Frequent Miler on the Air - Greg's round the world business class adventure

Episode Date: March 13, 2021

00:27 Giant Mailbag: Choice Privileges promotion fail https://frequentmiler.com/70k-points-with-500-all-inclusive-booking-via-choice-privileges/ 07:58 What crazy thing...did American Express do this week? https://frequentmiler.com/huge-new-referral-offers-for-both-sides-on-amex-cards-200-4x-home-furnishings/ 18:36 Mattress Running the Numbers: Is the 80K Best Western offer worth more attention? https://frequentmiler.com/80k-points-with-best-western-rewards-mastercard/ 29:04 Main Event: Greg's 'round the world business class adventure https://frequentmiler.com/ana-around-the-world-ticket-sweet-spot-spotlight/ https://frequentmiler.com/my-round-the-world-business-class-adventure-planning-phase/ https://frequentmiler.com/tips-for-booking-anas-round-the-world-award/ 1:07:33 Post Roast 1:16:04 Question of the Week: Can you have more than one Bank of America Cash Rewards card? Don't forget to like, subscribe, and comment! Go to FrequentMiler.com/Subscribe to join our email list. Music credit: Annie Yoder

frequent miler on the air starts now today's main event is my round the world business class adventure also known as my extreme jealousy also known as my desperate attempt to use up my a.n.a. miles before they all expire. Known by many names this week. Of course, first we have the giant mailbag. And today I'm going virtual because I didn't, I didn't. You didn't print it out. We don't physically have it. Yeah.

The mail came via, you know, electronically this time. And well, it came last time electronically, but the staples manager was still somehow carrying it around. So I'm, I'm, I'm disappointed that you're not doing the same. The truth is that I've, I've been, uh, dragging my heels on ordering more, uh, ink for my printer. So if I wanted to read about like a third of it, I think it could scratch out about that much. See, that's why you have to go laser. You get one thing of toner and you're set for years

these days. Oh, is that what you have? Yeah, I went with a laser printer years ago. One thing of toner lasts me years and it does thousands of pages. Is it just black and white though? It is black. Do you print a lot in color? No. I can't think of the last time I was like, oh man, I wish I had a color printer. Right, right. And the ink is so expensive, except I say that I say the ink is expensive and blah, blah. And I'm sure there's like four readers out there saying, what are you talking about? Recycle the cartridges or office max or whatever it is you guys deal with. You're buying empty cartridges and taking them back. Well, I'm not into all that. One thing, a toner, 10 bucks

lasts me a few years right right every time someone talks about that whole that whole scheme i i sort of get excited for for a little bit about all this like staples money you could get by doing that and then and then uh they talk about doing having to do that every month and save up to like 30 bucks or something and i'm just like it's lot of, that seems like a lot. Wireless laser printer toner set. So anyway, not printed out. It's virtual this week, but people want to know, Craig, like they're like, stop dallying here. What's in the mailbag this week? In the mailbag is a letter from Ma, C-M-A-S-I. And this is in response to that choice privileges, stay at a resort and get 70,000 choice points deal. You remember that? I do recall the one.

And I seem to remember in your posts about it and our discussions about it that it was a very quirky promotion in that the different pages didn't match up. Like the terms and conditions didn't match the landing page and so on, right? It was a mess. It was a mess. It was what you would expect from choice privileges. Right. Not particularly well thought out. Not so tight.

Not all together. So from Ma, we learned that it's just as messed up as we predicted. So Ma says, I did everything by the book. I confirmed the promotion with two choice hotels booking agents on November 20th. This is 2020 and completed the booking via these two agents at Dreams Huatulco Resort and Spa in mid-December. Booking process itself was a ridiculous story, as was my stay there. I received no bonus points 11 weeks later. And after unfruitful seven hours spent on the phone with various choice hotels and AM resorts agents, I can again summarize my experience with the same word ridiculous my experience included getting

disconnected many times no callbacks some completely clueless agents blatant lies of their text tech folks claims promotion people claim the promotion never existed etc although they were generally friendly agents so you've got that going for them. They got a good smile. They're real nice about telling you they can't do anything for you. So Ma's conclusion is avoid this brand at all costs. So it's kind of a sad one there. Ouch. I'm sorry to hear that. I mean, it's like we can sit here and grimace a little bit about it. And, but man, seven hours on the phone with choice privileges. Yeah. Ouch. Right. I hurt for you on that one. That's yuck. So, and, and it doesn't surprise me at all that agents wouldn't know about the promotion. I mean, of course, I mean, the person you're talking to today might've gotten hired last week for all we know, you know,

they don't necessarily. And even if they didn't, even if they were around back then, I mean, there was a promo that was live for like what, three or four days, who knows, you know, whether they ever saw it or heard about it. So they legitimately might not know that the promotion existed. Right. In fact, they probably didn't, if they were relatively friendly people, I would guess they probably didn't know that it existed. And, you know, how are they going to find the promotion that's been off the website for six months at this point? So yeah, that's too bad. Yeah. Yeah. It's a mess. It's a mess. So sorry for anyone who got caught up in that. Hopefully it'll get resolved. And if you still have a reservation, you may, I don't know, have some reservations. Yeah. I mean, what do you do? Do you cancel it if it's not too late to cancel?

Yeah, I mean, unless you really just want to stay there and you're happy with that. Maybe. I mean, I hate to make a rash decision off of a single data point. But in this case, it's a single data point confirming the fears that I had about the promotion. And it's fairly detailed. You know, it doesn't sound like somebody who just didn't do something right. It sounds like somebody who did do everything right and continued to pursue. I mean, if you know you didn't do it right, you're probably not going to spend seven hours on the phone, right? So probably pretty aware that they did everything by the book, not working out. I probably wouldn't expect it. You know, if you're going to go, just don't actually expect to get the 70,000 points,

hope for it, cross your fingers, you know, do a little dance, whatever it is that you hope is going to put the universe in your direction. But yeah, no, I would probably cancel. That's sad. Cause that was one of the, you know, earlier pandemic time promotions, if I remember right, that were like, Oh, now we're seeing those big promotions we were expecting. And it's pretty sad if they're not actually delivering on it. It is. It is. I'd love to see at least one more data point. Yeah, for sure. Except they say that and I wouldn't love it if it's another negative data point. Right. So, you know, unless you want to be the person who tries to prove that Masi just

did something wrong, then, you know, I probably wouldn't want to be that guinea pig at this point. So, uh, that's too bad. So back then you, you had talked about it. You were going ahead and booking. Um, did that never pan out? No, I couldn't find a time when I thought it was really realistically going to work. And then my schedule, my travel schedule started to really fill up. So I have a bunch of trips, believe it or not, I have a bunch of trips booked that I think I'm going to have to cancel anyway at this point. So eventually I was like, you weren't joking that your travel schedule filled up. Well, I say fill, I mean, I've, I've got enough trips planned this year that if they all actually happened, you probably wouldn't want to continue to give me

vacation time. So, and they're probably want to continue to give me vacation time. So, and they're probably not all going to happen as it is. And I don't really need another thing that I have to cancel. So eventually I really did intend to book it because I thought, oh, it sounds like fun and, you know, pick up a bunch of choice points. And then I didn't. And now I'm glad that I didn't.

Now I feel very smart for not booking it. But yeah, so there's that. Yeah, I think that the first of those trips is about to get canceled. I was thinking about it just yesterday. I was like, I probably had a call and cancel like a trip to Hawaii coming up next week. That's probably not going to, or next month, next month. That's probably not going to happen.

So I can take that for you. I know. All right. Well, let me ask you an important question. Okay. Go ahead. Let me ask you an important question. What crazy thing did American express do this week?

Lost their minds. They've lost their minds this week. They got crazy. They are absolutely crazy because a few days ago, like before we recorded this, and actually just a few days ago before you're listening to it, probably, you know, the Amex offers for the new Delta cards just weren't particularly good in the referral area. If you have a referral link, referrals for the personal Delta cards kind of stunk. They weren't as good as the public offers. And then all of a sudden Amex was like,

oh, you know what? Actually, we're gonna make those offers awesome and make a whole bunch of other referral offers awesome. So if you have an Amex card, any Amex card right now, I would log into your Amex login, check your referral link and see because it looks like most cards

are referring to other personal Amex cards with offers that match the same number of points you would get wherever you apply, but they're adding $200 to a $200 statement credit for home furnishings. And Greg will tell you more about that in a second. But we're talking about $200 on top of whatever the regular bonus offer is for the most part on those cards.

So like the green card up until a couple of days ago was at 45,000 points after meeting minimum spend. And I think that's about as good as we've ever seen. And now the referral offer on the green card is as high as 50,000 points after meeting minimum spend plus a $200 statement credit on the green card. I mean, what? And then there's a whole bunch of other ones too, like the blue cash preferred. I want to say it's $300 after 3K spend in three months plus this $200 statement credit

for home furnishings. $500 on the blue cash preferred altogether, if you consider that like cash, is fantastic. Or $200 on top of the welcome offers on the everyday card or the everyday preferred card or the Cash Magnar, whatever it might be, like all of these various cards. And so it just looks like a terrific deal. Now, I know you're probably sitting there saying, I don't need any furniture right now. So the home furnishings credit doesn't sound all that exciting. Or maybe you're like me and you're saying, I paid $1,700 for furniture two days ago. Thanks, Amex. Too little, too late. But that's not necessarily a problem, right? These look pretty good. Right. Right. Right. When I first saw these offers, I thought, oh, home furnishings,

like that's not very exciting. But you read the fine print and it's like uh home depot is included lowes is included and so you know as we know both of them sell gift cards to other things i will furnish my home with gift cards i'm sorry i mean lowes lowes has like these giant displays full of third-party gift cards, Visa gift cards, Amazon gift cards, all kinds of stuff. And so if you go in and just buy $200 worth of gift cards with one of these cards that has that offer attached, you should get the $200 back and be good to go.

Of course, you could buy things actually from Lowe's or Home Depot as well. But isn't Amex going to claw that back, greg i hear that they don't like gift card purchases don't you think they're going to claw that back if you buy gift cards at lowe's or home depot i don't think they will so i mean yeah they amex definitely doesn't like gift cards uh but like when you're buying them in the like five $500 at a time and thousands of dollars worth. But we haven't seen situations where when you're buying from a merchant like this, as opposed to from like Simon mall or whatever, we haven't seen any cases where MX will claw back, especially like $200 purchase. I think you're fine.

I would think so too. I mean, who would, who would know what reasonable person would know that, you know, like, I think if you, if you stopped a person on the street and you said, Hey, do you think that your credit card company would be okay with you spending $25,000 at the mall on visa gift cards? I think the average person would probably look at you and say, no, something doesn't sound right there. But if you stop and ask the average person, do you think you could use your credit card to buy $200 in gift cards at home Depot? I think they would look at you also like you're weird, but in this case it'd be like, well, of course, why,

why wouldn't you be able to like, what are you supposed to carry cash in the lows? You know? So, so, so yeah, I just don't think that that's going to be a much of an issue, but so $200 on top of the welcome offers on a bunch of these cards, like including the Delta cards. I was initially where we were excited. It's like the platinum card right now. The Delta platinum has a 90,000 mile welcome offer, which we said just last week, we were

like, listen, I know everybody's like, oh, Delta miles, poo poo. You know, they're not that exciting, except come on. I mean, they're worth something. And we said at least one cent each and in many cases, they're not that exciting. Except, come on, I mean, they're worth something. And we said at least one cent each, and in many cases, more than one cent each. So you're talking about like $900 worth of miles plus $200 at Lowe's or Home Depot. I mean, hello, come on.

Yeah, you know, we had previously written that the business card offers for the Delta cards were better because those came with some statement credits. But now these, at least for the, you at least for the gold and the reserve card, I think, or no, I'm sorry, gold and the platinum card, I think these offers are arguably better because the statement credit is higher. Now you do have the extra work of having to go out

to a Lowe's or Home Depot or wherever, but the total you can get is a little bit higher. So yeah, It's pretty crazy. It, it, it creates a, it creates a really interesting situation for, you know, all those websites that, that just advertise the credit card offers that they have affiliate links for because these offers are better than any of the affiliate offers. And so I would just keep an eye out if you're looking at a website trying to decide, can I trust them and always show me the best offer? If they're showing you the regular offer without these statement credits, then that's not the best you can do. And

so, um, something to think about. Um, also of course, if you have Amex cards and other family members who are interested in Amex, um, you can refer each other. And so you can both get these enhanced offers and earn a referral bonus. So it's a, it's a win-win when you're playing with multiple people. Um, so that people. So that's all good news. It's really weird though, how Amex has these different ways. And it's been increasing over time, but more and more different ways of getting the best offer through this, that, or the other. Yeah. I mean, that's really, really interesting, right? Because you get the affiliate offers that sometimes are the best offer there is on a card, the general public offer. But then sometimes you have these offers

where like you have to have a special referral link, like the platinum 100K offer. Only some people have the ability to refer to the 100K offer, right? So you got to have the special one for that. Or then, you know, the Rezzy offer that was out, out you know that you go through resi in order to get the gold or the platinum card still there i think yeah and and that has been the best offer on the gold card anyway at least up until now because of the the statement credit for dining and the points so you know that's like some third-party site or then now you have these offers with the statement credits on top from referral also so it very interesting very interesting to see Amex's strategy here. I don't know if I really understand,

but scattershot mentality. But it does mean you gotta do at least a little bit of extra work or have a place you trust to constantly display whatever the best available public offer is. Right. I'm just glad that, which of course the answer is go to frequent miler.

Right, right. Which I mean, it's obvious to you and I and hopefully to the average listener of this show, but not necessarily obvious to most people. I had a friend, for a new card and she said, Hey, you know, I, I, you know, we decided we want to switch from a strategy of having a Cabela's card that only earns Cabela's points to, you know, something else. Do you have any recommendations? And I was like, well, do I have any recommendations?

I have a lot. She's like, okay, we're looking at this and this. And she sends me links to some site that I know has just the affiliate offers for everything. Yeah, yeah. Okay, well, I don't wanna toot our own horn here and make it sound like I'm saying, we're better than somebody else or whatever else,

but you're just not looking at the best offers on any of those cards. So I you know, that's, I think it's important to, to know that. And that's, it is, it is. And the nice thing about these, you know, we were able to post these referral offers on our site because they're, they're public. Like once you, once you have one of these referral links, it works for everybody. Unlike, you know, how's Amex, sometimes the way to get the best offer is by putting your browser into incognito mode and trying a link that way. And then if that doesn't work, pull up another browser and try that in private mode. And if that doesn't work, pull up your cell phone and try that in private mode. You know, you don't have to do any

of that, this rigmarole for these offers or for the a hundred K platinum offer we talked about before. So that's why we're able to put those front and center on our site. And it's worth saying that the reason we don't put those types of offers front and center on the site is because they aren't something that's necessarily easy for everybody to get. It's not something that people's going to, people are going to see every time they click through. And so we don't want to advertise an offer saying, Oh, you can get this much. You just have to like, you know, stand on your head and pat your tummy and, you know, rub your toes and spin in three circles three times. And then maybe hopefully if you keep doing it, you're going to find the offer. It's, it's hard to list an offer that way. So, so instead we stick with whatever the best publicly

available thing is. And it's awesome when these referral links make that really easy. Right. Right. But for those weird stand on your head ones, we do, and we know about them put in the notes of each card alternate offer, you know, you may be able to find a, let's say 90 K offer for this card. If you see words like that, then that's sort of the hint that using incognito and whatnot might help. There you go.

All right. So that's a crazy thing. Amex out with their new referral offers. That, my friends, then brings us to the? To the main event. That's right. I was waiting for you. I was waiting for you to jump in.

I don't think it does, though, because aren't we on the? Mattress running the numbers. But we both thought main event, right? Well, I honestly, I don't know why. I was just like, my mind was off somewhere and I didn't know where you're going with the question. I was thinking main event too, but right. We skip mattress running the numbers.

How are we going to do that? We can't do that. Mattress running the numbers. So this week, what are we doing for mattress running the numbers? Since we both forgot about it for a second. How about you tell us? Right, right. So, you know, should we even bother? The

audience is going to forget as soon as we finish, but well, let's go ahead forward with it. Best Western. Best Western, baby. People falling asleep already. Best Western is out with a 80K offer for their credit card. And it has something unique about it as well, besides having an all-time, I think, best offer, which is that it used to be that on this card you could get 20,000 points every year by spending $5,000. They've upped that to 40,000 points per dollar for all spend you're talking about 50 000 a year with 5k spend that's on top of the 80k sign a bonus for the first year um a lot of points easy to get is it you know i guess the question here is is it worth it should we be looking at getting these best Western cards and spending 5k a year on them instead of, or in addition to all the other great hotel cards that are out there?

Well, so, all right. I want to clarify one thing you said there, you said easy to get, and I think you meant easy to get a lot of points. I don't know if it's easy to get the card or not because- No. Yeah. I don't know that either. Anybody who's got the card. I don't even know if that's the case necessarily but it's issued by first national bank of omaha and my impression from when i read about fnbo is that they can be a little bit more difficult on approvals for folks that have a lot of cards i remember that coming up with the ducks unlimited card when that was offering the five percent of gas stations for a while i heard from a few people that it was hard to get approved

so i don't know if that's applicable here to the best Western card or if, you know, they loosen up standards a little bit for the best Western card. I really don't know. But all right. So 80,000 points off the bat. Let's talk about that real quick. So we've seen some promotions over the last couple of years, not so much middle of the pandemic, but before that anyway, where I think they've they've run a promo or like all the hotels in North America were 10 or 15,000 points a night. And so if you're able to stay during that limited window during the time when nobody was traveling or whatever the case may be, then you could get a bunch of nights out of your 80K points. Otherwise, hotel nights range from 10,000 points to 70,000 points per night. So

you're going to get at least one night at a top tier Best Western property out of the welcome offer, or maybe a bunch of nights at a lower tier place Western property out of the wall cloffer, or maybe a bunch of nights at a lower tier place. How much are the points even worth, Greg? I mean, have you looked at this at all? You got any idea how much they're worth? Yeah. Yeah. So our reasonable redemption value for Best Western points is just under 0.6 of a penny per point. And I did a bunch of searches for properties. I was actually trying to find if I could find some like luxurious properties in their portfolio. And they have some brands that sound luxurious. And I'm not saying they're not, I just don't have any first

hand experience. So, you know, I was doing, but they don't have a good way of finding them. So I was just doing some random searches, like looking around New York City or London or places I thought would be likely to find some high-end properties. And then I looked at whatever properties came up, if they had good reviews. And then I compared the cash prices to the point prices. And I was seeing anywhere from 0.6 to about 0.8, maybe 0.85. So I'd say that the value, the reasonable redemption value you have now is probably pretty accurate. So I would go with 0.6 is what we'd say is the value. So at 0.6, you're talking about what, $480 out of the bonus minus whatever your opportunity cost is for spending. And then every year you're talking about the 40 K bonus, so 50 K total points for 5k spend.

So 5k spend is getting you 0.6, $300 worth of points worth of best Western points worth of best Western stay or something stays every year. So, I mean, that, that in itself isn't bad, right. Because I mean, what, 10, five, five, but better than 5% towards best Western stays anyway, not, you know, amazing, but probably, and not, I wouldn't necessarily value it at 5% exactly, but probably a respectable return anyway, in terms of how many points you get. So, I mean, yeah. So now let's compare it for a second.

Most of the Marriott Bonvoy cards, there's a lot of them. So that's why I'm saying most offer a 35 K per night, free, free night certificate each year. You don't have to do any spend though, to get it. But, but if we compare to that, I did some analyses last year on what are those worth. And I concluded they're worth about, those certificates worth about $200 towards a Marriott stay. You can get way more than that value. You could also get less than that. Same thing with when you're looking at points.

But so if you just look at that, if you just take my $200 value and say, okay, well, with this Best Western card, you're getting $300 in value versus $200. Well, that sounds pretty good. Sounds pretty good. But then you got to do a little bit more math because, you know, your Marriott certificate is worth about $200, but the annual fee costs you about $100. So it's really about $200, but the annual fee costs you about a hundred bucks. So it's really about a hundred dollars. Now on the best Western side, you've got another $90 annual fee. So your $300 certificate now has given you about two 10, but you got to spend

5,000 in order to get there and 5,000 on a 2% card to get you a hundred bucks. So if you take that a hundred bucks off because of the spend you got to do, then you're at, you know, one 10, you're more or less the same place you were with the Marriott card. So comparable, but do you really, do you really want to stay at best Western? I don't know. I mean, and, and maybe better because even if you're flexible. Yeah. Even if you do want to stay at best Western, I mean, you have to look at the fact that Marriott has so many more properties. I mean, if we're just going to compare those two, um, there's so many more properties. I mean, if we're just going to compare those two, there's so many more places you'd be able to use your certificates at. On the other hand, having points, we've talked about this before, is way better than having

certificates. Certificates expire after a year. You can't choose to use your certificate for like two or three nights at a cheaper hotel. It costs just as many certificates to stay at a hotel that costs 12,000 points a night as it costs as you would use to book a hotel that costs 35,000 points a night. Whereas with the Best Western points, I mean, you could use your 50,000 points to stay five nights in a 10 K hotel. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, so it's kind of interesting comparatively and I've stayed at some pretty decent best Westerns over the years. They have actually not a bad footprint in my anecdotal experience in Europe and in maybe in Australia, I stayed at one or two in places where I didn't find a lot of other chain properties.

And again, you know, they were decent enough spots. So so, I mean, maybe it's it's worth it. I think if you find it worth getting the bonus, like if you think it's worth applying for the card in the first place and getting it, I think it's probably worth keeping because that to me means that either you're a big Best Western fan or you're a fan of diversification of your points so that you're prepared for whatever your travels might throw at you. And in that

case, it's probably worth putting 5k spend a year on the card if you're already spending a lot and you're having no problem meeting other spending requirements and things. I mean, I think it'd be kind of crazy to keep the card if you don't spend the 5k because that's that's what is it 89 bucks a year for no reason for nothing yeah no um but yeah if you're gonna spend the 5k and you're you're in the best western you know it meets your needs great i'm not i'm not gonna get

it i mean either let's be clear I don't need the Best Western points because I have Chase points and I have other kinds of points. And it's the worst case scenario and go through the Chase portal and book a Best Western at one and a half cents value with a Sapphire Reserve. So if I need a Best Western,

I'd probably book it that way. I don't really need Best Western points at least. Also, I'm sure you're like me. I have a spreadsheet full of card spend opportunities, like spend, you know, $200 a year on airline incidentals on this card, spend $300 a year at Marriott properties on this card and for all the different rebates and things. And I need another one of those, Like I need a whole net, right? So you don't want to have to keep track of your 5K.

But I mean, you MS that anyway, right? I mean, you're going to do that. No, I mean, it's not hard. I just don't want another thing on the list, right? Now, that's why, you know, I'm still happy with my Radisson card because it automatically gives me, what, 40,000 points every year just for paying the annual fee. Funny, I logged into my Radisson card because it automatically gives me what 40,000 points every year just for paying the annual fee. I logged into my Radisson account yesterday on my phone just to see, and sure enough, my 40,000 had posted and I was kind of like, yeah, there's my 40,000 points. And, and like, when was the last time either of us have like spent any points, you know,

I got hundreds of thousands, hundreds of thousands of Radisson points. I spent all my points a couple of years ago and I still have hundreds of thousands now. Oh, good for you. Too many, too many. I'm still sitting on a lot. And, and you know, if, if I have a chance to, I wouldn't mind at all blowing them all at that new Radisson blue and, and the Maldives if, if I ever get out that way, but. Well,

and maybe you will because we're going to talk all about your around the world journey in a few minutes, but so maybe, maybe we'll talk about what you should do so that you can go to that radisson blue all right let's let's well let's talk about that now let's so so the thumbs up or thumbs down on the on the matches running segment so should everybody be running out and getting a best western card let's get that one and spending 5k if you ask it that way two thumbs down when asked that way okay yeah done all right so there's best western and no offense to the folks who are already applied and are like oh yes i got my best western it's fine i mean there's some people i think we were clear it's it's it's it's good it's it's good it's not it's not

incredible but it's good if you're in the best world. Not match or strong worthy. Okay. All right. So that brings us then to the main event. Welcome to the main event. Greg's Big Trip. Greg's Realm the World Business Class Adventure. Wow. So I've written before about my 269,000 ANA miles, which were going to expire about a year ago or whatever. And they got extended because of the pandemic. And then they got extended again more recently.

I had to register to extend them, but did that. So now they're going to expire end of September. I have no particular reason to believe they'll get extended again. Just rotting away slowly in your A&A account. It's like a ticking time bomb, like 269,000 miles that could just disappear one day if I'm not careful. And so that of course has led to a lot of sleepless nights. Now, it hasn't been my sleepless nights, but a reader who reached out saying that this predicament is causing him sleepless nights. And he said, well, why don't you use those miles to do ANA's Round the World Award? And we've written before, ANA has one of the best deals in travel.

I think you could easily make the argument that it's the best deal in travel, but where they have this award chart for flying around the world. And it's based on how far you go. But the point is like business class around the world can be unbelievably cheap. It could be cheaper than, you know, just flying round trip to Europe on most programs. That's amazing. That's amazing.

Let that sink in for a second. You can fly all the way around the world, stopping in like eight cities in business class for fewer miles than what many programs charge you just to fly to Europe and back. Like that's amazing. And it's cheaper than flying one way to Europe on Delta in business class. Right. Right. Let's get that straight. Cheaper than one way to Europe. Or it can be.

It can be cheaper depending on how far you go, how many segments. The segments all add up to your total distance, but it's certainly possible to make that cheaper. Right. Wow, that's just nuts. It really is. I mean, it's one of those things that I've looked at this

so many times before and been like, wow, that's a great deal. I really want to do it. And just never took the time to put it together and try to plan it and try to make it happen. And now of course, in these pandemic times is I'm just continuing to collect points and they're just kind of building and building. I'm looking at it. I'm like, I have got to do one of these round the world things. And I haven't planned it yet. And I don't know a ton about it. And I'm really happy that you gave somebody sleepless nights because that means that by the time I go to book this,

I'll already know whatever mistakes you made and the hours you spent on customer service. And I'll skip right to the finish line and get this all done in one shot. So, so, all right. So you get somebody who's sleepless because they don't want your miles to expire. You don't want your miles to expire. Nobody does. And everybody wants to hear what you're going to do with them. So you're planning, you're thinking about this amazing round the world trip, taking advantage of ANAs around the world trip. I am, I am. And, and, um, so, you know, I, I took him on his challenge. I was like, you know what, that's, that's an awesome idea. Not only is it a great use of the miles for me personally, but it's obviously a great use of my miles and time for the purpose of our website and blog, I mean, and podcast, because it's going to produce all kinds of really useful information. And I think it already has. So I wrote about the plans in the blog, my initial thinking, and I'll talk about that in a sec. And in response, a lot of people

wrote up their experiences and there were a lot of good tips in there, so much so I was able to turn around and take all those tips and create a tips page, tips for flying ANA around the world. And so there's a lot of good there. So let's, I guess, we'll start with what my initial plan was. And before you do that, when you say flying ANA around the world, I want to be clear for people who aren't familiar with it. You don't have to fly ANA. He's talking about flying around the world using ANA's around the world award chart. But of course, you can fly all the star Alliance partners.

So that's what like 27 or 29 airlines or something. You've got a lot of different options. So there's a, there's a lot of them. Yeah. So you're not limited to flying ANA, but ANA is the one that has the great deal. And of course they're an Amex membership rewards transfer partners. So if you've just picked up a lot of points, like for example, if you've got that new platinum card offer with a 100K and 10X that we were talking about before. I mean, if a two-person household got that offer and did some grocery spend on it, you would basically be in Greg's shoes with enough points to book two around-the-world trips, right?

I mean, if two people got that card. So, all right. So you started your planning. Where did you begin with this? Okay. So, so, so I looked at what are things that my wife and I really want to do? Cause that's, that's what we would be doing is, is flying this together. It, the timing is actually really great because she is a professor who was supposed to be

on sabbatical last year or now, now she was supposed to be on sabbatical last year or now. Now. She was supposed to be on sabbatical now, but postponed it because of the pandemic because original plans was to spend most of it in Australia, most of the sabbatical time in Australia. And so it was pretty sad canceling that. But now we're planning for her to be on sabbatical, you know, starting in January of next year.

So January of 22. And in addition, we still want to spend a lot of time in Australia. But in addition to that, some of the things we want to do is we very much, this is sort of one of the drivers for us. We want to visit a good friend who's, who lives in Cape Town, South Africa. So that's a, I'd say that's, that's an essential stop. We would love to do a safari while we're in Africa. Some other things we would like to do, we would like to visit a friend who's currently living in Delhi, India. And so we'd like to stop there. We'd like to visit another friend who's in Singapore.

And then if you say Australia, then finally we also long just desired to visit New Zealand. Never been there. Would love to spend a good amount of time there. So if I were just to not worrying about the distances or anything, just draw up, you know, where do we want to stop and everything? Those, those places that I just mentioned would be, would be on the way. And if it, if along the way there were other interesting things, that would be great. So for example, when I looked at awards available on Star Alliance from

the US to South Africa, I found one that went through Lisbon. And I've never been to Lisbon. And it's like, Oh, well, if we could bake in a few days there, that would be really nice. Why not? Yeah. And Lisbon is great. It's pretty inexpensive, you know, nice, cool, rustic European city. So definitely recommend you make that stop in if you can Cape town you've been before. And, and, you know, so, you know, how gorgeous Cape town is. That's a great stop. If you're going to get there and you can do the safari, I got to feel like you got to do one of the virgin safari places, right? I mean, come on, right?

You got to. That's definitely high on the list. You got to get a virgin ducky. As much as I love Kruger and I love Kruger National Park and I'd like to tell you, oh, you should go to Kruger. The kid in me, the spectator in me, the FM fan in me is like, I want to see Greg go get another virgin ducky. So I definitely. Right. And so for the record, there are two virgin properties in Africa that are safari

properties. There's more, there are more virgin properties in Africa, but there's two that are safari properties. The one that's in South Africa. Yeah. It gets great reviews. I think both do. I'm not sure. What's not consistent is the value you get per mile. So if you use your Virgin Atlantic miles, or they're now called points, to book it, if the value I'd get is really poor, then I'm going to have some thinking to do. Right, right. Let me put it that way.

Right, of course, because there's a lot of points. We were talking, what, like 600,000 points or... Something like that. A lot of points, yeah. Yeah. So you got to know you're getting good value out of it. But okay, so if you do get good value, I would certainly love to hear the story

and see how those go. And then, yeah, I mean, you got a couple of other fantastic stops in there. Delhi, Australia, Singapore, pretty cool and nice to have those types of goals. And and, you know, one of the exciting things about this round the world trip is that you can be like, you know what? I want to go visit all my friends who live all over the world and for not a lot of points with this. Right, right, right. And that actually brings up the direction question. So when I wrote up my post about the idea, I posted as if we would definitely be going east. So we'd be going first to Africa and then to India, then to Singapore,

then to Australia. A few people wrote in saying, you really should think about going West, that it's better for jet lag. And yeah, I mean, we could do that. I had us going East because I wanted to visit our friend in South Africa first, but it's not necessarily required. I mean, so anyway, so if we went the other way, it actually has another potential plus besides potentially less jet lag, which let me get back to that question in a second. But the other plus is we actually have a friend who's going to be working in europe in like scandinavia uh in the

in the like um spring and so or you know early spring i think and so if we go the other way potentially the trip could you know be ending with with us coming from Africa up to Europe to visit her before coming home. Um, not crucial that we do that, but, but that would be kind of a cool little plus. Then of course I got to say, well, if you're thinking about that though, you got to think about seasonality here. If you're going to, if, if, if the safari is going to be a big piece and or the other parts too, then you have to consider seasons because like, for example, that would be the farther you go into spring, you're looking at summertime, more vegetation, harder to see animals. So if you're looking at South Africa for that, or with that as a large purpose in mind, or

safari is a big part of your purpose, then you may want to do it the other way around and be there in January when there's hopefully less vegetation, a little bit easier to see animals. But I say so January is like the beginning of their summer. And so I'm there'd be less vegetation. Maybe. I mean, I don't know. You know what? You should do your research on that.

But that's something to consider because I don't know. You want to you want to think about that a little bit, but that's probably not the central piece of the trip. So maybe not the biggest thing, but then you do have to think about it on the other end too. Cause if you're going to go to Australia and New Zealand, then of course you want to think about the weather in those places too. And I tell you what, I went to Australia in the summertime there once and when it was summertime there and it was amazing, it was awesome. So I would love to do that again. Well, you know, I mean, I think we're not talking about spending like six months on this trip. So it's more like, you know, two to three at the outside.

You're going to hit nice weather. It's going to be in the southern hemisphere. It's going to be summer for the whole time. Nice, nice. The endless summer. You're going to have an endless summer here. It's going to go summer here. Pretty much. Well, I don't know. I mean, you live in Ann Arbor, so maybe you'll have a little a little bit of winter first, but, but then you can get right back to the summer. So that that's kind of fun and exciting. Sorry. You said you were thinking about all those places and you're talking about East, West, West, East. Is there one that you think is preferable? Cause I know a lot of readers told you that you shouldn't even be thinking about traveling East. You should be just traveling West.

Do you have a firm opinion on that? And then, and then of course we got to talk about your calculations as you started to think about what actually makes sense. So, yeah. So, so the interesting thing is flying East has, has one sort of technical advantage, which is the flights are actually a little bit faster because of the jet stream. So the, you know, their fight against it when going West and, and take advantage of it going stream. So their fight against it when going west and take advantage of it going east. So that's one advantage of going east.

The jet lag thing, I mean, yes, there was a scientific study or at least one that showed that theoretically flying west should lead to less jet lag. The problem is I don't know that that's true for my wife and I, or, or, or we've just gotten so used to, cause we fly to Europe regularly during normal times. And we've gotten so used to the process of fly there overnight. Don't sleep very well on the airplane, but you get there and you, you, you know, maybe take a very short nap but otherwise make yourself stay up until evening and and um then by the next day we're fine and so i don't know that jet lag is

enough to to to make the argument plus i when we went to japan last which is obviously flying the other way i don't remember us having a particular easy time with, no, we didn't. I mean, we went to Japan a couple of years ago and yeah, we didn't have a particularly easy time with it either. Of course that was partly because we were traveling with a, like an infant, you know, very, very young child that didn't help us. I'm sure. But, but yeah, I mean, we definitely had some jet lag cause I, you know, remember that higher agency in Tokyo going down to the seven 11Eleven that's in the basement. If you've stayed there before, you know the 7-Eleven I'm talking about because you were there too probably in the middle of the night if you've stayed there before.

So you're probably one of the other folks I saw down there. So yeah, I mean, I remember being up at 4 o'clock in the morning right away and having trouble with the time change initially. So yeah, I don't know. I don't really buy into that East versus West stuff. I might want to go West for the longer flights for a little bit of extra time and luxury, but yeah. All right. So now how about distance wise though? Because you talked about if you weren't thinking about distance, these are all the places that you would like to go to. But the thing is we've talked about how it's an amazing deal, but it does charge based on cumulative distance.

So the way the ANA around the world chart works, if you're not familiar with it is they have these distance bands. And so if your trip is within a certain distance, then you get charged X number of miles. And of course, Greg's got 269,000. So he's kind of between a couple of distance bands here. So he has to consider, does he want to stay under the number of miles he has in order to avoid having to transfer any more to ANA at this point? And then there's some limitations in terms of how far he can fly. Or does he want to open it up and fly as far as it is that he wants and transfer more points in for membership rewards to have however many it is that he ends up needing for the trip that he wants to take? So, I mean, what have you considered there? Well, I'm convinced what I want to do is I want to spend more miles than I have so that I don't have any leftover that I have to figure out what to do with.

The ideal, though, would be to just go to that very next distance band so that I only have to inject a small number more membership rewards points into my ANA account, book it all, you know, and then use it all up exactly. That to me would be the ideal scenario. As I had plotted out previously, it looked like I would be going up maybe a couple distance bands instead of just one, maybe two or three distance bands. And so, you know, I was looking at putting in more, if I went that way, more membership rewards points than I would necessarily want. That said, when I came up with like shorter versions that cut out some, some of the options. I realized, well,

if I booked, you know, my trips, let's say, let's say I didn't go down to Australia with the miles, I just have a really long layover in Delhi and use other miles to go from Delhi to or Singapore, from Singapore to Australia, then it would cost me more miles to do that than just going to the next distance band. So from that point of view, it still looks good. But some people, including you, suggested a creative idea to make the distance a lot shorter. Now, the relevant rules here with ANA are that you have to start and end in the same region, I believe, but mainly that you have to, you're supposed to cross both the Atlantic and Pacific ocean. And one, one idea that's been floated is, is whether you can either begin or end in Hawaii and whether that they count that as crossing the Pacific?

Because I flew across the Pacific for a few hours, I guess. Right. Yeah. I mean, it's a few hours for sure. I mean, and we ended up back in the United States. So that might work. I haven't yet tested that. Another version of that that might very of my travel be within the continental U.S., I could theoretically fly to Hawaii, have an open jaw to Chicago,

and then fly the 200, 300 miles from Chicago to Detroit to get home. And then, of course, I could use the Turkish Miles and Smiles super cheap award to fly between Hawaii and Chicago. So that's another strong possibility, which I intend to get on the phone with ANA, try to price it out and see what happens. You know, I'll come up with a itinerary that works well enough to test it with. It won't be my final itinerary, but just to see if that's a possibility. So that, I mean, that's an interesting way of hacking it, right? Because if you're able to start or end in Hawaii, then it's a much shorter distance across the Pacific to get to Asia. So, and like Greg's saying, we all know that you can get to Hawaii quite easily with Turkish miles and smiles sweet spot because the United flight is going to be 7,500 points one way

in economy or 12, five, if you can find business class availability. So that's a rare situation where you're probably going to do better if you can book that leg with some other miles. But the point Greg made before, I mean, he was looking at maybe cutting out Australia and just booking that as a separate award from Singapore or blah, blah, blah, something like that. It's really hard to beat the value of the ANA award chart though. Once you get out there and you're traveling around, you're gonna have a really hard time flying around in business class for fewer points than whatever ANA is going to charge you to add that extra stop. But they do have some other rules. So you got to

cross the Atlantic, you got to cross the Pacific. What else is it that you have to keep in mind in the planning process? Um, so let's see, I have a list here. You have a maximum of eight stopovers. So, um, you know, so eight destinations that, that we're going to count up, um, there you can have 12 segments and, um, four of these open jaws. So, um have 12 segments, and four of these open jaws so. But anyway, let's just talk 12 segments so that could, you know, I could be coming close to that, depending on how many segments each of these, each of these flights are so like getting from Detroit to South Africa, it's possible to do that with one stop. It's very, very unlikely that I'll do it in one stop. So you probably have three segments there. And so that's the kind of calculations we're going to be doing all along. Getting from South Africa to Delhi is most likely going to be at least one stop.

So that'll be two segments. So you're like halfway there almost. You're at five, right? Yeah. So it adds up quickly. And so that's something I'm going to have to be very careful about. And, you know, this is all dependent on actual like saver award space being available on all these Star Alliance airlines. And so that's really the key is like,

do, do, um, flights exist that could get me around the world with only 12 segments, uh, or less? Uh, yes. Um, will I be able to find a word space on them? That's, that's a big unknown. Yeah. Yeah. You know, what would make this an even more interesting challenge and, and nobody will probably ever be able to, to take the time to even more interesting challenge and nobody will probably ever be able to, to take the time to figure this all out and make it happen. But if you nested two of these to make them separate trips, so like you could somehow nest these deals so that you can be flying to and from places. I don't know. I mean, there'd be some planning to be done there, but then that might make it a little bit easier, but, but of course a lot more difficult too, because you got to find all the availability, you got to book it and you

can book like, I don't know, whatever a year in advance ish that ANA allows you to book award flights. So, but then you run into challenges like some carriers that don't release as much award space to partners or usually release closer to departure that you're not going to be able to necessarily pick up. And you also have to consider fuel surcharges because ANA passes those along. And so the Lufthansa group, airlines, Lufthansa, Brussels, I think, Austrian, Swiss, they're going to have higher fuel surcharges. And unfortunately, those are a number of the airlines that fly between Europe and Africa. So you're going to have to get a little creative there in terms of how you route so you can get to Africa in fewer stops anyway, if that's going to be your

first stop. So those are all things. Right, right. Absolutely. Absolutely. So in my post about tips, I mean, I laid out like, as far as we know, which airlines charge no or pass on through ANA, zero fuel surcharges or it's very low and which ones are known to be high. So that'll be helpful using that list so that when I'm finding award space, I'll be like, oh, Lufthansa, no, I'm not even going to bother with that. I know that'll be crazy high. Some of the others, though, it seems like it depends like some routes are are higher than others i guess um another trick this is relevant to this topic and the topic we just talked about which is uh if i want to minimize the distance flown as part of the ana around the world trip one or a few people recommended this idea of using United's excursionist perk,

sort of like I did in the 40K to Far Away Challenge, to traverse a big part of Africa. So that would cut out a lot of the distance that ANA is adding in. It would also cut out for that leg worries about fuel surcharges because United doesn't pass those along. And so, and it could also cut out some other little things like, so for example, in order to do this, what I want to do is i want to start the um i i want to pay for an award leg on united in the united states before in time i get a free leg across africa and so since i'll be starting detroit and almost all star alliance flights are are going to be out of like the New York or DC area. Um, I could, I could start my excursionist perk by flying my wife and I flying United from Detroit to Newark or Detroit to, um, DC and,

and then use ANA miles to get to Africa. It's part of the round the world thing, traverse Africa as my excursionist perk and so on. So that's very clever. And, uh, something that I would definitely, uh, consider if, if I could figure out, you know, will it, will it, uh, reduce the mileage enough to make it worthwhile? That would, that's pretty cool. Yeah. That's a really cool idea, especially because like you said, it could help you a potentially avoid fuel surcharges with an airline that charges high fuel surcharges and be cover quite a distance, especially in a continent like Africa, you can, you know, traverse quite a large distance there. Or alternatively, within Europe, you could cut off probably what I assume is a decent amount of distance if you were to fly

somewhere to Istanbul, you know, and then you could be flying Lufthansa or flying Swiss or whatever, because if you're doing it with the excursionist park with United, you're not going to pay fuel surcharges on that. And then Turkish has tons of reach for a Star Alliance airline from Istanbul. You should be able to get most places that you'd like to get from there and at least have cut a little bit of distance off, potentially not in your case necessarily, but for somebody else who's looking to do around the world, that might be something else that's useful. So yeah, I think that's a terrific tip to come from readers on that. What other tips so far have come out that you thought this is really useful? This is something that I'm going to keep in mind as I book this. So I've yet to find out if it'll actually be useful, but one reader reminded me of that there's a Star Alliance round-the-world booking tool.

And it will let you assemble an around-the-world trip online for Star Alliance. And so that's useful for figuring out what carriers might be available with flights during that time. It's probably useful to add up the mileage that ANA is likely to add up. It doesn't do a word flight. So, so it doesn't know whether those word flights are available, but I'll just throw that out there as, as something, one of the tips we got. So, so go ahead. Yeah. I mean, another tip was around using alternative call centers and, and, um, whether or not

I haven't, I haven't given that tip a try yet, but, but the, the general idea is sort of clever that, that there might be call centers where there's not that many people working there. And so if you ever want to get like the same person again on the phone, it's much easier if you call, you know, if they have some little tiny call center and in, uh, in Africa or something. Right. Right. Yeah. You call Tokyo, you're not getting the same person twice, but you call, you know, some other, you know, off location office and maybe you will get that same person twice. That's a great tip. And that's also a tip that probably is applicable in other situations, other airlines, award bookings, that sort of

thing. Exactly. One thing to keep in mind there, the foreign foreign ticket offices and things can certainly be useful when you're trying to book awards. Sometimes I mean that we've seen that with American for years that calling Australia works better for booking anti-hot flights and Turkish. I've had better luck with overseas ticket offices the last, you know, however many months here. So things like that. Even Marriott rewards, uh, there have been times where the trick was to get someone in there like Singapore office or wherever it was, uh, to, uh, to book certain types of, um, sure. Uh, travel travel packages that were worthwhile. Right. I wanted to add a lap infant to a flight on Cafe Pacific that I booked with American Miles,

I think. And I ended up just calling Hong Kong, calling the office there. And in that case, I knew I wasn't going to talk to the same person twice, but I figured I'd probably get somebody who A, spoke English because in Hong Kong, that's pretty likely. And then B, somebody who was probably going to be motivated to help and give decent service. And certainly that was the case, too. So, yeah, that's a great tip in general. What about tools? I want to talk about tools for a quick second. What are the tools you anticipate using in order to find availability and figure it out? You just talked about the Star Alliance booking tool, but what else are you going to use to piece this together to figure out, I don't know whether it's to figure out the distance or the award availability. Are there any other tools that people should know about or which airlines fly from which airports that are like your go-to tools you think for planning this? That's a great question. So for that question, which airlines, specifically which Star

Alliance airlines fly from point a to point b i use something called flight connections it lets you map it out super easily uh it is free although i i did pay a while back for the annual subscription wasn't very much just to get rid of the ads but um so i use that all the time and. And it lets you either pick individual airlines or whole Star Alliance, whatever you want. Shows you on a map, very useful. Yeah, that's a great tool. That was the first thing that came to mind when you were talking about figuring out

who flies where and whatnot. When you talked about the Star Alliance booking tool, I was like, oh, flight connections. Yeah. Super useful for this kind of thing because it's so visual and quick. It's way better for that. Yeah, great, great.

Yeah, what it won't do, what the Star Alliance tool will do is, is if you know your exact dates, then it's going to tell you what's possible for those dates, for flying those dates. Whereas the, um, flight connections to just show you, well, there is a route between these two cities. That doesn't mean they fly in january it might be a summer you know it might be a june to september route or something so um yeah anyway i i rely a lot on that i rely a lot for checking distance distances i use a great circle mapper gc map. Um, and, uh, people said one of the tips given was that ANA doesn't calculate their miles the same as GC map does. However, I have to assume that it's going to be within a rough ballpark. So if I'm anywhere close to above or below a, um, a range, you know,

then I'll, then I'll call ANA and try to get the official mileage for that. But it's good enough to get in the ballpark. Award booking. How do I know if the awards are available? There's a number of tools that I've already been using for planning this. One is united.com. United does a pretty good job of searching across all the star alliance carriers to see which flights are available it'll give you a calendar

view and show you uh in the calendar with little dots which days have business class awards available what it doesn't do in that calendar is show you that there's business class in every segment during that day. You might click it. Yeah. You might click a day and find out you're flying half of it in economy, but it's still, it's better than nothing. I will be using a lot SeatSpy, which has united, Seat seat spy lets you see a whole year of award availability between two points on specific carriers and united is one of them and so that's very convenient in a way because united is is one of the best ways for getting off of this continent getting off or back to this continent, because

it's Star Alliance, it doesn't have any fuel surcharges on those routes. They have routes that are all the way between Australia or New Zealand and the US. And so like, you know, whether that's the end or beginning of my flight, I could potentially use them. And it's convenient. SeedSpy lets me like pick a route, set up an alert and just forget about it. And if I get an email saying that the ward's available, great. So that'll be there. Luckily, I won't have to spend a lot of time on it.

I just have to identify which routes I'm interested in, set the alert and wait, wait for that to happen. And Juicy Miles, of course, is a great tool as well. And that'll come in more when I know the specific dates or around what dates I want to travel, then it'll give me plus or minus one day. I say I want to travel between, you know, US and South Africa on January, make up something fifth. And then it'll show me for the fourth, fifth and sixth, what business class flights are available as awards. I think I would have to use my smarts basically

to know whether there's Star Alliance. Although I guess it will tell me whether those things are bookable, for example, with United Miles or Aeroplan Miles. And that will basically tell me that it's likely to be bookable with ANA as well. Although that brings me to a question that I don't know the answer to, and I don't know whether or not you know the answer. Do you know, can you mix? Well, first, does ANA have partners that aren't in the Star Alliance?

And then if they do, can you mix those with Star Alliance carriers on the Around the World chart? I'm pretty sure, yes, that they have partners that are not Star Alliance, but I'm also 99.99% sure you can't add them in. I think this is called a Star Alliance Around the World award. So, yeah, it's specifically star alliance i believe um so united probably would be the most useful tool for a lot of people to be able to see a wide range of availability at one time juicy miles you know my mind when you're talking about it but i think united as you said convenient for being able to see a month of availability of course juicy miles will tell you the percentage of the itinerary that's in business

class so that's kind of quick reference, easier reference maybe than clicking on each individual day with United. But United can be super helpful for those types of things. And I used to find that United's calendar tool wasn't always reliable, that sometimes those days with the dots weren't the only days that had availability. But I don't know, the last few months when I've tried now and then, which has been many fewer award searches than normal. So admittedly a small sample size, but I haven't seen that being the case. I haven't found that to be the case like I used to. So I don't know if it's gone and now it's just accurate or I just haven't done enough searches, but, but something to keep in mind that it may not be entirely accurate if you're looking at the United tool.

Now, I'm not saying that it's not accurate in terms of showing award space. I'm saying that sometimes it might not show the dots, but really there is business class availability if you click on that day. That's the way it used to be. I don't know that it's still that way now though. Right, right. All right. So I mean, I think that wraps us up with the planning stages of the A&A round the world chart or round the world trip, Greg's round the world adventure, right? Yeah, yeah, no, that's it. So, you know, I'm excited. I'm jealous.

It's fun to... I'm jealous. It's fun to imagine these things and it's a fun puzzle too, to solve like how to do this the best. And so I'll keep writing about it as I come up with new things. And of course, we'll keep talking about it as when come up with new things. And of course, we'll keep talking about it as when there's anything interesting more to say.

I'll keep living vicariously through you during that whole time and looking at my membership rewards balance and thinking, you know, maybe we got to make that happen one of these days. And I imagine, you know, the thing that I think makes the timing on this particularly good

is that there's probably a lot of people out there that are finding their membership rewards balance continuing to grow because they haven't been traveling as much. And there's been some fantastic offers from Amex. Crazy good offer. And there's a good chance that as travel starts to pick up initially, there probably still will be lower demand. So there may be, we don't know this will be the case, but there may be better award availability for travel next year, at least initially. So the timing might be right for a lot of people to be looking at this. So this is something to consider anyway.

So it's true. I mean, you know, the big gamble still is like, will the countries be open to us? And, you know, sure, we're vaccinated, but that doesn't mean that countries will all be available to come in. So hopefully we can. But I think really for us, the biggest question mark is Australia and New Zealand. Will they open up in time? And that's actually an argument maybe for me going east so that I spend more time in Africa and India first to hopefully give Australia and New Zealand more time to open up if they're not by January.

Great, great point there. All right. So that, my friends, I think brings us to the next segment up, the post-roast. Post-roast time. Post-roast time. All right. And so this week, I am going to step back and instead of roasting you myself, Greg, I am going to let one of our readers roast you. Are you going to let Larry roast you? I am going to. You knew that it was going to be Larry, didn't you? You knew. I'm going to let Larry K roast you this week. All right. Let's hear what Larry has to say. I'm going to skip over half of Larry's comment and just get right to the good stuff. So

Larry commented on your post about using points for Wyndham Vacation Rentals. So you talked about this whole Wyndham-Vacasa partnership and how it might mean something great, but then it might not mean something great and blah, blah, blah. And I'm going to let Larry do the talking here. So Larry described the post as one of this type of posts, the type of posts, the I thought of something that might be of great value. And I did a bunch of work and it turns out I have no idea if it's good or not. And there's a decent chance there's no way to find out,

but maybe my process will be helpful. And in any event, I had to spend time on the phone with clueless customer service reps. So at least I should post about a type of post. So I think that was Larry's nice way of saying that. I didn't learn anything from this post. I think you left out the part. Didn't he say something like, this is my favorite type of post?

He did say that too. But that's not the roast. That's not the roast. Gotcha. I gotcha. Yeah, no, I enjoyed reading Larry's comment there. So did we learn anything from your Wyndham post? I mean, we learned that Wyndham doesn't make any sense.

We learned that. Oh. Yeah. Well, we learned from, if you read other comments on that post, we learned that it's the part of the title. So my title, I was very proud of this, you know, saying something like uh uh incredible value possible good value likely frustration guaranteed and what we learned

from reader comments who have who have tried to do this frustration is absolutely 100 guaranteed so if that's what you're looking for um i think they're giving choice a run for their money. But the post, I'm having fun with it. Post was actually, I thought it was interesting too. I agree with Larry. It was one of my favorite kinds of posts where you're like, ah, I tried. I threw everything I had at it and got nothing out of it. So, you know, it sounded interesting.

And when I got like halfway through, I was thinking to myself, I mean, I've got a bunch of Capital One points. I could transfer some points over to Wyndham and, you know, see if I can get this booked. And it might be interesting to follow up and write about my experience doing it after all this work that Greg has done, because he doesn't have the Wyndham points yet. And then I got further and further along into it. And I was like, yeah, I'm not transferring anything. Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, it was also it was one of the more fun posts i've written for a while um and so you know i i just i hope people read it even if they don't win them points because i

think it's fun i think it's a fun read um it is and uh yeah that's why i let larry roast you because because i wanted to make it clear that reading it's not just me reading it and trying to find something to roast but but readers found that funny too and and entertaining even i presume from larry's comment that he probably is not trying to book a windham vacation rental either but found the entertainment value in the post still and and how this game presents these really interesting weird opportunities that sometimes you find something great i mean we both stayed in amazing places that were vacation rentals through windham a few years ago that was something that sounded too good to be true and lo and behold it worked out great and now this time around it sounded pretty good i don't know if i'd say too good to be true pretty good but turned out

that it's probably not even that yeah yeah so Yeah. So, so that's kind of sad, but, um, but if you're listening to this and you've got a ton of Wyndham points, give it a shot. I'd love to hear your experiences. I mean, it sounds like so far everybody has struck out the people who've tried. Yeah. I mean, somebody out there has got that. I don't know. Someone in the comments put up, put a phone number in that might, that might work to, to have more luck. So I'm still intending to give that a try and see whether I can get someone more clueful to figure out whether there's any there there. But there's a reader out there

that got that Wyndham earner card for 8X at gas stations and is now suddenly flush with Wyndham points. You're out there somewhere. You're listening right now. Book one of those Vacasa vacation rentals and tell us all about it. All right. All right.

So that's it. That's my roast. All right. All right. Then my turn. So you wrote Best Ways to Get to Europe or you reposted Best Ways to Get to Europe and now includes various things like Isiana.

I see where this is going. I see where this is going. I see where this is going. And it also includes transfers from Brex. Right. So a couple of small, these are just small things. So, yeah. So, you know, before you do a lot of effort adding Asiana to a lot of these posts, you might want to remember that Korean Air is on the precipice of buying them out. We'll probably take over their award program and Asiana Awards will be no more.

Like the Asiana credit cards, which also are apparently a thing of the past. Also are no more. Yeah, me so yeah so i'll i'll i'll leave it at that yeah yeah yeah so there's a lot of great sweet spots in that post just asiana may not be the one that you're interested in but i mean i guess if you have a whole bunch of those points though now's the time to use them right because you know now you know that you can use them for good value to go to europe and you want to do that probably before korean takes over because you probably won't be able to use them for good value anymore once they do so time to use them now use them or lose them so speak actually speaking of that a reader had a great

question on my around the world post which was he's thinking of doing the around the world he's seeing asiana award availability for when he wants to go should he book it given that it might be owned by korean by the time he actually flies and will will this still work because korean is not a star alliance partner uh if if anything you know if there's any flight issues is he going to be just out of luck what what do you think i what would you do you know so there's a big part of me that says well that's risky because if you know they say no they're not going to honor the tickets right and it's not a star alliance carrier anymore and or they're going to route them differently because you know whatever they've got different routes, different planes, whatever it might be,

then you could run into a problem. Because if ANA is like, all right, we got to rebook the whole thing. And then now all of a sudden, there's not award availability on all these partners, maybe you've got yourself a big problem, and or maybe they want to reprice it, and it's going to cost you more miles. So there's definitely a risk in there. On the flip side, I feel like ANA has got such good customer service in general that I feel like they would probably work to accommodate you, right? And probably whatever leg it was, you know, apart from if you were looking to travel within Korea, probably whatever locations were served by Asiana are probably also served by ANA. I'm thinking most likely a lot of them, not all of them. Chances are good.

They would, they would put you on their own. That's what I'm thinking. You know, although I say that, and I know there are some places like Saipan, for instance, that at least used to be served by Asiana. I don't know if they still are, but definitely not by ANA. So, um, so maybe that's not true for all destinations, but yeah, I would think that ANA would probably try and accommodate you on their metal if they could, but there's definitely an element of risk. Although, is it any different than the element of risk right now with booking something to Australia and New Zealand without any idea as to whether or not they're actually going to be open? I don't know. Is it any more risky than anything else right now? I'm not sure. I don't know. I mean,

I told them that if it was me personally, I wouldn't risk it. I would try to find other flights. Just because even if nothing bad happened, it would be like a stress just hanging over me all the time. Like, this could happen. This could mess up. So, yeah. That was post-Rose. We both got out of that relatively unscathed, I think. Relatively. So, question of the week. Question of the week this week actually came from FDU a few weeks ago. It was a question that somebody asked in the chat box. And it was a question I just,

like I was just doing something on a computer, like an old computer, I guess, that I had used that day. It must've been. And I went to close this and I was like, oh, that was a really good question that I had written down and forgotten about. So somebody asked, and I don't know the answer to this, so hopefully you do. They said, you know, I've got a Bank of America premium rewards card or a travel rewards card is what it was. Bank of America travel rewards card. Can I downgrade and have more than one cash rewards card in order to have more bandwidth for the 3% bonus category. So with Chase, for instance, you've long been able to downgrade and have more than one freedom or something like that.

Can you do the same thing with Bank of America? Can you downgrade other cards and end up with several cash rewards cards? Yes, yes. So Bank of America isn't as predictable as some other banks regarding like what can you product change from and to. They seem to have magic computer algorithms that decide on a case by case basis, as far as I could tell. But yeah, I definitely know people who have done that. I'm not even sure that they wouldn't let you just sign up for another one. They have some rules in place for some cards, like the Alaska cards,

that now prevent you from doing that. Didn't used to, but I just don't know if they apply that to all their cards. Well, they have the straight-up cash rewards, but then they also have the Major League Baseball cards that are... Oh, good point. Yeah, that has the exact same earning structure. So that's another way of getting a, getting another one. Yeah. And so that, yes, that should add to your bandwidth. And so if you've got the bank of America, platinum honor status, where you're getting a 75% bonus, then the 3% category on that as a 5.25% category

and up to 2000 spend per quarter. And you get to pick the categories. It's unlike the rotating categories on a chase card with bank of America. You get to pick though. They do cap your 2000 spend at both the 3% category you choose and 2% categories, which are like grocery and dining or something. So you don't want to spend anything in the 2% category because that's going to eat into your 3% bandwidth. So that's just tip on the cash rewards, especially if you're somebody who's got the, uh, you know, platinum honors or something where you're getting that 75% bandwidth. So that's just a tip on the cash rewards, especially if you're somebody who's got the platinum honors or something where you're getting that 75% bonus. You don't want to give any of that up in a 2% category.

You want to be doing it on the 3% and then actually getting 5.25%. So yes, I think you can have more than one cash rewards. I wasn't sure if you could downgrade to another one, but I thought, I mean, you should at least, at the very least be able to get a major league. I think there's two. Right.

And I think there's a very good chance you can downgrade, but yeah, you'll see. Very good. All right. All right. So that brings us to the end for this week. Thank you guys for being out there listening with us. If you're enjoying what you're listening to,

and you want to read posts about all this stuff, as soon as they come out, as soon as they hit the presses, you want to go to frequent miler.com slash subscribe. Again, that's frequentmiler.com slash subscribe to get on our email list. You can follow us on Facebook, join our Facebook group, follow us on Twitter,

all of those fun things. Again, that's frequentmiler.com slash subscribe. We'll be back here again next week. Same time, same place, so to speak. We will see you then. Bye, everybody. Thank you.