Frequent Miler on the Air - How often do you fly to earn points & miles? | Ask Us Anything, Live Ep80 | 11-5-25

Episode Date: November 12, 2025

How often do you fly to earn points & miles? Do you chase status with an airline you don't intend to fly, with the intention of later matching to another airline? We answered these and many other questions on the Ask Us Anything hosted live on YouTube on November 5th, 2025.(06:10) - ​​How many annual fees do each of you pay a year, and how often do you fly to earn points & miles?(15:08) - ​​Hi, after the devaluation of the Wyndham Vacasa relationship, is there any more value left in hanging on to the Business Earner card?(18:36) - What are the FM team's thoughts on the Atmos summit card? Sustainable?(22:43) - Do you chase status with an airline you don't intend to fly, with the intention of later matching to another airline? Any opportunities like this that recur periodically?(24:51) -: ​​Hey gang, with platforms like Gondola and Rove, etc, when booking paid stays and flights, what is your typical order of operations with booking paid stays or flights?(32:35) - Have you heard if it's true Chase will move to EIN only for biz cards(35:06) - ​​What do you think Citi will do with current Barclays Aviator Silver cardholders...grandfather us or force us to the Globe card?(36:06) - For the Chase Sapphire Reserve® Card's 1.5x eligible points, how does it get affected if you transfer points or spend them on non-1.5x redemptions?(38:14) - A question regarding Bank of America approvals. I have a credit score of over 750. I applied for the Alaska Airlines premium card. Was denied because of not having a relationship with Bank of America . Any workarounds ?(40:22) - ​​Are Barclay’s Hawaiian cards going away or sticking around? I don’t have an immediate need for these miles, but I may regret not getting them if this is the last chance to apply.(42:51) - ​​Has anyone had success getting the annual fee waived for the next 12 months for the Wyndham Earner business card? I tried twice this week and was denied. I have 400K points and would lose them.(44:18) - ​Any word on a higher-level “ ultra premium “ delta card?(44:54) - ​​Are any of you taking advantage of the Alaska promotion using San Diego as a hub to fast-track status to Gold (or better)?(45:48) - Everyone: What is your favorite hotel brand (not chain, but brand)?(48:40) - I’m locked out of Barclays, so I can’t get the card. But is there any way to status match to Emirates silver or higher? I’ve got Delta Diamond and American Executive Platinum.(49:32) - ​What do you think will be the next Maldives? Any new, exciting up-and-coming locations that you’re excited about?

This is a Voyescape podcast. You can find all of our travel podcasts from around the world at voyescape.com. Welcome to Ask Us Anything, where the Frequent Myler team answers your questions live. All right, frequent milers, ask us anything. We're now live. For everybody out there who is watching or listening, don't forget to subscribe, enable notifications so you know when we post. stuff and go to frequent myler.com slash subscribe to join our email list wherever you're watching

you're listening don't forget to like this video give us a thumbs up leave us your comments your feedback and of course obviously tonight since it's an ask us anything pop your questions in the box if you're watching this live that and we're going to kick things off with a question about where the heck are you nick and why are you like hardly moving when you're talking i don't know I'm moving on my side. Apparently, the complimentary Atlantis Wi-Fi that comes with the complimentary Atlantis stay from Caesar's Diamond status is about the quality you might expect. So for the price tag. So anyway, I'm at Atlantis in the Bahamas on the complimentary four-night stay.

So Caesar's Diamond members get a complimentary four-night stay at Atlantis. And for years, you could match from Wyndham Diamond, which you get with just the Windham-Earner business card for. 95 bucks to Caesar's Diamond and then book this day. Now that no longer works, you can't match the credit card status to Caesar's Diamond anymore. But before my status ran out on January 31st, I booked a complimentary four-night stay at Atlantis. I had to change dates a couple of times and that was no problem. So here we are now. We do have to pay the resort fee, but that's it. Resort, well, I say that's it. That and the food, which is not cheap at Atlantis. But anyway, it's been a good couple of days. We're leaving in the morning. It's been fun. I met a reader named Tyler

today. So Tyler, if you're out there, great meeting you today. Yeah. So the kids have really enjoyed it. Atlantis has awesome water attractions. So it's a great place for kids to play and have fun for a few days. The casino is a bit higher, let's see, higher limits than I may have expected. I knew they were going to be high limits, but it's certainly, you know, the, you need to bring some money to gamble with if you want to gamble in the casino. And you do have to gamble for four hours. So, which is possible to do without losing a ton of money if you're strategic about it. But anyway, so yeah, that's where I am. So Nick, be completely honest. Did you lose your high speed internet access on a poker tournament? I did not. I did not. There is, uh, there's no poker, sadly here.

Oh. Oh. Is poker your only? Yeah, I know. Is that the only gambling you do? Or is that the only I don't know. That's what I would prefer to do. But in the absence of that, there is a sort of a poker-based table game, Ultimate Texas Holden, but I mean, it's a casino game. So it's designed so the casino has the edge. So it's not really the same kind of, it's sort of based on Holdom. So I will play that, but it's not what I would rather be playing.

I did this time around start playing Bacharat, which is sort of a classic casino game that you see in the old movies. and I understand why people play Baccarat now. The game is incredibly slow. So if you're getting rated for the purpose of comps, it's a great game to be playing because whatever your average bet is, you're going to get credit for a lot more time than you're going to have to put up a number of bets compared to if you're playing Blackjack or something like that.

So that's a good way to kind of use up your four hours, though you do need to be able to handle a little bit of variance because the minimum is $20 here. but at the same time it's it's a game that's like basically 50-50 there's no you don't have to do anything as the player it's just you just put your money up on one side or the other and the dealer handles everything else so it's a really easy game it's probably the easiest game in a casino it looks the most complicated because of the electronic board but it's probably the easiest casino game there has ever been so i played some baccarat this time around and i would do that again in the

future how does it compare to like my understanding is that blackjack is one of the ones that has the least advantage for the house how does this one compare Baccarat's a little bit lower yet. I think it's the best odds in the casino, apart from when you take the odds in the past line and craps, I think it might be a little bit closer to accurate. But Baccarat, it's almost a 50-50. It's almost a coin flip. You're betting on either the player or the banker. There's a very small commission if you bet on the banker's side. So a $20 bet pays out 19. A bet on the player is even money. And the only other option is potentially a tie. It's pretty rare, though. So it's pretty close. close to a coin flip every time. So very low house edge, and it's a really slow game. So I understand now why some people are really into Baccarat. These sound like bad things. Well, no, I mean, if you don't want to lose a lot of money.

Maybe an unfun way to spend four hours. Well, that could be. Some people would consider it on, but everybody's like looking at the board because the whole electronic board is just to show you like what the last few hands have been. So you can kind of study it, decide, oh, which side would I like to bet? and everybody's, like, doing this dance, pretending like they're thinking really hard about which side to bet. And really, everybody's just stalling so they don't have to bet so much. I don't know.

I'm going to cut off. Okay, we've talked enough about coin flipping. Please do. Done with the coin flips. Okay, first question. This is for everyone, and we're going to start with Greg. How many annual fees do each of you pay a year? I think we've answered that before.

So hopefully you have a little estimate in the back of your mind. And how often do you fly to earn points and miles? I'm going to answer the second one first, which is never. I mean, never is an exaggeration, but like the points you can earn from flying is usually such a small, like, pittily amount compared to what you could earn from welcome offers and retention offers and referring people and all those kind of other options that I never really think much about like, you know, oh, I'm going to fly in order to earn miles. Sometimes, and this is pretty rare, like there's a great fair and maybe it's maybe I could credit the flight to Alaska where they still, well, you still earn miles based on distance or you still can and you can do really well, but that's not, it's usually, that usually

comes up because I've already decided, well, paying for a flight is a, a better deal than using miles for a flight. And then, oh, good, I can earn some miles as well. It's kind of an afterthought rather than an intentional thing. As far as how many annual fees, the answer is too many. And I've been actively working on reducing that. So I've written a few posts about how I'm dropping a bunch of cards that have free night certificates. Because it's not that each one of them, like on its own, is a good deal. Like, I can always, like, use the free night certificate. They were paying, like, $95 a year or whatever, and I could use it for a hotel that maybe would have cost $250. But really sick of, like, the sort of annual pressure of having

to use all these things before they expire. And to, you know, make things worse are all these premium cards. So I have a bunch of platinum cards and all these coupons. And again, all those things, all those coupons add up to more than the annual fee. I'm getting way more value than the annual fee, but I'm not enjoying the work involved in getting there. And so I'm trying to trim way down on all those things to get to a normal, maybe 30 cards in my household instead of the 75 or so that I have to deal with today. Nick, how about you?

Any difference there for you? And as a reminder, again, it's annual fees, but also, do you ever fly to earn points and miles? Fly to say jet blue status and or jet blue. Okay, all right, too shay, let's just, I mean, just throw a random program out there. Is that, too shay? Does your family of four ever travel to earn points and miles for all four? Tim, of course, is bringing that up because right now we are finally finishing off,

JetBlue's 25 for 25 promotions. So this is one of those rare times where, yeah, we are flying. sort of just to earn the points, because if you fly to 25 JetBlue destinations by the end of the year, you get 350,000 points in JetBlue Mosaic 1 status for 25 years. And so I had decided to do that with our family of 40s, mostly MX membership rewards points in the business platinum pay with points rebate to cover most of the flights for the challenge. And so, so yeah, we did do it in this case. And it will work out to be a good deal. We'll earn 1.4 million miles collectively and use I don't know, six or 800,000 points getting there.

So it's a decent trade, not amazing, but an okay trade anyway. The status for 25 years is really kind of the nice thing. And it's kind of one of those quirky fun things. And it's gotten us out to visit a whole bunch of places we wouldn't have otherwise. We might not have done this Atlanta stay, if not for the fact that JetBlue flies to NASA on. And so that was really kind of part of the challenge. But otherwise, carbon copy of Greg's answer. Like the number of miles earned from a flight usually are not enough to move the needle for me.

that we earn way more points and miles from other stuff every year. So it's an afterthought. Totally agree and totally agree on everything he said in terms of annual fees. I'm enjoying the free night certificates more than the coupons, actually. So I'm more likely to keep the cards with the free night certificates and more likely to trim some of the coupon cards because all of the FHR credits and things are just getting to be too much to manage all that. But I agree with the sentiment that Greg is expressing that it does become unfun when you've got enough.

And I don't have 75, but we've got, you know, north of 60, I think anyway, cards in our household. And so, yeah, turning back to 30, probably wouldn't be terrible. Yeah, yeah. All right, Tim, how about you doing any flying for the miles? And what's your annual fee situation? So I don't fly. I used to, I have flown to earn miles in the past. But that was back in the day, it was primarily for Alaska status back when I was, if I needed a, just a little bit at the end of the year, at the beginning of the year, I thought I would.

I might do one or two because, you know, you could get a round trip flight to front of the east to New York from Seattle to New York for 150 bucks and earn more in miles, an actual deemable miles than that 150 bucks. And you would get the status points and so forth. In fact, the status points at that point, it wasn't status points, but now it is. So these days, no, not at all. And that's primarily because any overage I can make up by just spending on one of the Alaska cards to get status points. So that's where I would, if there was a, if there was some sort of difference that I needed to make. make up. I would just do it that way. In terms of annual fees, you know, I don't, and this is going to sound a little bit, and I'm actually going to, it gives me a great idea for a post, what I would like

to do, because I think when that question is asked, it's often asked in the sense of, what cards do you carry from year to year that you pay an annual fee on and how much are those? But it's difficult for me to answer that because it's very dynamic from year to year, because the vast majority of the cards that I keep paying annual fee on, I only keep for one year. So, for instance, right now, I have nine business platinum cards between my wife and I. And without going into the nitty-gritty of that, let's just take six of them, I believe. I have because I upgraded them using an offer where I got 120,000 points for upgrading from a green card to a business platinum card. So we can just do the math on that and say that, and these were all done before the annual fee increase, so we can

all do the math on that and say, well, that's somewhere around $4,200, slightly less than that, but about $4,200 for this year. However, those nine business platinum cards combined with the new welcome offers that I received, plus the upgrade bonuses are going to give me, you know, somewhere around over $10,000 cashed out through one of my Schwab cards. So right there, just talking about the points for that first year, I'm $6,000 ahead. So I don't even look at it as an annual fee at that point so much as I look at it as each, those, collectively those cards this year are going to put about $6,000 in my short net into my Schwabock retirement account.

Plus, I'm going to get somewhere around $3,600 in Alaska credits, all of the, and all of the ancillary coupons and so forth because I'm going to be able to double dip them for the first year. Next year, I'm not going to be spending those annual fees. So there's a lot of cards that are like that and it's fairly dynamic. So to me, but I do think it's a really good question because there are cards that I keep from year to year that I do pay the annual fees on. And so I actually, it would be fun to break it down into the difference because that's where that number really to me isn't terribly instructive because most of them are a first year's scenario and not a year-to-year scenario. And I think the year-to-year scenario is probably more the spirit in which

that question is being asked. So I think that would be a fun way to break it down and actually find that number, like how much you know I'm spending on cards that I keep from here to year. Are you trying to minimize your year-to-year-to-year like Nick and Greg as opposed to the first year? Yes. Minimize is the right word, but reduce. Yeah, I don't. And actually, to me, it's the exact opposite of what Nick is saying. And there's a post in there too that I have. I have a big backlog of posts that I'm going to need to write. But where Nick, and I actually understand where Nick is coming from, he's cooling on credits

and excited about certificates. I'm cooling on certificates and more excited about credits. And part of that is because of the dynamic nature of credits where I don't have to hold a card to year a year to be able to multiply those credits. Whereas oftentimes with a card, you only get one certificate. certificate per year. And we can go to that later and so forth. But, or I can go to that more in a post. But all that to say, where I am reducing is for the first time in maybe a decade or more, I don't have a premium hotel card right now. And that's where I am, and part of that,

and there's a big, you don't have the Ritz card? No, I don't have Ritz card. Wow. And that was because my Ritz card was closed a few years ago without my wishes. Right. And I don't have the boundless card to go back up to the Ritz card yet because I've been building all that stuff back up. But if I had the Ritz card, I would keep the, I would, I don't have an aspire. I don't have the bond. I don't have the Bon, I don't have the Bonvoy Brilliant anymore. All those cards I'm getting rid of. And that's partially because I want to play it for a while with a little more of the credits and a little less of the certificates. Got it. Yeah. Well, that's neat. There's need to hear the strategies there. But I'm going to move us along. Nick, after the devaluation of winning

Vakasa relationship. Is there any more value left in hanging on to the business earner card, in your opinion? I mean, eight points per dollar at gas stations. I still think that's worthwhile. I mean, don't get me wrong, Wyndham isn't my first hotel choice, but having some windom points for the times when they are useful to me is at eight points per dollar. That's what I would always use to fill up my gas tank, I think. And we've debated that a little bit on a coffee break as to which is the best card for a gas return. But I'm happy with that. So I mean, there's a few different angles to look at that from. So first of all, there are some wind and properties that I'd be happy to stay at. Some of the vacation club properties look

decent. There's a couple in the Smoky Mountains that I've been looking at. There's the one in Manhattan I wrote about not that long ago that has one bedroom apartments essentially in Manhattan for 30,000 points per night. And so that's, I mean, there was plenty of space. I was surprised. It's not like ultra luxurious, but I'd be happy to stay there again for 30,000 points. And there's the all-inclusives in the Caribbean. There's a whole bunch of all-inclusives that look pretty attractive. So I think there's enough uses of wind-in points. And then every now and then you get surprised in a different location. I ran into one somewhere in like rural France that looked beautiful. I was like, wow, that looks really interesting. I'd check that out sometime

if I have a chance. So I'm still happy to collect some wind-point and have some of them. So yeah, and at $95 dollars a year. I'm happy to trade that for the 15,000 points because it's not like a certificate where I have the pressure to use the certificate. I can hang on to those points until the day when they become useful. So yeah, I mean, I certainly intend to keep it. And then the other angle from which you can look at it is you could also move those over to Caesars. So if you are somebody who likes to go to Las Vegas, then you can move those over to Caesars and they're worth one cent each in reward credits. So you can pay for shows. You can pay for, you know, spa treatments. You can pay for dinners and stuff like that at one cent each. So again, that's like

8% back at gas stations for that, if you're somebody who goes to Las Vegas, you can move them to the Caesar's sports book and use their rewards credits to place bets through the sports book. And so there's ways to kind of sort of cash that money out, too, with some match betting. So maybe not at 100%, but close enough anyway. So yeah, I'm still keeping the Wind to murder business card. I think that's one of those that, at least the way it's structured right now, it's one of those things that I say you'd have to pry out of my cold dead hands. I don't anticipate giving that up any time soon. Is that a unique opinion, according to Greg and Tim?

No. You know, even though I dumped all my Wyndham points when I had a chance to convert them to United Miles recently, I'm happy to keep the Wyndham businesses to earner a card. The 15,000 points a year, it's so much better, especially when it's a chain that I don't frequent, to get points instead of a free night certificate that expires. in a year means that I can just earn those 15,000 points each year for 95 bucks and eventually hopefully have a great use for them. And that's, so that's really nice. And of course, eight points per dollar for gas is also really sweet. So it's not like my most valuable

card anywhere close to it, but I don't see any reason to get rid of it. Hopefully the hotels are listening. We'll keep your card if you give us points instead of certificates that expire. I think, Tim, you're up next. What are your thoughts on the Atmost Summit card? Is it sustainable? Really quickly, Nick, did you, I may miss it. Did you mention cottages.com already? I did not mention that, no. Okay. So I'm going to quick put a quick plug in for Nick's post. Nick has a great post that I still refer to you every time I go to look for codges.com property called How to Book Cottages.com with wind and points. And cottages.com is effectively a UK-centric vacation rental service that you can use wind-in points to book.

And there can be some terrific value there. I just stayed in one this summer that was marvelous. It's very specific, but it actually can be a great use of wind-in points that's still available. So I'm just want to quick plug in for NICs post on that to check it out. The Amazon car is it's sustainable. I guess I'm not entirely sure what the sustainable part is. I really like the card. I think there's a lot of really,

and I think Alaska put a really, I'm impressed by the thought that Alaska put into it to offer something different than how what everybody else was doing in a way that actually made it beneficial for folks who fly Alaska and who use Alaska points to make it something that is worthwhile

for them to have. I think there's a lot of really cool benefits. I'm just this week, and it's funny, I just did some bookings this week for a prospective partner booking in Canada using Porter Airlines, which has some really fun stuff, another post that's on the back burner. I booked like three different tickets, and I'm going to take one of them. But that was something that in the past, I wouldn't, I would have given me pause with Alaska

because every time you book a partner reward, Alaska charges you $12.50 per person per segment to book that partner award. and or sorry per person per direction not per second um but you get that way with the summit card and so right there like i just all of a sudden it's this whole new realm of being able to do these prospective alaska bookings and there was ways to get around it before if you changed a reservation into another reservation it wouldn't recharge you for the partner booking but just for somebody that uses the program a lot it's a really that's a really nice benefit that that doesn't seem like that's that that big on the front end

The 25K cert is really great. I just started to use that a couple of weeks ago for award tickets for my brother and sister-in-law because you can give it. You can easily use it for bookings for somebody else. And I like the way that they actually, they've broken up benefits. They could have given, you know, lounge access like the Delta cards do. And the card probably would have been two or $300 more expensive. They could have added all these different, you know, credits for things that are not Alaska related and had the card fee go up. up like they like we've seen with you know chase amics etc and that can be kind of fun too i i enjoy

some of that as well but i just really like that they have created this card that's really tailored towards people that use alaska's program i wonder if they're asking about the sustainability of three x foreign transactions and that's what i was just going to get to i think that probably that and i whether it's sustainable or not i what i think is interesting is that it's intentional uh Alaska has come out and said that they specifically want this to be a card that expats use and they added that benefit because they think that it's not something that other cards catered towards. So they're intentionally wanting to get that in the cards of expats, or in the wallets of expats, which I think is fascinating.

I don't know if that's sustainable long term. I don't know what the metrics are in terms of how, what, you know, the balance between how many expats will have it. But the fact that it's intentional and not just something that is made for domestic U.S. residents that they're anticipating will travel. abroad makes me think that they're expecting it to be used fairly heavily or more heavily than if it were just used by travelers going abroad. So I hope it is because I think that's a really cool benefit. Yeah, that's interesting. All right. I'm going to shuffle us along again. Greg,

do you chase status with an airline you don't intend to fly with the intention later matching to another airline? Any opportunities like this that recur periodically? I mean, I've I've been known to do it occasionally when there have been really easy opportunities to get status in another program. The most recent thing, and actually, yeah, it's going to be published in about 20 minutes from now as we're talking, I wrote a post about how I was trying to decide whether to chase status with American Airlines or Alaska Atmos, because both programs let you earn status from credit card spend and other non-flying activity. And I was very clear on that post that I don't need status in either one. I don't fly Alaska or American often enough

for it to matter. And when I do, it's usually because I've booked an award in business class where having status doesn't really matter anyway. And so it's more about like, I just like playing the game sometimes. And so I did an analysis, like, based on my situation, and it's not going to apply to everyone, you know, which direction makes the most sense to, and what I did is I set the goal. I said, I want one world emerald status, which you could get from Alaska's platinum status or from American Platinum Pro, I think it is. And so then I did like the analysis saying, how much spend would I have to do. I made some assumptions about how much I would earn with Alaska by booking award flights

because that's in a unique aspect of Alaska's program. Also, how many loyalty points would I earn with American by booking hotels through Americans' program or shopping through their portal and things like that? And you'll see in the post, but it turned out that Alaska, with the summit card specifically, turned out to be a, it looks like a much better deal for me to get there. So that's the direction I'm looking at going. All right. Great.

Nick, you're up next. Okay, this actually will get discussed on Friday, somewhat on the podcast, I believe. But talk a little bit about it now. Do a teaser. Hey, gang, with platforms like gondola and Rove, et cetera, when booking paid stays and flights, what is your typical order of operations with booking paid stays or flights, Nick? So my order of operations is the booking paid flights. I book very few paid flights overall.

So I go to Google flights and look at what the cash prices are. If it's something that I think I would pay cash for, I don't even always go to Google flights because there are situations like, you know, if I'm flying to Tahiti, there probably isn't a fair that I'm going to pay cash for anyway. So I may not even look at that initially. I might just because I'll write about it, but not because I think I'm going to do that. So we tend to start with an award search tool. I use award tool the most, but I use points.

Yeah, also I set alerts with both of them. And so I'll start with an award search tool and see what's out there. I will sometimes look at Google flights because I have points path installed and that will give me also quick access to some award rates. And then it kind of depends what I find. As you'll hear us mention briefly during the mailbag segment on this week's show. sometimes what I see will ring some bells and make me say, oh, well, okay, if this flight is available to that partner, maybe this other partner that doesn't show up through an award search tool will also have access. So as you get to know, award programs, that becomes a little bit

easier to recognize those things. So anyway, that's, that's really the flights, the recap as to what I do, my order of operations for flights. On the hotel side, again, I don't book very many paid hotel stays overall. I just did a post recently. And this year, the end of the year, I'll have 105 nights in hotels. And out of those only 18 are paid nights, and out of those 18 paid nights, like, I think there were very few where it probably would have made any difference in the long run. There's one really expensive one that wasn't available through any of the portals, so it didn't really matter in that case. And otherwise, most of them were like $150 nights that altogether, the number of points I will earn from those things is

relatively insignificant as compared to all the other things I do. So I don't put a ton of effort in, though, as you'll hear us talk about on the podcast this weekend, there are times where I'll look to stack. We'll stack a shopping portal with a card link to offer, with a credit from a credit card, and we'll talk about some super stacking on this week's podcast. And I have done some of that this year, because I will look up the cash rates of the hotels. Now, I should be using Gondola Moore, to be honest, because it is a really easy to use platform that meets the need that I have when I search. But if I'm being honest, I tend to just use all of the various hotel apps. So I go to the Hyatt app, I go to the Marriott app, I go to the Hilton app, I go to the IHG app. It's slow and time

consuming and inefficient and a habit I need to break. But I'm used to doing it that way. And so I tend to look one program at a time that way, and I'll compare the cash rate and the paid rate. Then if I see cash rates are good, then I'll go looking for a shopping portal offer, try to trigger something with Capital One shopping. And now that Rove Miles is heating up, now I'm looking at Rove Miles. I hadn't been until they've really, they've added some new transfer partners and had some incredible payouts. So that's really something that's just been the last few months. I've started looking at Rove Miles more seriously and saying, well, how much could I earn booking through Rovemiles? And is that worth it? Now that they have direct bookings as well, that makes me

even more interested as you'll hear Greg talk about on the podcast this weekend, being able to book Hyatt and earn transferable miles while you do it is pretty terrific if you're booking a paid Hyatt stay since those usually aren't available through shopping portals. So there's a little sneak preview. We'll talk about all that sort of stuff on this weekend's frequent mile around the air. So make sure you're subscribed to the podcast. Check that out when it comes out on Friday evening. Man, you better hope there aren't too many more cool tools or you'll have you'll run out of tabs. I know, I know, right? It's not possible, Kerry, you know.

No such thing. No such thing is too many tabs. Your whole above the fold will be tabs. All right. I'm going to mention something beyond Google flights for booking paid flights that if you have a platinum card and a business platinum card, either or, Amex has a couple of programs where sometimes international flights are cheaper. through them than through like directly from the carrier or through other sort of standard channels they they have a their international airfare something or other that's where it's the cash rate can be cheaper and then they have the one that where it's the point price is cheaper and i

forget what that's called but that those are those are two things and and um it's it's always seemed very random to me, like when you would find those. But one of the things I've been looking at, it usually comes up with international flights where you're looking to book like business class or, you know, a premium cabin. And my wife has had a few business trips where they were paying for her to fly business class. So I've been looking at a lot of fares and business class. And And one of the interesting things I found is if the best price on Google flights says it's, you book through some random operator you've never heard of, like, you know, Jim sketchy flights or something like that, then go over to Amex.

And Amex usually has a really good price, too. That's better than the direct through the airline price. So it's not literally Jim sketchy, but, you know, you see like weird stuff that you just never heard of. And that's a clue. Maybe you should check Amex. Now, I'm not going to say Amex is cheaper than Jim, but when Amex has good prices, it's at least cheaper than any other option that you've probably heard of before and feel okay putting your money into.

Now, but in terms of like your usual flow, like, I mean, I understand you're looking at that. If you're looking at paid flights because your wife's got a business trip. But are you regularly looking at the Amex International Airline? do you do you regularly log in to search flights through mx i mean i don't i know that exists but i don't like is so so how do you know because i think the reader's question here is like what's the order of operations like how do you go about this right i mean that's a tough thing i usually just do google flights and and accept whatever number it says at its word and i do i had a situation where we were looking at um coming home from cape town south africa on a specific

day and I had put in all these alerts for awards and they were not triggering and it was getting closer and so I was looking at paid flights and on sort of a whim I looked at Amex and I was like oh my God it was way cheaper which is not something that's like all that normal but you know I lucked out and got an unbelievable fare through Amex in that situation and so it happens and you know unfortunately it's one of those things. Like, how do you know whether to bother to look? Because nine times out of ten, it's not going to be better. Right. But every now and then, boom. Yeah. Yeah. Just another thing to check. All right. Tim, have you heard, if it's true, Chase will move to EIN only for business cards? Where does that rumor come from?

That rumor comes from, there's been some rumblings on the interwebs that I believe it was recently I mean, it's been in several different, like, Reddit threads and so forth. I believe Doctor of Credit actually wrote a post about this a couple of weeks ago. And the idea is that, or the rumor, is that Chase for its business cards is no longer going to be allowing what we refer to as sole proprietorships and is instead going to only allow its business cards to be issued to folks who have an employee identification number or EIN. And that would be very inconvenient for a lot of us who have business cards because when it's a sole proprietorship, I can just apply under Tim Steenke with my social security number because a sole proprietorship is under my, it would be under your social security number anyway. And it's not the end of the world if they were to go to EINs because it's not that difficult to get an EIN. And in Washington, I actually have a couple EINs.

And in Washington, all you have to do is once a year you have to click a box that says I didn't make any. revenue to not have to file a tax return on that EIN. But it does make it trickier for a variety of reasons that we won't get into here. What I had heard was that supposedly Chase was going to formally announce this on November 1st, bless you. It was going to be, start happening somewhere either November 5th or November 15th or the two things I heard. November 1st is come and gone. We have not received, to my knowledge, any formal word from Chase that this is moving. right now it's in unsubstantiated rumor territory we actually have it and under a under our things that we may write about list as something we may write about and I've been kind of looking at it

or like waiting just to see like well are there any is there any more smoke coming that we might indicate it's fire but thus far it's kind of unsubstantiated rumors it would be really hard for me to believe that Chase would completely take all sole proprietorships out of its business card ecosystem, not beyond the realm of completer imagination, but that seems like a choice that would be against their interests, but we'll see what happens. But so all that to say to summarize right now, we've heard the rumor, we haven't seen anything to substantiate that rumor so far. Yeah.

Well, we'll just have to wait and see. In the meantime, Greg, moving on to you, what do you think City will do with current Barclays aviator silver card holders. Grandfather us to force us to the globe card? Grandfathers or force us to the or force us. Yeah. Sadly, I'm guessing they are going to force us, force product change us to the globe card. When the globe card first came out, my first reaction was like, oh, this is so different from the aviator silver that they can't justify pushing us over. But then I realized if you look at a very, very high level, it has most of the same features of the silver card, such as the ability to earn 15,000 bonus loyalty points a year, even though the mechanism for doing so is

completely different. At a high level, they could say they're giving us the same thing. And so my guess is that, yeah, and it's just a guess. I don't have any inside information, but I'm thinking that at some point they will force us over. All right. Nick, for the Chase Saffir Reserves, 1.5x eligible points, how does it get affected if you transfer points or spend them on non-1.5x redemptions? Okay. Before I answer that, I'm just going to say at the AA Globe card, every time it gets mentioned, I hear the Harlem Globetrotters music in my head.

It's killing me. It's killing me. You always, always have a song in your head. That is the Nick Way. Anyway, I wish that the globe card made me as. happy as the Harleman Brothers do, but unfortunately it doesn't. So anyway, getting back to the answer here, my understanding is that the points that are eligible for 1.5x redemptions will get used first. And it doesn't matter if it's not a 1.5x. Well, I mean, you're going to get 1.5x initially,

but my understanding is those points get used first. Am I wrong about that, Greg, Tim, hop in? No, I don't know. I mean, the question is so like, if you transfer, transfer points to Hyatt, for sense. Right. So let's say you have 200,000 points in your account, 100,000 them qualifier for the 1.5 at X, and you transfer 100,000 points to high it. Do you lose your ability to get 1.5 on future stuff? I think so. That was my that was my read of the stuff when it came out. Because by definition, they're older points. So they're probably using the older ones first, right? First. Yeah. That's what I would expect. So I would expect that they would. I think it'd be easy to test, though, wouldn't it? If you've got points in both buckets, just transfer a thousand over

to high it and then see how many, just it shows you how many you have eligible for one and a half X versus not in one and a half X, right? So I think you could just do one small transfer of some sort in order to see which ones it used first. I think it's going to use the old ones first. So someone's got to test it. All right. Was that Nick? Yes. Tim. Actually, it's not going to use either because it's going to try to do a two-factor authentication and it's going to fail and transfer your points at all. Maybe Nick's not the right person to test right right well i didn't offer you know tim i think you're next a question regarding bank of america approvals i have a credit score of over 750 i applied for the alaska airline premium card

was denied because of not having a relationship with bank of america any workarounds what do you say well so first there's a famous quote from i think it's a british prime minister that says there's three kind of lies, lies, damned lies, and credit card rejection letters. And so I always take all of that stuff. I think all of us take those to read the official reasons with a large grain of salt because they have to put a reason there, but they don't necessarily have to put the reason there. They can just list something, right?

All bad to say, with that caveat aside, Bank of America is, does have looser, is known to have looser approval algorithms for people that already have a banking relationship with them in a variety of ways. We have a post called credit card application rules by bank or something like that that goes through the Bank of America, all the Bank of America specifics that you can look at and get more detail on it. But that's one of the things. Really easy to apply for a Bank of America account so long as you have a Bank of America location within your state because they're a little they don't like giving, I believe still, they don't like giving checking accounts to people that don't have an actual look at like a physical location within their state. But if they do,

or if you do, wherever you live, there's lots of great promos for Bank for America checking accounts that come along fairly regularly. They're fairly easy to maintain. So I would say you could always try opening up an account, wait to you. There's a good bonus. Get that bonus. Then you could try again. There's also, you could go through reconsideration. We have, if you look at that post, credit card application rules by bank, there'll be a reconsideration number for Bank of America. And you could always call in and say, hey, what's the deal? I have a credit score over 750. How can I, how can we make this happen? And sometimes you can, without, once you actually talk to a human being that's looking at your application, you may be able to get that push through.

Greg, are Barclays Hawaiian cards going away or sticking around? I don't have immediate need for these miles, but may regret not getting it. them if this is the last chance to apply. I'd like to phone a friend. Which friend? Pick a friend. I don't know. Nick or Tim, do you remember? I don't, I don't actually know anything about what's happening with us. I think we thought they were going away at some point, but they haven't. Yeah. We assume they were, but they haven't. So what's interesting is in the Hawaiian language, the same word means goodbye and hello. Hello. So we just got confused. That seems to me what's going on. I can't imagine that they, you know, and I think sort of all of us can't imagine that they will let these

stick around for forever. But Barclay seems to be insisting that there's no immediate plans for them to go away. So that's what we have. Aloha. That's what we're, that's what we're saying to the Hawaiian cards. All that to say, though, there are some good benefits for a couple of those cards. You can look at it on our best offers page that are useful for some folks. Note that now the Hawaiian cards don't actually earn a separate currency, whether you're earning Atmos points the same way the Alaska cards do. So if you, when you're saying you don't have an immediate need, understand that the immediate need is for Atmos points, not for Hawaiian miles and whatever you might be seen about what you could do with Hawaiian miles in the past.

Yeah. Alaska seemed when I got a chance to talk to a couple of the higher-ups from Alaska's mileage plan at the time, Atmos now, a little over a year ago. They seem pretty committed to not keeping Barclays long term. So I think we're all surprised. We've all, for a while now, we've been like, this might be the last chance to get the Alaska cars. And we've been wrong each time we've said that.

So, you know, you're asking us to make the same prediction that we've been making for almost a year here and been wrong about so far. I still think they're not going to stick around. I think Alaska's was clear that they like their partnership with Bank of America and want to maintain that and that they aren't going to maintain two banks forever, I would assume that Hawaiian just had an agreement with Barclays that lasts for X amount of time, and when

that's done, it'll probably end, but we don't know when that is. So what we can to say definitively is it will, right now is the time to say aloha to the Hawaiian cards. Right. Right. Do now. We're surprised it still exists. Yeah. Nick. We'll start with you,

but this isn't everyone, unless Nick can answer it, I suppose. Has anyone had success getting the annual fee waived for the next 12 months for the Windham-Murner business card? I tried twice this week and was denied. I have 400,000 points and would lose them. I've never tried, and I can't imagine I would. So, no, I've not even thought to try. And that sounds a little silly because we often talk about how retention offers can be useful,

and so it can be useful to call in and say you're thinking about canceling a card or you're leaning towards canceling or something to see what they offer you. I've never even thought to try that with this card because it just isn't a car. I've always been happy to pay the 95 bucks for the 15,000 points. And especially in that situation where you're telling me your points, well, you say you have 400,000 points and would lose them. That doesn't necessarily make sense to me because wouldn't the points have a hard expiration? It doesn't matter whether you have the card or not.

So if you're at risk of losing those points, you're risk of losing those points. Whether you keep the card or not, you've got to find a way to use them. If the bank told you that you would lose all of your points immediately if you canceled your card, they were wrong when they told you that. It's a very common thing for bank, you know, customer service reps to believe. I think they believe it when they say it, but it's just not true. That's only true when it's the bank's own points that you've accumulated and you cancel the card. So maybe that's what's going on there. Yeah, that's a good, good bet, actually. Yeah. I'm glad you made that point. Yeah. Tim, any word on a higher level ultra-premium delta card?

I'm going to briefly answer and then punt if anybody else has. I've heard rumors, sort of like the Chasea A-I-N thing, that they're thinking about doing a, I think it's a $995 per year card or maybe it'll be $4,000 per year. But something that's higher than the current Delta Reserve. But I haven't heard anything concrete beyond that. Have you guys, either of you guys, Kerry? Nope. Don't know. All right. I suppose we'll move on. on then. Greg, are any of you taking advantage of the Alaska promotion using San Diego as a hub to fast track status to gold or better? So, yeah, that's about a promo that gave you a fast track by flying through San Diego. No, I'm not. And I know, I know Nick isn't. I'm assuming Tim is not, but I'll let Tim answer. No, I'm not. I mean, if it's, if it's convenient, it's a decent promotion. Four segments to and from San Diego, you get gold. I can't remember. I can't remember. I wrote the post and I can't

remember. It wasn't much. Yeah. It was a good deal for someone who's in or near San Diego that can fly through their or get there reasonably or has the flexibility to do it. I mean, there's no way I was going to convince my family to do another ridiculous flying around thing. Right, right. How many flights through San Diego

to get 25 years of Alaska says? I mean, now we're talking. I can sell that. All right. Who did I just ask that question to Tim, I think, right? This isn't everyone. We'll start with Greg. Everyone, what is your favorite hotel brand? Not chain, but brand. That's easy. I don't have one. I mean, I don't. I look at individual hotels that I like or dislike. There's not a brand that I say, oh, this is great. I'm always going to go to that. Is there a favorite hotel that comes immediately to mind?

Like hotel, like actual individual hotel? So you said it's more about individual hotels? I feel like we have more pictures of Greg, uh, Greg's feet reclining in a pretty location at the Bentana Big Sur, but I may be putting, uh, well, all right. Yep. That's, that's a really good one. Yeah, that's, let's go with that. All right. Nick, how about you? Favorite brand? I mean, I, I, I like a double tree cookie as much as anybody, but I don't know that I like double tree is, as my pick of, uh, yeah, I mean, that's, yeah, that's, yeah, that's too hard to answer. I think that, yeah, I couldn't give you a favorite brand because like I I think I kind of I wouldn't say this is a favorite but like Hyatt place is convenient as a family traveler because the rooms usually have enough space and so like

that's a convenient and residence in also is convenient I don't get excited about going to a high a place or a residence in though so I wouldn't call them my favorite brand by any stretch so yeah I don't know it's a I think I can't really answer that for an individual hotel brand how about you Tim. Well, I think jumping on like along with that, the brands are so fudgy. Yeah. They're so fudgy. There's like a higher regency. One of my favorite Hyatt properties that I've ever been to is a Hyatt Regency on Okinawa, the Hyatt Regency Saraghani Island. It is just a marvelous property. It could, it's better. I enjoyed it more than many of the park heights that I've been to. Some of the worst Hyatt Properties I've ever been to are

higher regencies. Sure. Like, especially domestic U.S., there are just scrappy higher regencies. And it's like, I wouldn't send my, well, maybe by worse than me, I'd send them there, but not many of them, you know. So I think that I think, well, I mean, not. They're all at the high regency. Yeah, they're all the high regency.

It's like you want to send many of them so they're not, they're not plotting in the lounge. Yeah, totally. But so anyway, all that to say, like, I don't, like, to me, now that. that every hotel chain and it has like 57,000 different brands. I just think there's so little consistency between those brands or within those brands, that it's more about the location, the specific hotel location than it is about the brand itself. That may be a cop out, but that's how I'm coping out. Sounds like you guys all kind of have the same thought there.

All right. I'm going to go with Greg because I can't remember where we left off. I'm locked out of Barclays. I can't get the card, but is there any way to status match to Emirates, silver, or higher? I've got Delta Diamond and American Executive Platinum. Yeah. I mean, so the point of that question is that, you know, Barclay's Emirates card would be a path towards elite status with Emirates. And then presumably they want to be able to book Emirates first class, which you have to have elite status to do.

That's what I'm guessing is what's behind that question. As far as whether you could match from other things, I don't know. Probably. Maybe I would go to status matcher.com and see what it says there about, because other people post their experience when trying to match from different programs to things like Emirates. So you can look that up specifically and see. Yeah. Good tip. I didn't know that existed. Cool. Here's another everyone question. We'll start with Nick. This will probably be the last question of the evening. What do you think will be the next Maldives? Any new exciting and up-and-coming locations? that you're excited about? I have a prediction of what you're going to say, Nick. It's probably wrong, because I had no idea. I didn't know.

I was going to punt this one and say, no, I don't know what the next Maldives says. And I don't, yeah, I can't, I mean, no, I don't, I don't think I have an answer here. All right. Tim, how about you? Well, so I think here's the thing, like, in terms of the next Maldives, I think the Maldives is going to be the Maldives. Like, I don't, like, there will, there will be a consistent stream. of Instagram, hot destinations that will continue to cycle through. And the Maldives, into my mind, will still be a worthwhile destination.

And I think what's hard for me personally, and probably what's hard for all of us, is that there are very few destinations that aren't exciting. Like, you know, my wife loves Anne of Green Gables. So this year we're finally going to do, next year we're finally going to do a, for those of you who've never read Anna of Green Gables, it takes place on Prince Edward Island, which also happens to be the only Canadian province I haven't been to. So speaking of the Porter Airlines about why I was doing Porter stuff,

do a combined Montreal Jazz Festival, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island trip. And I've been to Prince Edward to Montreal a bunch of times. I've been to Prince Edward or to Nova Scotia. And now even just looking at it again, it's like, man, I'm excited about this trip. I just, I think it's going to be a blast. Now, how would I compare Prince Edward Island to the Maldives or Prince Edward Island? or Prince Edward Island to Thailand, you know, which I have never been to, actually.

I really, really want to go to Thailand. So that might be one of the destinations that I really, Southeast Asia in general. But it's hard for me. Like once I, it's just, it's really easy for me to get excited about just about any destination outside of Houston. How about a 50-50 coin toss at Atlantis? You know what, though, if we're talking about Maldives now that I had a second to think about it, we're talking about Maldives in the sense of like being an exclusive destination and it's hard to get to. It's expensive to get there. There's like these specialized resorts. Maybe Greenland will become

the next of that because now it's becoming more accessible. And, you know, there's more airlines flying there. And so maybe we will see more of those like luxury sort of like, you know, isolated properties and, you know, there. I don't know. I mean, that's my challenge for you, Nick. My challenge for you is to take the Maldives partially submerged in the ocean with the sense. sent behind you picture in Greenland. That's, I mean, it's a totally different thing, but, you know, people go to Antarctica. No, I can see that. I mean, honestly, is I, you know, is Greenland the next Iceland, you know, would be another

way to sort of think about where, you know, 15 years ago, Iceland was getting 800,000 people a year, and now it's like 5 million or 8 million or whatever it is, you know. Greg, we still need to hear your, uh, your Maldives. Yeah. Well, you know, I mean, Newark, New Jersey is always one of those that. Oh, marvelous. fantasize about and I think it's I think it's finally you know ready to be the location but personally what what I'm excited about is I've been lately you know just by chance

finding my way to sort of second tier cities in places that so cities that I had never heard of I suspect most Americans I've never heard of and I find that much more interesting than going to the big places that everybody knows about, that all the tourists are there, that everything is designed around tourists with great big mobs of tours going everywhere. So, you know, as far as I can't name a specific place, because I don't know where I'm going next, but I'm excited about like continuing to do that, like actually seek out those places that I don't actually, I haven't heard of, but are going to be really cool anyway. Do you have a specific example?

Yeah, my wife and I were just in Bombberg, Germany, which have any of you heard of that before I mentioned it? I heard about it because you posted pictures. Well, okay. It's an awesome town. It looked adorable. Oh, it's beautiful. And it has like, you know, a thousand-year-old cathedral sitting up on a hill that's just, you know, really stunning. and it has gorgeous little streets that wind around.

These rivers go through town and people like fish right from their balconies onto the river and things like that. It's fantastic. And it's not that it's not a tourist destination. A lot of Europeans go there. It's definitely set up for tourists, but you don't hear many American accents there.

And I just really enjoyed that. Another one was in the Netherlands going to Utrecht. instead of Amsterdam, which is, I think, a prettier city. And, again, much less crowded than Amsterdam itself. I would go to Utrecht over Amsterdam any day of the week in the future. Yeah. Hey, Carrie, it's an all play, though. You need to contribute your answer as well.

Yeah, I can throw a few things in the hat. There are so many islands. Like, we don't even have to veer from the Maldivesque, you know, feel like the Cook Islands. I don't hear anyone talking about the Cook Islands, and those are totally worth visiting, you know, Guam, Saipan. It's like offbeat Hawaii, sort of, and Micronesia.

Anyway, there's a lot of islands worth visiting that are quieter and cheaper and just as beautiful and crazy snorkeling and great beaches and, you know, just go to Raritanga. or something, you know? So you think Saipan is going to be the next Maldives? Probably not Saipan. Saipan's pretty small.

But maybe, I don't know, maybe one of those cook islands. Is it worth going even if there's no double tree to get those cookies? I think there's a double tree. There is a double tree in Saipan, actually. I'm pretty sure there is. I know there's a high, I stayed at the higher agency there. There's a Hilton property there, I'm pretty sure. I think it's a double tree.

Although, I wouldn't stay there. Use that to bounce off to like, I don't know, YAP or something. I don't know. Anyway, some of those are still in my bucket list, those little micronation places. All right. Thanks for meeting up with us, asking us questions again. We do this once a month, the first Wednesday of every month at 9 p.m. Eastern Time.

So come join us next month, and we'll do this all over again. Like the video, and don't forget to go to frequentmiler.com slash subscribe. Join our email list, follow us on all the various social media. Thank you guys very much. We will see you next month. Bye, everybody. See you next month. Travel Tales with me, Mike Siegel,

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