night stay. Absolutely. Yeah. I think so too. I mean, it's a similar rebate, obviously, on a two-night stay or a three-night stay also. It just seems like a nice score of points because if you have the Wyndham Business Earner card, then nights only cost you 13,500 points per bedroom at Vacasa Properties. So after a five-night stay, you'd earn enough points for almost a two-bedroom Vacasa Property

or two nights in a one-bedroom property. So I mean, that could certainly be worthwhile if you also need the Wyndham stay. But if you don't. Yeah. Yeah. So I don't know whether Go Faster awards are eligible for this promo or not. That's a great question. That's where you use a small number of Wyndham points to get a discount on the stay.

And in the past, I've found that that's actually a great value use of your points. Sure is. And so if those two things stack, I could see getting a cheaper stay, using some points and then earning far more than that number of points back. So it would be a good combo. But again, you need to actually want to stay however many nights at the window. Yeah, right. Right. For sure. For sure. But if you do, then I think it could be an interesting promotion anyway, worth a look if you value points and have any use for a Wyndham stay. All right.

Right. So, and Oh, and by the way, I should mention that's only valid one time. So you can only do it once. You can't like book two or three, five nights days.

So, you know, pick a nice long stay before you hop into that one. All right. So let's talk about crazy thing this week. We've got a, what crazy thing? Double header. We do. We do. Yeah. about crazy thing. This week, we've got a what crazy thing doubleheader.

We do. We do. Yes. So let's kick it off with what crazy thing did I do? Did Greg do this? What did Greg the Frequent Miler do this week? Yeah. So Greg decided, you know how Capital One approved me last year for a venture card? And I was so excited. I'm sure we talked about it on the show. And then a few months later, they canceled my venture card and gave me only a half cent per point of the miles I had collected so far. Yeah, it was really rough. Obviously, you were

manufactured spending and that's why they shut you down right you would think so but no i i i was very careful to only use that card i was using it as my everywhere else card just normal spend and i literally did not buy a single gift card with it i didn't do any kind of weird stuff that i that you know anyone would look at and say, oh, that's suspicious activity. Nothing like that. They shut me down, didn't give me any real explanation for it. I tried a bunch of different approaches to kind of reverse the decision or at least get them to explain what happened. No luck at all. So you would think I'd be done with Capital One forever, right?

I mean, it would make sense. That's one of those times when it might make sense to be like, I'm going to take a stand here. No Capital One, no more of you. Or at least to be afraid of even trying. I mean, come on, they redeemed your points at half a cent each. So basically, you earned 1% back on all of the spend you put on the card one time around. Now, I mean, what kind of a glutton for punishment would try to drink from that trough again? Apparently this glutton would. So this time, so the Capital One, the Venture X, a hundred K offer with also the $200 kicker for, for vacation rentals. It's coming to the end this coming Monday. And, and I had to make a decision. Well, I didn't have to,

but I wanted to make a decision about Capital One before that good offer came, went away. And I'd been thinking about this for a while. Like, yes, I'm not personally going to try for a Capital One card again, but could my wife get one? And would they hate her as much as they hate me and why? They shouldn't. They shouldn't hate Mrs. Myler as much as they hate you. Lovely woman. She's much nicer in all ways than me. So, so come on Capital One, you've got to like her. So, so yeah. So she applied for the VentureX card, was instantly approved. So we will then, you know, go forward, hopefully earn the hundred thousand point bonus and hopefully be able to use it towards good value instead of getting canceled again. Careful, careful.

Don't say we will earn it, Greg. You don't want to get your history, your tarnished history on her hands. Right, right, right. He will earn the bonus and enjoy the points. Let's not make her guilty by association with the riffraff, all right? Right, right, right.

Good point. So the scariest thing for me is that one of the great benefits of the VentureX is that you can add authorized users for free and they get good perks like Capital One lounge access, their own priority pass and so on. At some point, I'm going to want her to add me as an authorized user. And that's when I feel like that's when bad things might happen. So we'll see. I'm going to put off that that day as long as is reasonable. Right.

And I read that in the post. And and when I saw that, I thought, well, I mean, so what's the plan here? Because Capital One requires a social security number to add an authorized user. So she's going to have to enter your social security number. They're clearly going to be able to match that up with, oh, this is somebody we don't want. Now, I don't have any data points as to whether or not that means they'll shut down her account, but that's certainly a possibility, right? So you're going to redeem all the points before you do that or just take your chances. Maybe what I'll do is have her transfer all her points to you before we do that.

Smart. And then hope that they don't trace all the way down the line. I like that idea. I want to try it. Right. I don't know if I really want to be associated there. I don't know if you do either. Uh, or, you know, I guess I was like, I would love to get in on your Marriott gift card deal. That's true. But no, if we could somehow use them before I do that, that would be ideal. And if not, and she gets shut down, it'll make another good blog story. Sure will. We'll be talking about it on a future episode here.

All right. Very good. So moving on. What crazy thing did Amex do this week? Amex! You're getting crazy again. We love it when American Express gets crazy because they're crazy. In this way, we do. Yes, they have been a good crazy now for like a solid year, two years almost. I mean, they've really been getting crazy throughout the pandemic. And as we slide towards a more normal world, I might have expected credit card bonuses to normalize a little bit, but Amex just keeps

saying, you know what, we're going to add some more points to the pile. So this week, there's a new offer out on the Amex gold card. And this is the best offer I think we've ever seen on the gold card, isn't it? And as far as I can remember, for sure. Yeah. And it's only available via referral link. And only some people can refer to this. That may ring a bell with people because that had been the case with the MX Platinum offer in the past. So the new gold card offer is 90,000 membership rewards points after $4,000 in purchases in the first six months, which is

already fantastic. I mean, the usual offer on that card is 60,000 points. We've had a link through Rezzy for 75,000 points, but now this is 90,000 points with the same $4,000 spend plus 20% back at restaurants for the first year, 20% back at restaurants worldwide up to 250 bucks back. So that'd be 250 back on 1250. So, I mean, that's fantastic. If you value membership rewards points at one cent each and you should value them more, that's what $900 worth of points plus 250 and restaurant rebates talking 1150. That's a fantastic welcome offer. And if you value the points more like a penny and a half each or whatever, then it just gets even better. So that's pretty terrific, right? It sure is. It sure is. Are you going to jump on it?

You know, I think so. But what I think I'm going to do is wait a couple of months. So I thought this through because I was really excited and I wanted to jump on it right away. But then I got thinking about it and I thought, well, you know, it gives you the 20% back at restaurants for the first year. And I feel like if I wait until closer to the end, like June, there's more of a chance we'll do more dining over a year from June. So we haven't been eating in restaurants very much. You know, we're still we got young kids that can't get vaccinated yet. So we've just been kind of venturing out into the world little by little. And we do take out, but we haven't sat down in a restaurant with the kids, like basically,

I think one time during the pandemic, maybe so. So I don't anticipate as much dining out in the next month or two or three. But I feel like once we get to the summertime, there's a decent chance that we'll be dining out more and more and certainly over a year from there. So I feel like I'm going to wait until closer to the end on this one. Also, because I know that there's a June 8th expiration date, I feel like that gives me a window of time to open some other stuff now and meet that spend and hold on to this one. So I think I will, though, because it's a fantastic offer and it gets even better because Amex debuted a new referral offer this week. And so if you have a current Amex membership rewards card on the consumer side, you probably

have an offer to refer others and you get whatever the points are, you know, it varies by card. It might be 7,500 points per person that gets approved or 20,000 points or 30,000 points per approval. You have to go through your referral links and see. But Amex added on top of that this week that when somebody gets approved through your link, you'll also get five bonus points per dollar spent at restaurants for three months on a 25,000 spend. So that's five points more than whatever you would ordinarily earn at restaurants. And again, you should check your card

referral details to see it, but it should be there on the consumer membership rewards, earning cards. And so that makes the gold card even more interesting because the gold card ordinarily earns four points per dollar at restaurants. And so if you're able to refer someone from your gold card, then you'll earn an additional five points per dollar at restaurants. And so if you're able to refer someone from your gold card, then you'll earn an additional five points per dollar at restaurants for nine points per dollar for a little while anyway. So, so I'm interested in getting the card and referring someone like I refer my wife to, I don't know, like some no fee MX card, like the everyday card.

She's never had it and it won't hurt us at all. Cost the same thing to open it, but we'll get five extra points per dollar spent. Something like that, probably. Right, right. Now, they weren't done with all the greatness, right? No, it continues. It continues. As if that wasn't enough.

Tell us about what's going on with the platinum card because you're one of the lucky few that has got the link for it. I am. I have a platinum card that keeps getting these special links, special referral links that only a few people get. I don't know why this card is so special. I'm jealous of it. Yeah. My wife signed up for her like vanilla platinum card. I don't know how many months after I did, and she doesn't get any of this on hers. In fact, she's not getting any referral at all on her platinum or her gold card.

She cannot find a single referral link on those. But on mine, and some readers have found as well, that you can refer someone, get points for the referral, get the extra five points per dollar for yourself. But the person who uses your link gets an offer for 150,000 points after, I think it was $6,000 spend probably, plus 10 points per dollar at restaurants. And so before, so we previously had two options for the platinum card listed on our site because there were two really good offers. There was 150,000 point after I think 6,000 spend, but, but no restaurant bonus. Right.

Or you could do the 125,000 bonus and get the 10 X restaurants for six months. Not both, but now you can get both. You can have your cake and eat it too and earn a lot of points while you're eating it. Yeah, yeah, it's really good. So, you know, Amex seems to be really, really eager for everybody to use their cards at restaurants. You know, that's the thing they're bonusing,

people who refer you and people who sign up either for the gold card or platinum card or getting some kind of restaurant bonus out of it and uh yeah i don't know i mean they gave up on small businesses it seems that that used to go hand in hand with the restaurant right i think they've just been rotating you know because last year they had some furnishings thing for a little while then they had this whole business and they had like grocery and gas before that, right? They had grocery and gas and then they did the home furnishings, which was like Lowe's and stuff like that. And then they did the small business. And so I think they're just rotating around with different categories to see what works for them.

It could be. It could be. I also thought there might be something along the lines of that if they looked at what kind of merchants still do not accept American Express, maybe they're still trying to make inroads in the restaurant market. And so they want customers to apply pressure. It's just a thought that they might be doing something along those lines, but you might be right. They might just be rotating around. I don't know. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I think that obviously also part of their aim is to get their card to be top of wallet, to be the one that you're taking out the most often. And so they may look at it and say, well, people spend more frequently, whether or not it's quantity, it doesn't matter, but more frequently at restaurants and other categories, because then you're constantly pulling the card out, right? Right, exactly. I mean, they could have read our posts about what's in our wallet now and said, wait a minute there. You know, Greg's thinking of of of taking out his platinum card offer, it's worth mentioning again. So if you were to open that and then refer somebody to any Amex card, because remember, we get questions about this all the time. Remember that you can create your referral link from almost any Amex card,

not the co-branded ones. Let's keep it simple. You have an Amex membership rewards earning card. You can create your referral link and send it to someone and they can click through that link and open basically any Amex card just about through your link and you get the referral bonus on the card you use to generate the link. So you open that new platinum card and then you refer somebody and they can open whichever Amex card through your link and you'll get five points more per dollar spent at restaurants. So you'd end up with 15 points per dollar at restaurants. Right, right, right. That's, you know, back to the good old days,

except for the, again, you don't have the small business part of it, but 15X, that's just bonkers. So wait, so I haven't done the math on this. Which would you rather have? 15X on the platinum card, if you were to stack the signup offer and refer somebody or 9x plus 20% back on the gold card? Well, the 20% back is capped at you're assuming you're not going to spend more than that limit on restaurants,

then I mean, I would take 20% back, I think. Right. Yeah. I think so too. Yeah. But that's a relatively low amount, $1250, comparatively anyway, to the capacity that you could earn at 15X. So, all right.

Very good. So Amex is getting crazy and they just keep showering us with points. The points parade continues to march on. Thank you, Amex. Keep it going. That sounds like a future episode title. Oh my goodness. And they keep sending out these targeted offers too, by the way, I should mention before we move on, there was, I wrote about a targeted offer for the blue business plus for 25,000 points. But then I saw another one for 40,000 points total. And, and my wife keeps getting these pre-approval letters in the mail for the business gold card for 90,000 points, the 10K spammy. It's just, they were just showering us with points. Anyway. They, they, they are the, you know, someone, someone, you know, turned on the printing press of the points and no one knows how to turn it off. So are you nervous about that?

Somebody asked, are you nervous that they're going to devalue membership rewards points because they've just tossed so many of them out there? No, I, well, let me, let me put it another way. I don't, I don't think they reasonably can because the only way to devalue them from from the way we like to use them is to change the transfer ratios so that it's not one-to-one to these different programs anymore i do not see them doing that i mean will the individual programs continue to devalue as they have been, of course. So, you know, that just happens over time. But yeah, they're already offering such little value when you use it for things like Amazon purchases or Grubhub or, you know, when you use it in lieu of cash, they give you terrible

value. So they already sort of devalued for the people who don't know how to use their points best. Right. And if they're going to devalue anything, those are the things that they'll probably continue to devalue. So it'll probably, like you said, they're not going to make different transfer ratios for each partner. Too complex and, you know, hard sell for customers.

So they're not going to do that. They're probably not going to drop partners unless, you know, the partner doesn't want to play ball for whatever reason. So yeah, I think that any devaluation there is going to be one that doesn't affect us. All right. So we talked about mattress running the numbers, crazy thing. Let's get into the main event. Main event time. All right. The curve card. So, so curve came out in, in England, uh, several years ago. And, and as I described at the top of the show, what it does is you use this card when you're out and about to buy things. And behind the scenes, you link it to

your credit cards that you left at home and have it charge whichever one you want. So the idea is you're going to a grocery store. You still just use your curve card, even though you have another card that bonuses grocery. You've set up your curve card so it charges that particular card that you have at home that bonuses grocery. And you go, you know, you buy a train ticket and it charges to the card that that bonuses travel and you know you get sort of the the best card all in one if it were all to work correctly so they had this years ago

uh in england and just now are starting to beta test it in the u.s and you were one of the lucky first testers. Yeah, yeah. And I was super excited because they ran this promotion months ago where you refer people to join the waitlist and then the top 100 people would be the first people to try it out and get some additional cash back. And so it sounded like the card would probably debut shortly after that promotion ended, which was like, I don't know, September 6th or something like that. Sometime in September, early September. And so when we didn't hear anything about applying for the card in September or October or November or December or January, I started to think, okay, this just isn't going to happen.

Because there have been other similar products that they've created a waitlist for that have never happened. So it's true. I was starting to get skeptical that it was ever going to happen. I was beyond starting. I was very skeptical that it was ever going to happen. And then the email came out of the blue that, hey, it's time to apply. So that was exciting, I thought. And I was really happy to get this because this is the ultimate player to card. Talk about a fantastic player to card because my wife can just carry the curve card and it doesn't matter. She can use the curve card. I don't have to worry about her remembering which card to use for which kind of purchase. She can just use the curve card and we can back it with a card. So there are some limitations, though, but also some exciting things.

So let's talk about the fact that, A, you can link multiple credit cards to your curve card. That way you can switch the backing card. So if she's going to the grocery store, I can have it set up so that it uses a card that bonuses groceries. And then if she's going to a restaurant afterwards, we could switch it and she could go to the restaurant and the backing card that gets charged by Curve could be a card that earns a bonus at restaurants. And so that already is pretty awesome, but it gets better yet because not only can you switch the backing card before you make a purchase, you can go back in time and switch the backing card after you've made the purchase. And that's amazing. Golden, right? I mean, that's huge. So if she goes out and uses her curve card at the grocery store and the backing card is not

the grocery bonus card, it doesn't matter because later on I can just pull up the app and switch and switch that charge to the card that earns a grocery bonus. You can only do that one time per transaction, but that's all I need to do to swoop in for the save and make sure that we earn extra points for groceries. So like this is totally requires no thought or effort at all from the person using the card because later on, whoever's managing the rewards in your household could just switch it to the right card. Right, right. Well, you know, and not only that, often a merchant that ought to code one way does not and codes a different way. You know, there's a great restaurant in town that I love that, that codes as, I don't know, you know, not a mail order or something. And, you know, so,

so if I were to default to using a card that, that bonuses restaurants, and then I see, oh, it coded as something else. You can, after the fact, change it to the, to the, whatever card is best for that, something else. And that's, that's amazing. Great, great, great feature. Along with that super, super convenient for signup bonuses, right? For welcome bonuses. If you've ever run into a situation where you suddenly had to make a large purchase, this happens all the time. We get people that post in Frequent Miler Insiders and they're like, okay, I suddenly have a huge purchase that I have to make today, whether it's a vet bill or a car broke down or you need

a new fridge or whatever the case may be. They're like, okay, well, I got to make a big purchase today and I'd like to earn a signup bonus. You know, what issuer can I open a card with and get an instant card number today? This curve card takes that type of strategy and throws it out the window because, okay, you have to make a big purchase today. And you're like, oh, wow, I wish I could have earned a signup bonus. Well, you still can just sign up for the card tomorrow. And then when you get the card, add it to curve and switch the payment card to your new credit card that you opened even after you made the purchase. That's brilliant. That's brilliant. I hadn't thought about that. So how much time do you

have? You don't have forever to switch the purchase. That's a good question. Like 30 days, something like that. I'm pretty sure it's 30 days. Yeah. So plenty of time to sign up for a new card. And that comes to mind because in my household recently, we had a few situations like, you know, where my in-laws washing machine went down and they needed a new washer, like pronto. And so they had to make a large purchase. And, and that would have been a situation where it'd be perfect to be able to earn a signup bonus, you know, but moving quickly, they didn't do it there.

And this curve card would solve that kind of a problem because you could just switch the card that you use later on. So it has a lot of strength for that. I mean, that's great. That's awesome. And that's not it? No, that's not it, right? So it also lets you set up rules ahead of time, right? It sure does. So you could tell it if the card is used for grocery purchase, use my Citi Premier card that gets 3X. If it's used for gas purchase, use, oh wait, my city premier card that gets three X.

Right, right. But you get the idea. Yeah. Or, you know, if it's a health and beauty purchase, then maybe use my, I theoretically use a card that earns a pharmacy bonus or whatever. Freedom Flex. Yeah. Freedom Flex. There you go. I was thinking the Freedom Unlimited and I was like, no, because we got to talk about limitations.

But yeah, the Freedom Flex. There you go. That's a perfect example. So you can set those types of rules. You can also set rules for amount. So if it's a really large transaction, maybe you want to use a card that has certain purchase protections like extended warranty or return protection or whatever they gave protection or whatever they gave theft or whatever it might be. Maybe you want to say, okay, well, if the purchase is more than $500, I always want to use this card. Or maybe you make some big purchases from now and then, and you're like, okay, well,

I want a card that has a higher limit for any purchases I make that are more than two or three or 5,000 or whatever it might be. So you can set those rules. You can prioritize the rules. They have a fair amount of categories that you can pick that include popular bonus categories. So you can set a rule for grocery purchases, a rule for restaurant purchases, a rule for utility purchases, et cetera. So that's really powerful. I mean, that seems awesome. And we haven't had a chance to play much with it yet, but that means that you'll have even less of that switching after the fact, right? Because I can just make sure that when my wife uses a card for a restaurant purchase, it charges the restaurant

card and she doesn't have to worry about switching it in the app and pulling up the app and doing anything at all. Like it's just going to auto magically do it. I just love that. So, and you can also, or can you, can you also set, set it to do purchases under a certain amount, say like only use this card for less than $5, for example. So that to me is great for a couple of things. One is, is the rewards plus card, the city rewards plus card, which gives you a minimum of 10 points per 10 points on any trip transaction. So it's, it offers an amazing multiple on very small purchases. So you can set it up, uh, to use that. Um, but another thing is like, um, there, there are some cards that you don't really want to use in general because they're not very rewarding,

but maybe you get a bonus after first purchase. So just set it up to say, when it's under $2, then use this card. Another reason you might want to do that is some fee-free cards, the banks will shut you down if you never use the card. So again, it's not very rewarding, but set it up to only use it when the, when the purchase price is very low and then you're not losing out on many rewards because it's, you wouldn't have gotten that many anyway, you know, that kind of thing. Yeah. I think it's perfect for that, for keeping a card active. That's, I mean, that's great. And then once you get one of those purchases, you can switch it out to a different card if you want, because you can switch the rules whenever you want to. So that's great. Also, the rules could be perfect for rotating category bonuses. So this quarter,

the Freedom card is offering 5X on a particular category. You could set a rule for that category to charge to the Freedom Flex or to charge to whichever card, the Discover card or whatever it might be for those particular category bonuses makes it really easy to hit those category bonuses. So to me, that's a game changer right there. And I'm not even talking about player two. I'm talking about player one now. Me too. I rarely bother getting my Discover It card out, getting my Freedom cards out because it's just, you know, I don't know, get it, getting like a few extra points per dollar. It's not worth my mental energy to remember every quarter. What should I be using this particular card for? Um, but now, now that I could just once a quarter change the rules and I'll automatically be using the best card for whatever it is that it's bonusing, I love that.

Me too. Me too. And I intentionally, when I just said that, I didn't say what this quarter's 5X categories are because I can't remember. I never remember. I always have to go and check. All right. So like, and it's like you said, it's not worth the mental energy to me usually to expend it unless I'm like, okay, so this weekend I'm going to go and try to max out the five X.

What is it? But otherwise, yeah, I don't think about it. So whatever this, this quarter's five X category is on the freedom card, we haven't hit it because I just haven't thought about it. And this will be perfect for that type of thing where I can be like, like you said, first of every month, Steven always republishes those quarterly bonus categories. When I see him republish that post,

boom, go into the app, change the rule, done, right? Right, right, right, right, right, right. That's great. Another very minor benefit is tap to pay. So it comes, at least they advertise it, it comes enabled with tap to pay. I complained in a recent episode that my X1 card, which is my new everywhere else card, which is not the Capital One Venture X card, by the way. It's something different. The X1 card, that it doesn't have tap to pay. It kind of irked me a tiny bit. But now, you know, I should be able to plug it in to the curve card and use the curve card.

And if I want it to charge the venture, not the venture. If I wanted to charge the X1 card, then it will. Once they fix a little problem that's going on right now. Right. So the problem, the downside here, the kicker, as they say, is that right now, while the curve card works with basically almost any debit card, Visa, MasterCard, Discover debit cards, the only credit cards you can use to back Visa, MasterCard, Discover debit cards. The only credit cards you can use to back it are MasterCard, Discover, or Diners Club. Right. So whip out that Diners Club card. Right. All six of you can rejoice with your Diners Club. I mean, I remember when that card came out

for like 10 minutes before they ran out of plastic and they were like, oh, we're temporarily not accepting any more applications. And here we are like eight years later and they still, it was like 1997 or something. Right. Right. Right. So, uh, yeah. So, so I mean, like I, I wanted to laugh when I saw a diner's club there. I was like, why did you guys waste any time getting this figured out with diner's club for all six people that have one? Right. Right. I'm sure they just got that as part of part of the enabling discover card, but, um, the, yeah. So, so visa they claim that they're working to fix that. Right. So, so there's a hope that they'll get visa working. Amex is a lost cause is we believe, right. Yeah. I mean, they're not advertising that they're ever going to support that. Exactly. They're not advertising. They're going to support it. And I, as I understand it,

the curve card was first released in Europe and the UK. Right. And as I understand it, the European version had support for American express for a little while, and then it got taken away. So it seems to me like Amex is the one that doesn't want that for whatever reason, which is too bad because there's so many Amex cards right now. We just talked about how they're raining points on us. So probably we're still going to have to carry a Curve card and an Amex card. But two cards is probably reasonable anyway. But I hope they get support worked out for Visa.

And I am hopeful that they will. I don't think they would set up expectations for that if they didn't think that they would get that worked out. So yeah, I'm not as bullish on that as you are. Why is that? Yeah. Because of plastic, the bill payment platform. So if you remember, when they first came out, you could pretty much use any card for almost any type of bill. And then they started putting in restrictions. And as things stand now, things like mortgage payments or auto loans and things like anything that's like paying back a loan,

you can do with a MasterCard or Discover, but you can't do with Visa or Amex. And I suspect that whatever is happening with Visa right now and Curve is like a similar type of thing. That Visa does not want their cards used for certain types of things. They would have a hard time preventing it if Curve works perfectly. So I definitely hope I'm wrong about that. I mean, I really, really do because I really want Curve to work out, but I do think it's possible that they hit this quagmire of whatever it is that the Visa network just is not into certain types of uses. And so I can see that being a problem. That could be, that's interesting. Cause I wouldn't have even thought about this,

but related though, not going to be exactly the same as that Capital One cards, consumer cards cannot be used for plastic payments, period. I have a Capital One MasterCard and I haven't tried to use it on plastic because I know it says that you can't use Capital One consumer card. So I haven't wanted to push the envelope and try it. I wonder if it would work if it were backing the Curve card. Yeah. But even if it did, I wonder how long before Curve would shut me down because Capital One would say, hey, we don't like this. I don't know.

I mean, would that be risky? I don't know. So I probably wouldn would that be risky? I don't know. So I probably wouldn't bother with it, but you know, yeah. Yeah. I mean, worse would be that, um, maybe, you know, curve wouldn't be able to, um, provide all MasterCard support either, you know, they might have to back away from Capital One or something. So yeah, it's a slippery slope. Um, there's no question people will be trying things like that and other workarounds. And I'm on a fence here because part of me wants to try out all of those different things. People have come up with other creative ideas too. Part of me wants to test those

out as somebody who writes about this stuff. And the other part of me is like, it is so valuable to me to have this for player two that I don't know if i want to mess it up uh you know with stuff like that because even in the limited status right with just mastercard and discover we can still do well enough that this is a good solution for player two as well and and like you said in some ways i feel like it'd be a great solution for mine too in in that, you know, we can go back and make those changes, like you said, with quarterly categories and things like that. So I'm not sure how much I will test or what I will test. We'll see. I definitely want to be able to test out the regular functionality of it to start. Yeah, no, definitely, definitely. So what else could kind of bring down this card as a game changer? Yeah. So I wonder whether we're going to have

issues with large purchases. And the reason I say that is because Curve is a credit card. It sounds very much like if you've been playing this game for a bit, you might be like, well, that kind of sounds like PayPal Key because you can change the backing card behind PayPal Key, right? You can't do it after the fact like you can with Curve. And that's important for what we'll say in a second. But it's a similar sort of idea. PayPal Key, though, as we know, has often been considered more like a debit card. And Curve, by contrast, is definitely a credit card. You're applying for a credit card with it and you get a Curve credit limit. So there is, you know, you do get a

Curve credit, so to speak, like card. And I say that sort of with quotation marks because you're going to receive a physical Curve card in the mail that you can back with whatever credit card of your own you want. But one of the backing options is curve credit. So you also get that. And the reason for the curve credit is so if your backing card gets declined, then they will charge it to your curve credit account. And then you'll have to pay curve back for that. And the thing about that is like, my wife got such a puny little limit on the curve credit side, like so far below her other credit limits that, I mean, it would work for groceries, you know, trips, a grocery store trip or a restaurant purchase or something like that.

It's not going to work if we need to buy like a new fridge or a washer and dryer or really anything very big or a new computer or stuff like that right right which i'm not particularly concerned about i wouldn't think because well the card is backing curve is probably not going to get declined for an 800 charge or a thousand dollar charge or whatever it might be uh but is curve going to give me a problem because of that large purchase because my curve credit credit limit is not big and i don't know is that going going to be an issue? I don't know. I'm not sure. Or are they going to limit transactions in general? Like you can't go and spend more than a few hundred dollars at a time. Right. Right. It's also possible that they'll raise limits fairly quickly once people activate

their cards and start using them and everything. So that uh, that, so that might not be a problem. I guess we'll have to wait and see another problem that existed with the UK version of the card and will probably be a problem here is their support. Um, their customer support has been entirely through like messaging. So like sort of email or there's a chat function that never seems to be live through the app. And so, you know, getting a question answered seems to take at least a day, if not longer. And so, you know, if you have real problems using the card and if that continues to be the case, it's going to be the opposite of a game changer. Then you're going to be putting it away and just going back to the old way.

Yeah. Yeah. And that'll be too bad if that's, that's what happens. You know, we'll, we'll see. I've got my fingers crossed, but I certainly have heard people say that that's, you know, a potential issue, a potential hangup is that, you know, support is only via email. It takes a while to get anything resolved. So if you're having a problem with the curve card, then you're going to have to wait. So if my wife were to only carry or I were to only carry the curve card and no other cards, that could be a problem, right? If the curve card doesn't work, then you're not going to be able to just call and get it resolved over the phone. So you're going to have to have a backup credit card. Yeah. I can't imagine going around with just the curve card. I think you have to have at

least one backup if it's very important to you to actually be able to spend money. Right. Right. Right. Right. Yeah. I mean, I guess most of us have like, you know, Apple Pay or Samsung Pay or whatever. Well, you know, that's the thing. So I'm glad you brought that up because you mentioned the tap to pay thing again. And I saw somebody commented last week and I was like, I'm not even tempted to use tap to pay. If I'm going to take the card out of my wallet, it doesn't matter to me whether I tap or I slide it into the thing. I would much rather just take my phone that's always in my hand and boop, you know. So I feel like that's, you know, we always have that backup of

the phone because we've got cards loaded in Google pay. So, and nowadays that's pretty prevalent. So I'm, I mean, great. It has tap to pay awesome for the times you want to tap. I actually used it thinking of you just the other day, I went to the pharmacy and I took out my card and I was about to slide it in the slot. And I was like, no, you know what? Just, just so I can see if Greg is right. If this tap to pay is more satisfying, let me tap. And I did. And it was the same, did not, did not feel more satisfying. But yeah, so that nowadays I feel like I always have a backup or two or, or, or three, hopefully. Right. Right. So that's good. That's good. All right. So I mean, overall,

I think this is great. This is a potential game changer. And like we said, even with reduced payouts. So, for example, maybe my wife won't have the card that gives her the best possible restaurant or grocery bonus on her curve card,

but it will be good enough and we will avoid those one X type of situation. So I feel like this is a, you know, a bit of a marriage saver in the sense that again, this week I gave her a hard time over using the wrong card. Once you got a massage and use the same one X card with the masseuse. And I'm like,

what are you doing? Use a card that earns at least two points per dollar. And so now I don't have to say that I don't have to growl. they can just say, you know, just carry this curve card, use it for everything. And behind the scenes, it'll, it'll charge the card that I sent out for, as long as it's a MasterCard. Now, do you have a favorite card? Yeah, right. Do you have a favorite card or two to back the curve card with? I mean, out of MasterCard and Discover, do you have like a favorite option or two that you think are the cards that would be the best ones to have? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think the Freedom Flex, the Chase Freedom Flex is a really good one. That's one of the few MasterCards in Chase's lineup and the ability, as we talked about, to set it, to use whatever the 5X category is each quarter is great. I love that idea. So question on that, because I think

that's a great option. My wife still has the Visa version of the Freedom Card. Can she product change to the Freedom Flex? She can. And that's what I'm thinking. I never got around to product changing my Freedom Cards. I have multiple Freedom Vis know, I think once I get my hands on a working curve card that I will product change to that. I think that's awesome. A lot of cards that are popping into my head are visas. So at least for now, those wouldn't be ones I would pick. But I've talked about, I still have the prestige card that's getting 5X at restaurants. So I would use that for restaurants. If you have a couple of the city custom cash cards that earn $500 in the category you spend most, you could pick one to be grocery, one for gas or one for pharmacy, whatever is your ideal thing, right? And the Premier card has 3X

in a bunch of categories. So that's another good one. Double cash is a great everywhere else option. Bank of America. So most of Bank of America's cards are Visa cards, but in a lot of cases, it's possible somehow to you have platinum honors with bank of America, it gives you like 5.25% in certain categories. That would be fantastic. Yeah. That would be a really good choice for sure. So that's, I think an interesting one.

Also the, the cardless cards might be interesting all of a sudden that I shouldn't say all of a sudden they already, it depends on which one, because I think like the Pelicans card might be 4% on gas. And one of them is 4% on restaurants or whatever it is, but those cards might be interesting. And I wouldn't have really considered them because like, ah, then we got to carry that card for just that one specific purpose and, you know, kind of annoying it, but now you

don't even have to carry it. Just toss it in the app and switch it out when you're making the type of qualifying purchase that meets that particular category. Right, right. And of course, the Discover It becomes interesting again, too, for its 5X category. So same reason as the Flex. So yeah, there's a lot of good stuff out there. And I don't feel like I'd be... I mean, the funny thing is the more I think about it, I don't think we'd be giving up that much.

No. Because of the no Visa card restriction. funny thing is the more i think about it i don't think we'd be giving up that much no because of the um no visa card restriction um no and what you gain in ease of use is probably worth the trade of the you know one extra point here or there maybe right now now an exception of course is is amex i mean if they're going to be spitting 10x, 15X, or restaurant type of things at us, we're going to be carrying that card. Right, right. Or just the big, huge welcome bonuses continuing on. Yeah, absolutely.

But I think that that works out okay because then you carry the Curve card and you carry an Amex card and hopefully you don't end up in a situation where you can't use Amex and the Curve won't work, right? Right, right, right, right. And of course, you carry a visa or two because for whatever reason that the visa card you have is better than any MasterCard or Discover alternatives, which will happen with the Chase Inc. Cash card that gets 5X at office supply. I don't think there's a MasterCard equivalent of that. And if you want travel protections from your Chase Sapphire Reserve or your Ritz-Carlton card, you're going to be using those. Right. Right. All right. So good stuff there. Be interesting. And I'll also be interested

to see that things do code the way that we expect them to on the backing card, right? So I assume that they will, but we'll certainly see if there's any effect on cards or on charges being passed through Curve or when you switch from one card to another, there's still some things we don't know about how that process is gonna work. Also, I don't know for sure how it works. I assume that it works fine, but benefits like purchase protection,

if you've used a third party like Curve, do you have any additional issue making a claim or travel protection? I don't know. So we'll see. We'll find out. That's a great, great point. Great point. Yeah. All right.

So I think that brings us to post-roast. Do you have a post-roast, Greg? I've got. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah., yeah. So, okay. So you wrote about signing up for your curve card that you were one of the lucky top 100 people who got to get a curve card with that earning 10% cash back for some amount of time yeah and you signed up you actually your wife signed up for it right like instead of instead of yourself right and so my roast is is is more

of a complaint that you didn't you didn't tell me this idea of the spouse signing up before i went and tried to sign up through my own link. And signing up through my own link was a problem because I still have the UK version of the curve card. From years ago, I got it all set up when I was over there. I used a relative's address in the UK to register the curve card and get it mailed. And I never got it working at all. They, you know, the first time I tried to use it, it just, it gave me some kind of error and I never, ever got it used, got to use it a single time, but I still have it. And so when I tried to click the link to

get the U S version of the curve card, it just opened up my old account. And my old account thinks I live in the UK and I tried to change the address. It won't let me change it. All kinds of stuff. If I just signed up, if my wife had just signed up, maybe none of this would have happened. Maybe not. You did not tell me. Well, you know, but before you get too excited, you know, we're not expecting to see the extra 9% for quite a while. So like the first hundred people that were in the top hundred for the referral list, get 10% back for the first six months, everybody gets 1% addition. And we didn't even, how did we not mention this, Craig? How did we just talk about the curve card and not talk

about the welcome offer? Uh, like this is a-roast, frequent miler on the air roast right now. Let me back up for a second. What we didn't mention about this card is that for the first six months, it adds 1% cash back on top of your credit card rewards. So on top of whatever you earn with the backing credit card, Curve is going to give you an extra 1% back for the first six months when you open the card, whenever it's publicly available. The people that were in the top 100, that's awesome because that means your backing card earns 3% or 4%. You're going to earn 4% or 5% total with Curve's bet. That's a great feature for the first six months. It's up to $1,000 back, I think, also on that. You can spend up to $100,000, I think. Don't quote me on that. So, I mean, you can spend up to a hundred grand. I think, I think don't quote me on that. And I don't know that you actually could spend that much. Cause I think they'll

probably shut you down if you're doing too much MS, but at any rate, for people who are in the top hundred on referrals, which isn't going to apply to most folks out there, we were, we got the opportunity to get 10% back for the first six months up to a thousand dollars back. And so the way that's going to work is you'll get 1% back now and it says 9% back at some future time. So we don't know when that's going to be, if it's going to be after the entire intro period, blah, blah, blah. And I don't know how to know that she's definitely going to get the 10% back because it was my name on the referral originally. Right, right, right, right. So we're living on the edge a little

bit. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Did you register? Did she register with the same email address that you signed up for the waiting list with? Yeah. For the curve card. She signed up for the curve card with the email address that I got on the list with and the phone number that I think I used for the list if I used a phone number. So I'm hopeful. Preston Pyshko My guess is that you're safe then. David Collum I'm hopeful that it's safe. Preston Pyshko And I couldn't even have my wife sign up with that email address because I stupidly used the same email address for the waiting list and my old curve card. And that's, I think, where the problem starts and ends. So I don't know if I'll

ever have the curve card to get a curve card. But I mean, my wife should be able to sign up new under the 1% deal. When is that available? Is that available now to people? That's a darn good question because I didn't think it was going to be. But then Tim on the Freecomather team told me that he signed up the other day and he wasn't on the maybe he was on the wait list but he wasn't in the top 100 on the wait list anyway and he was able to successfully sign up i haven't tried like my so my thought then was like oh well i should sign up too but then i was like yeah well let me not mess with anything because of the 10 back i want to make sure we get that. So I'm going to open it now with a different email address. So I'm not sure. That's something for Mrs. Myler to check out. That's what we're going to do. She's going to try signing up separately. And meanwhile, I'll continue going through their

stellar support team to try to get my issues I spend, spend five minutes each day for the next six months or so until I get a, until I get it working. Hopefully we'll see what happens. There you go. Very good. All right. So, so that's our, our little roast there. That's our plan to fix it. So I have a reverse roast for Craig. It's not a roast. It's actually a little bit of applause. I'm going It's actually a little bit of applause. I'm going to give you a little bit of applause. Wow. I didn't even know that was allowed here, but thank you.

I'll take it. I appreciate that very much. So that approved for VentureX post that Greg published this week about his wife getting the VentureX card, we talked about it at the beginning. The last paragraph of that post was masterful. It was just the right amount of sass to be like, capital one without being like rude about it. That was awesome. That was a fantastic final pair. So like you haven't read that all the way to the end. You need to. I'm glad you enjoyed that. I enjoyed writing that. Loved it. Loved it. All right. That's great. So that out of the way, that brings us to the

question of the week. And I hope you like onions, Greg, because this week's question of the week has a lot of layers. We got to peel back. All right. There you go. Okay. Hopefully it doesn't make you cry. So this week's question actually came in. I'm trying to move my mouse. There we go. I came in a little while ago via the mailbag email address. So if you've been wanting to get on this segment, mailbag at frequent miler.com.

Hello, send it in. And we will eventually look through and get your question featured because Vince asks this question. He's hoping you could help with some recent card shuffling he's doing. So like I said, there's a couple of layers to peel back here. So because of annual fee costs and the ability to replicate benefits with other cards, he recently dumped his Chase Sapphire Reserve. So he recently got rid of the Sapphire Reserve. And in its place, here's his strategy so

far. He upgraded the Inc. business cash to an Inc. business preferred. That way he could still transfer his Chase points to partners and still earn 3X on travel with a lower net annual fee, because that card only has a $95 annual fee. Right. So that was his solution for that still has three X dining because he's got to chase freedom unlimited. So that takes care of the Sapphire reserves, three X dining.

He has kept the chase Ritz card for primary CDW coverage, like rental car coverage, travel protection, free authorized users, and the good priority pass that's available to the authorized users, which is important for him because he has a family of five, a couple of kids in college, blah, blah, blah. So he's got that. And he says that he feels like it's easier to keep that annual fee to a net zero, although I don't really know why. So he says the only benefit he loses with this strategy for the ink business preferred,x on dining with the freedom unlimited and the

you know ancillary benefits on the reds the only benefit he loses is the ability to cash out or use chase travel portal at one and a half cents each sure so now so that's so first i think he wants to kind of know about that strategy but we got to talk about the last piece i told you there's a lot of layers here craig there's a lot of layers to peel back. There's one more layer to add here. All right. All right. You don't have me crying yet, but we'll see. He was instantly approved for the Capital One Venture X. And so the Venture X replaces most of the Ritz benefits. Unclear, he says, on the travel protections, but actually, I think the travel protections are pretty comparable. In addition, he says, on the travel protections. But actually, I think the travel protections are pretty comparable.

In addition, he says, with Marriott blowing up that 50K cert on the Ritz card might be less valuable, he thinks. That's a debatable point, I think. But would you agree now? So first of all, was his strategy good on the Chase side? And second of all, is it time to dump the Ritz? Because he's got the VentureX to replace a bunch of the Ritz benefits? Or he said, you know, it duplicates the travel protections that the Sapphire Reserve has that I love, you know, definitely best in class. I think they're significantly better than Capital Ones, if you look at it sort of line by line. And yeah, so I think that totally makes a lot of sense I think he's been listening to the show doing a really good job there or reading the blog with whether or not to ditch the Ritz card for the

Venture X I mean yeah they both have the Priority Pass membership which is really good Venture X. I mean, yeah, they both have the Priority Pass membership, which is really good. Venture X has the addition of getting you into Capital One lounges. Right now there's only one, but as they open more and more, that'll become more important. So what, um, not as good a travel protection. I mean, it definitely, so the venture X has an easier justification, right.

For paying the annual fee. Right. So it's sort of a no brainer. I think you three 95 a year, but you get back, you, you get to spend $300 through their travel portal and get that back. So $300 back just by using their travel portal, which, yeah, I don't usually like to use travel portals,

but as you showed in your posts, they seem to be pretty good. And you get 10,000 points just automatically each year that you renew. So combined, that's arguably more than $395 in value without really doing much of anything to earn it back. Ritz card, meanwhile, you have to find a good use for that 50K cert. You have to find good ways to use the $300 in incidental airline fee credits each year. It can weigh more than pay itself back, but it's not automatic. It's not as easy as the VentureX. So I definitely see the interest in doing that. So what would you do?

I mean, are you going to dump your RITS card? You've got a RITS card. You've got now the VentureX in the household. Are you going to dump your RITS card? You've got a RITS card. You've got now the VentureX in the household.s are going to be less valuable than before. In fact, I think in many ways they're going to be more valuable. I think that before they were very, very awkward. I showed this in some analyses I did where the most expensive properties that you could use a 50K cert for were actually priced at 40K, not 50K. And that's because 40K was the peak pricing for category five hotels. And 50K was standard pricing for category six or off peak for category seven. And so those are hotels that are not cash-wise peak price when you

want to stay. So the hotels I really want to stay at were more than 50K. And now that we'll have the ability to add up to 15,000 points to our certs, to book properties with, with Marriott going sort of dynamic on us, uh, I think we're often going to see hotels in the 50 K to 65 K range that we really want to stay at. And you'll get full value for your cert instead of getting 40 K value. If you see what I mean. Yeah. So, um, yeah, so, so, so I actually think in a way the value is going up for the Ritz card because it comes with that 50K cert, not down. I'm happy to keep it. Yeah. I looked at this and I thought to myself,

that wouldn't be an either or for me. I felt the same way because the VentureX to me has no bearing on whatever else is in your wallet. Because like Greg explained there, it's worth more than $395 a year to me. If you value miles, like transferable points, because I mean, remember the 10,000 miles you get every year at anniversary could be used at one cent each for $100 towards travel, if you redeem with the purchase eraser. But if you value transferable points at more than a penny each, and I think most of us do, let's say you value them at 1.3 cents each, then you're looking at $130 in value there plus the $300 reimbursement through the portal. I mean, to me, that's a moneymaker. That's a positive because I always spend more than $300 a year on travel. and I don't have to work too hard to find enough situations where it's going to be like a one

night stay at a residence in, and it doesn't matter where I've booked it through or whether I get a leak credit. And I showed the prices are good. So I'm going to have no trouble getting full value out of that card year after year. So that doesn't have any bearing to me on anything else in my wallet. In terms of, I'm not going to drop the VentureX anyway. I'm going to keep that no matter what. So then it just becomes whether or not you want to spend the money on the Ritz card for whatever small incremental benefits there are. But yeah, I mean, I think that 50K cert, I mean, I think it'll probably be hard to get less than $200 in value unless you're going to use it for a really cheap hotel. If you're going to stay

anyplace reasonably nice, it'll be hard to get less than $200 in value out of that. So if you get close to 300 out of the, uh, the, the annual airline incidental credits there, then the card is pretty close to net free before you consider the fact that you are also going to get other stuff. So, um, so yeah, I So I would keep both of them, Vince, unless you're just looking at it and saying, man, this is kind of crazy. I'm paying $800 in change in annual fees and that amount out is too much. I get that. So if that's the issue, then I would have a hard time dropping the Capital One Venture X. So I guess you would have to drop the Ritz. The other thing you could do though, like you mentioned in the question, Vince, you said,

should I drop this or are you worried that Capital One is going to peel back benefits later on? I wouldn't worry about that because you would just downgrade your Ritz card to one of the other Marriott cards. If you don't want to pay an annual fee, there's a no annual fee Marriott card. So just downgrade to that. And then if Capital One nerfs the VentureX later on, just upgrade your no fee Marriott card back to the Ritz card again. So as long as that remains an option, which it has so far, of course it could change at some point, but I wouldn't probably make my other decisions based on the fact that that might change someday. Go ahead and downgrade it to the no fee Marriott card if you feel like there's too much overlap and you just don't want to pay the annual fee. That's a great answer. Okay. All right. Unfortunately, we're about out of time for

today. We went long today. So that person with the hour and a half commute, you're welcome. Got you home today. We do what we can. Thank you very much for being out there with us. If you enjoyed today's episode and you'd like to get our posts in your email inbox, you want to go to frequentmiler.com slash subscribe to join our email list. You can choose to get emails instantly, daily, weekly, et cetera. You can follow us on social media. We're on Twitter and Facebook and Instagram and YouTube and all of those places. You can be sure to like and subscribe to this wherever you're listening or watching, like subscribe, leave us a comment, et cetera, and join our frequent miler insiders Facebook group. You definitely want to do that. By the way, if you have one of those magic Amex links that Greg

talked about that refers to one of those increased offers like the 90K gold card offer or the 150K plus 10X platinum card offer, because we're taking reader links from our Frequent Miler Insiders group and putting them on our best offers page. And a lot of readers have picked up referrals and easy free points. So you want to join the Facebook group if you have one of those links to share. Thank you very much for being there with us today. And we will see you again soon. Bye everybody.