Frequent Miler on the Air - How to use that 100K bonus, and which vacation home platform rules? | Ask Us Anything Ep75 | 5-7-25

Episode Date: May 13, 2025

How would we use that 100K bonus, and which vacation home rental platform has the best value? We answered these questions and more on the Ask Us Anything hosted live on YouTube on May 7th, 2025.(03:54) - ​​Hi! Q for Stephen: what’s your credit card strategy now that you’ve moved? For everyone: If you lived outside the US but could still have US credit cards, which cards would you keep?(06:45) - ​​Last month, y'all outlined how many cards you open each year- often 12-20. How many do you close each year?(10:23) - ​​I don’t know if I really want to know this answer (haha) but did anyone have luck with Atlantis after the Wyndham/Caesars status match deal went dead earlier this year?(12:47) - Any news when we can book Philippine Airlines with Alaska miles? Any ideas to get more Alaska miles to book Philippine Airlines tickets?(17:21) - Am going to book an Air France award ticket. Fees are $400+. If I use Amex Plat for this, will I get 5x? Will I get trip protection/insurance?(18:38) - ​​What is the best use of the recent 100K Chase point offering in terms of Flights overseas? Read our Best Use of Chase Ultimate Rewards points resource here. (30:32) - ​​Can you explain the expiration date reset if merging Avios from other programs with different expiration dates? Read our Avios expiration dates post here.(32:14) - ​​I was just bumped from an SQ J ticket that was booked as part of my RTW itinerary. Do you guys know what kind of compensation to ask for? They offered $525 USD and a Garuda Flight(34:18) - ​​Do authorized users of Ink Preferred or Sapphire be able to transfer points to their airline accounts?(35:25) - ​​Is the option to get both personal Hawaiian cards now dead? (I have both, but P2 does not have both yet)(36:16) - Would Chase allow me to hold multiple Ritz Carlton cards simultaneously? If yes, how?(38:07) - ​​Which vacation home rental program do you recommend for its value?(43:28) - ​​Anyone get/use the Mesa card?(45:03) - Any hidden gems in Puerto Rico that you guys would recommend? I have a trip coming up later this year that I haven't planned much for(46:26) - What's the most memorable reaction you've seen from someone experiencing miles and points who wasn't used to it(47:17) - Which cards does Greg actually use for travel and dining as opposed to the one-off benefits?Visit https://frequentmiler.com/subscribe/ to get updated on in-depth points and miles content like this, and don’t forget to like and follow us on social media.Music Credit – “swappin’ back n’ forth” by up @ night

Welcome to Ask Us Anything, where the frequent Mylar team answers your questions live. I think we're live. I think we're live. What a time to be live. Feels good to be live. Does. So, who all is in the United States right now? I am.

I am too. Steven? I am not. I am in Scotland. I am in a castle in Scotland. You are in a castle? Okay, I'm actually within castle grounds. We're not officially in the castle building. We're in, we're in Veloki Castle, which is an SLH property. And we're in one of the small walled garden rooms. So we're kind of like within part of the grounds and things like that. But it's not within the castle building itself. But the bedroom and the bathrooms in this particular room type are actually more spacious

than the bedroom that you get as a base room if you're within the building itself. So we're quite happy being here. I literally think you sound more British. I'm getting asked to do it in Castle, right? That's just going to get more realistic over time. I think it's Scottish that we have to start worrying just because I can't understand Scottish. Well, wait, now you mentioned it's an SLH property. So for anybody out there that's listening that isn't familiar, how did you book that?

And so SLH stands for Small Luxury Hotels of the World and booked it through Hilton because they have a partnership now. And we used three night certificates for this because it would otherwise have been, I want to say at the time it was about 105,000 points a night. I think now it costs 110,000 points a night. Otherwise like the room rates were like 800, 900 bucks or something crazy like that. So it's a really good use of three-night certificates and it's a fantastic property. So we were here for three days last week or the week before and had a fantastic

time. But we've come back because we got tickets for the steam train that goes over from Fort William to Malague, which is, and it goes over the viaduct that's in the Harry Potter movies and stuff. So we're taking that train like tomorrow. So looking forward to that. That's so fun. So basically what you're saying is that you and Shay are now making fortnightly visits to castles. Or adverb I haven't heard in a while.

No, maybe we'll find some kind of castle that we can rent. Oh yeah, totally. So on the Harry Potter train, do they have those like chocolate frogs? I hope. That's actually really nice. I feel like Shay may have gotten one when we were like somewhere before, but in, well, just trying to think of where it was. Oh no, actually at the Glenfinn and Viaduct, they have a gift shop. So you can... there's like a walkway where you can like go up and watch the steam train

go over the viaduct and they've got a gift shop there and they sell some Harry Potter stuff there. So in theory, we could like go grab some chocolate frogs. Do it! Do it! We've done the proper British thing though, and we've gone out and bought some scones and some jam, and we're gonna stop and get some clotted cream on our way there tomorrow. Oh nice. So we can keep it nice and cold, so we're gonna have it on the train just to live it up. But something that British people don't necessarily agree on is which comes first, the cream or the jam?

I'm sorry, we all agree there is a way, Greg. What is it? Like it is a travesty if you put the clotted cream on first and then the jam. Really? Yeah, like our friends who we were traveling with for a couple of weeks, one of them put the jam on after the clotted cream and like we just almost had to disown her. And just not let her be part of the jam. Would that be like trying to put butter on top of jam? I guess that would look pretty weird.

Steven, I'm going to make you hold the mic because the first question is for you. What's your credit card strategy now that you've moved for everyone if you lived outside of the US but could still have US credit cards? Which cards would you keep? Steven, what would you say? So credit card strategy, like still basically doing the same thing. At the moment, I'm still being recently been working on a signup bonus for business platinum cards. So I've been doing that. For now, I'm probably going to move over to the city Premier for a fair bit of stuff just because that gives 3x on gas, 3x on groceries and things like that and that's valid worldwide which is kind of handy. Although I have been using the Winter Business Card for gas recently just because

that earns 8x worldwide as well. It's not just for US gas stations, which is pretty handy. So yeah, my our strategy isn't changing too much. Like we still have an address in the US that we can use. So we can like still get US cards and things like that. I'm curious what the new Alaska Airlines card will be like as well, because that one is going to have a specific category for overseas spend. And so depending on what the other benefits of that are like, then that might be a good one to pick up in the future too. Yeah, that one would be amazing if they actually

let you keep spending on it indefinitely. Wasn't it 3X for Nashville? That's insane. Well, they call it a privilege. So I'm just out of curiosity. Do you, when you apply for cards and you're overseas, do you do it straight away or do you use a VPN when you make the applications?

And have you had any sort of issues with like applications going haywire for you when you've been overseas? So generally do use a VPN just automatically, just because I've got it turned on to like automatically boot up when I turn my laptop on. We use live internet access so for the most part then I tend to have that on so it basically always looks like we're in the US anyway. I did get a Discover It Miles card for my wife the other day, just more for the referral ability than anything else.

And that one, it went pending, and I'm not entirely sure what the actual issue with that was. Able to do an online chat, and then they just pushed it through, basically. They ended up sending a code to her phone, and that was basically all that they ended up needing to do. I'm not too sure if there will be any other problems but I'm pretty sure when we're in the US I've probably applied for cards before while my VPN was on and I don't think we've ever really encountered any problems so fingers crossed things will be fine. Yeah. All right, moving along. Tim, last month everyone outlined

how many credit cards you open each year, often 12 to 20. How many do you close each year? That's a good question. And it really depends on the year and on the specific cards. Like right now I have a ton of business platinum cards that I've been kind of working through, but either retention offers for that I found worthwhile

or what I've done with several of them, for instance, is I product change them to a business green card to get the vast majority of the annual feedback because the business green is what, 95 bucks, I believe, versus the 695 on the business platinum. And with all four that I downgraded, I had upgrade offers for 120,000 points after $10,000 spend within about six months of downgrading them.

So now they're all business platinum. But I actually find a lot of value in that because the great thing about those sorts of upgrade offers is you they don't rather not you've had the card there's they're still applicable you don't need to have a no lifetime link and 120,000 for $10,000 is effectively half of the $250,000 for $20,000 or $250,000 points for $20,000 spend that everybody's going whack on right now. So I haven't closed as many of those. That's just an example of why I wouldn't close any.

So I mean, in general, I'm hesitant to close a card unless I need the space or unless there's an annual fee or there's not a downgrade option that I like or there's an annual fee that I don't want to pay for whatever those benefits are. Part of the reason that is I don't want to have as few closes as possible on my account just because I think it helps my approval odds and that might be just superstition on my hand or my part, but I think with AMEX to me, it seems like it does. But then also I don't want to give up credit line. And I could call and I could manually move a credit line. And if I do close a card, I almost always do. But that's effectively the reason why. So in terms of like an actual amount this year, I haven't closed that

many. I've actually only closed like two, probably, so far. But it's April. So we'll see. And we'll have a bunch of these business platinum's coming up at the end of the year. It's not actually April. It's May. So it's May anyway. You're pulling a carry and thinking it's three months ago. I was wondering if I was watching a repeat of our show. You're living in the past. You might have been.

Tell me about it. Yeah, so anyway, that's for me. I would just say, I don't necessarily, my first option is never to close a card usually. My first offer option, my first, my kind of the way I go through it is, is there a retention offer that's worth keeping the card? Is there a downgrade option that's worth me taking? And if not, then I'll close the card. But other folks, I'm curious if anybody else,

how many cards you've closed this year, Kerry? I don't think I've closed any. So I think everything you said is along the right, along the same direction as how I treat it. Follow-up question from our viewers. Any difference between business and personal as far as what how likely or unlikely you are to close? Not really. No, not really. No, I mean, with AmEx, yeah, no, not really. I mean, not really. It doesn't really affect me either way.

All right, we're gonna move along to Nick. I don't know if I really want to know this answer, but did anyone have luck with Atlantis after the Wyndham Caesars status match deal went dead earlier this year? Well, I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news then I guess. Yeah, a lot of people booked it. So we wrote about back in January that if you had Caes's diamond status, which was set to expire on January 31st, you could book your Atlantis day. And initially I had heard I think that you could book through June or something. So I booked it in May and then I've heard other people that booked it said they were

told they could book it through the end of the year. And so anyway, I couldn't go in May and actually made the reservation but when I went to the email it said that it had to be canceled at least seven days in advance or there'd be a one-night penalty but I called anyway just to ask I said we're not thank you that was it so it's very very easy to switch it I was surprised I thought maybe they would want to I'd get a little pushback since I was doing it like I think the day or two before check-in two days before check-in maybe and so I thought I'd get little pushback since I was doing it. Like I think the day or two before check-in two days before check-in maybe. And so I thought I'd get more pushback, but I didn't.

So yeah, it's working. People have been staying that booked them and that wanted to go. And hopefully I'll get a chance to go still. I don't know. It's kind of a speculative thing. If we don't go, we don't go, but if we pull it together, then those emails that are like, it's time to check in and you're like, uh, for what? Remember that you'd booked something. I got one of those recently.

It's like, who is it? It's time to check where? Why did I forget to cancel? Exactly. But you know, the nice thing is these days a lot of chains do send you that like two days before and a lot of times that's the cancellation window is two days or sometimes even one day with high. And if you have globalist status, you can cancel up to 24 hours in advance, even if

it says a 48 hour cancellation policy. So I think the rule on that is actually the hotel has to have a cancellation policy of 72 hours or less for you to get the 24 hour cancellation window. But at any rate, what we have all talked about before is that oftentimes, even if you're within that window, it may be possible to just change it because now I've changed my reservation to much later in the year. So if I had canceled when it came up, I guess I would have paid the penalty. But now if I cancel, it's well over seven days in advance. So I wouldn't have to worry

about that. And we've all talked about that technique before. All right. I'm gonna shuffle things along to Greg. Any news when we can book Philippine airlines with Alaska miles, any ideas to get more Alaska miles to book Philippine airlines tickets? I don't actually, I'm not tracking what's going on with the Philippine airlines,

but for the second part, for getting more Alaska miles, there's several things. As long as American Express Membership Awards can still transfer points to Hawaiian, you can do that transfer and then move those points instantly to Alaska. And so I recommend it if anyone has a lot of membership rewards points and you're thinking, hey, it might be worth getting, you know, converting them to Alaska, do it sooner rather than later, because we expect that could disappear at any time.

And so that's a good one. Similarly, getting applying for Hawaiian Airlines credit card, either the personal one or the business one or both can be a source of Alaska miles. Then of course, there's Alaska credit cards themselves can get you some more miles that way. So you have, again, you have both personal and business and presumably a premium Alaska card coming sometime soon. We don't know exactly when though. All right. Anything else from anyone to add on that?

I have a question for the three of you. Are any of the any or all of the three of you not counting Carrie or actually no Carrie you can answer too if you are. Is anybody still like going hardcore to try to earn membership rewards with the intention of moving them to Alaska? Like is anybody still trying to amass Alaska miles before they lose that? Yeah, yeah. I'm trying to gather as many membership rewards points as I can.

I talked on a recent podcast, I think, about how I took advantage of, we had a Blue Business Plus with employee card offers. I think about how I, um, I took advantage of, we had a blue business plus with employee card offers. It was spend 4,000 points get, or spend $4,000, get 15,000 points when you had an employee card. And of course that card offers two points per dollar on the first 50 K per year. And then one X. Uh, so essentially if you spent four K, you'd get 23,000 points and you could

add up to five authorized users. So I'm doing this from memory net live doing the math. I think if you did all five, that's like 127,000 points. So I did a bunch of tax payments. I overpaid taxes in order to max that out on several of those cards and then filed my taxes and got a refund about two and a half weeks later. So that worked out nicely because I was able to meet

a bunch of that spend in order to earn some more membership rewards points. And yeah, I mean, I'm using my MX Gold at the grocery store and I may open one more. Certainly if I got one of those upgrade offers Tim's talking about, I haven't been able to get any of those. If I get one of those upgrade offers, it's certainly do an upgrade. Maybe I will open one more membership rewards earning card in the near future with an eye to earn the welcome bonus quickly, depending on how much spend I think I can do. I have a cruise coming up and there may be an opportunity

for spend there. So, but we'll see. I haven't decided whether I'll open another card, but we did just recently also open a business gold card, 175K welcome bonus. It was one of those where if you click around for a while, you might find it. And I did.

So, and we knocked out the 15 K spend in one shot because the family members doing a renovation. So it was very easy to do that in a single purchase. So, so yeah, collecting as many membership rewards points as I can. I I'm anxious. I'm always anxious about using all of our membership rewards points,

but I've also been able to put some big spent on capital one cards Recently, so I've got a fair number of capital one miles. So I'm less anxious now than I Would have been before I think I have enough miles to take care of myself if I Transfer most of our membership rewards points to hawaiian and I will this month The rumor is it's going to end in june. I I don't want to wait that long So I'll probably make a transfer in the next week or two So this month, the rumor is it's going to end in June. I don't want to wait that long. So I'll probably make a transfer in the next week or two. Are you still Greg? Do you still think that there because I've seen chatter about some people that

are still holding out for an Amix transfer bonus to Hawaiian. And I know that at one point you were kind of bullish on that. Do you still think that there's going to be a transfer bonus? No, I don't remember being bullish on that. But this is transferred. I don't remember it being bullish on that, but. Well, this is like last year. This was like way, like end of last fall. Yeah, no, I think that's extremely unlikely at this point. Yeah.

So I would just do it. If you wanna do it, do it now. All right, you heard it here. Okay, Stephen. I am going to book an Air France award ticket. Fees are 400 plus dollars if I use MX Plat for this will I get 5x? Will I get trip protection and insurance?

Provided it's a personal MX Platinum card, then you'll get 5x if it's a business Platinum you wouldn't because you only get 5x if you're booking through MX travel and so if you're booking an award ticket that wouldn't be the case. So personal platinum, yes, business platinum, no. In terms of trip protection and insurance, I believe that kind of like the cancellation and interruption and that kind of insurance, you would get coverage for when you're just paying the taxes and booking the rest with miles. I think

the card has some other kind of protections travel-wise that aren't necessarily covered just by paying for the taxes and fees if you're booking an award ticket, so you want to double check the terms and the benefits list on that card just to make sure. But if it's just purely for like that you're worried about the cancellation interruption insurance, I think that you're good on that. All right. This is going to be an everyone question, but we're going to start with Tim. What is the best use of the recent 100 K chase point offering in terms of flights overseas. Tim, how would you use that for an international trip? Best use. I would book high hotels. One of the things that I often think if you took and I shouldn't say this, but well, I'm going to say it anyway. If you chase to me, chase doesn't have a great airline portfolio, it's okay.

It's fine. But the reason why Chase has such a following, I think, amongst a lot of us is because we sort of look at ultimate rewards and we see Hyatt points. And so Chase goes to Hyatt. Now that's not to say that there aren't Chase sweet spots for overseas travel. And there are. But I think it's fun. The reason why I'm just bringing that up is because probably most of us here, our ultimate rewards become high points for the most part.

There is a post that I would because that's a big, when you say overseas, we're talking about the entire world, which is a really, really big question. I don't, you know, we don't know. Do you want to go to South America, Asia, Europe, where do you want to go? And there is a post that actually delves pretty deep into it. It's called Chase. Best Uses of Chase Ultimate Rewards. It goes through regionally and by Chase Transfer Partner and kind of shows you the sweet spots that can be had with each of the transfer partners that I think probably you'll get a much better idea of what's possible than you can through any of us answering a question

in 90 seconds. All that to say, probably my two favorites right now are Air Canada AeroPlan and then oddly enough Virgin Atlantic. Gosh, I've been using a lot of Virgin Atlantic stuff lately. Atlantic stuff lately. I just had, well, you know, it's funny, I just had a trip that I booked where I was going to Africa and I had two inter-African, I had, I wanted to go from the U.S. and I needed to stop in the UK and so I needed a flight from, because we're meeting a friend for a week and we're going to Cornwall to Cottages.com property, thanks Nick for your article about that. And so it was kind of a weird, but we got flights from the West Coast to London for 29,000 points each on a 40% transfer bonus. So it was like 20,000 points transferred over.

That's amazing. We got inter-Africa flights from Rwanda to Kenya and then from Kenya to Zanzibar for 4,500 points each with, you know, again on a 30% transfer bonus. And then what was awesome is, you know, you can imagine trying to get as well, Steven probably more than most people can imagine that trying to get from Cornwall to Rwanda is not necessarily the most straightforward thing when you're looking at award travel. But there's, there's like three nonstop flights from the whole of Europe. And one of them is a nonstop KLM flight from Amsterdam

to Kigali, which is the capital of Rwanda. And it was available on the exact date that we needed it. Air France won it 90,000 points and like $600 each way for it for the for the flight or not care France but flying blue which is the rewards program for both Air France and KLM using Virgin Atlantic points we got I think it was 54,000 points or 55,000 points it was low 50s and that but you when you factor in the 40% transfer bonus it was like 35 38,000 points and we paid I think 250 bucks per person and this is all in business class. I'm talking about all in business class. But I mean the economy stuff is even cheaper. It's really amazing to me since last year,

at the end of last year Virgin Atlantic for their own metal flights, for flights on their own metal, moved to dynamic pricing, and we all thought the world was gonna end. And there are some crazy nasty prices out there, but then there's also some really good deals, especially because there's always a transfer bonus to Virgin from something. So anyway, all that to say, I love Chase.

I think Chase from Air Canada, Aeroplan is probably the one that has the most wide applicability. We've got a ton of partners, great availability, but gosh, Virgin Atlantic has just been kind of tickling my value bone lately. So I really love that. Nice. All right, Nick, can you speak to that also? What would you do with that? Yeah. So like Tim said, it's a really broad question.

It's kind of like asking me what the ideal dinner for $50 is. It's like, it depends on what you like to eat. So it's tough to answer. However, what I will say is that if you're limiting yourself to just those 100,000 points and you really want flights and you want to go somewhere international, probably you're going to get the best values, apart from Caribbean, I guess, going to Europe. And that's because there are a few partners that have really good prices on economy

classified syrup. Virgin Atlantic is certainly one of them. So, you know, Tim was talking about incredible deals in business class, but incredible deals in economy class are even easier to find on Virgin Atlantic. Also, Air France, Kaelin, Flying Blue, does their monthly promo rewards. It's often possible to fly to Europe for something like 15,000 points one way in economy class with that program. And so again, your round trip at 30 there.

I just recently stumbled on the fact that the Emirates flights from JFK to Milan, and then Tim told me also, I think from Newark to Athens are 17,500 points each way in economy class. So you've got a number of different ways that you get to Europe. And then another one that stands out is Iberia, their business class off peak between the Northeast to the U S and Europe is 34,000 points. One way premium economy is 22,000 points one way. Premium economy is 22,000 points one way. So I mean, you could probably fly round trip either in economy or premium economy,

depending on which of those sweet spots I just talked about. And also stay a few nights in a Hyatt property with that 100,000 points. So you might be able to presumably fly two people round trip to Europe in economy class and stay a night or two in a hotel depending on where in Europe you're going with that a hundred thousand points.

So while I, my first thought was exactly what Tim said. Like if you had asked me first, Kerry, I would have said use them for high at hotels because that's what comes to mind with Chase Ultimate Rewards for all of us. So I totally agreed with that assessment However, if you're an economy class traveler that hundred thousand points can actually get you pretty far I mean, it's a pretty incredible value. So anyway, there's a bunch of those

We have a post that's chase ultimate rewards, but best uses of chase ultimate rewards Like Tim said that could really kind of give you a better breakdown depending on where you want to go and what you want to do. Eventually I'll stick that in the show notes. Just to piggyback on what Nick said, because I think it's a great point, is the economy class start from the East Coast is just insane.

Like you have, like I'm looking on seats.air right now, there's pages of economy class flights from the East Coast to London for 6,000 miles and $70 each way. That's nuts. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you, I mean, I mean, that's nuts.

That's an incredible deal. You know, you can file a whole family to the totally round trip and still have points left over for the hide hotel. Right. It's crazy. Um, yeah, I was looking at this tonight cause I'm looking into a trip back to the U S in a few weeks time. I'm just for a few days and yeah, Virgin Atlantic, just the crazy deal of like 6,000 points one

way. Another interesting one that cropped up as well was JetBlue from London Gatwick to Boston. The award pricing one way in economy was 14 and a half thousand points and I think it was about 165 bucks in taxes and fees, which as things go into and that was going from London to the US. So usually you can get a much better deal than that if you're going from the US to London, but from London to the US that was a surprisingly good deal because the one-way cash ticket with JetBlue was I want to say like five or six hundred bucks or something like that and so

even subtracting out the taxes and fees you're looking at about two cents per point for JetBlue which was pretty surprising as well because usually the rate that you'll end up getting with JetBlue is lower than that for your True Blue points So that one's like possibly tempting as well if you're looking for a one-way flight from the UK because otherwise Yeah, the taxes and fees usually make any kind of award pricing a bit of a deal-killer and especially in economy So but yeah, that one's I'm really excited about this idea now I feel like I want to write a post laying out a trend with 100,000 points that you're used to stop in like a couple of European cities because you could I mean, you really could do with Virgin Atlantic for short haul

on Air France and KLM. You could probably hit a few European cities with that one bonus for even two people. It's kind of an interesting idea. Thank you for planting that seed. Yeah, I thought we had an excursionist perk as well. Exactly. I'm glad somebody mentioned it. Greg, how about you? What would you do with your 100k? Yeah, well, you know, everything people said makes a lot of sense, except I want to stress one thing, which is that what you do is you wait until you find the award flight that works for you and is well priced, and then you transfer the points to the appropriate, whatever the airline is or to the Hyatt.

Because as you heard from all these examples, sometimes Virgin Atlantic's the right answer, sometimes Emirates is the right answer, sometimes JetBlue is the right answer, and sometimes Flying Blue is the right answer. Sometimes JetBlue is the right answer. And sometimes FlyingBlue is the right answer. You know, so you just, you just keep the points as transferable points. And then that puts you in that great opportunity, that great ability to strike, you know, when you see the opportunity.

And that's why we all love transferable points so much. We sometimes talk about Chase is mostly good for Hyatt, but it actually has very strong Nearline partners too. It's just that they overlap with what a lot of other programs have as well. So when you have points for multiple programs, the reason you wanna keep your chase points for Hyatt is because you could use other programs to book the flights and other than built, there's no other program that can transfer to Hyatt.

And Hyatt points are just so valuable that that's a great use of them. Steven, did you have anything else to add? I know you mentioned a few things, but more officially, what would you do with your 100K? Yeah, like Greg said, like it would just completely depend on what I actually end up needing to book. So I certainly wouldn't transfer anything speculatively,

but in terms of what I'd most likely be looking at, it would probably be Aeroplan, Flying Blue or Virgin. On that note as well, there are a couple of transfer bonuses right now for Flying Blue and Virgin from Chase, and so that's something else to look out for because usually Chase has a couple of different transfer bonuses each month. Sometimes it's only on the hotel partners, but then other times it will be for airlines, so that's worth keeping an eye out for as well for when you

need to book something. And there again, you'd probably still not do it speculatively though, right? You'd still confirm you can have a use first? Yes, especially with Chase Points, then I would, yeah. Yeah. All right, great. A lot of cool ideas there. Thanks, everybody. I think we're at Nick then. Can you explain the expiration date reset if merging AVOs from other programs

with different expiration dates? No, I can't. Hopefully somebody else can. I don't know off the top of my head. Yeah, we do have a post somewhere. So effectively what it is is when you transfer them, a lot of people think that when you transfer them, it resets the expiration clock, which it does not.

So what it does is when you transfer the points, all the points that are transferred in, join the clock of whatever program you're transferring to. So for instance, let's say if you're transferring from British Airways to Qatar, obvious, and you have never transferred to Qatar obvious before you have no points, there's nothing in there. Transferring points to British Airways, by my understanding, which is always, you know, limited, but will then create a it'll they will then expire 24 months because that's now the clock has been started. However, if you're transferring to Qatar

and you have a hundred obvious in there that are expiring in six months, now all of your obvious expire six months. So it doesn't reset the clock, it just joins the clock to whatever program you're transferring to, is my understanding. And we do have a post somewhere. There's like a post about... Yeah.

And am I remembering right? The British Airways doesn't have a clock. Isn't there's just no expiration or am I thinking that wrong? It was 24 months for everybody, but maybe that's changed within the last... I haven't updated the British Airways guide yet. I'll check our resources. All right, if I find something, I'll put it in the show notes. Okay, Greg, I was just bumped from an SQJ ticket

that was booked as part of my around the world itinerary. Do you guys know what kind of compensation to ask for? They offered 525 USD and a Garuda flight. Take it or no? No, I don't know. So, I mean, so when they say J, that means a business class flight, and then the SQ is like the two letter code for the airline,

which I think SQ is Singapore. And I mean, we don't know anything about how far that flight is or anything. So I can't say, I'm not sure I'd be able to say even if I knew that information, but. Yeah, I'm a little confused. If it was around the world itinerary, is there anybody else in StarLane

other than ANA that offers around the world Itinerary and so if that would make you feel like it's an a and a award But then Garuda is not a Star Alliance partner. I'm very confused What is that even mean? I think we would need more. I I guess I I read it as being that they The Garuda flight was the only alternative to get them from point B to C that the bummed flight blew. So they were actually like going to buy them that Garuda ticket

to get them to connect the dots in the around the world itinerary. That's what I'm assuming. And I guess it depends on like is the is the gruder flight in business class? Because if it is, and you're also getting $525 on top, I'd be fairly happy with that resolution. If it's getting me from where I am to where I need to be and getting more than $500 as compensation, then that doesn't seem too bad unless there's something more to it than that.

That also probably depends on where the flights are from in two. The Europe would have some rules about that, but other places won't. Okay, moving on, I think. Stephen, do authorized users of Ink Preferred or Sapphire have an ability to transfer points to their airline accounts? Yeah, so Sapphire Preferred, yes, like In Preferred I think that's the case too. Or is it, I forget now, like on business cards, are authorized users able to do that too? Or is it only on personal?

But yeah, certainly like with Sapphire Preferred, then you can do that. And I think that there's some kind of wait period where you have to have been an authorized user but can't remember the exact dates. Anyone else know the exact dates? I think that's with Amex that you're thinking of with the wait period.

Oh, okay. I'm not aware of a wait period with this. So I think with both you can, I've never tried it. So I don't know what's involved in making that actually happen. Yeah, because my wife and I have always had like premium cards and so we've never needed to worry about that. We've always had enough points in each person's accounts.

If somebody knows, put it in the chat, please. All right, Tim, is the option to get both personal Hawaiian cards now dead? I have both, but player two does not have both yet. Yes, there was a fedora wearing angel of deal killing death that wrote about this post soon afterwards. Test, test. No, unfortunately, yeah, it is. They've

Dealt killing bloggers. Dealt killing bloggers. Gosh darn it. Yeah, that's well, at least it's by all accounts, it certainly appears to have died. The reps are saying that now the Bank of America, Barclays, not Bank of America, Barclays, right? Barclays has changed the rules and no longer allows you to have both products. You can either have the Bank of Hawaii car branded card or just the street Barclays branded card. All right. Um, Nick, would chase allow me to hold multiple Ritz Carlton cards simultaneously? And if yes, how we really want to the same couple of them. Yeah. Yeah, I have more than one Yeah, you could just you have to so the Ritz Carlton card is no longer available for new applicants the only way to get it is to product change and

She doesn't have any rule against allowing you to product change to a card you already have So if you if you were let me back up you So if you were, let me back up, you, if you have a Ritz card right now and another consumer Marriott card, you could product change that other consumer Marriott card to another Ritz card. Now, if you don't have another consumer Chase Marriott card, I'd have to consult the Marriott Matrix of Death,

but I believe you wouldn't be eligible to get a welcome bonus on a new Marriott consumer card so you might be able to open one without a welcome bonus But I don't think that you could get a welcome bonus. I want somebody correct me if you know that I'm wrong But anyway, so but the the methodology would be to just to upgrade another consumer Marriott card similarly You know if you've got a freedom card And you also have a sapphire preferred you can downgrade your sapphire preferred and have another freedom card and then you can get another sapphire preferred and someday downgrade that and have another freedom card and Then someday get another sapphire preferred card and downgrade that never another thing

I mean, so it's same kind of thing chase doesn't have a rule against Holding multiple they have a rule against getting a welcome bonus on a card you already have. So if you already have a freedom card, you can't open another freedom card. You can only downgrade to it from, or product change to it from some other Chase card. So it's the same thing on the Ritz side.

I long had a Ritz card and a Marriott card. And so eventually I just upgraded my other Marriott card to have two Ritz cards. Now we'll move along to Greg. Which vacation home rental program do you recommend for its value? Well, I'm going to take liberty in interpreting what that's asking. I think what it's asking is which program can we use points for good value towards, not a review of vacation home rental programs because I am not equipped

to do that. So the only so most of them don't offer particularly good value for points. So for example, using Marriott points to book Marriott homes and villas is bad value for your Marriott points. Using Hyatt points to book their version of that is not good value for your Hyatt points. The one area where you could potentially get really good value is that I can think of off the top of my head is using Wyndham points to book Vacasa vacation rentals in the US and some in I think there's some in Canada and Mexico too and and also window points to book cottages.com in the UK those are the two places I can think of where you can potentially get good value and it really

just whether or not you get good value really depends on whether the cash price of the vacation rental hit sort of a sweet spot where the points are worth more than they'd usually be worth to use them for that redemption. All right. One thing about, I get to re-emphasize Greg's Wyndham points thing that also something that I forget about all the time is that Wyndham actually has their own branded vacation rentals, as well as the ability to book vacation rentals for shell vacations. Those you can actually book on the app and they don't have any dollar limitations like they do with the Vecasa. For instance, at the end of last year, I had to get a property up in downtown Vancouver,

or British Columbia for a concert we were going to. There was a, whatever the brand was, I don't remember, Worldmark or something like that, some brand of Wyndham Vacation Rental, that the one bedroom place was $750 per night. And I was able to book it for 15,000 Wyndham points per night with the 10% discount going down to 13,500 because I'm a card holder.

Yeah. Are you talking about timeshare rentals, basically when you're talking about those brands? I have no, I'm assuming they're timeshares, yeah. I'm assuming there's some sort of, but it's the same sort of thing where it's all fully furnished, one bedroom and two bedroom.

Yeah, and it probably is all timeshares. I'm assuming like- I think that's totally relevant to the question. I just wanted to clarify. But I always forget about that. And then, because I often don't even think to check the Windham app or the Windham actual booking engine to see if there's availability for one of those properties.

That's one of the tricky things is they have some great opportunities, but finding availability at some of them can be really, really hard. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. So similar to Tim, we booked a shared vacations property through Wyndham in Waikiki. And yeah, that was 15,000 points a night for it was a studio suite, but it was like spacious. It had a balcony and like a full kitchen and things like that. So that one

was really good value and that was over New Year as well. And so being able to stay in Honolulu over New Year for 15,000 points a night was fantastic value. In terms of like all the other vacation rental things, so just a few quick things. Airbnb I really like, we spent a whole ton of time in Airbnb's on our road trip around the US. You can often get discounted gift cards for Airbnb and so that's one way to get even better value. Verbo we've never actually booked but Capital One Shopping, But Capital One Shopping, recently I've been getting quite a few emails for targeted offers for other travel programs like Hilton, IHG and things like that. But within that email, they've offered 15% backer, Verbo, which is a really decent deal. Plus you'll get two, I think it's 2% one key cash or maybe it's 1%.

I don't know, I just wrote a post the other day about it. It's I think 2% of your platinum status. It's zero if you have their basic status, I think it is. Maybe 1% if you have whatever their other status is in the one key program. Marriott homes and villas, they often have bonus point promotions. They got one at the moment where you can get 40,000 bonus points when you're spending 1500 bucks and staying at least two nights so those can be decent deals plus there's often like Chase offers and Amex offers for Marriott Homes and Villas so that's another option and I feel like there's some other option that hasn't been mentioned and I'm blanking on it

at the moment but yeah so basically all of your different options there, for the most part, is some kind of way to get additional value out of it. I'm looking at higher homes and hideways because I haven't really seen anything about that since they launched it that makes it worth booking. All right, perfect. Thank you. So let's move on to...

Where was I? Greg, I think, no, Tim. Has anyone got or used the Mesa card? No, so the Mesa Homeowner's Card, I just wrote a post on this last week, I believe, is the first that I'm aware of credit card that actually gives you points based on your mortgage payment, as opposed to built, which is gets you points based on paying rent. And without going through all the ins and outs of the card,

it's a quirky card, it's interesting. There's a post on it, you can check it out. But I believe I'm the only one that actually has a mortgage here. So I'll probably be the one to buckle down and get it in the name of science. And actually I'm just kind of curious about it because it is a unique product and we see enough of these things come out that it's not often you see something that's unique. Like, oh, I haven't really seen something like this before.

So I will probably be getting it in the near future and then giving it a test run and seeing how everything goes and so forth. It's pretty exciting because while you need to prove that you have a mortgage and how much it is, you don't actually use that card to pay your mortgage, but you get points based on the size of the mortgage, which means that if or when BILT finally delivers in making it possible to pay mortgage and earn rewards doing that, it should be possible to double dip. And I find that really interesting and might be time to kind of re-mortgage my home. Gregory finances his non-existent mortgage.

No, no, I need it to be a bigger mortgage. Nick, any hidden gems in Puerto Rico that you guys would recommend? I have a trip coming up later this year that I haven't planned much for. So my only trips to Puerto Rico were before Miles and Points. So I don't have any hidden gems in Puerto Rico

to share unfortunately. Anybody been there more recently and have a- I have a long time for me, but we loved the bioluminescent Bay that you can get a little. What's that? I think that's vehicles. Perry, do you have any, I think there's one right from the sort of mainland.

Cool. Did you have any, did you have, cause you actually, it sounds like you've been to Puerto Rico more recently than any of us. Did you have any specific gems you have, because you actually, it sounds like you've been to Puerto Rico more recently than any of us. Did you have any specific gems that you wanted to recommend? Rincon, if you road trip from San Juan to Rincon, you get a beautiful view of the coast. And there's a place called, I think, Pozo Teodoro. That's really pretty, kind of like on the northwest coast that I recommend. Those are, I didn't explore as much as I would have wanted to.

So that's all I could say. I didn't get to see the bioluminescence, for example. Let's take a picture, Nick. I got one actually, this is an older one that I don't think we ever answered. That Jim put on the post a few months ago. And he wanted to know your most memorable, fun, noteworthy response you witnessed from someone who experienced luxury travels or stays for the first time.

Might be people you specifically helped getting that experience, but not limited to this. So I thought that was kind of an interesting one. Have any of you brought someone along on a trip that is not used to this life? And what was memorable? Yeah, we took Drew's mom to the intercontinental Paris, like the one right by the museum.

And we were like, we're gonna go see the Eiffel Tower now. She was like, I'm gonna hang out in this hotel. And then we kept being like, we're gonna go see the Eiffel Tower now She's like I'm gonna hang out in this hotel and then we kept being like we're gonna go see that The museum or that arch and she was like this hotel is too nice. It was really cool It was cute. That's kind of fun fun. All right, I got one for Greg Greg So Jack says Greg just gave up his chase Sapphire Reserve yet He still has 80 plus cards inquiring minds want to know what cards are in his wallet that he actually uses for travel and dining, as opposed to those one-off benefits.

Yeah, well, for dining, I've been using for years my City Prestige card, which no longer available for new applicants, but if you have it, you can still have it, and that gets five points per dollar for dining, five thank you rewards points per dollar. So that's great. And for travel, I am struggling to figure out exactly what my approach is. So my sort of rough approach is if I'm booking travel where I think I might need built-in travel protections from the credit card,

then I use my Ritz-Carlton card, which has equal travel protections to the Sapphire Reserve. But the downside is, even though it earns, it also earns three points per dollar for travel, it earns three Marriott points per dollar for travel, not three ultimate rewards points per dollar. So I think of those as worth about half of what an ultimate reward is worth.

So the value of the earnings for that is not nearly as good. So I'm looking at other cards like the, well, my Prestige card gets 3X or 5X on different types of travel things. My US Bank altitude reserve gets 3X for travel. So those are some others that I look to for travel things. My US bank altitude reserve gets three extra travel. So those are some others that I look to for travel purchases. All right.

So because YouTube cuts us off or Zoom, I don't know which one, at about an hour for these lives, then I think we're gonna wrap up here. So thanks for joining us. And don't forget to like this video. Yeah. So thanks for joining us and don't forget to like this video. Yeah