Frequent Miler on the Air - How to avoid Amex's pop up prison | Ep137 | 2-12-22

Episode Date: February 12, 2022

Amex offers some of the best cards on the market both in terms of initial welcome bonus offers and rewards for ongoing spend, but how do you stay in Amex's good graces so you can remain eligible? This week, we discuss avoiding dreaded pop-up prison. 1:18 Giant Mailbag 5:49 What crazy thing . . . did American Express do this week? 8:32 Mattress running the numbers: Is it worth spending on a Marriott credit card for elite night credits? 16:00 Main Event: Avoiding Amex's Pop-up prison 49:41 Question of the Week: How do you build up a meaningful stash of Citi ThankYou points? Email feedback for the Giant Mailbag and questions for Question of the Week to: [e-mail] Join our email list: https://frequentmiler.com/subscribe/ Music credit: Annie Yoder

Let's get into the giant mailbag. What crazy thing did City do this week? It's time for Mattress Running the Numbers. Ready for the main event? The main event. Frequent Liler on the air starts now. Today's main event, avoiding Amex's pop-up prison. I don't want to be a prisoner.

I don't want to be a prisoner. No one wants to be a pop- I don't want to be a prisoner. like my son as an example, end up in pop-up prison where when he goes to sign up for a new card, a pop-up shows up saying, you can sign up for this card, but you're not eligible for a welcome bonus. Wait, are you telling me your son's been in pop-up prison and you haven't bailed him out yet? I haven't yet. The bailout process is not clear. So we're going to be talking about how to avoid getting in there in the first place so you don't end up waiting for your dad to bail you out, which he doesn't know how to do. Seems like a good topic to discuss then. So then I think, I think then we should probably drag out the giant mailbag. Is there mail this week? Giant mailbag time. There is. This mail comes from YouCan. It rhymes with toucan. YouCan says,

You frequently mention that airlines no longer have change fees. The fares that have no change fees are routinely 30% or more expensive than basic economy in my experience. I think you rarely choose basic economy since you have airline status or prefer premium domestic seating. However, the fares that a vast majority of people book do not have free changes. Saying that change fees have been eliminated is a misrepresentation. Well, that's, I mean, that was an interesting piece of feedback. And I think that if you live somewhere where you're booking a lot of Delta flights, that's a great point because Delta flights are indeed often basic economy. And

the searches I've done lately are the cheapest anyway, are basic economy. But the thing is, when we're talking about change fees, we're usually talking about award tickets in terms of whether or not there's free changes. And while it's true that none of the major airlines are offering free change fees on basic economy, I don't think, unless Greg's going to correct me on that in a second, I think Delta is the only one that I've seen offering basic economy on award tickets. Now, that's not to say that there isn't any others,

but I did a whole bunch of searches, for instance, for the Southwest Companion Pass post that I wrote this week, and I didn't see basic economy even offered as an award with any of the other airlines, just Delta. Yeah, if I remember right, I think American introduced it for a while and then backed off. And so I'm not really sure what happened there, or maybe my memory is wrong. But either way, I think you're right. That's all I've seen in recent times for the domestic airlines, which is what we're talking about for no change fees. So if you're booking an award with most of them, except for Delta,

you are likely to be able to do free changes on that award. But UCAN is right that if you buy basic economy, either with cash or with miles in the case of Delta, then it's not freely changeable. Right. Right. Which is a good point. But I think most of the time when we're talking about change fees, we're talking about positioning flights or backups and things like that, which you would want to book something flexible for those. I think just naturally wouldn't be looking to book basic economy. And then in the difference in price, I think that that may be true with cash tickets. I don't pay close attention to cash tickets because I don't book that many of them. But when it comes to awards, for instance, I don't think, at least based on the searches

I've done lately, I haven't noticed a very big difference in the cost between basic economy and main cabin with Delta. So I think for me, it would be worth usually choosing main cabin over basic economy with Delta domestically anyway, because it's not that much of a buy-up. Right. Right. And the other thing is, uh, it with Delta, and I think this is true with the others too. So book the main cabin and then keep checking the award price afterwards, because you can actually, I've done this right from the mobile app. You can say, change your ticket, basically. You click a button to change it and pick the same exact flight to rebook at the lower price and they'll refund the extra miles. So it's not

unusual for the price to fluctuate. And so it's definitely worth to check in on it now and again before your flight and perhaps rebook it and get extra miles back. So you might end up paying as little as basic economy or even less if you hit the timing right. So another tip there. And that's true with cash also, especially if you're booking anything that's not basic economy. Anyway, I wrote a post, I think last year, because I rebooked a United flight, I think five times in the space of a week because it kept dropping in price. I just kept rebooking it and getting the difference back as a credit. So it's worth keeping an eye on your flight bookings these days with variable pricing and no change fees. Right, right. I still don't

like getting credits back as much as I like getting miles back, you know, miles you can keep alive forever. And with some airlines, they never expire, but you know, with, with, uh, those credits, they always expire. So that's, that's a downside, but still it's way better than getting nothing back. Exactly. Exactly. Than paying the higher price. Yep. Okay. So that was, I have thought a great piece of feedback. So excellent. Thank you for that. You I have thought a great piece of feedback. So excellent. Thank you for that. You can, and a good topic to discuss. So now what we got to talk about is what crazy thing did American Express.

Yeah. Yeah. What crazy thing did American Express do? Well, you know, maybe it's what they're not doing. They're not offering some people, it seems, the chance to refer friends to other cards. We've had a few reports come in and our Frequent Miler Insiders Facebook group from people who I know have been around the game for a long time. So they're not new to referring friends. And they've said that they're clicking on the place where they would expect to

get a referral offer. There's a few different places in your online account where you can get to the referral offer. And it's telling them your card is not eligible to participate in the referral campaign. So they're coming up with an error page and they can't generate a referral from many of their cards. We've had this report on platinum cards

and we've had this report on some other cards, membership rewards cards, cashback cards, et cetera. And some of those people are able to generate links for some of their Amex cards, cashback cards, et cetera. And some of those people are able to generate links for some of their Amex cards, but not for others. That's nuts, isn't it? It is. It's totally nice. Especially when you consider that some people are seeing a referral offer in their Amex offers section of the website, clicking on that and then being told this card is not eligible. Yeah. Now I think I have a solution. At least it has worked for me consistently. I've had that happen quite a bit over the last month

or so, but just pressing refresh once or twice on the browser screen has changed it to make the referral offer come up. So I think it's just a bug in their website and that that's an easy way to do it. I would also, if that doesn't work, I would try, you know, try the mobile app and initiate a referral that way. Or if you started with mobile apps, switch to your desktop browser, whichever. But yeah, it seems, I just assumed it was some weird like cookie issue where it saved a cookie before. And I mean, I like to say that's no longer valid.

Yeah. It's the darn cookie jar. So refresh, refresh, and let us know if that works for you. Hopefully it does. But you know, and the thing is, when I've heard this a few times, I've heard people say,

oh, maybe they just don't want me to get any more referrals or I've had too many referrals. And trust me, that's not it. I haven't had trouble generating referral links. And of course, Greg and I as bloggers have gotten plenty of referrals over time. So if they're going to block somebody from getting referrals, they'd block us probably sooner than the average person who's going to refer two or three people. So that's not it. It must be some sort of a glitch. So hopefully that refresh works. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. All right. It is time now for Mattress Running the Numbers. What do we have in store for Mattress Running this week? Marriott. Marriott's got us interested in mattress running. Maybe. I don't

know. I have to consult with Greg the Frequent Miler and see whether or not it's worthwhile. So this week it was announced that the Marriott Bonvoy Boundless card, that's the Chase card, what was formerly known as the Marriott Plus, right? The Marriott Rewards or whatever it was, plus card when the conversion happened. So now it's the boundless card from Chase, the card that's available from Chase, the consumer card, $95 annual fee. It earns two points per dollar on most purchases. They just announced this week that it'll earn three points per dollar on gas, dining, grocery purchases, up to $6,000 in combined purchases per year. But more importantly, what I want to talk about here is they announced that you'll also get one elite night credit for every $5,000 spent with no cap on the number of elite nights you can earn. Now, I guess the question is twofold. First of all, does it make sense to max out that $6,000 spend or at least do 5,000 of it in those bonus categories for three points per dollar and an elite night. And more importantly, since that bonus category is capped at 6,000 in combined purchases, does it make sense to keep spending at 2X on the card to get your 2X plus an elite night credit? What do you think, Greg? Should we

run our way to status at $5,000 a pop? It's a great question. First, let me say that I recently updated and republished my guide to shortcuts to Marriott Platinum Elite status. And I didn't have this in there because this wasn't a thing. Thanks for doing my post roast for me, Greg. There you go. There you go. I didn't use my psychic abilities to put that in ahead of time, but obviously it will appear in there very soon. Maybe even by the time you listen to this episode. Anyway, I think it's worth looking at the opportunity cost of that spend. So we often have talked in the past about how spending on a Marriott card to get two points per dollar is not a good bet compared to many other cards you can have. And just for example, use a 2% cash back card like the Citi Double Cash. You'd be getting, obviously with the Double Cash,

you're getting 2% cash back. With the Marriott card, you're getting two points per dollar. So the opportunity cost, you're basically paying one penny per Marriott point to buy those's been closer to about 0.6 of a cent. So you're getting far less than that. So if we say that Marriott points are worth about 0.6 of a cent, then getting two points per dollar, that's like 1.2% back. And so you're losing almost 1% back by not spending with your double cash card. So let's make the math easier, right? Let's just say Marriott points are worth half a cent each. And so the value at two points per dollar is 1% back. Otherwise, you can get 2% back. So your opportunity cost is 1% of your spend. That's what you're losing. So $5,000 spend, you're basically losing 50 bucks. If I did my math right

in my head, you're losing $50 in cash back, um, by, by buying these Marriott points at a half cent each instead. And so there you go. You have a number now of like what it costs you to buy these elite nights towards elite status. So 50 bucks a night, that's not that bad. I mean, a lot of people who are close to the next level of status, which let me say the two levels of status worth pursuing in my mind, platinum status, because it gives you a number of perks at that level. Once you hit 50 nights per year, and then titanium status gives you a few more perks, notably also united silver status 50 bucks a night in opportunity cost is, I think that's reasonable.

Yeah, you know, I guess it could be. You know, when you do it that way, you're right. It certainly could be a reasonable option. It's probably better than what you're going to pay if you were to go to a hotel and pay. Though, I have to say, you'd have to probably do the math and figure out how many points you would earn based on the stay and how much it's really costing for the night. But it's probably less than what you'll find, at least in many markets for a hotel. So you probably can't book a mattress run for less than that. Now, whether you could book a mattress run at a low level Marriott for a low enough number of points that that's more attractive.

I don't know, maybe, but it's questionable. So I mean, by that token, it's not necessarily bad. The thing you really have to be careful about here, I think, is making sure that you're not exceeding your target status level by any nights at all. Because if you spend and you go even to 51 nights on the year, then you didn't get that $50. It's a total waste. So you have to be really careful about how much you spend and how many nights you're going to stay and know how many nights you're going to stay. Because if you overshoot by anything, then you've just lost a whole bunch of value for

no reason. You've gotten 1.3% cash back essentially for no good reason. Right, right. I guess one exception to that I would say is let's say you have a big trip to St. Regis Bora Bora, for example. And so you want to get that free breakfast and other upgrades and things like that ahead of time. It could make sense to spend your way to platinum status before the trip, enjoy the benefits,

even though it would take you over. And that's a good point too. Although of course, in that situation, you have to ask yourself, okay, so how much is breakfast per night? It's a hundred dollars per day for two people. So, okay. How many elite nights are you willing to buy then? It depends on how many nights you're going to be there, but you have to do the math. I mean, which is just typical. I mean, you always have to do that kind of math and determine whether or not it's worthwhile. So there you go. It might be. And how about the 3X categories? Are you interested in those? Is that exciting for you? The 3X? I mean, would you do your spend at the 3X categories?

I mean, even at 3X, it's not exciting. It gets to where it is roughly similar to a 2% cashback card in value, but it's only in certain categories and it's capped at what was it $6,000 a year spend yeah so no I'm not interested in that doesn't really move the needle much okay well very good so we mattress ran

that we did our crazy thing I think that means it's time for the main event the main event avoiding Amex's pop-up prison. So, I wrote a post- Otherwise known as the episode, Greg's son wishes he had heard ahead of time. Right, or the podcast he wishes

he could go back in time and listen to. I don't know. Right. Yeah, so pop-up, avoiding pop-up prison. I don't want to be in pop-up prison, Greg. How do I stay out? No, you don't. Let me tell you a bit about what led us to pick this topic first.

I published a post, what will be next last week by the time you listen to this, most likely, about how to sort of keep a Amex Platinum card for free after rebate forever. And one part of the whole idea is to serially sign up for different flavors of platinum cards. Basically, if you think of it as there's four different types of MX platinum cards that give you all kinds of great perks and by signing up for one and earning the welcome bonus on it, that welcome bonus is usually worth more than the card's annual fee. So that's why I consider it free after rebate if you do that. Then after a year, you cancel that card, sign up for a different flavor of the platinum card, and so on and so on. Become a serial signer-upper. Serial signer upper. Yeah. If you're into your Cheerios and whatnot, then that sounds really good, doesn't it?

Yum. Yum. But there's a not yummy downside of that, which is that if that's all you do is sign up for MX cards for the bonus and cancel it after a year, you will end up in pop-up prison. And so you won't be able to do a plan like this because it's going to pop up a thing saying, sure, you can apply, but you're not going to get the welcome bonus. So, you know, too bad for you. Right, right, right. No free after rebate for you. Right, right, right. No free after rebate for you. Not free after no rebate. Yeah, so that's not good. Nobody wants that. And am I wrong in saying that if that was all you did after two or three times, you're probably not going to make it to five years on that, right? You're going to be probably in pop-up prison after maybe the second time you try that, right? Right, right. I mean, yeah. Thinking back to my son, it could be longer. He signed up for

maybe, I would think about six or seven Amex cards that he canceled after a year before actually landing in what appears to be permanent pop-up prison. Although as an aside, it seems to be a consumer prison, not a business prison. He's been able to get business cards still. So anyway, what was your question? So I was saying it's not going to last. The party isn't going to last that long, probably. Although, I don't know, maybe it will. So we don't know how long it'll last, but it's inevitable if you keep doing this and only that. It's not going to be good for your long-term prison avoidance health. So we have a theory about what keeps you out of prison, but I do need to caution that nobody

except some people at Amex, and I would guess it's very few people at Amex know the real story of how to avoid it. One belief that I have is that regularly spending on Amex cards and regularly renewing Amex cards that have annual fees are two factors that I think will keep you safe because Amex will look at you and see that you're a valuable customer. And the fact that you're sometimes signing up for cards, I think their algorithm is going to say, well, they might be a valuable customer for this new card as well. So that has definitely worked for me over the years. I haven't personally been in that kind of pop-up prison. And by that kind, I mean, there's another kind of pop-up, which is, which is the lifetime rule one, where, you know,

if you try to sign up for a card you've had before, it pops up a thing saying, basically, you've had this card before, so you're not eligible for the welcome bonus. Fine. That's a reasonable thing. That tends to disappear after about six or seven years, but there's no hard and fast rule on that, what lifetime means there. Okay. I just talked myself into a long side tangent. So how do I avoid going to prison, Greg? I mean, that's really all I want to know. How do I avoid going to prison? So the idea is that if you just keep signing up for cards and closing them and not spending on them, it's just for the welcome bonus. You sign up, you just make the spend for the welcome bonus. Don't do any more spend, close it, open another one, just do the spend for the welcome bonus. Don't do any more spend. Close it. Open another one. Just do the spend for the signup bonus.

Close it, blah, blah. They don't like that. So I know I shouldn't do that, but what should I do? So let's talk about cards where you can spend on them regularly. You could pay the annual fees and it's worth it to you because you're getting something valuable out of that whole proposition and hopefully keeping you in Amex's good graces so that you could also keep signing up for other cards and getting the welcome bonuses. I made a list of candidates for this discussion and we can talk about with each one real quick, like, is this a good choice? Let me start with a card that we've often

raved about, but I'm not sure it's the best choice. The Blue Business Plus. So this is their business card that earns membership rewards points. It earns two points per dollar on all spend up to 50K spend per year. So it's an awesome card for just earning membership rewards in any category of spend, which is fantastic. The only reason that I hesitate on saying this is the one is that it doesn't have an annual fee. So I don't know that Amex will kind of look at you favorably necessarily for keeping this card and spending a lot on it. I also wonder whether spending a lot on the business side will keep you out of pop-up prison on the consumer side. So I don't know if that will make me like you use your son as an example, who seems to be in

pop-up prison on the consumer side, but not on the business side. So I would think that if it transferred over, then probably you wouldn't have that issue. Cause I think he's probably done some spend on his business cards that he's opened. So hoping that that would get him out of pop-up prison and it seems he hasn't gotten out. So apparently bail is significantly higher than what we may have expected. So yeah. So I don't know if that's going to necessarily help. I mean, it's a good card to have. You want to have that card because it keeps your membership rewards points alive. It keeps them transferable. So you can have that and open and close everything else and just keep that card active, pop it out and use it now and then when it's advantageous for you. But that's not

necessarily the one that's going to keep you out of pop-up prison. I agree. So if we want to stay out of pop-up prison, Greg, I'm going to get back to the question again. How do I stay out of prison, Greg? What do I have to do? All right. So one of my favorite options is the Amex Gold Card. So that's $250 a year. So I think just paying that annually will make Amex at least a little bit happy with you. But it's good to spend on, especially for grocery stores in the US because you get earned four points per dollar on up to $25,000 spent at grocery stores and you earn 4X for dining worldwide. So those two great earning of membership rewards points. You also get a monthly $10 per month Uber credit, which can be used also for Uber Eats. And you get $10 sort of miscellaneous,

mostly dining related credits for like things like Grubhub and box.com and Cheesecake Factory. Ruth's Chris Steakhouse. I have not done a good job of using those credits, but even if you just value that a tiny bit, maybe you value the Uber one. I value the Uber one more because I use Uber Eats enough to always use the credits. Same for me. And I didn't always, I used to, if you've listened to the show for a long time, then you'll know that in the past, I didn't value the Uber credits very much at all because I didn't use Uber all that much because it doesn't exist where I live. So, you know, there's like places I go where sometimes I'll do pickup or that sort of thing.

But I was like lukewarm. I wasn't going to go out of my way to use 10 bucks. But since I have other cards now in the household that also get Uber Eats credits, now I make an effort to use it. So now I use it basically every month. So I agree. also get Uber Eats credits. Now I make an effort to use it. So now I use it basically every month. So I agree. I value the Uber one a lot more, but I'm not going to go out of my way to use the $10 Grubhub credit or find a Shake Shack to buy a burger hat or whatever the case may be. So yeah. But plenty of people do and plenty of people get a lot of value out of that. So basically with those

credits, it ends up sort of net costing you not that much. Or you could say you're getting a lot of value from the annual fee and you're getting the very good earning potential. That combination, I think, is really good. And since most people spend a fair amount on grocery and dining, I think Amex will be pretty happy with an average family that has that card. Now, if you don't spend that much on dining and grocery, but you do spend, let's say around $6,000 per year on grocery, there are two cards that bonus up to 6K of spend on grocery. And one is the blue cash preferred. So you get 6% cash back on grocery, US grocery, up to 6,000 per year.

And the everyday preferred earns membership rewards points. It earns three points per dollar at grocery on the first $6,000 spend. But if you also spend, make 30 purchases per billing cycle, you get a 50% bonus. So basically you can earn up to four and a half membership rewards points per dollar on that 6K spend. So those are two cards where if the gold card is too rich for you, these are $95 cards where you can get good value from your grocery spend up to 6,000 a year. Which of those do you prefer out of those two? So the blue cash preferred 6% back and up to 6K spend every day preferred four and a half points per dollar if you do 30 transactions

a month, 30 purchases a month. So which of those is the better card to get for gross trading? Yeah. Of those two, I mean, not counting other, not looking at other bonus categories. I prefer the blue cash preferred just because it doesn't have those hoops to jump through to make sure you do 30 purchases per billing cycle to get a good rate of return. And so that's one I would pick there. I agree. No, I totally agree. Because if you don't make 30, then you're only earning three membership rewards points per dollar spent. And I'm not too excited about paying two cents of membership rewards points. Same kind of opportunity costing we talked about before. You're essentially paying two cents for every point and that's not worthwhile to me. Even at the four and a half versus 6%, I'm kind of like, yeah, there's enough other ways to earn membership rewards points. I'd probably take the 6%.

And the $6,000 spend is I think an easier or an easy amount for a lot of people. That comes out to about $115 per week over 52 weeks. So that's, I think, probably a reasonable amount of groceries. So easy to get your value back there. And I agree, I would take the blue cash preferred out of the two, even though we have the everyday preferred in my household. I've definitely questioned the value because I don't do 30 transactions a month on it anymore. There's just too many other ways to get a lot of points to make that worthwhile. Right, right. So, so now of, of the cards that give like everybody decent value, uh, I think that's, that's it that we've covered the ones I recommend in that area. Now we're going to go, go into ones that are specific to certain brands. So like,

if you like Delta, if you like Hilton, if you like Marriott, then there are opportunities there. So for example, let's start with Delta. So Delta, Amex has seven different Delta cards. So there's the no fee consumer blue card. Forget about that because no fee and that's not going to help you with this. But there's a gold card, a platinum card and a reserve card, which are, they have two versions of each one, a business version and a personal version of each one of those. And they're pretty much, they're very, very similar personal and business version. So I'm not going to distinguish between the two. I'm just going to look at those three different cards right now, gold, platinum, and reserve. If you're a minor Delta fan, or let me put it another way,

not interested in Delta elite status, then the Delta gold card, which is $99 a year, not only does it give you the things that a frequent or even just, let's call it a sort of a regular Delta flyer. Even if you just fly a few times a year, you might benefit from the free check bag each time you go and other sort of standard perks like that. But you also, with 10K spend, get $100 Delta flight credit. So 10K spend, you're sort of getting the equivalent of 1% back on top of earning the miles for that spend. So it's not terrible from a... If you stop spending on that card at 10K, it's not terrible from a point of view of, oh, you could have earned 2% back somewhere else. Right, right. So that could be a reasonable choice if you don't really care

about status. And really, like you said, the free check bag alone could make back the annual fee for you with just a few Delta flights a year. So yeah, I mean, that's a reasonable choice if you're not really into Delta Elite status. But if you are interested in Delta Elite status, then it becomes a lot easier to stay at a pop-up prison, I think, right? Because it's a lot easier to spend on the other cards. Yeah. Because if you're interested in Delta Elite status, then you almost need to have either a Plat That means Delta's requirements of dollar spend with them in order to achieve an elite level. That goes away for any elite level up to platinum status if you spend 25K a year on either of these cards. But you also get MQMs, which are medallion qualifying miles, which also help you earn

those levels of elite status. With the platinum card you get, which is $250 a year, each 25K spend up to 50K, you get 10K, 10,000 MQMs towards status. Okay. So, you know, again, you're, if you're seeking Delta elite status each year, uh, spend 25 K at least on the platinum card and it gives you the waiver and the extra MQMs Delta, uh, unlike what we talked about with Marriott before, once you hit an elite level, if you get more MQMs than you need for that elite level, they roll over to next year.

So it's not really wasted earning extra MQMs. That's nice. That's nice. Yeah. So reduce your path for the next year or make it easier for you to reach the next level. Right. Right.

Yeah. And the Platinum Card also gives you a companion ticket each year upon renewal. So the $250 annual fee could be basically paid back if you use that companion ticket effectively each year. So that's a really good sweet spot, I think, for frequent Delta flyers is that platinum card. Moving up to the reserve card is, I think really for those who really want even more eliteness and who want to get into the Sky Club because the Delta Reserve Card costs $550. Having it gives you access to the Delta Sky Club and actually Amex Centurion lounges on when you're flying Delta. And you'll get 15,000 MQMs with $30,000 spend. And you can do that up to four times each year. So up to 120,000 spend, you could get the 15,000 MQMs. So you can actually get

very high level elite status with a single Delta reserve card if If you have a ridiculous amount of spend on it. Yeah. So, cause I, if I did the math, right, since you can do that four times, you can end up with 60,000 MQMs and an MQD waiver.

So that's more than enough for Delta gold status. And that puts you on a path to platinum, right? Platinum is. Yeah. And if you just flew, if you just flew 15,000, you know,

miles or earn 15,000 MQMs other ways or have rolled over from previous year, you'll have platinum, which is great. And that's where you get things like the regional upgrade certificates as a choice benefit. So there's some good value to be had there. There you go. And the MQD waiver, by the way, for people who aren't familiar with Dalton or just listening to this and enjoy hearing the perspectives on these things. I think, and correct me if I'm wrong, if you know, but I'm pretty sure that for platinum status, the MQD requirement is $15,000, I think. So I think

that normally you would have to spend 15 grand on Delta flights to get platinum status, no matter how many miles you fly, right? If you want to end up getting platinum status, if you meet the MQM requirement, the number of miles, you still need to spend like 15 grand on Delta unless you do the 25K spend on your card. And so that's what makes it appealing to get that MQD waiver because then you don't have to worry about spending $15,000 on Delta flights. So- Right, right. I thought the 15,000 was for Diamond, but it doesn't matter. It's a lot of spend on Delta. Maybe it's 10, right. I thought the 15,000 was for diamond, but it doesn't matter. It's a lot of, maybe it's 10. Yeah, it's a lot. It's a lot of, a lot of Delta spend. And the great thing about the waiver is that you can, you know, not worry about, um, some people are,

are choosing to book Delta flights and even do things like pay for, what is it called? The Comfort Plus just to earn more MQDs, even though at your level of elite status, you're probably getting in the Comfort Plus automatically for free. So people do crazy things like that, which Delta wants them to do to get more MQDs, but by getting the waiver, you can avoid that kind of ridiculousness. Preston Pyshko Larson. Yeah. So, all right. So the Delta cards are a decent option if you like Delta. But if you're me and you don't live near a Delta hub and you don't buy Delta very often, though I do have Delta elite status, makes sense of that.

If you're not interested in getting the Delta cards, what else is there? So we talked so far about the Blue Business Plus and said that probably won't help. We talked about the gold card, the Blue Cash Preferred and the Everyday Preferred Delta cards. What else? Let's talk Hilton. So Amex has several Hilton cards and let's start with, they have two $95 a year Hilton cards. There's a surpass and the business card, both of them with $15,000 annual spend, you get a free night certificate. That's, um, during normal years, it is good only for weekends. Um, this year, I think it's good for any day of the week if you earn it this year. Right. And, um, they both also have some categories where they earn six points per dollar. So Hilton points are not worth a lot individually.

You know, we've seen them worth about 0.4 of a cent each. But once you get into six points per dollar, it's a decent return on your spend. Right. Even if you're only getting four tenths of a cent per point, then you're talking about around 2.4% cash back toward Hilton's days. So that's not bad. It's not wildly exciting, but it's not bad. And it gets better if you're earning a free night certificate. So if you're able to do $15,000 spend in one of those 6X categories, for instance, the consumer card, the surpass card offers 6X at grocery stores, US supermarkets, I should say rather on up to, well, not an unlimited amount on that card, right?

So if you do your $15,000 spend at 6X, you're going to end up with, what is it? 90,000 Hilton points plus a free night certificate. And if you leverage that free night certificate well, if you're a Hilton person and you're into that, you can get tons of value out of that because that's valid at almost every Hilton property in the world. There's a very small list of exclusions and they aren't even the places that you would think would be excluded necessarily. It's not like the Waldorf Astoria Maldives is not an excluded place or the Conrad Maldives is not excluded. Exclusions are like all inclusives and timeshare-y type properties. They're not necessarily the places that you would worry about being excluded.

So very few exclusions. You can use it almost everywhere in the world. And again, if you earn the certificate this year, it's valid any night of the week. But in a normal year, it's only valid on weekend nights. And keep in mind, weekend nights is, I think, Friday, Saturday, Sunday in the vast majority of the world. In the Middle East, I think it's Thursday, Friday, Saturday, although maybe that'll change because I think I've read about some countries changing up the weekend there. So I'm not sure. It'll be interesting to see if Hilton will update because of that. Hopefully they will just to make it easier to remember what is the weekend. Yeah. So those are the two that I

think are the most interesting for spend because you only need $15,000 spend to get a meaningful benefit out of it. You could also with either of those spend $40,000 to get diamond status with Hilton, if that means anything to to you but you already get gold status just by having these cards so um you'd have to really love diamond to be worth that and if you do you might if you really love diamond you might want to instead have the aspire card i don't even might want to you want to have the aspire card but that's not going to help you stay out of pop-up prison because you're not really going to want to spend money on the aspire card yeah i mean in that one you have to spend60,000 a year to get another free night.

Otherwise you get a free night annually just by having the card. Well, that's true. And I guess that's why, because yeah, you get that just for having the card, you get a free night certificate every year. Again, issued this year, it's going to be valid any night of the week, but in normal years, weekend nights. So yeah, I mean, and that card is a great car. We've talked about it a bunch of times because it comes with a $250 airline incidental credit each year. It comes with a $250 resort credit each year. It comes with a free weekend night certificate all for 450 bucks. So, uh, you know, plus some other small benefits and diamond Hilton diamond status also. So it's a great card to have, but it's not necessarily a good card for spend because it doesn't share the same good 6X categories that you can get on these $95 cards, the Hilton Surpass

and the Hilton Business Card. So if you're looking to stay at a pop-up prison, it's not the card necessarily. Yeah. And the business card, am I remembering right that it was $60,000 spend on the business card, you can get another free night? I believe. Am I remembering that right? I thought that, yeah, go ahead. I believe so. Anyway, if, if that's true, and if you can make good use of, of its six X categories, which are admittedly not as good as the personal card success categories, cause it doesn't include supermarkets. Um, then, you know, if you want to spend 60 K for a free night, you'd be much better off with this business card than spending the 60K on the Aspire because either way, you'll end up with a total of two free nights with either

card because the Aspire gives you a free night each year automatically. And you would be able to earn up to 6X per dollar, unlike the Aspire card, which would not give you that. Right, right. And you are correct. You get a second free night at 60K spent on the business card. Yeah. So, all right.

So the Hilton cards might be a ticket out of pop-up prison. So, I mean, that's marginally good, right? That's not a bad list of things to get you out of pop-up prison. I think it's also worth mentioning, by the way, that there have been some other opportunities like the referral offers that Amex has run in recent years that have sometimes given you the opportunity to earn an additional four points per dollar spend. And if you're able to refer someone and pick up one of those offers, then all of a sudden other cards could be worth spending on

when you add. I mean, obviously the cards we've talked about already would be potentially good, but even cards that aren't always good for spend, like the platinum card, for instance, I wrote about earning a whole bunch of points buying a car on that. And one of the reasons I earned so many points was because I had an offer for plus four points per dollar everywhere. And I have that on other cards also. And so a minimum of five points per dollar means almost all of my spend is going on various Amex cards right now. I'm hopefully buying a get out of jail free card for like ever.

Let's hope that they look at that spend positively. Hopefully, I don't know. I expect they do, but you could certainly imagine where they'd say, let's not count that spend in the algorithm because the consumer's getting so much back for it. But that said, there's one more brand we haven't talked about yet, which is Marriott. So I look at the Marriott cards and the business card and the old, what was the SBG card, but the $95 Marriott card that Amex has that you can't get new, but you can product change to. Neither of those are good candidates in my opinion for spend. They're both good to have because they give you the annual free

night certificate. So if you like that, it's good to have, but would you spend on either one of those? I don't think I would. I mean, there's no good reason to, I mean, not beyond the Bonvoy Brilliant card, I guess you're going to spend your $300 a year at Marriott for the rebate. But after that, no. And even spending at Marriott properties is kind of questionable, right? Like 6x Marriott points is good, but there are other cards that are in transferable currencies that I could certainly see an argument for preferring one of those transferable currencies over 6 Marriott points per dollar anyway. So there's really not a lot of good use case for spending. I mean, is Amex going to do something about that?

Yeah. Well, it's interesting. Maybe we'll know by the time people are listening to this podcast, but with Chase announcing that they were going to be giving Elite Knights for spend with their card, how long will it be before Amex does the same? Because usually these Marriott enhancements go pretty much lockstep between Chase and Amex. So we'll see. We'll see about that. But the one use case, arguably, for spending a lot on a Marriott Amex card

is the Bonvoy Brilliant, the $450 annual fee card. With $75,000 spend, you get platinum status. That's a lot of spend for a benefit of sort of questionable value. Yeah. I can remember back not that long ago to receiving an email from a reader who used to spend $75,000 annually on, I don't know, one of the Marriott cards for status and then was upset at some changes that happened. And I thought to myself, $75,000 on a Marriott card. There's just no Marriott card offering enough benefit to justify that much spend, you know, over just because if you're not staying at hotels enough, if you're staying so little that you need to spend $75,000 on the credit card to get the benefits, I question how much

those benefits are worth. But yeah, so that's a potential use case, I guess. And if you do spend $75,000 a year on your Marriott card and you don't get an automatic, get out of jail free card forever. And something's wrong with that. Somebody needs to rewrite the algorithm. Wow. Right. For sure. More beneficial for them than it is for you.

But the business card has a like gas stations, right? And they have Forex on gas stations on the business. Yes. So yes. Yeah. So you're right. There are some, there's some situations where that makes sense. You can spend your way to gold status or something like that. And Amex has run some temporary promos where they've offered like 10 points per dollar on PayPal with those cards and things like that. And when those things happen, okay, then maybe you've got a decent reason to spend on those cards. Absolutely. Absolutely. And don't forget with the Brilliant card, the $450 card, there's all these rumors about

them raising the price and increasing the benefits considerably. At that point, if any of those rumors are true, they're likely to have some significant incentives for spend. So keep an eye out for that if it happens. We don't know. It's just a rumor at this point. Now, here's a related question. How do retention offers factor into this? If I go after a retention offer, I contact Amex and say that I'm thinking about canceling my card and they offer me some sort of a retention offer to stay. Does that hurt me long term? Does that help

me because it helps me put spend on the card? How does that play into this, Greg? Great question. I have no idea for sure, but my gut tells me that it doesn't really play into it other than a lot of retention offers do require some spend in order to get them. And so that should be helpful because that's more spend on that card. But, you know, my, my guess is that the retention offers are sort of in their own sort of sandbox. Like, like if you accept a retention offer and then don't start using the card a lot, and then you call the next year to try to get another retention off the same card, you're unlikely to get one. But, you know, so it's in its own little sandbox in that way, I think. Yeah, yeah, I think that's probably true.

And along with that, though, I think it's also worth mentioning that sometimes Amex runs authorized user or additional cardholder bonuses, and those can be worth taking up also. And again, I think that those probably are in their own little sandbox too. They can be another way to help encourage

increasing some spending on cards and make it more rewarding for yourself. Now, again, I don't know for sure that Amex rewarding you in an outsized way for your spend isn't going to hurt you in terms of pop-up prison, but it may help because it will increase your overall spend on the card. I'm not really sure. We don't really know what the algorithm takes into

account, but I would think anything that helps you spend more is probably worth pursuing. So that might help justify more spend on your IMAX cards if you get that sort of an offer. I think so. My guess is that when they look at their algorithm to decide whether to put you in pop-up prison is looking at how much you've spent on your cards, how many times you've renewed a card with an annual fee, that sort of thing, and probably doesn't look at how much value and rewards you got along the way is that's just my guess. And that's, I think that's probably a reasonable guess. So, all right. So, you know, increase your spend on your existing cards. And anecdotally that has helped some people get out of pop-up prison, right? I mean, I think that's, that's why we're talking about this. I guess we didn't

necessarily set that out at the beginning, but anecdotally we've heard stories from people who were getting the pop-up saying that because of their history with American Express, they wouldn't be eligible for a bonus. And then after peppering some spend around on their other existing Amex cards, that pop up has gone away. And so that's where this theory comes from. And of course, anything based on anecdotal evidence is only anecdotal. So we don't know for sure, but we have strong suspicions anyway, that that's going to help. That's right. That's right. All right.

All right. So that brings us to the post-roast. Post-roast time. All right. I am unprepared. How could you possibly be unprepared? Roastless. No roast for me.

Well, there we go. I'll take it. I'll take it. I'll take it. So my, my roast for you is going to be a playful roast that you forgot when you posted about the Marriott cards that you can earn one elite night, uh, for every 5,000 spend. But we talked about that already. So, uh, Greg's been roasted. He roasted himself. He beat me to the punch. So we're going to jump right into the question of the week. And so this week's question of the week, we had a few questions come in. We didn't ask us anything. We do those the second Wednesday

of every month. And so we had a few questions that came in on our post about the ask us anything that we didn't get to during the ask us anything. So I wanted to toss one of these out for you, maybe two, if your answer is fast, we'll see. So Emma asks us, I've been able to maintain a pretty steady stream of membership rewards and ultimate rewards points through business card signups. And I'm starting to look at getting into Citi's ecosystem too. How do you collect a healthy amount of thank you points when they have such strict rules about signup bonuses and no business cards?

RIP the Citi business thank you card. None of those things to churn. Would my only option be organic or manufactured spending? How do you earn a whole bunch of city thank you points, Greg? Yeah. Great question. So yes, I think that there are some signup bonuses, but as you say, you're pretty limited to how many you can get um if you can get in on the still floating around 80k city premier card offer that that's a great one but how do you go beyond that uh i think is to take advantage of they have a great set of category bonuses that all can work together so

you know get the custom cash card, which earns five points per dollar on up to $500 spend in the category you spend most each month. Shoot, if you can get several of those, you can maximize that. You can't sign up new for more than one, but you can probably product change from other cards to get more than one that way. Yet the, the premier card earns three X for grocery and a number of other valuable categories. So now you're earning five X in some categories, you're in third three X and in others and make sure you have the double cash

for two X everywhere else. And you know, cash for 2x everywhere else. And then also sprinkle in a rewards plus card so that when you go to redeem your points, you get a 10% rebate and get 10% of your points back after you redeem them. So that combination is a fantastic earning combination. And they have a benefit that they're MasterCard. So things like plastic bill payments, like you could pay your mortgage and stuff. So if you're working on a signup bonus or Citi frequently sends out these like earn 5X on up to like $2,500 spend or whatever, you could do things like pay your mortgage, pay your car payment through something like Plastic, 2.8% fee. But if you're earning 5X or whatever, it's well worth it. And oh, because Plastic doesn't allow that for like Visa and Amex,

but they do for MasterCard. Yeah, definitely. So there's a lot of different ways to earn those points on spend. Greg highlighted a bunch of great options there. So to answer the part of the question about, you know, is it just organic and, and, or manufactured spending the only ways to earn points? Certainly a, there are lots of rewarding ways to spend, like Greg said, but to add one more rewarding way to spend that is perhaps a little bit outside of that is retention offers. Citi has long been known for very generous retention offers. So not only can you earn the welcome bonus, but then call in before the year first, you know, when your first year is up or sometimes even more often than that, call in every now and then and ask if there are any offers available to entice you to keep the card, to reward you more for using the card, et cetera. And sometimes Citi has really generous

retention offers that are almost like getting another signup bonus. So that can be a way to sort of double up on your signup bonuses. I mean, you're not going to get 80,000 points, but you're going to get potentially decent offers anyway. Absolutely. And, you know, when you call to try to get a retention offer, you often have to tell them that you want to cancel the card in order to get them to, you know, send you to the retention specialist or to unlock the computer system that gives you these offers. But don't say that to the computer because people have made the mistake of calling, getting the automated system and what do you want to do? I want to cancel my double cash card or whatever. And then the system's like, okay, it's canceled. Bye.

Right. So you don't want to say that to the automated system that picks up. You want to speak to a representative. That's what you want to do. And then once you have a representative that is willing to work with you, after they give you a retention offer for the card you called about, ask them if they could look at your other cards. So I've had a single rep go through eight different cards of mine to see if what offers are on them. And frequently, there are good offers for a number of them. And so that's a great way to do it. And it's interesting that often you have good offers even for no fee cards. So don't be afraid to try that approach with a fee-free card.

There you go. There you go. One other tip, by the way, and we said that the automated system has been known to close cards on people. So if you call and you say you want to speak to a representative and you talk to a representative and they have to transfer you to the retention team and it's taking forever to get to the retention team, don't hang up. Don't hang up.

Because they may just go ahead and close the card as per your request. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I didn't know that. Thanks for that, Siddy. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, be careful.

Make sure you have time on your hands when you make that call and get to a human being and explain that you're considering canceling and want to know if there are any offers available. So good, good, good safety tip. Thank you for that. Don't hang up and figure out, you know what? I'll just call back later when I have more time, bad decision, bad decision. Don't do it. Okay. You sound like someone who knows. I'm just saying, I'm just saying, you know what I mean? All right. So that brings us, I think to the end of today's episode. So I want to thank you guys for being out there with us today. If you've enjoyed this episode,

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next week. Yeah. One last thing. If you want to leave feedback for us to read and the giant mailbag or to ask the, as the question of the week, then email us at mailbag at frequent miler.net. We'll see you next time. Bye.