Frequent Miler on the Air - How to get great value from your Platinum card | Frequent Miler on the Air Ep262 | 7-5-24

Episode Date: July 5, 2024

The Amex Platinum card has had great welcome bonuses for a while now, but it's a very expensive card. Are there reasons to keep the card once the annual fee comes due? That's what we'll discuss in today's Frequent Miler on the Air episode. (01:36) - Online chat for immediate Avios refunds? (Mailbag) (05:26) - Wells Fargo Attune Card (Card Talk) Read more about the Attune card here. (17:49) - Hyatt promo: Earn 1k bonus points + double elite nights at 15 Florida properties (Mattress Running the Numbers) (23:46) - Virgin kills Delta One deal (Award Talk) (28:39) - Interesting notes about Spirit awards (Award Talk) Read more about Nick's Spirit discoveries here. Read more about the Amex Platinum card here. (34:25) - Become elite (37:01) - Enhance your travel experiences (40:57) - Earn $200 back on prepaid hotel bookings each year Read more about FHR credits here: https://frequentmiler.com/maxfhr-an-awesome-new-way-to-help-use-your-200-fine-hotels-resorts-credits/ (44:28) - Earn $200 in Airline Fee Credits each calendar year (46:08) - Use $200 in Uber credits each calendar year (48:53) - Get $20 per month back in rebates on select digital entertainment services (51:27) - Earn up to $100 per year in rebates at Saks Fifth Avenue (55:18) - Get Walmart+ for Free (56:53) - Earn 5x for airfare and prepaid hotels (57:21) - Refer friends (1:05:37) - Hyatt dummy-booking offer... why is no one talking about this offer?

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 Mylar on the air starts now. Today's main event, how to get great value from your Amex Platinum card. As you may know, the MX Platinum card has had great welcome bonuses for quite a few years now. And so it's always very tempting to apply, get that initial welcome bonus. But it's a very expensive card. And so you may be tempted to ditch it once the next annual fee comes due. And that's not a bad idea, but we're going to talk through how you might want to, why you might want to actually keep it long-term because there's a lot of good value opportunities

through the card. And even if you don't keep it, you want to make sure you squeeze every little bit of value that you can out of it before you decide not to keep it. So we'll talk about how to do all of that. But don't forget, if you want to jump ahead to a specific segment or you want to return to one later on, you'll always find the timestamps in the show notes. So you might have to expand the description box to see those, but you can find those there. And wherever you're listening or watching, please like this video or podcast or give us a bunch of stars if you're rating us and leave a comment, leave us some feedback.

We always love to hear from you and we appreciate people who do all of those things. And we appreciate you even if you don't, but you still should. So make sure you're doing that. All right, let's drag out this week's giant mailbag. Okay, a little background on a previous episode at some point we were talking about booking with Qatar Airways Avios and how they charge just $25 to change or cancel as long as it's 24 hours or more in advance that you do that. And I think we had a little online debate about whether your points come back right away when you do that. And so Sushrit wrote in with their experience.

They say, just wanted to share my recent experience with this. I had booked a few QSuite reservations that I was wanting to change. I canceled the ticket online and then went to the online chat during normal business hours and said I wanted to process the Avio's refund so I can book a new flight. In both instances, they were able to process the Avio's refund instantly while I was on chat. I've also done this reliably once before many months ago, so I'm three out of three. Now, the reason I wanted to bring this up is I remember during the show that my memory was that the points came back instantly. But then when I got this email, I remembered that when I had done the cancellation

and got my points back instantly, I had done that through chat. I had chatted with an agent and they were able to push it all through right away. More recently, I canceled one. And what happened was a few days later, I canceled one like online. And a few days later, I got an email saying that they couldn't process the $25 refund fee without my like calling in. And they actually ended up calling me and I was able to give them my credit card and get that done. So if the taxes and fees were less than $25, which was the case in this case, then they can't take that $25 payment out of the taxes and fees that you already paid. And so then it could take a while to get this all done unless you initiate the cancellation with a person. And an easy way to do that is through chat. So just wanted to, you know,

tie that one back up. You know, I'm glad you did it because this just dawned on me as you're reading this data point that we ran into, there was a comment this past week on a Virgin Atlantic post from a reader who said that they filled out the online form. Because if you go online and you try to cancel a Virgin Atlantic award that you've booked, even if it's on a partner, it doesn't matter if it's on a partner on Virgin Atlantic, then it sends you to this form to request a refund. And so the reader reported that they'd done that. And it's been like two and a half weeks, and they don't have the points back yet. And when I saw that, I was like two and a half weeks. And then I thought about it, I realized because I've made a couple of cancellations in recent memory with Virgin Atlantic, and the points came back instantly. But then of course, I had to think about, well, how do they come back instantly? Well, I didn't fill out the form. I looked at the

form. And in both cases, I was like, Oh oh no, I need the points back. Like I got to talk to somebody. So I called in and talked to an agent and I did my cancellations over the phone and the points came back while I was on the phone instantly. So I refreshed my balance and there they were. And that was also the case with another one. I can't even recall who not that long ago, maybe it was Air France where a calling redeposited the points immediately, whereas online maybe didn't. So if you run into that situation with any old airline, it's worth hopping on chat or on the phone to see if they can reinstate the points more quickly. That's happened with American a bunch of times now too, where I've had to actually call and

talk to a person who can reinstate the points. So good luck with that. Absolutely. All right. Card talk this week's card talk. We have what I said on our recent ask us anything might be the sleeper card of 2024, the Wells Fargo attuned card. This is a card that you may not have been attuned to, but you should tune into this one. Uh, thanks for all the puns Wells Fargo. Uh, so the Wells Fargogo tune card has no annual fee. It does have a foreign transaction fee. So this is not the card you're going to want to bring with you overseas. But it has a bunch of interesting 4X categories.

So 4X self-care. And if you just looked at the headlines, you would see 4X self-care, 4X planet-friendly purchases. And was there another one? I thought there was another one that was on there. sports, recreation and entertainment. There you go. If you just look at that, it might not. I don't know. To me, that didn't sound like anything. It seemed like a nothing burger when I saw that. I was like, oh, it doesn't seem like a very interesting card. Spending much money in any of those. But that's not necessarily the case. No, not even close. I mean, when you dig in, their list of what qualifies in these categories is enormous. I mean, you know, for self-care, you have gym memberships, spas, you know, massage parlors, barber shops. I mean, it goes on and on. For the sports category, you know, you have an endless number of things there. Planet-friendly purchases has things like, you might have guessed EV charging, but you probably didn't guess pretty much all public transportation is included.

So subways, buses, all that kind of stuff. So it's really amazing what's included here. Like some things that surprised me. Somewhere in there, I don't remember under which headline, you have pet care, you have commercial sports, you have ticket agencies. I mean, think about how broad these categories are. You have bookstores, you have digital goods and media, which that combination tells me Amazon. If you buy anything on Amazon, you're probably talking Forex. So it's really just staggering how much is included in this.

I read through the list thinking that they looked at all the other common cards out there and what's commonly given a bonus category. And they said, let's list everything that's not those things. Let's list everything besides grocery stores, besides gas stations, besides restaurants, and everything else is 4X, it seems like. It's like the ultimate companion card. I mean, there were so many things in there that I said, wow.

I mean, Disneyland, Disney World tickets and parking were for I would like, I mean, with what some people spend on tickets to Disney. I mean, that's a great bonus category for folks who are not necessarily cheap. And also marinas, marine services and supplies. I mean, I can't imagine what marina fees probably come to in some cities, but getting Forex on that is probably pretty good. Bicycle shops were in their dance halls and dance schools. If you got kids that are in lessons like that, public golf courses. I mean, there were just so many things that were in there. And then under individual categories like sporting goods stores, they listed stuff like Eddie Bauer as an example of a sporting goods store, which I wouldn't have put those two things

together. I mean, I guess, yeah, it's outdoorsy, but I wouldn't have considered that a sporting goods store necessarily. So, so there was a lot of that, you know, different brand retailers, Nike and Adidas. And so there's just, like you said, so many things that would be 4X. And the reason that that's interesting is because this is a cash back card. So it looks like it's 4% back, which good. That's a great rate on a lot of these things. But it gets even better, of course, because you're not necessarily limited to only getting cash, right?

If you also have a Wells Fargo autograph card or an autograph journey card, then you could move your cash back into points on the autograph card, and those points become transferable. Right now, the transfer partners include Air France and KLM Flying Blue, a number of Avios programs, British Airways, Aer Lingus, Iberia, Avianca Life Miles, which if you don't know how to use those, check out our podcast on learning to love life miles. And Choice Privileges Transfer 1 to 2, which is really cool. Only Citibank does that kind of transfer to Choice right now. So having another program that does that is that one to two transfer is, is pretty awesome. And, you know, they've promised to add more programs into their transfer partner options,

but, but as you know, we love, we love transferable points. And so the idea of getting 4X on all these different categories and that they could easily become transferable is pretty darn exciting. Um, you know, My biggest problem with this though is, let's say you have the card and you're out shopping somewhere. How in the world would you know whether whatever place you're going into would earn 4X? So your risk is only earning 1X because it's one of the three stores in the world that fall through the cracks or not. Yeah. I mean, you'd have to make some test purchases. I think on anything, it's going to be a major purchase. You'd have to be making a test, but you don't like if you're

going to put your Marina fees on it or whatever, you don't want to make sure you start with a test purchase and it's going to earn four X's. You don't want to earn one X on a big purchase. I wouldn't probably worry as much if I go to the Adidas store or the Nike store, it didn't list Reebok. Is Reebok going to be four X? I probably wouldn't worry as much about that. But you're right. I mean, you could end up getting one X at Reebok. Who knows? So nobody wants that. But yeah, so that's not my biggest hesitation. That's certainly a good reason to hesitate because you have to be willing to put up with a certain amount of uncertainty to get this card. So that is certainly a good reason to be hesitant. My bigger hesitancy at this point is that the transfer partners are still really limited. And I like those three transfer partners choice. Okay, great. But I'm not super I don't use choice

points often enough to care very much about that. So Air France, Avios, Avianca LifeMiles are all programs I like. But, you know, like if Avianca destroys their award chart tomorrow, then I'm limited to Air France and Avios. And while I like those, I don't like them enough to be my only two transfer partners. And so, you know, it just makes me a little bit hesitant. If they would add two or three more transfer partners, I would be even more excited. I think that this card has a lot of potential, but I'd be hesitant to lock myself into just three or four transfer partners, basically. I mean, I know there's a bunch of different obvious ones, but as you should know, if you

listen to this show, if there's one obvious partner, they're all included because you can transfer from one obvious program to the next. So it really feels like four transfer partners to me. And that makes me hesitant. Yeah. Yeah. The one transfer partner that I think that they're missing that they really need to address is Aeroplan. They need Air Canada Aeroplan in there. Once I get that, I would feel better about that list, even though it would still be a short list. You know, between Flying Blue, Avios, and Aeroplan, they would have the three major alliances covered really well. And yes, I know Life Miles covers Star Alliance, but it has so many quirks to it. It's just not as generally useful, in my opinion, as Aeroplan is.

And Aeroplan has so many non-Alliance partners, so it does give you far more options. Yeah. The other hesitation, or it's not really hesitation, but something that's important to point out is this does have a foreign transaction fee, a 3% fee. And so if you're thinking of parking your yacht in the Mediterranean and getting 4X, earning that, you will probably earn 4X, but then you're paying out 3%. And so it's not as good of a deal as it sounds like. Yeah, well, and that's worth a mention because when I first looked through the categories, one of the categories is tourist attractions and exhibits.

And they give examples like Summit One Vanderbilt in New York, the Houston Zoo, the Kennedy Space Center. And I was like, oh, this would be an awesome card to take on vacation, right? Because like almost everything you're going to do activity wise on vacation sounds like it might fit in that category. So great. Forex on all that sounds awesome, only domestically like greg said because internationally then it's it's not as good of a deal but i think it is important to point out that greg didn't say definitely don't use it internationally just it's not as good of a deal you know if it's a category you're not going to earn a category bonus on it all anyway maybe you're

happy to pay three percent for forex on a little bit i mean it's you're not paying that much per point in that case obviously less than a penny a point, essentially. Although if you have an option for 2X without a foreign transaction fee, I'd probably prefer that. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Okay. And one other thing I wanted to point out about this card is that it really makes the Wells Fargo sort of credit card ecosystem very interesting because you can now put together a really good combination. You can use their active cash card to get 2x everywhere. Everywhere where there are no bonus opportunities, you can earn 2x with that card. With the Autograph Journey card, you're earning 5x at hotels, 4x for airlines, and 3x for restaurants and other travel.

And then you could use the Satune card to fill in pretty much everything else and get 4x everywhere else. I'm not even sure you need the active cash with the 2x. Right, right. Because of what we were just saying. But anyway, that's a really powerful combination. And again, it is somewhat hampered right now by having a limited selection of transfer partners. But one would assume that they're going to eventually add some more transfer partners. And like you said, really, if they added Aeroplan, that was exactly my thought. If they added Aeroplan, I would feel pretty good about going to a Wells Fargo setup for everyday spend, like for all the stuff I'm going to regularly spend on. They've got good bonus categories. So Wells Fargo, if you're listening, get on the horn with Air Canada Aeroplan. They, I'm sure, would love to be a transfer partner.

Yeah. You know, a while back, you read a question from someone about, about wanting to take their family to Disney world. And, and would this change like your advice for that? That question, this is a great card to, uh, to get at least for the spend, I guess at a Disney world, maybe not to use, to redeem for Disney. Yeah. Well, that's the thing. Yeah. I wouldn't necessarily help you redeem to get a better deal on your Disney vacation. And actually, it would probably be a poor choice for that because I'm flying domestically. These programs might not help at all because, you know, the domestic programs don't release that much award space to partners anymore. So, you know, and I don't think there's a good way to redeem the points for hotels other than choice so you know you're i guess one cent per point although i don't even know exactly how that works with the autograph points uh off the top of my head so yeah it's a good one to earn if you're going to go to disney and you're going to spend a bunch of money then yeah i mean this would be the ideal one because i don't think there's a

better option i'm not i'm always hesitant staying at some place like a disney resort is it going to code as travel properly? Is it going to code as some sort of an entertainment type of a thing when it's not like clearly that, you know, the Hilton Garden Inn, so to speak? I don't know. But this one I would know because it does sound like, well, actually, the Disney resort. I still don't know for sure whether you still don't know. Yeah. But something you said, you said if you're going to Disney and if you're going to spend a lot of money, those two are.

They go together. They go together. You're right. If you go to Disney, you want the card. You're right. You are going to spend a lot of money. You just cut that middle part right out. Yeah.

Yep. Then get this card before you go. You might as well. Might as well earn as much as you can because you're going to be spending a lot. All right. All right. I think that wraps up the Attune card. You should definitely check that out.

We wrote a post about it. So there'll be, of course, a link in the show notes to the post about that card. All right. All right. I think that wraps up the Attune card. You should definitely check that out. We wrote a post about it. So there'll be, of course, a link in the show notes to the post about that card. All right. Mattress running the numbers. Hyatt is out with a promotion to earn 1000 bonus points and more interestingly, double elite night credits at 15 Florida properties. So that's pretty specific. You need to be staying at one of 15 Florida properties. Is that interesting? Does that sound appeals to you, for those chasing Hyatt status, earning double nights, of course, is always interesting. I did look into though, is it mattress run worthy? So we call this segment mattress running the numbers because the idea of a mattress run is where you book a stay, not because you actually want to stay there, but because you want to earn elite credits or points, whatever the promotion is that, that where the, the promotional earnings outweigh the cost of the stay basically. And, and so, you know, this segment is to analyze that in this case. So what I wanted to know at first was, are there any like category one hotels included in this promotion?

Because category one for standard pricing is 5,000 points a night. And so since you'd earn a thousand bonus points with this Hyatt promo, it costs you like 4,000 or less. If it was off peak, it would be even less. Plus the double elite nights. It might be totally worth it to book stays in Florida. But the problem is none of the included hotels are Category 1. I don't even know if there are any Category 1s in Florida at all, period. But anyway, of the included ones, I found a couple, maybe two or three Category 3. So Category 3 hotels cost anywhere from 9,000 to 15,000 points per night. And standard pricing is 12,000 points a night. The Grand Hyatt Tampa Bay is one

of them. Hyatt Regency, Jacksonville Riverfront is another one. And so I would just say right off the top, I don't think it's worth spending 12,000 points to get a thousand points back and double elite nights if you're not interested in that stay. Right. I mean, that that's the answer. Now, maybe if you could find an incredible cash rate that's so low, that might change the equation. But based on what I know about the point prices, I think it's unlikely, too, that the cash prices would be that low that it would be worth doing.

So my answer to this one is no, this is not mattress run worthy. But what do you think? Well, I have a question for you. So is a Category 1 Hyatt ever mattress run worthy? I mean, forget about the promotion. Is there ever a situation where you would consider paying 5,000 points per night at a category one just to mattress run it, just to get the elite night credits? Yeah. I mean, so like in this case, you're getting two elite nights. And so you're saying, what are you willing to pay per elite night? And since you're getting a thousand bonus points,

it seems to me you'd be averaging just 2,000 points per night to earn your elite knights towards status. Right, but let's say there's no promotion. Let's forget about the promotion for a second and say, okay, you're a few nights short of a milestone. Would you pay 5,000 points per night for a Category 1? No promotion. How many knights might be mattress run worthy? a milestone, would you pay 5,000 points per night for a category one, like no promotion? How many nights might be mattress run worthy? And is there a level at which that would be mattress run worthy? You know, Hyatt makes that so hard to answer in the abstract because, so Hyatt has these milestone rewards that you get every 10 elite nights that you've earned

starting at 20 in a calendar year. And they vary tremendously in how valuable they are at each milestone. So if you're close to the 40 night one or 50 night and one or 60 night one, those are the ones that have like super valuable milestones at them. Then you could justify a lot of mattress running, uh, to get to one of those. But if you're getting to the 20 night one, no, it's not worth it at all. Right. Well, so here's the reason I brought that up because at 12,000 points, like the standard rate, so to speak, then if you have a thousand points back, then you're paying 11,000 points for two elite nights, essentially 5,500 points a night. It's not much more than a category one. And like you said, there might not be a category one in Florida. So if you live in Tampa, this might be your cheapest way to get a mattress

run if you're not going to go somewhere else and it might be in your backyard. So I think actually, you know, through that lens, maybe it's worth a couple of nights for somebody that is going to be very close, but you know, you're not going to go over the number of nights required for a particular milestone. And certainly if you're able to get off peak, which during September in Florida, maybe you can because it may be during August also. I know that that's like September specifically is often a low season for travel

because kids are back in school. And so a lot of things get cheaper in September. So I wouldn't be surprised if you can find some off peak nights between August and September because August because of the heat in September, because most of the country at that point is still is already back in school or has been back in school for a while.

So so if you can find them at nine, then you're paying in that eight per night. And, you know, and on a one night stay, I guess that would be. And so four thousand points in elite night, that's even better than a standard category one. So I think there are some situations specifically, like you said, if you're close to 40, 50 or 60, that was what was in my mind. And this would make the difference in getting there. Maybe it's mattress run worthy.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. And don't forget too, if you can find really cheap cash rates, then it could be a really great deal. Agreed. Agreed.

And you might. Yeah. So if you do, good luck with that. All right. That's mattress running the numbers. Let's talk about you might. Yeah. So if you do good luck with that. All right. That's mattress running the numbers. Let's talk about award talk this week's award talk. Greg gets to be the bearer of bad news. Oh boy. For, for many years, one of the best uses of Virgin points. So Virgin Atlantic's points are Virgin red are, those are two Virgin property point systems, but they,

they are really the same thing, even though they look like they're different. If you have one, you have the other. With Virgin Points until now, you were able to book Delta One from North America to Europe or the other direction for 50,000 points. And at least when you're departing the US, they charge $5.5 and 60 cents in, you know, the standard, uh, TSA fee that died overnight. So what, what happened overnight is Virgin changed the award chart for that. Um, not too bad for, as far as the points prices go. I mean, now the points prices range from just under 50,000 points to, I don't know, I think it was just under 80,000 or something like that. I didn't even pay that much attention.

But that's roughly the range. And so that's not bad. Even at the top range, it's still a great deal or would be a great deal for Delta One if it was available. But what they also did is add huge, ridiculously huge surcharges into these awards. And so now you're paying something like $1,000 in fees instead of $5.60. That's a big increase. Ouch.

That's a big increase. That is just, that's just devastating and really, really discouraging. I'm really unhappy with Virgin for doing that with no notice to. The bright news is that, if there's any, is that it was really rare to find Delta One award availability. So every now and then there'd be like a flood of it. Well, maybe not a flood, but a good amount from certain cities.

A puddle of it now. But most often, if you were just like out of the blue looking for award space to Europe, you weren't going to find Delta One because Delta so rarely releases award space to their partners. So in a way, for many of us, it doesn't really make that big of a difference, but it's one of the great uses of Virgin Points that is no longer even a good use. Yeah. Well, and this illustrates why we often tell people not to transfer points speculatively. You know, we've seen lots of transfer bonuses to Virgin.

Just recently, there was a 30% transfer bonus to Virgin. And people often say, well, should I just transfer now because there's a 30% bonus? And we always tell people, no, generally speaking, you don't want to do that. I say always, we've made a couple of exceptions over the last year, but generally we tell people, no, don't do that because you don't know when a program is going to devalue. And Virgin Atlantic has proven yet again, that they have no regard for the members in the sense that they will just do it overnight without telling you that they've done it or they're going to do it. And I hate that. I think that Virgin Atlantic deserves some some negative, you know, I don't know what you want to call it, some negative vibes going their way. They deserve to be paraded for that because it stinks that they do that overnight without warning.

And they've done that a number of times now that that is definitely the way Virgin Atlantic is going to do business. They're just going to devalue something when they decide they want to devalue it. And they're not going to tell you in advance. And they're not going to tell you they did it. They're just going to leave you to find it yourself. So that's unfortunate because they have really good communications in general and ought to communicate the fact that they're going to change their award chart and let members know so they can use points if they want to before that changes. It's a big bummer that they don't have enough regard for their own members to do that. They're not the only ones out there, but my goodness, I hate to see that. So that's too bad, Virgin Atlantic. You can do better. But yeah, that's like Greg said,

it wasn't widely available. So from that frame of mind, it's really a nothing burger to me in the sense that I rarely ever find this anyway. And I say that as somebody who did find and book it a few times. It was just still so rare, it's a big discount over the cash price. And it won't make much of a difference to me if they do that, because I'm not going to and I wasn't getting it anyway. So, you know, it's not going to be a huge loss. So why couldn't you tell me in advance, Virgin Atlantic? Right. And to be clear, we don't know or even expect necessarily that Delta One will become more available to partners. I'd actually be surprised if that happens. But if it does, yeah, then there'd be some some right there. Yeah.

Yeah. Some silver lining. OK. All right. So that's Virgin Atlantic. On the other side of the coin, we have Spirit. Spirit Airlines. I wrote about Spirit.

We got Spirit. Yes, we do. We got Spirit. And I won't even finish the rhyme. So anyway, spirit, I wrote about spirit this week because I flew spirit very recently. And actually, as we record this, I'm still in the middle of that spirit trip. I haven't flown home yet. And when I did that, I checked out a couple of features that are more unique for spirit. And then I looked at using spirit points. And so I found just a couple of interesting notes, I think, about Spirit.

First of all, if you live near an airport that Spirit serves, then you may wonder, well, does it make more sense for me to drive to the airport and buy a ticket or to buy the Savers Club membership because it's 70 bucks a year for a Savers Club membership. And then you save some money on airfare

and also a little bit on bags and seat selection. And the reason I bring that up is because if you're not aware, Spirit and a number of other low-cost airlines have some sort of a passenger usage fee that they charge when you book online that they don't charge if you pay for a ticket at the airport. And so for most domestic awards, at least all the ones I looked at, it was $23 on Spirit, $22.99 that they charge for a passenger usage fee. So if you buy your ticket at the airport, you don't pay that $23. On the flip side, if you buy the $70 Savers Club membership, then you save almost as much in a lot of cases, sometimes even more than

the passenger usage fee, sometimes enough less that it might be worth it. It depends on how many passengers you're booking and whether you're booking one way or round trip or how many trips you're going to book. So you have to kind of look at the two. I think unless you live pretty close to an airport where it's easy for you to go and park for free and go in and get the ticket. Probably the Savers Club membership makes more sense for more people than buying at the airport because the discount is pretty similar and you save a lot of time by being able to book it online. You can't stack the two. You can't go to the airport and also have your cake and eat it too. So the Savers Club would be my pick probably for most people, although there are some folks that are in a situation

where it'd be easy enough to buy tickets at the airport. So you have to do the math on that. The other piece is using spirit points, which on the one hand can be a pretty good value sometimes. And in fact, if you have the credit card or elite status, then you can pull points as a family. And that'd be kind of nice because altogether that my family of four, we flew spirit over the holidays and now we're flying around trip here right now. And so by the time this trip is done, we'll have around 22,000 Spirit points amongst the four of us, which actually could be pretty valuable in some cases. The case where it's valuable is when you're booking in advance because Spirit charges a redemption fee. So I totally forgot about this. I went to book a flight that was going to be $47

or 3,500 points. And I was like, oh, that's a pretty good deal. That's a good value for points. Once you subtract the taxes out of that, it becomes essentially like about 1.4 cents per point. And I said, well, that's pretty good for SpiritPoint. So yeah, it seems like a nice rebate on the airfare spend. So I thought it was great. And I was excited and I went to book it. I was originally going to use my altitude reserve points for this flight. And I said, oh, no, I don't even need to do that. I have spirit points. Let me use the spirit points. Finally, yes, I found news. Seemed exciting. And I went to book it. And so again, this flight, that would have been $47, but instead was 3,500 points would come with $55.60 in fees.

So it would cost me $8 more to use my points than if I didn't use my points. I was like, what? This is ridiculous. What's going on here? Because Spirit charges a close-in booking fee, and I didn't realize this. So they charge an additional $50 if you book within 28 days of departure. If you book 28 days or longer in advance, so more than 28 days in advance of departure, then they don't have that fee. And when they don't have that fee, the value really

is around 1.3, 1.4-ish cents per point. Sometimes you can get lower. Sometimes you get closer to the one cent per point end of the spectrum, depending on if you're booking a regular fare or a Savers Club fare with the points. But at any rate, there are plenty of situations where you get good value, but it has to be at least 28 days in advance, or you have to get either the credit card or elite status with spirit. If you have the, the, the annual fee credit card or you have silver or gold status with spirit, then you don't pay the close end redemption fee.

And then your spirit points can actually be a pretty good value. I actually was pretty surprised at how good the program kind of looks if you don't mind flying spirit. Yeah. So that story about how the points would have been worth negative money, that reminds me so much of your story of the first time you used miles in Hawaii. You had a similar thing, didn't you? Where you paid a close-in fee and ended up not getting very good. in Hawaii years ago. Yeah, yeah, except I paid it in that case. So yeah, I did the math and it was what negative 0.22 cents per point. I think that you're getting if you're booking that award

with the close in booking. Yeah, yeah. For those who aren't, don't think of themselves as being good at math, just, you know, negative value is not a good thing. So don't don't use your points.

Don't use your points if it's going to cost you more in cash than just booking and cash outright, um, in order to use your points. Yeah, it seems like it should be. It should be. Thanks for, thanks for reminding me of that though, spirit, because I did, I did, I did plan to use the points and I was like, wait a second. Something's not right here. Yeah. I'm here for you, Nick. Thank you. Thank you. All right. That, I think my friends brings us to this week's main event. Main event time. How to get great value from your Amex Platinum card.

Okay, this is a $695 card. We're talking about the personal Platinum card from American Express, and it regularly has fantastic welcome bonuses. So you may have gotten the card and now you're wondering, how do I get a good value from it? And there's actually a lot of things you should be doing to eke out value from this card. And so we're going to go over not everything possible because that would be too long of a show, but we have a number of categories we'll talk about. First up, becoming elite. So just by having this card, you can sign up to have Hilton and Marriott gold status. And each of the big three car rental companies, National, Hertz, Avis, you can get elite status with them. I'd say of those, the ones that are really valuable,

Hilton Gold, because you'll get food and beverage credit with each stay in America and free breakfast internationally just by having gold status. And national, I really like having national executive status because that lets you pick from the better line, the better Emerald Isle, the what are they called? The executive selection, I think something like that at the airport. And so you can get a nicer car, a bigger car, whatever it is you need. So those two are really good. Yeah, agreed. So you and you have to enroll in that. It's not like they don't magically figure out what your numbers are for those things. You have to log into your account. And so when you're logged into your Amex account, you look in the top bar

for the link that says benefits. And under that somewhere, you'll find the links to enroll in these different things. So you will have to enroll in order to get that, but it's pretty quick. It doesn't take very long for the status to get upgraded midday or two or something like that. And you might as well sign up for all the statuses that you can. There's no cost of doing it and you never know when it'll come in handy. I remember my wife once getting a sweet upgrade at a Marriott with just the gold status. So that was pretty good. There you go. And you never know how long these things will last. Sometimes after you cancel your card, it'll be quite a while before something gets downgraded. So you may as well take advantage of it while you

got it because you never know how long you may end up keeping it for years. So, so worth signing up for those. All right. Next up, enhance your travel experiences, get a better travel experience with some of the various credits that they give you for things that will make your experience more convenient. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So if you don't already have global entry, you know, paying for global entry or TSA pre-check with the card, they'll, they'll refund that once every, I don't know, four and a half years, something like that. Clear, if you want to sign up for a clear, then that'll be reimbursed. There's a number of airport lounges that you can get into when having the platinum card.

The Delta lounges, when flying same day on Delta, you can get into the Sky Club. Now, it is going to be next year limited to a certain number of days where you can do that. But still, it's a reasonable number of days across the year. Centurion Lounges, which Amex provides themselves. Escape Lounges. And they also have their version of Priority Pass, which will get you into Priority Pass lounges. It will not get you free Priority Pass restaurant access, but you will get into lounges. So there's actually a lot of lounges that you can get into by having this card. Yeah. And actually Plaza Premium also,

I believe, right? With the Platinum card. And Plaza Premium tends to have some of the nicer lounges internationally and so that's that's another one that i i like to use platinum card for yeah yeah and in terms of enhancing your travel experiences there are also cruise benefits you get um some some uh cash credits uh when you uh use your platinum card to sign up for a cruise, as well as some perks that are, I think, specific to each cruise that they give to platinum members. Yeah, I haven't dug far into that because I just haven't really been paying for cruises these last few years.

I've done a lot of free cruising, and if you don't know what I'm talking about, you can just Google Frequent Miler, how to get free cruises by gaming casino status matches. So I haven't booked a cruise through MX yet, although I have family members joining us on a couple of cruises next year. So maybe I'll have to take this for a test drive here relatively soon. But at any rate, these benefits are nice. I mean, the airport lounges are really nice. I take it for granted sometimes how much more

comfortable and easy our airport experience can be because of that. So I love the lounge access and clear. We got clear this two years ago, maybe now, and we've been enjoying that. And some situations that saved us quite a bit of time and plenty of bloggers have written about global entry. And Greg has talked about it numerous times, how that saves him time coming back into the US. So definitely, I think those are things that just kind of, like you said, enhance the travel

experience and make it more comfortable and less stressful. Less stress. Yeah. That's really nice. Less stress is the big thing. Yeah. It is. It is.

A friend was just asking us about tips for what to do in the airport with your kids, like to keep them occupied. And I was thinking to myself, man, at most airports, we're in a lounge. So, you know, there's food and drinks and that usually keeps kids occupied for a while. So we have less of that to worry about than lots of other people do because, you know, there's more distractions that don't cost us anything. So that's nice. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

Moving on to savings. So one of the savings that they give you with the Platinum Card is you get $200 back on prepaid hotel bookings each year. And the prepaid does not mean that you can't cancel it. All it means is, you know, you're paying up front for it. And usually it has a cancellation rules like you get all your money back if you cancel within 48 hours or, you know, each different hotels will have different rules about when you can cancel. So 48 hours in advance or whatever I think is what you mean rather than within 48 hours of booking. But yeah. Yes, yes, those, Amex offers a couple of hotel collections that are worth considering. And one of the best is what they call Fine Hotels and Resorts.

And so this is a program where if you book your hotel through Amex and it's in the Fine Hotels and Resorts collection, not only will you get your $200 back once a year, but you get all these other benefits by booking through fine hotels and resorts. You get daily free breakfast for two, you get some kind of property credits, often like $200. Sometimes it's limited to using at the spa, but sometimes it's for anything on property or sometimes it's specific for dining and you can use it for dinner or whatnot. I think you meant to say it's usually anything on property or sometimes it's specific for dining and you can use it for dinner or whatnot. I think you meant to say it's usually about a hundred dollars. Oh, a hundred dollars. Yes. Yeah. Sorry. And you get guaranteed 4 PM late checkout, which can be really valuable. And you get early check-in when available, which it's hard to tell when that's working. I mean,

I have used it. I have checked in early, but like would I have been able to anyway? I don't know. But still, so anyway, there's a collection of benefits that can make those stays really nice. And that's fine hotels and resorts. They also have the hotel collection, which is sort of a lower down version of that.

You have to, in order to get that at all, you have to book at least two nights. Whereas fine hotels and resorts, you could book one night at a time. The hotel collection just gives you really basic benefits, like $100 property credit. I can't remember if there's anything else.

That's the only tangible one anyway, is that $100 property credit, I believe. So yeah, yep. But you know, it's still for essentially, well, not really free because you're paying the annual fee, but it's a good benefit because you're paying the 200 and getting the 200 back. And sometimes you can find good deals. Now we hear from readers sometimes who say, oh, I look at fine hotels and resorts and everything is outrageously expensive. And so if that's the case, then I would just say, well, it depends on where you look. because, yeah, if you look in New York or Paris, then the hotels are going to be very

high end expensive hotels. But in markets where luxury hotels are less expensive, you may find some really good deals now and then, like Las Vegas and Dubai and Abu Dhabi and plenty of other places. Those are just a few. But there are places where you can find hotels that might cost $200 for a night. And so you may be able to do pretty well. But it does depend on where you look. If you're looking in a market that is generally expensive, then the fine hotels and resorts places are not going to be cheap. They're going to be more expensive than the generally expensive prices you'll find at places that are not fine hotels and resorts. So, uh, so it does depend on where you look, but these can be useful. I make use of these each year. So I think there are. Yeah. And there's a tool, there's a free tool out there, a free website where you can

quickly and easily look up the standard prices for, uh, all the fine hotels and resorts properties. And, uh, we've written about that. So we'll put, we'll put a link to that in the show notes, but that that'll make it re you know, if you're trying to decide, like, should I sign up for the Platinum Card and will I be able to make use of this? That'll give you, you know, a quick idea of what kind of fine hotels and resource properties are in your area. Because, I mean, Amex has websites where you can find that information, but it's clunky and it can take a long time. Whereas this makes it super easy.

Good point. Good point. All right. Next up, you can earn up to $200 in airline incidental fee credits each calendar year. So if you were to get a platinum card in July, then you could use $200 between July and December, and then you get a fresh $200 the next calendar year from January to December. So that's kind of nice. The $200 in airline fee credits are only valid with your chosen airline. So you need to pick an airline out of their airline options. So it's domestic U.S. airlines. And by the letter of the law, the rules dictate that this is valid for stuff like baggage, check baggage fees or lounge entry fees or maybe seat selection, things like that. In practice, we find that there are a lot of things that work that

aren't in the list of what officially counts. So we have a post that we'll link to in the show notes about what still works for triggering the airline incidental fee credits, because there's lots of stuff beyond just what you might expect if you're not familiar with how broadly these can potentially be used. And it varies from one airline to another. So you'll need to check the data points for the specific airline or airlines that you're considering choosing and choose your airline carefully based on how easy it will be to use those incidental credits for you. Yeah. And in some cases it's, it's so easy. You know, things like the United Travel Bank where you could just add money to your United Travel Bank and, and get that refunded. And I mean, as long as that keeps working, that's a great deal for those who,

who regularly fly United. Same, same sort of thing with Southwest. So yeah, it's a very, very easy ways to use it for some airlines. Yeah. Next one up is they give you $200 in Uber credit each year, but that's, it's divided up monthly. So most months you get $15 of Uber credit, which is not additive over time. That is like, it's a use it or lose it each month. And the nice thing here, even if you don't use Uber to ride places, you can use this credit for Uber Eats as well. And so as long as you have Uber Eats, you know, restaurants in your area, that's great. You know, yes, Uber Eats will charge like extra fees and things, especially for delivery. But you can reduce most of that by ordering for pickup.

And the cool thing, sometimes they have promos. Like they'll often have these like buy one, get one type of promos. In fact, for a month or two in Ann Arbor, they had Zingerman sandwiches that were two for one. And so, yeah. So what a great way to use the credit up is to get two. For those who don't know, Zingerman sandwiches are really expensive. And so getting two for one and really, really good was was fantastic. But they regularly have those kind of deals. And so you can you can do really well with that $15 credit and you have more credit each December as well. Yeah. And worth a mention here is that if you have more than one

platinum card in your household, if you add them both as payment methods in the same Uber account, then those credits will stack. So for instance, my wife and I both have platinum cards and we both have our platinum cards set up as payment methods in the same Uber account. So we get $30. And then we also have a gold card, and that comes with a $10 monthly Uber credit. And so then that's $40. Actually, we have a couple of gold cards. And so when you add it all up, you know, we end up getting enough to get a free meal every month. I say free meal, a free meal, because obviously, these cards have costs involved with them, but then we're talking about how to maximize the credits. And so I find

the credits much more useful that way than if she had $15 in her account and I had $15 in my account, that's less useful to me than $30 in one account. So worth knowing that you can stack those up by just adding each of those cards as a payment method in the same Uber Eats account. Yeah. Yeah. And just to sort of show where we're at with rebates now, we've talked about $200 back annually with prepaid hotels, $200 airline fee credits, $200 in Uber credits. So you're talking about $600 in credits already, and we still have more to go. And that's without putting any value on your Hilton Gold Elite status or things like Clear or Lounge Access, like those things. Zero value so far.

We're still at $600 in credits. Right, right. Okay, so another one that they offer is $20 per month back in rebates on select digital entertainment services. They have a list of what things apply there. I use mine for the the Hulu and Disney duo package for 1999. And so I get that rebated each each month and get streaming for Disney and Hulu basically for free. Thanks to this this benefit. Yeah, that's great. I think for a lot of people that would be almost a no brainer because a lot of people are paying for those things. So that would be a nice, nice one to have. Is that bundle easy to buy? Because I know that there were some bundles that were more easily available years ago. Do Disney. Like it's not available through both of them. I can't remember which one was the right one, but I remember that.

I think you have to go through Disney maybe because I think I had to cancel my Hulu subscription because that's where I was paying from originally and sign up again through Disney, something like that. But yeah, if you can find it, it's a good deal. There you go. There you go. And if not, there are other digital entertainment services that qualify too. If those two don't float your boat, there are some other things in there and newspaper subscription type things that may trigger that. So you do have to keep up on what works though there,

because I will note that one unfortunate thing is that Amex has made some changes over the last year in terms of what qualifies for that. And that's annoying, because if you were used to using this for Sirius XM, for instance, and you like that service, well, they took that one away just recently, not a month or two or three ago or something, I think. And same thing, I think, happened to Audible. And so that's kind of annoying, because if you get really used to a specific service, because it was rebated by

your platinum card, something that perhaps you weren't even using before, and now all of a sudden you're used to it and they take it away that, that, that stinks because that may cost you more money in the long run than what you intended to spend. So that's a really good point. Yep. All right. So now, so, so that one is worth up to what? A hundred and I mean, uh, $240 a year up to, but obviously if you're getting less than $20 back per month, then it's less than that. But if we, if we round down to $200 maybe in rebates, uh, just to make that math easy. Now we're up to $800 in rebates on top of all those other benefits we talked about. And we're not done because you can earn up to $100 per year in rebates at Saks Fifth Ave. That's split into two.

So you get up to $50 in statement credits for purchases at Saks between January and June and up to $50 between July and December. So what do you think? Is that useful? Have you used it? How do you use it? What do people need to know about this one? Yeah, it used to be more useful than it is today. But if you live near a Saks store, then it's very easy to use. In fact, people have reported success just going into a Saks Fifth Avenue and getting

a $50 gift card and paying with their credit card. Technically, that's not supposed to work, but people have reported success doing that. And then that way- But it doesn't work online, if you're to answer the question. It does not work online. I'm sure to ask. Really good point. It used to be that there were easy ways of getting free shipping from Saks. And so I used to regularly buy, you know, $50 items and get, or even $60 and stack that with going through a portal. And it was still basically free, you know, thanks to the portal rebate and

the Amex Platinum rebate. And I would get like, you know, whatever, a couple pairs of socks. There were a lot of different things that you could find online, especially that are $50 or less or in that range. But they have repeatedly changed in a bad way what you need to do to get free shipping.

And now what's the latest? Something like $300? $300 minimum order size in order to get free shipping. And now what's the latest size is probably $300 or more. So they, it's probably not a problem from their core customer market is the thing. But for, for us, for the, you know, the, the riffraff at Saks, they, they increased that. So yeah, that really stinks.

So you're going to pay, I think, 10-ish dollars in shipping, I think. Yeah, about 10 bucks. Yeah. So it reduces the value a little bit. That's exactly how I think about it. I think of it as like this benefit was reduced by 20% basically because of having to pay shipping. And I still will, you know, so now I buy things that are $40 or $50 and include stacking through a portal, you know. So it's still, you know, worth doing. But, you know, I don't know. I've gotten some decent things.

We got these little side tables that were useful. We get Bomba socks, you know. There are things that are worth getting. Yeah. I have Bomba socks, too. I have a pair of sandals that I wear all the time now that were about 50 bucks, 51, 52, something like that on clearance at Saks or you're traveling to a Saks and you're able to buy gift cards in store. I mean, I know some people also bought online and returned in store. There's just more headache there than I'm interested in getting into. But if you live close or traveling

to an area with a Saks store, then you may consider going in store to buy a gift card and hope that it works. We went to Las Vegas earlier this year, so we brought our Platinum cards with us because we knew it would be easy to get to a Saks Fifth Ave while we were there. But usually I just buy things like what Greg mentioned online. Yeah. Yeah. Then we're not done. Another thing you get is a Walmart Plus. If you sign up for a Walmart Plus subscription and pay with your Platinum card, that gets automatically refunded as well. So that's what, I don't remember, $15 a month, something like that? 13 a month. Yep. Or I think 98 if you buy it for the annual version, which you wouldn't want to buy if you have a Platinum card because you'd only get $13 back.

So you would want to buy the monthly version. And yeah, I mean, this can be useful for free delivery from the store and some other small benefits here and there free shipping with a small minimum order size on the website. So those things are kind of nice. I also like the ability to scan your items in the app when you're in the store and check out without having to go to check out and rescan all the items. You can just scan them with the phone and then you do still have to go to the self-checkout to scan a barcode and pay, but you don't need to rescan all your items again. So it saves a little bit of time. Nice. And gas discounts too, I think, at Walmart gas stations. Yeah. So there's a number of benefits there. And as Nick pointed out, you shouldn't value this at the full $13 a month because you could buy the subscription annually for more like $100, just under $100. So at most,

this is worth $100, this benefit, but still. So if you value it, then we're talking about, let's call it $100. We're at, what, $1,000 in rebates, roughly, now that we've talked. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that's all pretty good. And the card itself earns decently on certain purchases. You'll earn five points per dollar on airfare and prepaid hotels. So that can be okay for those types of purchases. I just actually use this for a booking. I made an award booking with Virgin Atlantic where I had a bunch to pay in taxes and fees because I figured I would get the 5x on that at least since I was buying directly from the airline. I hope anyway, I haven't actually double checked to see if that came through.

But anyway, that's potentially good. And then, of course, the referral offers can be quite good with platinum cards sometimes. Yeah, they often have a really good refer a friend offers where if you refer a friend, you might get 20,000 or 30,000 membership rewards points. And it's worth also mentioning that membership rewards points are super valuable because they are transferable to a huge number of airline transfer program airline programs. whatever program has the best deal for what your current travel needs are. And you get sometimes incredible, incredible value for your points. So we always love transferable points. And between the earning 5X for airfare and prepaid hotels and refer a friend bonuses. And I should say, too, that when you're referring a friend,

you don't have to refer them to a platinum card. Amex lets you refer to from the platinum card to just about any other card, almost any other card that they carry. And so whatever the current welcome bonus is for that other card, maybe your friend is interested in a Marriott card or a Delta card or something, they can apply through your link for those cards. You get membership rewards points, they get Marriott, whatever the Marriott bonus or whatever the Delta bonus is. And so you both win from that

and great way to earn extra points. Yeah, I mean, I think we're gonna use that in my household probably because we have some big expenses coming up. So we have the ability to meet a couple of welcome offers. And so I haven't had the Hilton surpass or the new annual fee card in enough years that I probably am eligible for the welcome bonus, I think, again. And so my wife has a platinum card and she has an offer to earn 25,000 membership rewards

points for each approved referral. So she'll refer me and I'll open one of the Hilton cards. And so on top of the Hilton card bonus that I'll get, she'll get 25,000 membership rewards points. And that's really nice, especially when you stack that on top of all the other things. If you're able to do that once a year with something, then that could make sense. And we have seen, we should note, some people have the ability to earn as much as 45,000 points per referral. So if you get targeted for that, that's pretty awesome to be another nice little bonus that can make a big

dent in the cost of the card over the course of a year. So the other thing worth mentioning, I just added to the list. So I just popped into my mind is that we sometimes see authorized user bonuses on the platinum card, and sometimes they look pretty good. Now, I mentioned this in part because the most recent version of this is not necessarily as attractive as they used to be. So we've often seen situations where you get 20,000 points by adding an authorized user and having them spend $2,000 within, I don't know, three months usually I think is what it is. And I just got the email about that offer yesterday. The difference is in the past, you can get that 20,000 points for adding an authorized user as a companion platinum card, our companion card, I think they call it of some sort. So worth a mention here is that there's two

different types of authorized user cards on a platinum card, you can add a platinum authorized user and that costs $195, I believe, for a platinum level authorized user. So that authorized user would get platinum benefits like the clear reimbursement and the Amex. They get mostly things like the lounge access, the elite status benefits. They don't get the rebates on top of, in addition to your rebates, but they do get the sort of the elite type of perks, travel benefits. Travel benefits. There you go. So like Centurion Lounge Access, for instance, and that's what Delta Sky Club Access when

flying Delta. So that costs $195 to add an authorized user, a platinum level authorized user on the vanilla platinum anyway. And so now, and then I'm rather I should mention, I was as I was saying there that there's a companion platinum or companion card option that costs $0, where you can add a companion that doesn't cost anything at all, that person does not get those elite statuses or lounge access, then it's just that their spend earns you points, basically. And in the past, you could get those authorized user bonuses for adding either type of card,

whether it's a platinum level authorized user or a companion level authorized user. But the latest authorized user offer is only for adding a platinum level authorized user. I just got this in my email yesterday. And the way that the email looks was really misleading because they showed both the $0 annual fee companion card and the $195 one up top, right near the 20,000 point bonus. But if you read the fine print at the bottom of the email, you'd see that the 20,000 point bonus was only for a platinum level authorized user. So I mentioned that because if you do get the card and you get that email, you may think

that you can earn an easy 20,000 points with a no annual fee card. But it sounds like that's not the case, at least not the way the email, the fine print words it. But if you are going to add an authorized user, if you have that in mind to do, you might want to hold out and get the card and see if you get targeted for an offer to earn some points for adding an authorized user, because they do offer that periodically. And in some cases, we've gotten in more than once on a single card. Yeah. And depending on your situation, it might make sense for you to add a $195 authorized user. If you travel with your family a lot, most of the, we didn't really mention this, but most of the lounge benefits are for

just yourself. And so if you want the people that you're traveling with to also get in, then maybe having their own platinum card for $195 might be a good option. But another option to consider is whether they should get their own full-fledged one and also get all of those rebates. But you have to do the math and say, like, do we really want to be worrying about how to use the rebates? Why some of them aren't as valuable for the second person? Because, for example, those digital entertainment credits like, OK, you now you already have Hulu and Disney for free. You know, do you really value whatever the next thing on the list is as much? And maybe you

don't. Yep. Yep. So there you go. That was one other point turning opportunity to get into and mention anyway that you could potentially get that. So lots of ways to get good value out of your platinum card. At the end of the day, this is a card that I think Greg and I have both held on to for a long time because we generally find enough value in the rebates. And of course, we write about these things so that that weighs into the equation for us also. because we generally find enough value in the rebates. And of course, you know, we write about these things. So that, that weighs into the equation for us also, but we get enough value out of the rebates to make it worth keeping the card, or at least we have, I have, you have to, right?

I have. Yeah. Yeah. I, I'm a, I'm a, I'm a, uh, I guess a light fan, meaning like it's not something I go around to friends like, Ooh, you should get this. But, um, but, but yeah, it's, uh, I think it's at least the first one in your household is, is almost easy to get more value from it than, than the annual fee. When you're talking about second and third and fourth in your household, then, then the value goes down, but, uh, right. Right. But not many people are going to consider spending $700 on two or three or four of these

things. So right. Probably not a problem that most listeners have to worry about. But yeah, I think it's easy enough. Easy is perhaps a little too strong of a word, but easy enough anyway to get good value. Sometimes people talk about having to jump through the hoops and it's coupon book and this and that. And I get the complaints there. But at the end of the day, I don't, I don't have that

much trouble getting these. They, they aren't, it does require a little bit of effort. That's it. Just a little bit. Right. Right. And you know, if, if you travel, if you travel a good deal, then the, you know, finding an opportunity to use, for example, a $200 prepaid hotel credit, I find that pretty easy. Most, most of the time, most of the time because it'll come up because we travel enough that something comes up. Yep. Yep. That's really it. If you travel a lot, then it becomes more or easier to justify. Yep. Okay. I think that wraps up our main event, right? And moves us to this week's question of the week. This week's question of the week, I chose because I bet you other people have run into this and wondered about it.

And I think it's worth mentioning. So the subject line of the email said Hyatt dummy booking offer. A dummy booking for people who aren't familiar is when you go through the steps of like booking a hotel or a flight in order to see if you get targeted for a particular credit card offer during the process. Because sometimes when you're starting a hotel booking or a flight booking, you'll receive a credit card offer. And oftentimes it varies a little bit. It's different than whatever the main public offer is on a particular card. So Daniel writes in and says, Hi, FM team.

I wanted to let you know about a Hyatt dummy booking offer I came across. And so the details of the offer are that you could earn a $350 Hyatt statement credit plus 5,000 points after $1,500 spend in three months. And they included some information about it and said, I haven't seen this shared anywhere else in the blogosphere, but I could be wrong. Cheers, Daniel. So the details of this particular welcome offer on the Hyatt card, which again is not the regular public offer. This is an offer somebody saw when they were clicking through the process of booking a hotel. Offer, again, was up to $350 in statement credits as reimbursement for Hyatt purchases within the

first 12 months and 5,000 bonus points after you spend $1,500 on purchases within three months of account opening. Is that a good offer? Why haven't we written about that? Well, kind of regardless of whether it's a good offer or not, I think it's worth just mentioning that you can often find different offers than the public offers by going through the steps of booking a hotel or an airfare. Even if you're not planning on putting in your credit card information at the end, you often get a offer that's different from the public offers. And often they're better. Sometimes it's the same as the public offer, but add throws in $50 or $100 statement credit. And so it's in those cases, it's obviously better. Now, I don't have the current public Hyatt offer in front of

me. So it's a little hard for me to compare what you just said to the, uh, so the public offer on the Hyatt card for a long time now has been that you, they advertise it as a 60,000 point offer, but we don't list it that way because it's not really that. So what it is, is you have to spend a total of $15,000 to end up with 45,000 bonus points, plus the 15K that you learn from the 15K spent. So essentially, the short version of the story is you have to spend 15K to end up with 60,000 total points, including the points earned from spend. And we don't like to include those. So 15K for 45K is the general offer on the hyatt card

gotcha and this one and this one that you just read was like 300 yep i'm sorry 350 in hyatt credit so statement credits for hyatt purchases plus 5 000 points for only 1500 spent. Yeah. So, I mean, for, for those who, who can't do big spend, uh, it does obviously sound like a much better offer that now 45,000 Hyatt points for the public offer is worth way more than, um, $350 and Hyatt credit plus 5,000 points. Hyatt points are worth, what did we last see? About 1.7 cents each. But even if they're only worth one cent each, with 45,000 bonus points, you're talking about $450 value.

But now ramp that up to what? 700, something like that. Something like that, yep. So the overall value is, is much higher with the, with the public offer, but does require a lot more spend. So, all right. There's, so the public offer is two tiered. And so the first tier of the public offer is 30,000 points after a 3k spend, and then the rest of the bonus points require the 15k. So how about that? Would you take the 30 of the bonus points require the 15 K. So how about that?

Would you take the 30,000 bonus points for $3,000 spend or the $350 in Hyatt credits plus 5,000 points for 1500 spent? Yeah. Um, I mean, again, even though those two, the spend requirement is, is way, way lower for the 30,000 points. I mean, some people still, you know, maybe can't swing it. So for them, the $1,500 spend offer would be better. But I would much prefer to get 30,000 Hyatt points in the public offer. Yeah, I would too. So the 30,000 points in the public offer at 1.7, that's $570 in total value. So your $350 in statement credits for Hyatt purchases are only valid for Hyatt purchases. So I would hesitate to value them at the full $350, but even if we did, and then we take the 5,000

points that you're in there, 1.7. So you're talking about $85 worth of points and $350 in statement credit. So total of what is that $435 if I just did the math right back on 1500 spent, that's certainly not bad. But I would rather be doing the additional $1500 spend, I think for the additional 140 ish dollars in in value that you're going to get with the 30k for $3,000 spent. Now, either way, I would probably not recommend the world of Hyatt card if you're only going to spend the $1,500 on it and probably not if you're only going to spend the 3k on it. It's not a great card for that low, like 5000 points isn't going to get you very far on $350 in statement credits. It might get you a couple nights, but it's not a huge value.

I think your chances to get far more outsized value with Hyatt is through having Hyatt points. So I would want to have more points. And most people that should consider this card are probably people who value the annual free night certificate that you can earn with $15,000 spend on the card. And so that's when I think the regular public offer makes the most sense, because for that 15 K spend, you're going to get the 45,000 bonus points. And as long as you do the 15 K spend all in one calendar year, you're also going to earn a category one to four free night certificate. That's an addition to the one that you'll get an anniversary each year. So, uh, so I think the world of Hyatt card makes the most sense for people who are going to be

spending quite a bit on it. And if you only had the $1,500 worth of spend to do, I would probably be looking at a different hotel card because there's hotel cards from competitors that I think offer better value than 5,000 points and $350 in statement credits for about that much spend for, you know, one to $2,000 in spend the Hilton cards might be a better fit or the, uh, the Sinesta card. If you have Sinesta is where you're going might be a better fit. I'd be hesitant to recommend the Hyatt card. If you're only going to put, you know, if, if that is the limit, if the fact that the spending requirement is too high, the $1,500 fits your spending patterns better. I just think there are better cards out there for you probably.

Yeah. Now keep in mind this card, in addition to the free night you get with $15,000 spend, does offer an annual free night upon renewal. So I guess I wouldn't say that it's a bad idea for everybody who can't spend much because you you know, you might value that that free night each year and say, you know, it's worth spending the ninety five bucks for the annual fee in order to be able to stay at, you know, I know that that would otherwise cost, let's say, three hundred dollars for for the night. And so, you know, you're getting a decent value. Now, it's not for most people, night. And so you're getting a decent value. Now it's not, for most people though, I agree with Nick, it's not a slam dunk card if you're not valuing those other things. And really for most people

who aren't interested in elite status with Hyatt, which this card gives you five elite knights automatically plus ability or more through spend it's it's not like a it's not an obviously good card to have and hold i mean it's it's fine and and because of the free night annual free night you could you could definitely get more value than the annual fee it's just not a not a big win i think for most people yeah i agree i i don't think i'd be going after the card if i didn't like you said value the ability to spend to earn elite nights and so if you don't have the capacity for a lot of spend i

don't think this card probably is a good it's not a great fit like you said you can do better than 95 with the free night certificate each year but if you're after a free night certificate each year then i think there are other car other hotel cards that will have give you a certificate that's valid, but a greater range of places for a similar ish price tag. So I, yeah, I don't love this card if spend is a barrier for you. And it is I thought it was worth a mention, we're talking about this, because you do sometimes see much better offers as those dummy booking offers, but you also sometimes see much worse offers and the dummy booking offers. And so you really do have to do the math like this. I mean, I saw the answer wasn't obvious or clear or universal, even, you know, we didn't necessarily think it was a bad offer for everyone, but we obviously didn't think it was a good offer

for everyone either. And so you'll find that sometimes. So you have to kind of do the math and say, okay, well, how much is this worth? And, and you could reverse engineer it another way that we didn't and say, okay, well, the $350 in statement credits, you know, if we divided that by 1.7 cents per point, it's kind of like 20,500 Hyatt points. So it's actually relatively similar. I guess it's kind of a value of like three or 30,000 ish points or 25,000 points anyway. So it's not super far off of the first tier of the public offer. There's different ways you can, you can look at it, I guess, and approach it and try and decide whether it's a good fit for you or not. But this particular one, I wouldn't be going after.

Yep. Agreed. Okay. All right. And the story, let's finish things up here and end this episode. If you enjoyed what you heard this week, and you'd like to get more of this stuff in your email inbox each day or each week, you want to go to frequentmiler.com slash subscribe. Again, that's frequentmiler.com slash subscribe to join our email list. Follow us on all the various social media. Join our Frequent Miler Insiders Facebook group where you can ask questions and get a whole bunch more opinions on stuff just like that one. If you have a question that you'd like to be considered for a future question of the week or a piece of feedback that you'd like to be considered for a giant mailbag, you can send that to mailbag at frequent miler.com. Bye everybody.