Frequent Miler on the Air - How to Amass Amex Points | Frequent Miler on the Air Ep369 | 7-31-26

Episode Date: July 31, 2026

In today's episode we'll talk about how Amex has added a valuable new hotel partner, Seats.aero has added useful new tools, and we'll discuss the many ways to amass a Membership Rewards fortune.Giant Mailbag(00:59) - Ross: Another hidden gem card?Bonvoyed: JetBlue, Air Canada, LifeMiles(04:51) - JetBlue & Air Canada add basic fares to premium cabins(06:27) - Your Lifemiles+ free award changes/cancellations may end sooner than you thinkAwards, Points, and More(08:55) - Amex adds new transfer partner LHW(16:28) - Philippine Airlines flights now bookable with Alaska Atmos Rewards (Read more about this here: https://frequentmiler.com/philippine-airlines-flights-now-bookable-with-alaska-atmos-rewards-book-biz-class-from-75k-points/)(17:48) - United transcontinental business class from 27K miles for cardholders(19:14) - Seats.aero has added a few new tools for Pro members(24:00) - Nick's experience with The Edit by Chase Travel℠Main Event: How to Amass Amex Points(26:26) - Amex Membership Rewards are suddenly interesting again(31:03) - Sign Up Bonuses(41:26) - Two Player Mode(43:55) - Read about multi-referrals here: https://frequentmiler.com/maximizing-value-from-amex-multi-referrals/(48:31) - Amex offersLearn about Cardpointers here (https://frequentmiler.com/cardpointers/) or Savewise here(50:01) - Rakuten ShoppingLearn about Rakuten referrals here: https://frequentmiler.com/rakuten-best-ever-5k-membership-rewards-50-referral-bonus-for-both-sides/(53:21) - Category bonusesSubscribe 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 NetworkDon't forget to visit our Best Offers PageWe make it our job to show all the best credit card rewards offers currently available all in one place right here: https://frequentmiler.com/best-credit-card-offers/https://frequentmiler.com/best-credit-card-offers/

This is a Voyescape podcast. You can find all of our travel podcasts from around the world atvoyescape.com. On today's episode, Amex adds a valuable new hotel partner. Seats.org. Add some useful new award search tools. And we'll discuss many ways to amass a membership rewards fortune. Frequent Milo on the air starts now. Today's main event, how to amass Amex points. American Express membership rewards points have recently gotten more interesting to some of us.

And we're going to talk about why in today's main event, but mainly we're going to talk about ways to amass huge fortunes of Amex points. And if you want to jump ahead to that or you want to come back to something later, don't forget you can find the timestamps in the show notes. Just expand that description box to jump around the show. And wherever you're watching or listening, don't forget to like this. Give us a thumbs up. Subscribe and enable notification so you can find out when the next video or podcast episode comes out. With that out of the way, let's drag out this week's Giant Mailbag. Today's giant mail comes from Ross, who was responding to last week's show about hidden gem credit cards. Ross writes, another possible hidden gem card for those in the Northeast Corridor who ride trains at least once a year with a companion.

The Amtrak cards, either the free or $99 annual fee variety, the welcome offers are pretty valuable based on the staggering valuation of Amtrak points. Their earning rates are very good on Amtrak purchases, given those high valuations of Amtrak points, plus the fact that any points booking is automatically refundable without penalty. And even pretty good on dining, plus travel and transit for the paid card. The $99 fee card also includes both a lot of money. lounge pass and a round trip companion coupon annually, which you should be able to get more than $99 worth of value from. Both cards also include a 5% points rebate and either 10 or 20% rebate on

onboard purchases. Not sure how often you all take Amtrak, but for those who do, definitely seems like a hidden gem to me. I am disappointed to myself for not thinking of this card, because you're absolutely right. The Amtrak cards are definitely a hidden gem. If you're not familiar with Amtrak points when we're saying here that they have the, you know, great value, the staggering value that Ross mentions is true. I mean, you can often get like what, it's up to 2.9 cents per point, I think out of Amtrak points. It's wild. There are so many times and I don't write Amtrak often. Like for me, it's once or twice a year maybe. But those one or two times, they're like almost every year. I'm like, man, I wish I had some Amtrak points. And I've used their shopping portal at times just

to generate some and then use them later on, but not very many that way. And so every time we see an elevated offer on the Amtrak cards, I'm kind of tempted to get one and just the timing hasn't worked out. But the next time I see an elevated offer on Amtrak cards, I might just jump on one because, again, I don't ride the train often, but every now and then when I want to, I really wish that I had the Amtrak points. So this is a great hidden gem Ross. When I went to outline the show last week, I did think about the Amtrak cards, but I actually didn't include them because... Intentionally, I'm not sure how many people ride Amtrak often enough for it to matter to have these cards. And so I think of them...

I bet a couple million, Greg. I would bet. Well, so, but here's the thing. I think of them like airline cards. We talk during the show about how if you fly a particular airline, even once or twice a year, there's probably an airline card that's a hidden gem for you, or not hidden,

but that it makes sense for you to have. And I think that's true for the Amtrak cards too. If you write Amtrak even a little bit, you know, every year, then absolutely these cards make sense. Whether it's a hidden gem, I don't know. Okay. We can debate that. I'll give you that.

I will say that from the point of view of being less talked about than other cards that have good value, then I totally agree from that point of view. Well, and the thing for me is I would probably take Amtrak another time or two per year if I had the points to cover the train. Since I don't, I end up driving and parking. And if I stay at a high with global status and I have an award stay, then I don't pay for the parking.

So I don't want to pay all the money for the train for my whole family. But the convenience is nice. So I would probably consider it if I had the points to use for it. But you're right. You're right. It's definitely like an airline card in that regard. So good one, though, Ross. I like the fact that you brought that up because I think it is relevant for at least a number of people. All right. Let's talk about being Bonvoid. This week, whose Bonvoid is? JetBlue, Air Canada and Life Miles. We've got sort of a double triple header. Yeah. So first, let's just mention JetBlue and Air Canada. I think last week we talked about how Delta is adding basic fares to their premium cabin. So now you can. book, you know, like first class basic, basic first class or basic business class, things like that. And we don't like that. It's like, that's just a way for the airlines to get more money

because you're going to want to avoid those basic fares. And so you're going to be paying more to get into what you normally would have paid the regular amount for. And they were following, Delta was following United's lead on doing that. And now both JetBlue and Air Canada, Canada are jumping into the mix and doing the same thing. Yeah, that's a bummer. It would be like McDonald's serving a basic burger where you get just the patty. You didn't show up for just the patty probably, right? And raising prices for the for everything else.

That has actual topics. Yeah. Right, right. That's what they're doing. They're just creating a product. You're not, nobody is going to want or not many people are going to want anyway. So that's a bummer. I mean, if the seat is primarily what matters to you, I guess maybe maybe you'll

see some savings. I'm skeptical about that. But, uh, but, but yeah, so unfortunate there. I should have called this, by the way, a triple double header because it's really a double header with three airlines. So because the jet blue and in air Canada is the same thing there. The other piece of our bonvoid this week is life miles plus. Your life miles plus subscription or your free changes and cancellations, I should say, might end sooner than you think. So if you're a life miles plus subscriber. If you're a basic subscriber or higher, hopefully you caught the news last month when Life Miles announced or didn't really even announce they kind of put a footnote in somewhere that somebody noticed that people who had subscribed to Basic or Higher prior to June 26th of

2026 would get free changes in cancellations for 12 months, but they're ending that benefit. So if you were described to Life Miles Plus Basic today, you would not get free changes in cancellations anymore. But if you were subscribed by June 26th, then you do have it for 12 months. Now, I think most people's initial read of that was that you'd get free changes in cancellations until June 26th of 2027, a year from when they announced it, right? 12 months from when they announced it. But I don't think that's what they're doing. I think what's actually happening is they're counting 12 months from your anniversary date for your basic subscription. which actually even that's a little misleading, but 12 months from your life miles plus anniversary date. So if you signed up for Life Miles Plus, let's say in October of last year, October of 2025, then I think your free changes and cancellations are going to end in October of 26 based on the interpretation that a reader was given. So we don't know for sure it's going to work that way. But it sounds that sort of makes the wording make more sense to me the way that they were instead of

just saying everybody gets free changes and cancellations until June 26th of 2027. They said for 12 months, which this is probably why. The odd thing is that they count 12 months from when you subscribed. And in my case, I had subscribed to the light subscription and then upgraded at some point. So I assumed that the date I upgraded to Basic was going to be the anniversary. But it's not. They're counting from the month when I originally signed up for life miles. And it was a little complicated figuring out where you could find that out because Life Miles Plus is a monthly thing. You can cancel it any time. So even thinking of it in these annual terms is kind of weird and awkward. But see the post for more details if you're a Life Miles Plus basic subscriber or higher so that you can try and figure out

when your free changes and cancellations might end. Good tip. Okay, awards point to more. Amex has added a new transfer partner and I bet you're excited about this one. I am. They've added Leading Hotels of the World as a transfer partner. Prior to this, the only way to get leading hotels of the world points from a transferable points program was City. And City transfers 1,000 points to 200 leading hotels points, which, this is going back to City now, not Amics, which sounds terrible, but leading hotels of the world points are worth a lot. And so they're often worth eight cents per point, which means with city points, you're getting about 1.6 cents per point with city. Now, Amex, all of a sudden, just kind of out of nowhere, came up with a transfer.

Standard transfer now is 1,000 points to 250 leading hotels of the world points. That's one-fourth. You get one-fourth as many points, but if points are worth $0.8 each, that means you're getting $0.2 per point from Amex when booking these leading hotels of the world. hotels with points. And that's a pretty terrific, sort of fixed rate. And I'm saying sort of because not all LHW hotels price out, so you get exactly eight cents per point. Like many do, definitely not all. But since many do, I mean, I think that's pretty darn awesome. Yeah, it is. It's really interesting to see. So, you know, again, we're talking.

thanks to the transfer ratio, getting about two cents per membership reward point when you transfer those over. So, you know, you transfer over four membership rewards points and you end up with two and a half leading hotels of the World Club points. And those are worth about the whatever I said too. I can't even remember my own math there, four cents or whatever it might be. So, so two cents per point. I mean, that's good. For lodging, that's about as good as it gets these days, right? It really is. I mean, you know, if you think about the only other two cent per point option out there is the Sapphire Reserve card when they happen to have points boosts at 2x and then, and hopefully their prices aren't way inflated over other places. Now it's possible

that leading hotels of the world also inflates their prices over other places. You can book the same hotels. But to the extent that they don't do that, I don't know. you will often get that full, full value, which is great. And a couple notes about leading hotels of the world that are good to know. One is that you will often, it seems, be charged taxes and fees even when you pay with points. And so, like, when you make a booking, it shows a receipt with taxes and fees that you will owe. That said, when I've booked a particular leading hotel of world property, even though the booking showed those taxes and fees, I'd never had to pay those taxes and fees.

You would think that means that just the confirmation that showed the taxes and fees was wrong, but many readers wrote in when I wrote about that, that they were, in fact, charged taxes and fees. So I'm going on the assumption that tax and fees are usually charged, but not always. And so you might think that when we say eight cents per point, that means that the actual value is less, because you're having to pay the tax and fees, but I went through a bunch of properties. It's not a huge number, but a bunch in Paris, a bunch in California, and a few others. And I looked at the pre-tax cost of the hotels compared to the full points cost, because that's the most fair comparison, assuming you will be charged taxes and fees with points.

and I found a range of values of leading hotels of the world points from a low of 6.4 cents per point to a high of 8.5. But most observations were 8 cents per point on the nose. So you'll usually get the full 2 cents per point value with your Amex points. But even when you get as low as 6.4 cents per point, the math works out to... 1.6 cents per point value from your Amex points. So that's still not bad. I mean, if you think about the fact that we've been willing with the business platinum card, there's a way to get a rebate when you book certain flights, and that gives you a value about 1.5, 1.55 cents per point. We've been willing to sometimes do that. This is a way to get a little bit more, even at the

lowest point value that I observed when I was like looking through stuff. So it seems to me like, this is pretty darn solid as a transfer partner. The other thing to know is that if you have an Amics platinum card, you can get free Leaders Club sterling status. Leaders Club is leading hotels of the world's loyalty program. You have to join Leaders Club in order to transfer points over from Amex. And the good thing is even if you don't have a platinum card, most of the benefits you get from most of the benefits you get you actually get as a base member you don't even need sterling status to get upgrade priority upon arrival daily continental breakfast for two early check in and late checkout out considerations so for what that's worth which not much but in my experience you actually do without sterling status get the daily continental breakfast for two and upgrade um at least at

the hotel I went to. I went there twice once as a base member and once as a Sterling status member, thanks to the platinum card. I didn't notice any difference in the lead benefits at all. So don't make much about that platinum benefit, but this transfer partner thing, I think, is awesome. Yeah, a quick tip about the status match. I believe, if I remember correctly, that the email address on your Leaders Club account has to match the email address associated with your American Express card account in order to do the status match, I think, because I had to sign up.

I know that I'm signed up with not my usual loyalty program email address for that one, and I think that was why I had to do it. So check that. It'll tell you in the details when you go to do that match. I'm interested in this because I've looked around at some of the leading hotels of the world properties. Now, they don't have a huge footprint. So if you didn't expect that right off the bat with a small sort of boutique chain, then let me burst your bubble and tell you the footprint's not very big.

However, the places where it is, I mean, there are some interesting hotels. They're off the beaten path in some locations. I've got a trip coming up to Italy. And I'm going to a couple of places that are not as, you know, not Rome and Florence. And I was surprised to see, oh, there are some leading hotels of the world properties and areas where I'll be. They're not going to work out for my particular trip, but they would be a good value in the future. And I've looked around Europe a bit and seen some others that look quite good. So worth checking that out.

All right. Next up in awards points and more. Philippine Airlines flights are now bookable with Alaska Atmos rewards. And at least when this launched a few days ago, a week ago, by the time you listen to this, availability was like wide open, particularly from the West Coast cities. But I even found dates with four seats from New York to Manila. when this first launched, which four seats to get to Asia and business class is pretty hard to find these days with most programs. So it's great to see that this is now available.

Flight start at 75,000 points in business class, and you pay less than that in economy, of course. And so it gives you a number of options. Philippine Airlines flies all around Asia. They fly to Australia. And they fly to quite a few cities within the Western United States. Eastern, it's essentially New York and Chicago, if you want to consider. consider that eastern, but quite a few places in the West Coast. Yeah. Now, don't expect the utmost luxury on most of their planes, but I think you'll

still get lie flat on most of them. And, you know, it's business class. So to fly business class to Asia as next said is really difficult these days at good award prices. Here's a sudden opportunity to to nab those cross-Pacific flights, which is great. Speaking of good opportunities, we have some transcontinental opportunities that have popped up with United. So United Transcon Business Class has been available for 27,000 United mileage plus miles each way for United cardholders on select flights. And so we're talking the Polaris business in some cases between Newark and San

Francisco or Los Angeles. So flatbed, transcontinental business class, access to the Polaris lounge and whatnot. But the kicker here is that I think it's only been available for United Cardholders, right? Yeah, exactly. So, you know, United introduced this idea of better Polaris award space for card members as well as cardholder discounts. And the interesting thing, you know, when they mentioned this whole Polaris extra space, when they mentioned the idea that you would have better availability for Saver Polaris Awards, I was thinking international business class, it didn't even occur to me to look at domestic. But that's a great feature. And, you know, so if you're flying from coast to coast, what a great way to do it at a very reasonable price.

And, you know, obviously if you're in that situation, picking up a United card or even the United Debit card could be the way to go to get access to that. Very good tip there. All right, seats. Arrow has added some new tools for pro members. First up, we've got an Air Canada E upgrade finder. I don't know a lot about Air Canada E upgrades, but I think you've had Air Canada elite status in the past, if not anymore, right? Yes, if you have Marriott Titanium status, you can get free Aero Plan, that's Air Canada's loyalty program, Aeroplane, 25K status. And that actually comes with some E-upgrade coupons.

I haven't actually used mine, but the idea is you can book a flight, either paid or with or an award flight, and use these coupons. these e-upgrades to upgrade to a higher-level cabin. It's complicated figuring out when you could use them and how many, how many e-upgrades are required for each flight and all that. So now with Seats.O. As long as you're the pro version of it, you have a tool that will help you find qualifying fares. And you have a tool now that'll help you find Cathay Pacific Award flights.

So Cathay Pacific, Asia Miles, well, let me say, Cathay Pacific tends to release more availability to their own members for their own flights, but most award search tools don't do a great job of searching for Cathay Pacific award space, but now the pro version of Seats. Arrow provides access to bookable Cathay Pacific inventory through Asia miles. It'll cover flights within 180 days of departure, so you can't see a full year of availability like you can with many of the seats.com. you can explore, but 180 days is pretty useful. They don't have alerts up and running just yet, but that is something that's supposedly going to be available soon, and that'll be really

useful, again, for finding a word space to and from Asia, as we mentioned before. That's pretty challenging these days. So that's a nice little ad there, not the only one. Oh, sorry. No, but I have something to say. So I played around with this before our show, and it is, what a great feature, because As Nick said, it's really hard. I can only think of one tool that has done a good job at all of finding Cathay Pacific's own award space, and even that seems hit or miss. So having a pretty solid way to find it is great. I wish it was more than 180 days.

But I will say if you're hoping to get award space within the next 180 days between Asia and North America, good luck. There were only a handful in either direction. But if you want to fly between New Zealand and Hong Kong, there was a lot of ward space there. There's a lot of ward space to South Africa, which kind of surprised me, because that's quite a nice route if you want to go kind of the long way to South Africa. So anyway, there are definitely some good opportunities there, and it would be really hard to find without that tool. And Seats. That Arrow also has now Singapore Airlines

Advantage Award inventory across that full year-long booking calendar. And so this is a different price level, right? Because they have saver awards, the cheaper awards, but then they have these

advantage awards where you can pay more. But that's only bookable, of course, through Singapore Airlines. And now you can actually use Seats. Dot Arrow to find those because even those

have gotten hard to find, right? There's a lot of where you can't even find the advantage awards anymore. So now, at least if you have got a lot of Singapore miles or you're just willing to pay a lot of Singapore miles in order to be able to fly when it is you want to fly, you have a tool that can help you find that

without having to search day by day and week by week on the Singapore site. Yeah, again, like Cathay Pacific, award search tools do a really bad job of finding Singapore's own award space for their own members. So this is really helpful. If you have your heart set on flying Singapore suites, which is one of the most luxurious ways you can fly commercial, it's so, so hard to find anything. And, you know, this gives you a way to just search kind of across a world and find what's available. If you're willing to position just to fly that, it should become obtainable.

Even though it'll still be, as Nick sort of mentioned, it'll be more expensive than their saver. level, but more expensive and possible is better than less expensive and impossible. True. True story. All right. And then last but at least on awards points and more. I've recently made a rebooking with the edit. So Chase is the edit credit, the Sapphire Reserve card gets up to $250 two times per year and they're not split by time anymore. It's not January to June and July to December. Now you just get two period over the course of the year, $250 credits for charges through the edit for stays of two nights or more. And so I bring this up because I had looked at an edit property, a specific place back in May and it was boosted at

two cents per point. And then I went to book it in June and it was only boosted at 1.65 cents per point. And I questioned my own sanity and thought, was I wrong? Did I not really see it at two cents per point? I had to question myself at that point. And I thought, ah, maybe it wasn't. Maybe I was wrong. But then, just a few days ago in late July, I've been looking at this property regularly. And in late July, I noticed it became boosted again to two cents per point. So I don't think I was crazy the first time after all. And in that case, since I had booked it using points at 1.65 cents per point, I canceled my booking and rebooked. And rates hadn't changed rates were the same at this property. So luckily, when I canceled, the points refund was instant. So I got the

points back right away and then rebooked for fewer points than I had paid to begin with. So I guess the moral of the story there is keep an eye on those edit bookings for changes in the boosts, particularly if you've got something that's boosted less than two cents per point anyway. Not only do you need to keep an eye on the rates for those properties, but also how much they're boosted. I also found the max FHR tool to be useful here because I had set alerts. This is a property that I wanted to be able to find when it became available at the price that I wanted to pay because only one room type is cheap enough to make it worth considering for me. And so getting alerts for that were really instrumental in finding the space that I wanted for this particular hotel. So shout out to Max FHR for that

and Max my point both because I've been using both of those tools there. So anyway, keep an eye out for the changes in boost value. All right. We'll be right back after this with our main event. Hey, Nick, I just got a text from my cousin. He's asking me about a credit card offer he just got in his email and asking if it's any good. Yeah, well, your cousin ought to go to frequent myler.com and click the link at the top of the page for our best offers page. That's the best way for your cousin to know whether or not they're getting a good offer because we're committed to publishing the best publicly available offers. So if you see an offer for a credit card anywhere on the internet, you should always compare and make sure you're getting the best possible offer. And we're back. Let's get on with today's main event. How to Amass Amex Points. In my opinion, Amex Points are suddenly interesting again. They've gotten kind of stale for a while. Like,

not much had been happening in the MX universe. But a couple things are new. One, we talked about earlier in the show. Leading Hotels of the World is a new transfer partner from Amex. You can expect to get about two cents per point value from your amex points when using your points to book leading hotels of the world by transferring them to leaders club and then booking that way. That's a fantastic value that's, you know, of great interest to anyone who enjoys booking luxury hotels. Another one, this is kind of a weird one, but Delta Sky Miles has become interesting. again. What's how could I even say that? I'm asking myself that, Greg. So I'm hoping you're going

to fill in the blank there because I don't know the answer to that question. That's for sure. Yeah. So Delta, you know, for a long time has been very uninteresting because for the most part, they price their awards where you're getting about 1.1 cent per point value and it's fairly fixed. So there's just not much interest there. And I wouldn't transfer. points from Amex to get 1.1 cent per point value from Delta, especially because when you transfer Amex points to an American-based airline, you also pay a small excise fee, tax fee, which is ridiculous. But anyway, what's changed lately is that Delta has had some spectacular award sales. And they've been unadvertised.

So things like being able to fly for as low as 25,000 points round trip to, Australia, now this economy, but still, that's an unbelievable deal. They've had most of the summer. It's been possible to book Delta One, to or from Europe for under 100,000 points one way, which is not a staggering price for an award in general, but the availability has been really, really good. And so, you know, if you're looking to fly to Europe in the summertime, the kind of peak time, being able to get multiple seats, lie flat Delta one, has been really spectacular. And those are a couple of sales that really made me notice that something was happening. But also, thrifty traveler, which is a service for getting like email alerts about great

flight deals. They also have a blog, and in their blog, they listed a whole bunch of recent amazing Delta award sales where they're making the argument that Delta has recently become one of the best miles to have. So it's kind of interesting. I could tell from Nick's face that he's skeptical about that. And I agree. I think it's good to be skeptical. I also think that, you know, we can't count on those kind of sales continuing. But at least for now, Delta Sky Miles have lately become very useful. And Amex is the only transferable points currency

that can transfer one to one to Delta. Yep. Yep. There you go. All right. I am interested in Amex membership rewards points, not for the Delta Flash sales, but I can agree that I share some interest in Amex membership rewards points

for all of their excellent partners. And being based in the Northeast, 100,000 points one way for business class to Europe sounds less appealing to me than it probably would if I were based somewhere where it's much harder to find availability and or where Delta has the non-stops that go to the places you want to go. I mean, you know, if you're somewhere where that's the case, I can totally see where that would be appealing. But, you know, with Air Canada Eraplan and Avianca Life Miles now, I think back down to Earth

in terms of their award pricing, which it skyrocketed for a bit, but I think it's back. to semi-normal on life miles maybe. So there are plenty of good opportunities. Of course, you got Air France, KLM Flying Blue, transfer bonuses to Avios and Virgin Atlantic. I just always find membership rewards points to be useful. So anything that makes them more useful, I think is worth, you know, focusing again on how you can earn a whole bunch of them.

So let's talk about how we can earn a lot of membership rewards points. Yep, yep. All right. First and most obvious is sign-up bonuses. there are a lot of Amex cards that earn membership rewards points, and so there are a lot of sign-up bonuses available when you're getting started with it. First, a little sort of public service announcement about one of the major Amex membership rewards cards. The Amex Green card is currently MIA.

It's disappeared from Amex's website. People who already have the card still have it, but there doesn't seem to be a way to get it right now if you want it. So we don't know what's going on with that. Maybe they'll come out with a new version of it that's new or better. Maybe they've retired it for good. We just don't know. But so we're going to proceed with the rest as if that card doesn't really exist. And if and when it comes back, of course, we will talk about that on the show. And you'll want to add it to your own calculations as we talk about welcome offers and how many points you can earn. So So, MX has moved to this as high as format for welcome offers.

And so first of all, I guess what does that even mean as high? When you look at an AMX introductory bonus, you click through to an application page. Often it'll say, you can earn a bonus as high as. What's up with that? Yeah, it's so frustrating. So it used to be that if you went to a MX application page from different browsers, different computers, your phone, whatever, you might see different offers

when you go to that same application page. They decided that wasn't a good idea. So instead, they're now saying, you actually have to fill out the full application in order for them to tell you what the offer is, which is so absurd, it's so annoying. But the good news, to the extent that there's good news about that, is that they won't process the application,

Like once you've filled out the application and press go, then they'll tell you what your personalized offer is. And they won't, if you say, no, I don't want to proceed, they're not going to process the application. So there's no risk of getting a hard credit inquiry or anything like that. Yeah. So let's talk about how many points you can earn from the various welcome offers because there's a whole bunch out there. So you got the MX gold card, the as high as offer, at least. at the time we're recording this maybe is 100,000 points. So you can earn up to 100,000 points from the welcome offer there. Platinum card, 175,000 points. Though you do need to be strategic in terms of when you,

or the order of operations when it comes to, I was going to say signing up for, but I should say applying for these cards. So of course, there's the family rules now. So if you've had the platinum card before you have the platinum card, you may not be eligible for the gold card welcome bonus. So you want to start at the bottom and work your way up. Start with the gold card and get a welcome bonus there. And then later you can get a platinum card and get a welcome bonus on that card. If you haven't had any of these membership rewards cards, if you're listening to this show shortly after we publish it,

it might be worth waiting because there's been speculation that we may see a new green card come towards the end of August. And if that happens, then you may want to start with the green card and then work your way up. So consider that. Yep, yep. Yeah, a really good point. Now, those family rules so far are just on the personal cards, not on the business cards. So with the business cards, you could go in any order, at least again, as things stand now. The business gold card as high as 200,000 points. The business platinum card is as high as 300,000 points. Then you've got a couple of membership rewards cards where the current standard offers are very low. You've got the business green card, which, still exists at 15,000 points and the Blue Business Plus card at 15,000 points as well. Now, if you were to get all of these cards that are currently available with the current offer, assuming you qualified for the highest offer, then you could get a total of 805,000

bonus points from all of those offers. And you probably wouldn't do that all at once. Okay, so unlikely that you would be able to do that all within the space of a couple of months or even a year. You might not be able to do all of that, both from an approval standpoint and from a spending standpoint, because there is a substantial amount of spend required on those business cards with the really big offers. So you have to consider which ones fit your lifestyle, your ability, your capacity to spend. But nonetheless, that's more than three quarters of a million points for one person. And of course, if you're playing in two-player mode, we'll talk about how you might amp that up even further. But keep in

mind when you open a new MX card, obviously you got the family rules on the consumer side, as Greg mentioned. Another thing to keep in mind is that you want to make sure you keep your card open at least a year. If you close it less than a year after having opened it, that is going to increase the odds that you will not be able to get future welcome bonuses. Amex can be a little fickle in terms of refusing to give you the opportunity to earn bonuses in the future if you close your cards too quickly. So make sure you keep it open for at least a year. Yeah. Also, if you've kept it open for a year and you got charged the new annual fee and you don't want to pay it, consider going after seeing if there's a retention offer available. So you call Amex or message them and say you want to

cancel the card and see if they'll make you some offers. Sometimes there's more than one offer available, so make sure to check all of the possible offers before you accept one and pick the one that's best if there's one that is worth more to you than paying the next annual fee than it can be worth doing. Another reason to potentially keep some cards around, even if you don't necessarily want them long term, is that sometimes you'll be targeted for upgrade offers. So, you know, maybe having a business green card around might be good because you might get targeted to upgrade to a business gold or business platinum, even if you've had, well, even if you've earned welcome offers for those higher level cards before. So those are things to keep in mind as ways to earn even more points from that same set of cards. And another thing to watch out for are what we call no lifetime language offers. Sometimes you'll receive either a mailer or sometimes there'll be online links where you can apply for a card that does not include lifetime language. Now, what do we mean by that?

Most AMX cards, if you just go straight to the American Express website and you look at the terms of the introductory bonus, most of them say that if you have or have had the card before, you may not be eligible for the bonus. and sometimes there are links available for those cards or offers you'll get in the mail that don't include that language. I don't say that you may not be eligible and in which case you would be eligible even if you've had the card before. So it's possible in some cases to open the same card that you've had before or sometimes even a card that you currently have open. You might be able to get another one of the same card. And in fact, we sometimes see MX Target people via email or in their online law. with the opportunity to expand your membership or add another card whereby you can add an additional,

for instance, business platinum card or an additional business gold card. And when I say add an additional, I don't mean like adding an employee card. I mean like opening another business platinum account or another business gold account. In fact, I just noticed this again recently. If I go into my account and I navigate up in the top menu somewhere it says cards and then you can view all consumer cards or you can view all business cards. And when I go to view all business cards, there's a bunch of offers at the top. Most of them are just to add an authorized user or refer somebody. But at the bottom of that list, in my account now and in my wife's account also, there's an offer to add another card, add another business platinum card with a welcome offer of

150,000 points after 20K spend or another business gold card with an offer of 100,000 points after 10K spend in the first few months. So it's worth checking for that kind of thing because in those cases, Emix is directly saying, hey, you want another one of these? You can do that. And it's possible to do. And maybe that wouldn't be intuitive, I think, for a lot of people, that it might be possible to get another one of the same card.

Yeah. Yeah. And we should back up a bit. We've been talking about both personal and business cards. And you might not think you have a business, but the threshold for what it means to have a business is very low. You know, if you sell things on eBay or have yard sales, those are businesses. If you are an aspiring writer, if you do any consulting, if you have rental property, there are so

many things that people do all the time that might not, they might not even think that they have a business, but they do. And there is no legal or accounting type thing you have to do to do. declare that you are a sole proprietor of your business. You can just, you know, apply for a business credit card saying you're a sole proprietor and get a card that way. So even if you don't think you're eligible for business cards, there's a really good chance you are. Yep. Absolutely. My wife sells things on Facebook marketplace every now and then and she's very honest about the amount of revenue that she makes, which is not very much, but it's enough to get approved for business cards.

So yeah. Yeah. My son got business cards when he was, you know, I think a freshman in college. I mean, it's, it can be really easy. All right. Let's talk about ramping things way up with two player mode. All right. So easy math here. Greg added up all the welcome bonuses before and we got to 805,000 total points you can earn in one player mode. So if you're in two player mode at a base. level. We're talking 1,610,000 points between two people if you were just to open all the membership rewards card points without even considering that you could do a little bit better than that. You can. First, I just want to mention that you might say, well, what good is it to have all those points spread out into two different places because Amex doesn't let you move points back

and forth? If, let's say one of you, let's call you Player 1, has most of the loyalty accounts where you'd want to transfer the points to. If Player 2 adds you as an authorized user or as an employee on one of their cards, then starting 90 days from when you were added as an authorized user employee, they can move their points to your loyalty accounts. So they can move their points to your Leading Hotels of the World account or your points to your Delta account or whatever it is they want to transfer to. So it makes that bundle of points across multiple people very useful by doing that.

Yeah. And so it really makes sense there if you're going to do that to add your other player, your other household member as an authorized user or employee card on at least one keeper card that you're going to keep for a long time. I don't do this on platinum cards because I'm not going to keep the platinum card forever, necessarily particularly at the really high annual fee. but the Blue Business Plus card is a card that earns a base of two membership rewards points per dollar spent on up to 50,000 in purchases each year and then 1X. It's got no annual fee.

You can transfer to partners. That's an easy keeper card that keeps your membership rewards points alive and transferable. So both my wife and I have one of those cards, and we each have the other person as an employee card on our Blue Business Plus accounts, because those accounts will keep forever. and that way we can transfer to either person's loyalty accounts. So that's a good way to do that. Yeah, yeah. All right. Now here's how to pump things way up.

Amex will let you refer other people and you earn bonus points. They earn the normal welcome offer. You earn bonus points. And they'll even let you refer like your spouse or, you know, someone in your household. And you could do those referrals back and forth. But what's really key here is what we call Amex's multi-refer capability where, let's say you just have one Amex card. Let's say you have the Amex gold card. And your player two wants to sign up for something completely different.

Let's say the Blue Business Plus card. They can actually use your referral from your Amex gold card, your gold consumer card, to sign up for the, business platinum card, any of the cards that are available through Amex with offers. And you will still get your bonus and they will get whatever the current welcome offer bonuses for the card they sign up for. And so that's so key because as long as one of you, we talked about six cards that are available right now as we're recording this that have welcome bonuses. And as long as one of you has gotten one card some other way, then you can start a sort of back and forth referral chain for all the rest. So 11 cards, there could be 11 referral bonuses along the way for signing up

for all of those cards. Again, Nick mentioned earlier, this isn't like an all at once thing. This is over time. You do this slowly over time. But with 11 referrals, so we typically see referral bonuses, What you get for referring someone ranges anywhere from a low of only 5,000 points to as high as like 35,000. I think some people have even seen 45,000, although I've never seen that. And so you can, you know, if you have multiple Amex cards that are membership rewards, look for the one that has the best referral bonus and refer your player two through that link. to whatever card they want. And you can earn a lot of points that way.

And we have a video that explains how to do that and a post that explains how to do that. So if that's not immediately intuitive to you, which is totally reasonable, then check the show notes for the link there because it isn't totally intuitive off the bat. But once you get the hang of it, it's incredibly lucrative. Because, like Greg said, I think it's, even though we're talking about membership rewards points, I think it's even worth making the point that you could have, the gold card, the MX gold card, and maybe it says you'll get 30,000 points per referral, and your spouse wants the no annual fee Hilton card. You can give them your MX gold card link,

and they can click through your referral link and open a Hilton card, and you're still going to get the 30,000 membership rewards points when they open their Hilton card if they used your link. And so you can, that multi-referral thing is really powerful for referring back and forth. And again, I know we're focusing on membership rewards points today, but because Amex does issue other cards too. It's just worth being aware you're going to get whatever bonus it says you get for referring people based on the card from which you create the link. It has nothing to do with which card the person you refer actually chooses from that link. Right, right, right. All right. So we mentioned that up to 11 referrals are possible just staying within the membership rewards

world. If we assume you're averaging 20,000 points per referral, even though it could be higher than that, that's 220,000 extra points by referring each other back and forth and using those referral bonuses. But as Nick said, actually more is possible because your player two or player one may be signing up for delta cards, Marriott cards, Hilton cards, cash back cards. And the other person can be referring from a membership rewards card in order to get extra membership rewards points. So, you know, like, wait until you see, like, those inflated offers, which come multiple times a year for the other cards you want, Delta, Marriette, Hilton, et cetera, and then have

your player one or player two, you know, refer you from their best referral opportunity to get both more membership rewards points and lots of other rewards. So it really can be extremely lucrative by doing all that. Absolutely. Then beyond the referrals and welcome bonuses, you also have MX offers. And amex offers are, of course, within your login, you scroll to the bottom and you get offers for shopping at different retailers and things. And usually those are for cash back, for, you know, X amount of dollars back when you spend X amount of dollars. But sometimes those offers are for membership rewards points like spend $500 earn 10,000 membership rewards points or something of that nature, depending on the merchant.

It obviously varies. Sometimes they're just for extra points, like earn an extra two points per dollar, an extra five points per dollar when you shop with a particular merchant. Sometimes they're generic big bonuses for big spend, like spend $7,500, get 10,000 bonus points. And that type of offer can be really valuable on a card that already has a bonus category or a standard earn rate that you're happy to be using it. Then you can add an additional 10,000 points on top. I love it when I see these on like the Blue Business Plus card, for instance. I love to see that kind of offer to just kind of amp up the points a little bit further. And then, of course, you get bonus points for

shopping. Sometimes like I mentioned, those spend 500 or 10,000 points. You can use tools like card pointers or save wise to add offers automatically to all of your eligible cards. So those are two interesting tools that are worth checking out, card pointers and savewise. We have posts about both of those tools. They can, again, help you comb through, see which offers you have on all your cards and then add them. Yeah. Another category, another way to earn a lot of points is with the Racketon shopping portal.

Now, Rackadin by default is a cashback shopping portal where you join Rackadin. You are going to shop at some store online anyway. So you start in the portal. and the portal gives you an opportunity to earn extra rewards. Usually it's listed as like an extra 2% back or an extra 10% back, whatever the deal is. The great thing with Racketon is you can actually choose to earn membership rewards points instead of cashback. Now, you could also earn built points instead of cashback. So that's a whole other thing.

But if you're interested in membership rewards, that's a great option to earn membership rewards from the Rackadin shopping. portal. And then you'll see things like the ability to get, you know, 10x when shopping at Macy's or wherever. And that's on top of what your credit card would get you automatically. Some other things to know about the Rackenden Shopping Portal. They've been running these great deals for referring people or using a referral to set up. If you haven't already set up your Rackenden account, use somebody's referral and you can earn 5,000 membership rewards points very easily by signing up with someone's referral. But then when you refer other people, you will earn 5,000 points when they meet the terms of the referral. So that's a great way to build up your points too. They also have a

credit card. And they periodically have a $20,000 or $200, it's described as sign-up points. for that card. So if you are set to earn membership rewards points with your Rackettin portal and you sign up for the $200 offer, it'll come in as 20,000 membership rewards points, which is great. And when you shop through the portal and pay with your Racketing card, you'll earn an additional four points per dollar on top of what the portal is offering by itself. Or another way of thinking about it, you'll earn four points per dollar instead of earning, let's say, one or two points per dollar with whatever credit card you would have normally earned when shopping through the portal. That four points per dollar is limited to $10,000 spend per year.

Yeah. So, I mean, Rackton absolutely can be a great way to supercharge things. And I find it at the holidays, I want to share this so that I can let people know that they, for a lot of people, $50 back when they spend like $50 or more is a great deal, particularly like I said. I will sometimes share this at the holiday period, not so much to generate the referrals for me, but because I know that that was helpful for a lot of people to get 50 bucks off of whatever they're doing. And then you can also earn some referral points that way. So I think it's definitely worth keeping that in mind as a good opportunity to get other people, something that benefits them. And it also benefits you in membership rewards points. Yeah. We should, we should mention that that $50 referral thing is set up as

a temporary promotion, but they keep extending it over and over. So we're kind of assuming it'll keep going, but we don't know that. True story. True story. It can vary. All right. And then finally, you got category bonuses. So the Blue Business Plus card I already mentioned before earns two points per dollar as the base rate on the first $50,000 per year. Then it's only one X after that. The MX Gold card earns 4x on dining and at U.S. supermarkets. The U.S. supermarket category is up to $25,000 per year. Dining, I think, is $50,000 per year. year now, if I remember correctly. So those caps are decent for most people, I think. So I always love going out to like a big family dinner where I know there's going to be a big bill and everybody

else is happy to Venmo me because I'll pull out the gold card and earn my four points per dollar on those. And then the MX Platinum card offers five points per dollar on flights booked directly with airlines or I think via MX travel as well, if I remember correctly. And the business gold card earns 4X in your top two categories each billing cycle and out of the next several categories here. So out of U.S. dining, U.S. gas stations, U.S. advertising, transit, and some sort of computer stuff, computer software providers or something. Sort of miscellaneous computer stuff. Yeah.

Yeah. How they word that. That's capped at $150,000 in purchases per calendar year. And then it's 1X. But if you have a business that spends a good deal on advertising or on gas or something, something like that, that can certainly be a way to amp up your points. Four points per dollar could be a great return on that kind of stuff. Yeah. I mean, think about it. If you spend, if you have a, you know, business that spends 150,000 on advertising, that's, what, 600,000 points per year right

there by getting 4x from that. That's great. Absolutely. All right. So there are a lot of ways to earn lots of membership rewards points. And this is, I think that makes this program particularly exciting because there are, I think, more ways to earn a really meaningful number of membership rewards points than what you can earn with most other transferable currencies from welcome offers and spending bonuses and that kind of thing alone. And we'll see you soon at a leading hotel of the world. This episode was produced and edited by Carrie Yoder, music by Annie Yoder. If you've enjoyed what you've heard today and you'd like to get more of this in your email inbox each day each week, go to Frequentmyler.com slash subscribe to join our email list. Follow us on all the various

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