Frequent Miler on the Air - Game changing transfer bonuses - The Bilt card ain’t just for renters anymore | Ep240 | 2-3-24

Episode Date: February 3, 2024

On this week's Frequent Miler on the Air, Greg and Nick talk about some game-changing transfer bonuses that have got them thinking..."The Bilt card ain’t just for renters anymore" (00:00:00) - Start (00:01:12) - Giant Mailbag (Bilt transfer bonuses are bogus) (00:04:18) - Card Talk (Big changes to Delta Credit cards...) (00:13:29) - Crazy Thing: (Dany says "I’ve had a Chase Ink $95 card for 10 years and this year they sent out a 10 year gift of coffee and some treats from a veteran owned company. Today I got the 1099 in the mail for it!")  (00:15:54) - Mattress Running the Numbers (IHG promo: Earn 40k bonus points every 4 nights at Iberostar properties)  Read more: https://frequentmiler.com/ihg-promo-earn-40k-bonus-points-every-4-nights-at-iberostar-properties/ (00:18:48) - Award Talk (Award Discover Tools) (00:24:34) - Main Event (Game changing transfer bonuses) (00:24:34) - Old advice: the fee free Bilt card is GREAT for renters but with limited ways to earn points, it’s not great for points & miles hobbyists. (00:25:19) - New advice: Bilt is great for points & miles hobbyists too (00:33:04) - Bilt Card Overview Read more about this card: https://frequentmiler.com/Bilt (00:35:00) - Bilt elite status / transfer bonuses Read more: https://frequentmiler.com/how-nick-built-his-own-bilt-bonus/ (00:39:15) - Is there a Bilt welcome bonus? (00:42:01) - Earn points primarily through card spend (00:46:20) - Sample strategy for Silver status (00:48:21) - Sample strategy for Gold status (00:50:46) - Strategy for Platinum status (00:56:23) - Who should consider this? (01:03:34) - Downsides & risks (1:05:47) - Question of the Week Visit https://frequentmiler.com/subscribe/ to keep up to date with Frequent Miler content, and email us at [e-mail] to submit a question for our "Question of the Week" segment. 

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 Miler on the Air starts now. Frequent Miler on the Air starts now. Today's main event, game-changing transfer bonuses.

The built card ain't just for renters anymore. Sure isn't. You know, I initially, back in the day, said this is a great card if you're renting, but it didn't make a lot of sense to me as a non-renter. And when you know it, nowadays there's one in my household because, like Greg said, it's not just for renters. In fact, it's great for renters, but In fact, like it's great for renters, but man, I think it's gonna work out for a lot of people.

It's certainly working for us, but we'll talk more about that. We'll get more into that during the rest of the show. But don't forget that you can find the show notes. If you expand the description box, you'll find timestamps and hopefully links to those timestamps. So you can jump around

if you wanna move ahead to a specific segment or you wanna come back and listen to another segment again. Wherever you're watching or listening, don't forget to like the show. Leave a comment. Those things help other people find the show, too. So we appreciate that. Okay, Greg, drag out this week's Giant Mailbag. All right.

Today's Giant Mail comes from just me, huh? This was a comment on a post where we posted about our pick for the deal of the year in 2023. And we picked a built 100% transfer bonus to Air France KLM Flying Blue as the deal of the year. And Just Me, huh? Says, in all caps, built transfer bonuses are bogus! Three exclamation points. Three, not one, not two. Yeah, I didn't know how to get that into my intonation.

And then in lowercase, there I said it. The fact that you get an amazing transfer bonus on a minuscule points balance is in no way noteworthy and definitely not deal of the year worthy okay so i mean i understand where just mija is coming from because the the built uh ecosystem doesn't have lots of cards where you could sign up for and get like chase and mx and and and some others have lots of cards where you can earn lots of points just by signing up for lots of cards. Sometimes you can sign up for cards multiple times, like wait 48 months or whatever the rule is

and sign up again. Built just doesn't have that. They don't even have an official welcome bonus. So the only good ways to earn built points are through credit card spend or if you pay rent, that's their original niche. So yeah. So what just Miha is saying makes sense, but things have changed. And in today's main event, we're going to talk about why things have changed, why we don't think, at least I don't think, I'll let Nick speak for himself, why I don't think that just Mija's criticism holds water anymore going forward.

Agreed, agreed. And let's not forget the original target market, which we'll talk more today about why that's not the limitation anymore. But my goodness, I mean, I know I would say in my normal social circles, like I don't know anybody who plays this game the way we do. So my normal daily friends and people that I know don't play the games that we play, but I know a lot of people who rent apartments. And so a lot of those people would benefit a lot from built. And I know quite a few people that pay enough in rent that they would earn a non-minuscule balance over the course of every single year. And if they're able to take advantage of these transfer bonuses, great. But we'll talk more about why I opened it, even though I'm not paying any rent. So we'll talk about that

later. And just to close the loop in case you don't know out there, built is a fee-free card that lets you earn points paying rent among paying other things. But that's what's unusual about it and what made it special in the first place, but things have changed to make it special in many other ways as well. Okay. All right. Let's talk about card talk. All right. So this was brand new for us as we're recording this. This morning we got up and learned that Delta had increased the annual fees on all their cards and couponized them. Love the coupon book model, Greg. Yes so it's finally about where things are at now. The Delta gold card was $150 a year. Oh, I'm sorry. It was $99 a year. It's now 150. The Delta platinum card was 250. It's now 350. And the Delta reserve card was 550. It's now 650. So that's the bad news is that the cards each went up by, well, about $100 except for the gold, which went up by a little bit less. But they got new features, which could make you happy about

paying $100 more or so. The Delta Gold card has now a $200 Delta flight credit after 10K spend instead of $100 previously. So if you're spending the 10K anyway, now you have a much bigger flight credit. And you also get $100 of credit towards Delta Stays. That's basically their hotel booking platform. And if you have the business version of the Gold card, it's $150 towards a Delta stay. So yeah. So if you use these new perks, obviously it could be worth the extra, what, $51 a year. The platinum and reserve cards have a lot more going on. So they both also added various amounts of Delta Stays credits.

So those are the hotel booking platform again. They also added monthly Resi credits. And so that's basically you book hotels. I mean, you book to the Resi network and will credit you back a little bit, $10 or $20 a month kind of thing. There's also monthly rideshare credits. So that's kind of interesting. This is different from – Amex has branched out a bit here because in all their other rideshare credits, what it is, it's specifically Uber credits that disappear at the end of the month. But this is different. This is actually paying with your credit card for Uber, for Lyft, for there's a number of other ones that I've never heard of. And they'll rebate those charges up to a certain amount per month. The terms say it's not going to work with things like Uber Eats,

so I wouldn't hold my breath on that, but who knows? Maybe it will. But there's more. So in addition to all those coupon credits, you also get Platinum cards now. If you you're a platinum card holder, you get added to the complimentary upgrade list. So that's a feature that the reserve card has had for a while. That means that if you have no elite status at all, and you book an economy flight, let's say, then when you show up at the airport you will be on

the upgrade list for first class now you'll be number 189 on the upgrade list you're going to see your name up on it if you really want to see your name in lights this is going to give it to you or at least three digits of your last name

three letters of your last name but that's about it right when you're flying the midnight flight out of Wichita, I think you have a 50-50 chance of getting that upgrade. 50-50. Because, of course, you'll be behind all of the Delta elites and all of the Delta Reserve cardholders. So, I mean, you've really got to be on a pretty empty flight for that to work out it's almost a punishment in a way because you'll probably never get upgraded and yet you'll always have that hope and then you'll your hopes will be dashed every time you fly i think if you

have a platinum card you better just stop flying delta altogether it'll be too depressing um platinum card also added hertz elite status uh which again, the reserve card already had a version of elite status. But here's the part I actually find really exciting. The companion tickets, both the platinum card and the reserve card have annual companion tickets that you get upon renewal. And previously, these were only available to fly within the lower 48 united states with a couple minor exceptions like if you live in hawaii or puerto rico then you could fly a round trip from one of those places but you couldn't fly to them with these companion tickets but now the companion tickets are good for not just the lower 48 but all U.S. states including

Alaska and Hawaii but also Mexico the Caribbean and Central America so wow I mean that greatly expands the the power of these things for the platinum card always, is for booking economy. And the Reserve card was always previously good for booking economy or first class round trip tickets and adding your companion. So yeah, what do you think? I mean, a lot of good news. But of course, the increased fees and the more coupon headaches as not necessarily good news. Yeah. I mean, I'm not happy to see annual fee increases mostly just because, I mean, this is quite a bit of creep in annual fees over the last several years. I mean,

these fees have gone up significantly. I mean, the reserve was 450 a couple of years ago, right? So you're talking about almost a 50% increase in just a couple of years. So, and as I've said before, I need another $600 credit card. Like I need a hole in the head. I mean, there's so many of them out there. So yeah, like you said, the credits add up to be worth more and the companion certificate, it makes sense is going to be more valuable. So I can see some people saying, well, yeah, that's worth another be more valuable. So I can see some people saying, well, yeah, that's worth another $100. And I guess they're not wrong. I mean, it probably is worth another $100. I just don't really like the idea of being forced to spend another $100 that I wouldn't have

wanted to. Of course, I say that as somebody who's never had a Delta card and probably isn't going to get one. So my opinion doesn't matter nearly so much as yours. What do you think, Craig? I mean, are these a net win? Yeah. Yes. Uh, for, I'd say for, um, well for me, you know, I, I, I need to spend some time and think about like all the different scenarios, but, um, I think the ability to fly, for example hawaii with a companion ticket is fantastic and i mean i know for anyone who who uh is used to alaska's companion tickets yes i know you could always do that with them but this is brand new for delta um so i'm pretty excited about that especially because delta at least um recently has had non-stop flights to honolulu from detroit so it'd be pretty awesome to be able to book that uh at a reasonable rate and add a companion yeah so yeah yeah yeah you're

right i think that that probably is great news for a lot of people so uh and also you know i should mention that these cards arguably became more interesting this year thanks to the MQD headstarts, which we've talked about previously. But now they each offer a $2,500 MQD headstart, which we knew was coming. But now I think those are starting to apply. And so you get a couple of these and you may have status. So you may get your name up a little higher on that upgrade board. I don't know whether or not it is going to make a difference. But you may move up a few spots. Right. Right. They're, they're trying really

hard to make sure that everybody who used to be cardholders and used to be elite, um, sticks around. So, so the other thing they did is Delta reserve cardholders who kept their cards, uh, who already had them before February 1st are getting are getting an extra thousand mqds so on top of the 2500 so um they're just throwing mqds around like crazy uh so about like candy yeah it's funny yeah anyway interesting interesting changes thank you delta for uh giving us something of interest to talk about with the coupon book. I don't love the couponizing of things, but they look like decent coupons. So there you go. All right.

Let's talk about what crazy thing this week for what crazy thing Danny writes in with a story that was just absolutely hilarious, I think. So what happened to Danny? Yeah, I've never seen anything like this before. So Danny says, I've had a Chase Inc. $95 card for 10 years. This year, they sent out a 10-year gift of coffee and some treats from a veteran-owned company. So that's nice, right? Yeah. I mean, some free coffee. I mean, it's nice to show their appreciation. You've been there 10

years. It's $95 a year. You spent $950 over the years just in annual fees plus whatever they've earned from the swipe fees, right? So they show a little appreciation, give you a cup of coffee. I'm all for that, right? Sure. And they appreciate you so much, Danny, that they sent you a 1099 for that $35 coffee. Make sure you pay your taxes on that, Danny. Nothing's free, right? Coffee isn't free it's just you know what at 10.99 that's just unbelievable for 35 dollars worth of coffee i mean is that even is that even legal to send someone things unsolicited and then send tax forms tax forms like that just seems wrong no it does you're right you're right like because could you just give whatever you want to anybody then instead of a 1099? I mean, like, it's not that, you know, like Chase isn't getting anything out of sending you the 1099, I guess, except for somehow that benefits them to show what they've given

away. I don't know. But, uh, but yeah, I mean, they're not collecting any money on that, right. You're paying taxes on it, but, but 35 coffee i mean wow that's uh that's bold it and in fact his ink card may have been an ink bold originally that came to mind as soon as i said that was the old name for the ink cards before they they changed so he probably has an ink plus. Probably, probably an ink plus. But nonetheless, plus the taxes. That's what it's for. Ink plus the taxes on your free coffee. So initially,

when I started reading the email, by the way, I was a little disappointed. I was like, oh, well, I've had an ink plus card for a long time, too. I didn't get any coffee. Now I'm less disappointed. You know, same here. No coffee for me. Right. Right. And no, thanks. Buy the coffee I want rather than pay the taxes on the coffee I didn't ask for. All right. Anyway, so that's that crazy thing. All right. Mattress running the numbers. IHG is out with a promotion this week where you can earn 40,000 bonus points for every four nights at a beer star properties. What are a beer star properties? Oh, I don't know. I think they're all inclusives.

I think they're all inclusives, right? They're like the Caribbean-ish, or maybe they're in Europe. They're all inclusive type properties somewhere. You have to register for this. You have to stay between February 20th and May 20th, and you can stack it with some targeted offer, apparently, to stay four nights and earn 8,000 points.

So our own Steven Pepper is a big IHG fan, and so he says that stay four nights and earn 8,000 points. So our own Steven Pepper is a big IHG fan. And so he says that after four nights, you're going to earn 48,000 points. So Greg, is it worth a mattress runner and a barrel star property to earn 48,000 points? Right. And to be clear, that's not counting what you might earn from the credit card you use to pay. So if you have like a premier IHG premier card, you're earning 10x on that. It's not including if you click through a portal to book it, whatever rewards were available through the portal. In Steven's post- Card-linked offers. Right, card-linked offers. In Steven's post, he pointed out that if you do some

dummy bookings with the Capital One shopping portal installed that you're almost certain to get something like a 15%, an offer for like 15% or so back on IHG. So all those extra rewards are possible. But still, we're talking about if you were targeted for that extra promo, 48,000 points. Um, that's, uh, if, when you're frequently able to buy points at a half cent each for 48,000 points is what, $240 of value. So really it comes down to, would you be able to book a four night stay or less than, yeah, yeah. I i mean maybe i i really don't know so if you could do it great uh it's obviously a great rebate on um on your stay if you actually want to stay at one of those properties and i'm sure i guess that many of them are very nice i literally know nothing about them no i don't know much about them either. But even if you paid $200 a night for four nights,

so you pay 800 bucks, if you're able to go through a portal for even 10% back at IHG, which is a rate we see now and then, that's 80 bucks back. If you get $240 worth of points here, that's 320 back on an $800 stay before you even consider

whatever you're earning on your card when you're actually paying for it. So that's a good return. It's not worth going when you're actually paying for it. So that's, that's a good return. It's not worth going and booking a stay just for that. But if you want to stay at an Iberostar, I mean, you're getting almost half back, so that's not too bad. Yeah. Yeah. It's, I mean, if it fits your needs, it could make a great little vacation with a, with a big rebate. So yeah, that's great. There you go. I like a good rebate, but not mattress run worthy, probably.

Exactly. All right, award talk. For this week's award talk, we've got a bunch of different award search tools that now make it easier to find awards if you want to travel to Europe, right? Well, it's not just to Europe. So I'm calling these discover tools,

which no one else I don't think uses that term, but- Sorry, we're coining a new term right. So I'm calling these discover tools, which no one else I don't think uses that term. Sorry, we're coining a new term right here. I'm coining a new term. So about a year ago, when I first wrote about and talked about a nerdy tool called seats.arrow, at the time, it was the only tool that I knew of where you could ask questions like, what business class awards are available from the US to Europe or from Europe to Asia? Big, broad questions like that instead of very specific. There have been plenty of other tools that let you ask, on this date, from this airport, what awards are available to go to that other airport? But a lot of people want more broad. So for example, you want to go to Europe in the summer when it's hard.

There's a lot of competition over award seats. Maybe you're willing to position to another airport to fly to Europe. So you just want to see what's available. And Seats.aero has been doing that for a long time. And the way they do that is they run lots and lots of award searches, and they cache the results. And then when you query Seeds.Aero, it just is looking through its database of pre-run results, and it shows you what's there right away. Some of the data is old, though, and could be no longer available, but it's still a great way to see what might be out there. It's a great starting point for your award searches.

So the problem with Seats.Aero is that you kind of need to know what you're doing. It's not made for beginners at all, and that's why I call it a nerdy tool. You really have to understand a lot of things to know how to use it best. But now a whole bunch of beginner-oriented award search tools have added new features that add that kind of discover capability to them. So PointMe has added their explore feature that lets you say, I'm flying from Detroit, let's say, and I want to go to Asia or I want to go to Europe. Tell me what's available. Points Yeah has their Daydream Explorer, which has a similar type of thing.

And Roam has Skyview and a new tool that I've been looking at, a Word tool, has a panorama feature. And so they all have these new discover capabilities. Real quick, PointMe has a big advantage over the others, which is it lets you set that you want two people or three people, how many passengers you're looking for. And we'll show you just the results that have that many or more seats available. All the others are just one person.

Seats.aero can do multiple, but not with all airlines, unfortunately. So PointMe has a leg up there, but PointMe will only let you pick, it'll let you do to a region, like you want to go to Europe, but it won't say from the US to Europe. You're blocking the way back home. So I have to say from Detroit or from New York or from, now each of those are quick because it's all cash results. So I could quickly cycle through all the airports I can think of, but it's still not as convenient as saying just from the US to Europe, tell me what's available. So I really didn't like that. The other thing I

don't like about PointMe is when you want to find out if a result, a cash result is real or still available, I guess a better way of saying it. And you click to show it. It does a full point me search for that day and the airport parrot found. So it takes a couple minutes before you get your answer. The others have quicker ways of getting to that final answer. So yeah, I just thought it was worth pointing this out. Of the ones that are out there now, besides Seedstud Arrow, which I still like using, liking the points, yeah, Daydream Explorer probably slightly better than the others, but they're also similar. It's really hard to say.

Yeah. I mean, it's nice to have that capability, though, because if you're flexible, and I wrote a post a while back about how one of the keys to winning in this game is being flexible, either in the time of year you're willing to travel or the destinations that you're willing to travel to. And so, you know, these are great tools for finding stuff if you're willing to be flexible. I mean, if you know you want to travel to London the first week of April or whatever, something like that, then you're just stuck with whatever is there. But if you open up the parameters a bit and say, okay, well, I just want to get to Europe sometime this summer, then these tools are great for that. And it becomes a lot easier to find award availability when you start to open things up like that. Often when I hear people are frustrated,

I know that that's one of the reasons why they are because they're used to searching for a specific destination on a specific date rather than these tools. So I think these tools are valuable also in helping you see, oh, wow, well, I could do this or I could do that or I could do the other thing.

It's not impossible to find award seats. It's just a matter of finding which ones are out there. And I think these tools are valuable for helping people discover that. Okay. All right. Very good for award talk. Let's talk about this week's main event.

Main event time. Game changing transfer bonuses. Yeah. So in the old days, like several months ago, the advice around the bill card was that it's great for renters. It's fee-free. It lets you earn points for paying rent. Even if your landlord doesn't accept credit cards, you can use your credit card to pay, but they receive either a check or an ACH or even a Venmo payment.

So it doesn't cost them anything, but you earn points. So that was the old advice. It was great for renters, but because there's limited ways to earn points, the old advice was it's not great for points and miles hobbyists. But I'm going to argue that now the new advice is that built is great for points and miles obvious now. And, and, uh, so as always, it has great set of transfer partners, uh, like Hyatt, American Airlines, it has United, Aeroplan, Air France, British Airways, et cetera, et cetera. Um, that hasn't changed. What has changed is that these incredible transfer bonuses keep happening. So last year we saw a couple 100% transfer bonuses, but then towards the end of the year, what we saw was a new pattern where you had up to 150%

transfer bonus. And these are one day transfer bonuses. They always happen on rent day, which is the first of the month. And they've now established this pattern so that it seems like these are going to continue. And there's no guarantee that they'll continue. But if they really will continue, it changes the game. It really does. It really does. And I mean, I'll repeat what Greg said, that we don't know that they'll continue. I mean, it could be that this is it and we'll never see one again. But I would tend to doubt that because if that were the case, why wouldn't they space them out a little bit more? Right. I mean, if they had the capability to do 150 percent in January, why would they do it again in February if that was going to be it for all of 2024? You know, so I am gambling here, but I would gamble if I were betting, I would gamble on other bonuses like this happening. Maybe not every month. I wouldn't necessarily expect them

every month. But yeah, I mean, these are incredible. I mean, you look at anybody else and you might see a 15% transfer bonus 20 transfer bonus 25 is good 30 is like only a couple of programs ever offer 30 bonuses and once or twice or you know a small handful of times we've seen 40 or maybe even 50 usually not to programs that you'd want to transfer to 50 but uh but like 100 or 150, these are nuts. They're absolutely nuts. And so the game now is to get a lot of build points so that you can take maximal advantage

of these transfer bonuses when they're offering transfer bonuses to valuable rewards programs. On February 1st, they offered up to 150 transfer bonus to air canada aero plan which is nick's favorite program right yeah i mean it there's so many sweet spots with the air canada program and if you like you know if you're somebody who's going to use those award booking tools we talked about in award talk and kind of just look at okay where can i get in all of europe or in all of here or there?

Air Canada is your program. That's your jam because they've got so many partners, not only all of the Star Alliance partners, but more partners than any other program in the world. So you've got tons of different options to find award availability. So if you're going to be flexible regarding destination or airline, like this is a great program for you. And it's not going to be the best program for everybody because there's some distance-based aspect of it.

So if you're on the West Coast, you're looking to go to Europe, it's not necessarily going to be your cheapest option for a simple round trip to Europe. But if you're willing to piece together a bigger award, yeah, you can get some incredible values, you know, or really cool trips anyway with Air Canada Aeroplan.

So I'm super excited about that one i thought that was an amazing bonus i wouldn't have expected if you had asked me which programs i thought might offer a big transfer bonus through built i like i would have thought the ones that we've already seen okay i could see those again and maybe i would have guessed that avianca life miles would get one at some point and i won't be surprised if if we do see one Avianca Life Miles at some point. I would not have picked Eric Kennedy Aeroplane. Like that really threw me for a loop. I didn't see that coming. Right, right, right. So yeah, so it's exciting. It's a trend that we're seeing now. Yes, we're gambling on it continuing when we're talking about this. But at the same time, that's true of everything in this points and miles game.

That anything you do to prepare for earning or spending points and miles is based on hoping that what you know is the case now or in the past will continue in the future. Okay. The other thing I want to mention, so to get a full 150% transfer bonus,

you have to have top tier elite status with Bilt. Yes, Bilt, which is like a credit card rewards program, has its own elite program. So here's the thing. which is credit card spend if you're not a renter, and a synergy between that and the best way to earn elite status, which, again, we'll get into details, but there's two ways to earn elite status. It's from earning points or from credit card spend, which, yes, you earn points when you're spending a credit card, but anyway, for many of us is the best way to earn elite status. And so by earning your points through spend, and then by getting to elite status all through that same mechanism, then what you're getting is you're getting more points because you're spending more, and you're spending more at the right time, which we'll get into. And you are then getting the maximal advantage of these transfer bonuses when they come,

because you get up to 150%. Now, to be clear, what does 150% mean? You might think that means if you transfer 100,000 points, you'd end up with 150,000 points, but no. 150% transfer bonus means you end up with 250,000 points. 150 on top of the 100. Yeah, I mean, that's right. That's absolutely crazy. And, you know, we didn't mention, but we should probably, that Build has incredible transfer partners. So even like if we were to throw out the transfer bonuses for a second, which I think they're important and they're part of the reason we're excited about this. But even if we throw that out for a second, keep in mind that BILT has a great roster of transfer partners, right?

I mean, you got Haya, you got American Airlines, you have United, Aeroplane Air France, British Airways, Turkish, which I love, Avianca Life Miles. These are almost all of the best programs from all of the other transferable currencies, right? Yeah. And one nice thing is there's a nice, there's a complimentary nature between the transfer partners that Build has and other programs.

So for example, if you're earning points with welcome bonuses through Chase, for example, and you want to use Chase's best transfer partner, which is Hyatt, you can transfer some from Chase to Hyatt and transfer some from Built to Hyatt in order to get the number of points you need for whatever your booking is. You could do the same with United. And shout out to Built regarding American Airlines. They're the only major transferable points program that that supports American and American does at times have some fantastic value available today. They play really well with other currencies. I was totally happy to transfer all of our built points to Air Canada Aeroplan because I know that we can transfer points from MX Membership Rewards to Aeroplan, from Capital

One to Aeroplan, from Chase to Aeroplan. So I know that we can put together, like those points don't exist in a vacuum. They're going to play well with all of my other points. So that makes that exciting to me. Right, right. Okay. Backing up a little bit. Just the very basics of the built card.

It's fee-free. You earn 3x on dining, 2x for travel, and 1x for everything else. But all of that doubles on rent day. The first of each month, you get 6x for dining, 4x for travel, 2x everywhere else. And that's really key to what we're talking about and what we're going to talk about the rest of the day. The rent day thing also contributes to this all being a game changer for why this program is so important to people like us that want to maximize our earnings of points and miles.

One really annoying feature of the card is you have to make five transactions each month to earn any rewards on the card. So you have to, you can't just put it away and use it once on rent day and hope to do well. No, you have to remember to use it five times, which certainly, I mean, even, even though I write about these things and I know about that, I forgot about it temporarily. So, you know, that's something that is important and I'm going to have to put a little bit of extra attention on, at least in the beginning, to make sure that I make that habit and remind myself to make the five transactions per month. But, you know, I look at my points balances pretty often. So I think I'll probably notice that I haven't earned points on transactions. But I look at my points balances pretty often. So I think I'll

probably notice that I haven't earned points on transactions. And I don't know, do you know, hopefully you know, can you add this to a word wallet? Is there a way to track your balance with a word wallet? Probably not, right? I would guess you probably could, but I haven't looked at it. The other thing I keep forgetting is that on rent day, the doubling is capped at, I think it's 10,000 bonus points per month. So that's good to keep in mind if you're a big, big spender. All right. Now let's talk about when they've been doing these big transfer bonuses and they vary by elite status. Do you want to walk us through what you get at each elite level? Yeah. So if you have no status with Bill, you just signed up today, you get blue status. That's the base level.

So with blue status, when they run these transfer bonuses, which is, again, what makes the program most exciting to us at this point, you'll get a 75% transfer bonus. Again, when they run these, this is the pattern that they've had. I shouldn't say you will get because we don't know for sure. But thus far, anyway, people with no status have gotten a 75% transfer bonus. And so, you know, if you think about spending on the card and if you're spending at 1x, for instance, which we wouldn't recommend doing, I don't intend to do. But if you did spend during the rest of the month at 1x, effectively, you're earning 1.75 points per dollar if you're transferring during one of these transfer bonuses. So that's not bad. But better yet, if you're doing any of that unbonused spend on rent day on on the first of the month, when you earn a base of two points per dollar.

So if I pay a bill on the first of the month that costs a thousand bucks, I'll earn two points per dollar. That's two thousand. And then if I'm able to take advantage of a transfer bonus, well, better yet. Now it's effectively like earning three and a half points per dollar because with a 75% transfer bonus, that becomes 3,500 points all of a sudden. So that's, again, what pumps this up. Again, just at the base level with no status at all. Now, if you spend some on the card, you spend, what is it, $10,000, I think, on the card, then you'll get silver status. And silver status is beginning 100% transfer bonus. So an extra 25%. And let's not ignore the fact that 25% is like a standard transfer bonus. And you're getting that extra amount, you know, when you have silver status, that's, that's a huge bump. So, so now you're looking at, you know, if you're earning just 1x, that's like a base level of 2x, if you're transferring at 100% transfer bonus or 4x if you're doing it on rent day spend. So it gets a lot better. And then you also, I think, alternatively could earn silver

status with 50,000 points. Is that right? Yeah. Yeah. So if you have 50,000 point earnings, so there's lots of ways to earn points with built, like we've talked about before, rent, which by the way, rent spend is not counted. When we say 10K to get silver status, 10K credit card spend, the rent, even though you're sort of doing it through your credit card, the rent does not count towards that. But the points earned from rent count towards the 50,000 points that would earn you silver status and also things like there's built dining. And I imagine when you refer friends and get points that way, that probably counts as well. Those sort of things.

Lift, yeah. They have lots of different little itty bitty ways of getting points. Yeah. So as we've mentioned, I think for most of the people listening to the show, the $10,000 spend on a credit card is what's probably going to be the easiest path to status. I think so. But I don't know, maybe if you're planning an event

at a built dining restaurant, then you could earn a bunch of points maybe through built dining or something. So there are some people where that might work out better, especially if it was like a wedding or a large company party or something. Perhaps you could earn enough points

to earn elite status with just one big dining event. But otherwise, for most of us, it's going to be non-rent spend on the credit card that's going to earn status. So 10K will get you silver, 25K on the card will get you gold status. Gold has been getting 125% transfer bonus. So that just pumps things up a little bit more. And platinum requires $50,000 in non-rent spend or 200,000 points earned over the course of the year. And that's been getting 150% transfer bonus. So now all of a sudden you're looking at your unbonus rent day purchases that you're getting

2x on on rent day. If you're getting 150% transfer bonus, it's like earning 5x on unbonus stuff on rent day. That's nuts. Yeah, it totally is. It's like earning 5X on unbonused stuff on rent. That's nuts. Yeah, it totally is. It's nuts. It's great. And that's why that's exactly why we're devoting this main event to this. What about a welcome bonus?

Do you have a welcome bonus? No, but maybe. So no, there's no official welcome bonus. Bill doesn't officially list anything for it. And there's no guarantee that you'll get anything. But a lot of people receive a targeted offer after they get the card. So typically, like the day you receive the card in the mail and or activate it, many people get an email that advertises the chance to earn 5X for the first five days up to 50,000 bonus points. So you can spend wherever and you're going to earn the extra few points to make up five. So essentially, you could max this out with $12,500 spend at 5X over the first five days.

So again, that's if you're spending in non-bonus categories, not for travel dining, right? Yes, yes. Good point because you'd actually spend, you could spend even more. Let's not confuse things. Yeah, so with un-bonus spend, it'd be 12,500 at 5x.

So let's keep the math simple, I guess, right? So if you did 12,000 spent at the 5x, you'd have 60,000 points is the way that works out, right? Right, right. And so right there, you would be at silver bonus, those, let's just round down to 60,000 points that you earned to make this easy. Those 60,000 points become 120,000 miles with a 100% transfer bonus. So 120K bonus, you know, yes, 12K spend in five days. That's a lot. But some of us can do that with things like we've talked in the past shows about like paying your taxes with credit cards or paying bills with credit cards. There's a gamble because you don't know whether you'll get targeted for the 5x for five days. But it's a gamble that, for instance, I was willing to make because a lot of people have gotten targeted for that. So if you had a big purchase to make and you're willing to roll the dice, that's potentially a good bonus. It's not the best

we've ever seen. It's not, you know, there are other cards that offer bonuses of that many points for a little bit less spend but it's pretty good it's not a bad bonus right right yeah exactly it's it's yeah yeah there are better bonuses but it it gets really really decent when you factor in these transfer bonuses um all right let's move on to on to after you're done with the welcome bonus, if you got one and you just want to, you want to do two things. Through regular use of the card, you want to earn enough points so that transfer bonuses are meaningful. So you can do like what I did and transfer over 100,000 points and end up with over 250,000 miles. So most of the tricks around making that happen is to focus your spend on rent days.

So every first of the month, you're going to be getting double rewards. So again, that's 6x dining um 4x travel and 2x everywhere else so if you plan just set it on your calendar pay your monthly or annual bills on the first of the month uh with your with your built card and uh you're going to be getting 2x for for all of that but wait right i could, I could earn 2X with other cards. Venture card, capital and venture card earns 2X everywhere all the time. It doesn't have to be first of the month. Blue Business Plus earns 2X everywhere on the first $50,000 spend per year.

Then it's 1X. So why would I care about doing those purchases on rent day? Right. That's because here what you're getting. Well, first of all, you're getting better transfer partners than the others. But but more importantly, this is if you're interested in taking maximal advantage of these transfer bonuses when they happen, because 2x built points can mean, you know, up to what? 5x if you get to the top top elite status, 5x airline miles. So that's huge on uncategorized spend. The other thing you could do every rent day is pre-book

travel. So if you're paying for travel, things like, let's say you're booking hotels, sites like Expedia and ones like that usually offer you the option to pay in advance, even if it's fully refundable. So it's not like you're getting locked in necessarily to a hotel thing, but if you could book, if you could pay for that hotel in the first of the month, then you're getting 4X on your bill card, which would be great. Which let's be clear, Greg and I don't frequently book through Expedia because we generally tend to prefer to book chain hotels where we're getting elite benefits and things like that.

But a lot of people do book via Expedia and third-party sites like that. So if that's you, then yeah, it would make sense to do that on the first of the month. Right, right. Or if you're just booking flights or whatever, any kind of travel that would qualify. If you can wait till the first of the month to do that booking, then that can make sense. Dining. So not only my wife and I literally just this morning decided we're going to we're going to plan to to go out to a nice restaurant on the first of every month.

We're going to celebrate rent days by doing that because 6X dining is fantastic. But the other thing you could do is go to your favorite restaurant and buy a gift card on the first of the month. If you know you're going to be returning to that restaurant over and over and using that gift card, why not earn 6X instead of three X paying prepaying for dining, basically? I mean, that's absolutely what we're going to do. There's a restaurant in town. I live in a small town, so there's not a lot of options, but there's a restaurant here we get takeout from at least once a month, but oftentimes two or three times over the course of the month. So now on the first of the month, I'll go up and I'll buy a gift card for a hundred bucks or 200

bucks, or we'll figure out how much we think we'll probably spend over the course of the month, I'll go up and I'll buy a gift card for $100 or $200. Or, you know, we'll figure out how much we think we'll probably spend over the course of the month. And if we don't spend it, well, then we'll just hold on to a gift card for the next month. But anyway, again, like you said, at 6X, that's great. And then with status, and my wife already has the first level of status. So with status, if I get a 100% transfer bonus, that's going to be like earning 12x on that restaurant spend that I'm going to do anyway. And so why would I put that on a 3x or 4x card if I can get 6x that might double the 12? I mean, that's a gamble that's well worth it to me. Right, exactly.

All right, let's back up. Let's say you're not a heavy spender. And so you'd be happy just year after year getting silver status, so you'll end up with 100% transfer bonuses, assuming that trend continues. You would just have to spend $10,000 a year on your built card. And if you average two points per dollar, so what do I mean by that? So during the regular month outside of rent day, you could be averaging 2x because you might be spending, getting 3x at restaurants, 2x for travel and 1x elsewhere. And then of course on rent day, you're probably averaging more than 2x because 2x is the least you can earn. So anyway, if you average just 2x, and I'm guessing a lot of people will average better than that, then you'll earn 20,000 points each year just using this card. And then when you get one of these transfer bonuses and transfer, get 100% transfer bonus, then those 20,000 miles, 20,000 points become

40,000 airline miles of some sort. And so then you could back up and say, oh, look, for my $10,000 of total spend, I got 40,000 points. That's four miles per dollar that I averaged. So I mean, hello, that's that's not a bad deal on $10,000 spend, right? I mean, aren't most people happy? I'm sure happy with a 4x bonus category. You know, there are there are only so many cards that offer a 4x bonus category on anything. And when they do, it's limited, usually in scope. And so here, you've got a decently wide range of stuff that you could be spending on to average out to out to essentially 4x over the course of a year with this.

Right, right. All right. Now, so that's a level of spend like I think my son could do, for example, if he wanted to do this. He's not earning a lot as a young adult just out of college. But let's go to gold status because I think this is probably going to be the sweet spot for a lot of people. So with gold status, I mean, to earn gold status, you have to spend $25,000 annually, or that's one way of getting it. And that's just about

a little over $2,000 spend a month. So, you know, if you can, even if you don't have $2,000 of credit card spend each month, remember, you can do things like pay bills. You might have to pay a fee to pay those bills, but you could do, it can be worth doing things like that, that cost a little bit in order to round up to the full $25,000 a year. And here, so after a $25,000 spend, if you average 2x, like we talked about before, then you're ending the year with 50,000 points. If you take advantage of 125% transfer bonus, that's 112,500 airline miles. And so basically we can back up and say, wow, you are averaging 4.5 miles per dollar from your spend. And that's not a minuscule amount of points, right? 112,500. That's repeatable year after year with a level of spend that I think is not unrealistic for a lot of people, especially when you consider stuff like paying your taxes, for instance,

stuff like that. I think it's relatively within reach for a lot of people to spend $25,000 on the card over the course of a year and to earn that many points every single year without having to open a new card. Don't get me wrong. I'm not telling you not to open other cards and earn other welcome bonuses. So this is not a replacement necessarily for that. But that's something that I could certainly envision myself doing anyway for an extra 112,000 points each year.

And again, when you look at it, you say, well, that's an average of four and a half miles per dollar spent. Again, this is assuming that you earn an average of two X on the card, but that's doable. I think so. That's, that's pretty awesome. I think four and a half miles per dollar spent. I mean, how can you argue against that? I don't think you can. Well, I'm sure we'll have some, some people will, some people will, but I don't get it. We do want to hear your point of view. Trust me. Now, the next level, this is where my strategy is to get platinum status. It requires double the spend that gold status requires. So you have to spend $50,000 annually to get and keep platinum status. But again, if you're averaging two points per dollar, that means you're earning 100,000 built points per year. And wow, then you would be eligible for the 150% transfer bonus. So 100,000 points per year could mean 250,000 airline miles with the right transfer bonus. And so that means you're averaging five airline miles per dollar from your spend. Okay. So how am I doing this? $50,000 annually,

that's just barely over $4,000 a month of spend. I am doing things like we talked about earlier, paying any kind of bills that I can pay with a credit card, like straight up pay with a credit card. I'm doing that on the first of the month, the extent I can. I am contributing to, I'm lending money through Kiva, lending microloans through Kiva, which we talked about on our do good and earn rewards show. I'm paying estimated taxes on the first of the month so that I can earn. Now it does cost me just under 2% fee to do that, but I think it's well worth it. I'm going to be averaging over five miles per dollar from spend because two X is the least I'm going to earn. But when I spend for travel and dining, it'll be more than

two X. So so, yeah, it's it seems like a no brainer strategy for anyone who can handle that level of spend to me. Yeah. And I mean, to be fair, I think that level of spend will be hard or harder for a lot of people. But I think there are quite a few people that will find that within reach, too. I mean, certainly if you own any kind of medium to slightly larger than medium sized business, you probably have expenses that could max that out, whether that's your taxes or whether it's regular ordinary expenses that you're going to run into. So I can definitely see where that level of spend is not impossible to meet and just with the ordinary bills of life. So certainly Greg gave you some good ideas in terms of other things you can do to meet that spend. And I think I don't know whether I will meet that much spend or not, but I could certainly see doing it. I could see where it might be worthwhile, especially like Greg said, if you're somebody a maximizer, like you're going to average better than these numbers we're talking about. I think that's important to drive that home.

The numbers we're talking about here, which you would average, if you were able to average two points per dollar spent, then with the transfer bonus, essentially earning five miles per dollar spent. But if you're a maximizer, you're going to be using this card probably for a fair bit of first of the month dining, for some travel, for dining throughout the rest of the month. So, I mean, you're going to probably be averaging closer to three or more. And so with the transfer bonus, it's going to be even better. I mean, that's just a pretty incredible return on spend if you're somebody who's looking for a fair number of miles per dollar spent. Now, again, I'm going to mention another time that we don't know if these transfer bonuses will continue.

So this is a bit of a gamble. You're going to put a bunch of spend on this card and maybe they won't offer another transfer bonus, right, Craig? Yeah, I mean, it's certainly possible that the transfer bonuses are here and done or that the future ones will be things we don't care about. But I'm willing to, you know, personally, I'm willing to gamble that it's going to continue. My understanding is it's been very successful for Built. And there's sort of a virtuous circle here because what happens is points and miles related podcasts like ours and blogs like ours get excited when they offer incredible transfer bonuses to good programs like Aeroplan and Flying Blue. And so we talk it up just like we're doing right now. And then that helps Bilt get more customers.

And so it becomes worth it to them, whatever it costs them to do these. It's like, it's not free advertising. It costs them a lot, probably, to do these transfer bonuses. But at the same time, it's a different way of paying for advertising, right? An indirect way by basically giving people who are excited about it what they want, which is, I think, a great way to do it.

Well, and it's also good for their partners because, you know, partners like Air Canada Aeroplan that want more U.S.-based customers to engage with their program, to sign up for their program, to transfer miles to their program. This gives them access to a ton of people who maybe didn't even know their Canada Aeroplan existed or didn't know how it worked or didn't know that their existing Chase points and Amex points and Capital One points would also transfer to Aeroplan. And now that they've woken those folks up with this huge transfer bonus, some of those people are going to transfer at one-to-one from Amex and Capital One

and whatever else in the future, which is going to continue to be good for Air Canada. So it's really one of those things that just, like, it's a win-win-win all the way around. I don't, there's not really a loser in this. You know, at least I don't see it, or it's not us. Right, right.

Well, you know what, that actually, that's a good that's a good segue to the next section which is who should consider this and who shouldn't um because the loser in this is someone who gets gets caught up in all this hype but doesn't actually value airline miles so if if your goal is if if you're going to end up using built points for something like paying your rent where you get terrible, you get less than one cent per point value. But even if you use it for paying for travel at 1.25 cents per point value, you're not getting any of these multipliers that we were talking about earlier in this discussion. So 2x, averaging 2x, yeah, you're ending up with the equivalent of what, 3% towards travel. No, not even, 2.5%. 2.5% towards travel, which is okay. But it's only okay. You can do better with other programs if that's your goal. So this is really,

and I can't stress this hard enough, this is for the hobbyists who are going to really value the airline miles, the aeroplane miles, the flying blue miles, and will end up getting great value from those miles by flying international business class, international first class, or even just long economy as well. It just depends what you're doing, but it's always possible to get great value if you're into the game and you know what you're doing. But I'm just going to say one more time, if you're not going to be doing that, if you're going to be using your bill points for other things, then totally don't. It's not worth it. It's not worth it at all.

Don't get into it because it's not going to. And not only that, like you're totally right. So first off, yeah, if you're going to use your bill points for rent or Amazon or to book paid travel through bill, like it's just not exciting or interesting. I don't think it doesn't offer enough value for your other best options. So this isn't for you. I mean, I would still take the points for paying rent, but I wouldn't try to get elite status through lots of spend or anything like that. Exactly. Exactly. But I think also it's probably worth mentioning that it's also not for the person who's like, you know, I'm not going to be willing to sit on the points and

wait for the right opportunity, you know, because we're talking about speculatively transferring, which is something to be clear, we've always told people not to do, right? Like in the past, we've always said, oh, yeah, there's a 25% transfer bonus, but don't transfer speculatively, because you don't want to make your flexible points inflexible, you know, without a plan to use them. And so this is going totally against the grain and the type of advice that we've historically given in terms of transfer bonuses. That's because they're so big. And so I think you have to have an element of patience and flexibility in terms of saying, okay, well, how and when am I going to use these points?

If you're someone who's like, I'm going to go to Scotland in June of this year. And so I'm going to transfer to Aeroplan. And now I need to find a way to get to Scotland in June with Aeroplan. It might not be a great fit for you, because maybe you'll find that, but maybe you won't. I think if you're someone who's like, oh, you know, I go to Europe just about every summer or every other year and, you know, I'm planning a trip to Asia in a couple of years, maybe this or a couple of years is kind of far off, but maybe next year, you know, then then OK, this might fit better for you. So I think there also has to be a flexibility in terms of the type of point and mile user you are in order to make that interesting and exciting and useful. Yeah, that's all true. Then there's a counter argument as well for even for people who value airline miles. You might say, but wait a minute, I'm going to earn a lot more points, even considering these transfer bonuses. If I just put all my spend into new welcome bonuses for Amex cards or Chase cards or this,

that, and the other thing, and don't put any spend on a built card, I think that's probably true. So if you are someone who is deep into credit card churning and you are set on earning all your points that way, then great. Keep doing that. That's a great strategy. At some point, though, you might have to slow down. You might have already signed up for so many and there's not that many left that offer great returns. So then this might be worth considering at that point. The other person, even someone who turns a lot, if you have extra spend capacity, maybe you have a lot of avenues for spend and you're maxing out all your new credit cards, but you also have additional spend you can do, then this could still make sense for you. So, um, yeah, I, you know,

I think that's the boat that Greg and I probably find ourselves in, in the sense that we've, we've found a lot of avenues for spending. So spending on the bill card is not going to prevent me from spending on other cards. And so it's, it feels less like there's an opportunity cost. I guess always there's some sort of opportunity cost because you had some other option. Uh, but, but it feels less like that to me because i'm not not spending on other cards or you know i'm not missing out on opening other cards because i'm going to spend on the build card because i have enough capacity for spend to do those things also so i think you know if you're in that boat then

this is exciting if you're if you're like i have a capacity to spend fifteen thousand dollars a year or ten thousand dollars a year period then i don't necessarily think it is worth going after silver status you could probably get two or three welcome bonuses each year and you're not going to at that velocity you're not going to run out of good welcome bonuses anytime soon so you know in that case yeah it makes totally much more sense to just go after a few good welcome bonuses each year so yeah yeah but at the 10,000 spend, if you're not someone interested in signing up for new cards all the time

and just want one, this could be a good option. Again, if you highly value airline miles. Yeah, and you're willing to take a look at the transfer partners, whoever's up for a big transfer bonus and say, okay, how can I use those? And what is a strength for that? Because a lot of times you do have to look at what's the strength

of the transfer partner rather than this is the trip. And so how do I make this square peg fit in this round hole? It's more so looking at, okay, well, what do they do well? And how can I enjoy that? You know, because some, some points and miles are good for certain purposes and not great for other purposes. If you live on the West Coast and you just want a round trip to Europe, well, aeroplane probably isn't your best option. So rather than frustrating yourself with, oh, man, now I got all these aeroplane points and it's not a good deal to go to Europe.

First, probably you need to take a look at, OK, well, actually, look at this. Built or rather aeroplane points are great for going to Hawaii from the West coast. So can I, you know, leverage that instead of using them for Europe? So there's, there's an element of that. Sure. All right. So, so I think we talked about who should consider this, who it makes sense for. And it does, I think makes sense for a wider range of points and miles enthusiasts that we probably initially gave it credit for now that things have changed pretty significantly. Yeah. Now there are some downsides and risks. As we talked about earlier, these big transfer bonuses might not continue. Bilt could change elite requirements again. I mean, they just recently doubled the spend required essentially.

So I don't think it's super likely to happen anytime soon, but it could always happen. And, you know, we already talked about that. Of course, there are situations where spend could be much better put onto new card bonuses instead of on the built card. But I still think this is something that a lot of hobbyists should be considering given the rent day bonuses and the transfer bonuses together make just an amazing combination. Yeah, well, and we haven't mentioned because there's nothing to mention at this point,

but built has hinted at the fact that there are going to be more elite status perks coming now whether or not that actually happens and what that means i don't know but i'm interested you know with these huge transfer bonuses obviously that's a pretty big benefit of having elite status if they're going to add more uh i don't know maybe it'll be something that doesn't matter to me but i'm curious to see what's going to come because I imagine that they're going to add something that I'm going to be interested in just because thus far they've surprised me in a lot of pleasant ways that I wouldn't have expected. Yeah. Yeah. But, um, you know, I, I purposely,

at least my own plans and my decision to talk about this on the show is based on what we currently know, which does not include those new milestone benefits. But yeah, if those turn out very good, that'll be icing on the cake. So let's see what they do. Hopefully. I got my fingers crossed now that we have a level of elite status in my household and are within striking distance of another one. So hopefully they have something good coming up. All right. That, I think, wraps us up with Bill and brings us to this week's question of the week.

This week's question of the week is a beginner question that came in via email. And I thought this was a good one to talk about a few different from a few different aspects. Shoot. And of course, I just minimized it. Excellent. There we go. So greetings. I'm new to travel hacking. I desperately need your help. We're developing

a strategy for a family trip to Korea. Goal is to use rewards and fly business class for four to five people. They list the number of cards they have and annual fees that got waived because they're an active duty military member, et cetera. So they wanted to know what bonuses should I seek first and what strategy should I employ based on my flight research below. And I really wanted to include the flight research because I think that this kind of matches well with what we talked about in the award talk segment today. So this person who wrote in, Alex, saw it as they have three options to plan a family trip to Korea. Option one is Delta, accrue Delta miles and transfer from Amex membership rewards

and book on Delta so I can fly Delta or KL. That's easy, no, don't do that. Right, don't do that. Option two is Korean airline miles, but you can't transfer anything to Korean airline miles. So option two doesn't really exist. Don't do that. Option three that they saw was Asiana.

They said they could accrue and transfer Chase Ultimate Rewards to United and book Asiana flights on united.com, which maybe if they have availability, possibly. What do you think? Is that it? Because those are the three options that Alex gave and was like, okay, so what do I do here? How do I collect miles and plan this? So if somebody came to you, they're a beginner, Greg, and they said, okay, so what do I do here? How do I collect miles and plan this? So if somebody came to you, they're a beginner, Greg, and they said, okay, I want to plan a family trip to Korea. What miles do I need? And how do I figure out what miles I need or a credit card strategy? What would you say? Yeah.

The goal here should be to be accruing the easiest to get transferable points currencies. Because whatever awards become available when you need them, I guarantee you the main programs, JSMX, even Citi Capital One, Built, will be able to transfer to some programs where you'll be able to book those awards. And so I would focus first on what's the low-hanging fruit for the biggest point earnings, transferable points, and then wait until when you're ready to book these things. That's when you want to start looking for award availability, see not just which airlines have awards available, but what program is best to book that from, because it's often the case that to book a United

flight, you're probably better off booking through ANA, which is a Ameri, which is a, uh, Amex transfer partner or through, or booking through, um, aeroplan or booking through a life miles, for example, or Turkish. So there's, there's a lot of options besides United. And so you don't need to be accumulating, you know, United miles in that example. Yeah. I think that that's the key. If you're a beginner and this is going to be an advanced strategy for a beginner, so it's going to sound like it's not the right advice. But if you're a beginner, starting with one single airline mile, like miles in United or miles in Delta, it's just not the way to go. That's not going to be useful for you. Ironically, I think that collecting individual airline miles is best for advanced users who will recognize what the good opportunities

are with exactly that kind of mile and only use them when they've hit one of those situations or scenarios. You're much better off with transferable points. And the reason I said this ties into today's award talk is because what you need to do is sign up now for a free tool like Points. Or you can use Point.me through Build, or you can check out Point.me or any of those other award search tools we talked about. But Points. Yeah is free. You just sign up for an account. So that's why I mentioned that. I think it's pretty beginner user-friendly. It doesn't include all of the World's Transfer Partners, but what it enables you to do is to pick

a program, like you have Amex Membership Rewards points. You can pick that out of the dropdown and say, these are the points I have. And then the tool will only show you flights you can book using your Amex membership rewards points, but it'll give you the various different options. Now, it doesn't include every option and ANA, for instance, is one that I don't think it does give you. So it's somewhat limited, but as a beginner, I don't think it gets much better than that. Like there's not a perfect solution as a beginner. I't think it gets much better than that like there's not a perfect solution as a beginner i think that's a pretty good solution as a beginner to figure out okay so what are my options there's this korean airlines flight and i could use delta miles for

that which i could transfer from amex membership rewards points yes but maybe it's a better deal to transfer to air france klm flying blue which can also book that korean airlines flight or maybe virgin atlantic which could probably also book that Korean Airlines flight, or et cetera, et cetera. So I think you want a tool like that as a beginner to look at what the options are. But Greg's advice to collect transferable points is the best piece of advice there, because you don't know which points you're going to need the day you're ready to book. Like if you're just collecting points now, you don't know what's going to be available six or eight months from now when you're ready to book. Like if you're just collecting points now, you don't know what's going to be available six or eight months from now when you're ready to actually book the trip.

So you want transferable points and a tool like that to search multiple programs at once. There you go. All right. Good luck, Alex. Thank you guys very much for listening today. If you've enjoyed today's show

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