Frequent Miler on the Air - Greg & Nick's Favorite 2024 Awards | Frequent Miler on the Air Ep285 | 12-13-24

Episode Date: December 13, 2024

In this episode, Greg and Nick review some of the hotel and flight awards that stood out for each of them in 2024 so they can determine the best of the best for their 2024 award travels. (01:06) - Bilt buy house benefit correction See the previous episode where Greg talked about the Bilt buy house benefit here. Read more about the Bilt Buy House benefit here. (02:42) - Greg's latest experience booking Preferred hotels with Choice points See the previous episode here. (10:17) - Greg: "You’re a SAS EuroBonus Millionaire!” (11:56) - Nick: Yikes! (19:24) - Stephen: 1 more needs to be credited (21:32) - Business Platinum gains $200 Hilton credit! (29:48) - IRS temporarily displayed lower fees for paying taxes by credit card (32:04) - Should Greg mattress run 1 Marriott night? (37:24) - Alaska news Read more about Alaska Airlines launching premium card here. (41:48) - Waldorf Astoria New York now bookable with points and free night certificates. (44:22) - Greg's candidates for top awards in 2024 - flights (52:20) - Nick's candidates for top awards in 2024 - flights (56:59) - Best flight pick overall (1:00:32) - Greg's candidates for top awards in 2024 - hotels (1:11:07) - Nick's candidates for top awards in 2024 - hotels (1:21:05) - Beat hotel pick overall (1:22:54) - Other top experiences in 2024 (1:30:07) - Which airline would you prioritize to fly and earn miles with: American, United, or Southwest? 

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, Greg and Nick's favorite 2024 awards. We've looked back at the flights and hotels and other things we've booked this past year using points, miles, and other. And we've made a list of candidates of what were our favorites. And then we'll pick our overall winning flight, hotel, and other in today's main event. And if you want to know what do you mean other, flight, hotel, and other? Well, you'll find out if you listen to the rest of the show. So anyway, don't forget, by the way, if you want to jump ahead or you want to come back to something later on, the timestamps are always in the show notes.

So expand the description in order to see timestamps and go directly to different segments of the show. Also to find links to more about the stuff that we're talking about. So when we have a post written about these topics, you'll find a link in those show notes. So be sure to check that out. Let's drag out this week's Giant Mailbag. All right. Today's Giant Mail begins with a whoops from me. In a previous episode, I talked about how built now you can earn points when you're buying a house.

You earn like one point for every $ dollars of the house you purchase and in that in that discussion i incorrectly asserted that this was based on using a particular provider to get your mortgage that's not right it's it's using that particular provider as your buying agent. It's the agent who gets a fee for helping you buy a house that is passing on some of that fee to you in the form of points, basically, is what's happening there. So, I don't know. That's good news in that you're free to hunt for the best mortgage deal you want. It's bad news if you like a particular agent and this isn't them. Well, and or depending on what the fee ends up being, right?

Because essentially you're buying those points by paying the agent something and getting points in return. Now, if the fee is the same as what you would pay another agent, then great, then it seems like a benefit. But if you pay an extra $2,000 for however many points or whatever, you got to just consider that and see, is that worth it? It might be, but it might be. Yeah. I mean, built points are very

valuable. So yeah, I would, I would still consider it, but you should do that math yourself and see, is it worth it? Yep. Very good. hotel and had decided to cancel that stay. But nobody from the hotel to Choice had any knowledge of her reservation, despite her having a confirmation email and everything. She had talked to a supervisor at my recommendation, and it had sounded positive. But when we last talked about it, we didn't know the final outcome. And so Linda wrote with the final outcome. She says, I'm happy to report that Choice Privileges did return the 96,000 points to my account once they investigated my missing reservation with Preferred Hotels. Your recommendation that I speak with a Choice Privileges supervisor was key to my success. Once the supervisor created a case number, even though she dropped the ball and failed

to report back to me as promised, another supervisor was able to follow through with success once the supervisor created a case number even though she dropped the ball and failed to report back to me as promised another supervisor was able to follow through with the back office and get my points back all told it took a half dozen phone calls over a three-week period in the future confirming with hotel directly after booking a preferred hotel through choice will be essential for my peace of mind. Yeah, everybody should do that. Absolutely. 100%. Whether booking with choice points or with I prefer preferred hotels own points, you do need to confirm with the hotel because preferred hotels, their system for this stuff is just very, very problematic. Yeah. Yeah. You know, it makes me wonder about the process on the

back end here. And the reason it does is because I wrote a while back about this ranch in Montana that you could book with Hilton Points. It's an SLH property. And the short version of the story is I don't have a resolution to this yet, but at the time after I wrote about it, a number of people had found that after they booked and contacted the hotel, or some of them got contacted by the hotel, there'd be an additional fee of like $500 per child if you were bringing kids with you that wasn't disclosed anywhere in the booking process. And what I found interesting is eventually I had my wife proactively call. She didn't receive a call from anybody advising her about that, even though we had put in two adults and two kids. She called the hotel and the person at the hotel claimed that they don't receive the information for reservations until a certain amount of time before this day. They told her 30 days before this day, which doesn't seem possible to me that they don't get the information from Hilton until

30 days before this day. But maybe what happens is they get record of a reservation and it takes a room out of inventory, but maybe they don't get the name of the person and all their contact information until a certain amount of time, whether it's really 30 days, I find that hard to believe. But at any rate, there's some transfer of information that has to happen in a partnership like that from Hilton to this external partner and probably similar if you were using choice points to book a preferred hotel that transfer of information has to happen and so there's a you know potential for a problem there if something goes wrong in that communication and I don't know if it's instant or not I mean in the digital world you always expect everything

to be instant these days but maybe it's not maybe it's not that simple yeah yeah and i'm gonna give an update to i i talked i think in the last show about how i had made a reservation recently with choice points and how initially there was a there was a problem because the hotel contacted me to get to use my credit card as a uh to to make a deposit i don't know Did I talk about this on the show or not? I can't remember. Maybe not. Maybe not. So anyway, so what happened is I called them and gave them my credit card information

because I thought it was one of those just a deposit to hold the room type of thing. But they ended up charging me the full cash rate of the whole hotel as if I hadn't paid with choice points. And so I called them back and said, wait, wait, wait, this is not right. I paid with choice points. And so they, the woman talked to her manager and then reversed the charge completely. And so I thought I was done, but- I thought you were done too.

Yeah, yeah. My mistake. I thought I was done, but I thought you were done too. Yeah. Yeah. It wasn't done because she, she called me like a few days later and said that she, she asked if, if I could share the confirmation email information that I got from choice, because what they got on their end was a virtual credit card number from Choice to pay for the room, basically. So they were trying to charge it initially to that. They were trying to charge an entire room charge to that credit card. It failed. And that's when they contacted me to get my credit card.

And so now they're like, it's still failing. And so she said maybe if she had that email, the confirmation email, there'd be information there about how to contact Choice. Because they couldn't find anyone at Choice or Preferred Hotels that could help them figure this out. Wow. And I mean, I forwarded the email confirmation. There's nothing in there that is going to help them figure this out wow and i mean i forwarded the the email confirmation there's nothing in there that right is going to help them right so now now i'm kind of like in a bit of limbo like it it sounded to me in talking to them that that this particular hotel is kind of owning the problem trying to get it fixed as as a put but i can imagine other hotels just saying forget it i'm I'm just going to cancel this reservation

because that's a lot of work on their part to try to track down someone at Preferred Hotels or Choice that first of all knows anything about this partnership and second, would know anything about this virtual credit card and why it's not working. I mean, there's probably one person in the whole world that has that answer. Well, my guess about why it's not working, and this is total speculation, but I'm going to guess that Choice creates, based on your description, Choice creates a virtual card to pay the amount that's been negotiated with preferred hotels for whatever that hotel costs. Because obviously they're not paying the rack rate, right? They're paying whatever they've worked out with Choice or with our preferred hotels for whatever that hotel costs. Because obviously, they're not paying the rack rate, right?

They're paying whatever they've worked out with Choice or with our preferred hotels. So it's probably set to charge that amount. But the hotel is probably trying to charge the actual rack rate for whatever reason, not knowing. I mean, for whatever reason. It's pretty believable that the individual people at a single hotel don't know what preferred relationship is with choice and what that agreement is. So they're probably just trying to charge the whole mountain. Of course it's failing because they're trying to charge too

much to it as my guess. So, or I know there's just speculation, but I could see that being the case anyway. And then, yeah, getting ahold of somebody who knows and understands how all that works, you would think preferred hotels would have somebody in a corporate office that would be able to answer that question for them. But good that the hotel is taking care of themselves there. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, this stay is supposed to be in January. So hopefully we'll actually stay there. Good luck. Yeah. Thank you. Well, so you still haven't sold me on preferred hotels, Greg. I'm just going to say that. You still haven't sold me on the preferred hotels.

I look forward to hearing what it's like, though, especially since I don't have to actually be the one who goes. So, all right. Speaking of looking forward to things, one thing that we've been looking forward to is a Million Mile Madness update. And you, in particular, have a great one for us. I do. So, you know, I've been sitting here with 14 confirmed airlines in my SAS, like log in, I log in, I could see that I earned points from 14 of the 15 required airlines in order to earn a million points. But that one remaining one has an interesting backstory to it, which is it was China Eastern. I had put in,

like weeks ago, I had put in to their online form for missing credit the details for that flight. And the form said, success, this worked. But then I went to my account to see how many points i actually earned and it just wasn't there and so i like filed a you know missing i filed with a person a claim about it but apparently somewhere on the back end it is there like i think that my doing that actually worked wow i just don't see the miles but i'm'm okay with that because, and the reason I think this is because I got an email yesterday as we're recording this saying, you're a SAS Euro bonus millionaire. Wow, nice. It came from Skin and Even Airlines and said I had met the requirements and that sometime in the new year they would award the miles. So that was very exciting. A big relief that like

this, you know, one thing hanging out there is not going to be an issue. So I'm at one end of the spectrum, Nick's at another. I'm not at Greg's end of the spectrum, let's be clear. You know, and I got to say, I'm really pleasantly surprised they did that. I don't think we had any expectation that we would receive confirmation apart from seeing 15 airlines. Right. But in your seeing miles earned from 15 airlines, I don't think we expected that they would reach out and say, hey, you're getting the million miles. Awesome that they're doing that. That's really, really good. Big positive.

So give them credit there. But, but, but I have not been as fortunate as Greg. Nick has some butts. Three butts. Only three exactly yes 12 of my airlines have credited but uh three have not so unfortunately i have not yet gotten credit for vietnam airlines which i'm pretty sure that one's all like it should be great i booked a qualifying fare class i have the boarding pass like right here in my hand as I speak, actually, with my euro bonus number on it, ticket number, name, all that jazz. So I don't see how that one doesn't credit. And when I look on Flyer Talk,

there's lots of people that aren't getting credit for Vietnam Airlines and the people that are more tech savvy have dug into the code a little bit and found that there's an error coming up somewhere like behind the scenes that you can't see when you're looking at just the web page that says something like ticket database not found. And so it seems like for whatever reason, SAS just can't connect with the Vietnam Airlines system to look up the information. So hopefully that's going to get fixed. But at this point, anyway, I don't have credit for that flight. I don't have credit for Air Europa, which that one has me slightly nervous only because I booked it through Expedia. So I'd be sure which fare class I had. And then it would be a qualifying fare class because Expedia shows the fare class.

And so I booked it, flew it, all the rest of that. And when I went to fill out the retroactive mileage claim, I expected that to be just like a, you know, it would work. So to be clear, to back up a step, we each had a number of airlines that automatically credited and a number that didn't automatically credit where we had to go to the website and fill in the missing points form. And for a number of those airlines, as soon as you fill out the form and hit claim, boom, it looked up the information for the ticket and you got credit and that was it. So I expected that with Air Europa because I was like, this is done deal. This is really easy. Right. And so I went to do it and it said, we need more information to

manually investigate this claim. And it's the only airline I got that with. So I had to attach a copy of my receipt. And then I got an email saying that, you know, we'll look into it, but it takes about five weeks. And of course, this was like first couple of days of December. And so five weeks brings me into January. So I'm not going to know whether I've gotten credit for that for five weeks. And I would think that it's all set, except Stephen booked a flight. And I think you did too through Expedia where it actually credited under a different fare class than what Expedia showed, right? Yeah. In my case, though, in each, I think it happened in a couple of times. But in case the the the actual um booking class was on my boarding pass and so that's what i used to fill out the missing uh you know miles form and um

you know of course i checked first to see that it was a valid fair class and it was in each case so um did you look at your boarding pass to see whether i only have digital for aeropa and i don't think it i'll double check but i don't think it, I'll double check, but I don't think it showed a fair class on the boarding pass. So I'll double check that though. I appreciate that tip. Yeah. And Steven's credited at a higher fair class where he earned more miles than he expected, but it just made me a little nervous that, well, if Expedia gets it wrong sometimes, then maybe they got it wrong. And I got a fair class that wasn't qualifying, which would be a nightmare because then I would lose that flight.

And that would be a nightmare because the last one I'm missing is Virgin Atlantic. I booked that through Delta and it was a Delta basic economy fare, which was operated by Virgin Atlantic. And that fare class on Virgin Atlantic would be qualifying. But I'm increasingly sure that I'm not going to get miles for that because the Delta E class fare, the basic economy fare is not going to get miles for that because the Delta E class fare, the basic economy fare is not eligible to earn miles. And that seems to determine whether or not you're going to earn miles for the flight. So I don't think I'm going to get credit for that. So I think I'm going to be

one short. And you haven't heard from you haven't heard from anyone else who booked it that way and was able to get credit. No, I had heard like during the trip, I had heard from someone that they thought people other people had done that and earned miles already, but I haven't found one of those data points. And now I've gotten a number of people who are pretty confident. It's not going to work. Yeah. And the fact that we flew the same flight and I got mine a while ago is a big negative for your situation. Yeah. Right. Though the odd thing is when I go to fill out the missing miles claim, it says this flight has already been credited to another program. It doesn't say it's not eligible. It says it got credited to someone else. So that gave me some hope,

except that there was no way to do anything else with it. So it just tells you, no, you can't get miles. And there was no way to actually like contact somebody through that. So I called and spoke to somebody this week in Denmark, a number that Greg had used and had some success with. And so I called and spoke to someone and they said, the system's just down for claiming retroactive mileage credit. It's broken. There's no estimate as to when it's going to be back up. Just try back in some days. That's what he told me. Yeah, this is kind of a mess. If I was was running sass or or this euro bonus program um i would i think i would look at just everybody who um who flew who flew 15 airlines and and like even if they

weren't credited if they had put in tickets for the missing ones and you know even if we hadn't had time to investigate them yet i would just say let's just give it to them you know, even if we hadn't had time to investigate them yet, I would just say, let's just give it to them. You know, I mean, because do you really want the negative press that they're going to get if a lot of people flew 15 airlines and didn't get and don't get the million miles? I mean, I don't see how that's worth it. Yeah. Well, I don't know. I mean, it depends on how many million miles we're talking about here. You know, it's kind of hard to say. I was speaking to a reporter, a media reporter the other day about a totally different topic, but this came up in

the conversation. And I explained the promotion to her and what was going on. And she laughed as I explained it. She said, so what do you figure? There's like a half a dozen people doing that worldwide. And I said, well, more than a dozen on one of our flights. I think it's more than that. But anyway, so yeah, so I'm stuck with, I'm three short. So I'm going to go to Mexico this weekend to pick up Aeromexico. I've put together an itinerary where I only have to be gone one night in order to pick up Aeromexico on a cheap domestic Mexico flight. So I'm going to do that to pick up Aeromexico. But then I'm like, man, what if one more doesn't credit?

Am I going to have to go to Europe to get Virgin Atlantic or Aeropa? Readers reminded me that Virgin Atlantic has some fifth freedom routes in the Caribbean. Those are much cheaper. So if Virgin Atlantic doesn't credit plus one other airline doesn't credit, then I guess I'll try and get to the Caribbean for one of those at the end of the month, I guess. I don't know when I'm going to know. I think your other two, I mean, I get Virgin Atlantic. It seems like, okay, that was a mistake, so you fix it with Aeromexico. The other two, though, I they should they don't have any argument

to not credit that right like sure there's technical issues so i i would not do any more flying if i were you i would just assume that you did what you need to do you have the 15 um and they need to do their part and you, you know, because that's the position I think Steven's in right now, right? So he has 14 credited, so he's closer, but he still needs that one more. And it's in the same situation. Like he filed a claim.

Now he's just waiting for that one person who goes through the claims and also has to answer questions about choice preferred relationships for probably as well. Right, probably, probably. And in his case, it's a different airline. I think his is Kenya Airways maybe.

And that seems like it's been really split. Some people have gotten credit for it and some people haven't. We both got, Greg and I both got credit for it without trouble, but I saw, I went through lots of posts on Flyer Talk. I went through like pages and pages and pages, like the whole thread about getting missing mileage credit and a bunch of the pages on the Euro bonus millionaire thread. And there's a lot of people in both with a

Kenya airways specifically, and with Vietnam airlines that are missing credit. And then quite a few with Virgin Atlantic. And that's the one thing that makes me like, Oh man, is Virgin Atlantic going to credit eventually? Are they going to do what Greg said and be like, you know what? Let's just credit all these people because this is too much of a mess to deal with. I don't know. I don't know. But I guess I'm going to go to Mexico and we'll have one extra if that's the case.

I hope. I hope. We'll see. And I'm not going to Mexico to have fun, unfortunately. It's going to be like a real quick get there late, hop on a plane to come back early. But at least I'll pick up my last one and hopefully get my million miles yeah yeah and and you're you're flying american airlines to get there right and then you're gonna fly around mexico don't say it out loud i just had a i just had a trip with i just had a trip with four american airlines legs and two of them were uh fine um but two were significantly delayed and that's that's better than my old percentage with American,

which used to be like about 70% were significantly delayed, but 50% on this latest one. Actually, so as long as my flights on the way there get there within a couple of hours of when they're supposed to, I think I'll be okay. Worst case, if I get delayed

on the way home, it's going to be inconvenient for the family, but they'll figure it out okay where our fingers are crossed for you yes yes all right that's million mile madness update let's talk about card news there's some big news out today as we're recording this uh tim logged into his american express account and found that his business platinum card had a new perk. And that seems to be true across the board for all business platinum cards that we now have $200 Hilton credits. They're doled out $50 each quarter, exactly like the personal Hilton surpass card. And it's the exact same situation, like you enroll, and then you use your card at Hilton properties, it doesn't have to be resorts, this isn't like the Aspire credit.

And you get up to $50 back each quarter, so a total of $200 back each year. And it's not too late if you have a business platinum card now, it's not too late to get in on the fourth quarter 2024 uh and get your 50 so that's pretty that's pretty cool they're just out of the blue without any fanfare it just appeared well you know so i i have to imagine that that might have something to do with because we expect the the dell rebate is going to end we only expect that because at the beginning of the year, it had language indicating that the Dell rebate would last through December 31st of this year. But then we didn't hear anything else about it or anything replacing it. And then it quietly got extended to now showing an end date of June 30th of 2025. So my guess has been that they're going to at some point

here announce a benefit to replace that. And also, I think the Adobe and Indeed credits or something were ending. So I've been waiting for them to announce something. I'm really surprised that they just put this online, like in your account before actually announcing it. So that's a little weird, but but cool. I mean, great. If that's the case, that's awesome. That should be useful. And interestingly enough, we've talked about how there's really not much incentive to stay at Hilton's for elite status or anything else, because you can just get elite status through a credit card and there's not really any significant enough milestone benefits to justify going out of your way to stay at Hilton.

But these quarterly credits do create a regular incentive to stay at Hilton. Yeah, yeah, it does. And, you know, if you have a lot of these cards, which now I do, because my wife and I each have two Hilton cards that earn quarterly credits. And now we currently have a total of five business platinum cards and that's because of like various opportunities to either sign up new for business platinum cards even if you already had them or in this case many of them are we had a bunch of business gold cards and we got these upgrade offers really great upgrade offers so we're sitting on five of them and so that's a

lot of credits to try to earn each quarter. Now, if you're staying at a Hilton and you have all these cards with you, you can ask them, hey, can you run $50 on this card, $60 on this one, $50 on this one, and so on. And they'll do that. So, yeah, definitely if you stay at a Hilton, pay for it at least once a quarter. That's great. You can also buy online Hilton gift cards, pay a small fee to get them mailed to you. But people have had mixed success using those entirely. So for some people, they won't, they're not able, the Hilton Hotel, that where you try to use them, are not able to charge the full amount of the gift card.

And so you end up with like five bucks left over or whatever on the card, which is annoying. So anyway, those are a couple ways of dealing with it. You also, if you're staying at a Hilton in the future, if it takes a deposit, you could pay your deposit. But I think that would be a hassle to try to pay. Like at one hotel, pay a deposit across multiple cards. I'm not sure how that would work. Yeah, it probably would be a bit of a pain. Yeah, I think realistically, because we have a bunch of business platinum cards too in my household. And so I think realistically, this is going to actually do what it's supposed to and incentivize me to stay at Hilton's because it's just going to be easier to deal with that way to actually just split payment at the desk and check out. That should be relatively simple

to put $50 on each card. So I think I'm much more likely to at least once a quarter stay at a Hilton's. So I think this is going to accomplish that not with one business platinum card. If I only had one card that had these quarterly credits, then I would probably buy the gift card and deal with the hassle or something of that sort or the deposit on a hotel or whatnot. But with the number of cards that we have now that are going to have quarterly credits, I'm going to stay at some Hilton's next year. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Quick question for you. If Dell credit is going away, are you happy or sad that it's being replaced by the hilton 200 happy happy i think so we're losing 400 400 yeah yeah yeah but versus 200 but what what's left that that i need to buy

it down it's like i'm getting to the point where there just aren't very many things i mean my kids are going to get some nintendo switch games for christmas because they've got nintendo switch games but they're at full price i could probably get them cheaper somewhere else. And I don't really need to get them more games right now. It's just that there aren't very many things left to tell that I need or want. So because they've gotten rid of most third party stuff. So that's kind of annoying. Like the mouse that I use every day, I love it. And I actually bought a couple extras and I don't know, one of them broke. I'd probably buy another one or two for backups, but they don't carry those anymore. They don't carry most of the earbuds and things anymore.

So yeah, it's a, I think I'm okay. It's a trade where I'll, I will stay at a Hilton hotel or buy the gift cards and use the gift cards that I don't think I'll have much trouble using. Whereas man, I'm having a hard time finding stuff. I still want to buy it from Dell. Yeah. Yeah. i was lucky i finally got i i have that exact same reaction i'm so sick of searching through dell for things that i actually want or need or even like remotely like would consider like needing or whatever um i but um for an upcoming uh in in-person meeting with the team, I thought it'd be kind of cool to have a little portable projector in case we want to meet in an area that doesn't have a big enough TV or whatever.

And the Samsung Freestyle projector, which is a cute little device. It's like a size of a sort of a big can, like a bigger than a soda can, but not a lot bigger. It was on sale for $600. And as you know, you can split the charge three ways across three cards. So I had three business platinum cards and I bought that projector, got it all refunded. So that was really cool. And it's been really fun playing with that projector. It's a really, it's a really good little device. So right now it's $800 though. So go until it goes on sale again. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I bought an Insta 360. I think I probably

mentioned on a show, a 360 degree camera that Greg has, and we've used on some previous challenges and I brought it with me on the, this last challenge, but I didn't end up using it very much until the end because I just didn't have time to get on the computer. And I thought I needed to edit all the footage on the computer. I totally forgot that you can edit it on the phone. So my Christmas market footage at the end, like a couple of things at the very end had that Insta360 footage. And if I had realized sooner that I could edit it all on my phone, I probably would

have had a lot more footage of that. I find it kind of fun. It's kind of gimmicky and it's not the best thing since sliced bread, but it's also at the same time can be useful. So that was also 600 bucks just about everywhere, I think. And so I used three business platinum cards to buy that. And going through Capital One Shopping yielded a nice amount of cash back. So it actually makes that benefit work out pretty well. If you find something like one of those things that you're like, I wouldn't mind having,

I probably wouldn't buy it, but I wouldn't mind having it. Then you have some business platinum cards to use. That's something that, you know, those are the types of things to look for. So there are some fun things. And but yeah, Nick and I will both be happy just not to have this headache in the future if the Dell credit does go away. Yep. All right, let's move on.

All right, let's move on. Crazy thing. What crazy thing did the IRS do this week? Narrow it down, please. Yeah, so the IRS has a webpage where they show the fees for paying your taxes with a credit card. There are, there are three, you know, credited processors, companies that, that, you know, IRS like sort of allows to take tax payments and they each have different fees for paying with a credit card or a debit card. And on the IRS website, one of those three processors disappeared,

even though if you went to them, they were still taking tax payments, no problem. And the other two displayed lower fees than usual. And so we posted about this, but people noticed that when clicking through to those processors, the fees were still what they were before. And then a day or two later, the IRS actually put back their previous web page. So I think somebody jumped the gun on what is going to happen, but it hasn't happened yet. So that'll be a shame if we lose one of the processors. But it's good news for the other two if the fees actually come down a bit. Yeah. Yeah. Well, so moral of the story is use it before we lose it if you need the three processors. And you might need that if you're paying by, for instance,

debit card, if you're using gift cards maybe, because you can only do so many payments per processor, right? So if you need the three of them? Yeah, for a given type of tax you're paying, like if you're paying, let's say, fourth quarter estimated taxes, you can make two payments per processor, so a total of six payments with your credit card or with debit cards for that specific thing. Then you can do another six for your end-of-year taxes. There you go.

Because those are different. So if you need multiple, if you're trying to hit multiple welcome bonuses, you want to make different multiple payments or whatever the case might be, then moral of the story might be to use those now before we lose one because we may lose one. But the good news, I think, is definitely a lower fee. I mean, everybody would be happy with a lower fee and earning rewards with a lower fee. So that'll be a nice change there. All right. Mattress running the numbers. Greg's up with a mattress fee. So that'll be a nice change there. All right, mattress running the numbers. Greg's up with a mattress run question. Go ahead, why don't you ask it?

What's going on? Yeah, should I mattress run one Marriott night? Here's the situation. I currently have 71 nights and I've got three nights on the books before the end of the year. So that brings me to 74. I want to get to 75 because that's where you get titanium status.

And titanium status, among other things, gives you United silver status and Air Canada 25K status, which is their equivalent of silver status, really. So I like having those. I don't use those perks a lot, but it's nice. Like if I am flying one of those airlines, it's nice to have the free check bags and whatever other benefits that gives you. So being just one night short, I want to get there. Okay, so I previously said that I had handled this

by making sure I had spent um five thousand dollars on my marriott bonvoy um bound boundless there you go that's one i think yeah one of the one of the bonvoy cards that starts with a b anyway one of those thank you for narrowing that down it's it's it's the chase card that gives you an elite night for every $5,000 you spend on the card. So I did that. But right after I did that, right after I finished the $5,000, I got my early December statement. And that charge was not on there yet. Oh, swing and miss. Yeah, so my next statement closes in January. I don't know if they'll retroactively award the Elite Knight for 2024. So now I'm at a point like, should I just find the cheapest Marriott stay I can find and get that one night? Or should I hope that this credit card thing gets retroactively applied?

I wouldn't hope. I would definitely get that mattress. I think the silver status is worth it. I know you don't fly United or Air Canada very often, but just one time, the benefits could easily make it worthwhile. Or I think of a situation like the one I'm in this weekend. Greg already mentioned that I'm flying American and I I was debating for one direction, do I use 15,000 American miles plus the, I don't know, 40 or $50 in taxes, or do I use United Travel Bank credit? Because it was like 380 bucks, I think on United. And so I was kind of debating between the two. And, you know, I have status with American Airlines, so I could pick an exit row seat and have a chance

at an upgrade and priority boarding and all that. And it passes through an airport where I'd have lounge access. With United, I'd have none of that. So I'd end up getting whatever free seat I can somewhere in the back of the plane, no elite benefits, so no check bag if I needed one or whatever else. And so in that case, I ended up going with American over United. But if I had United Silver status, maybe that would have changed the equation because maybe I could have gotten a better seat at check-in and then that would have, or at booking, and that might have made a difference. Were you factoring, United gives a perk to all members, though,

that American Airlines doesn't, which is that they're likely to get you there. I find that perk pretty valuable. Yeah, it is that they're likely to get you there. I find that perk pretty valuable. Yeah, it is a pretty good one. Yeah. It's a good one for a base member perk. That's a pretty good one. Yeah. No, I did not factor that in. But so anyway, yes, I think you should do your one night because it won't cost you very much. You find a cheap award or a cheap cash rate, you should be able to do it for less than bucks that's worthwhile right yeah yeah i'll do that for sure um yeah i hate it that that i you know well they just said i thought i had it done having done that spend and now it's like ah but it's not as bad as having a flight to mexico

well true true story well the funny thing is i had a big purchase that i was contemplating making yesterday and i was going to make it on my Freedom Unlimited because I need some chase points right now. And it was something that wouldn't trigger a bonus category. And I realized that my statement was going to cut yesterday. I was like, oh, man, that's not going to come in time for me to even get those points right now. So I rethought that whole situation. So I did think to look at that for a different situation just yesterday and realize it was not going to cut in time. The other thing is that I talked last week about Hyatt and I'm short of globalist status with Hyatt. And so I thought that my statement for Hyatt cut early in December, but I think live on the show, I looked at it and I was like, oh no, it doesn't cut until the end of December. And that's actually come in handy

because I did end up spending quite a bit on my Hyatt card. So I've got, I think on my next statement, six elite nights coming in from that. That'll come in just before the end of the month, hopefully. And I'm still going to end up being three nights short. So I'm still going to probably need a three-night mattress run. Should I do that for 60 nights, Greg? Three-night mattress run for 60 nights? Yeah.

I mean, there are so many benefits at 60. You get automatic, well, globalist status, um yeah what do you what do you get you get some upgrade certificates yeah two two sweet upgrade awards two guests of honors yep uh category one to seven free night certificate right there that could be worth uh a few cheap nights yeah exactly yeah that's kind of what i'm figuring. So anyway, so mattress run coming from me also. All right. Let's talk about awards points and more quickly. But, you know, they already have some announcements about new routes from Seattle to Asia, like to Tokyo, I think, is the first one coming out. So that's kind of cool, especially for Seattle area people that you get some new opportunities there. We also, we knew that next year they're planning to combine the Alaskan-Hawaiian loyalty programs all into one program, which will be the Alaskan program. We didn't know when in 2025. We still don't, but we have a narrower window, which is summer 2025.

Assuming that's based on the northern hemisphere summer, then we know within approximately a three-month window when that's happening. It's a good chance. It's a good chance. It's the Northern Hemisphere summer that we're talking about. I think so. Probably. Probably. Yeah.

And so worth a mention, probably transfers from Amex membership awards to Hawaiian are going to end no later than that. Right. So and potentially earlier. So between now and summer, that's going to end no later than that, right? So, and potentially earlier. So between now and summer, that's going to probably go away. So if you have ambitions to make a transfer there, consider that your notice. Yeah, yeah.

And then one of the more exciting announcements, there's not a lot of information about it yet, but Alaska is launching a premium card, a $395 annual fee card in summer, in Northern Hemisphere summer, most likely, of 2025. And if you join the wait list by the end of this year, so by December 31st of 2024, you automatically get 500 miles. And if you then later sign up for the card, you'll get 5,000 miles more than whatever the welcome bonus is at the time. So there's a good

incentive to just go ahead and join the waiting list. I think even if you don't think you're going to want the card, why not take the 500 miles? So I have that as a to-do. Personally, I want to go ahead and grab that for everyone in my family. Very good. Yeah, well, that's great. So then it sounds like this might be interesting. And even if it's not signing up for the waitlist makes sense. Yeah, totally. So so there's there's some teasers about what the card includes, like global companion award certificates and a lot more stuff.'ll we'll do a coffee break episode where we talk about that and and uh discuss these things try to figure out um how excited are we

well you know what i'm going to make my first prediction of 2025 right now so you can't steal this when you do your predictions post uh but but the reason will be clear so i'm gonna predict right now that january 1st 2025 and i could be wrong this is just. So I'm going to predict right now that January 1st, 2025, and I could be wrong. This is just a prediction. I'm going to predict that on January 1st, the Hawaiian Airlines credit cards will no longer be available. That's my bet. Because fiscal year ends the end of the year for Barclays. They had the investor call earlier this year where they kind of hinted at the fact that they don't intend to have airline cards in the long term or really that they're going to focus on other things and airline co-branded cards. I'm

thinking that those are going away December 31st, especially with this premium card, you know, needing to sign up for the wait list by December 31st. I'm thinking that January 1st, something's changing. Right. You heard it here first. If you haven't already jumped on thoseian airlines cards and you're interested in doing that so that you can get alaska airline miles easily uh do that now uh right now and before the end of the year i think that's great and also just as an aside uh don't forget we uh we think the barclays american airlines cards are going away we don't know when i don't think Nick's predicting end of year necessarily, but it's possible. No, I don't know.

Yeah, it's possible. I don't know. So anyway, that's another one to jump on, especially because the Aviator Red card has a nice welcome bonus right now. So another one to go for, assuming that's still true when you listen to this podcast.

As we're recording, last I saw it was 70,000 miles after first purchase, which is just a great offer. It is. It is. The Waldorf Astoria New York is the next thing we're going to talk about. The fact that that is now bookable with both points and free night certificates. So if you've got Hilton points or Hilton free night certificates, you can now book the Waldorf Astoria New York starting in late 2025. I think right now, as we record this, it says September 2025 onward, you can book. So it's 150,000 points a night. At least all the nights that I saw that were available as awards

were 150,000 points. Don't be surprised if you go and you look at a weekend now and you don't find it available because this did come out this week that it was now taking reservations. So I'm sure a lot of people jumped on it because cash rates, at least in the weekends that I looked at, were like 1,700700 a night. So pretty good use of Hilton points. Yeah. So, you know, this Waldorf Astoria has been closed for renovation for a long time. I expect it's going to be really, really nice with the new thing.

But, yeah, we haven't seen it open in, I don't know, what has it been? 80, 90 years, something like that. It's been a long time. Yeah. Not quite. It's been a long time, yeah. Not quite. It's been a long, long time, yeah. Yeah, and I think I never stayed there before, but from people who did,

it sounded like it was in need of a renovation, a bunch of the regular guest rooms anyway. And it sounds like they have really gone all out to try to renovate it by both making it kind of have its classic look and feel, but making it modern. Uh, at least that's what they're trying to tout anyway and market at this point. So it'd be interesting to see how that all shakes out now, like anything else, if you stay in the first month or two, don't be surprised to find some growing pains because that's often the case

with new hotels. So you may want to hold off a little bit. You don't necessarily need to jump right now, or maybe a jump on a reservation a few months later after it's scheduled to open might be a better strategy. Yep. Yep. And who knows, maybe, maybe in the future, this, this hotel will be one of our favorite hotels of the year, favorite award bookings of the year, but it won't be this year because it's not open as we talk. Right, right. But I could certainly see using an Aspire card for your certificate annually if it's nice. I imagine it'll be nice. We'll see. All right.

Let's get into this week's main event, though, and talk about what our favorite awards were of 2024. Yeah, let's get into it. Main event time. All right. I'm going to list my candidate awards, but I won't pick a winner just yet. And then Nick will list his candidates, and then we'll tell which were our favorites overall. Why don't we do it this way? I'll do my flights, then you do your flights, Nick, and then we'll cycle that way. Let's do it.

All right. Here are the flights that I thought were really good award flights that I took in 2024. Starlux, that pretty new airline that is based in Taipei. I flew from, I was going to say LA, but now was it LA or San Francisco? I think it was LA. la to taipei and and back in business class i paid only 60 000 alaska miles at the time each way today it's a bit more than that uh if you can find saver award availability but alaska also charges like uh it's not quite any time availability but another level where it's much much more expensive like 100 and i don't know,000 per person one way or something like that. But the best price, I think, is $80,000 one way, which is still a really good deal. Very nice product, beautiful plane and everything, great service.

I flew Turkish business class from Detroit to Gothenburg via Istanbul. And I didn't love the flight because there were some things I had very high expectations for certain things about it that weren't met. But what I loved was a couple things. One, Turkish is pretty new flying out of Detroit, so I love being able to take advantage of that convenience for me. I loved having a long flight, long, comfortable flight to Europe overnight. So it was about a 10-hour flight, plenty of time to have a meal, put the seat down, go to sleep and not feel like, oh, I only have four hours, so I have to get to sleep right away. And then that dooms me getting to sleep at all. So I actually had a good night's sleep and then took the short flight from there onward to Gothenburg. So I enjoyed that flight a

lot. All right. During the flying by the seat of our points challenge, I had a couple really nice flights. I had KLM and their new sweets product from Vancouver to Amsterdam. And then I flew onward in business class to Zagreb, Croatia. That one, I would say a lot of nice things about it probably, except I slept like a baby for the entire flight. So you don't even know. There's not much to say. I mean, it was comfortable and I slept well. So that was great. From Zagreb, I flew Qatar and then Malaysia Airlines business class from Zagreb to Doha, then onward to Kuala Lumpur.

And that first flight, the Qatar flight, even though it was like a narrow body plane with two by two seating, not even necessarily, I don't know if it was even fully lie flat. The service was unbelievable. Um, like both the interactions and the, and the, the food, I got like lobster Thermador and it was just out of this world. Good. Such a weird, like random flight to love so much um but i did it was really really terrific yeah uh the malaysia flight was also terrific but it and had true live flat seats and stuff but it kind of paled compared to just because the guitar flight was so good um another one i flew united business class to London from Chicago. This one I loved because United saved us from American Airlines.

Don't jinx me, Greg. Don't jinx me. Yeah, right? Well, luckily for you, I'm not on any of your flights, so I think you'll be okay. But just a quick recap. American, we had booked Detroit to London via Charlotte, and that flight was delayed, and I ended up rebooking Detroit to Chicago to London on American, and we got to Chicago, got on the flight to London, and engine blew, they returned to chicago and i i uh asked them to change us to the united flight

that same day and and they did and so um that was so there was nothing notable about the flight itself except that it got us there again a hidden benefit that united offers to all flyers everybody on the plane gets that one. Everybody on the plane gets the same benefit. You get to arrive and you get to, it's like Oprah. That same trip, we flew JetBlue home from London and business class

and wonderful business class product. I was really, really pleased with it. It was a daytime flight, which I recommend because it was just really great service, great seat and everything. The cabin feels very spacious and just modern and nice. Really enjoyed that. You know what? I'm going to jump in on that because I forgot. We also flew JetBlue Mint this year to Europe, to Dublin. I didn't put this in my list. And here's why. Greg's absolutely right. Seat's really nice. Service was surprisingly good. Much better than what I typically expect when I fly a US-based

airline. It was much more like the service you might get on a good foreign airline. So give them a lot of credit for that. But from a family perspective, seats were horrible because they don't- They're too private. They're too private. Exactly. They angle in, you can't see the kids or anything. So with my kids, I don't think I would take that one again because I was just constantly like mommy, daddy, like somebody calling from over a seat. And if I had my headphones on, I wasn't hearing it. So goodness knows how many times everybody else had to hear the kids say mommy or daddy.

So not one I would probably take with the family again. Yeah. Yeah. Some people have been complaining because JetBlue is no longer apparently allowing those doors on those suites to close. But believe me, the way these seats are designed, they're very private, even with the door wide open. So I wouldn't worry about that at all. I wouldn't let that stop you from flying JetBlue business if you're not flying with little kids. I flew before they stopped, before they did that. They removed a flight attendant is what it was, I think, and now they have to stay open. So I flew before that change, and nobody closed the door on the flight. They were all open still. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. A few more flights. So on the latest Million Mile Madness Challenge, I flew Etihad First Apartments from Paris to Abu Dhabi, and that was fantastic. It was a daytime flight. Got to fully enjoy everything about it, all the food, the top shelf, you know, champagne and wine and whiskey even on that flight. And I took a shower on board. I, you know, had a nice nap with the lie flat dedicated bed that's separate from the chair you sit in. All of that stuff was amazing. I also flew on that flight, on that trip, Japan Airlines first class from Tokyo to Chicago. And while the physical aspect of it doesn't compare to Etihad First, the service, food and catering, like catering and service absolutely in some ways excelled, like was above what Etihad First.

I mean, they're so close. It's really hard to compare. But I thought some of the food and drink available on the Japan Airlines flight did exceed what was available on the Ida first flight so really love that salon champagne and I'm not I don't usually care for champagne that much like like like I'll have like one of those like top shelf ones and be like yeah tastes like wine with bubbles you know but this one was different I really really enjoyed it um and apparently doing a quick google search apparently that stuff's really expensive so i guess that was

that was some good stuff uh so anyway those those are my uh those are my flight uh contenders for my best flight award for 2024 yeah yeah so i i and similarly the etihad and japan airlines i flew both also this year. I flew Etihad first on the same challenge as Greg, the Million Mile Madness Challenge. And I flew Japan Airlines first on the way home from our flying by the seat of our points challenge. And so I totally agree with most of what he said about Etihad, although I've previously said because I had the overnight flight, catering was not as good on mine and service was not as good. Seats, fantastic. Great way to fly. So not much more to say about that beyond what Greg already said. Japan Airlines first, the two things that I'll add to that. Well, first of all, I will

concur that that salon champagne is really good. And and you know, you're right that a lot of champagne tastes kind of similar to me. And I don't have a lot of other like, I think it's like 1200 bucks a bottle or something. Right. I mean, I don't have a lot of other $1,200 champagnes to compare it to. So I don't know if it's great compared to other things and its price point, but man was good. It was really good. Yeah. And I usually I'll like, if I have champagne, I don't, maybe I probably like champagne more than Greg, but not a lot more than Greg. Like I'll drink a glass or maybe half a glass even and not finish it usually. I finished a few glasses of champagne. So it was really good.

So I agree with that. The other thing is I flew Japan Airlines first class from Bangkok to Tokyo, like interesting thing there is that you get access to the Qatar Airways lounge there in Bangkok, which is really nice. And they have like a whole sit down restaurant type thing where you order from a QR code. I was really surprised for an outstation lounge. It's small, but it's really well done. And it looks so much nicer than most outstation lounges. So if you get a chance to fly first class out of Bangkok, that's certainly one to consider a visit to for a lounge. It stood out for a tiny little outstation lounge.

It was really well done. So that's worth a mention, I think. Also, by the way, the pajamas on Anti-Hot, I don't think you mentioned those. Really like those pajamas too. They're really comfortable. They're really great. Yeah, that's a good point um yeah the the amenity kit was pretty amazing and and the pajamas yeah um actually both airlines i like the pajamas i mean

i wear both of those still so yeah yeah great stuff on on both yeah okay flights back to back to my flights my my other flights. So I have my big aeroplane award in here, and it's not really for the flights itself, but rather for the award, really, because I was able to book a big aeroplane award from Paris to Mauritius, to Kuala Lumpur, to Singapore, to Osaka, and the booking was all the way on to Guam,

although I didn't take the last flight. And there was a stopover in Mauritius for five days in the middle of that, and that was 115,000 miles to fly in business class. Plus a really reasonable amount of taxes, a couple hundred dollars, I think. Uh, so that was awesome because I got to get to a place like Mauritius never would have considered going there probably if not for award travel, right? I mean, it's so far away and kind of remote and hard to get to not many airlines fly there.

I'm sure it's probably relatively expensive to buy a cash ticket. Wouldn't have been on the map for me, but award travel puts that on the map. So that was enjoyable. The flights themselves were fine. Singapore Airlines business class, always good. And Air Mauritius was a solid fine, but it was just more so paying 115,000 miles with a stopover to mix Air Mauritius, which isn't partners with very many airlines, plus some Star Alliance carriers. I really enjoyed that in concept. Yeah, yeah, I think that's so cool. I want to mention, for those who know, you might be thinking, well, ANA offers, you could fly around the world for 115,000 miles if you plan it right. But a couple things here. ANA is going to charge a lot more in taxes and fees to do that with most carriers that you fly.

But also, Air Canada has partners that are not in the Star Alliance. And to do the ANA thing, you're limited to only Star Alliance. Even if ANA has partnered with other ones, you can't fly those for that round the world award. So like Nick's Air Mauritius flight, he wouldn't have been able to do that. So yeah, it would have been a different trip. This is a great way to use aeroplan miles.

Yeah, yeah, it really is. And Air Mauritius was a solid find. It wasn't like great. It didn't wow me, but the flatbed seats and food was okay. Service was fine. So yeah. So there uh, yeah. So, so there, there you have it. That's that. I think that's all I had for flights, right? Cause I, those were, those were the big ones for me this year. I mean, I flew lots of other flights that were all solid finds, like I just described here at Mauritius, but nothing else that really stood

out as a best of the best. All right. Um, so rather than waiting to then let's go ahead and pick what was, what was, uh, what was our single best flight award overall. Why don't you go first? Oh, man, this is so tough. So, you know, Etihad Apartments is such a luxurious way to fly that I'm tempted to pick that just because the seat is so good. But because my experience with it on the overnight flight was a little subpar, I'm going to actually go with the Japan Airlines. It was a great deal for 80,000 American Airlines miles. A fantastic deal. Service was so good. And there were only a couple of people in first class and the seat, while not as flashy as some other first class seats is nice. It's really spacious.

Really? It's super spacious, super nice, super comfortable. It's like, you can't complain about it. It's just that when you compare one to the other, it's obvious which one's better. It's certainly not as flashy as others, but every other aspect of the experience basically is really good. And actually, I can't remember what happened, but for whatever reason, I needed help with something in Bangkok or in Tokyo, rather. And when I got to the lounge, I don't remember what it was. They needed to do something with my boarding passes or whatever it was.

As soon as they saw, they were like, okay, here, we'll take care of this. You go sit down and we'll bring it to you. We'll find you when, when we've got it done, whatever. And, and so they did that piece and they hand wrote out a tag for my, uh, my bag, my, my carry on backpack. They hand wrote out my name and flight number and stuff on like a, you know, one of those little tags for your name for your bag. But they did it so neatly that it looked like it was printed. If I didn't know somebody hand wrote it

because I saw him start with it, I would have thought that it was printed. That's amazing. Yeah, and I forgot to mention that JAL, Japan Airlines, has a new first class like entry when you're entering the airport uh haneda airport in tokyo uh and you're flying first class on japan airlines they bring you to this big

unmarked door uh and and escort you through there's like a lounge area before their private security i don't know why you'd ever be there, except maybe in a situation like what you just mentioned, maybe if there was something that needed to be taken care of before you could go in, they would probably sit you there and take care of it while you relax in that lounge. But then they take you to a private security, you know, where they run your bags through the skinner. There was literally no other person there except for the guard and me and the person escorting me through. And so I'm through in like, you know, 30 seconds or whatever to the other side.

It was really, really nice. And to go right from there to the lounge, which is just around the corner, really nice way to start that experience if you're starting in Tokyo. Yeah. So is that your best flight or what's the champion here? Yeah. It's so funny. I had so many good flights, but both Japan Airlines and Etihad First Apartments were my top two favorites. So it's funny. It's that Nick and I had the same two favorites to try to choose from. I have to give Etihad First the nod just because it may have been more about how I, you know, like what I did on board than anything they did. But

because I did like that wine tasting experience and took a shower on board, which I couldn't have done on Japan Airlines, they don't offer that. Those kind of different things that I did there give it a slight edge, but it's really, really close. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Very good. All right. So that's flights. Now what about the nights? Nights. Oh, good way to put it. All right. Here are my candidates. I stayed with Hyatt Points at the Miraval Austin. Miraval is like that luxury wellness retreat type of thing. Hyatt has its own award chart for Miraval. That's not, it's not the, even though they're all inclusives, it's not the all-inclusive award chart. It's not their standard room award chart.

It's its own Miraval one. So it's very expensive with points. You have to like, Miraval is its own thing. It's not the most luxurious resort you could stay in. It has some luxury to it, certainly. I mean, you're not going to complain about luxury, especially the Austin one is very, very nice. But it's more about like lots of wellness things you can do. So it has all kinds of things, whether you're interested in exercise, there's lots of exercise options. If you're interested in meditation and yoga, there's lots of those kind of things. If you're interested in spiritual stuff, there's all kinds of things there. If you're interested in horses, there are various horse experiences.

So it's hard to compare to other things however i've now stayed at three different maravilles and um while there's certain aspects of this one i like better than the others i still i like aspect overall i like the one in um tucson and the one in in the berkshires better for different reasons than this one. So if I was going to go back to one or the other, it would be one of those other two, I think. So that was one. So Mirabal Austin made the list, but it's not the best Mirabal that you've been to overall. Yeah, but I haven't been to the other ones this year. So it made the list for this year. Great Scotland Yard Hotel in London is a Hyatt. Just a really cool hotel where it's built from the old Scotland Yard building.

And so they put in all these whimsical touches, including a speakeasy where you touch a book or something on a bookshelf and the door opens to get into the speakeasy. So stuff like that. That makes it a really good place to stay. touch a book or something on a on a bookshelf and the door opens to get into the speakeasy so stuff like that that's makes it a really good place to stay if you're especially if you're a tourist it's right in the heart of like where you want to be tourist wise um and but on a quiet side street so you're away from the noise a little bit um and uh but right in the thick of you want to go see the changing the guard it's it's like quarter mile away maybe i mean it's really really close so um that was cool um another trip we stayed at the saint pancras london again we've my wife and i've stayed many many times if you get an upgrade which we did to the to a a suite, it's in the special wing of the hotel where it's a whole different.

If you stay in the regular part of the hotel, it's a nice hotel, but it's just a hotel. If you stay in the chamber swing, I think it's called. Yeah, that's what it is, the chamber swing. Then you have, it's really nice. And that wing has sort of separate parts to it and the part where they always put us because they they was like oh you've stayed here before

like they do this ahead of time they put us in the same room most of the time which is great and I hope that happens to me someday yeah it has these extraordinarily high ceilings just beautifully decorated room it's more of a junior suite than a real suite, but we don't mind when there's just the two of us. And it's right near the stairway that walks

down to their really luxurious lounge. And it's just become sort of a second home to us because we've been there so many times and we get in that same room and enjoy spending time in that in that luxurious lounge so that combination makes it just our special a special place for us you know i can't recall have you stayed in a regular room there or have you been in the chamber swing every time we did want to stay in a regular room um if you have platinum no so if you have marriott titanium status uh they'll let you into that special lounge. If you only have platinum status, they won't. They'll still give you free breakfast in their restaurant, but you can't get into the lounge where you have not only free breakfast, but free afternoon tea time with all kinds of delicious snacks and sort of eveningapes and and drinks and stuff that's all included if you're if you get into the lounge uh yeah the regular part of the hotel very nicely

decorated rooms but it looks like hotel room so it's different different um you know in the in the chambers wing it feels like you're staying in a castle uh it kind of looks like it too yeah it looks like yeah from the outside absolutely Absolutely. Yeah. Okay. The inside, those big arch, like, you know, like the staircase, I think of the staircase and the staircase looks like it's a belongs in a

castle. Absolutely. In fact, that staircase has been in a lot of different movies and videos. So there's like favorite famous music videos that the spice girls, I think. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. And I guess Batman Arkham asylum. There's like, there's a scene, I looked it up and it's a little hard to tell if that's where it is when you see the scene because it's pretty dark.

But if you know what you're looking for anyway, you'd be like, oh yeah, that totally is that staircase. And actually, if you watch British TV much, you see this hotel all the time.

It's so iconic. I think they like to film in front of it or in it. So it's pretty cool because we're always like, there's a hotel. So that's fun okay um another one in oslo we stayed in the america america lingen i sure that's not how you pronounce it but something like that might be ascend hotel collection hotel we paid only 20 000 choice points and um that's one where you it's even though it is

part of preferred hotels you can also book it directly with choice points and so there's less problems that way and it's like a 300 400 a night hotel in season um pretty luxurious hotel we loved it um stay there two nights location canation can't be beat. We came in and left by train and it's literally across the street from the train station right in the middle of Oslo. Love that. Great, great breakfast there. Very comfortable rooms and really neat robes and slippers they offer there. So anyway, only 20,000 points. So the reason it's on the list is because what a great deal, you know, with choice points.

Wait, wait, before you go on from there, prediction number two for 2025. Well, actually, yeah, I guess it's not going to work out because it's going to happen in 2024. I was going to say Greg, Greg's pronunciation of American lynching is going to get corrected.

Already done. Whatever it is. I don't know how you say it. Definitely going to happen. Before the end of 2024, somebody is going to correct our pronunciation. There's my second prediction. Very good. And I welcome that.

All right. My wife and I stayed recently at the St. Regis Chicago. It's a fairly new hotel, about a year old or so, I think. $60 credit towards the hotel breakfast, which is enough depending on what you buy, especially if you don't order coffee or anything with it, which worked out for us because I used nightly upgrade awards to upgrade to a big, big, beautiful suite, great view of the river so you can have views either of like the river or the lake or um or millennium park like depending on which way you're looking i think and um so nice views from that hotel the if you get in a suite you get a you get a butler who um can do things like we'll do things for free like shine your shoes so we we actually brought shoes just to do that just to get them shined yeah they'll they'll press press some of your clothes so i had some wrinkled shirts uh i got pressed um but the other thing they'll bring you a coffee service each

morning if you ask for it and you could ask for lattes or whatever you want. And so we really enjoy that. Having the coffee service brought to a room, lays around in the morning a bit, then go to breakfast. And we didn't order coffee because we'd already had our coffee. And so that whole thing worked out really well. Very nice stay at the St. Regis Chicago.

Yeah, that's great. That's very good. Good to hear. And smart strategy on getting coffee in your room if it wasn't going to be covered by whatever they give you for breakfast anyway. Smart strategy there. I like that. Greg the Frequent Miler, thinking ahead, bringing the shoes to get shined, the clothes to get pressed, and getting the coffee up front.

I mean, that's some Greg the Frequent Miler math right there. Well done. Well done. There you go. All right. All right. My final candidate is the Conrad Tokio, which I stayed at at the end of my Million Mile Madness trip at before it's a very elegant very nicely done hotel great service um the rooms they have these like big rooms it doesn't matter if you're not in a suite

if there's just two of you because the rooms are really spacious have these big uh sofas up against the this big big picture window that makes the sofa seem like a huge window seat basically. And looking out at the Bay, um, was, is Tokyo Bay is just really nice. And, um, so I, I liked everything about that stay. Um, it was just one night. Um, and probably, probably the most noteworthy thing about this day is not really about the Conrad, but was the first night i for that whole trip i got to not set an alarm and just luxuriate sleep sleep but sleep in in the morning go have a go have a nice leisurely breakfast so um that stay was notable for that reason nice to have that after a week of rapid travel so we're not even a week less than a week of rapid travel a lot of rapid travel there very we're not even a week, less than a week of rapid travel.

A lot of rapid travel there. Very good. All right. Well, you got some excellent ones there. I don't have much that's going to compete with some of that, although I do have a couple of

of stays to highlight anyway. And actually, I was going to take one off the list. I'm going to add it back on the list. Just not going to say much about it. And that's the caption by Hyatt Namba Osaka. So this is a new brand from Hyatt.

I think caption maybe just came out this year, if not, not thatamba Osaka. So this is a new brand from Hyatt. I think Caption maybe just came out this year, if not that long ago. So it's a new one you can hit for Brand Explorer for a Brand Explorer free night certificate. One of the different milestone type things you can earn with Hyatt. And I mentioned this because this place is a Category 1 right now. And at Category 1, it's a slamming deal. It's got a good location. It's right near an outdoor market there. And it was off peak.

It was 3,500 points a night. So it's a terrific deal. It made it hard to even consider any place else to stay in Osaka. Like, what am I going to look for that's going to be comparable to 3,500 points a night? Nothing. Right. So that's awesome. Is it still category one?

Yeah. I guess. Yeah. Yeah. What a great job. And you love Osaka, right? Yeah, I do. Osaka is fun to walk around. It's just it's a cool Japanese city.

It's not as overwhelming as Tokyo, but yet still big city. And so there's still plenty to do. I mean, the aquarium is amazing. The tanks there. They have multiple whale sharks in their big tank. So it gives you a sense of scale as to how big that tank has to be. There's a lot of other stuff tanks there, they have multiple whale sharks in their big tank. So it gives you a sense of scale as to how big that tank has to be. There's a lot of other stuff in there too. So yeah, there's plenty to do to keep you busy and have a great time. So good food. Yeah. So

3,500 points a night. That's hard to beat. That sure is. Sorry to mention it for that. Grand Hyatt Tokyo. We stayed at the Grand Hyatt Tokyo and I didn't love the Grand Hyatt Tokyo, but I loved the use of a suite upgrade award there because that was an amazing value. Tokyo is a city where I imagine most rooms are relatively small. The Conrad Tokyo, like Greg said, has really spacious rooms. But I imagine most hotels probably have relatively small rooms in Tokyo. And so the space of a suite at the Grand Hyatt was really nice. Being able to confirm that at the time of booking, I think I Hyatt was really nice. Being able to confirm that at the time of booking, I think I booked this stay six, eight, 10 months in advance. It was

far in advance. And so being able to confirm a suite for five nights was really nice. If you go there, don't miss the massage chairs in the like the spa area. If you go into the locker room, you got to go into like the men's or women's locker rooms and don't miss the massage chairs. High end Japanese massage chairs are really good. I didn't realize that they had them because I didn't go into the locker room. I didn't miss the massage chairs. High-end Japanese massage chairs are really good. I didn't realize that they had them because I didn't go into the locker room. I didn't have any reason to go into the locker room until the last night.

And I was like, oh man, I wish I had known that sooner because I would have been down there once a night. I don't, I'm not a massage guy, but massage chairs. That's, see, that's different. So I, I like massage chairs.

So, so there we get, there we have that. The Grand Hyatt Kauai, we went back to this year. We've been there a couple times before. Also, this is kind of like our St. Pancras London in the sense that it's a place we really enjoy. And we've been there three or four times or something. And so beautiful hotel. It's gotten more expensive over time. So now it's a higher category than it used to be. However, we still love it. The place is beautiful. Service is really

warm and friendly and nice. Lounge is beautiful. Service is really warm and friendly and nice. Lounge is good. It saved us a whole bunch of money because my kids would have asked for a snack or a drink at the pool every single day, and we were able to just go into the lounge and get a cookie and milk or juice or whatever. And so that saved me a bundle having lounge access and because, of course, my high global status, we didn't get any sort of an upgrade. We had like a parking lot view, which we've had nice rooms there before. This time around status we didn't get any sort of an upgrade we had like a parking lot view uh which we've we've had nice rooms there before this time around we didn't get anything special from the room and yet we still extended our stay by three or four nights more than we originally intended to just because we didn't want to leave so we really like that place and then finally so

wait a minute it's it's worth mentioning that as we're recording this oh yes our own steven pepper's there right now. Right now. Enjoying his 50th state. He and his wife have been doing this many-year road trip around the United States, hitting every state and spending significant time in each state. So they've been nomads. And they left Hawaii to the end and didn't drive to Hawaii. So I think that was kind of cheating. But, you know, I can understand that.

It's a road trip, guys. Logistically, it's difficult. But, yeah, so they're there enjoying that hotel right now. And coincidentally, Tim is also – he's not at that hotel, but he's in the same town. So he's in Poipu, Kauai. And so they may be, two of The beach is nearby. I really enjoy, I don't know. There's something about Kauai. I like all the Hawaiian islands, but something about Kauai that I just like a little bit more.

And even though the Grand Hike Kauai is a huge resort and it really is big, got to bring your walking shoes because depending on where your room is, it might be quite a hike from the reception area to get to your room. But I still love it because the grounds are so well kept. The pool is really nice it's just a good place to go I've never stayed there but I've been to Kauai like at least three times and and I have the same thing as as Nick which my wife and I just love it and and we've been to the other islands several times as well but Kauai is still our favorite. It's just like that happy place where everything is beautiful and good.

Case is slow. It doesn't feel overdeveloped in the same way that some places like that would. And people still seem really friendly everywhere you go. I mean, even like just going to parks and playing with other kids, local folks, people are just so nice. There was a woman we ran into. I can't even remember. I think she said she used to work at the Grand Hayek Y in the lounge is what it was.

And our kids played with her kids for a little bit. And then we were in the lounge and mentioned that to one of the other workers. They were like, oh my goodness, blah, blah, blah. They're talking about her. And it's just, people are just nice and friendly. So. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, I'll just, I have to mention a few other things. Sea turtles are everywhere. Like they'll just climb up on the beach and, or you could go snorkeling in different places where sea turtles are plentiful and you could just see them in the water the beauty like drive up wamea canyon it's it's one of the most beautiful places on earth i mean i feel confident saying that i haven't been to a lot of beautiful really startlingly beautiful places but but well, Mayoc Canyon will

hold its own with any of them. For sure. For sure. Agreed. When we went, took that drive this year and we've been before, but still do it again and would do it again in a heartbeat another time. So anyway, yep. So that's a perennial favorite, but certainly one of my favorites for this year. And then the last one, which is worth a mention for anybody who hasn't stayed there. So we stayed at just very recently at a place that's now called Luxury Collection Manhattan. And we stayed there earlier this year also when it was the Conrad Midtown. It changed. It changed from Hilton to a Marriott.

So now it's just called Luxury Collection Manhattan. And I know you're probably, if you know Marriott, you're like luxury collection. That's like not a hotel name. That's like one of their many brands, right? But they don't have a name for it. It's just called Luxury Collection Manhattan. And this place is worth a mention. And I've talked about it probably once or twice before, but I think it's worth a special

mention now with Marriott because I know there's a lot of people that have Marriott points and free night certificates. This place, most of the rooms are suites. And so one of the standard rooms is a one bedroom suite. There is a standard room. That's not a suite also. Uh, but I don't know how very, how many of those they have. If you, you know, when I went to check in the last time in the Hilton app, just looking at the map, like the floor map of each floor, I don't think there are very many rooms that are not suites. So the vast majority of this place is one bedroom suites. Yeah, it is. It is great because they are super spacious. They're real for Manhattan. Oh my goodness. We stayed at the Grayson, which is a Hyatt that a lot of people

like one night. And then we stayed at the luxury collection. And when we walked in the room at the luxury collection, my six-year-old said, wow, this hotel is a lot nicer than the place we stayed last night. And I didn't disagree with him. And that's no knock on Grayson. Grayson's nice. It's fine. It's exposed concrete ceilings and stuff. So whether or not that's your thing probably varies by person. But the luxury collection hotel, just the rooms are super nice. You walk in and there's a bench by the door. So you're putting on shoes, taking off shoes, whatever. There's a place to sit.

I appreciate that. That's such a small touch, but it's a really, it's a nice bench too. It's really well padded. So that's great. Convenient. So there's a little like entryway there. And then you walk into a living room that has a pullout sofa and a really nice coffee table, TV, a table with chairs so you can sit and

have a nice view. We had a view of Central Park this last time. You only see like a little sliver of Central Park, but it depends which direction your room is facing, whether you'll see that or something else. But many of the rooms have a decent view of something anyway. And then there's a bedroom and the bedroom has its own TV. And then there's a little closet area that's like almost like a walk-in closet on the way to the bathroom. And again, bathroom is spacious also. And everything feels very high end. The furniture, when you stay at a nice high end type of a place, you can tell the difference in furniture and things like that, fixtures, when it's a place that they've done well.

This is one of those places. And so the cash rate doesn't always make it a great deal with points. When we stayed, it was like $700 to $800 a night for the regular rooms there, the one-bedroom suites. And so it was like 89,000 Marriott points. So a little bit less than one cent per point. But man, if you have 85K free night certificates, I think it would be hard to make an argument for a different property in Manhattan because you get a standard room at one of the other places that might seem nicer. Now, I know you've stayed at the St. Regis New York and that does seem really, really nice. But if I were comparing the two with my family, I would stay at Luxury Collection because I know I'm going to get a one-bedroom suite for the price of a regular room. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's awesome. That

sounds great. Yeah. All right. Is that it for you? That's it for me for stays. Yep. For hotels. All right. Time for you to pick your number one hotel award. Oh, man. I have to pick the Grand Hyatt Kauai because we love it so much. But that luxury collection Manhattan, which we stayed at as a Conrad also, is probably the place I would prefer to stay in Manhattan. Man, if they were a Hyatt and had free parking, that would totally tip the balance in favor of luxury collection. But I think the Grand Hyatt Kauai is hard to beat. So Grand Hyatt Kauai would be my pick for my top because we'll be happy to go back there again anytime. Yeah. All right. That's totally understandable and i i'm really want to go

but there's so many other places in the world to go yeah lots of places um anyway uh oh man i'm having such a hard time picking i had so many great stays i even forgot to mention the inn at bay harbor which we stayed at a couple times this year which is in northern michigan i love to use our marriott points there right on Lake Michigan. And if you get a, so if you get a lakeside room, it's just, just beautiful. I think, that's so hard, man.

I'm going to go with our sort of happy place in London, our home base, the St. Pancras. It's just, it just feels so good. It feels like coming home when when we go in there get our same old suite uh with the high ceilings and everything uh you know it's one of those you can't replicate that like i can't you other people can't come and do that because you're gonna have a different experience than us um but yeah, but it's by such a small margin because we had so many good stays this year. Very good. Yeah. Well, aren't we fortunate to have so many to pick from?

All right. Last but not least, we got the other category. And the other category, I had to put in something else here because when we talked about favorite awards, obviously, I was using miles or points, but there was just another little couple of things I had to add in here, because they weren't exactly awards, but they were free. So casino matching shenanigans has continued to go really well, and I had to pick out and highlight two things quickly. First of all, the free MSC cruise that we took from Venice,

that cruise went to Cotorra, Montenegro, Dubrovnik, Corfu, Zakynthos, and Bari. And I loved all of those stops. Dubrovnik gets really crowded, and I've been there before when there's not a cruise ship in town. It's totally different when there's not a cruise ship there. It's just so crowded with a cruise that that was probably my least favorite of the stops on the cruise. Not my least favorite place overall, if you go there when there's not a cruise ship. But Kotor, Corfu, Zakynthos, and Bari, all terrific stops on this cruise. They were great places. And I would totally go back to Kotor. And in fact, I have a

cruise that's going to stop at Kotor next year. And I'm glad for that. But I would go back and stay. It was beautiful. And it's a place I never would have. I didn't even know it existed, to be honest with you. I knew Montenegro was there, but I'd never heard of Kotor before. Totally would go back. Gorgeous. Beautiful, beautiful place. So that was a free cruise from the MSC or from the status matching where I matched Caesar's Diamond to Hard Rock Icon to Ocean Prime. These days, it's a lot different.

Now, if you get Ocean Prime status, you have to earn 250 tier credits. So you have to gamble a bunch in order to get the travel benefits. And the MSC cruise is only free if you depart the United States. If you depart internationally like this, now they charge an extra $1,400 for that. I would still probably consider paying it for a cruise like this, not for the cruise ship, but for the stops the stops were great so uh so anyway you do have to pay a 400 deposit but you get that back as an onboard credit and it's really easy to just go to a slot machine put your room key in and charge 400 to the slot machine and spend it a couple times and cash it out so easy to get that back so it was very free i would say the msc uh cruise there and then the other one from the status matching was a free stay

at resorts World Las Vegas. We really like Resorts World. It's kind of dead at that end of the strip. So it's not the exciting part of the Las Vegas strip. And so a lot of people won't like it for that. But I love it because it's clean. It's nice. It's bright. I don't know if it's non-smoking, but I don't recall any cigarette smoke in the casino, maybe because it's so spacious. And I mentioned that it's bright, which is in stark contrast to many of the more high-end stylish Vegas casinos, which are very dark these days. I like the fact that it's really bright. We like the rooms a lot.

So we stayed at Conrad Las Vegas with the free stay from, again, this is from Ocean Prime status in Atlantic City. So really liked that. They've since changed to now a partnership with Wynn, where you'd stay for free at Wynn instead. And Wynn is like eight times nicer than Resorts World. We stayed there also this year. We actually stayed on the Encore side using fine hotels and resorts credits in order to get another free cruise for next year, because there was a status match with Wynn that was only briefly available. But anyway, so I stayed at Encore and man, I would be really happy to stay at Wynn. So that MSC benefit is still really good. And the reason that that is worth a mention in particular,

I said MSC benefit, I meant the Ocean Prime benefit. If you're able to do the status matching in Atlantic City, which your time is limited on that because Caesar Simon status is going to be much harder to get after January 31st. But if you're able to do the matching, and you're okay with losing some money gambling, and you can gamble enough to earn your 250 tier credits, one of the nice things about the free stay with that is that it doesn't seem to be very restricted. Like we went during Martin Luther King weekend. It was no problem booking a weekend when cash rates were like 800 bucks a night or something ridiculous like that. And that was fine. You could do that. So

that's really nice. It could be a really valuable benefit. Weekends in Las Vegas can be really expensive and win for sure. It gets really expensive comparatively. So that's a really nice benefit along with the free cruise that comes with the Ocean Prime status. So I had to mention those because those are two great things that I got that were very, very free because of all of this casino status matching. Absolutely. And I've got one in the other category, which is I have built platinum status and built rewards. If you get platinum status, one of the benefits is you can ride a blade helicopter for free in New York or Nice, I guess, from or to the airport. And so I flew from Manhattan to JFK on the Blade helicopter. It's such a cool way to get to the airport. I mean, it's like a fun little ride in itself. You have the beautiful

views of the city and you're there like literally in the door at JFK in like 10 minutes from when you take off. And yeah, it's just ridiculous. So I love that. So since I only had one in the other category, my favorite of that category is obvious. You didn't pick your favorite yet though. Oh, true. The MSC, I got to pick the MSC cruise.

The cruising, I am not a huge fan of cruising, believe it or not still, even though we've done I think eight now in the last couple of years, we've got two more for next year. Cruising itself, it's not my favorite way to travel. I love being able to get to a bunch of different places without having to pack up all the stuff and move it. And Europe is a fantastic place for that because you can get to a whole bunch of really beautiful places, nice places, good food, good culture, good stuff to see

without having to pack up your stuff and move your stuff from place to place. So I really have enjoyed the European cruises, particularly the Caribbean cruises have been less my thing, even though I like nice Caribbean beaches, I would just assume fly to a nice Caribbean beach and stay there for a week. Whereas the cruises around Europe have just been a personal favorite out of the stuff that we've done. So that would be my pick out of the other category. And in the future, I'll continue continue to look for if i'm going to look for cruise opportunities i still enjoy the ones in europe sure most no that totally makes sense so like so instead of going to like a like a place that's that's dedicated to cruise lines you know there's like these artificial little beaches or towns that they make you actually go into real cities that are interesting

in themselves. And so that totally. Yeah, that's totally that's what I like about the European ones. And, you know, I mean, I've got a Caribbean one and a European one lineup for next year. So we'll go and we'll do that. And we'll go to the little fake island and the kids will enjoy the water park. And, you know, and then a lot of the places, you know, like Greg said, it just kind of feels a little artificial the way they're built up. But that's totally different in Europe because, you know, those places are there. Dubrovnik is there all the time. You know, it has been for a long time.

Right. It wasn't just built up for cruise ships. So it was built for Game of Thrones, I think. Right. That's right. Exactly. So anyway, that's that. So we picked our best of the best.

Right. Yeah. That wraps us up. I think that wraps up today's main event. Okay., that's that. So we picked our best of the best, right? Yeah. I think that wraps us up. I think that wraps up today's main event. Okay. Question of the week. I had a few questions and I had a really hard time picking one, but because of the time, because we've gone really long here, I'm going to try to pick the one that I think

will be easiest for you to answer out of the ones that I had earmarked. So here we go. PJ writes in, says, Hi, FrequentMiler. I'm writing to ask which of these three airlines you would prioritize to fly and earn miles with. I recently accepted a new job, which will require at minimum two round trip flights to Chicago monthly. I have the option to fly American, United or Southwest for these. Which of these would you prioritize for status and miles earning purposes? Thanks for all you do, PJ.

So if you had to go to Chicago twice a month, I don't know where from. So we don't know how far these flights are gonna be necessarily. But if those were your three options, which one would you prioritize for status and or miles learning? Yeah, I think chances are good that that's not enough flying on its own

to get you to meaningful status with any airline. The way I would handle it is probably just, I would acknowledge that it's not going to make much difference and probably just fly whatever flights were the most convenient for what I wanted to do. But if they're all sort of equally convenient and you're interested in earning elite status, I think American has the best options for earning elite status, not just by flying, but for other things. You can earn it from a myriad of ways, including spend on the credit card, spend through portals, just it goes on and on and on, how you could get loyalty points during American Airlines status.

So I think that combination of flying American and getting status through other means, then you can enjoy those American Airlines flights more because you'll have status, um, makes sense to me if I had to pick just one. And, you know, I, I knew this would be an easy answer because that's the clear answer for this, uh, this question. And I love the fact that Greg was ribbing me about flying American Airlines. And I knew he was going to have to pick American. Yeah. Isn't that crazy like so like yeah if i should back out because if you want to get there

you need to fly united or southwest but if you remember america doesn't come with that perk we're in elite status americans the way to go no that's totally it because you can yeah you can supplement with everything everything else and and absolutely you're not going to earn enough miles because chicago is in the middle of the. I can't imagine that two flights a month, even if you're flying from as far as possible within the continental US to Chicago and back twice a month, that's not going to be enough miles to earn any kind of meaningful status, but you can easily earn meaningful elite status with American. So then that would give you those extra perks. So yeah, that's great spot on. So there's your, there's your answer American.

If you're going to do everything else to earn status and if not just pick whichever one's cheapest or most convenient for you, because it probably doesn't really matter. All right. That's the end of this week's episode. If you enjoyed this week's episode, and you'd like to get more of this stuff in your email inbox each day or each week, you want to go to frequent miler.com slash subscribe. Again, that's frequent miler.com slash subscribe, join our email list, follow us on all the various social media wherever you're watching or listening don't forget to give us a thumbs up like this leave a comment we always appreciate that stuff and if you have a question that you'd like to be considered for a future question of the week

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