Frequent Miler on the Air - How best to spend $115K... Asking for a friend | Frequent Miler on the Air Ep350 | 3-20-26

Episode Date: March 20, 2026

In today's podcast episode, we'll share 3 ways to improve your Google Wallet, we'll see how Marriott Bonvoyed us again, and Nick will explain how he would spend $115K.Giant Mailbag(01:24) - Mark shares how to arrange the card order in Google Wallet(03:30) - Rick & Heather share another way to arrange cards in Google Wallet(03:55) - Raj shares a way to set a card as default, and customize the nickname of a card on Google Wallet (which Raj uses to specify the rotating category for a card)Card News(05:46) - IHG Biz 200K OfferLearn more about the IHG One Rewards Premier Business Credit Card here(12:25) - New/updated resource: Best credit card purchase protectionsSee our Best credit card purchase protections resource here(19:44) - Citi ThankYou Points about to end points-sharing between cardholders?Read more about this hereBonvoyed by Bonvoy(25:04) - Read more about Marriott card eligibility hereLearn more about the Marriott Bonvoy® Brilliant® American Express® Card hereLearn more about the Marriott Bonvoy Bevy® American Express® Card hereAwards, Points, and More(28:39) - Rove Miles: Redeem Rove Miles for a paid stay at a loyalty-eligible rate and earn hotel pointsRead more about redeeming Rove miles here(31:43) - Chase Sapphire Reserve® Card / Sapphire Reserve for Business℠ Card Price Match GuaranteeLearn more about this here: https://frequentmiler.com/chase-travel-offering-price-match-guarantee-for-hotel-bookings/(36:52) - Delta's 20-minute baggage guarantee[40:14:26]Main Event: How to best spend $115K....asking for a friend(40:16) - A large capacity for spend could mean many welcome bonuses(43:20) - The contenders(43:34) - Learn more about The Business American Express Platinum Card® card here: https://frequentmiler.com/AmxPlatBiz/#Goto(46:19) - Learn more about the Chase World of Hyatt Business Credit Card: https://frequentmiler.com/WOHBiz/#GotoLearn more about the Chase World of Hyatt Credit Card: https://frequentmiler.com/WOH/#Goto(48:27) - Learn more about the Hilton Honors American Express Surpass® Card here: https://frequentmiler.com/hilton-honors-american-express-surpass-card/#Goto(49:49) - Learn more about the Caesars Rewards® Prestige Visa Signature® Card here: https://frequentmiler.com/CaesarsRewardsPrestigeCard/#GotoLearn more about the Capital One Venture X Rewards Credit Card here: https://frequentmiler.com/VentureX/#Goto(51:43) - Learn more about the Chase Sapphire Reserve® Card here: https://frequentmiler.com/CSR/#Goto(53:02) - Our thoughtsQuestion of the Week(1:10:57) - How might investments enhance the points and miles game?Subscribe and FollowVisit https://frequentmiler.com/subscribe/ to get updated on in-depth points and miles content like this, and don’t forget to like and follow us on social media.Music Credit – “Ocean Deep” by Annie YoderMentioned in this episode:Check out all of our other travel podcasts from around the worldThis podcast is part of Voyascape, a podcast network that brings together the world's best travel podcasts. You can find all of our podcasts from around the world at Voyascape.com. If you are interested in advertising or sponsored content on any of our shows you can find out more at the link below.Voyascape Podcast NetworkVisit FrequentMiler.com Did you know that Frequent Miller is also a website? At frequentMiller.com, you'll find all the latest deals, news about points, miles, and rewarding credit cards, the single best, Best Credit Cards page on the web, guides to all popular rewards programs, and many other terrific resources. If you'd like to get our posts sent to your email, go to frequentMiller.com/subscribe and sign up for free. https://frequentmiler.com/subscribe/

This is a Voyescape podcast. You can find all of our travel podcasts from around the world atvoyescape.com. On today's episode, we talk about three ways to improve your Google Wallet. Marriott Bonvoy. Bonvoy's us again. And I explain how I would spend $115,000. Frequent Milo on the air starts now. Today's main event.

how best to spend $150,000 asking for a friend? So Nick had a friend reach out to him that was in a, had a great opportunity, I guess is the best way to put it, to spend a heck of a lot of money in a fairly short amount of time. And in today's main event, Nick is actually going to walk us through his thoughts about if he was in that situation, how would he make that spend? because the answer of like what's the best way to do it really depends so much on your individual situation. And so Nick can best answer that from his point of view. Yeah.

So we'll talk about that a little bit more in a little bit. But don't forget if you want to jump ahead to that or come back to something later on, you'll always find the timestamps in the show notes. So just expand the description box for that. And wherever you're watching or listening, don't forget to give this a like. Give it a thumbs up. If you like the idea of spending $15,000, give us a like. And if you think it's crazy, give us a like too. We'll talk more about that a little bit later on.

But right now, let's drag out this week's Giant Mailback. All right. Today's Giant Mail, we have three pieces of mail that are all basically saying the same thing, but in different ways. And there's different nuances to each. So I thought it was worth reading each one. Basically, in previous shows, we talked about how you can. reorganized cards in your Apple wallet for Apple Pay. And we didn't know if you could do a similar rearranging in Google Wallet.

And a number of readers wrote in to say, actually, yes, you can. And here's how. And the interesting stuff is in the details here. So first up, Mark says I was watching your episode about gems from the giant mailbag. one of the readers mentioned about how to change the order of your cards in Apple wallet, and Nick said it doesn't appear you can do that in your Google wallet. I'm an Android user and you can change the card, or at least on my pixel phone I can. When you open your wallet, you will swipe left through the cards all the way until you see a circle with three bars in it.

And for those listening, Nick is doing this right now to try it out. If you click on that circle, you will see all of your cards from top to bottom instead of left to right. and by scrolling to the bottom, you'll see an option to edit card order. I hope this helps the Android users out there. All right, so before I go on the next one, so the Mark's technique works for changing the order of your cards, Nick? Yes, it wasn't exactly the same.

So, in mine, instead of swiping left, I had to swipe all the way to the right. I swiped left first, and there was nothing all the way on the left side. And to the right, I wouldn't have thought of it as a circle, but you're right, it is a circle with three bars.

When I saw it, I was like, oh, it's not a circle. And now I'm looking at it. And it is. It's the hamburger menu, the traditional, you know, sort of three bars that you see everywhere. And it's inside a circle. I just, my brain, my eyes didn't even recognize it that way. But yes, at the bottom of that, there is indeed an edit card order. And I have never noticed that.

Okay. Well, don't put away your phone because Rick and Heather said on the most recent episode with Mailbag gems, Nick said he didn't think you could rearrange cards in Google Wallet. Good news you can. In the wallet. click your profile picture in the top right, select payment methods, and touch the button at the bottom to edit the card order. Brings you to the same place. Yeah. Look at that. Look at that.

All right. Don't put away your phone just yet. Okay. It's still here. Raj wrote in about Google Wallet and said in the recent episode, blah, blah, blah. You can easily do that by tapping on the card, click on three dots on top, and set make default. So this is about making a particular card default for tap to pay. But here's where it gets interesting. Yeah, it's at the same place you can put in nicknames. So I update the cards with rotating category names. So for example, a card where the 5X benefit changes every three months,

Raj goes in and changes it to say, you know, grocery stores and whatever, which is great, right? then you see that in your wallet. That's great. Now, I do not think I can do that in Apple wallet, but please let me know anyone out there if there's a way to do that because that could be really helpful to have some tips right in there when you're using your wallet about how you should use it.

Yeah, I mean, like, first of all, mind blown on the idea of doing that with the categories, like the rotating categories, because I always forget what the rotating categories are. So that's a brilliant idea that you could do on the first. first day of each quarter. So that seems great. But then my next thought was, oh, my goodness, player two sometimes can't remember which card do you use for a particular type of purchase. And I could just nickname it in the wallet. That would be so convenient. So yeah, thank you, Raj. That is a terrific tip. It really is. All of those, all of those were good tips because I had not found that before. And I've played around a little bit in Google wallet. I didn't go looking

deeply obviously since I had never seen any of that. But I think that that was terrific feedback because I wouldn't have known if not for Rick and Heather and Raj and Mark. So thank you very much. Absolutely. Great tips there. All right, let's move on to card news. In this week's card news, the IHG Premier Business Credit Card is out with a new offer with an eye-popping 200,000 points as the headline. Yeah, you can earn up to 200,000 points. So the offer is structured. as you'll earn 140,000 points after spending $4,000 in purchases in the first three months, and then an additional 60,000 points after spending $9,000 in the first six months. And so let's talk a little bit.

And to be clear, that's $9,000 total. So it's an additional $5,000, right? I just wanted to be clear on that. I'm not sure how I said it, but absolutely. That's important to say that a total of $9,000 in six months, if you structure it right, will get you the full 200,000 points. That's a terrific offer for this card. The card only costs $99 a year.

And I want to talk a little bit about the perks of this card because I actually think this is a pretty darn good card for a card that only costs $99 a year. So especially if you're into IHG at all. So I'm not going to go over everything, but it's not super rewarding for spend. Let me get that out of the way first. So it has a few, it does earn 10x at IHG, and it has a few 5x categories, but basically it earns 3x everywhere else. And if you think about the fact that you can buy IHG points often, they go on sale for half a cent each, it's sort of like it has a base earning rate of 1.5% which is not bad, but it's also not good.

Like, you know, it's not a 2X everywhere card, right? So it's not great, but it has a number of perks that I think make up for that. So, for example, every year upon renewal, you get a 40,000 K free night certificate, which can be topped off with points to any amount. So if you want to book a 90,000 point night with IHG, you could use your cert plus 50,000 points to book to book that night. It automatically gives you a fourth night free on awards days. So book four nights for the price, for the award price of three nights. It gives you platinum elite status automatically. You get $25 in United Travel Bank cash every

six months. Now, that goes away, like if it's not used. So it's not like it just accumulates over time. And if you need global entry, it'll give you $120 of credit towards global entry, TSA precheck or Nexus. It's also interesting in terms of the big spend bonuses. You, after $20,000 in spend and $40,000 in spend and $60,000 in spend, each of those thresholds in a calendar year, you get some perks. So at $20,000, you get $10,000 bonus points plus $100 statement credit. At $40,000, you get IHD Diamond status, which includes like free breakfast at all IHD properties,

which is pretty good. And after $60,000, you get another $40K free night certificate at that point. So if you spend exactly to one of those bonus categories, depending on how much you value those perks you get at each stage, that goes a long way in making up for the fact that it's otherwise earning only three points per dollar for most of your spend. So that's pretty cool. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think, you know, I think that it, so backing up a quick second, you mentioned that the card,

earns three points per dollar on most purchases, the non-bonous category purchases, and that you can buy points for about a half a cent each often. So you might think of it as earning like the equivalent of, the rough equivalent of one and a half percent back. And you said, which isn't good, but isn't bad. And I think it's worth pointing out there that if you really wanted IHG points, then you might be better off just getting a 2% cash back card and using your two cents to buy four IHG points when they're on sale instead of three. Now, there's some caveats there, because you can only buy so many points every year and they're not always on sale, et cetera. But that's just to give you a comparison point as to what you're giving up. You're kind of giving up an extra point per dollar

on other purchases. But if we valued that at one and a half percent at that 20K level, the 10,000 points, if we value those at just the $50 that you would have to spend to buy them when they're on sale and the $100 statement credit, which is $100, right? That's $150 on the $20K. That's like one and a half percent back? I think if I did my half very fair, right? So no, no, no, no, no, I'm sorry. That's point, oh, I can't do the math that quick. I think that's 0.75% if I'm doing the math in my head correct, which still gives you around a 2.25% return. But that's only if you spend exactly to that 20,000 threshold and stop. Correct. If you go over it at all, you're dropping. But that makes the return relatively reasonable at 20K. And so then it depends, well, you know, how much do you value diamond

status, do you value it enough to, you know, take up that half a percent? The way I think about this card personally is like you could do it one of two ways. You could just say after I meet my the minimum spend to get the welcome bonus, I'm just going to pay the annual fee each year and get that 40K free night certificate. Plus I get the ability to, you know, get the fourth night free on awards days and the other automatic perks and just never use it for spend except maybe at IHD hotels, right? that's one way of using it. That's probably how most people should use the card. Now, people who are really big spenders that could easily generate a lot of spend might be interested in spending to

diamond status, for example. And that's how I use the card. I try to once every two years spend exactly $40,000 on the card. And then I get diamond status for two years if I do it right in the beginning of the year because diamond tests last for the rest of that year and all of the next year. And I think through January of the year after that. Yeah. And I think it's really reasonable really reasonable for what you quote unquote give up by earning by spending on the IHG card versus a 2% cashback card. If you value diamond status at all, it's pretty reasonable. If you've got a lot of spend, I think that's a pretty reasonable option. But anyway, we'll talk more about big spend bonuses later on. And so maybe we'll come up with some other comparative options.

too. All right. Next up, let's see. We've got a new updated resource, the best credit card purchase protections. You updated this, right? Yeah, I had last updated it in a major way six years ago. So that poor post was sitting out there just basically completely wrong. So it's terrible that I waited so long, but in my defense, it was a bear. It was so much work to update this. thing because I basically had to crawl through all the benefits guides of all the popular cards where I wanted to know what the purchase protections were. And so first I had to find all those guides. And that was a whole thing.

It's not easy. Most issuers don't make it simple. No, they don't make it simple. And I tried to use AI to help, but I discovered AI wasn't getting it all correct. So anyway, enough woe is me. The point is, we now have a post that's up to date with information about just popular rewards cards and what they offer in terms of extended warranties purchase security. That's where, like, for example, they might say within 90 days of when you made a purchase, if your item was stolen or damaged, then, you know, they'll pay to fix it or replace it. return protection where if you want to return an item you purchased recently and the retailer

doesn't accept it for some reason, they'll cover that. And then there's price protection, which allows you to say you've bought something and now it becomes available for less somewhere else within, let's say 60 days, then you might be able to recover the difference if the card you purchased the item with has price protection. So take a look. What you'll find is that there's no card that offers all four of these things, like none. And where they vary, cards that offer most, cards that offer three of these four benefits, either offer return protection or price protection. No cards offer both of those things.

So there is no single best card for all of these things, but there are some cards that stand out. we'll have a link to this guide in the show notes. I have two quick questions for you. So the first one is, have you ever used any of these protections yourself? And B, do they ever come into play when you consider what card to use for a particular purchase for you personally? No, I have never used any of them myself. It does come into play sometimes when I'm buying something big and refusing. the, you know, I know I'm going to refuse the extended warranty because I hate the idea of paying more.

Basically, you're gambling on something going wrong when you pay more to get an extended warranty. You win if something goes wrong during that extended warranty period. So I don't like to do that. So anyway, yeah, you know, it's pretty rare. It's like I'm buying a new laptop or recently had my fridge replace. And that's when I look at this guide, actually, and see. of the cards I have, which one would be best for making this purchase. Another thing to consider is that, and I have this in the guide as well,

is that American Express has a really good reputation for people having success with claims. So even if they don't necessarily have the best protection for what you want, if they have good protection, you might consider using your American Express card because of people having reported good things. Now, I think, Nick, you've had some success, right? I have. Before I mention that, I want to mention, always check the exclusions, too, before you, before you put a purchase on one of these because, you know, for instance, a lot of household

items that are like anything that's like attached to your house, basically in some way, shape, or form. Like, for instance, I think pretty sure like a microwave that's one of those like built-in microwaves, like won't be covered by purchase protection on some cards and on other cards it might be. So when you mention the fridge, for instance, I think some cards might exclude appliances, but others definitely don't. So you should take a look at the details before you decide which one to use. Yeah, I've used all of them except the extended warranty. I've never had something that I needed to use an extended warranty on. But purchase security, I dropped a cell phone

within a week of buying it and smashed the screen and was able to get the entire purchase price back. Return protection. I've used a couple of times in situations where we've bought something from some small retailer that didn't accept returns. And Amex has been great about that when we've been in that situation about return protection. And so both purchase security and return protection we've used with Amex. I tried using return protection once with a chase card. And I had so much trouble and pushed back. And eventually I gave up on it.

It wasn't enough money that it was worth the time to continue going at it. So my one experience there was not positive. Price protection, I've used a bunch of times. I used to use it all the time. Back in the day, more cards used to have that. And some excluded Black Friday ads and some didn't. And so I would often see what's going on sale for Black Friday and buy it ahead of time and then file a purchase protection claim once the ads came out. Now, that won't work with a lot of issuers anymore.

However, there's plenty of times where I have used that with multiple issuers. And I think it's a great benefit that a lot of people will probably overlook and don't think about when you're buying something, especially electronics. If you're buying an electronic, the chances of it going on sale cheaper in the next three to five months is like almost 100% on most electronics that aren't Apple, right? I mean, yeah. I mean, the price protection, the length of time that you have doesn't tend to be five months. But by sale, yeah, absolutely. The chance is pretty good of the price dropping. And I was surprised at, I thought that, you know, there were very few.

cards left that had it. But I was surprised to find that a lot of Capital One cards have it. And whether or not your card has it has less to do with which card you have than which network it's running on. So Capital One doesn't have like a benefits guide for their venture rewards card. What they have is a benefit guide for their, you know, master car, like World Master card cards or their Visa signature cards. And since, Capital One issues cards different ways to different people, you'll just have a look at your card, see what it is, and then match it up to figure out what kind of protections it has, unfortunately. But it's great that a number of their guides show coverage for price protection. The biggest surprise for me was that one of the built cards has price protection.

The expensive built palladium card has it, too. So that was interesting. Yeah, terrific. All right. Next up in our card news this week, our points and miles and card news, I guess this says card news. There we go. Next card news is city thank you points. Are they about to end point sharing between card holders? We started seeing reports pop up on some other blogs saying that you would no longer be able to share points. Now as a reminder, if you have a card that earns city thank you points, most of them, like let's say you have the strata premier card. and you know somebody else who also has a strata premier or a strata elite, you can share points with them up to a certain amount of points each year. And when you do, the points expire after 90 days.

So you only want to do that when somebody has an immediate kind of use in mind. However, word on the street has been that might end. Is that true? Yeah, it's really interesting. So what's happened is, so there used to be a Sears Shop Your Way card that got sunset and replaced. to everyone who had that got instead, this city thank you mastercard that you can't otherwise get. So it's this like it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's own thing that some people have because of that situation. And those people on their most recent statements, got a message saying,

effective May 17th, 2026, point sharing will no longer be offered as a thank you rewards redemption option. Additionally, you will no longer be able to receive shared points. You can share and receive share points until May 16th. Yeah. And so that came out and some, like, blogs reached out to their Citibank contacts or Citibank in some way and asked, is this just for this card or is this going to be for all thank you cards? and at least in one case they were told it's for all thank you cards. Now let me tell you how much I believe anything a city rep tells you about details like that.

Not at all. That's not to say this isn't possible. It's just that I don't think that what a city representative says about this without it in writing bears actually any weight at all. And so just as an example, when the Strata Elite card came out, there were questions about if you book hotels, is there any way to earn points? Are those bookings loyalty eligible so that you would earn high at points

or marriott points on those bookings, for example? And we had our city contacts say yes. and then after pushing back about that to like can you really confirm this because it seems unlikely, they said, yeah, we researched it and it's definitely the case. Well, it is not the case. People have not received points. There's no way to put in. Anyway, so that's just an example of how, of why I really distrust anything that's come out verbally from city in response to a question about this situation.

So the other reason I'm dubious about this, going beyond this one city thank you master card, is that there's another city thank you card that doesn't allow point sharing. That's the custom cash card. So with that card, you earn thank you points. And you can pull those points together with your own other city cards, but you cannot share those cards. Like, I could not move my city points that were earned on my custom cash card to NICS city card, for example, which I could do with any of my other city cards that earned thank you points.

So I think, and again, I don't have any proof either way, but I think what's happening here, because it's only come out, the message only came out on statements for this particular city. Thank you, MasterCard. I think that's what's happening is they realize that they want to make this more like the customer. cash card. Yeah, yeah. And to be clear about what Greg said, I mean, as a consumer, any detailed question like this, if you're calling an 800 number and talking to a frontline rep, like, you can flip a coin as to whether they would be right or wrong. And the chance of them having the actual answer or information or knowledge of something that deep in the weeds is like infinitely small.

As a blogger, in some cases, we have contacts with various banks and loyalty programs that we can ask questions. And in many of those cases, we've got high faith in the answers that we got. Like, we know that we've asked detailed questions and gotten research detailed answers that proved to be correct. That's just not the case here. That's right. And so that past experience tells us that that's, I don't blame anybody for thinking that a rep or even if a rep had confirmed that. It's just like, like Greg said, we just wouldn't have much faith in it until you see it. So we got to wait and see when the April statements come out? Is there something on other card statements? And if not, then I think this is

going to be a nothing burger. I think Greg's right, which is good. That's a tasty nothing burger. We're hoping anyway. Hopefully. All right. Next up, we've got Bonvoid by Bonvoy. So the new Bonvoy, well, there's a number of new Bonvoy-related welcome offers out, but they've gotten more restrictive. Yeah. Yeah. If you're interested in the Bonvoy Brilliant or the Bonvoy Bevy card, They're both out with great welcome offers right now. But they've changed the language. So all the Bonvoy, all the Marriott Bonvoy cards have confusing requirements about whether you can get the card or get the welcome bonus if you've had, if you have or have had any other Marriott cards in the past. And what's happened with these two cards in particular is they've made it harder to get the welcome bonus because previously,

Both of the terms said you're ineligible for the bonus if you've had the Chase Ritz-Carlton card within the past 30 days. So at that time, with that, like some people would, like, product change the Ritz card to a different chase card, wait 30 days, apply for the Amex Bonvoy Brilliant or the Amex Bonvoy Bevy. And then after they're approved, you know, an eligible for the welcome bonus, then they could, you know, product change their chase card back to the Ritz. card. You can't do that anymore because now you're ineligible if you've had any Chase Bonvoy card in the past 30 days. So you would have to, if you really want the welcome offer for these Amex cards, you'd have to cancel all of your Chase Marriott cards, wait 30 days and then apply. And I kind of doubt the welcome offer is worth that if you like those chase cards at all. Yeah, I mean, not to mention that there's no guarantee that you won't get a pop-up,

saying that AMX doesn't want to give you the offer. And so, boy, canceling the other Marriac cards you have only to maybe find out that you can't even get the welcome offer you canceled them for, that would be a huge bummer. I mean, I think that's more risk than I'd be willing to put in unless I don't care about things like, if you don't care about the elite night credits from the cards, you don't care about keeping the chase cards. Well, then, yeah, of course, consider canceling those and going after these if the welcome offers matter.

But if you're somebody who's like, oh, well, I get the elite night credits every year. I value the risk card for the priority pass and for the Sapphire Reserve or Sapphire Lounge Access, rather, and for the free night certificate and other stuff, I'd be hesitant to give that up, I think. I don't know. What about you? Yeah, no, I wouldn't want to do that either. Plus, you know, I only mention one particular rule.

There's quite a few rules that might prevent you from getting the bonus that I haven't mentioned because they haven't changed yet. So we have this post, which we'll link to in the show notes, called Are You Eligible for a Marriott card? And it has a whole, like, matrix that lets you kind of figure it out. That's been updated with these new rules. But just one simple example, if you're interested in both the Brilliant and Bevi card, I'm trying to remember the order.

Yeah. If you already have the Brilliant, you won't be eligible for the Bevy, but it's not true the other way around. If you have the bevee, you could be eligible for the Brilliant, potentially, as long as you you don't have a chase card. And, you know, anyway, look at the chart and then get a headache and then worry about it. Pat your head and rub your tummy and spin around in a circle three times while hopping on one foot. Then maybe you can get all of the Marriac cards you'd like.

All right. So Bonvoid by Bonvoy, that kind of wraps that one up and moves us on to awards, points, and more. So Rove Miles, we wrote a post this week in response to a reader email about redeeming Rove Miles for a paid stay at a loyalty, eligible rate because if you do that, you can earn hotel points and trigger hotel promotions and get your hotel elite credit. And this is something that we didn't really talk much about at all on our show about Rove Miles, our recent episode about Rove Miles. We talked about earning Rove Miles and using them. And kind of in passing, we mentioned that you can use them to pay for hotel stays usually at around 1.35, somewhere between 1.35 and 1.5 cents per point. We said,

that's pretty good. And then we moved on to other stuff. And a reader said, well, you know what? Slow down. Maybe it's better than pretty good because you can use those for the loyalty eligible rates. And when you do, you earn hotel points as though it's a paid stay. And so the short version of the math without getting into all the math here on the show, because you can read about it in the post, is that you can end up getting somewhere around 1.8 cents per point when you're stacking promotions and the points that you earn from the paid stay.

for your Rovemiles, if you value the hotel points anyway that you could be earning. And that starts to look pretty good when you consider what you could earn on the paid stay. So that might make it more attractive than we had sort of presented it for some people. And I think that's a legitimate, interesting use of Rovemiles. Yeah, I think it really is. Now, personally, I would do the calculation of the sense per point. differently just because if you book with cash directly, you still get all of those benefits. You earn those points and everything. So I think a fair comparison. I think it's still, you know,

1.35 or up to 1.5 cents per point value. It's just that you're getting you're getting a lot more than you would in a, you know, a points, any other booking where you're not earning the hotel points. Maybe it'd be fair to say you're effectively getting less than 1.3.3. when it's not a hotel eligible. But then it gets very complicated. Anyway, I just wanted to put in that kind of fine print there. But overall, I think, yeah, it makes us a more attractive use of points to book hotels. And it's nice to have a decent way to get value from your points and still earn hotel points.

earn hotel elite credits, be able to use your hotel elite status so you get benefits during your stay, probably qualify for promotions, hotel promotions that require paid stays, still qualify for those, you know, all that kind of stuff is really good. Yeah, absolutely. All right. Next up, I think we have some sort of breaking news here. Yeah. So as we're recording this, we're recording this on Wednesday before publishing on Friday.

So I wanted to call out this is breaking because this is really new and details may change about what we know by the time this publishes for all I know. But anyway, a doctor of credit reported on their blog that the Safrae Reserve for Business card, when you go to make a, when you go into their travel portal, the hotel booking platform shows that now are offers a price guarantee, price match guarantee. And it appears that even if you're booking stays with Chase's The Edit, that you can make a price match guarantee. So what does that mean? It means you can book a stay through Chase's the Edit. And then within 24 hours, you find a better price elsewhere, which with the

edit is often very easy to do because often their prices are inflated, you should be able to submit a claim to say, hey, I found it cheaper elsewhere, and get back the difference from Chase. So if this works, that's great. Now, what Dr. Credit reported was that it's only on the business card. And it's true. I tried, I logged into both the business card and the personal Safarer Reserve card. It's true that it only pops up on the business card account. But if from there, if you click through the terms and conditions, it's pretty darn clear that it applies to the personal Sapphire Reserve card as well. There's, in fact, there's a bullet point that says, you must book the hotel in your Chase Travel account connected to a qualifying Chase credit card, and parentheses J.P. Morgan Reserve, Sapphire Reserve, and Sapphire Reserve for business. So Sapphire Reserve counts. So that means that potentially the value of making bookings through the edit could have gone up a lot. And here's the other reason this is breaking and not like something. Most price match guarantees like require that all the stay details be exactly the same for them to, you know, say, okay, we'll honor that claim.

and if that includes what benefits you get during the stay, there isn't going to be anywhere you can compare the edit to, except maybe fine hotels and resorts, but even there, it wouldn't be worded the same, the benefits. So, and that wouldn't be a public rate that you,

it seems unlikely to me that if they do that, that you would be ever successful in filing a best rate, guarantee, claim. However, when they list out what has to be an exact match, it kind of sounds like we're okay. So they list out that the hotel name has to be the same, the address dates, room type, bed type, refund policy, number of guests, and currency has to be in U.S. dollars. That's all they list.

So we don't know, right? Yeah. So it's possible. that the best rate. So anyway, it'll be fairly easy, I think, to test this because when you make a booking through the edit, most of them are fully refundable. So there's very little risk in just trying it and seeing whether it works. Yeah, I'm really interested in this because that would that would greatly increase the value of that edit credit. And I say greatly, it's still hamstrung by the footprint. There still aren't enough the edit properties for me to get wildly excited. But this is

certainly a major improvement if it works in the best possible way that we can imagine. I'm hopeful, but cautiously hopeful. It's also a big advantage for just using, if you're interested in using your chase points at a decent value whenever there is a boost, which currently tends to be either 1.65% boost or a 2x boost, then you can be getting good value for your points as long as the price of the hotel is decent. And boosts aren't reserved only for the edit stays. There's also some other hotels that show up boosted, so it might be good for that as well. Yeah. And then it'll be interesting to see how they refund the difference. They refund the points or just the cash? Yeah, I would guess it's cash, but yeah, I don't know. It's very clear that you can book with points, though. Right. Right. That'll be interesting. Okay. So that's the Sapphire Reserve breaking news. Next up, there are some updates to Delta's 20-minute baggage guarantee. If you're not familiar, Delta offers a baggage guarantee that your bags, will be at the carousel within 20 minutes of, I guess, of you getting to the gate, is that the way

this works? I, yeah, 20 minutes of arrival, whatever they consider arrival being. And I'm not even sure they check, but, you know, I've filed a, so anyway, yes, Delta has long had this benefit where you're waiting for your bags. It's taking a long time. You could then, there's a easy online form where you could fill out your flight number, your Sky Miles number, a couple other pieces of data. I can't remember.

And they right away credit you with 2,500 miles, which has been great. In the past, you've had 72 hours from arrival to submit your claim. What's changed is now they limit it to two hours. Wow. Yeah, that's a shame. So if you're the type who like, you know, waits till you get home and settled and everything to do something like this, you know, might not work for you. For me, I would tend to forget if I was waiting until then anyway. So I tend to be like, I'm waiting at the baggage carousel this is taking forever.

Let me fill out a form. Let me fill out the claim right now. You know, and that's, that's how I do it. So it doesn't affect me. But, but yeah, so it's something to be aware of. because it, you know, obviously you have less time now to do it. Yeah. Well, if you're arriving in like New York City at a New York City airport and it takes

more than 20 minutes to get your bag, that's eating into your two hours, right? So if you wait until you get your bag and then you got to go find an Uber or a taxi or whatever and get into the city and get to your hotel, yeah, I mean, your two hours would be up by the time you get checked in maybe. So you really have to be there on the form, ready to rock and roll, I guess. so that's something to keep in mind. I will be flying Delta this week and checking something. So I'll have to have my form pulled up and ready as I'm walking to baggage claim just in case.

Just in case. Because I'm not going to let them get me. That's fine. You're not going to get me, Delta. It doesn't take long to Google for the form and pull it up and fill it out. It does not take long at all. That much is good. That much is good.

And I probably wouldn't have bothered Delta, but once you put a little pressure on, you lit a fire, and now it's going to cost you 2,500 miles if it's not there in 20 minutes. So good luck to the baggage claim. Yeah, you know, it'd be funny if they get more claims now rather than fewer. Right. You know, because before people probably, you know, frustrated about the bags being laid and thinking, oh, I'm going to do this when to get home, then they forget, right?

Forget. Yeah. And now it'll be like, oh, this is frustrating. I better do it now because I've only got two hours. And I can't wait. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I think that's a really silly move, to be honest, Delta.

So you're just encouraging people to fill that out more. But anyway, all right, well, good luck anyway, one way or another, bad luck, or I don't know which way to wish the luck. But I hope my bags get there on time and I don't even have to worry about it. Okay, we'll be right back after this with our main event. We hope you're enjoying the Frequent Myler on the air podcast. Did you know that Frequent Myler is also a website? At Frequentmyler.com, you'll find all the last.

latest deals, news about points, miles, and rewarding credit cards, the single best, best credit cards page on the web guides to all popular rewards programs and many other terrific resources. If you'd like to get our post sent to your email, go to frequentmiler.com forward slash subscribe and sign up for free. And we're back with today's main event. How to best spend $15,000 just asking for a friend. Well, like Greg said at the beginning of the show, So a friend reached out to me and had this enormous amount of spend to do, $15,000 worth of

spend in short order and asked, you know, what's the best credit card to use or what are the best credit cards to use? Because it's a situation where the spend can be broken up over multiple cards and they had enough foresight to know that there are some big spend bonuses to hit and whatnot. And so I found myself thinking, well, what would I do if it was me? If I had the $115,000 to spend it. And like Greg said at the outset, it's really hard to give any kind of general advice that would apply to everybody because it all depends on your situation. Do you care about elite status with this program?

You know, how do you travel? What matters to you? It varies so much from person to person. They're kind of giving some blanket advice for how everybody should spend $150,000 is almost impossible because there are so many different big spend bonuses out there. But we wanted to talk about it through the lens of how I might do it. Yeah, and I just want to throw in like one thing about like, even if there was a card that, that for some reason gave a bonus for tax payment or whatever this is a payment for, I was assuming tax because that's what usually comes up. You know, let's say there's a card that earns 20 points per dollar for this type of spend.

Does that card offer $15,000 of credit limit for that person? Probably not, right? So even if there was that magic bullet card, you probably could only do a percentage of that spend with that card. Right. Exactly. So most people would have to split that over multiple cards. And I would probably be splitting it over multiple cards too, although we'll talk about how you might be able to do it. But at any rate, before we get into all of that, I want to first recognize that the fastest way to earn lots of miles and points is always to apply for lots of cards and meet lots of ones.

welcome bonuses. And with $115,000 in spend, I mean, an average of $5,000 in spend to meet an average welcome bonus, you could open like, I don't know, 30, 31 cards or something and earn lots and millions of miles and points. And so I want to recognize that that would be the best way to earn lots of points would be to split this over tons and tons of new cards. So recognize that, full stop. That's absolutely true. But not everybody wants to sign up for a bunch of new cards. And you can't necessarily sign up for 30 at once. And in this case, it was a situation where the spend had to be done in short order and a short amount of time. And so that wasn't a possibility to open 30 new cards or whatever.

And so we wanted to look at it through the lens of, okay, well, I'm going to look at it through the lens of the cards that I have. Which cards would I use out of the cards I have if I had this big purchase that I had to make or a big amount of spend that I had to do. And so big spend opportunities unlock some additional benefits like elites. status or the ability to earn more points or other stuff. So let's talk about the contenders that I would consider. And then Greg can tell me out of my contenders, which ones you think you would pick and how you might divide the spend. And I'll talk about maybe how I'm thinking about it. Sounds good. So let me start with some contenders. First up, the business platinum card. Now, this is a card that ironically enough, even though Greg just said you probably wouldn't be able

to put all the spend on one card. This is one that maybe you might be able to put the entire 150 $15,000 on. I've heard of people spending significantly more than that on their business platinum cards. In fact, it's going to depend on your spending pattern and all sorts of things as to whether or not Amics will let you spend $115,000. I say you, meaning like you, the listener, like me, I don't know if I would be able to put $115K all on one. But it's at least theoretically possible because it's a payover time card that needs to be paid immediately unless you have the payover time feature on. And then you'll, You can only do that up to your payover time limit.

So it would be theoretically possible to do it entirely on that one card. And the business platinum, of course, offers two points per dollar on individual purchases of $5,000 or more on up to $2 million per year and spend. So if it was possible to do the entire 115K just on a business platinum card, that would yield 230,000 AMX membership rewards points, which is a nice return on that amount of spend. And if it was a new business platinum card at that, then you'd have to be. have the welcome offer as well, and then it would be pretty incredible. Now, at $75,000 spend on a business platinum, which you could hit with this, you'd earn unlimited Delta Sky Club visits. So if you're a regular Delta flyer, that could be a great benefit. You wouldn't be limited to the 10 visits per year that you ordinarily have on this card. And you get two guests when you visit Centurion lounges

or sidecar by Centurion, which again, ordinarily, you don't get any guests as an MX Platinum cardholder or business platinum cardholder. So, If you live in a city with a Centurion Lounge or a sidecar by Centurion Lounge or a Delta Sky Club, that could certainly add up to be worth something for you. Yeah. And I think those benefits are good for the rest of this calendar year and all the next, if I remember right? I think that's correct.

I think that's correct. Yeah, I think you're right about that. And then, you know, if this person had a bunch more spent to do over the rest of the calendar year, if you were to spend $250,000 on a business platinum card, you'd earn a $1,200 credit for flights through MX travel. Now, the $115K we're talking about here only gets you not even halfway to that ultra big spend bonus. So whether or not that would make sense, I probably wouldn't have enough spend to hit the

$250K,000. That probably wouldn't be a factor for me. But I bring it up because it's there. And this would get you part of the way there. So that's one contender is using a business platinum for some or all of this, this, this 115k spent. Then we got World of Hyatt. Now, I don't have the business card, but if you did have the business card, that might be appealing for earning additional elite night credits, although I actually think having the consumer card might be a little bit better here. So if we were to put all 115K spend on a consumer, World of Hyatt consumer card, which would not be possible for me or most people.

But just as an if, if you did, that'd be 46 elite nights since the card earns two elite nights per 5K spend, plus the 115,000 points plus a category 1 to 4 free night certificate. And we value those free night certificates at $216. So altogether, if you take our reasonable redemption value for the points you would earn and the value of the free night certificate, and you compare that to what you'd earn on a 2% cash back card, it's pretty much an even match. 2% cash back on $15,000 if you were to be able to put that all on 2% cash back cards to get you $2,300. And your value is going to be somewhere in that range if you consider the value of the points and the free night certificate with Hyatt. So it would be relatively close. But in my case, I'd probably only be looking to put some spend on the consumer card. And we'll talk about how much in a little bit.

Yeah. Let me just add one piece. The business card also gives you 10% back on award redemptions up to 20,000 points earned back after you spend $50,000. So if you spend points enough at Hyatt hotels, that's like 20,000 extra points on top of what you'd be earning from the spend. That's a good point. That's a good point. And then the consumer card, I just talked about 115K, but I think in my own personal circle, I'd be more likely to consider spending just $15,000 on the consumer card in order to earn both six Elite Night credits and the category one to four free night certificate on top of the 15,000 points that you earn with $15,000 spend.

That combination is a really good return, but that would only take care of a small piece of the overall spend here. Another thing that could take up a small piece of the spend is spending on an Amex-Hilton surpass card. If we put $15,000 on a surpass card, then we would earn a small piece. an uncapped Hilton Free Night Certificate, and those can be used any night of the week at any property for a standard room. Our value for a Hilton Free Night Certificate, and we have an entire post on how much free night certificates are worth and how we come to that value based on an approximate points value and a fudge factor because it's not quite as valuable as points, et cetera. Our value for a Hilton Free Night certificate is $5.25. So that's the big spend bonus at

$15,000 calendar year spend on the Hilton surpass card. And so you could look at that if you valued it at that, which you might value it less. You might value it more. But if you valued it at our valuation, that's about an additional three and a half percent cash back on 15K. It's not cash, but 3.5 percent value back on $15,000 spend on top of the base earn. And the base earn rate on that card of three points per dollar based on our reasonable redemption value is about 1.23.

So if we put 15K spend on the Hilton surpass card, it's kind of like an effective return of 4.73% on that 15K, which is pretty good. Again, it only takes care of a small portion of the overall spend here. Then two more cards that I would consider putting some spend on are the Caesar's prestige card. I just recently got that one, actually, and $50,000 in spend on that card would give me Caesar's diamond status again. Now, we used to value Caesar's diamond status, mostly for the ability to match around for free cruises. But there are some other benefits that are related with Caesar's diamond status. So $50,000 spent on a prestige card would get me $50,000 rewards credits worth $500 at Caesar's properties, plus 20,000 tier credits, which is more than enough for diamond status.

So if I were to compare that against a 2% cash back card, if they valued the $500 in Caesar's credit at $500 because I'm planning a trip to a Caesar's property anyway, and I'll use that like cash. Then you can kind of look at it as earning like 1% cashback-ish. And so $50,000 spend is coming at an opportunity cost of about $500 that I could be earning with a 2% cash back card. So it's not it's not the most attractive option out of the ones we've talked about so far. What interests me about that is that after the $50,000 in spend, and the tier credits you earn for that, and the tier credits you earn from the welcome bonus on the card,

be very close to Diamond Plus status with Caesars, which is the next tier above Diamond status, and that's interesting because it offers the complimentary Atlantis stay that you get with Diamond status, but with no resort fees. So that is a savings of about $70 a night and a nicer hotel room because it's a nicer. tower that you get to stay in with diamond plus status. So that's marginally interesting to me and 2,500 tier credits would be relatively easy to acquire. So that's another thing I'm considering.

And then finally, the Sapphire Reserve card is the last of the things that I would kind of consider here because $75,000 in spend on the Sapphire Reserve card would get IHG, one rewards diamond status, Southwest ALA's status, a $500 Southwest Airlines credit. when booked through Chase travel and $250 credit to the shops at Chase. So that's not a slam dunk by any stretch. But we value Chase Ultimate Rewards points at one and a half cents per point. So if you consider that plus just whatever you value, the $500 Southwest Airlines credit and the $250 shops credit,

you're probably close-ish to a 2% on the $1,000. $75,000 spend. So close to parity with a 2% cash back card. And you can kind of look at it as an easy way to end up with IHG Diamond and Southwest A-list status. So not, again, a slam dunk, but kind of a cheap way to get to IHG Diamond and Southwest A-list if you value those things. So all right, those are the cards that I talked about here that I would consider.

So let me first ask you, are there other cards you think I should consider for big spend in this type of situation. And then out of the cards I mentioned, how would you do this? Well, some other cards that come to mind are, depend on like, are you interested in airline elite status? Then you've got, you know, the Delta Reserve card. If you're interested in American Airlines elite status, you've got any of their cards, you know, and so on. You can go on about other airlines as well, where you can spend to status. So depending on what your friend is interested in, there might be some opportunities there where they would. Now, in most cases with that, where you're spending to status, I would say that if you were making like a just a logical decision about

which approach is going to get me the most sort of concrete value for my spend, that's probably not going to be it. But there's there's this sort of intangible it's very hard to put a price tag on the value of things like just knowing you're always going to get extra leg room or whatever it is. Which is also why with Southwest, for example, you can't. It's hard to put a price tag on that, right? So that's so independent. You know, it differs so much from person and person how much they would value that. Anyway, I would throw that in the mix. Same thing with hotel program. So you mentioned Hyatt.

Of course, with Hilton, you could get, if you don't have the Aspire card and you want diamond status, you could do that with $40,000 spend with Marriott. It's a little bit more complicated. But anyway, you could do stuff with Marriott as well. I wouldn't recommend it. And then, of course, IHG. We talked about earlier in the show, the IHG premier card or the premier business card. card with $40,000 spend, you get diamond status, which will get you free breakfast at IHG hotels. So that's pretty good, too. So that's the main thing that comes to mind.

There's the, if you're thinking more about like just earning points, you know, and you already said at the outset, like, we know that signing up for cards is better. So, so, I mean, I would start off looking at what are the big sign-up bonus, at least do a couple of them, I think, and then do the rest with the leftover spend. But assuming you could break up the spend into multiple, right, chunks. But, you know, beyond that, what if your main thing is, I want valuable rewards, okay? So you pointed out the business platinum 2x, and you could probably, and what's attractive about that? You're getting transferable points, which, of course, If you're into this game, you know how to transfer to the right airline or hotel partners in order to get outsized value.

But there's a couple other 2X games in town, right? Capital One has a few options with earning 2X with their VentureX, VentureX for business. They've got their cash plus. Spark cash. Spark cash, Spark cash, Spark cash plus. Yeah. So, you know, almost there. All of those earn 2X almost there.

I'd be like, ooh, can I get a big welcome bonus plus get 2X for all that spend? And then there's the built palladium card. Again, 2X. Now people aren't getting huge credit limits on those, so that might only go so far. But if you combine the 2X with the spend plus other points you can earn from their points accelerators and whatnot. They have other ways of earning, you know, using it to pay for rent or mortgage. You can get even more points than the 2x with the Bill Palladium. So those are a few off the top of my head.

No, that's a good one. And the Bill Palladium car, you mentioned, people aren't getting huge limits in that, you know, various person and person. My wife's limits, her largest limit by a margin. Oh, wow. So it just depends, you know, I think one person to the next is to where that shakes out. And I think that that in particular is one where, you know, you're only probably going to get reports on the internet from people who are disappointed. Yeah.

Rationally. Like somebody who gets a limit that they're happy with isn't looking for a Reddit thread to tell everybody, hey, I got a great credit limit on this card, right? So you always kind of have to take those types of things to the grain of salt. Yeah. The sample set is. It came up in my mind, though, because my credit limit went down a little bit when I went from the old built 1.0 card to the Bill Palladium.

It didn't go down. It didn't go down. Yeah. And you're not the only person we know who had that happen. So you're absolutely right about that. Makes sense. Yeah. So I'm kind of looking at it and saying you're right.

So there are a lot of ways to earn at least two points per dollar. So then let me ask you this. Even if you couldn't do it all on one card at 2X, probably. I mean, like in my household, my wife has a venture X. I have a venture card. She's got a spark cash card. We got a double cash. We could put some in the business platinum.

Should we just be putting all of that if we were doing this? Should we just be putting it all? at 2x or are any of the other big spend bonuses worth going after? You know, first, I think I'm going to go back to it so individual about, because a lot of those big spend bonuses are about elite status and there's just no way to give someone else. You know, here's how much you should value this. There's no algorithm where you could, you could say, well, the ability to book, you know, right into extra legroom seats and

have the chance of an upgrade is is worth this. It's so individual. And even if there was an exact dollar value you could assign to how much that's worth if you fly, you know, once a week, well, most people don't fly exactly once a week. So it's still individual, right? Right. And so, yeah, so it's so hard. So, you know, personally, I'm looking at it going, well, the one on there that would attract me because I like Hyatt Globalist status so much is spending enough on Hyatt

a Hyatt card to make sure that you earn global status this year. But, again, it just really depends how much you want those. The Caesar's thing did not excite me because of what you mentioned.

Because you said, okay, I'll waive resort fees. If that's really why you're doing it and you add up how much you're saving and resort fees plus versus how much you're losing an opportunity value from spending on a two X transferable points card, I don't think it adds up. Now, if there's other things about that Caesar's elite status that you'd be excited about, sure, that could be interesting. Right, right. So let me tell you the one I would eliminate right off the back. Okay. So for, for me, I would eliminate the Sapphire Reserve right off the bat. And here's why. So it's obviously

a lot of spend in order to get marginal benefits. You know, we fly Southwest a lot. So the $500 Southwest credit is pretty good. It's kind of a bummer that you got to use it booking through Chase. That's kind of annoying. I would put up with that annoyance, but there's not enough else there to attract me. The $250 credit to the shops at Chase, I mean, I could probably find a Christmas gift or whatever that I would value enough to, I don't know, look at that at half of its face value or whatever. But when you mentioned the Southwest Airlines A-LIS status, you said it's hard to put a price on that.

And I would push back as a Southwest person on that and say, no, it's actually very easy to put a price on that because the Southwest priority card or the Southwest Performance Business card gives you basically all of the benefits of A-LIS status except for the, like, priority check-in line at the airport. That's really the only thing you get beyond. with A-LIS status, it's meaningful that matters. Otherwise, your access to extra legroom seats is the same with the priority card or the performance business card and, you know, other stuff like that.

So I guess you earn some more points per dollar on paid flights and whatnot. So I guess maybe some people will find a marginal benefit. But for me, that benefit is worth the annual fee. So it would save me the annual fee on one of those cards if I were going to cancel them. But I'm not going to cancel them because I keep them around. Because as a blogger, I'll write about them and occasionally be able to use my referral link. And so I'm not going to get it. get rid of the Southwest cards. So that benefit doesn't really mean anything to me at all. So it's

whether or not I care about IHG diamond status. And as you said, if I really cared about IHG diamond status, and IHG card would be the way to do it. I don't have any of the IHG cards where you could earn status. I could upgrade my old $49 card to do that. But I don't care enough about IHG diamond status. So I'd eliminate that one, the easy elimination for me. Now, the Caesar's one's interesting because I would not earn Caesar's diamond status any other way. And so that's the one that I look at and you're absolutely right. Mathematically, it's a bad decision. It doesn't make sense compared to the other options. But there's part of me that says, well, but there's, there is no other, I mean, you could earn the tier credits. And there are some people that will go during the 10x tier credit times

and play certain types of machines and be very strategic about how they do it. And I'm not talking about picking like the machine that looks like it's a, you know, a firecracker about to explode or whatever. I mean, mathematically, there's some ways that you can actually, you know, approach gambling in order to minimize the, the amount of house edge and

minimize the expected variance so that you could, you could earn tier credits somewhat reasonably. I'm probably not going to do that to go after Diamond status. I probably will use some of those techniques during the other 2,500 tier credits, but I'm interested in that to see what else I could do.

with Diamond Plus, and particularly to see if Diamond Plus could get me any other cruise opportunities or matching opportunities with other casinos that Diamond has not opened up before. Yeah. So to sort of rephrase this, it's not so much that earning diamond status from that spend is what you're after, but you're looking for that big leg up towards Diamond Plus, and that's where the potential exciting stuff is. Yeah, and the cost is relatively small because, you know, it does earn something back, right, that's concrete. It earns the reward credits that we can.

And we are planning a stay in Las Vegas where we will be able to use the reward credits and get value out of those and some of the diamond elite benefits. So I would look at that and say, well, I could. I could use that and get some additional benefit. If I stayed at a Caesar's property, you get wave resort fees and free valet parking and all. those types of things that would be nice little benefits where I wouldn't really want to pay a lot of money for them. But in this case, the opportunity cost would be small enough. And the opportunity, excuse me, would be easy enough that I would consider spending the 50K on that. However, that would obviously be like lower on the totem pole because you're right that the return on spend isn't great.

So then, yeah, I look at, okay, well, you get the Hilton surpass card. That to me would be an easy, $15,000 of the spend no more. is I already have diamond status. That comes with the aspire card. Easy to get diamond status. So I wouldn't be spending any more than the 15. But I would spend the 15 because that's a pretty good return on 15. So I would knock out 15K for sure on the surpass card and have 100,000 left to do.

So that would cut me down right away. I would for sure do the 15K on the consumer Hyatt card because at 15K,000 the return there between 15,000 points and the category one to four free night and the six elite nights towards status. it's a struggle for me to hit 60 nights with Hyatt. So getting six nights is kind of a no-brainer for me. It's an easy way to pick up six nights and get me closer because I wouldn't hit 60 without that for sure. I may need to spend more on the card than that in order to reach 60 this year. So, and I think I probably will go for 60. So I'd spend at least 15,000 on that and maybe more. So that's 30. So that leaves me with 80 more, which is, relatively convenient because 75K on the business platinum card would offer a good return and it would

offer at the two points per dollar on a purchase of over 5,000 and it would get me some small additional benefit in terms of unlimited Delta Sky Club visits. Now I don't fly Delta enough that probably am to use the 10 I got anyway. So that doesn't attract me as much as two guests for Centurion Lounge Access does because my wife and I both have platinum cards so we can each get into a Centurion Lounge, but we don't go to them now because we have two kids. And I don't want to pay the $35 a kid or whatever. And there are multiple times each year where we fly through an airport with a Centurion Lounge, but we don't go anymore because of that. So spending the 75K on the business platinum would get that access. And that would be worth something more to me.

And the 2X is already a good return. So 2X plus something more is, I think, attractive enough for me to say I would, I would do the 75K. And if I just had said, 75 that leave me an additional five, I could toss on the Hyatt card for a couple more elite nights and be done with that. So, so, and that would be without the Caesar's card at all. So that would be probably my strategy without the Caesar's card. The Caesar's card is tempting for me. And I haven't thrown it out yet. But, but I think more reasonably, 75K business platinum, 15 or 20K, world of Hyatt and 15K Hilton surpassed. I think that'd be my answer in my household. I think that's the way I would probably do it. I mean, I think that's a really solid approach. I think if,

you know, if somebody was really interested in Hilton free night certificates, I think, now correct me if I'm wrong. Well, all right, I think you mentioned that the spend had to be done pretty quickly. If it didn't need to be done too quickly, I think what you could do, spend 15,000 on the surpass, get a free night certificate, upgrade to the aspire, which comes with a free night certificate right away. So now you're at two. Spend $15,000 more because if you spend 30,000 in a calendar year on the surpass, am I right on the aspire? Yeah, no, on the aspire. You get another free night. And they count, at least a lot of reports have said that first 15K counts, even though it was on the surpass, but it's now an aspire. So with a total of $30,000 spend, you'd then have like

three nights in short order if you can stage it that way, which would be kind of cool. Yeah. I mean, I think that's a really solid plan. So I love that I think this does a good job of demonstrating how individual these things are, right? I think some people would look at the Caesar stuff and be like, I go to Vegas all the time. If I could be one of those high rollers just by throwing the spin there and getting a few more tier credits, that would be awesome. I could see a lot of people highly valuing that. On the other hand, you know, everyone else would be like, I don't value that at all. You know, and so, or the business platinum card, the two guests in the Centurion lounge, if you didn't travel the way you do and, or even if your wife didn't also have a

platinum card. Yeah. It would be worth it. Having just two guests isn't enough, right? Because you're traveling with four people. And so I think that it's such a good, um, demonstrating. of why we can't just give an answer that works for everybody. Absolutely does not. No, we can't. And, and, you know, I only briefly touched on the Capital One cards. And that was the 75K and a Capital One card is something else I thought of because that would get you guest access for two guests for you and the authorized users for whom you pay for an authorized user card at Capital One lounges. And so that came to my mind as well, though I can count on one hand the number of times I've been in a situation where I potentially could have used a Capital One lounge and I can count on zero

fingers the number of times I've been into a Capital One lounge yet. So that's not something I'm using. But if I lived at an airport with a Capital One lounge, that might be more of a consideration for me. Obviously, potentially more than caring about Centurion Lounge access. So you're right. So it's so individual. It varies so much from person to person. And the surpass technique, the Greg just mentioned, be a great technique for somebody who has had a surpassed card for a long time. But if you don't, you're opening a new surpass card in order to get the bonus and spend the 15K, well, you're not going to be able to upgrade to the aspire card yet. So, you know, it varies tremendously from person to person in terms of what you might be able to do there.

So yeah, but fun exercise to consider. I like sometimes getting questions like that because it does make me think about what would I do, how would I do it? And bounce that off. And I kind of like bouncing it off of the rest of the frequent miler team and getting opinions. So I appreciate you playing along with that one, Greg. Oh, absolutely. It's fun. This is like a fun game. How would you spend the X number of dollars?

So the listener, same to you. How would you spend $115,000? I'd be curious to hear what you have to say. I'm sure there's going to be some folks out there who say they would spend to Delta Diamond or they would spend on an aviator silver card in order to earn credit towards elite status of American Airlines. You could spend towards a companion pass with Southwest. There's so many other things you could do.

So please let us know what you would do. I'm curious. I look forward to reading the comments. But let's move into this week's question of the week. So this week's question of the week came in a couple of questions, but Rob wrote in and said, could you talk about how significant amounts of investments like brokerage or IRA investments can be used to enhance the points in miles game? I think Greg has mentioned a Bank of America program he's taken advantage of, thanks, Rob.

And I know we've talked about Bank of America before, but maybe not really in detail in a while. And maybe it's not the only opportunity out there. I don't know. Can you share a little bit about somebody who has investments and how much they need to have in order for it to make a difference might be able to enhance their points in Miles game? Sure. So Bank of America, yeah, it has this bank level rewards program where basically you get a different elite tier based on how much money you have in the combination of Bank of America plus Merrill. So Merrill is Merrill Edge and Merrill Lynch. And if you have, I don't remember the exact amounts, but currently, as we're recording this, if you have $100,000 and more across your investments in all of Bank of America and Merrill, then you get a, the big deal is that on certain Bank of America credit cards, you get a 75% boost in the rewards earnings.

So there are one and a half percent, the credit cards that earn only one and a half percent everywhere, suddenly jump up to earning 2.62 and change percent back for all your spend, which is an incredible. That's cashback equivalent. What Bank of America does not have is any cards that earn points that are like airline miles or hotel points or transferable points where you could get that 75 percent boost. The other thing to know is that soon, I forget, I think May, they're changing the program up. And so at the $100,000 tier is going to give you a 50% boost instead of a 75% boost. So I think that brings you down to 2.25% everywhere, which is still better than most programs, but not as eye-poppingly exciting. And then at a million dollars in investments and savings, you can, you get the, the 75% boost. Some others worth knowing about that off the top of my head are Citibank. If you have $200,000, I think, in investments and savings, checking all that kind of stuff with City, then you have City Gold status, and that gives you things like a annual rebate on certain

high-end Citibank credit cards, including the CityStraEleet, the American Airlines executive card, the old city prestige card. I think those are the three currently. And so that brings the effective annual fee for each of those cards down by a camera, $145, I think, I've thought me at. I don't remember exactly how much, $150 maybe. And suddenly, like those cards become a lot easier to justify if you like the perks of those cards.

It also gives you some things like if you have a checking account, you get, I can't remember $200 back on certain types of purchases. And so you might be able to get like your Costco membership rebated and different things like that. Wow. I know there's others, but those are the main ones. A couple others come to mind. US Bank. If you have $100,000 or more and you get the Smartly card and there's some additional,

I think you need like a Smartly checking. I can't remember the exact Smartly card details. but if you have $100,000 or more, then you get a total of 4% back on your first $10,000 in net eligible purchases each billing cycle with the SmartLeak card. And there are different tiers. You get 3% between $50, 999 or 2.5% less than that. So it just depends on how much you have. But again, at that 100K level or more, then you're looking at 4% cash back and up to $10,000 a

month, which could certainly be interesting. So that's one to keep in mind, I suppose. And then with Morgan Stanley, you can, with investments and a platinum cash plus account, you can get an annual fee waiver, essentially, get the $895 engagement bonus. I can't remember what they call it. But you can get the $895 back on the annual fee, right? Is that the way it works with the Morgan Stanley card? Yeah, right. I mean, there's requirements you have to have a certain account open. And if you have that account open, the cash plus account, I think it's gone. Yeah, you get the full annual fee back, but that account has a monthly fee, which can be waived if you have enough in savings in that account. Yeah, I think if I remember correctly, you have to have $25,000 average monthly balance or average daily balance each month in that account.

order to not pay a monthly fee. And if you don't, then I think the monthly fee on the Platinum Cash Plus account, if I remember correctly, is $55 a month. And so I did briefly think about, is it worth trying to get that and just pay the monthly fee and get the annual rebate on the annual fee for the Morgan Stanley Platinum card? That's questionable, though, based on your tax bracket, because you're going to pay taxes on that $895 that you get back. And so if you're in a higher tax bracket, the amount you're going to pay in tax, plus, you're going to pay in tax, plus, you're the monthly fee for the account might add up to more than the cost of just paying the annual fee on the card. So if you weren't going to keep that money in that account, then it's questionable

value right now. And right now, because of the way interest rates are, it's questionable to keep $25,000 in that Platinum Cash Plus account. But at any rate, it's a possibility. It's something else to keep in mind. Schwab also has an engagement bonus on the platinum card. If you've got, I think it's a million dollars or more with Schwab, then you get a discount on the annual. will fee on the platinum cards. So that's another one that comes to mind. But the majority of what I think about here are the things that we mentioned initially. Bank of America, City, and U.S. Bank are the three that come to mind in terms of your investments making a difference. There probably are some others out there that are less interesting to us and or just that we haven't yet stumbled on, but those

are the ones that are the ones that used to be fantastic was Chase's private client because what that gave you was you used to be exempt from the 524 rule if you had private client status through their banking. And so that meant you could sign up for at that time as many like chase cards as you wanted basically and get the welcome bonus on all of them. But that has long, that ship has long since sale. Yeah. And it's worth mentioning the the cash and or investment requirements for most of these. Again, you'll have to look into the details. But like Bank of America, for instance, I'm familiar with since I've done it in the past. investment accounts could include like IRAs and their self-directed brokerage, Merrill Edge.

And so that's worth calling out because if you're familiar with Merrill Lynch, you might say, oh, but there's fees, you know, managed account fees and whatnot. But Merrill Edge is the self-directed brokerage that does not have like monthly and annual fees. And so you could just have an IRA there, move an IRA because you can change custodians. Maybe you have an IRA right now at Wells Fargo or Fidelity or wherever else. you could move it to Bank of America in order to meet that requirement. And that's going to be similar probably with most of the rest of these, that you could move over retirement accounts like that in order to meet the requirements.

So it might not be as hard as it might sound when you hear what, $100,000 in cash. I don't have that in the bank. But you might have retirement savings that could potentially work for that. So it's not necessarily as far-fetched as it might initially sound. Right, right. And if your main concern is about the cost, maybe you have a lot in investments, but you don't want to be paying like, you know, brokerage fees, as Nick said, all of these that we've talked about have self-directed investment

account options where the fee, you know, any fees that are there are so tiny that it, what you really care about is how you're investing and whether that's getting a good return. And so it's a pretty good option. Yeah, if you have the money anyway. Right, right. All right. That brings us to the end of today's episode. If you've enjoyed this and you like to get more of it in your email inbox each day or each week, go to frequentmiler.com slash subscribe to join our email list. Follow us on all the various social media. You can join our frequent miler insiders Facebook group to ask questions just like that anytime you'd like. And if you have a question that you'd like to be considered for a future question of the week or piece of feedback that you'd like to be considered for our giant mailbag,

you can send that to mailbag at frequentmiler.com. Bye everybody. If you love travel, but don't always have time to plan, we've got a podcast for you. It's called Travel in 10. And in every episode, in about 10 minutes, we give you a smart, practical overview of destinations all around the world. We cover what to see, where to stay, where to eat, what actually matters when you're planning out a truck. It's designed for real life. Listen on the way to the airport, in the car, or while you're thinking about your next get a lot. So if you want expert advice, zero fluff, and travel inspiration that you can actually use, search for travel in 10 wherever you listen to podcasts, or you can also find us at voyscape.com.

Hi, I'm Mike Siegel, host to the Travel Tales podcast, and I'm a stand-up comedian who's been touring the world for years, and when I'm not traveling for work, I'm traveling for fun. And when I'm not traveling at all, I'm talking with friends, influencers, expats, and other people from all walks of life about the thing I'm most passionate about, travel. So if you want to hear a fun conversation about travel and maybe even learn a few things along the way, check out the Travel Tales Podcast with Mike Siegel, wherever you get your podcasts.