Frequent Miler on the Air - How to earn millions of points from credit card welcome offers | Ep214 | 8-5-23 Published Aug 5, 2023

Episode Date: August 5, 2023

There are more than 8 million points and miles available via new credit card welcome offers. Here's how to score millions of points in your household. Join our email list: https://frequentmiler.com/subscribe/ 00:00 Intro 01:45 Giant Mailbag 09:05 Card Talk: JetBlue Plus and JetBlue Business Cards https://frequentmiler.com/b6plus/ https://frequentmiler.com/b6biz/ 15:37 What crazy thing . . . happened to Greg the Frequent Miler this week? 21:10 Mattress Running the Numbers: 50% transfer bonus from Chase to Marriott https://frequentmiler.com/chase-ultimate-rewards-offering-50-transfer-bonus-to-marriott/ 23:57 Award Talk 24:09 Nairobi to Cape Town....via Doha 27:15 Main Event: How to earn millions of points from credit card welcome offers? https://frequentmiler.com/best-credit-card-sign-up-offers/ 28:59 Won't this ruin my credit score? 32:53 High-level summary https://frequentmiler.com/the-games-we-play/ 36:56 How do you choose which card? 39:30 Start with 5/24 strategy https://frequentmiler.com/must-have-chase-cards/ 42:05 How do you find the best offers? https://frequentmiler.com/best-credit-card-sign-up-offers/ 50:08 Family referrals 58:35 If you get denied, it's not over 1:01:54 Meeting minimum spending requirements https://frequentmiler.com/manufactured-spending-complete-guide/ 1:02:40 Call for a retention offer 1:08:57 Downgrade options 1:17:12 Question of the Week: Why aren't we using Altitude Reserve points to pay for our car rentals? Music credit: Annie Yoder

let's get into the giant mailbag what crazy thing did city this week it's time for mattress running the numbers ready for the main event the main event frequent miler on the air starts now today's main event how to earn millions of points from credit card welcome offers i want to be a millionaire greg you want to be a millionaire well what? I'm going to do a pop quiz for you right now. I looked at our best offers page and the data behind it, and I counted up all of the points that are available right now as we record this from credit card welcome offers. These are offers that are real in place right now. How many millions of points do you think are on offer right at this moment?

Oh my goodness. That's a tough question. Without thinking too awful hard, I'm going to say 3.2 million points. 3.2 million points. You are so far off. The right answer, you are. The right answer. You are. The right answer is 8 million.

What? 8 million. Yes, slightly over 8 million points on offer right now. Go get them. Wow. Wow. You know, and every now and then you hear from somebody who's like, I've applied for all the cards. And I'm like, you haven't applied for all the cards yet.

There's so many out there. Right, right, right. 8 million. And yes, they vary a. Right, right, right. Eight million. And yes, they vary a lot in terms of how valuable those points are, but still a lot of them are transferable points, which are our favorite kind and can be incredibly valuable if you use them correctly. So, yeah, it's pretty exciting total. A lot going on there. First, of course, we have a giant mailbag. Now, today's giant mail was generated by a conversation in the last Ask Us Anything. So last night, the night before we're

recording this, the Frequent Miler team did our monthly Ask Us Anything show, which is the first Wednesday of every month, Nick was sleeping through it. He wasn't there. Slept right through the thing. Slept right through it. Now, he might argue that since he's in Europe, it was like 3 a.m. his time, but we don't believe any of that. He just did not want to be there for us. But anyway, one of the questions we read or that Kerry read to the rest of us during the show was this. Someone named Rowan said, why don't you guys ever talk about the JetBlue card? It's such a superpower card.

I got Caesar's Diamond status from it, which led to free cruises, was getting AA benefits because of mosaic status. So that was a question. And we talked a bit about the card and I kind of said, well, I think it's a good card for those who fly JetBlue, but I wouldn't call it a superpower card. And then I also said, I don't know where this Caesar's diamond status comes from. And we just left it hanging like that. And so Rowan emailed after the fact and said the following. So here's the giant mail, finally getting to that. Rowan says, I have to make my case why the JetBlue card is a superpower card. One, you do get mosaic status after 50K spend. Okay, so that was something Tim during the show said

that the card used to have that feature, but he doesn't think it does anymore. And he was sort of right in that it's no longer a fixed thing that you have to spend exactly 50K and get mosaic. But the way they redid how you earn elite spend exactly 50k and get mosaic but but the way they redid how you earn elite status you still will get mosaic status uh with that's right through tiles with 50 000 spend on the card so um rowan is correct there he says uh tim is in the live said you don't anymore but yes you still do two, you get AA benefits when you fly with them.

Even if you don't fly JetBlue, that alone is worth it if you fly American instead. Yes, I know the partnership ended, but American Airlines won the appeal. So who knows what might happen? Now, I hadn't heard anything about winning appeals or what that means. So I can't really speak to that. I'm sort of dubious personally about the long-term prospects of getting any AA benefits, but hopefully, who knows? And then he says three, Greg was confused about this, but another superpower is that you can get Caesar's diamond status from the card because once you get mosaic status they offer you the founder's card for free a 400 plus benefit and that comes with caesar status for free amazing workaround for people

who can't do that match anymore and don't want to apply for the windham earner card that's the business earner card by the way and that's how i was able to get the free cruises after matching my caesar status toival, which I got. I got a balcony room, seven nights by myself, and I only had to pay the taxes for one person since it was only me. Amazing. Also, the Founders card comes with lots of other useful benefits. There you go. What do you think, Nick?

You were sleeping on this, so this is all new to you. I'm going to beg to differ. I'm calling this a superpower card okay so interesting some interesting stuff in there you're right i i'm sure that i knew at some point but i certainly if i knew had totally forgotten about getting founders card from mosaic status and that is an interesting backdoor workaround to turn that card into a path to caesar's diamond however uh I'm dubious as to whether it's worth putting, you wouldn't necessarily have to put all 50K,

but assuming you were spending 50K on the JetBlue card for mosaic status, is it worth putting $50,000 spend on a mostly 1X card where the miles are worth about 1.3 cents or whatever a piece towards paid airfares or 1.4. I mean, you're giving up base level 0.6% everywhere, right? At a base level, if you're comparing against a 2% cash back card, you're not comparing against one of the other 2X transferable currency cards that you could instead be putting your spend on. I think you're losing enough a significant amount

anyway it's costing you quite a bit to spend that much at 1x on an airline card that i mean i feel like you probably if you wanted founders card that badly could i don't know i haven't done the math would you be able to you know do a two percent card and come out ahead that way i don't know i haven't done the math on it but um, but I don't get excited enough about spending points for a currency that has such a low fixed value. But if you're flying JetBlue a lot, then it might make sense to have mosaic status. And also, if you're flying JetBlue a lot, now you can mix, right? Because you can earn tiles through spend on the card. So it might make sense to spend enough to get the tiles you need in order to reach mosaic status. I don't know if that makes it a superpower card per se. I don't know. Do

you disagree with me, Greg? No, I agree with you. Some details I'll change a little bit, which is that remember the card does give you 10% back on award bookings with JetBlue. So let's call it a 1.5% just to round up a little bit. But still, your point is still taken there. And it's 1.5% that can only be used towards JetBlue. There's no partner award bookings here. It's like JetBlue. Right. The other thing is when you say that the Founders card is free um remember a couple things one you when you reach a mosaic level you get to pick which reward you want and and the founder's card is one of them but by not picking something like 15 000 bonus points you're you know it's costing you quite a bit um so so there's that uh side of. Plus, when I read it, it said that

it gives you one year free and then it'll automatically renew and charge you after that if you don't cancel. So you have to remember to cancel. Third, we had heard from someone who was able to get a year of Founders Card for free somehow through facebook ad or something um so there might be other ways of getting so right i don't know i i i'm i'm dubious about the uh yeah the superpower value there and and uh and so i decided that what we should do is do a review let's let's do a card talk on the jet blue card let's do it let's do it and uh and and see what do we think you know and i just real quick i want to address the fact that the american airlines we don't know what's going to happen in the future but right now your mosaic benefits

won't get you anything on american airlines so if you had mosaic today uh it wouldn't get you any of those aa benefits that he was talking about so uh so there's that loss there too but anyway let's talk about the cards like you said yeah uh so all right so what do we got so we're talking about we're talking about the jet blue plus card and the jet blue business card which are almost identical cards they're both 99 a year um they both give you six points per dollar for spend with jet blue they both give you two points per dollar at restaurants uh the the only major difference between the cards the personal card gives you 2x at grocery stores and the business card gives you 2x for office supply so that's the main difference between them um they each have a number of good perks so that they have uh first check bag free for you and up to three companions. They give you a

10% award rebate rebate on JetBlue operated flights. So that's pretty valuable right there. Group A boarding, you get automatically a hundred dollars back on a JetBlue vacation each year. If you use your card to purchase a vacation. 5k bonus each anniversary. So, you know, I think in a large way, the card kind of pays for itself if you're a JetBlue flyer, right? Because between the 10% rebate and the 5k bonus points each year, that's pretty nice. And you get the ability to redeem points for statement credits, which you shouldn't do because it only gives you something like three quarters of a cent per point, but they advertise that as a perk. And both of them will give you the ability to earn elite status, mosaic status with spend. So they give you one tile for every thousand dollars you spend. And it takes 50 tiles to get to the first level of mosaic status, 100 tiles to get to

the second level, 150 tiles to get to third and 250 to get to four. So if you think of it as spend as if you weren't flying JetBlue or earning tiles any other way, it means $50,000 spend to get to four. So if you think of it as spend as if you weren't flying JetBlue or earning tiles any other way, it means $50,000 spend to get to the first level, $100,000 to get to the next level and so on. Yeah. So that's, I mean, that's, I think a bunch of valuable perks if you're a JetBlue flyer. If you fly JetBlue a lot, then I feel like this certainly could very quickly make sense. I mean, check baggage fees, get old after aer. If you fly JetBlue a lot, then I feel like this certainly could very quickly make sense. I mean, check baggage fees, get old after a while if you're flying with any kind of regularity and you check bags. And like you said, between the 5K bonus points and 10% award rebate,

those three benefits to me could easily make this card more than pay for itself. Even if you didn't spend much on it, those would probably work out pretty well. So yeah, I mean, I like it for all of those things. Yeah, me too. And there was a time where the 2x grocery on the personal card was kind of exciting because at the time when it first came out, there weren't many cards that offered bonuses at grocery stores. And so it seemed like, oh, wow, this is a great way to generate a lot of spend and earn elite status. But these days with cards like the Citi Premier offering unlimited 3X at grocery stores and the Amex Gold offering 4X on up to $20,000 spend at US groceries, $25,000 spend at U.S. groceries, $25,000.

You know, it suddenly doesn't sound that great to me. Yeah, I don't get excited about it. I mean, again, if it's like a tool to fill the gap to get you the rest of the way to mosaic status, then it might make some sense. You know, if you already have, you know, a good chunk of the way there to mosaic status, then yeah, why not do it? Do some spend at supermarkets at 2X. You're going to be giving something up. I mean, don't

just don't disillusion yourself to think that you're it's not costing you to get mosaic. It is it's costing you the chance to earn three transferable points or four transferable points on that spend. Instead, you're going to get two JetBlue points, which I mean, JetBlue, I love flying JetBlue, but the only option to use those points if you earn them on two JetBlue points, which I mean, JetBlue, I love flying JetBlue, but the only option to use those points if you earn them on your JetBlue card basically is to fly JetBlue. So like the 1.3 or 4 cents, or if we're going to count the rebate, we're talking about one and a half cents in value in total on that spend. So 1.5% back. So, you know, okay, it's 3% back if you're at the grocery store then towards JetBlue flights, whereas alternatively, you could be using, you know, a card like the

MX Gold card, that 4X and be cashing those out for one cent per point if you have the right, you know, avenues for that. So, yeah, it's not like wildly exciting, but not necessarily bad if it's helping you fill, you know fill the void there to bridge the gap. Then it might be worth it if the mosaic perks are going to matter enough to you. Right. No, exactly. Exactly. So, yeah, pretty similar to how we ended the conversation about the Delta gold cards last week, which is if you're a flyer of this airline, it's a good card. I mean, I'd argue this one is probably even better for JetBlue flyers than the Delta gold card is for Delta flyers. Because, I mean, it gives you like the automatic 5,000 points each year, making up for a lot of the annual fee. But anyway, yeah, it's good if you're a flyer, but I wouldn't. I'm not interested in it otherwise.

You know, that's an interesting comparison point, though, too, because I think for most, no, for a lot of people, JetBlue is not necessarily going to be the most convenient option, right? Because they just don't have as many connections as a lot of other airlines. For sure. So you have to be in a situation where JetBlue is going to be the most convenient option, you know, again and again, which is going to be people in some markets, but not tons of markets, even places where JetBlue flies. Like they fly to my home airport of Albany, but they fly to like two places and I can only connect a small handful from there. So it's not it's not terribly convenient for me. That's why I love the experience of flying JetBlue, but I rarely do it because it's just not convenient for my home airport.

And I say that as someone who's going to fly JetBlue in a couple of weeks on an award ticket that I booked. So it's not that I'm opposed to JetBlue at all, but it doesn't work out well for me. So I think if it works out based on if you fly out of JFK all the time, I mean, hey, great, this could certainly be an awesome card to have. And if you get to Mosaic status, then it certainly has some perks that might interest you.

Sounds good. All right. That's the end of Card Talk. All right. Awesome. So let's talk about what crazy thing did Bilt do this week? I don't know if Bilt did it exactly, but tell me about the Bilt craziness.

It's not even really Wells Fargo. So I applied for the Bilt card. I couldn't stand it anymore. Bilt had that insane transfer bonus to Virgin on August 1st only, where if you had top elite status with Bilt, you would get 150% transfer bonus. That's insane.

And so I just couldn't stand anymore. I had to get the card. So on August 1st, actually, when that transfer bonus was in effect, I applied for the card in the morning. And I actually didn't finish applying for the card because midway through, it popped up a thing saying we have to verify your identity.

And it went to a third-party identity verification thingy. And that's where things got kind of crazy, which is basically I was on my laptop at first trying to apply. It said you need to take a photo of the front and back of your ID and then do a selfie. And so at first I did that with my laptop's selfie cam. And afterwards it just said, nope, that didn't work. It didn't tell me why. It didn't tell me what was wrong. It just said, do you want to try again? And it gave me the option to try again on my phone instead of my laptop. So I thought, great, that makes sense. I'll, I'll try on my phone. It has better camera and we'll see how it goes. Um, so I, I did it on my phone, the whole process and, uh, nope, it didn't like that. So, uh, I did it again on my

phone and it still didn't like it. And this time it's so much didn't like it. It gave up on me entirely and said, you're out of luck. Goodbye. that there's all kinds of identity theft going on these days. And so Wells Fargo, which is the credit card issuer behind the built card, they send some of the applications, not all of them, not by a long shot, but some of them to this third party identity verification process. And I get that. I think that's important to do. I'm glad that they're protecting people's identity. But I mean, the process should have some kind of feedback, you know, like if if if one of the pictures was too blurry for them or they couldn't match, like, tell me what's wrong so that I can do it better the second and third time before I get locked out. Right. Yeah. Right. It's just a matter of, you know, the lighting or the resolution or the, you know, the orientation you need to know. Right. Yeah. Yeah. So just to complete the story that Wells and Bill, they have a manual identity verification process behind the scenes that they could do when this happens. Because I have friends high up at Bill, they were able to push mine through quicker. Now that wasn't pushing the application through, that was just getting me through that identity verification process. And they tell me that they're like about 10 days away from

kind of fixing the process for everybody. So that if you get stuck in this loop and get caught like I did, it shouldn't take long to get that resolved. So hopefully that's true. But anyway, again, to complete the story, my identity was verified in about 24 hours. And then I finished the application and was automatically approved. So yay for me. Very good. Very good.

You know, I ran into something similar to that. I think I told you, I feel like with Brex and or a checking account that I had applied for where it just kept telling me that, no, it couldn't match something up. And like you said, it was so annoying because it didn't tell me what was wrong. And it took me forever until in my case, what I eventually discovered worked was that the box to take a picture of my license was like in a landscape mode. So I had been turning my license to match that so that it would fill the frame. And I found when I did it the opposite way, so I put my license like the opposite from that,

and it looked really odd in the frame, but it actually worked that way. And it didn't work the other way. It just didn't make any sense. But again, I'm sure it was different for you. But my point is that I ran into, again, one of those systems that didn't tell you what was wrong. And had it just told me, hey, turn your license the other way, I would have done that and would have been through it much faster. But instead, it took me a number of tries. Luckily, I didn't get locked out, but annoying nonetheless. I actually think it did get me locked out on one of those, a checking account, one eventually, but then months later, I was able to reapply. So whatever the case may be, it's probably worth

following up because I imagine that some of these companies know that their third-party identification things don't always go smoothly. So hopefully Bill gets it aired out. Yeah. And I promise you, they are not happy about it. I'm sure. I'm sure. How many people who get locked out just never follow up and just say, forget it, I don't want this card. And that's the last thing that Billton Wells Fargo wants to happen. So it's in absolutely their best interest to fix that process. And I am told

they are working on that. So that'll be better going forward. Awesome. All right. That brings us to mattress running the numbers this week. We've got an exciting transfer bonus out. Chase is offering a 50% transfer bonus to Marriott rewards. You in Greg or what? I am not in. Why not? It's a 50% bonus. I mean, my goodness, the Virgin Atlantic bonus got you to apply for the built card. This can't get you going after more ultimate rewards points? Yeah.

No, because I value one and a half Marriott points less than I value one Hyatt point as an example of why I wouldn't do this. And you could transfer chase points, of course, one-to-one to Hyatt. And that's going to get me most of the time more value than the equal number of Marriott points. That said, it's not a terrible redemption, I think. So we often see one cent or better value for Marriott points for good redemptions. And so, you know, so a 50% transfer bonus, you know, you have a good chance of getting about one and a half cents per point value, which is, you know, is okay, I guess is the best way to say it. Like, it's not great. I wouldn't be excited about that, but it's not terrible, especially if you don't have the Sapphire Reserve card and you have the Sapphire Preferred, for example, you'd only get 1.25 cents if you use your points through the

Chase travel portal. So you could get maybe slightly better value with this transfer bonus. But as a general perspective thing, I wouldn't even consider it unless you needed those points right away for a high value redemption. Yeah. And keep in mind that Marriott sometimes sells their points for less than a penny a piece. So you're looking at less than 1.5 cents in value for your chase points when you compare against the sale price of Marriott points. I mean, that said, I totally agree with Greg's point that it might make sense for the right redemption. If you have the right redemption in mind, then maybe.

I mean, I recently used a 35K certificate for a hotel reservation that would have cost more than $500, Marriott 35K cert. So, you know, you're talking, what would that be, 23-ish thousand without doing the total math in my head? Ultimate rewards points transferred over 50% bonus. Yeah, something like that, close to that. So that would be a pretty good deal if you're able to get a hotel stay like that potentially. So I think with the

right redemption in mind, maybe, but then like Greg said, you have to realize that you're giving up a Hyatt point essentially, a point that could be a Hyatt point for each of those. So tough. I think topping off for the right redemption, okay. So there's our mattress running the numbers. That's what we think about that. Kind of the same way we always feel about those Marriott transfer bonuses. So let's move into award talk. Have you booked any interesting awards this week, Greg? Not this week, but recently. So I stumbled upon a interesting value. So I was looking at the possibility of flying from Nairobi, Kenya to Cape Town, South Africa. And what I found was that one of the options is to fly a cutter business class. So it's way out of the way. So it's flying

complete. So you start off in Nairobi and go completely the opposite direction, like 180 degrees opposite direction from Cape town towards Doha. And then you land there and get on another plane and you fly all the way back to Cape Town. But this is all Cutter business class for only 35,000 American Airlines miles. That could be pretty nice. That's an incredible deal. Now it's on their A350-900 aircraft, which at first I thought was probably Q Suites, but I looked it up and unfortunately these are not operating Quites, at least not now. So it's still an excellent business class. I would fly that particular reverse ring bone product any day of the week, but it's still not their sort of award-winning best in class type of business

class. So still, I just thought it was interesting. I went ahead and booked it, even though it wasn't for the exact dates we want and it's going way out of the way, but I don't think it's likely that we're actually going to keep that booking. It was just one of those, Ooh, this is too good of a deal not to book and it's freely cancelable. So I did it, but yeah. Yeah. I'm glad you mentioned that it's reverse herringbone because if anybody's flown like the old cutter business class like i did during our uh our three cards three continents challenge the old 777 the a350 is significantly different the reverse herringbone business class does look nice it's not q suites

but it looks quite nice so uh so i imagine it probably is so yeah all right pretty good that's i think that's a pretty darn good award and one that a lot of people wouldn't consider because it does kind of defy your logical expectations as to what an Africa to Africa award looks like. But you could do it. So, cool. I like it.

All right. I booked some awards this week, too, but nothing that I think is worthy of discussion just yet anyway. We'll see you after I make a couple of upcoming stays. So I'll be interested to see how those work out. I did make a booking this week with United Mileage Plus Miles. I should mention that an intra-European booking because it was freely cancelable. So at 6,500 points per person for a short hop within Europe that would have cost $300 because, you know, when you wait until too late in the game, the fares within Europe sometimes can be quite high. So I was really happy to be able to book a flight for 6,500 mileage plus miles that I know I could cancel if I don't want that flight. Actually, I booked it as a backup flight.

So we'll see whether I end up taking the backup flight. And'll talk more about that if uh depending on how all that works out but but anyway it's good to keep in mind for a future future episode yeah they can be good in europe okay let's get into this week's main event main event how to earn millions of points from credit card welcome offers so we're going to talk first about the big picture, how people, how do we, every day, what we do, how do we do it? How do we earn our millions of points? And first, just sort of backing up why it's even possible. And the reason it's possible is that the credit card issuers, the banks, they want your business. They make a lot of money off of credit cards, both because with your spend,

they earn a fee as part of that, each every transaction, but they also earn money when you don't pay off your balance in full each month, then they charge you all kinds of ridiculous amounts of interest. If you're late on a payment, they charge you late fees and so on. So they're banking on the idea. I imagine they're banking somewhat on the data collection too, the spending habits and patterns, I imagine. Whether they're selling it yet or not, I'm sure that that's a long-term play for them. Yeah. Yeah. So there's all kinds of reasons why they want your business. Um, and they're, they're banking on the idea that they can make more off of you in the long run,

then they'll give you with a welcome bonus. So the, the game is to basically, uh, avoid all those fees I talked about and, and try to, um, you know to get a lot more from the banks than they get from you. And it's actually, if you're organized and know what you're doing, it's not hard to do. So that's the game. And one thing that we hear from people all the time when we first tell people about this is they say, oh, but opening a bunch of credit cards is going to ruin my credit score. And do you want to talk about that, Nick? You know, it's such a common misconception. And what I frequently tell people is that it's a misconception that comes from the need to condense a news segment into a 10 second,

20 second soundbite so that when Good Morning America is explaining credit cards, they can extend. I have nothing against Good Morning America. All right. But so a morning news show can condense something down into a really short segment. They say, OK, opening a lot of cards is bad, but it's a lot more complex than that. Opening a lot of cards is not going to hurt your score on its own. A large, large segment of your credit score is your average age of account. Another large segment, of course, is your payment history. So as long as you're paying your bills on time, that part will be taken care of. But your average age of account is how long they've been open and then your utilization ratio, which is

how much of your available credit you're using. So having really old accounts, a high average age of account is helpful and also keeping your utilization low. So having a bunch of available credit that you're not using shows that you're not at risk of using it all up and running off to live on a tropical beach somewhere. So as long as you keep your utilization low and your average age of accounts relatively respectable, then opening

new cards is unlikely to hurt your score much. Now, when you first apply for a card, you lose a couple of points on your score because of the hard inquiry. But those points typically are made back up within four or five, six months, something like that. So they're not usually a long term harm to your credit score. Now, if you're going to be buying a house soon, then you don't want to go on an application spree if you're looking for a mortgage soon. But if you're not in that situation, then opening new cards won't necessarily hurt you very much at all. In fact, as long as you have a couple of old credit cards, new credit cards have a pretty negligible effect on the credit score for the most part. Yeah. Yeah. And a very common pattern.

I looked at this closely when I first got into this game and I looked at it again with some friends when they got in the game and the pattern happened each time. I started and they started with very good credit scores, like let's call it like in the 770s, somewhere around there, applied for a few cards. So I dip a little bit like so now we're in 760 or maybe even 75ies, somewhere around there, uh, applied for a few cards. So I dip a little bit like, so now we're in seven 60 or maybe even seven 55, somewhere in that range. But then even just a few months later, we were up higher than we were in the beginning. So 800, 805, that kind of range. And I've seen that time and again with, with many people who are just getting started that it actually seems to help

in the short term. And that's going to vary. Yes, I'm sorry. It'll vary very much based on your credit profile, but it can for a number of reasons. Number one, having one credit card doesn't have enough diversity in your credit profile. So I think that people have studied this and found that you really want to have at least three in order to maximize the score for wherever you are. And then you can obviously, it'll vary from there as to how many are going to help you. But oftentimes, people will find that having a greater credit mix is actually going to help them. Number one. Number two, it helps to keep your overall utilization lower. The more cards you have, the more available credit there is. So whatever balance got reported when your statement last cut is going to have less of an impact on your credit score. So yeah, your score probably will rise by adding more available

credit if you're not using all of your available credit anyway. That's going to be probably, like you said, a more significant jump for a lot of people than the hit for a new application, at least as you get started in this game. I think you're going to find that Greg's right. A lot of people find their credit scores actually improve at the beginning. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So what we're going to do now, we're going to talk about the overall process of signing up for cards and getting the bonuses and canceling cards and all that at a very, we're going to just talk about a very high level. This is like outline level. And then we're going to dive into each one to get a little more granular. Um, so yeah, I'll, I'll just go ahead and, and give the outline. Basically the steps are this, you start off,

you choose cards to, to sign up for. Um, then, uh, if possible, you, you refer within your family or within your friend group to each other to get those cards. And basically, it's a way of getting both a welcome bonus and a referral bonus if it's possible to do that. You apply for those cards. If you are not approved, you call the bank for reconsideration and you'd be surprised. You'd be shocked how often that actually works. You get the card, you meet whatever the spend requirements are for the welcome offer. And then you get all those points, whatever the welcome bonus is, next year, you get a new annual fee. So at this point, what you do is you call the bank and say, oh, I think I want to cancel this card to see if you could get a retention offer. We'll talk more about that. If not, and if you don't think the card is worth keeping

with the annual fee, then you either downgrade it to a no fee card or you could cancel the card. And that's basically the process in a nutshell. There's a tool that I like called Travel Freely. Full disclosure, we partner with Travel Freely, so it is in our financial interest. But Travel Freely is a tool that can be used to help you kind of organize that whole process, remind you that your welcome bonus requirements are almost due. So don't forget to spend enough, remind you when the annual fee is coming due, that kind of thing. So yeah, that's it at a high level. So now- Pretty simple process, right? It's pretty easy.

You know, right? It's very, very easy. I think it's simple to understand. But you do need to keep track of the details. And so whether using Travel Freely, if you're not using Travel Freely, do use a spreadsheet or something of some sort keep track of when you signed up for each card what card it was what the requirements were when you met the uh the spend requirements all that kind of stuff um it's good to know and you might need it down the road later on. So that's important.

So it's easy process, but it does require some organization of the details. So yeah, you got to require some organization. Yeah, you got to stay organized. And that's a trait that you want to get started at the beginning in this game, because as you get further along, there are going to be more complications and that you'll be thankful for the organization you had at the beginning when things become more complicated later on. So, you know, when we talk about staying organized and using a tool like Travel Freely, or like Greg says, if you want to just do it with a spreadsheet yourself, you totally can do that. And it might seem silly and not that

necessary. And you'll remember what you need to remember. But trust us with the voice of experience here, those spreadsheets and keeping that information is really helpful down the line. So I can't emphasize enough that it helps to stay organized. And you might think right now, well, I'm just going to open one card because of this one thing. But it's surprising how quickly you'll say, oh, you know what, this would also be helpful or I want to do something different next year. And so something else will be helpful. So get organized at the beginning. Yeah, definitely, definitely do that. All right. So let's dive into some details here. Starting with the beginning, how do you choose what cards you want? Yeah, I mean, that's a good one. This is a question we get all the time,

right? People say, Oh, well, what's the best credit card to get? You know, what's the best offer right now? And that's a difficult question, I think, for somebody else to answer for you. There's, I think, some extent of, you know, getting personally invested in terms of figuring out what you want to do. I often tell friends that ask me that, well, where do you want to go? And what do you want to do? And if you kind of figure out a trip that you want and then sort of reverse engineer what you think you need in order to do that, that'll help. But the thing that you're probably going to want to start with, no matter where it is you want to go, is probably a transferable points card of some sort.

And the reason for that, I guess let me back up and explain what I mean by that. Each of the major banks, Amex, Chase, Citi, Capital One, have a monopoly money currency of their own that can be transferred to different partners. So Amex has their Amex membership rewards points, or Chase has their Chase ultimate rewards points, for instance. And if you earn points on a card that earns those, if you earn those types of points, you can later transfer those to various airline frequent flyer miles. So let's say you have a Chase card and you're earning ultimate rewards points. Well, later on, you could transfer those one-to-one to Hyatt, for instance. We often talk about Hyatt hotels being a great redemption. Or you could

transfer them to United, Mileage Plus, if you want to book an award through United, or Southwest. Or there are a number of different international partners, like Singapore Airlines, for instance, or Virgin Atlantic. And there are reasons why each of those might become useful for you. But each of the different banks has a slightly different set of transfer partners. There are some transfer partners that overlap between them. But having a transferable currency card is useful because then it allows you to cherry pick the best awards because oftentimes there are multiple prices for the best awards depending on which program you book through. And so when you have access to a currency that can be transferred to many different

airline programs, it gives you many different options when you're going to book an award versus if you just open one card like a United Mileage Plus card, then you only have United Miles. So you're going to pay whatever the United price is for whatever award it is you want to book. Whereas if instead you had Chase Ultimate Rewards points, then you'd have a lot of different options in terms of which airline programs to book through. And so then you can pick the cheapest one, the one that's going to be the best value for you.

So you want to start with a transferable point of some sort. Now, out of those various transferable points currencies, is there one you should start with? Yeah, well, I like for new people to start with Chase. And that has more to do with Chase's rules called 524, where if you signed up for five or more cards in the past 24 months, they don't like to approve you for new cards. And so if you're going to get into this, signing up for lots of cards, I think it's a good idea to look at Chase's portfolio and say, which cards do I really want to have and to keep? Um, that way, if you end up signing up for more than, uh, four in a, in a, uh, 24 month period, uh, you won't be locked out of getting those cards that you really want.

And, uh, we have a post called, uh, must have chase cards where you can look at that and see, okay, here's what we recommend. Like you should at least consider, uh, to get right away before it's too late to get those really good chase cards. And I like what Greg's choice of words there. He said, which ones to at least consider. And he mentioned before that, he said, which chase cards you really want, because it's not as though we have what we tell you is the best chase card to have or the second best chase card to have, because it's going to vary a little bit depending on your circumstances. You know, we often talk about Hyatt and we love Hyatt. So I might think for a lot of people, a world of Hyatt card would

be in those first few chase cards you get, but it probably wouldn't be the first one. And if you stay in places where there aren't any Hyatts, well, maybe the chase IHG card would make sense or a Marriott card would make sense for you. But you probably don't need all of those. So that's why it's not like there's just one set plan. And all of those cards that I just talked about don't earn transferable points. So I wouldn't start with any of those. I would start instead with one that earns ultimate rewards points, which would be like

the Chase Sapphire Reserve or Chase Sapphire Preferred or the Chase Freedom card or Freedom Unlimited card or then the Chase Inc. business cards all or mostly earn ultimate rewards points. So there's a whole bunch of different options and which one makes sense for your scenario. Your situation will vary a little bit, but it does make sense to figure out which Chase cards you think you're going to want from the beginning. Now, how do you know, though, Greg, like how do you know which chase cards are going to matter to you uh well you know again i think that post i talked about will give you some like a starting point as an idea of of uh what's good and what's not and everything but um what i want to move on to the next important thing is like how do do you find out, uh, which

offers are out there and which ones are best? Um, we have some resources on the blog that, that are widely considered, um, the place to go and, and not just from people who work for frequent miler, but within this sort of hobby overall, I think a lot of people will point you at FrequentMiler's best offers page. And the reason is that what we do is we keep a database of all the rewards credit cards that have good welcome offers and we make them available through this best offers page. But the other thing that we do is that we only publish the offer that's best for you,

even if it means that we lose out on earning a commission. So there are some credit cards where if you click through our link, we'll earn a commission if you're approved for that card. Those are called affiliate links. And so there are a number of them where we have affiliate links, but we don't show them on our

website because we know of other public offers for the same cards that will get you more points. So we're willing to forego some earnings to make sure that you always get the best offer. So when we say best offers, we really mean it. These are the best public offers that we know about. And as soon as people tell us about others that we haven't found, we put them up there. So our the frequent best offers page, you have to look at that. Yeah. And Greg mentioned this really separates us from a lot of other blogs out there. And so I often tell friends when they first asked me about this, if they're interested, I tell them about the best offers page and I explain it to them. And I tell them the same thing that I'll tell you. And that

is whether or not you're going to apply through our link or somebody else's link, at least go to our site and check and make sure you're getting the best available offer. Because, you know, before you click through a link from some other site that you were looking at, make sure that it's the best offer because there are frequently times where offers can vary quite a bit. I mean, there was a large chunk of time here where the Amex Platinum card specifically

had like a 60 or 70,000 point bonus or something. And we were listing an offer that was 150,000 points. And if you just Googled the card, you would have found one of those lower offers. But if you went to our best offers page, you would have seen that, oh, you could get like double that or 50% more or whatever it may have been at the time anyway. It doesn't really matter. The details are not important here. What's important is that I think it's a great resource to check against when you find something. And if you do find a better offer out there, well, then let us know,

because we certainly want to change it. If something has slipped under the radar, we're not looking to have anything that's not the best offer. So I think that really does separate us from most sites that will just link to the affiliate offer. Yeah. And as people who live and breathe this every day, it's frustrating for me. Like when I'm in an airport and I walk by someone saying, here, get this card and you'll get 60,000 miles. And I know there's a 90,000 point offer listed on our best offer sheet. It kind of drives me mad, but that's the reality and what we see all the time. Sure. Happens to me on planes all the time too. I'll see somebody taking an application and asking questions about it. I'm like, oh my goodness, that is not the best you can do. Yeah, it is.

It's frustrating. But anyway, so our best offers page, we talk up. The other thing to mention about our best offers page is that I think is worth mentioning for people who are new to this is that there are estimates of the first year value for each card. And that's done as objectively as possible without diving into the weeds in terms of how the first year value is calculated. It's calculated in a pretty complicated spreadsheet and as objective a formula as possible. And so if you look at a bank, a specific bank, like if you go through the Chase section or the Amex section or the Capital One section, the cards within those sections of the best offers

page are ordered based on their first year value, not based on like which cards are earning us the most commission. It's done alphabetically by bank. And then within the banks, it's done. It's ordered by the cards that have the highest first year value. So again, that's something that makes, I think, our best offers page unique and making it easy to compare. Okay, well, which one is worth more than another in the first year based on, again, a pretty

complicated formula that doesn't value things that are wishy-washy. We just assign a value to the bonus points and to pretty concrete benefits. So it's not like we're valuing things that you're going to be like, well, maybe that matters to me. Maybe it doesn't. We're pretty, I think, pretty objective in terms of our first year value. Pretty conservative about it too. So there could be some things that have great value to you, like airport lounge access that we might not have assigned any value to because we don't know if you're going to actually use that perk. So it's more like we're valuing things like the

actual miles you earn as part of the welcome bonus and any rebates and things that are easy to get. Those are more of the types of things that we're likely to value as your first year value. The other thing, if that page is a little overwhelming for you, like you still can't figure out what card to get, another resource is called Greg's Picks, which is my personal take on the best offers. And sort of I pick out what I think are the best of the best and do a little bit of explanation for why I think they're so good. And in that post, I have this example of why I think that kind of explanation is needed. During the pandemic, Marriott had a credit card that offered five free nights. And based on our objective valuation of first year value, it looked huge. It looked like one of the best offers that were available at the time overall.

But those free nights expire after a year. And this was during the pandemic when people weren't traveling. And so even though our objective calculations made it look really valuable, we had to jump in and say, you know, wait, no, probably not for most people, you know, unless you know, you're going to be staying in Marriott's and, and so on, you know, in the next year, this is probably not so great. So that's an example, an extreme example of why I think, you know, some editorial is sometimes needed to, to make more sense of it. And that's what that page is for.

Very good. Yeah, that is a great resource. And I'm going to mention one more resource with this that we didn't have on our list, but that's our Facebook group. Our Frequent Miler Insiders Facebook group is a great place to go when you have a question, you're not sure, you've done some reading, and so you have a base level of knowledge maybe, but you still can't understand something and you need a little bit of extra help. Our Frequent Miler Insiders Facebook group is a

good community of generally pretty nice people. It's a large community, but people treat each other fairly well for the most part. And so you can ask a question like that and lots of other readers will chime in to give you their advice, their two cents. And I like internet forums like that, where you know that you're getting feedback from normal everyday people, not only from bloggers. And not that I think the bloggers are bad. I'm a blogger, obviously. I think that there's a lot of good bloggers out there. But then you can at least get other people that will tell you, yeah, these guys are right about this. Or somebody who might say, no, Nick and Greg are crazy. I think this, and you can do some analysis for yourself about what makes the most sense. So I think a lot of times when you have those questions, you might feel uncomfortable

or you're not sure how to get them answered. That's a great place to go because there's so many people that are frequently answering questions. So that's a good spot to get some feedback. Now. All right. So so choosing cards we got some thoughts about choosing cards what next all right so applying so don't then so let's say you found the card you see it on frequent miler's website and don't go click it and apply right then um what you want to do is if you're playing in two-player mode what i I mean by that is, let's say you have a significant other or a child or a parent who's old enough to sign up for cards. Hopefully your parent is if you're doing this with a parent. Then you may be able to get more points within your family by referring each other.

So I'm going to give a made up but realistic example. Let's say you and a significant other are playing this game together. One of you has the Amex gold card. So you'd signed up for that to get the welcome bonus straight up. Now you both want to get the Hilton Aspire card because that's a great card. You saw on our posts how good it is and you want to get that free night and all the other stuff. Great. Whoever has the gold card, Amex person to the Hilton Aspire card. And so the Amex gold card owner gets, let's say, 15,000 membership rewards points, whatever the offer is in is like 150,000 points after some amount of spend. And then if you want, the person who got the Hilton Aspire card should be able to then refer the original person to the Hilton Aspire card as well if you wanted to both get the card. And then if you're referring from the Hilton Aspire, you're going to get Hilton points,

not membership rewards at that point. But either way, it's a way of getting a lot more points for the same, you know, what would end up being the same applications. So that's a great way to do it. Oh, and it adds up. I mean, a lot of times on various Amex cards, you know, you can earn 10, 15, 20, 25,

maybe 30,000 points for referring a family or a friend. Yeah. That's great. I mean, if you refer player two to, and we often refer to two people who live together, married, unmarried, whatever the case may be, who are playing the game together, two family members. Then we talked about player one and player two.

And so you refer player two and you get 30,000 points. Maybe when player two is approved, I mean, that has quite a bit of value potentially. And then player two and you get 30,000 points, maybe when player two is approved, I mean, that has quite a bit of value potentially. And then player two refers you that adds quite a bit to the game. I mean, you're adding potentially, you know, like basically it feels like another welcome bonus every one or two times to do that. It absolutely can be huge. Um, right now, I think the best referral offer I could think of right now, the Chase Inc. business cards, you can refer within that family. They have something like four different, excuse me, Inc. cards. And if you have one of them, you can refer to any other and you get, as things stand right now, 40,000 Chase Ultimate Rewards points, which are one of our favorite transferable point currencies.

So that's a fantastic deal. And I know we haven't mentioned this yet, but business cards ought to be on your radar. I think we did a whole show on that. So if you're hesitant about that, go check out our business card show and why, even though you don't think you have a business, you probably do and can apply for those because that makes a big difference in how many cards you're eligible for. It sure does. And at a base level, that 40,000 points, you cash those out for $400. So referring your spouse, you're looking at at least a $400 win and potentially much more depending on how you use the points. I mean, that's a fantastic bonus for referring somebody. Now, when I mentioned

that, though, I should also mention with it that referral bonuses do get taxed. So if you earn enough points from referrals, you'll get a 1099 from the bank. So do keep that in mind that you're going to be stuck paying taxes on a valuation of the points, which I think most of the issuers value most of their points at one cent each. If I'm remembering correctly, for the purposes of those 1099s, there's a little bit of variance maybe. So that's something worth keeping in mind anyway, that those points aren't totally free. Whereas the points you earn, the welcome bonus you earn when you open a new card and meet the minimum spending requirement, that doesn't get taxed. And your ongoing rewards that you earn

on your spend doesn't get taxed, but referral rewards that you earn on your spend doesn't get taxed, but referral bonuses do. When you refer somebody else, the bonus you receive for referring them, that is considered taxable income. Yep. Yep. Then the process of applying, I mean, should be straightforward for most cards. I personally prefer to do it on a laptop than on a phone so I can see all the information

more easily, but however you work makes sense. One thing I will say is that if you're applying for business cards and you're not used to it, keep in mind to keep things as simple as possible when I ask you what type of business you have, let's say you're an aspiring writer and so that of the business, that could avoid some complications as well. And then it'll ask you for your business tax ID. You could use your Social Security number or you could apply for free at the IRS for a EIN and you'll get one immediately, which you can use instead if you prefer. But either way is fine. And so those are the only details I think I want to mention about the process of applying. There's one other thing I'm going to mention,

and that is to take a screenshot of the offer that you're applying for. Now, if you're doing that on a laptop, you can do that with a couple of keystrokes, or if you're on a phone, maybe the power button and the down button. And the reason I suggest taking a screenshot of the offer is twofold. Number one, so you have a record of what you applied for. So if you had any problem later on, you'd be able to refer back to that. Now, you're unlikely to have any problems, especially as a beginner going through this. So I don't want it to sound like you're likely to run into a problem, not getting your bonus. You're not

likely to run into that type of problem. But the problem you are maybe likely to, I don't know if I'd say likely, but the problem that you may run into more frequently is forgetting the details. And this just happened to me. I just wrote a post this week, actually, about new cards that I had applied for. And I mentioned the spending requirement for one of them. And somebody jumped in to say, wait, the offer that I had applied for actually had a slightly different spending requirement. And they were right. I had totally forgotten. It escaped my mind that the bonus I had applied for had a spending requirement of $4,000.

And now the current bonus on the same card has a spending requirement of $3,000. And I might have forgotten that. So keeping a screenshot will help remind you, OK, how much do I have to spend and how long do I have to spend it? Most cards are three months, but there are some cards that are four or six months. So having a screenshot of what you've applied for could be helpful, as can that spreadsheet. This goes back to Greg's spreadsheet or travel freely and the value of using something like that so you can keep track of what it is. Yeah. Yeah. So the reason it, I find it especially easy with travel freely because you go and you say, all right, I just applied for the Amex gold card and it, it will automatically pre-populate the current offer that it's aware of, um, with what's the minimum spend requirement is and all that kind of stuff. And so, you know, if, if your offer was different, you could change it right then, but usually it's going to be the same. And it will send you email reminders saying, hey, it's almost, have you spent the X amount of dollars yet on the card?

And once you have, you can mark it complete in the app. So that's why I like to use that. Yep. That makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. And that is helpful and can be helpful, especially if you're the type of person with a lot going on in your life. You're likely to forget smaller details. Having a tool like that is just extremely valuable.

All right, so that's applying, right? Now, what if you don't get approved? Then what? Yeah, yeah. So, you know, usually when people are starting out, they'll usually probably get approved for their cards right away. But once you've been doing this a while, not so much. And there are some banks that just aren't

as, that sometimes are more conservative and don't approve right away. And if you're somebody who has a really long history, but you haven't applied for a card in a decade, then maybe there's a chance that you'll run into a secondary verification step.

So, all right. So, go ahead. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to cut you off. Yeah. So, if you get denied, it's not over, not by a long shot. So, on our best offers page, under every major bank, we list reconsideration numbers. Call this number if you're denied. And the idea is you

basically just say to the agent who answers, can you reconsider my application? And I remember the first time I did this years ago being like, there's no way this is going to work. But the agent just asked me a few questions and was like, okay, you're approved. And it was like nothing. I couldn't believe it. And then other times, like I called and they said, well, I don't need more credit. Can you move credit from one of my other cards in order to open this? And then they say, oh, sure, we can do that. And boom, it's, it's approved. And then you spend and may enter in the welcome bonus. So that's, that's what you do if, if you're denied.

Yeah. And, and, you know, I can't emphasize enough that it's worth doing that in most cases, because sometimes like Greg said, it can be doing that in most cases, because sometimes, like Greg said, it can be a really simple phone call and not take that much effort on your end to turn a denial into an approval. And so it's worth that few minutes of effort to call. And then, of course, if they do have questions, then you can answer them. And you're dealing with a human being who can consider whatever your answer is.

So I think it's totally worth that. You know, and if you get declined and you get a letter in the mail explaining why, keep in mind that whatever reason is in there is not always cut and dry, set in stone or even correct reason. I mean, we had somebody who applied who hadn't applied for any new cards in the last two years and got a letter in the mail that said, you have too many new accounts. And clearly that wasn't the case. So a lot of times the computer system will just come out with an answer that they give you. And it's not necessarily the real one. And also sometimes there are things that could be errors of some sort, like Greg mentioned with the identity verification, that was something actually really simple to resolve and just took a little bit of time to do. Or I have a family member who recently just needed some more identity verification herself,

had to send in some additional paperwork to verify who she was, and then boom, again, approved. So it's worth going after that. So reconsideration calls won't always work, but they should often work. So it's definitely worth doing. All right. Next up, you have to meet the spend requirements, obviously. And that's such a big topic. We don't have time to dive into that, but we did a whole show on how to increase your credit card spend. Check that out. We have a post on manufacturing spend. Check that out. It'll give you a lot of ideas of how you can meet minimum spend requirements. Very good. Absolutely. And there are plenty of ways to do it. So if you look at some of the spending requirements out there and you say, oh, but I don't usually spend X amount of dollars in

X set of time, it's worth looking at those because there are ways to relatively easily meet spending requirements with a lot of different cards. So it doesn't have to be particularly difficult. And there may be some things that you can use a credit card for that you didn't realize you could. So it's worth checking out those. Now, you've had the card for about a year. And what happens after a year? Well, they come after you for another annual fee, or maybe even the first annual fee if you apply it under an offer that waived the fee for the first year. So a year from the time you were approved, you're going to get hit with that annual fee. Now, what do you do?

Do you just pay the annual fee and go away, Greg? Sometimes, yes, because there are actually a lot of cards where they're worth more to you or should be worth more to you than the annual fee. And just for example, a bunch of hotel cards will give you a free night certificate each year in exchange for the $95-ish annual fee. And if you use them at a hotel that would have cost you $200 or more, I mean, obviously you're coming out way ahead. And so, you know, I like, personally, I like to keep those and just, and just pay the annual fee each year. And I keep them in a binder. I don't, I don't usually even take any of these cards with me, but because they're attached to my loyalty account, I get the

free night each year and I use it and do well. However, that said, there's lots of cards where I don't want to pay the annual fee or you're not going to want to pay the annual fee. So you have some options. First of all, if you call the bank and say, hey, I think I want to cancel this card, you may, if you're lucky, get transferred to a retention department like agent who's going to try to retain your business. And if that happens, they're going to give you an offer of some sort and say like, Hey, you know what, if you spend $3,000 more on this card, we'll give you this many points or the, you know, that's the type of thing you might hear. Or with Citibank, sometimes you hear earn an extra two points per dollar for all your spend for up to this many points. Those kinds of offers might come up. And I like to, if those offers, I like to have in mind what I'm willing to take to keep the card. And the nice thing about keeping it as opposed to canceling is

if you keep signing up and canceling right away each card with the same banks, eventually the bank's not going to want to approve you for more cards. So the more that you could keep and pay the annual fee, the better, even if keeping the card and paying the annual fee meant getting a retention bonus. That's still, I think, a plus for them. And it's a plus for you because you got something in exchange for the second year annual fee. One little tip I want to mention, though, is when you're talking to that retention agent and they say, you know, oh, hey, you can get, I don't know, 30,000 points with, you know, $5,000 spend. It's worth saying, are there any other offers available? Because sometimes there are, and sometimes

they're better. And I've had experiences where I keep asking and asking and asking until I finally got one that was like so big that I definitely want to take it. And then I kept asking, but then they got really bad. And so I wasn't interested in any more. So I go back, of course, to the really good one. It feels a little weird to do that because like if you already got one that sounded good to you, why don't you just take it? But these are all just it's not like the agent is making these up at the time. They're just in the computer and they're reading from the top down generally. So it's worth asking.

It is. It is. Because and the form might make a difference. Sometimes the agent will ask you, well, what are you looking for? Because sometimes that retention offer will come in the form of a statement credit of some sort that might offset or help offset the annual fee. So if your main concern is, well, I really don't want to spend the money on the annual fee, they may be able to offer you something that statement credits that away.

On the flip side, if your main concern is, well, it's not rewarding enough as is, then they may be able to give you an offer for a certain, like you said, number of points or extra points per dollar spent, et cetera. So it's worth calling and asking. And this can also work even on some cards that don't have an annual fee. And so it's something that's worth considering now and then, certainly if you're not sure you want to keep the card. But even sometimes when you have a card where you're pretty sure you're going to keep it, it might be worth calling and seeing if

the bank has any offers to keep you interested in the card, because oftentimes they're willing to extend these. So that's certainly a tool you should use. And you should definitely, if you're even remotely considering canceling, one thing I want to mention is Greg said, you'll call the bank and tell them I'm thinking about canceling. And it's important to emphasize that because there are some banks that have automated systems where you say, I want to cancel my card and it'll just cancel the card. It'll ask you again, are you sure you want to cancel it? But then it'll just cancel the card. Whereas if you call and tell someone, I'm thinking about canceling or I'm pretty sure I want to cancel, I think I want to cancel, then that obviously tells them that you're considering keeping also. And so they have a chance to try to talk you into keeping it.

So you want that so that they can make their pitch and explain to you why they think it's worth keeping and what offer they can give you in order to entice you to keep it right right I will say in some cases you do have to say the words to a person saying I I do want to cancel in order to get transferred to that retention specialist um and don't worry about it because they're not going to cancel without confirming with you are you sure you want to cancel? So there is the chance when you say to that first agent, I want to cancel that they'll say, okay, do I have your approval to cancel? And then you could say no, if you're not sure if you were just out for a retention offer. And in that case, you could say, well, you know, actually, you know, is there any, any,

anything you can do to make it more enticing? Or is there any current offers the bank's offering in order to make the card more interesting? So that would be how you would get into that, perhaps. All right. So suppose, though, you don't get a retention offer at all or you don't like any of the offers. What now? Well, now, obviously, you could cancel the card, but you also want to consider your downgrade options. Because in many cases, there are other cards issued by the same bank that you may be able to product change to. And so, for instance,

if you have a card with a high annual fee, let's take the Chase Sapphire Reserve for an example, because that's a card with a high annual fee, $550 a year. And you decide, well, you know, I don't want to spend the $550 on this card. It's not worth it to me anymore. Rather than canceling it all together, what you might want to consider doing is downgrading that because you could downgrade that to a Chase Sapphire Preferred that only has a $95 annual fee. You could downgrade further to a Chase Sapphire card that has no annual fee, not a particularly good card, but it's another option that has no annual fee. And or you may be able to product change that card into a Chase Freedom card, Freedom Flex or

Freedom Unlimited card. And there are a number of reasons why you might want one of those. So for one, those last few examples I gave, Chase Freedom Flex and Chase Freedom Unlimited and the Chase Sapphire, plain old Sapphire card have no annual fee. And so you could wipe out that concern temporarily, but keep that card open. And there's a few reasons you might want that. Number one, you keep the credit history with that line. And we mentioned at the beginning of the show that average age of account is going to be important in the long term for your scores. So keeping that old line open for a long time is useful.

So that's one reason why I would consider downgrading, especially if there's a path to a no annual fee card. But another reason you might consider downgrading is because in the future, maybe you want to upgrade and that may be easier to do and potentially rewarding to do depending on an issuer, right? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And so like, if you had downgraded your Sapphire Reserve, and, and now you're about to book a big, let's say, expensive cruise or something, and you want to earn three points per dollar, which the Sapphire Reserve offers, you should be able to just pretty much instantly call them, and they'll probably let you instantly upgrade the card and use the current card,

even though you haven't received in the mail the SEPHRA Reserve itself yet, the number you use should get the 3X because it'll immediately have the SEPHRA Reserve benefits to it. That's one thing. Another thing, though, a lot of issuers have very valuable no-fee cards. And so this is a way of getting a big welcome bonus for a fee card and then later downgrade to a card that has no new fee but has great uh earnings from spend so like nick mentioned the freedom flex card before which has uh gives you 5x in certain category in changing categories of spend every three months. The freedom unlimited gives you one and a half points for all spend plus three X in a few categories. And, and so those points can be merged with your other chase points to, to make them all

really useful together. On the business side, chase has the like in cash card, which is gets five exit office supply stores. And that's incredible. And so you could downgrade, for example, from the ink business preferred to that. So, so that's on the Chase side on city side, there's a similar situation, a lot of really good no fee cards. So if you got this city premier, you might want to downgrade to one of those others. So, uh, but with Amex, the story's a little different, right? Yeah. And it's a little different and kind of from two different perspectives too. So, uh, there's a couple of things to consider with Amex. Most Amex cards have what we call lifetime

language. And what that means is in the application, you know the terms of the application, it will say that the welcome offer, the intro bonus is not available to you if you have or have had the card before. And so what that is essentially saying is that if you've ever had this card before, you can't get the welcome bonus on it. And so if you were considering downgrading your Amex card to a card that you had never had before, let's say you have an Amex Platinum card that you got for a big splashy welcome offer and you decide, okay, I want to downgrade that. So I'm going to downgrade it to an Amex Gold card. Well, if you've never had the Amex Gold card before, but you downgrade your Platinum to a Gold card, well, guess what? Now you have had

a gold card before and you're not going to be eligible for a gold card welcome bonus in the future. That's unique to Amex. Other issuers don't have that sort of lifetime language, so you're not going to run into that problem with other issuers. But with Amex, you would, where you would not be eligible then potentially for an Amex gold welcome offer in the future. So you want to be careful about downgrading Amex cards to cards you've never had before, because you're going to lock yourself out of getting a welcome offer in the future on that, at least for a long time. So that's one consideration with downgrading an Amex card. Be careful that you don't downgrade to a card you've never had if you think you are ever going to want that welcome bonus. But on the flip side of things, Amex is fairly unique in that they pretty frequently,

or at least sometimes, offer upgrade bonuses. And so you may downgrade your platinum card to a gold card if you've had the gold card before, and so you're not eligible for the welcome offer anyway. Maybe you downgrade to the gold card, And then at some point in the future, it's possible that you'll see an upgrade offer to upgrade to the platinum card again, where you'll earn what is sort of like a welcome bonus for upgrading potentially. And those upgrade offers vary tremendously from one card to another and the frequency with which they happen varies quite a bit. So we won't get into the weeds on upgrade offers. But the bottom line is that most issuers will not give you a welcome bonus when you product change. MX is a rare exception where they may give you a bonus for upgrading to a card that costs more money, basically. So that's something to keep in mind that you may want to downgrade to the fee-free

card of some sort. Greg mentioned the Hilton Aspire card earlier, and that's got a high annual fee, but you could potentially downgrade that to the no-fee Hilton card. And then maybe in the future, you'll get an offer to upgrade to the Surpass or the Aspire card. Yeah. Yeah. I love those types of things because that's a way of keeping just that same account, the same account history, but keep earning new welcome offers, but in the form of upgrade offers. And I really do like that. All right.

So I think that kind of wraps us up. So when you do all of those things, you can earn a lot of points because each welcome offer can be significantly valuable. There's lots of offers these days, anywhere from 60 to 80 to 100 to 120 or 150,000 points potentially from a single offer. And the value of those different offers does vary tremendously. But the point is there are tons and tons and tons of points out there. And so you have lots of opportunities to earn valuable points and then turn those into

even more valuable, potentially, experiences. So definitely. Absolutely. Great game to play. A lot of fun. Just this week, somebody posted in our

Frequent Miler Insiders group about a redemption they made. They said they never could have imagined they were flying first class on ANA, which is something we did recently. A really expensive, expensive experience if you were paying in cash. And they had just two people, a married couple, husband and wife, and they had the entire first class cabin to themselves. Felt like they were

flying private, two flight attendants, you know, doting on just them, thanks to, you know, these made up currencies that, you know, we earn relatively easily. So that's So it could be a lot of fun. Game can be a lot of fun. It's the best game in the world. Yep, it sure is. It sure is. Okay, so I think that brings us to the end of the main event,

but brings us to this week's question of the week. And this week's question of the week comes from none other than Nick Reyes. Your own Nick Reyes. Oh, I've heard of that guy. Yeah, you've heard of him once or twice before. Here he is. So yes, this week's question of the week is from me. So my question of the week comes in because I wrote about some new cards that I

applied for this week. And one of them was the U.S. Bank Altitude Reserve. And the reason that I applied for it, or one of the reasons anyway, not the entire reason, but one of the reasons is because the card earns 3x on mobile payments and so mobile wallet payments. So if you use Apple Pay or Google Pay or Samsung Pay, you earn three points per dollar. And then in many instances anyway, you can use those points towards certain travel redemptions at a value of one and a half cents each. So it's a pretty good return on spend if you're able to use the points at one and a half cents each. It's like earning four and a half percent back on all your mobile wallet purchases, which these days you can use tap to pay just about everywhere, it seems. So you could potentially do quite well. And so the question of the week

comes in because somebody mentioned in the comments, you know what, let me back up and you're going to see where this is going. This is where I should have started this week's question of the week. Several weeks ago, we talked about renting cars, and you and I talked about how we don't usually use rewards programs to pay for our cars. We don't usually use points to pay for our rental cars. We usually pay the cash rate because we can get a much better deal by shopping around and using tools like auto slash, et cetera. But in the comments of my post about the cards I applied for this week, somebody brought up the fact that they love using the altitude reserve and then using the points towards car rentals.

It's a great way to cover your car rental costs. Why didn't we talk about the U.S. Bank Altitude Reserve, Greg? Are you not using that to pay for your car rentals? And if not, why not? Well, I mean, yeah,

you can use the points in two different ways with car rentals. So one way is by going through the U.S. Bank travel portal and using your points that way. And that's what we're not going to do. Right. That's what we wouldn't do. And the reason is because we could get much better rates by going directly and using coupon codes and things. However, using the altitude reserve to pay for a car rental that you booked

directly should invoke I mean, there's some minimum $150. That you have to the minimum $150. It has to be at least $150. Then if you have enough points to cover that, you can use real-time mobile rewards, which means you get a text basically from U.S. banks saying, hey, do you want to use points to cover this charge? And if you say yes, you'll get 1.5 cents value. So that's actually, that's a great way to do it. And I'd be happy to do that. If I remember right, I think that that card actually has good primary auto coverage.

So yeah, absolutely. That's a good way of doing it, I think. Yeah, I don't know why I hadn't really considered that very much before because it made a lot of sense to me. My goodness, car rentals have gotten so expensive. They quickly turned into the most expensive part of the trip for a lot of our trips.

And it does seem to me like essentially getting 4.5% back everywhere that I use towards car rentals would be really pretty useful. I think the main limitation that Greg mentioned there is you'll need to have enough points to cover the cost of the rental. So that's definitely going to be a limitation if you don't have a lot of US bank altitude reserve points. But if you bank those up for a while, yeah, I would certainly consider this because it does have good primary CDW coverage. So that is a decent option. Whereas we often talk about how we use Chase cards like the Chase Ritz card or the Chase Sapphire Reserve card to rent our cars because of the rental car coverage. The U.S. Bank of Altitude Reserve has relatively comparable car rental coverage. So

it's certainly not a bad card to use for car rental. So I thought that was a great point that a reader made. And I thought, well, you know, I probably will do that and in fact, use my U.S. bank points in that way as my car rental supply. Like these will be the points that I use to cover my car rentals for the foreseeable future. I feel like that's a great way to use them. Yeah, seriously, that's a great way to go. And, you know, when I use Uber to the extent that I don't have lots of Uber credits, I also like to use the altitude reserve card there because even small charges, anything over $10 is eligible in that case for real-time mobile rewards. So I don't know. I find it cool to have an Uber to the airport and boom, it feels free because I

wipe it out with my US bank altitude reserve points Altitude Reserve Points. For sure. And that's cool. The one thing I should mention about this is that technically it's supposed to be U.S.-based merchants or U.S. merchants that qualify for this. And I mention that because if you're renting through some small rental car agency in Italy, chances are that you're not going to be able to use U.S. Bank Real-Time Mobile Rewards, but we have a resource post for that. And so I'm going to have to start weeding through that and looking for more data points in terms of what works and what doesn't. Because while US Bank says they have to be basically US-based travel providers, that's not necessarily always the case. It is in some cases and not in others.

So I'm going to be curious now looking for more data points. I very frequently rent from US-based rental car chains. So I'll be curious to see how a lot of those code and work in terms of using real-time mobile rewards. But I'll have a link to our real-time mobile rewards post in the show notes. So if you're listening to this and you're intrigued, you can check that out and take a look. Sounds good. That's an excellent card. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. All right. Unfortunately, we're out of time for today and I have to let you guys go. We have to let you go. So if you have enjoyed today's episode, please, please, please leave us some feedback. Give us a few stars or whatever it may be, wherever you're listening to this. Leave a review, leave a comment, share it with your friends and family. If you have a

question or a piece of feedback that you'd like to be considered for a future episode, please send that to mailbag at frequent miler.com. Again, that's mailbag at frequent miler.com. Join our frequent miler insiders Facebook group. And if you want more of this stuff in your email inbox each day or each week, you want to go to frequent miler.com slash subscribe to join our email list. And we will see you guys again next week all right bye everybody bye you