Frequent Miler on the Air - Greg's credit card cuts, stitching awards together, Marriott elite plans and more

Episode Date: December 21, 2019

This week, Greg and Nick discuss: - A new way to bypass 5/24 - How to protect yourself when stitching together flights from multiple airlines - Marriott elite nights via meetings are gone. How does this influence our elite status plans for 2020? - Price protection from Rakuten

Welcome to Frequent Miler on the Air with Greg and Nick. This week, we're going to be talking about a new way to bypass 524 and stitching together award flights. What are the risks involved? How do you alleviate those risks? Marriott meetings, no longer a workaround to getting elite status. What are we going to do next year? And we've got even more. protection it still exists we're going to talk about a little known card that that offers price protection who would have thought that this

one card would have would have uh would have a feature that none of the big guys have and uh finally purchasing miles is it ever a good idea? We'll debate that. But first, Nick's favorite topic. Drum roll, please. Here's all the suspense. Reader feedback time. Reader feedback. This week. Cough segment.

This week, the reader feedback is from Captain Greg. Captain Greg. Not to be confused with Greg the Frequent Miler. This is Captain Greg. That's right. Okay. Captain Greg. Captain Greg. Not to be confused with Greg the Frequent Miler. This is Captain Greg. That's right. Okay. Captain Greg says, instead of or in addition to reader feedback, I think it'd be cool to do reader questions. Maybe one a week? You could have people submit questions here in the comments of the previous podcast, and the two of you pick one to answer in the next podcast. What do you think?

What do you think about Captain Greg's idea? I think I like it. That sounds like a really good idea to me. If people have questions, I think taking a look through and debating them and seeing if there's something that might be interesting to talk about, I mean, that seems like a great idea to me. That's the ultimate reader feedback, I guess, and seeing what people are interested in hearing us

talk about. So I'm all for that. What do you think? No, I really like the idea too. And I'm thinking that in future episodes, what we should do, maybe we do the reader feedback in the beginning and wrap up the show with the reader question. Question of the week. We'll make a question of the week we'll make a question of the week yeah but i'm gonna go off script this week and we'll do a reader question right now oh okay all right now we're heating up all right you gotta roll up the sleeve for this one someone named greg it's not me i don't think it's captain greg but greg of some sort uh says greg three says says i'd be interested to hear what five amex cards greg and his wife have excluding charge cards i feel like the only

must have amex cards are the blue business plus and the Hilton Aspire. So you might remember we talked about the fact that I did not jump on some deals like the Hilton Aspire deal because this wasn't the only reason why. Let me go on record and say there's no reason why. All right, go ahead. It wasn't the only reason why, but say there's no reason why all right go ahead it wasn't the only reason why but i but i said on the air i said i would have to decide first which cards to cancel so that i could free up space to to pick up another amex credit card so a little background

for those who don't know all the intricacies of Amex and what they allow and don't allow. Amex has both credit cards and charge cards. There's no known limit to how many charge cards you can have, but they do limit people to five credit cards. At least if you already have five or more Amex credit cards, they won't approve you for a new one. So quick review, what is an example of a charge card and what makes it different than a credit card? Yeah. So technically the difference is a charge card, you're supposed to pay back the whole thing every month there's no built-in idea of them lending you credit that will go on forever with interest now i say it's not built in because

they always do want you to sign up for their extended payment option which basically turns the charge card into a credit card but that's the technical difference between them. Now, why Amex has different rules for how many you can have, I have no idea. That doesn't make any particular sense to me, but in general, a lot of their membership rewards cards are charge cards, but not all of them. I think all of their co-branded cards, other than platinum co-branded cards. Platinum, I was going to say. Well, there's... Like their airline cards. So Delta is our credit cards.

Hilton's credit cards. Marriott is credit cards. Those are the names I can think of of so that so that's what's going on and so I thought this was a good question for a couple reasons about you know which cards does Greg have it I think it's going to open up a good debate about which ones should I cancel if I want to pick up the Aspire Nick has been Nick has been bugging me to pick up an Aspire for a long time now, and for very good reason. Don't get me wrong. It's a great card.

But I look at my cards and I say, whoa, I've got a bit of a problem. So let me answer that first, just straight up. And let me say I am as interested in this answer as greg is okay the other greg greg number three because i'd love to know i'm greg number three just for the record oh i thought i was saying i'm losing no i don't know who's greg number three but here here are the cards that this greg has today the amex cards. And I was actually just as interested too. I had to go catalog them. It's been a while since I've done that. I have two Marriott cards. I have a business one and a consumer one. I have the Blue Business Plus card. I have the everyday card i have the old blue cash card and i have two delta cards

so i have i can tell you what goes well first of all go ahead i have seven amex credit sevens count them seven you can't find room for an Aspire. I'm not supposed to have seven Amex credit cards, but I do. How did you manage that? Well, this happened back when, a couple years ago. I tried to see what would happen if I signed up for an SBG card. I wanted to get the pop-up saying I'm not eligible. And I never got it, and I got the card. And I tried it with the business card, too.

The pop-up never appeared. I got the card. I I tried it with the business card too. The pop-up never appeared. I got the card. I got the bonuses for both of them. And when the merger between Marriott and SBG happened, those cards became Marriott cards. So somehow, even though I already had five cards then, I was able to sign up for two more it there was just some fluke in the system that let me do that so now i have seven so i have to get rid of three so which three should i get rid of well i mean the every day out the window i don't know why i agree bothering with you every day at this point no reason to keep that unless the only reason to have an every day for listeners listening in is so that you have a card that'll keep your membership rewards alive that has no annual fee. But you got the Blue

Business Plus, which does the same thing. Every day is gone. So that's an easy one to eliminate right off the bat. Now, the Marriott Bonvoy cards, interesting to have them because of their annual free night certificates. On the flip side, we're going to talk a little bit later about what your plans are for elite status next year. And if you don't go after Marriott Platinum status for the future, I don't know if those are worth hanging on to. And not that you can't get better value out of the free night certificates than the cost of the annual fee. But realistically, are you then going to choose a Marriott over a Hyatt where you get a Guest of Honor reservation or over a Hilton where you'll have Diamond status once you get rid of your two Marriott cards. Your Hilton card comes with an

annual free weekend night. So you're kind of trading a free night for a free night. There's obviously some differences. The Hilton free night can only be used on the weekends, but at the same point, it's not capped, unlike the Marriott free nights. So I'd be pretty happy, I think, to make that trade. I'd probably trade in the two Bonvoy cards for the Hilton Aspire card for the free diamond status the night every year and the other perks of the card. I think it outweighs the free nights you're going to get

from the two Bonvoy cards. On the flip side, I would probably get rid of the Delta cards, but that's because I'm not looking to manufacture status. But you are, and I know you're going to want to continue to do that to get rid of the delta cards but that's because i'm not looking to manufacture status but you are and i know you're going to want to continue to do that that's right get rid of the bonvoy what about the old blue cash you know i i think it's worth msing on it if you've got it if you're going to continue to ms i guess i should say on mx cards which 250 000 a year for diamond status tells me you are so i would probably keep the old blue cash i think would i wouldn't shoot it's easy money it is it is easy money so yeah i i gotta be worth more i thought i thought it would be i thought we would we would have fun arguing about which

cards i should dump but i agree with you total that if if or when i'm ready to go for the aspire well actually there's no reason for me not to dump the everyday at any time it's literally doing me no good i think i picked it up back when there was no cap on how many amex offers you can add to your cards and i wanted a i just wanted every type of amex card you could have and this was like a consumer membership rewards card that i didn't have at the time let me back up the truck and i don't mean to interrupt you even though i am so i guess all right i partially do but let me back up the truck and say actually i don't know if you should get rid of that every day really i think about it really why i'm not sure that you should get know if you should get rid of that every day. Really? Before I think about it.

Really? Why? I'm not sure that you should get, boy, maybe you should get rid of that old blue cash. How much per year in cash can you make from the old blue cash? Let's assume no cost for the MS. How much? Because it's like, what, $50,000? I think it's under, I think it's around $2,000, something that so that that that'll significantly outweigh so yeah a tough call the re okay so here's the reason i'm hesitating the reason i'm hesitating is because you can get referrals for your everyday cards so it's

membership rewards points capped at 55 000 if you can cap out your referrals at 55 000 points that's pretty valuable. 55,000 membership rewards points, that'll get you, you know, business class flight or well on your way to one to a number of different places. And for me as a blogger, that's a lot easier than most people to do that as well. Yeah, that's a good point. That makes the math a little more difficult for me, I think i think anyway in terms of which one to get rid of so now it might get more interesting because now i don't know you definitely get definitely get rid of the two bonvoy cards i think the third card i'm not

sure that's that is a bit of a tough call because you need to have the two delta cards if you're going to manufacture status right yeah yeah exactly there's i was sure you were going to tell me to get rid of those Delta cards. Oh, I mean, that's what I would do because I wouldn't be manufacturing Delta status. But every time I, you know, here's the thing. I've never chased airline status. I've had it once or twice, but never chased after it on purpose, really. And so it seems crazy to me that you manufacture Delta diamond status. On the flip side, every time I see you talk about it at a presentation, I'm like, man, maybe I had to do that. So, you make it sound pretty good. And I gotta say, for the people that haven't seen Greg speak, if you saw him speak

about it, even if you've read the posts and you've been like, yeah, no, that's crazy. Me too. I've read the posts and I've been like, no, Greg's crazy. But when you see him talk about it, you're like, maybe it's not such a bad idea after all. I don't know. So I know you're going to keep doing it. And it's valuable in terms of knowing what works and how it works. So I'm not going to argue with you keeping them. But I think that the Bonvoy cards, bye-bye. Yeah. Yeah, it's kind of interesting.

So the Bonvoy cards, they provide definite value. There's unquestionable value to those $35,000 per night certificates that you get each year. But the upside is at best a couple hundred dollars, right? Well, and let's put it this way. So let's say you're trading one of those certificates for the Hilton free certificate that comes with the Aspire card. Right, and you get a much better value out of that because it's as long as you're traveling on a weekend. Right.

As long as you're traveling on a weekend, which you do a couple of times a year. So I think you've managed to be able to do that. So probably you're going to do well with that certificate. So then essentially what it comes down to is trading one Marriott Bonvoy certificate for a $250 airline credit, a $250 resort credit with Hilton, and Hilton Diamond status, I mean, I would trade a 35K Marriott certificate for that, right? Yeah, yeah. So I think that seems like a no-brainer, but it does become difficult for me now to tell you.

So basically, it comes down to do you ax the everyday card or the old blue cash, right? Right, right. So then it comes down to do you axe the everyday card or the old blue cash, right? Right, right. So then it comes down to what's worth more than the points or the cash. I think I would ditch the everyday. Partly because the old blue cash, I hate to give up a card that you can't get anymore. Do you know? partly because the old blue cash, I just, I hate to give up a card that you can't get anymore. Do you know?

Yeah. Yeah. Never, you never know what, what great things in old relic like this will, will provide besides just the, the cash back. And so I'm kind of leaning that way,

but I'd, I'd be interested in hearing from listeners. You know, write in, call, our lines are open, and let us know. Here's the question. Which of those two cards should I get rid of? Here's a question that would sway my opinion. Do you know, because I don't know the answer to this, do you know is it possible to product change a cash back card, like the old blue cash to an everyday card

a membership rewards card i don't know you know that's interesting i don't know what amex's rules i i feel like only allows you to product i think they only allow you to product change within a brand or family of cards, right? I would think that. I would think that. And probably that's correct. I just wonder what would happen down the line if the old blue cash gets sunset at some point and they get rid of it and change it into something else if you would be able to get the everyday still. Because if that's the case, then I guess you probably dump the everyday until you get to a point where you desperately need those membership rewards points but yeah that's that's that's that's

my answer but i i'm like you i'm interested in hearing what readers have to say and uh and i bet that at least one of them out there is going to tell you that you're crazy on this whole delta kick and so yeah for sure get rid of those and keep the free night shirts right now for my wife it's easier she has the blue business plus she has the two delta cards and she has two marriott cards so she would only even have to get rid of one of the marriott cards to um to make that work i i would rather you know i wish i wish getting rid of her cards would free up a slot for me because i'd rather get rid of her cards since she doesn't have you know any special elite status with with Marriott right but that's the way it is

the way the cookie crumbles exactly yeah yeah that's an interesting situation too when you look at it from the perspective if you are going to make enough knights to keep Marriott status then it does become a little bit more difficult because if you do think you're going to make enough nights to keep Marriott status, then it does become a little bit more difficult. Because if you do think you're going to hit 50 nights, then you look at it and say, well, okay, you've got two nights there for not a lot of money. You could MS the points cheaper, but two nights for not a lot of money. And if you're tossing those together with two nights from your wife's card, and then you probably have a couple of Chase Marriott cards too, you can put together a decent week's vacation fairly inexpensively without a lot of chase marriott cards too you can put together a decent week's vacation fairly inexpensively without a lot of effort but you do then have to make sure that you use the

cert in time and the more certs you have i guess the more pressure there is to do that whereas if you just pare down to one hilton cert you'd be great one hilton cert each because you should both have it shouldn't you yes yes if you get it will your wife get it too then yeah yeah i i thought how often do you need just one weekend night i mean it does happen it happens but i think it would be nice to have the two for sure yeah for sure for sure okay so we're in agreement on that so i think that it's so there we go yeah there you go we agreed perfect no debate really there so speaking of things that we can't possibly debate uh let's talk about no i think we actually can debate this let's talk about you stitching together your award we talk about free night certs we think about the fact that greg spent a

few nights in grand cayman just this past week, right? I did. Beautiful. It was. It was awesome. I had three IHG uncapped free nights. How do you get three? That were going to expire. Well, there's a third family member involved besides my wife and I. Okay, all right. But we were able to use, you know, you have to book each of the nights separately,

but I was able to just contact the hotel and say, hey, put all of these together. And they never questioned the third person who was, you know, the fact that there was a third person who wasn't there. They never questioned that at all. I wasn't even thinking that. I was thinking about the fact that those old shirts could be used beyond their expiration date. So I put two of them together back to back this year. I spent two days by just booking one beyond their expiration date so i put two of them together back to back this

year i spent two days i see what you're saying by just booking one beyond the expiration date and then booking the second there was a date at which that stopped working though and so the the ones i had did not work past the expiration i tried and i even tried like calling to get i was hoping what would happen is something that happened to me once before when one time I had trouble applying an IHG cert and I was trying to apply it to a top tier property, which at the time was 50K a night, I think. And it wasn't outside the expiration date. It's just, there was some bug going on and, and the IHG rep I talked to couldn't get it to work either. So what she did was she added 50,000 points to my account

and booked the night with those points. And then the next day I canceled that award and got the 50,000 points. Because I was just booking that because the cert was going to expire in a month or two and I just wanted to use it somewhere. So, it was great to have the points instead. So, I was hoping something similar would happen, but it didn't. On the other hand, it was great to have this trip. So, for this trip, I found... Okay. So, first of all so i spent the certs in grand cayman because that was the

nicest ihd property it's a kimpton resort normally often goes for a thousand dollars or more the time i was there i think it was more like seven hundred dollars a night but still good decent for a 49 annual fee exactly. I wasn't going to complain about that. And it's fairly easy to get to, ish, right? At least from the East Coast-ish, again. I'm East Coast-ish in Michigan. And so the problem was that all of the flights booked on a single airline to Grand Cayman were crazy expensive. There were no saver award availability.

There was no discount. I couldn't even use companion certs because it goes out of the country, so I couldn't use the Deltaion certs. And so what I did, I found that, wow, I could get to Fort Lauderdale super cheaply with my Delta miles. And I could get from Fort Lauderdale to Grand Cayman super cheaply on either JetBlue or Southwest. And in all those cases, points were really good. In all those cases, it would have also been cheap to use cash, but it was a better deal to use points. I actually got good point value in all three cases. And so I ended up booking Delta to Fort Lauderdale, JetBlue to Grand Cayman,

Southwest back to Fort Lauderdale, and then the return of the Delta flight to get home. And some of the questions I got in my post about that were, weren't you worried about a disconnect? So, you know, maybe there's a delay on my Delta flight getting to Fort Lauderdale, or maybe there's a delay on the Southwest flight getting back to Fort Lauderdale, and so I'd miss my Delta flight back. So, first, let me talk about what I did to try to alleviate those issues. One, I didn't look to book anything on American Airlines. Smart man, smart man. I was not that smart a few times this year. Yeah. I mean, I hear they're getting better, but that's all relative and compared to airlines like Delta and Southwest that are usually have a very good on-time record. I'm not sure about JetBlue, but I think they also do.

I'm not positive either. I wouldn't want to risk that, but it didn't really come up anyway in this particular situation. But anyway, the other thing I did is we flew into Fort Lauderdale the night before we were going to Grand Cayman. So flew into Fort Lauderdale the night before we were going to Grand Cayman. So flew into Fort Lauderdale. And this is kind of funny because it's relevant to the conversation we just had. I needed a weekend night near the Fort Lauderdale airport,

but we wanted to be, we're flying out late enough in the morning the next day, well, about 1230 or so. Plenty of time to get to the beach in the morning the next day, well, about 1230 or so. Plenty of time to get to the beach in the morning. Exactly. So we wanted to be on the beach and have a nice view in the evening and be able to walk on the beach in the morning. And we all know that about a year ago, I reviewed an excellent Hilton property. You did. Right on the beach there.

You did. Right on the beach there. You did. And so I looked at the Conrad and I was really bummed that I didn't have a free night certificate because that Conrad hotel charges 95,000 points for the one night. And that certainly didn't seem worth it. So instead what I did was I had an expiring Marriott 35K certificate.

There's a courtyard that's there on the beach that gets decent reviews. It has pretty views. And sounds like a good reason to cancel one of those cards well in a way so i mean it certainly was not anywhere close to as nice as staying at the conrad i'm not gonna argue that at all but at the same time i think it was it was a good example of how these hotel cards provide great value with their annual free nights because that courtyard was $300 and something for that night. Yeah. That's a perfect value for a $95 annual fee or $99 or whatever.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, I got great value for that certificate. But, yeah, I would have been happy to stay at the Conrad, obviously. Right. And you know, interesting, worth pointing out, since you mentioned that the Conrad is 95,000 points per night, the one big downside in the Hilton program that I definitely don't like is how variable the pricing is. Because I've seen that property at 95,000 points per night. Last

year, I paid 66,000, I think, or 69, 70,000, something like that for a standard room. But I did like in searching, I saw other nights that were 95. So, it varies like wildly as to how much it's going to be depending on when you're booking and how far in advance. So, that's kind of an annoying piece of the Hilton program. It's certainly my least favorite part of the Hilton program. But one of my favorite parts of those free night starts is that they are usable anywhere. Right. And it doesn't matter how high the price is. Exactly.

That's true. Even the new Maldives property that goes up to 120,000 points a night, you can still use the free weekend night certificate, right? Right, right. Yeah. So it's a very valuable certificate to have but that courtyard i'm sure worked out perfectly for this and in this kind of situation where it's one night it really doesn't exactly to me that sounds like a pretty good value i'd

probably if i had both certs i'd probably use the 35k cert in that situation right yeah yeah i mean it's better about it i think right right and it was and it was it was totally fine and exactly as you said we were only there for one night so yeah maybe it would have been wasted to use it on the conrad i i don't to use you know yeah well it just seems like if the main goal is to be able to get to the beach in the morning for a little bit you're not probably spending that much time at the hotel anyway that's probably right fine either way so you used a night to stay at the courtyard on the way there so you flew in the night before right so i so right so i wasn't worried about missing that connection right right so that wasn't an issue atale, and we had a two and a half-ish hour layover, and it turned out fine. I didn't do anything particular to try to

make sure, you know, I would be covered if something went wrong, but there are a ton of flights between Detroit and Fort Lauderdale, so if we were late, there are ton of flights between detroit and fort lauderdale so if we were late there's probably a later delta flight worst case we could have come back in the morning the next day so i wasn't you know i wasn't even too worried about that but also because of where they are and the part of the year you know i wasn't too worried about weather whereas you know if you're flying through chicago in the winter then you've really got to worry about that and i would i would never have stitched together something like that that involved a flight into chicago and then a connecting flight on another airline out of chicago in the winter time for example right

and and the two and a half hours that you planned there were probably plenty because i assume you probably weren't checking bags so you didn't even have to leave security right or did you uh well they're in different they're in different terminals actually oh yeah so so so we we had to pick up our bags we actually did check that's a long reason why we checked but anyway we did check bags but um so we had to wait 10 minutes to pick up our bags. And then luckily we know the Fort Lauderdale airport pretty well because we know you don't have to wait for the shuttle to take you to the next terminal. It's an easy walk from one terminal to the next. So we just went outside and walked.

Walked it. Yeah. All right. So that worked out. So two and a half hours time and you probably i would i'm assuming i don't mean to put words in your mouth but i assume you probably weren't too worried either because you do have delta diamond status and you can probably count on delta to help you out and work with you if you you know run into an issue there that's absolutely true too right right in this case so i i think what i think the itinerary put together would be reasonably safe for most people.

I think most people would feel okay about it. But I certainly get the question because, you know, especially if you're doing an international flight that has connecting in a region that you don't know well and then have a different airline you're booked after that and there's no connection between them so no one's going to protect you if something goes wrong that that would be scary right and if hotel prices are that high in fort lauderdale then you might be concerned about getting stuck there for the night also so that's another consideration though depending on which card you book things with i I don't know. Maybe you could try to make a claim with being delayed. I think it'd be a little hard

in that case since you're probably but but but the other thing I was going to ask you about is what else could you have done to mitigate the risk if somebody doesn't feel quite comfortable? They'd like to book that two and a half hour layover, but want to have a backup plan to be able to drop back 10 yards and punt. What would you recommend? Yeah. Well, if to have a backup plan to be able to drop back 10 yards and punt, what would you recommend? Yeah. Well, if you have a way to book a refundable ticket, so for example, with Southwest, one option would be to book a later flight home on Southwest,

even if it's a connecting flight, which it would have been in my case. And then you, and then you just have that and be ready to cancel it when you see that the Delta flight is ready to go or that you're there in time for the Delta flight. I mean, right. That, that would be the obvious answer to me too. I've done that before. In fact, at times when I thought I needed to one, one day, one day I remember I had a really early flight. I knew I was going to have to leave my house at like 3.45 in the morning. And just in case I overslept, I booked a later flight on Southwest. I got to the airport with plenty of time. I was on the shuttle from the parking lot. I was like, oh, I'm here plenty early. Canceled the Southwest flight. Got to security and saw the line and said, maybe I shouldn't have canceled that flight so

soon. But I walked literally up to the gate and onto the plane. So I did make it, but it was much closer than I would have liked. I wish I waited to cancel that until I was at least in the boarding area. Do you know what the current rule is? Do you have to cancel 10 minutes before? Before. I think that's what it is with Southwest. And I've cut it pretty close before.

I know I've canceled them within 30 minutes before. And that was actually unintentional one or two times when I just forgot to pretty close before. I know I've canceled them within 30 minutes before. And that was actually unintentional one or two times when I just forgot to do it sooner. But yeah, so that would be a backup, an easy backup. Other easy backups, so to speak, would be maybe booking a flight for the next day with an airline that would allow cancellation within more than 24 hours ahead of time. There are some that you can cancel fairly close to departure. So you might have been able to book something with another airline's miles for the next day. Or in your case, since you have Delta Diamond status, I'm sure you could

have done it with Delta also. Sure, sure. So all right, there's some ways to mitigate that. Speaking of mitigating risk, if you don't want to take on the risk of overpaying for your stuff, then you probably want to consider using a credit card that has price protection. Except, well, I'd say you would probably want to do that, except so many of them have cut it. That's a benefit. I know. It's so sad. All the top cards, it's gone, right? It is. It is. It used to be such an awesome benefit for people who could take advantage of it because the price drops on something, you file a claim, and the bank gives you your money back. I mean, what a great deal, right? You remember last year with that Google Fi deal where we had those Google Fi phones.

I then I bought it with one of my city cards and then I filed a price protection thing. When the price dropped, I got $ dollars back on top of getting the phone basically for free because of the gift card rebate yeah right right and i felt stupid this year that i didn't think to do that when google ran their deal dumb and in hindsight because this year's deal with google was they were giving a 50 five credit so i think you buy like an 800 phone and get 400 and five credit and right of course the phones don't normally sell for 800 they just went up to full price because they were packaging it with so much fi credit but duh obviously the price was going to go back down after that deal was done

and i if i had bought one of those with a card that offers price protection i probably could have gotten my money back and gotten a pretty terrific deal on a new pixel this year but but anyway even even if you're going to resell that might have been a good way to go Probably could have gotten my money back and gotten a pretty terrific deal on a new pixel this year. But anyway. Even if you're going to resell, that might have been a good way to go. Rubbing salt in the wound here. Yes, definitely. Definitely it would have been, I think. But and I don't use Fi all the time, but when I have it on, it would have been great to

have it for free. So mistake on my part there and not taking advantage of it. But I did republish our post this week about cards that offer price protection because there are some that still do. And in prepping that post, as I was prepping that post, I actually got a message from a reader who was asking me a question about a deal we had posted recently because he was filing a price protection claim. And when we got talking about it, he said, well, yeah, by the way, the card I'm using is the Rakuten Visa. And that caught my interest because that Rakuten Visa is one that certainly Greg is very, very adamant about being a super valuable card. It's one he feels very strongly

about and a big fan of. And I think a lot of people are a big fan of it and didn't realize this is another reason to love that card so you can get up to 500 per claim on price protection with that card up to 2500 per year so that's as good as anybody else's price protection ever was yeah that's amazing so so now if you're going to buy anything, especially online, and especially if the Rakuten portal has the store you're going to shop at, I wouldn't even worry about is the portal rebate as competitive as the others because if you want that price protection go through the racketing portal to get your 3x rewards and then you get price protection by paying with that racketing card well and what i was going to say is on top of that if there's a great racketing portal payout then all the more reason if you had a store that's giving 15x, then you're not even concerned with whether or not the price is right. If you're picking up that big rebate, and then you can file a price protection claim later on. Also, on top of that,

you can get yourself just a slamming deal because those 15x days at different stores come up now and then. And I think there are plenty of opportunities to buy something and do really well in terms of the rewards you can earn. Have you heard any data points on how good they are at paying these out? No, no, not yet. Because this is something that I think probably most people didn't know. I sure didn't know it. And I don't think you knew it. And I don't think most of the people who saw it, who happened to pick up on it in the post, had known it either. So no, I don't have any data points on it yet. Hopefully we will from the reader who is filing the claim shortly. But the thing of it is, and I'm going to say this, and I haven't double checked because I didn't have this in mind to double check before this, but many of

the issuers use the same claim, like company, it's basically a company that runs it. So it's the same phone number and they're the same website, which with whatever issuer you're using. So I'm fairly certain I'd have to go back and double check, but I'm fairly certain it was the same exact claims processor that everybody else was using. So I assume it'll be just as easy as it was with anyone else. So yeah, it should be a great benefit to have. So unlike best rate guarantees, where a lot of the hotels are very stingy about approving them, it's not as hard, right? With price protection. No, my experiences with price protection have all been pretty easy. You know, you need to submit usually photos of the advertisement or the website, the screenshots

with whatever the price was. But I've price protected against both major sites that everyone would know and smaller sites that probably not so many people would be familiar with and not had any issues with the claims that I made over the years. So I don't have a huge sample size, but enough of them that I always had positive experiences. I don't think I ever had one that was denied. So, I think that that's going to be something that'll be another great benefit for having that card and for the folks that do. Yeah. Awesome. So, when all those Visa gift cards that we're buying at Gift Card Mall come down in price... Don't file a price protection claim on those. Don't ruin it for everyone. Don't be that guy. Speaking

of ruining it for everyone though. Uh-oh, what did I ruin? A piece of reader feedback that I should have had prepared for this week. Oh, yeah. What? And I'm not going to quote it exactly because I don't have it up in front of me because I wasn't thinking about it. But on Twitter, there was somebody on Twitter who said yeah frequent miler continues to have the Midas touch whatever you write about dies oh ouch I think that's I think I think that was in response to the Marriott meetings that right it probably was yes I didn't I didn't see that tweet but it was yeah something some things happen so quickly after we write about them that, you know, my defense is it couldn't possibly have been because of it, but it does feel like it. And, yeah, the last time I remember something happening, like, right when I got back from Necker Island, Virgin Atlantic changed the rules to where you had to have silver status in order to book a free week on the island.

And I am 100% sure that that was a coincidence, but it sure didn't feel that way. Now Marriott, yeah, we just published last week, I think it was, about how to get 10 elite knights so you can get elite status with Marriott just by booking a meeting. And now we hear that as of January 1st, that's no longer an option. Ouch. Bummer. Oh, man, that stinks. Bloggers.

Oh, those bloggers that kill the deals. Did you have to write about it and publish it? I mean, what do you think so seriously is that a trick that we shouldn't have published do you think that that's a contributing factor and what do you think about this whole change is that how's that going to affect your quest for status next year yeah let's talk about the latter question first because i don't know what i'm going to say about the first question. The quest for status, I'm not that set on the overall idea of getting platinum status each year, but i like it i like i like the benefits it gives and i actually like the benefits of having titanium status even which is the 75 night level versus platinum which is at the 50 night

for two specific reasons there's two specific things that I like about that. One is that it gives me United Silver status. And not that I've made much use of United Silver status, but it's nice to know it's there in case you need it. You get a little bit better service, you get to pick your seats, you know, get to pick the better seats of those kind of things excuse me so so uh that's good the the other one you're really really specific thing you might remember one of the hotels i enjoy staying at in london saint pancras it's this big majestic almost gothic building that houses the train station but also this elliott hotel and if you book the hotel the hotel is two sections one is called the chambers wing the other is called something else the the other wing is the more

modern everybody else stays it's where it's it's the everybody else there's a riffraff stay over there it's not the frequent miler way well um that other wing does not give you automatic entry into the club so they have a club lounge they don't call it a lounge though it's the club. So they have a club lounge. They don't call it a lounge, though. It's the club. And that's an important distinction. Because in this case, normally a Marriott, Platinum, or Titanium member would get lounge access, guaranteed lounge access.

Normally a Platinum member would get guaranteed lounge access. Instead, what they do is they say, we don't have a lounge, we have a club. So you platinum members, you get free breakfast in the restaurant, but you don't get into the club. And while that's a huge, huge difference because the club not only gives you free breakfast,

but you have full afternoon tea service. I mean, the works and you have evening you know, evening canapes and you have beer and wine for, I don't remember, like from 2 p.m. to 10 p.m. or something like that. All those things are included if you get in the club. Well, if you're not staying in the chamber swing, then you have to have titanium status or above to get free access to the club so i did have a chance to use that a couple months ago my wife and i were there and for the first time my suite upgrade certificates did not work had they worked we would have been upgraded to a suite in the chambers wing and we've

been fine um but the first it was a four night stay the first two nights we were in the non chambers wing and the riffraff wing and but because of my titanium status, we could get into the club. So it was almost as good-ish. Ish. Ish. Now, an interesting thing happened. Because I had applied the Sweet Night Upgrade Awards, they kept checking for me, or they said they would keep checking for me to see if a suite opened up. On the third morning, I asked if anything had opened up, and they said, oh, one is opening this afternoon, so just pack

your bags and leave them in your room, and we'll move you. And they did, and so we were moved. So, the second two nights, first two nights was in the other wing. The last two knights were in the chamber's wing. So that was great, but it's sort of an unexpected benefit of the Sweet Knight Awards, which they never actually took out of my account, but they sort of had on record, like upgrade this guy if you can.

So that was good. Nice. Yeah, that's really nice. So having titanium status is nice for that and and so the quest for titanium status requires 75 nights a year instead of the 15 nights a year and you get 15 nights a year for having any one of the marriott credit cards that no longer stack so if you have four credit cards you're not going to get multiple right nights. You only get 15 nights of credit for having a credit card. And up until now, you've been able to host a cheap meeting for another 10.

That gets you to 25. So that's half of the way to platinum or a third of the way to titanium. But starting January 1st, you're not going to be able to get those 10 nights from the meeting. So at least you'll have to do 65 nights in Marriott hotels to get titanium status or 35 in order to get platinum. What do you think? Yeah, I would be, I think I'll be very lucky to get to platinum, let alone titanium. And I probably shouldn't try too hard because the titanium status I have now should give

me a soft landing to platinum. So when my titanium runs out, I should be dropped to platinum and that'll give me another year. And depending on how many nights I earn, even if I don't get to platinum, I should be able to get to lifetime platinum in about three years or so. So, you know, maybe in 2020, I won't get to platinum, but I'll get some number of nights, and those will all count towards my lifetime. And then in 2021, I should be dropped from titanium to platinum. That year, I might have to requalify for platinum in order to keep going long enough to never lose platinum by getting to lifetime.

That's sort of vaguely what I'm thinking is how I'll try to play it. Yeah, I have thoughts on this, but now you led me into another question because you brought up lifetime status. So now you led me into another question that I have to ask you. Why weren't you doing more of these meetings a couple of years ago? Because as I understand, these nights rolled over and led to lifetime status for people that were able to, because previously before last year, I guess, there was no cap as to how many times you could do this in a year. You could host those meetings again and again and again and again and again. And surely some people did do that a lot of times and earn a lot of elite nights that

way. You could have earned platinum status for, you know, whatever, $800 or less probably, and then just continued earning blocks of 10 knights towards lifetime status. Why didn't you do that sooner? Well, before the Marriott-SPG merger, Marriott required both elite knights and points, if I remember right. The merger, before they actually merged everything together, but I should say that the acquisition, before they merged the loyalty programs together, it created an opportunity to create points. And it had to do with moving points around like through the spg back to

marriott or something i don't remember exactly how it worked but i i had it clear in my head at one point it doesn't matter anymore the point system's gone but so there was certainly an opportunity during that time where you could generate the points and you and there also wasn't a cap on meetings and sure had i thought about it i probably if i knew the future i certainly would have been interested in doing that but i didn't and i'm actually really bummed because there was also an opportunity to get Lifetime what's now called Titanium. And that's no longer an option. So only people who already have it can ever get it unless they change their minds on that.

Kind of like that old blue cash card is one of those things that is gone. And so having it is that much more attractive now since nobody else can get it. Yeah. Yeah. You know, in my case, I ignored Marriott mostly for years because I just wasn't that interested. I've never, for no good reason, I've never been a big fan of Marriott hotels. I don't know what it is. I don't know if it's actually the hotels or the branding or the fact that I really did enjoy Hyatt quite a

bit. And I also had good stays at Hilton's. I just was never all that drawn to Marriott. I liked SPG when SPG was around, although I was not as loyal to SPG as probably some readers and listeners were. But Marriott was like that other program for me that I mostly ignored. So I really never thought hard about Marriott. I probably put more money into IHG stays than Marriott stays before this year. So, and IHG has never been my top program, but I've done more chasing their Accelerate offers over the years than I chased Marriott Elite Knights. And in hindsight, playing Monday morning quarterback, I can definitely say like Greg that maybe I would have played things differently had I been thinking forward, I guess, and knowing what the future would hold.

But at this point, I'm going to hit titanium status. I'm at 73 nights this year. I've got two more plans. So I'll hit my 75 nights exactly before the end of the year and have titanium status for next year. And I've been really kind of waffling as to what I'm going to do next year, because part of my rationale behind going for titanium status was to be able to hopefully get that soft landing and in 2021 have platinum status even if I don't make it to platinum status next year if I don't make it to 50 nights on the flip side there was definitely

part of me that wanted to hit the 50 nights and get the five sweet night awards for the following year and I think my only possible chance of doing that was to be able to get the 15 elite nights and stack them with 10 from a meeting and then a few free night certificates. And then my normal stay activity, I don't have much travel planned in 2020. So I don't think I'm going to make it to platinum. So that's, that's definitely going to change my plans for next year. And it will probably change those situations where I'm like, ah, it's kind of close. Which one should I stay at? Marriott has had the edge and probably still will because of the 4pm checkout and late checkout is often useful for me.

But it's definitely gonna be an edge case now. I don't think I'm going to make an effort to get to 50 next year and hope that maybe in 2021, there'll be some other trick that'll have developed by then and be able to get me to 50, or maybe I'll just have more travel on the docket that year. And I take it from what you said that you're far from lifetime platinum. Oh, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I think I've got like years to go before I hit lifetime silver. So, I think that's what it shows me in the app. It doesn't even show me lifetime gold.

It's like, hey, if you keep saying it, you'll get the lifetime silver. So I'm not interested in that at all. That's something to dream about. Right, right. Exactly. So yeah, lifetime status, not at all on the docket for me with Marriott. One thing, though, that I will say is I am excited about the potential for United Silver status. Now, I don't know that say is I am excited about the potential for United Silver status.

Now, I don't know that this is going to do me any good. I don't know that it's not. But I definitely intend to use more of the Turkish Miles and Smiles. Oh, yeah. I intend to fly United. Not only that, but one of my recent award flights that I had booked, actually a couple of recent award flights that I had booked on United, I ended up with bump vouchers. So I've got a fairly large bump voucher to use at some point in the coming year. Plus, I've got, you know, these obvious Turkish miles and smiles 7500 mile awards. Now, the question there is, will I be able to replace the Turkish number with my United

number? I didn't bother to try that this year, because I have no United status, it wouldn't do me any good anyway, having my United number on them. So and because United, unlike American and Delta, you don't get your free check bags just for having your United number attached and having a United credit card. So there's really no reason for me to attach a United frequent flyer number to those Turkish bookings. So I haven't tried it yet. But if I have United silver status status then i probably will try to

see if i can leverage that on flights that i book with 7 500 turkish miles and smiles miles so i am looking forward to having united silver status makes a lot of sense definitely not going to make titanium again next year though there's no way i'm spending 60 nights in marriott's next year so right right and then you're gonna then you're gonna be sad about losing the united status i am i am but then you can maybe you should keep those bump vouchers so that you can then challenge uh do a united status challenge challenge smart and use the bump vouchers to pay for the flights do they but they probably expire they do that's the problem but my bump vouchers i mean i they were on flights this fall. So they're good for almost another year. So I have a decent amount of time to use them,

whether or not I'll be able to use them late enough in the year to have status for 2021. I'm not sure. I don't know when the cutoff is. Because again, I've never really focused on chasing airline status. So I've never worried too much about the cutoff dates for matches and that sort of thing and challenges. But I'll definitely be keeping my eye out for an opportunity. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Good. So, all right.

So, we talked about the United thing. Let me see. My notes just moved on me here. So, the last thing we said we were going to talk about is purchasing miles. Is it ever a good idea? That's right. Is it ever a good idea? So, today, Greg published, and when I say today, Friday, Greg published a post about buying American Airlines.

Well, no, I'm sorry. About buying miles in general. Excuse me, I misspoke. Whether or not it's ever worth buying miles or points, whether for airlines or hotels, et cetera. And it seemed that the kind of conclusion that he came to with this post was that it's not usually a good idea to buy them unless you have a use in mind and you already have flights or hotels or that sort of thing where you plan to use them. However, on the flip side, he's written recently about how sometimes it's worth buying some speculatively if you know that you'll eventually be able to use them to good value, if you know how to cherry pick the right values, so to speak, and often we do. So there are times when I've certainly looked at the possibility of buying them where I have bought points even without an immediate, immediate use. However, I found it interesting that you said

that. Basically, you suggested that if you know what you're doing with miles and points, you know that you're going to eventually get value out of those, then yeah, maybe sometimes it makes sense to buy them. That kind of lit up a light bulb, I guess you'd say in my mind, because just last week on this podcast, we talked about the fact that you have a lot of American Airlines miles because you said years ago, you got wrapped up in the frenzy about buy miles, they're on sale, they're cheap, it's a great value, blah, blah, blah. So you've got like hundreds of thousands of American Airlines miles. I do. That you've been sitting on for years, right?

Yep. Yep. And here's an expert in miles and points. And you know how to use them to good value. You've taken a great flight with them recently, and yet you still haven't used them. So does it ever make sense to speculatively buy miles and points? Right. Well, I think this is different from the choice privileges example. So the choice example was buy enough points so that when you're going to be staying somewhere and you see that a choice hotel has a great deal on it, then you use those points for that situation, right?

Mm-hmm. With American Airlines, I have way more than that sort of... So, you can still argue it would have made sense for me to buy... If I didn't have other ways of getting those American Airlines miles. With Choice, there aren't a lot of good ways to get the points. And now that American is shutting down everybody who gets their miles through credit card signups, through repeated credit card signups. Not everybody. Not necessarily very many good ways to get American Airlines miles either. Anyway, I think it does make sense to have a ready stash of American Airlines miles as well

for when things come up. Like, hey, I have an opportunity to fly on the apartment's first class and, oh, it costs 80,000 American Airlines miles done right so having that having them ready for those kind of things is great having so so maybe having 150,000 or so or if it's a family maybe you need some more than that but but having between my wife and i probably eight hundred thousand that's more so you know once i'm past a hundred or maybe two hundred thousand each there's no reason i i would argue there's absolutely no reason to buy more without a plan that i think that would be crazy. But buying enough so that you could take advantage of great opportunities when they come along, I'm not against that.

So that's what I mean by... So how do you find that amount in each of the various programs? You mentioned those numbers, and I think they make sense for American Airlines miles. I would totally agree that $150,000 or $ 200,000, that's enough to basically fly anywhere. So whatever great deal comes along, you'd be able to take advantage of it. So that makes sense with American Airlines miles. How would you figure that out with other programs? Yeah, good question.

I think it probably depends on the program. So for example, with Hyatt or Marriott, you might look at how much would it cost me for a five-night luxury stay? So you kind of look at the top of the award chart, even though it's not there with Hilton. And then you say, all right, well, fifth night will be free. So what will that be? A little complicated with Marriott because well with both of them there's complications but with marriott you have to decide am i basing it on peak standard or off peak rates but probably unannounced rate that's going to be there for the north uh north island

seychelles yeah yeah but so enough for four or five nights at a luxury hotel in case some awesome opportunity comes along. come up where 35,000 points a night will get you into a excellent, if not aspirational property in a very expensive city, for example. So, then you might want to look at getting 35,000 times four so that you could stay five nights. That's the way I think about it. What about you? Do you have any other way to think about that? I think that's a good rule of thumb in terms of figuring out where that level is, where you probably shouldn't buy points speculatively. When you've got enough for that kind of redemption, then that's exactly what I was thinking. I was thinking four or five nights with a hotel. If I had enough to cover four or five nights, I'm probably not at the top end of where I would like to stay probably.

If I don't have that, then I might consider buying points when they're on sale. But if I have that level, then yeah, I'm not going to just continue buying points without an idea in mind. The other aspect to it, I wouldn't just buy them just in case. I would want to know that there's, it's very likely that I'm going to get great value from it. What I prefer if people are looking to buy points and miles is that it's real, objective, concrete savings. So, for example, savings or a better experience. So, for example, hey, I'm planning a trip to Asia and the economy flights or premium economy, whatever it is you were going to book are going to cost me, I'm going to make up a number, $2,000 round trip.

But, hey, I can buy Alaska miles and fly first class for that same amount. Well, duh, do that, right? If you don't already have miles that you could use to fly business or first class, then, I mean, why wouldn't you? And I think that's an ideal way to use it, right? Sure. You know enough to know the word availability is there, miles are on sale, buy them, use them, have a great time. Right, right. And I think it makes sense in those situations. And I think it might be funny for some readers to hear us say that because we do write a blog that focuses heavily on manufactured spending also, or at least has the guides, the complete guides to manufactured spending also, or at least has the guides,

the complete guides to manufactured spending and a lot of information about manufactured spending that we would suggest buying the miles instead of generating them with spend. Except I think that when we talk about this, I'm not saying that you should buy the miles instead of generating miles. I think it's great to manufacture spend. Not everybody is going to want to do that though, number one. And sometimes you're in a situation where you don't have time to be able to generate the points you want for the award that you're looking to book and or the energy. And you have to value your time, the value of your time, figure out the time cost and the opportunity cost, et cetera. And so there are times when I agree.

I think that buying the miles in that case to get a much better experience would make sense. Right. Also, it could be that you see that there's a word availability right now. Right. It's not going to be there by the time you've manufactured the necessary miles, right? Right. Exactly. That's a slower process that you have to be kind of doing for a while. So if you find something that you want to book now, then that's obviously not going to work in most manufacturing, the miles or points through manufactured spend techniques isn't going to work in a, you know, very quick, brief amount of time. So like you said, if you find the

availability, sometimes you got to strike while the iron is hot. So yeah, and I think that Greg made a great point about not just looking at theoretical values and convincing yourself that you're going to get 12 cents per point in value and that sort of thing, but actually looking at realistically, is this going to save me a pretty concrete amount of money? And as a nearly sure thing, is it going to save me a concrete amount of money or give me a much better experience? If you have the Hilton Aspire card, you know you have diamond status, you're going to get lounge access. Those are things that add on to the value of Hilton points. Hilton points go on sale for half a cent all the time. They're not necessarily a great purchase because that's generally the value

of Hilton points are usually worth about a half a cent each. However, if you also have diamond status and you know that this hotel has a great lounge and blah blah blah then there may be some reason to consider buying those points well i mean also there are hotels where you're getting way more than half a cent per point value so sure sure and if you're in that kind of a situation it becomes a no-brainer and i also think that you know we talked about recently how there are lots of great bank account bonuses to go after out there. There's lots of great cash back cards to go after. And using some of those bonuses or the cash back that you're earning from a credit card to buy these points is often a way to generate the points even more efficiently than you would by spending on the credit cards dedicated to those currencies. So I think that's another good reason to consider.

Yep, yep. And I'm going to bring up an example. I know I've mentioned this before here, but I think it's a good example. If you are going to go stay at a hotel like the Kempton Seafire in Grand Cayman and you're planning to pay for it, look at the price that you're about to pay, $1,000 a night, and then look at the fact that the 70,000 point award nights are, when I was looking, they were pretty wide open. I mean, most nights that I looked at before I

decided when we were going to go were available. And, you know, you say, wow, I can buy when the IHD points are on sale for half a cent each, I can buy the same room for $350 a night instead of $1,000, whatever. So, you know, I think that's often a situation at these high-end places. You don't see it as much on mid-tier places except during New Year's Eve in a city or Super Bowls going on in town, that kind of thing. If you could find award availability, you're likely to get unbelievable deal by booking with points instead of cash. And not just getting an unbelievable deal, because I do want to emphasize the fact that, you know, if you weren't thinking about paying $1,000 for the room, then it's not worth $1,000 to you necessarily. However, on the flip side,

it might open up the ability to do something that you wouldn't be able to do otherwise. You brought up the Super Bowl, I'm sure in part because I was in Atlanta this year for the Super Bowl. And I wouldn't have been able to book a room downtown because I would never have spent $1,000 a night. But it was really easy to do with Hilton points because it was just a cheap number of Hilton points to book that room. So it gives you opportunities to do some of those things. And I didn't necessarily look at it as, wow, I'm getting $1,000 in value. I looked at it more so in the sense that I'm getting a kind of cool experience that I wouldn't have gotten because I never would have paid for it. Right. Which is also how a lot of people think about flying business or first class, right? You don't necessarily think of it as saving the $10,000 that it would have cost to fly that route because you wouldn't have done that.

But what you're doing is you're getting an experience. You're getting an amazing experience that you wouldn't have been able to get. A pretty awesome experience. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that's, to me, a big part of what all this is about, this whole award travel thing is being able to enjoy some of those awesome experiences that you otherwise wouldn't get. And, you know, just like anything else in life, someone offers

you the ability to do that for the amount that you're already comfortable doing. Of course you would, you know, if you're able to get the Mercedes for the cost of the Toyota, then you'd probably take the Mercedes, I guess, you know, and that's kind of the same thing that we're looking at here. And, and I don't even like Mercedes. And I said that and I drive a Toyota, but, but that's kind of the situation you're looking at with buying these miles and points sometimes. So I agree that it's worth it sometimes, but you do have to be careful that you're not buying just because it's a good deal. And just because maybe someday you'll use the points, but to have at least somewhat of a notion as to how you might use them, how you think you're going to use them for good value and not buy beyond sort of a level that gets you what you think you might want someday. Right, right. Are there any points that you think everybody should have some of for these eventualities?

That's a good question. Well, without having prepared an answer or thought about it, I would, boy, no, I don't think there's necessarily one that I would say. My answer would be ultimate rewards, except you can't buy those. So, I guess Hyatt points, but Hyatt points don't usually go on sale cheaply enough to the point where I think I would really consider buying them. But those are the points that I would most like to have for those situations where there's lots of situations where they come in handy and are quite valuable. Right, right. Yeah, I can't think so. I think that it's, well, you know what? I'm going to give a controversial answer. IHG. IHG. Because I knew that Greg was going to say that than half a cent per point in value out of IHG points. And I think they come in handy, especially handy in those situations where there's a special event, there's something expensive, and having those IHG points will save you a good chunk of

change. And I think that IHG gains availability much less than some of the other chains. I feel like I almost always find availability at IHG properties, whereas I don't have that experience with other chains. And for me, I often find particularly good value out of IHG in like rural areas where hotels are expensive because there's not much competition, but the local IHG is 10,000 points or 15,000 points. So those are the ones actually that I like to have in reserve. I don't use them often, but I like to have some because there are plenty of situations where those have saved me.

Yeah, interesting. That'd be my pick, IHG. Nobody else would agree with me. I look forward to that. That would have never come to my mind, even though I was just talking about buying IHG for the Kempton experience. But that's the one. No, I would not. I don't disagree with things you said, but I would not tell people, oh, you don't have any IHG points, go buy them.

You know, without first finding out if they're likely to actually need them. See, anytime my IHG balance is below 100 a hundred thousand i'm like getting a little nervous there's gonna be a situation where i'm gonna need those ihg points so yeah but you're not everyone right that's true that's true you're right but there's an ihg wherever you want to stay probably if you're listening to this there's probably an ihg wherever you're looking to go it might not be the nicest property in the place but in the case of the Kimpton Seafire, it sure looks like it was. Okay, so suppose you are on the island of Kauai. Okay.

And you've got your big pile of IHG points, but no Hyatt points or Marriott or Hilton. What do you do? You know, that's a darn good question because off the top of my head, I'm not sure whether or not there is an IHG in Kauai. I assume that you're saying that because there isn't one. Well, there might be a Holiday Inn or something, but there's not going to be. I don't think there's any, you know, nice. No, no. Probably not.

There's probably not any nice IHG property. And there might not be any. I don't know. I'm not sure. I guess you're going to end up paying cash for something. Or you're going to use Southwest Points to fly back. Anyway, I was just pushing back about the anywhere you go part. Good point.

Good point. We forgot one of the topics for tonight. Uh-oh. What was it? So what do you do when you are over 524 and you really want a United credit card. How did I skip over that? When you're over 524 and you really want a United credit card, you either A, have to hope that you see a Blackstar offer in your account, which I don't know how prevalent those are after the big leak of those links recently. But if you see a Blackstar offer in your Chase login, those historically have been

able to bypass 524 when, and this is a key point, when you look at the offer details and you see a fixed or set APR. So rather than a range like 16 to 20% or something, if you see a fixed number, like 17.99%, and that's it, then those offers have been bypassing 524. However, not a lot of people are seeing those anymore. And now there's another way to find that kind of an offer. So somebody, a reader wrote in with the tip that if you pull up your United app, you might see a targeted pre-qualified offer for the United credit card. Now, when I log in and Greg logs in, and I think Steven Pepper too is in the same situation, when I log in and Greg logs in, and I think Steven Pepper, too, is in the same situation, when we log in on that United app, we're seeing some 100k business,

United business offer that is not pre-qualified, has a range instead of a set APR. But some people, some readers, quite a few readers, in fact, commented to say that they did pull up the United app and see this pre-qualified United Explorer card offer that gave them a set APR and they reported instant approval despite being over 524. So what do you think about that, Greg? Is that a safe one to apply for? Would you apply for it if you saw it? Would you be nervous based on the kind of, I don't know, noise around the edges, so to speak, that we've been hearing about some people getting shut down ever since those leaked Chase links.

What do you think? Right. Well, this is nothing like a leaked link, right? This is right from Chase or right from United. I mean, in combination. Don't tell that to someone who opened up American Airlines credit cards. is not publicly written anywhere anymore. It was briefly, but Chase does not publicize the fact that they won't approve you if you have opened five or more cards in the last 24 months.

So I don't think there's any true analogy between those two. But we do know that opening new cards gets eyes on your account. We do know that Chase for the last couple of years has been fairly frequently shutting down people who they think are a risk in some way. Maybe their amount of credit that's been extended is more than they want to extend based on that person's credit history or stated income. Or there could be other reasons that they think this person's a risk and and so what we see occasionally is signing up for a new card puts new new eyes on it so i think that's the only risk i don't think there's a risk in this particular link that's that's my feeling about it so i don't think that signing up for this card

while you're over 524 is more risky than signing up for another card right when you drop under 524. I just don't see it. What about you? Do you think there's risk here? You know, no. I guess my answer is no, though I think in the current environment, I feel like there is some risk

in the sense that Greg is right, that this is very different from the American Airlines situation where people are getting shut down by American Airlines for their credit card activity. That's a totally different situation. And like Greg said, I think that most of the people caught up in that probably knew that they were getting around the rules a little bit. On the flip side, I guess one could kind of make the argument that if you know you're over 524, that maybe you know you're skirting rules there too. This is a very different situation, though, in the sense that that's a bank

rule and it's not a written rule. There's no, whereas American Airlines has their terms and conditions to fall back on. There's none of that has their terms and conditions to fall back on. There's none of that here for Chase or United to fall back on. So I don't think it's necessarily risky. I think that if you're over 524 applying for more Chase cards in general, carries some inherent risk in the sense that Greg said it. It has the opportunity to draw eyes to your account. And knowing that that's an activity that they don't like, I think you are accepting a level of risk in inviting those eyes in to take a look. So I might be a little concerned about that, especially if you are a big time manufacturer spender, because we have heard of

some chase shutdowns. And I think over the last year, year and a half here, there have been an increase in chase shutdowns. So I think that if you aren't manufactured spending quite a bit, you don't want to do something that's going to draw more attention to you. So I would probably skip it. I don't think the United miles are worth enough to invite the risk there. I agree. If, if, if, if you're worried about a chase shutdown already,

don't do anything that's going to draw additional eyes to it. And this is something that probably would. Right. But on the flip side, for people who aren't worried about that and don't have cause to be worried about that yet, yeah, this is probably a pretty safe bet. I think it's kind of interesting. It's interesting to see that the co-brand has access to offer that. Yeah. Even when it's something you're not seeing in your Chase login. I think that's interesting because it also then begs the question, well, what else like that is out there?

Is there a Hyatt offer that could be like that through their app or a Marriott offer? Or might that be something that would work with another issuer? A lot of times hearing about these little tricks like that set off light bulbs to say, oh, well, what other similar thing might work? So it makes me interested from that perspective, will we see this with another brand? And if we do with the Hyatt card, I could see that being very popular. Oh, that would be huge. One thing I should point out, a reader commented yesterday or today, I'm not sure, on our United 524 post, that what he did was he saw the offer in the app, didn't want to sign up through the app, so he logged in to the website and found the same offer there.

So apparently it's not app specific. It's more about logging into your United account and having United advertise the card to you as opposed to Chase doing so. That's interesting. And it's also worth mentioning here that the fact that you can be approved when you're over 524 is not a guarantee that you will be approved if you're over 524. That's a very good point.

And then that brings up some confusion. And I definitely want to be clear about that. And also, we sometimes hear from readers who say, you said that this was going to work even if you're over 524, and I got denied, and they told me it was because I've opened more than five cards in the last two years. Key point there is that, you know, they're often going to give you it's a, you know, it's not you, it's me kind of an answer. So they're just going to come up with an answer that fits. And I wouldn't put too much stock in whatever reason you get denied for. The fact of the matter is we have positive data points from people who are over 524 and have been approved. So it's possible. It definitely doesn't mean you will surely be

approved. There are a lot of other factors in approving a credit card. So it's important to note that for anybody who is not clear with that. Yeah. Good point. And I just want to thank the reader who came forward to us with the information about this. It's huge. It's great seeing so many people in the comments writing that they've been approved even though they're way over 524. So a lot of people are getting a new card that they wanted. It's kind of funny because I've been writing just in the past few months about that particular card as a gateway to a must-have card.

So the idea is that you sign up for the United Mileage Plus card. And when you're tired of the annual fee, you downgrade to the no fee version of the card, but you still keep expanded award availability as a perk. Now, you lose a free check bag and some other things. But if you don't want to pay the annual fee, don't cancel the card. Downgrade it and it's still valuable. Yeah, great point. And thanks again to that reader. All those people have been approved. So that's probably

a good feeling, I imagine, for the person who shared this with us, if he's listening, that lots of other people have been able to take advantage of this thanks to the fact that you reached out and let us know about it. Exactly. That's awesome. We appreciate that kind of information and so does everyone else who got approved, I think yeah all right so that's it for this week it is next week we're gonna try to introduce the reader reader question section so my intent

is that we will start with a reader feedback comment, and we will end with a reader question, and we'll do our middle stuff. In between, we'll talk about something else. In between will be middle stuff. Yeah. Middle stuff. Middle stuff. Hopefully there's some good stuff in the middle.

So how should people get their questions to us? What do you think? See, now there's a couple answers to that. I'm going to be keeping an eye on comments and posts because sometimes people ask questions and there might be a question that's worth highlighting as the question of the week. On the flip side, if you have a question that you'd like us to cover, feel free to leave a comment on this video or this podcast wherever you're listening or watching. You can always send an email to us. You can get us through the website. There's a simple contact us form right on the

website that we'll both see your message if you send us a message. So you can always send an email. You can find us on Facebook, Frequent Miler or Facebook group, Frequent Miler Insiders. Find us on Twitter at Frequent Miler or just go to thefrequentmiler.com and go ahead and comment on a post with your question. And we'll certainly consider it for the next week. So there's lots of different ways to get in touch, lots of different ways to read the content and submit your questions. All right, great. We're looking forward to hearing from you. Yeah, absolutely. I'm excited to see what next week's question is going to be.

Yeah. So start thinking. And if you'd like to check out this video, if you're checking out the video on Facebook or on YouTube, you can check out the podcast as well, or on all your favorite podcast formats. If you're listening to us in a podcast format, awesome. If you want to see our smiling faces too, you can find us on YouTube at our Frequent Miler channel. So lots of ways to get in touch and check out the podcast each week. Yeah. All right. Bye everyone. Thank you very much. Take care. See you next time.