Frequent Miler on the Air - Has Citibank Sears-iously improved much this week? | Ep60 | 8-22-20

Episode Date: August 22, 2020

00:45 Reader Feedback: Greg's trip to Ventana Big Sur 4:26 What crazy thing did Citi do this week? A $900 million mistake 8:46 Mattress Running the Numbers: Targeted Marriott promotion for a free night cert after one paid night 16:24 Main Event: Searsiously? Did Sears make Citi more valuable? https://frequentmiler.boardingarea.com/on-my-mind-shop-your-way-gift-cards-are-a-big-deal/ https://frequentmiler.boardingarea.com/shop-your-way-gift-cards/ https://frequentmiler.boardingarea.com/citi-double-cash-complete-guide/ 43:24 Post Roast: Greg roasts Nick's ommissions. (Nick roasted Greg during the Main Event) https://frequentmiler.boardingarea.com/the-case-against-citi-thankyou-points-on-nicks-mind/ 52:32 Question of the Week: What is the best credit card for accelerating retirement savings through manufactured spending? Don't forget to like and subscribe! See: TheFrequentMiler.com/Subscribe for our email list, Facebook group, Twitter, etc. See: TheFrequentMiler.com/CardTalk to volunteer for a credit card intervention Music credit for intro/outro: Annie Yoder

frequent miler on the air starts now today's main event city thank you rewards becomes more valuable thanks to sears sears sears i'm looking forward to digging into that yes serious sears seriously sears yes sears crazy i i would have never believed we'd be talking about this today but yet here we are here we are of course we're not going to talk about that yet that's more of a teaser for later in the show because first you have to drag out that giant mailbag here it comes here it comes dragon dragon dragon dragon dragon oh there it is yes okay and today's feedback comes from me from you wow all right uh so i just threw all the reader mail right away threw the mail over my shoulder it crashed out the window yeah david lederman style and since we don't have like a sound effects person i just have to describe what just happened okay so I thought it was I thought it would be a good idea for me to close a loop on on something I've talked about

before so I talked before on here about how I managed to book a suite at the Ventana Big Sur and I got a great deal on it because like regular room awards weren't available but suites were when I at the time I booked and so I booked it but then I was able to through the Hyatt concierge convert it to a standard room and use a suite upgrade to get into that suite and so I was making out like a bandit and that's plus on top of the 25% rebate that's going on right now for Hyatt Cardinals. I just explained that to my wife over the weekend, by the way, cause she was asking me about the trip you have coming up. And I explained it to her and she was like wide eyed, like, wow, he did a great job. He got a great deal on that. Yeah. Um, so we were very excited and we're making our plans. And sometime in the last day or two, you know, one of the news headlines about California wildfires caught our eye.

And so we decided to dig into that a little bit and look at the, they have maps showing where these wildfires are. And there have been some right in the big sur area they just had a the road going south from ventana that was closed the highway one at least part of it uh and air quality is very poor so so the one thing we were most looking forward to about being there is it's a wonderful place to just spend time in the outdoors and hike and everything and now depending on the air quality while we're there it would be like we'd be sitting in our room with running an air conditioner i think because they're also experiencing heat wave uh so this is all very sad but we decided to cancel everything because of this. Bummer. Yeah.

I was looking forward to doing the show from our Ventana suite next week, but no. Not going to happen next week. Yeah. Yes. Right? So this is feeling like...

2020 is just not coming together. It's all like an extension of 2020, right? Because first all these plans got canceled because of the pandemic and now wildfires. So what will be next? I don't know. Can't wait. Can't wait. My goodness. Can't wait this year with the travel stuff. No, no, but certainly hope for all the best for everybody who's out there. Just kind of stay safe.

Absolutely. So anyway, just want to close the loop on that. If anyone's wondering why I'm not reporting in on my trip report from Ventana. That's an unfortunate closure of the loop there. I was looking forward to something more exciting when you said you wanted to close the loop. I was like, ooh, something interesting. And then I started on Ventana and I was like, ooh, something interesting. And then I started on Montana and I was like, ooh, painful.

Right, right. Okay. There's always next year, Craig. 2021. Yes, yes. And I'm looking forward to that, hopefully. I mean, it's got to get better, right? It's got to get better. It will. It definitely will.

It has to. Alright, right? It's got to get better. It will. It definitely will. Yeah. It has to. All right. So that brings us then next to the next hot segment of the week, which is what crazy thing did Citi do this week? And this week, Citi did not disappoint, right? They did not. So the last few weeks, we've carried the theme over to other companies

because other companies have done crazy things. Like hiring city employees to run their promotions. City's back in a big way. This one comes from Pennywise Traveler who alerted us to this news. Apparently city accidentally sent $900 million out. What? Accidentally. Accidentally. I thought it was crazy. I mean, Greg, it's like I accidentally opened an Extra Starwood Preferred Guest credit card, right?

I mean, like that's kind of crazy to accidentally do it. But he accidentally sent $900 million. And it wasn't even just that they, I mean, don't get me wrong. It's real crazy that they i mean don't get me wrong it's real crazy that they accidentally sent 900 million but it's not even just crazy that they did that it's who they sent it to right well you mean the uh creditors right revelant revelant creditors right right folks waiting for their money from revelant suddenly woke up to 900 million from city and thought oh okay great this, great. This is nice.

Except, well, I don't know. Maybe it will be nice. I don't know. Have you read about the outcome? Like what's going on? Did Citi get the money back? What's going on? Yeah, so they sent messages or called the creditors that they sent all this money to and said it was a mistake.

Oops. I think some of them. They spent that $900 million. My understanding is some of them returned the money. And at least one though, is trying to keep it. And so there's a court antics ensue. That's unbelievable. 900 million. You know, I, I often say, so my parents are kind of old school, you know,

not really into credit cards at all. Not really into the inner. I mean, they, they, I shouldn't say they're not into the internet. They, they Google things and order things online and you know, they use the internet and those kinds of basic ways. But when it comes to bank, they just won't, my mom, especially just won't do anything online with a bank. And I always try and tell her mom, when you go to the bank, it's just somebody typing it into the computer, the same as you could at home. It's just all going into it. They're just numbers or zeros and ones on a screen somewhere, no matter where you're doing it. So it doesn't really make a difference. I always say that, you know, if it's going to get

messed up, it's going to get messed up. You got no control. And I think that if and when she hears about this $900 million, all of her fears of online banking are just going to get amplified. But really, this was not even an online banking thing, right? this just now this was a behind the scenes you know it it seems to me that maybe it was them trying to pay their the interest that was owed and and someone forgot to enter a decimal place something along those lines but they and that kind of error used to be something we look forward to because sometimes what we would see our airfares where someone forgot to enter a decimal place. And so, you know, like years ago, I took advantage of that business class to

China, which was $400. It should have been $4,000. Right. So this is not one that, you know, anyone except for the companies, I guess, that receive the money particularly look forward to. But still, there you go, Citi. Bloody Citi. All right. Congratulations, Citi. You came back in a big way. You didn't disappoint.

If you were going to take a few weeks off, coming back with a $900 million mistake was the way to show just how crazy you are. Yeah. Although, you know, I think they would have been better off for our show if they had sent out 900 million thank you points to random listeners of the show. That certainly is preferable. So, Siddy, if you're listening, if somebody's going to mess up the decimal point again, that's the way to do it next time

because our readership will really appreciate that. And you know that they're big City fans. 900 million thank you points is not equivalent to 900 million dollars this is a much cheaper mistake to make so do that instead just a phony made up currency you made it up city you can hand it out that's right all right so then pivoting a little bit the next segment that we talk about every week drum roll please please, is Mattress Running the Numbers, right? So Mattress Running the Numbers is up next. What do we have going on for Mattress Running this week?

What's the new hotel promo? Yeah, so this week we don't have a public promotion, but what we have instead is a promo that was targeted to some people. We saw in the comments of a, I think it was a doctor of credit post, that some people said that they were targeted for a Marriott offer where after one stay they would get a free night

certificate and this was good up to two times up until I think it was end of October or something like that or mid October. Dr. Justin Marchegiani So what do you think? I mean, that's pretty simple. I don't know. Do you remember the details of what kind of certificate? Yeah, it was a certificate worth up to 35,000 points. So for a night up to 35K. So 35K cert, the same kind of cert that comes with all the $95 annual fee cards.

So I mean, a pretty decent free night certificate. So you stay one paid stay, get a free night, stay a second paid stay, get another free night. And that sounds a little bit like the new member offer. I think the new member offer is actually you pay for two nights and you get a free night, something like that. Something like that. This is different. And people did confirm that they got it even though they were not new Marriott members.

Now, the thing is it comes via email. And I think the fine print in the email on these, Marriott's done this a few times now. It says you have to activate it within like three weeks of receiving the email in order to be able to do it. So take a look at your email. If you don't monitor the email that your Marriott email goes to all the time, it's worth taking a look. I didn't get anything, but maybe you did. And I think some people only got something like double points on weekend nights or something. But this offer, if you got the offer for one free night cert worth up to 35K for a paid night, you can do it two times. Is it worth mattress running for

that? Would you book a throwaway set? We don't even need to do any advanced math. I mean, yes. I would say, I mean, 35K certificate is, there are some really nice properties. I mean, it's not like, you know, St. Regis Bora Bora level, but you know, the, you know, Bay Harbor in Michigan that I've, I've talked about many times I go to often beautiful resort during standard pricing at 35K. So you can spend a night there. Yeah, I would definitely do it. I think it's worth booking a cheap hotel to get that certificate. So that leads into my next question then. So how cheap?

How cheap does it have to be? I mean, obviously, if you can get a night for $50 or $60 or $70, sure. I mean, I would pay the $95 annual fee on one of the credit cards to get a free night cert worth up to $35,000. So it's worth at least probably the $95,000. But how how much like if you can't get one that's super cheap yeah like i live in an area where in the summertime paid rates are high so anything nearby me is not that 60 70 80 90 dollars a night so what uh you know how much is it worth how much would you yeah that's a good question so you know i know, I think I would, I would,

it would depend on how certain you are of, of how you're going to use it, right? So if you don't have a plan of how you're going to use it, then it might end up, you know, well, it might end up going to waste for one thing. But let's say, let's what you do is uh you end up using it at like a you know a highway stop hotel or near airport hotel that would have cost what like 120 something like in that range 125 so so i wouldn't go much over 100 i mean nate what do you think yeah i mean about around 100 is probably where i'd feel comfortable betting on it but yeah i don't know that i would bet a lot more than that unless again unless i had a plan like if if i if i had a reservation at an expensive place

like the ventana big sir i mean it's not a marriott like that um right no with marott, if you had a points reservation, I believe you could go in and modify the reservation and apply the certificate after the fact. So that would be an ideal situation because then you know how much you're getting. And you know, in that case, you'd be saving, if it was a 35K a night reservation, saving a full 35K.

And then, you know, that's, I don't know, that's how much, how much you'd pay to buy that many Marriott points. Cause you'd be getting those back. Right. Right. Yeah. And I think I'd be more likely if I were going to mattress run it to mattress run it towards the end of the promotion. Simply if I didn't have a specific plan coming up, like Greg's mentioning, uh, then, then I'd probably be more inclined to do it towards the end so that you have a little bit more time as far as how long the cert is valid. I assume it's valid for a year.

Check the fine print on that because I didn't get this offer. So if it's valid for like six months or something, that might make a difference in how enthusiastic I'd be because I made the joke about Ventana Big Sur. Hopefully it's not too soon. But the point was that even if you have plans these days, right now, I feel like things, things keep changing all the time. So, so I'd want to have a few different options. A plan is good, but a couple of other backup options in mind for that certificate too. There are lots of nice places. My hesitation is that a lot of the nice places that you could say for 35K are places I'd want to go in Europe. And I just don't

know whether or not I'll be able to travel to Europe in the window that it'll be valid. If I, in normal times, yes, I definitely go 100. I may even go 150. Right now, I don't think I would go any more than 100 though, because the places that I'd like to stay in the United States, I would be happy to stay for $100 for a 35k cert. But I don't want to gamble any more than that, like you said, just the chance that I don't end up getting to use it. Right, right. So I'm thinking an ideal scenario would be a stay that's exactly $100. Well, ideal would be cheaper, but I'm going to, and you do, you do this thing the two times you're allowed to do it. So $200 total. And if you have that Amex offer for $50 back after 200 spend at Marriott's,

then it's costing you $75 per night for those two certificates. Then I would definitely gamble. Yeah, that's a great point. Very good. Yeah. Yeah. And I assume that you're going to earn regular Marriott points on your stay too. So you're going to earn a little from there too. So no, not, not too bad. And you may even need those elite nights. If you're looking to qualify, you know, to, or requalify, especially cause we've talked about what Marriott's doing in terms of giving even need those elite nights if you're looking to qualify you know to or requalify especially because we've talked about what marriott's doing in terms of giving you half the nights from last

year so maybe a couple of those mattress run nights will come in handy if you're kind of close to the next level so you know we previously talked about we we asked about if you were six nights i think it was away from from platinum status should you mattress run for it seven i think it was yeah seven yeah and i think we said well not if you uh you know not if you don't have any real stays you know but so would this change it yes that would this change it i mean it only gets you two nights close well no i mean you could say you could spend those those two certificates this year. So basically for the cost of two nights, you could get four, yeah, I don't know. It's getting very close, but yeah.

Yeah, maybe. Yeah, and then it becomes a solid maybe. Very solid maybe. Depends on how good of a use you're going to get out of that. But yeah, yeah, so interesting. Fun stuff. If you have it, fun to to definitely click and activate you know i keep going into these mattress run topics thinking oh this one's gonna be really fast where you know what is there to say about this

it's but we found those twists and turns we did we did your entertainment i think that's okay. There you go. All right. Are you ready for the main event? Seriously? I can't even say that. Yes. Seriously. Yes. Yes. Sears.

Sears. What about Sears? Sears has made city thank you points more valuable. I don't believe it. I can't believe it. So here's what's going on. So Sears, at some point in their sordid past, created this Shop Your Way rewards program, which was a combined rewards program across Sears and Kmart.

And in the last couple of years, it's become more of a general purpose rewards program. They've tried to, I think whoever runs the Shop Your Way is trying to kind of separate it from Sears and Kmart. Plan for the future. I can't figure out why. Create some job security. But one of the things that got slipped in there at some point, I have no idea when, but Steven Pepper noticed it and alerted us to it, is that you can use shop your way points to buy gift cards and the value is sort of one-to-one and what I mean by sort of one-to-one is that

if you look at shop your way points in terms of what shop your way says they're worth, then it's one to one. So $50 worth of shop your way points gets you $50 gift card. Um, but shop your way points individually. If you look at the number of points, they're each worth one 10th of a cent. So a $50 gift card is, uh, is, uh, what? 50, 50,000 points, 50,000 points. Yeah. So it sounds expensive, but it's not really because they just have this dumb one-tenth of a thing. So that's all nice for anyone who has shop your way points. Except it's not great for everybody who has shop your way points. No, yeah. When you said that, I was like, well, it's good for some people. Some people will shop your way points. Oh, yeah. When you said that, I was like, well, it's good for some people.

Some people with shop your way points. Right. So if you get the credit card, I think you're out of luck. Some readers have mentioned to us that their shop your way points didn't work. And so, and one reader in particular said their credit card points

from their shop your way credit card did not work to buy gift cards so that's really weird because you would actually i would actually have guessed the opposite that sure that points earned from the credit card ought to be worth more than points earned from other stuff but whatever it's a weird program what about what about points earned from buying because i mean like back in the day i don't know if they do it anymore but sears used to offer tons of stuff like 100 back and right or you know yeahars used to offer tons of stuff, like 100% back in France. I used to get Sears Shop Your Way points all the time, just buying free stuff, it felt like.

I don't know whether those points work or not. I was curious about that, but I didn't see any. Not curious enough to buy something from Sears. Well, I took a quick look. I didn't see any obvious offers like they used to have all the time. It's time to go back and search for those things. Maybe they stopped doing it because they can't afford it. It turns out giving stuff away from free isn't really a great way to be profitable. You want to make money. It would certainly make a big difference on those kind of deals.

Because it used to be like, yeah, it would be like you get 100% back in rewards. But those rewards would expire in like 30 days sometimes or in a short amount of time. And so it was pretty hard to use them effectively. And if you could cash them out for gift cards, that would change everything. My guess is those won't work at least not the bonus points that expire soon anyway just my guess but good guess all that aside this is all kind of mildly interesting but not enough to be worth a main event let alone even a you know a side event for one of our shows except for the fact that thank you points transfer to shop your

way at a value of 20% more. So, so if you have $20 worth of city, thank you points. And, and when I say $20 worth, I mean at a cash out rate of 1 cent per point, then it becomes 20, uh, I should have 22. Yeah, I should use a different start. Let's start with, uh, well, $24. So 10, if you have $10, it becomes, uh, $12 in shop, your way points, um, $40 becomes $50. And so you can have $40 worth of city points. It becomes $50 and shop your way points, which now, which used to be totally uninteresting because you were limited to buying things like from Sears or Kmart. And even then they limited what you could buy with them. But now you could actually buy valuable gift cards, Walmart, eBay, um, hotels.com hotels.com yep uh and and all the like sort of standard like uber the and the streaming services hulu and whatnot so a lot of things that people use all the time are available

and so you have an actual value valuable uh gift card that you can turn these into so we have a way now to convert uh thank you points to gift cards at a increased value. And so like if you value, for example, Walmart gift cards near face value, then what we're saying is you have a way now of getting better than face value for your thank you points for shopping at Walmart or for shopping through eBay, things like that. This is noteworthy. I think this is actually very exciting because this is the only transferable points program I could think of where you could get better than one cent per point value for something other than travel. Can you think of any other? I mean, Chase, pay yourself back right now, right?

I mean, get better than that. Well, okay. Right? And if you cash out Amex points via the Schwab Platinum, you get 1.25 cents. I mean, but you're straight up redeeming the points. I should back up. Straight up redeeming the points, I guess.

So let me back up. Let me say without having a premium card. oh so this you get even if you have a no fee card and right so you're getting so you're getting uh basically 1.2 cents per point value right for stuff for stuff when i go buy pretty much anything at walmart or ebay you got it or for hotels you can you know go through hotels.com that kind of thing so that makes the double cash a which was a 2x card which still is a 2x already get to two cents per dollar when you could turn into thank you points becomes two points per dollar. Now you could turn into gift cards at, you know, 2.4 value, 2.4% returns. What do you think? Is this exciting? Or is my excitement kind of overblown here?

Well, you know, so I think we should take this even a step further before we talk about whether or not your excitement is overblown. because you made another good point when you talked about why you should be excited about this because all right so base level one city thank you point buys you 1.2 cents worth of gift cards through this you know if you transfer over to sears and then you redeem them for gift cards every one city thank you point becomes worth 1.2 cents towards these gift cards. So a card like the Double Cash, 2.4% effectively towards gift cards. And then if you got the Rewards Plus also, it gets a little better. It does.

It does. So the Rewards Plus gives you a 10% rebate each year on up to 100,000 points redeemed. And if you combine your thank you accounts, each card has its own. Thank you account But it but your city lets you combine those accounts and when you combine them That rebate works across cards so points earned on your double cash Will get that rebate and so for up to a hundred000 points redeemed, which is up to $50,000 of double cash spend to get those 100,000, but up to 100,000 points redeemed per year, you're going to get 10,000 points back. And when you do the math on that, it means you're getting up to a 2. I think I said 2.66% value on your spend on the double cash. Right.

Right. Which is like the best, you know, like hands down everywhere on bonus reward out there. I mean, we've talked a lot about the bank of America premium rewards card with platinum honors. If you have a hundred grand in investments or cash on hand with Bank of America and Merrill Lynch or Merrill edge, then you can effectively get 2.625% cash

back in the premium rewards card. And we've talked about how that's like the best deal out there, right? The best deal going. It's great. If you have the money or the investments, you can do it. You should do it because it's a terrific return on everyday spend. And this is theoretically, at least a little bit better at 2.66. So, and it requires no annual fee, no huge deposit on hand with Citi or anything like that. You just need two cards that have no annual fee. So it sounds pretty interesting. And not only that, it actually has an advantage over the Bank of America card, which is that if you decide you don't want to use the points towards gift cards, you still have the option to add a City Premier or City Prestige card into your mix,

and then they become transferable, and then you can transfer to airline partners. So the Bank of America does not give you that option. So, uh, yeah. So overall it's looking kind of crazy strong, kind of crazy, strong, kind of crazy strong, but, but of course I'm going to argue the other side here because I, I was not nearly as impressed and, and I am going to, you know, so regular listeners know that we've got another segment coming up called post-roast and, and I'm going to take a pass on my opportunity to roast later on because I'm going to roast right now. So I'm going to chance the fact that Greg is going to roast me later on. I'm going to have no sort of rebuttal because I've already used up my post-roast, but I am going to roast this because I know Greg is very excited about this and I am not nearly as excited

about it as Greg is. And here's why. All right. So the supposition here is that the gift cards are worth something to you and worth face value or near face value to you. But here's the thing. They're not. The only option in that entire list that you can't regularly buy for a pretty significant discount over its face value is Walmart. And even Walmart is on raise at 1.8% cash back today, or I'm sorry, 1.8% off of face value today. And so when they run those promos where they add another 7% back or off rather, or another 8% off, you know, then you're looking at potentially even more than that. So I would tell you that I don't value that, those gift cards at face value. Hotels.com,

one of the options you were excited about, we frequently see right now there's an Amex offer for $10 back on 50. We frequently see that Amex offer come back again and again, or other Amex offers at retailers that sell those gift cards where you can save 20% or we have seen my gift cards plus site give 15% cash back on up to $500 at hotels.com over and over in the last few months. So I look at it and I say, okay, so a $50 hotels.com gift card, for instance. So if you're going to redeem for that with Citi, you're going to need to convert over, if I did the math right, 4,166 thank you points in order to get the 50,000 shop your way points that you need. And you're going to get 10% of that back. So your net cost is going to be around 3,600, 3,700 thank you points for a $50hotels.com gift card.

But that $50 gift card is only worth 40 bucks to me because I could buy it for 40 bucks on my Amex and earn rewards on the purchase. So in the end, you're getting a $40 gift card basically, or at least a gift card that should cost you $40 for about 3,700 points, which is just over one penny a point, like a hair over one penny a point. So is it better? Yeah, it's better. It's no 2.66.

No 2.66. Come on now. Walmart's the only one. If you're a Walmart shopper, okay, great. This is a decent option if you're a Walmart shopper. Not the best you can do if you do follow Ray's and you get yourself a discount and you're able to use one of those codes before the Walmart cards are gone, but pretty good if you're a Walmart shopper. And hey, I am a Walmart shopper, so I'm not saying that like in any kind of a condescending way. I like to save money at Walmart. So this

might be a pretty good redemption in my case because I do shop there. But apart from Walmart, that one option, all the rest of those are regularly available at a discount come on Greg 2.66 you got to be kidding me so I think everything you said is true um but but you know if you if you think about no fight just sort of fight sort of back up a little bit right all these programs, they advertise like you can redeem your points for all this merchandise and crap. And it's always a bad deal. Like at best, you're getting one cent per point value. And usually it's less because the stores might be running a deal and you're not being able to take advantage of that.

There might be portal offers for those products, sort of some of the same stuff you're saying. But now, by redeeming the offer for eBay or Walmart, you can get that same stuff, probably at a really good price. And also, if Walmart is available through a shopping portal, you get a little extra cash back when you're buying the stuff. So compared to, you know, merchandise redemptions, I think this is way better than... Agreed. It's about anything we've seen.

Agreed. It's also very competitive with the you're locked in to redeeming travel through our portal type of rewards okay yeah so you know if you think about like we've always said okay well city premiere which this is going away but gives you 1.25 towards travel That's only travel book through their portal. So now, okay, you have 1.2 to get the hotels.com gift card or to get a Southwest gift card or to indirectly get a Delta gift card. You know, there's different ways of, I wrote about in one of my posts, how to get that Delta gift card, but the, the, you know, so you're getting 1.2 value towards those things. And then you're able

to book, um, the way you want to book without being tied into this like very clumsy, awkward, uh, portal. And, you know, in the case of Delta and Southwest, especially then you're, you're, you're really doing it, you know, um, directly with the vendor. And so there's none of that awkwardness. So yeah, I mean, so yeah. Which is true, but you can, again, you can get a lot of those gift cards. I mean, even Delta, we've seen opportunities to get discounts on.

Not the 20% or 15% I was talking about before. We've seen much smaller discounts on Delta through like Costco and stuff like that in the last few months. And that's not necessarily a regular thing, not nearly as regular as the other stuff. But my point here is that I feel like 2.4 or 2.66 are overly optimistic, because I feel like in most cases, you can get those gift cards at a reduced rate already, probably, or you probably have some avenue to

be able to do it. And the other thing with these shop your way cards, as you showed, a lot of them are pretty limited in terms of dollar value, right? I mean, you couldn't do more than like 30, 50, 60 bucks at a lot of these places. So you're going to have to deal with then combining them, which is really easy in some cases like hotels.com. Sounds like Walmart is fairly easy to combine them with too. And I know you can load a few to the app and use Walmart pay at the checkout, done that. So, so I mean, there are ways to do it, but then a lot of these are kind of going to be a pain in the butt to deal with a bunch of small gift cards. I mean, you mentioned the streaming services and I think like that, I don't know how you pronounce it, flus or floods or whatever that

app is that's out right now that you can buy gift cards through that. And if you get the small business offer loaded on your, your Amex card, you can, that'll trigger the small business offer loaded on your your amex card you can that'll trigger the small business offer so you buy yourself like a ten dollar gift card for five a few times if you got that offer and then if you happen to refer a couple of family members or something you can get those at 35 off plus trigger your five bucks you know you're only up to three dollars and fifty cents off but my point here is that there are lots of ways to get that stuff pretty heavily discounted. So Walmart, good. Hotels.com. The rest of them, I don't know.

You're right. It's better than merchandise. It's better than redeeming straight up for a gift card at one cent a piece. If Walmart works for you particularly or you can parlay one of your gift cards into something that you really want, like you mentioned with the Delta one, then it may have a little bit more value if that works. this combination of these two no-fee cards as the best sort of starter card you can get because it's no fee you get great rewards for your spend and even even if you stop at the at the 2% cash back you're getting decent rewards but if you if you can use the Walmart or whatever you you're getting, you're getting a, uh, up to 2.66% value. Um, and granted it depends, you know, what gift card you redeem for as to whether it's really that high of value,

but, um, what do you think? I mean, is it, can you think of a better no fee starter card or cards? Well, yeah. So I hesitate because I was going to say, yeah, I hard disagree that this isn't a good starter. So, all right. I have a couple of different points here. Is it the best no fee starter card? Maybe, but I'm going to qualify that with a few things. First of all, you get a Discover It, Miles card, no annual fee, and get effectively 3% cash back for the first year or get the rotating category one with 10% rotating categories and $1,500 in spend in each. So I think for somebody who's just getting started,

that's a super simple program. Discover has got it really easy. So I feel like that's a potentially simple one. And the additional thing here that I like about Thank You is obviously that you can transfer them to partners, to airlines and things like that. So there's definitely a big part of me that would say, oh, I would love to push somebody into earning something that's really easy for them to get and value and understand and then also learn how to use for even better value and be like, oh, wow, I can use this

with Turkish and fly to Hawaii for $7,500. That's amazing. Here I was going to take $75 in cash back or $100 in Walmart gift cards or whatever we're talking about here. And instead, I can do something much better. So I definitely see where you're going with that. On the flip side, this does not look particularly easy. So 2%, yes, that's easy. And I think the double cash from that perspective, either 2% cash or potentially the ability to transfer to partners makes it a good starter card. I don't think this serious thing makes it a good starter card because you got to try to explain to somebody that, okay, one of your thank you points is worth 12 shop your way points. And then you take those shop your way points and you move them over here to this pile and you can

somehow redeem them for a gift card. And if you could really do the math on that you're going to figure out that you get 2.66 percent but and even then it's going to be on a gift card that unless it's walmart is something you probably could have bought cheaper elsewhere anyway so i feel like that doesn't make it starter friendly i feel like if you're advanced enough to follow the math on that then it might certainly be interesting enough to you uh but i don't necessarily think that this improves it as a starter card now is the double cash combined with the rewards plus one of the best or maybe the best starter combo yes i don't think sears made it that way okay all right well that's that's actually that's a good point i think i think the the part the part

where you said that that it's maybe too complicated, that's very valid. Because you do have... If you can wrap your mind around that, you can wrap your mind around Turkish smiles and smiles. It's actually comical how many steps there are here. So let's take hotels.com as an example, just because you can combine the gift cards.

So first, you have your double cash cash back. It doesn't start as thank you reward, so you have your cash back. Then you have to know you convert it. You go through Citi.com and you convert that cash back to thank you points. Then you log into thankyou.com and you convert those thank you points to shop your way points. Then you go to shop your way, log in there, and points to shop your way points then you go to shop your way log in there and convert your shop your way points to your hotels.com gift card but because they have small denominations you've got to do you've got to buy uh you know let's say five of them separately

then you've got to go to hotels.com's gift card website and merge those five gift cards together so that then you can book your hotel and use that gift card. And again, Greg said, what was complicated about that? If you can do that, you don't need that starter card. You're ready for the prime time. You know what I'm saying? Like you can learn Hyatt. If you can learn all that, you can learn some ultimate rewards if you can figure that out. So that's what I, you know, I don't think that this improves. I think I've been sufficiently roasted for today. You win. I think it's good. I think especially for people who are looking to get out of the city ecosystem or who just aren't going to travel for a while. And you know, that's totally fine. You're not going to travel for a while and you want to cash out the points because the money is worth

more to you than the possibility of using your points to get value someday. I can respect that. And if you don't want to pay the $95 for the premier, because you don't know when you're going to transfer to a travel partner again, so you want to downgrade your premier to something, this makes a lot of sense. I mean, I think if you know how to use your points and transfer and use transfer partners, great. So I think this is actually an intermediate advanced play for somebody who wants to hang on to a slot down the road. They're going to maybe upgrade to a premier again, but in the meantime, they want to redeem their points and get some good value out of it. So I am thinking of moving my son to the double cash as like his standard, you know, earning card. And then that way, when he asked me,

what can I do with this stuff? You know, I could, I could say, well, what do you need? Totally discourage him by telling him, listen, you transfer to, thank you. And then to, you know, Walmart or Sears, and then from Sears to hotels.com. Well, in the real world, I would do that for him once he tells me what it means. Fair enough. Fair enough. So one of the things I was disappointed by, there's a gift card choice called Gift of Choice. Sounds like a choice option.

When I first saw that, I was excited because I know Gift of Choice gift cards, their whole purpose in life is that you could convert them to the gift card you really want. So that opens up a whole slew of other gift cards you can get like Amazon.com and gas gift card you really want. So that opens up a whole slew of other gift cards you can get like amazon.com and gas gift cards and so on. Some of these that are really are worth, you know, like Walmart, very close to face value because they're not usually sold at a discount. So I was very excited about that. That didn't pan out. I think there's a bug in the system right now, but it would be pretty funny because if that worked, let's say you wanted an Amazon.com gift card, then, you know, you very simply say to this starter person who, you know, just got these two

cards, so easy, just turn your $10 in rewards, you know, so log in, go in, go to city, change your cash back into thank you points, then log into thank you and change your thank you points to shop your way points and log into shop your way and change your shop your way to gift of choice cards and log into gift of choice and change the gift of choice points to Amazon. Best beginner combo ever. i love it king king of beginner options right here that's i think i think i just i just love these kind of things where where you can convert one thing to another it's fun to another and it's fun it's uh it's something i've always i've always enjoyed there were times like way back when when i think there were like sometimes you could transfer points from one program to another and,

and then from that other program to another, and there'd be some kind of transfer bonus along the way to where, you know, you could theoretically end up back where you were with more points than before. And just kind of like figuring out those puzzles is fun, even if, even if it's not very,

and this was fun. And so I roasted it, but I mean that my, I mean my roast in fun because it was a really interesting find. I mean this Steven Pepper, like Greg said, pointed us to this in the first place. And then Greg really kind of took it and ran with it in terms of figuring

out how good it can be. And so I am, I'm roasting him in fun here because it certainly can be pretty decent. And it is kind of interesting because a week ago, in fact, about a week ago, somebody asked me why we didn't have a value for shop your waypoints on our reasonable redemption values page. And they said, are they missing something? And I said, no, you're not missing

it. One shop your waypoint is worth about 100 Italian lira to me, which, you know, the defunct currency. So I was, I was like joking that they're not worth anything a week ago, literally with somebody BMS. So certainly that part of it is fun, that angle that they're not worthless anymore. I'm arguing with Greg that they're not worth as much as he says, but right, right. So I had to actually go into, so we have this rewards table, uh, just like our, our credit card, uh card database, we have this rewards sort of little tiny database. And for the longest time, so each rewards program that we track, there's a column that says best uses, and it's just a short description of how to use

this. And the description I had for Shop Your Way was just don't do it. Like, there's no good use for this. Just don't even think about transferring your city points here. So I had for shop your way was just don't do it. Like, it's just like, there's no good use for this. Just just don't even think about transferring your city points here. So I had to go in and change that. And I just wrote a brief thing about how you can convert them to, to gift cards for more value. So speaking of the rewards table, that brings us to I know where that's brings us to Postros. Postros.

I already did, but we're done, so we can move right on from there. Right, right. So would I get my turn? All right, all right, all right. So today you wrote about how Citi is not a great program. So today's main event was all about how Citi points are worth more than before, but your post today was uh this week for those listening on a day that's not that it wasn't today thank you my

recent post that temporal correction um this week i wrote about well but they might listen next week they might listen next week the week that we recorded this at some point in time before when you listen to this nick wrote a post i did it's true you wrote about sarah that's it post roast is over on to the next one you were you were arguing that so so this this person who who wrote in asking us about whether it was time to um move on from chase and Amex to Citi, you were saying why Citi's not probably a good choice to branch out in this person's situation anyway. So he has tons of opportunity yet to earn lots of membership rewards points. And your argument was that Citi doesn't bring a lot.

It doesn't bring much over the other two programs. You already have the other two. You're not incrementally getting that much more and, and you're just complicating life by branching into this other program. Right. I think that's all true. You know, I think if now with the shop your way thing,

if, if what you really value is getting stuff instead of travel, then maybe the equation would change a little bit. Yeah. That's debatable. It might, yeah. But generally, I thought it was well-reasoned, well-thought-out. One reader had a good… So we're done. One reader, I think, had a good argument, which is basically you're leaving points on the table by not signing up every two years for the Premier card, for example.

So I thought that was a good point, but still it doesn't take away from the general idea that focus on the more valuable currency, especially. And my thought specifically was that you need the $95 Premier or the prestige card in order to be able to transfer to partners. And is it worth paying 95 bucks a year for the Premier to pick up like one or two extra transfer partners over what you have with Amex and Chase? I mean, it depends. If you really value those one or two transfer partners, then maybe, yeah.

In the current environment with travel being so uncertain and flexible, I feel like it's even less of a value play to have that. And then, you know, how long are you going to keep holding on to it and paying 95 bucks without transferring? So it didn't seem to me to make sense to branch out into city, especially right now. And in general, for most people, probably not. And I say that as somebody who likes my city thank you points, guys. I mean, I use my city cards. So I do like my city thank you points, but I just don't feel like it adds enough. Like you said, incremental value, that's the thing. You look at, I've been doing a lot of reading about retirement stuff and asset allocation and

correlating and non-correlating things and say, well, look at it. Basically, all the partners are almost the same. So if they're really super valuable, it's going to be super valuable. And if the partners become not very valuable, it's going to be super valuable. And if the partners become not very valuable, it's basically the value is going to track Amex membership rewards more or less and chase ultimate rewards points. So if you've got a lot in those two, you probably don't need city also, except in a few circumstances, but now, all right, so we've recapped what I wrote. We haven't gotten to the roast. So here's the roast. So, okay.

So in your post, you had a list of, of all of, you had a table showing all of the programs that were, you could transfer Amex and city and chase and, and capital one you threw in there. A little asterisk there coming. I can see. Yeah. And, and, and then readers were like, well, you forgot this one or that one. And. There was one, one reader brought up one and then i realized that

i left out you were okay so a reader and you realized that you were missing some right so the roast is basically why didn't you use our rewards table we we have it all set up for exactly this purpose there's there's a post known as um uh the uh transfer partner master list transfer partner master list that i linked to within my post uh-huh which has that comparison right in it and it it draws right from the rewards table so yeah just gone there and pulled it out and used it so what i didn't know and I saw that you sent this to me, but you sent it to me not that long before we started recording this. I haven't actually looked at it again yet.

But what I didn't like about the table on the transfer partner master list was that it included Marriott. And I felt like that made it harder to see where Citi was different than the others. Right. And the reason for that is Marriott has about a billion transfer partners, whereas the others have far fewer. So if you include the one that has a billion, then the table's way too long and so on.

Yeah, so I sent you some code showing how to do it without Marriott, and it's not obvious, so I'll give you that. Okay, thank you. It's understandable that you wouldn't have known how to do it makes, it's understandable that you want to know how to do it. And it's actually not even a perfect solution, because it's going to include hotel transfers as well. Which I mean, I almost included the hotel transfers, but I felt like they were so irrelevant for the most part that it wasn't really, I mean, Citi doesn't have any, first of all, so kind of irrelevant to the discussion. And then, and then the fact that most hotel transfer partners aren't worth transferring to apart

from Hyatt, because you can probably buy their points for cheaper than your transfer cost. But without even getting into all that, yeah, that certainly would have been helpful if I had realized that. And I did take a look at that transfer partner master list, because that is hugely helpful when you're trying to figure out who you can transfer to and from which programs. But yeah, the Marriott thing is what was throwing me off there. So now that I know, though, then we'll have a better one so that next time I don't leave out Cutter's program

and let's see, it was Malaysia Enriched and Thai Royal Orchid Plus. Those are the ones that I left out. So if you really like one of, if you read the post before I edited it and you were like, oh yeah, he's right. So the thank you points aren't as valuable, but now you just heard that you can also transfer to Cutter, Malaysia or Tyroy Lurkin Plus. And

you're like, oh wait, that's a game changer. Then go back and read it again. Right. There's a reason he forgot those three. Right. Well, he said, so here's the, here's the, here's the mini roast back. So this always frustrates me and it shouldn't, but it always frustrates me that, so we have transfer partner pages, Amex transfer partners, Chase transfer partners. So if you're ever trying to remember who's a transfer partner,

just Google Frequent Miler City transfer partners or Frequent Miler Amex transfer partners. Now with all of those programs- And then scroll past the points guy and get to our post. Right, right, right, right. That's why Frequent Miler at the front of that search and and get to our post. Right, right, right, right. So I frequent my alert at the front of that search and then continue to scroll past.

So anyway, in all of those lists, they're all alphabetical and it just lists all of those alphabetical airline transfer partners, except the city one. The city one is the only one that splits them up as these are the best transfer partners, these are the okay transfer partners,

and these are the rest. And so the ones I left out were the ones that were in these, the rest, partners, these are the okay transfer partners, and these are the rest. And so the ones I left out were the ones that were in the these, the rest, because I forgot to scroll down to these are the rest of the transfer partners because that section doesn't exist on any of the other transfer partner ones. And so it throws me off every single time

because I always forget that that section is still there. Yeah, you know what's funny about this conversation is just yesterday, I had made a note to myself to update those pages because I wanted them all to have that format. Now, do you dislike the format of having it separated out? I think that it makes some sense to do it that way.

And every time that this has caught me more than once and every time that it's caught me, I've been like, oh yeah, oh, well, that makes sense for most people to have it split up so that they can see which ones aren't worth it. But every time I look at it, I'm always like, I just want a full list of everything, just like Amex and Chase and everything. I just want them all alphabetical in one list. So yeah, personally, I don't like the way it's split up. But I think it's probably the most reader friendly or the most, certainly the most beginner friendly to be able to see which ones they can

just ignore. So so if you go and do it with the other ones at least it'll be standard it'll be the same format and i'll stop making that mistake yeah so so i mean um i think amex really needs amex has a lot of partners right so i think it would be really helpful chase it probably doesn't really matter there's not that many but um yeah i think i don't know yeah i think it would help with amex it probably would it's just my my brain that seems to shut off that last section and forget to scroll to the last one each time. I don't know why it is. It's happened to me a bunch of times in City stuff, though.

Right, right. Well, you know, I'll go in and I'll update them to have that format and republish. And then the week after that, you can go in and change them back to the old way. Change them back to the old way. All right. So you got some things you can Google there and take a look at some resources.

So my friends, that brings us then to the question of the week. So question of the week is one that actually I had held back from a week or two ago, but I thought was an interesting one. I don't think we talked about it anyway. So here we go. This one comes from Kent. So Kent says, I know your mailbag overfloweth, so I hope this makes it to Greg and Nick. But Kent says, I've been giving some thought as the best way to use my credit cards to accelerate retirement savings via manufactured spending. Of course, cashing in points is always an option,

one cent apiece for ultimate rewards, 1.25 cents each for membership rewards with Schwab. But what's the best option? I know there's the no annual fee fidelity rewards visa signature, earns 2% back and deposits directly into your investment account. But are there other investing specific cards that are better? Or is maximizing cash back through something like the Bank of America cash rewards with platinum honors at 2.625% the best route. Thank you for your time. What do you think about this? If you're looking to earn cash back to plan for retirement, I wrote about planning for retirement recently, what's your best option? What do you think? Wow. I think that's so dependent on... So the premise is that he's going to manufacture spend. Is that right?

It is. Yeah, that was the premise, yeah. Okay. So let me... That creates an extra wrinkle, doesn't it? It does. Because then it kind of depends on which cards you can do that with. Which cards you could do it with,

and also where you're going to do that spend. So, you know, if you're going to do, chase all those fee-free visa offers that come, you know, at Staples and Office Depot, then, you know, then there's one answer. If you're going to be doing Simon Mall gift cards, it's another answer. And if it's grocery or whatever, cards it's another answer and if it's uh grocery or whatever might be another answer so i don't know let's let's uh let's just say simon maul that that there's no particular

that you're going to be getting gift cards that have no there's no that there's no category bonus no category bonus okay okay um then yeah i don't I don't think there's anything better as that's uncapped than the 2.62 from Bank of America. Do you? I don't think so. No. I mean, I think that's gotta be the best uncapped for no category bonus. It's not tons better uncapped and it's, it's the best if you're going to do Simon for sure. You know, I think of the Blue Business Plus, which is two points per dollar. And so it's

like two and a half cents deposited into a Schwab account. The problem with that strategy is A, you're not going to get points for Simon Mall purchases. So it won't work in that specific instance Greg is mentioning. The additional issue with that is that you have to pay for the Schwab Platinum card. So it's another $5.50 a year. So that takes away significantly from your retirement savings. So yeah, I think the Bank of America Premium Rewards is it. Although I'm going to add to that that chasing after some cashback signup bonuses and bank account bonuses and things like that also can add quite a bit.

Sure. So I think that you probably, if your goal is to increase retirement savings, manufactured spending should be one of the tools in there, but not necessarily the only tool in there. I wrote about, not that long ago, about bank account bonuses I went after, and that's at the top of my mind today because one of those bank account bonuses

were $600 deposited this morning. So it's like $600 that kind of came out of thin air from one of those bank account bonuses were 600 bucks deposited this morning. So, you know, it's like $600 that kind of came out of thin air from one of those bank account bonuses. And so this year, I think it would be a little over $4,000 by the end of the year, just in new bank account bonuses, just moving around money to new banks. And that compounded over the course of however many years I'm going to invest it makes a difference. And I have to do a lot of spend on the premium rewards card to match that. Now, I won't necessarily be able to keep up that rate every single year in new bank account bonuses. So it's going to vary a little bit, but it's a tool to keep in mind. And I look at the premium rewards card that's got a $500 welcome bonus essentially. So I mean, that's pretty nice. And you can deposit that in your

Bank of America account and then transfer that right over to the Merrill Edge side. So in that case, you're keeping it all in one place. Is that card manufacturer spending friendly? Is that a card that... I don't know. Yeah, I haven't pushed it. I did learn something interesting and relevant if he has a spouse, which is that apparently and I haven't tried this yet so remains to be seen but apparently if like let's say so I have I have platinum honors with Merrill I mean with Bank of America if I open a joint Bank of America bank account with my wife, apparently she will inherit the Platinum Honor status. And so then, yeah.

So if that works, then she could also open a premium rewards card or a regular travel rewards card, which she already has, also get that 2.62. And then with the travel rewards card, she can move her points over to my premium rewards and cash out and the only reason to to prefer the travel rewards is that there's no fee on it so you wouldn't have to worry about how do i earn that hundred dollar airline fee credit each each year with that but but uh so that's that's a pretty interesting way to maybe add capacity for the spend if you're doing lots and lots of spend and maybe reduce the chance of getting shut down because you're spreading out the spend across multiple cards and multiple accounts instead of just your own. That point segues me into the next thing that I want to make a point with here. And that is that I don't think there's probably one.

I don't think it's best to be doing one card if this is your goal either. Yeah, that's a good point. You're looking for the best strategy rather than the best card. Your best strategy is going to be to have more than one, right? To have more than one card that you're manufacturing spend with. So, I mean, you want to do those 5X fee-free cards at Staples. And you want to be those 5X fee-free cards at Staples and you want to be able to do Simon and you want to be able to take advantage of those grocery store

spend for grocery store promos, fuel points and things like that. So I would say you're going to want a few different cards. Now, the thing that makes Bank of America a compelling option that you have to go after, I think, is A, best rewards on everyday spend on the premium rewards card, and B, terrific category bonuses on the cash rewards. You're looking at gas station, 5.25%. Now it's capped at like $2,500 a quarter. If you pick that as your 3% category selection, then you're really going to get 5.25% with platinum honors on 2,500 bucks a quarter. And you have a few of those cash rewards cards between you and your spouse. You could rack up some decent cash back at gas stations and do manufacturer spending there.

But then again, also, I would say I'd want to have an ink cash card for doing it at office supply stores. And I probably wouldn't be averse to having a Blue Business Plus and hanging on to some membership rewards points for a long time and then just getting the Schwab card when I'm ready to cash it out into an account. Yeah, yeah. No, that's a good point. Another way to add more cards, this is still Bank of America, but is once you've earned $100,000 over the $100,000 that you already used to qualify for Platinum Honors, you could actually open a small business investment account with Merrill and invest that money just as if it's

on the personal side. It really is no different. And then you'd qualify on the business side for Platinum Honors. And then you could get the business travel rewards card, which would earn the 2.62. And again, you could cash those points out by moving them to your personal premium rewards card to cash out. But it also has the cash rewards card with also a 3% categories that become 5.25%. that case, the categories, there's not an online category, but there is a travel category, which some things like paying mortgage through Plastique actually count as online. So it's just worth a look because you can spend up to $50,000 on that 3% category. If you didn't hear that, you better rewind and take a second lesson. So yeah, I think that Bank of America is a compelling option for that. But again, diversifying, like anything else, diversifying is going to be good. I don't think your solution is going to be just one, if that's your goal. So if you want simplicity, the Fidelity card is going to give you simplicity in terms of just

automatically depositing it right into your brokerage account. But, you know, if you're manufacturer spending, simplicity doesn't necessarily hit me as your thing. Right. Also, the Bank of America does give you the option to automatically deposit in the ones that give cash back, at least. I can't remember. Yeah, probably the ones where it's points like the travel rewards. I don't, you don't want to do that because you only get half a cent if you cash those out directly. But anyway, yeah, if you want simplicity, you could do it through Bank of America as well. All right, there you go. All right. Well, I think that brings us to the end then, right? I think it does. So I want to thank everybody out there listening. If you have not yet hit the subscribe button, wherever you're listening or watching, make sure you subscribe, like, give us a comment, leave us some feedback.

And then if you want to get on the email list, so you can get all the posts as soon as we write them, you want to go to thefrequentmiler.com slash subscribe. Again, that's thefrequentmiler.com slash subscribe to get on our list and follow us on Twitter and join our Facebook group. Thank you all very much. Oh, also, I almost forgot to mention that we have our bi-weekly series called Card Talk. So if you're looking to do a consultation with us and learn a little bit about which cards you should keep or cancel,

you need some help, you've got a whole bunch of cards, you want to thin out your portfolio, or you have a specific goal in mind, like this retirement question, or perhaps a honeymoon, or a big trip you want to take for an anniversary or something,

you want to try to figure out a strategy, then you can go to thefrequentmiler.com slash cardtalk. Again, that's thefrequentmiler.com slash cardtalk or email us cardtalk at thefrequentmiler.com. So you can get on one of those future episodes. Those are coming out bi-weekly. So thank you guys very much once again. We will see you guys, hear you guys, listen to you guys, talk to you guys very soon.

All right. Thanks, everyone. And I will see you next week, but not from California. Ah! Ah! Bye. Bye-bye.