Frequent Miler on the Air - How we use our Hilton credit card perks | Frequent Miler on the Air Ep295 | 2-28-25

Episode Date: February 28, 2025

Hilton credit cards come loaded with perks that CAN BE worth more than the card's annual fee IF you use them well. On today's show, we discuss how we use these credits. (01:06) - Hilton points for the win that all starts with the Venture X credit card promo to enter into the special access raffle to buy Taylor Swift tickets. (06:24) - This person was trying to use up a $200 Hilton resort credit for themself and their player 2 account, booking on December 31st for a date beyond the expiration. (09:39) - Hilton has a bad habit of taking a substantial deposit (in this case, several hundred dollars) at many of its resorts at the time of booking. But is booking with points and cash (sliding the cash slider as far as possible) a way around this?. (15:15) - Learn more about the Hilton Aspire card here. (17:15) - Diamond status (18:42) - Annual Free Night Reward every year (20:19) - $400 Hilton Resort Credit per calendar year ($200 semi-annually) (22:11) - $200 Flight Credit ($50 per quarter for purchases directly with airlines or via Amex Travel) (24:05) - $199 CLEAR (R) Plus fee credit per calendar year (24:35) - $100 on-property credit with Aspire Card package (25:24) - Learn about the Hilton Surpass card here. (26:12) - Free night award after $15K spend in calendar year (27:55) - Free Gold status. Diamond elite status with $40K calendar year spend (28:40) - $200 in Hilton credits ($50 per quarter) (30:28) - Learn about the Hilton Business card here. (32:16) - Free Gold status. Diamond elite status with $40K calendar year spend (32:31) - $240 in annual credits for Hilton purchases (Up to $60 per quarter) (33:27) - Complimentary National Car Rental(R) Emerald Club Executive(R) status (34:07) - You gave advice that if using "2-player mode", both applicants should open their Hilton Aspire cards on the same day. If you didn't do that and your annual free nights don't post together, is there a way to fix this?

On today's episode, we'll give you an example of a great use of Hilton Points. We'll show you why you might want to use your Hilton Points to pour value. And we'll talk about how the Hilton credit cards can pay for themselves. Frequent Miler on the air starts now. Today's main event, how we use our Hilton credit card perks. Hilton credit cards come loaded with perks that can be worth more than the card's annual fee if you use them well. Now I'm not saying we necessarily use them well, but on today's show, Nick and I are

going to talk about how we use our Hilton credit card perks. Yeah, you know, I think there's some value in learning what we actually do, not just what you can do, but what are we actually doing day by day with these types of cards? Because Greg and I have a lot of cards and so we'll talk about how we use the perks on the Hilton cards today. But first, don't forget, if you want to jump ahead to a specific segment or you want to come back to something later on, you can always find the timestamps in the show notes. So just expand those to jump around wherever it is you want to go and wherever it is that

you're watching or listening to this, don't forget to like it, give us some feedback, leave us a review. We appreciate that stuff from you. Now we're going to listening to this. Don't forget to like it. Give us some feedback. Leave us a review. We appreciate that stuff from you. Now we're gonna drag out this week's Giant Mailbag. Today's Giant Mailbag is extra big. On today's show, instead of our many usual segments, we're gonna be doing three pieces of giant mailbag mail and then move right into the main event from there.

We're gonna start with a giant mail from Brian, whose subject heading was Hilton points for the win. Brian says, this all starts with the Venture X credit card promo to enter into the special access raffle to buy Taylor Swift tickets. I was on a side. I don't even remember this. Do you remember this, Nick?

Oh, I sure do. My wife's a Swiftie. So was on a side, I don't even remember this. Do you remember this, Nick? Oh, I sure do. My wife's a Swiftie. So yes, I did try to get tickets that way. And a number of people reached out, because I had mentioned something about Taylor Swift on the show, and a number of people reached out to let me know when that happened. And I didn't get picked to buy,

or I did get picked, maybe on one of them, but it was like a late time. So I didn't get tickets through it. I can tell you that. That's not how I got my tickets. Well, anyway, as is gonna be clear as I read this, this is a pretty old piece of giant mail. I just never got around to reading it on the show before.

And Brian goes on to say, my wife is a huge fan. Now this is of Taylor Swift, not of a freaking mile around the air, by the way. Both, I'm sure. It might be. I'm guessing Brian is a bigger fan here, but we'll see. So I entered thinking there's no chance I would get selected, but nothing to lose, so let's give it a shot. Next thing I know, I got off the wait list

and was selected to buy two tickets for the concert on November 1st in Indy, Indianapolis. Great, this is awesome. I've certainly won husband of the year, but we live about two and a half hours away from Indy, Indianapolis. Great, this is awesome. I've certainly won husband of the year, but we live about two and a half hours away from Indy and needed a place to stay. We got the tickets roughly six weeks before the concert and the hotels for Taylor Swift concerts book out a year in advance. I initially looked at Hyatt because they're awesome, but of course they were all sold out with the

exception of one about 40 minutes from downtown. I decided to search on Expedia to see if any hotels even had any availability in the downtown area. I found two, one being the Conrad Indianapolis. I remembered a couple of days ago reading an article about Hilton having the 100% bonus sale when buying Hilton points. A standard king room was going for $3,000 for one night. I figured the number of points needed would be astronomical. But lo and behold, they only wanted 70,000 points for this room on that night. I couldn't buy these points quickly enough. And as an aside, when there's 100% bonus, that means points are half a cent each. He says, now my wife and I are staying right downtown at the Conrad, Indianapolis for 70,000 Hilton points that only cost me

$350. Incredible considering the $3,000 cash rate. I love this credit card points hobby and want to say thank you for all that you do in this realm. That's awesome. That's really awesome. And that's one of the things I love about miles and points It makes it possible to do stuff like that and not only to do it but to recognize that type of arbitrage opportunity And I and I think that that's the value of being in tune in the game Even when it's stuff that you don't think applies to you Maybe you never stay at Hilton properties, but you happen to be a Taylor Swift fan and you're in that boat Well, it's really good to be someone who just knows generally that Hilton often sells their points for half a cent each and if there's a standard room, it

might be available as an award and so be able to connect those dots. Great job really well done and I think that that really shows the outside value that's possible when you play this game when this is your fun and your entertainment, you can get something really wild that a lot of other people would have thought was totally you know out of the realm of possibility they would have looked and said, oh no, I can get something really wild that a lot of other people would have thought was totally out of the realm of possibility. They would have looked and said, oh, no, I can't do that.

It doesn't make sense. Instead, you found a way to do it. Well done. Yeah, yeah, it's fantastic. And just so people know, if you're not familiar with how Hilton points work with awards, if you just go on to Hilton.com and do a search for a room, you might see astronomical room prices, and

those are premium room awards. Those show up as prices for rooms that are not considered standard rooms. So every hotel has a set of rooms that are considered standard rooms. If they're available for sale, they should be available at the maximum point price that Hilton has for that hotel or less. And so what I mean by that is like Hilton for every hotel, they have sort of a hidden award chart where they say, for standard rooms, we're not gonna charge more than in this case, it's probably 70,000 points.

And so if you go to book that room and it's, you know, and the cash rate's really expensive, if the standard room is available, it should be available for that max rate, that 70,000 points. And so in situations like that, buying Hilton points for half a cent each, if you don't already have Hilton points, can be an awesome deal. In this case, it was absolutely, he was getting, you know, if you consider the it was absolutely he was getting you know if you consider the cash rate he was getting almost 10 cents per Hilton point which is right right good or no I'm sorry almost almost five cents per Hilton point doing doing very well you were doing very well that's the bottom line there so yeah nicely done and you know I think that

was a big big win so congrats to you absolutely Absolutely. All right. That's not all. We also have a piece of giant mail from anonymous. Anonymous says, I wanted to use up the $200 Hilton resort credit for my, my and my P2, my player two account on May, 2025 on a May, 2025 domestic booking on December 31st. So what Anonymous is saying is they wanted to make this booking on December 31st of last year for May 2025, in order to use their Hilton Resort credit that comes with the Hilton Aspire card before 2024 is up. So, you know, every six months,

you get $200 of resort credit if you have the Hilton Aspire card. And Anonymous was trying to use their $200 credit that would have expired on January 1st. And so they're trying to use it before it's too late. So they want to say, booked early on the 31st for one night in May 2025 and then called the hotel and spoke with accounting and charged both $200 charges to the room. So two different Aspire cards made two $200 charges to the room over the phone. It showed as pending, so I wasn't sure if it would go through. Success eventually, but had to call Amex to remind them to credit for player two's, for a massage, in quotes, that was charged to the room. That's what apparently they told Amex the $200 charge was for.

The only thing that was charged, and I don't actually think they needed to do that because The only thing that was charged, and I don't actually think they needed to do that because any charge to a resort should count. Like there's no reason that it doesn't have to be a fee or something. Anyway, and they go on to say, the only thing that was charged on this credit card was the $200 charge, so that may have made

AmEx reluctant or suspicious of the charge. I don't think so, but that's just the end of their email. I don't think so either, and I don't think it was probably necessary to reach out and remind them because this, I don't know exactly when this one came in, but it was probably a while ago and it sometimes takes a while to receive those credits. A lot of times people get nervous if they don't see a credit in three days or five days or something, and sometimes it takes weeks. So I would have probably not been nervous for quite a long while. I mean, at this point, as we record this, about six weeks into the year or so.

And now is about when I would get nervous and maybe message him. I guess if I hadn't received the credit yet, but I'm thinking probably they just jumped the gun because there's no reason they'd be suspicious. And there's no rule that you can use it towards your room charge. You can use it towards some massage or towards dinner or whatever you want, as long as that charge comes at one of those eligible resorts. Right.

The key learning here is that sometimes you can get a hotel to make a charge to your card earlier than your stay. And that can be useful for things like using up these credits. For sure. For sure for sure very good well done No, that was a good use of it And we've talked about some hotels charge in advanced deposit sometimes you can call and get them to to make charges ahead of time So yeah, definitely you want to do that if you need to use up your credits like Greg said. Yep. All right

third piece of giant mail comes from DSK. DSK says, I know a lot of people are paying more attention to Hilton lately. I just booked a cash reservation at a Hilton resort in Central America on the $200 Amex resort reimbursement list. So Hilton has a page where they list all the resorts, all the hotels that count as resorts for their Aspire credit. Hilton has a bad habit of taking a substantial deposit, in my case several hundred dollars, at many of its resorts at the time of booking, which is a pain because a. the money is tied up until your stay, b. if you cancel

you may need to contact the hotel to get them to refund your deposit, which I've had to do in the past, and c, it inhibits rebooking when the price goes down since you will be out two deposits until the first one is returned. Normally, the Hilton points and cash option is not a good idea. However, in playing with it a bit, if I move the slider as far to the left as possible above zero, it removes the obligation to leave a deposit. Now, as an aside, what DSK is talking about here is anytime you book a room with Hilton, you can decide what percentage you wanna pay

with points or with cash. And so what DSK is saying is they, and they have like a slider online to determine how much of it is what. So what DSK is saying is basically they found the way to use the smallest number of points possible, but still make it a partial points stay. So after they moved the slider as far to left

as possible above zero, it removes the obligation to leave a deposit. So DSK didn't want to leave a deposit, found that by using a few points, they didn't have to leave a deposit. In my case, I can move it as low as 5,000 points. The points value of that 5,000 points was pretty bad. So 0.39 cents per point. But I would gladly trade about $10 of suboptimal value or less depending on how you value Hilton points for the ability to not leave a deposit at the hotel for nearly a year and the freedom to change

or cancel my reservation if something comes up without hassle. That's a really interesting technique. So essentially what DSK is doing here is redeeming a small number of points at poor value in order to reduce hassle and reduce the mental bandwidth that it takes to track, you know, did I get my deposit back?

And to tie up that cash that you could be doing something else with, which is particularly important for somebody who perhaps is trying to work with a limited amount of cash. A, maybe you just don't have that much cash. B, maybe you're in retirement phase and you're trying not to draw out more than you need to and you make a lot of reservations so you don't want to make a whole ton of deposits that you have to float for months and months at a time. Because that just means money that comes out of investments that could have been

earning more for you. So I could totally see where this might make sense. It's not a great use of points like DSK freely admits here in that you're accepting suboptimal value, but that's an interesting way to optimize. I wouldn't have probably thought of that myself because I don't make that many of these reservations. So I wouldn't be too worried about how long it takes me to get the deposit back. Usually that happens in a reasonable amount of time. But if I were making a lot of these, I would think that maybe that would be of interest. So thank you for bringing that up.

It's an interesting point for people that I wouldn't have been aware of that. I wouldn't have known that. And so if I ever find myself in that position where I say, oh man, I really don't want to have to pay a deposit at this place, that's a way to avoid doing it. Yeah, I found it really interesting for all the reasons you said.

And it's also interesting because, you know, on today's show, we're gonna be talking about situations where you want to pay a deposit because you wanna get the Hilton credit. You want your Hilton credit card to be charged. And it occurs to me that, you know, there are times where it kind of points out that while we often want it to be charged because of these weird credit card coupons basically, in normal times it'd be much better

not to be charged and here's an easy way of avoiding that charge. And you just are sacrificing a few points for low value in order to get that ease and not have to float that money. It all makes sense, a lot of sense to me. Yeah, well, I mean, if you think about it, if you're able to buy those 5,000 points for 25 bucks, he's saying the value he got was about $20 out of those points. So I mean, so sacrifice five bucks. That's a pretty low sacrifice. So I actually think that five bucks, you know, that's the, that's a pretty low sacrifice.

So I actually think that that's an interesting way to avoid that. Another thing that I think maybe we ought to mention for clarity on a number of these data points here is that it gets a little confusing when you talk about Hilton credits, because as Greg pointed out at the beginning of this one, he was talking about the Aspire card and a resort that was on the Aspire card list, which actually probably didn't even matter for the purpose of the example that DSK is giving here.

That's true. Because I think DSK is looking to use a credit later on in some other part of the year, which doesn't even really matter for the purpose of the example overall. But the Aspire card, that credit on that one only works at resorts on a specific list. Whereas if you've got the Hilton business card, for instance, or the surpass card, those work at any Hilton property. So it gets a little confusing, but we'll talk more about that when we talk about how we use the various credits. All right. That brings us to this week's main event.

Today, we're going to talk about how we use our Hilton credit card perks. So we're going to start off with the Hilton Aspire. We'll make our way through the Hilton Surpass and also the Hilton business card. But let's start with the Hilton Aspire and we'll make our way through the Hilton Surpass and also the Hilton Business Card. But let's start with the Hilton Aspire card. This is the most expensive of the various Hilton cards and it comes with the most perks, we'll call them. A lot of different things to use every month. So base level card costs $550 a year.

That's the annual fee, which is kind of steep if you're just looking at the fee. But when we dig into the perks a little bit, maybe it makes sense for you. I'll just start with the spending bonus categories and I'll let Greg take it from there So this card offers 14 X and spend at Hilton properties So if you're staying in Hilton, you're gonna earn 14 points per dollar 7x on US restaurants and flights booked directly with airlines Or at amx travel comm select car rental companies also earn 7x and then it's 3x on all of the other eligible purchases. So $550 annual fee. Those are your bonus categories, but the card offers a lot more than just its bonus categories. Yeah, it really does. Now I don't have this card just yet as we're talking. So Nick, we titled this Coffee Break, how we use our Hilton credit card perks. How do you use these category bonuses? I don't really use these category bonuses at all I don't put any spend on this card over the course of the year except

You know Maybe if we're staying at a Hilton property or to use the various credits that we'll talk about in a few minutes But I don't use this on any day-to-day purchases I don't use the 7x Categories at all because it wouldn't make sense for me to do that since I have an MX gold card that earns four membership rewards points per dollar at restaurants for instance worldwide not just US restaurants but worldwide on up to $50,000 in spend each year and then I could transfer those to Hilton if I wanted Hilton points and the transfer ratio would make that worth eight Hilton

points per dollar so there's no sense in me earning seven Hilton points per dollar on restaurants and I'm not going to use this card for any of the other types of 7x purchases so me earning seven Hilton points per dollar on restaurants, and I'm not going to use this card for any of the other types of 7x purchases. So 14x at Hilton, if I'm spending money at Hilton, then certainly we'll pull this card out, but that's about it. Yeah, that totally makes sense. Okay, I'm going to list the rest of the card benefits, and you tell me how you make use of each one.

So the card gives you diamond status automatically just for having the card. That's top tier with Hilton. What do you get out of that? Well, you know, it gives you a breakfast credit within the United States or free breakfast outside of the United States, free continental breakfast, which sometimes might be a buffet or sometimes might be a menu type of a situation. But so diamond status gets you that the breakfast credit or the breakfast outside of the United States. Also gives you lounge access, which we haven't used a lot because there aren't tons of Hilton properties with lounges, but we did stay at the Hilton Tokyo Bay just last year when we went to Tokyo Disney and we had lounge access there.

So we had some afternoon snacks and that was nice. Okay. And of course, it gives you the chance of upgrades as well. And it's worth noticing that it's worth noticing. And it's worth noticing that the breakfast and food credits are also available to anyone with Hilton Gold status, which you can get automatically if you have, for example, an MX Platinum card. So this one gives you a higher level status, but it doesn't give you, that level status doesn't necessarily give you

a lot extra over gold. No, really it's just access to lounges over gold that you get and I guess, the erratically higher upgrade priority, but I can count on one hand the number of times I've gotten a meaningful upgrade with Hilton either way. So. Yeah. Yeah. All right.

Let's get into more meaningful benefits, annual free night reward every year. What do you do with your? So these are uncapped. You could use them any day of the week. They used to be weekend only, but now they're any day of the week. You'd use them any Hilton property or SLH partner property, the participating property or auto camp. How do you, how do you make sure you use these every year? Well, so in years past, it's been pretty easy because I live about three hours away from New York City by car, and we end up going to New York City every year at least once. And so I would use them at a property in New York City that costs a lot of money or points usually.

Although my preferred property was the Conrad Midtown, and that's now a Marriott property. So maybe I'm a little bit less likely to use that in New York now unless I can find availability at the Waldorf Astoria, but I'm even more excited now because you can use these at SLH properties. So this year we've got a stay lined up at the Grand Hotel Victoria and SLH property in Minaggio on Lake Como in Italy. And I'm really excited to be using a free night certificate for that stay. And in the future, I'm sure we're much more likely to use these at SLH properties, probably

in Europe, than we already use them on domestic properties. But we usually don't have very much trouble finding a use where a hotel might have cost us $300 a night or more. And in some cases, especially with the SLH properties, it might be a property that would cost far more. Like the Grand Hotel Victoria, it's not uncommon for them to charge $1,500 a night or more for a standard room in high season. So I'm excited about that use.

Yeah, absolutely. All right. So that's not even close to it of what this card offers you. So you also get $400 in Hilton Resort credit per year, but it's broken up as $200 every six months. Do you make use of that every six months? Yeah, this is more of a pain. We have, but it's more of a pain because it only works at properties that are on a specific

list of resort eligible properties. And it's not like all properties with resort in the name and some of the properties are places that might not seem like resorts at all. So you have to consult a list. It's kind of a pain. We've been lucky the last couple of years we've ended up planning a trip to Las Vegas. Sometimes they work out and sometimes they don't. But the hotels there tend to charge a one night deposit. And so for instance, we've booked a hotel there before and they charge a one night deposit. And then if you cancel the stay, you end up getting refunded. But at least that charging of the deposit triggers the credit on the card.

So we've done that sometimes. Other times I've written about, we've written to a hotel in advance to ask to make a deposit on a booking that we have there. And again, whether or not that booking has worked out has varied from time to time, but oftentimes, they'll be willing to take an advanced deposit and pay it that way. So those are the two main ways we've used it.

I think right now, this six months, what we're gonna do is we're going next week to be in South Florida, and there's a number of properties on the list there, and we'll probably just look to have a meal at one of those properties in order to use the credit. Hopefully that's gonna work, we'll see. Yeah, sounds good.

So you're gonna be having what, a $200 meal at that property? Which isn't to be fair, I mean, there's five of us, so it's not that tough, yeah. Yeah, at a resort with four people or more, if you have another family with you. I'm sure that's not tough. Okay, so now you've already gotten $400 back from the $5.50 annual fee, plus you've got the free night each year, you've got your diamond status, but you also get $200 back

in flight credits, but those are parsed out $50 every three months, so every quarter. How are you using those? So very similar to what we do with other cards. We've got a notebook with these various credits written down that we have to use. People who are more in the 21st century or whatever might be using a spreadsheet on their computer. I would recommend that for most people.

But we have a physical notebook where we write this stuff down. And so I so yes, it is. So so we make sure that the first day of each quarter now, what we do is we buy a cheap Southwest Airlines, want to get away plus fare. And usually you can find some routes, particularly routes in California or between California and Las Vegas that are around 50 bucks for a one-way fare. And so we'll use it on one of those. And I say want to to get away plus because if it's a $50 ish want to get away plus fare, it will trigger this credit. And if you buy a want to get away plus fare, then the resulting flight credit, if you later

cancel your trip, so we'll book a flight from California to Las Vegas for three months from now and then two months from now plans change and we cancel that flight. But because it was a want to get away plus fare, it's a transferable credit and their their credits don't expire so we end up with a southwest credit that we can then transfer to somebody else if we need to or use for ourselves. I like the transferable credits over booking the cheapest possible want to get away fares because for instance we're going to fly southwest soon we've got another family member joining us and so we were able to move over flight credit that we had earned that sort of way to that person so that they could buy their ticket too. So anyway I find that to be a good use. Another way we've used it before is paying the award

taxes on an award booking particularly flights departing Mexico tend to have award taxes in the vicinity of 50 bucks so that can be a good use also. All right. Now the next two I'm going to mention are maybe less generally useful so if you don't use them just say so and we'll move on. Next one is up to $199 in clear, clear plus the fee credit per calendar year. We're not using it on this card, but we should, because we've used platinum cards, and we're not going to keep all of our platinum cards forever. This card we probably are going to keep forever. So I should change it to this now that you mentioned it. But right now, I'm not using this at all.

OK. $100 on property credit with Aspire card package. I don't even know what that is exactly. You have to book a specific rate plan to get $100 credit, and that rate plan is almost always More expensive than the cheapest possible rate plan So you're essentially just paying less for a hundred dollars in credit and it's never been something that's looked attractive to me Yeah

there's a lot of cards that have these kind of things where they they advertise like a hundred dollar credit at certain properties or whatever at certain types of properties and and They are all like that where It's like when you look into the details It's not really much of anything because you have to book with a special rate. You're probably paying more for that It's not worth it. Yeah, it's gonna cost me an extra 70 bucks to get a hundred dollar dining credit that I may or may not Have wanted to use anyway. It's just not worth it. All right. Let's move on to the Hilton surpass card. Now, this is one that you have, but I don't. So you can tell me all about how you use it.

Base level, $150 annual fee, 12X for spend at Hilton properties, 6X US restaurants, US supermarkets, US gas stations, 4X online retail purchases, and 3X everything else. So those are your category bonuses. How do you use those Greg? Not at all. So, you know, if I was, yeah, I mean, if I was at a Hilton, I would, I would use it for the 12x until I get my Aspire card. But for the 6x, I know a lot of people do use it for 6x, you know, grocery stores, for example, but I'll take I'll take the 4x With my Amix Gold card over 6x

Hilton any day that's true So, okay So then we got to talk about the more valuable perks and one of the more valuable perks on this card Is that you can get a free night certificate after fifteen thousand dollars spent in a calendar year But you're telling me you don't spend any money on this card. So do you use this perk? Yeah. So, you know, I just picked up these cards for my wife and I last summer and we did,

you know, spend the 15k right away. And we plan to spend it also this year to get the free nights again. The thing is I tend to generate spend like on things that are online that don't fit category bonuses, things like I have large tax payments to make, so I'm willing to spend the less than 2% fee to make my big tax payment, just as an example.

And so I would rather just do that in one fell swoop and get the free night certificate instead of like tracking my grocery spend over time. And also there's a, even though I'm only earning three X, with the Hilton card when I do it that way, there's an opportunity cost of not using my Amex Gold card at grocery stores.

And so I think it kind of balances out that by using a card that earns more at grocery stores, it's making up for the fact that I'm earning less on the spend towards the $15,000. So I'm very comfortable with that. Very good. All right. It certainly might be. I can't do that kind of math that quickly. But so you do spend for the free night certificate and then use the free night certificate, presumably to good value. You also get free gold status with this, or you can earn diamond status with $40,000 spent in a car or in a calendar year rather. So you have to spend 40K in a

calendar year. You spend in 40K on those tax payments in order to get diamond status. No, you know, diamond status just doesn't have enough extra going for it that makes it worth it over gold. Gold is pretty good by itself. I already had gold says anyway from having a platinum card with American Express. But you know, I would certainly appreciate that benefit if I didn't have gold status already. So that's the free gold status is nice spending towards diamond. That's something I would do. All right. So you would spend the 15k for the free night, but not the extra 25k for diamond status.

I agree. It doesn't make any sense. And then finally, this card comes with up to $200 per year in credits for Hilton properties, Hilton Spend. And this can be, doesn't have to be properties on a resort list, unlike the Aspire card, this could be any sort of Hilton Spend, but it's broken up as $50 per quarter. So that's every three months, like you said before. So are you using this and if so, how? I am.

Although I am finding it a bit annoying especially because we have several Amex Hilton cards in our household and now the the Amex business platinum cards also have this same kind of credit and so originally when it was just having you know dealing with two Amex cards I figured well just bring them anytime I'm actually staying at Hilton, make sure to use them for at least $50 worth of spend while at the hotel, and that's easy enough. Now that I've also got business platinum cards involved, that's a bit more complicated. So I've done everything from, I have brought some of them to Hilton hotels, but also when they were available, you were able to order gift cards online,

Hilton gift cards. Now they can be problematic using them, but it was a nice easy way. They were triggering the credit to just buy the Hilton gift cards online. That's not currently available as we're recording this, but who knows? Maybe it'll come back. The other thing I've done is reserve The other thing I've done is reserve hotels that charge a deposit right away. So like, you know, Nick mentioned that some hotels in Vegas tend to charge deposits right up front. So I'll just book in, you know, a night or two or whatever for the future that I may or may not go, but the deposit gets charged and I get the rebate right away that way. Very good.

All right. Excellent. And then there's one more Hilton card for us to discuss, the Hilton business card. Yeah. So I think we probably both have the Hilton business card right now, although I'm probably going to drop mine. But anyway, let's let's get into that. So that's a hundred and $195 annual fee card.

It offers 12X earnings at Hilton Properties, and then five X everywhere else, a flat five X up to $100,000 per calendar year, then it drops down to three X after that. So how are you using your 12X or five X bonus on this card? Not using the 12X at 5X bonus on this card? Not using the 12X at all, because we've got the Aspire card for 14X at Hilton Properties.

I have used the 5X everywhere or some though, when I've had some large expenses to pay occasionally, I've peppered in this one for 5X, because it's 5X, you know, flat everywhere. And that's not bad. You know, if I look at the points and I say, Hilton charges a half a cent each when they put them on sale, that's sort of like a two and a half percent return

if I would have used cash to buy points anyway, and I have occasionally used cash to buy Hilton points. So I don't mind using this sum for everywhere I'll spend. It's not my primary everywhere else card, but now and then I'll use it for everywhere I'll spend. Yeah, that makes sense. And then, you know, I got ours when it used to offer a free night with 15k spend and there was a period where it overlapped where you get 5x plus you could spend towards the free night. So I did spend during that time,

haven't spent on these cards since then. And I do plan to drop them basically to make room for since then and I do plan to drop them basically to make room for getting a Hilton Aspire card because that one you know has so many great credits that it makes it well worth having and the annual free night without even having to spend is a really nice part of that one. This card also has free gold status and you can spend your way to diamond status but just like on the other cards we said you know the gold status is nice if you don't have it from another card but otherwise if you do have it from another card no incremental benefit there and neither of us would consider spending forty thousand dollars for a Hilton Diamond status but what about the other credits there's two hundred and forty dollars in annual credits

for Hilton purchases so similar to the surpass card but this is two hundred and forty it's sixty dollars per quarter right presumably you've used it in the same way so I've used it the same way as my surpass card but how but how about you? How do you have you used these credits? I so actually well the one thing I will say is I've used them so far until they stop stocking them to buy Hilton gift cards From the buy Hilton gift cards website However, I did not try to maximize the problem is that when they were selling gift cards They only sold in $50 increments or $25 increments. So a lot of people would buy $75 worth

to trigger the $60 credit. I didn't want to spend 15 bucks on my gift card. So I just bought a $50 gift card and said, whatever, they got me on 10 bucks, that's fine. I did the exact same thing. Exact same thing. I mean, it's $195 card. If you're getting $50 back every quarter,

you're still getting more back than the annual fee. So I give you that. All right, last thing. This one offers you National Car Rental Emerald Club executive status. So I know you already had executive status, but if you didn't, what would you do with that status? If I didn't, I'd like it because you reserve a midsize car

with national, and then you get to pick from the executive area. So you get to pick from the executive area. So you get to pick a nicer car, oftentimes sometimes a bigger car. And I have often rented from National in the past for the ability to select a car that fits my needs that day. So I would use this. I do already have National executive elite status though. There you go.

So that's how we use our Hilton cards and all of the perks that are on them. All right. That wraps up the main event and brings us toilton cards and all of the perks that are on them. All right that wraps up the main event and brings us to this week's question of the week. This week's question of the week is a Hilton question to go along with the theme. So Joseph writes then and says on a recent episode you gave the advice that when playing in two player mode you should make sure both players open credit cards at the same time. The reason given was that the annual free night certificates would post at the same time each year. That totally makes sense. For instance, we talked about

the Hilton Aspire card today and the Aspire card comes with an annual free night certificate. And so if you're playing in two player mode, you'd want to both open that around the same time so that it posts around the same time each year. So you get the full period of validity overlapping. So Joseph goes on to say, well, my wife and I messed this up many years ago. We opened Hilton Aspire cards almost six months apart. This makes using the free nights together rather cumbersome. Is there any way to fix this so our annual free nights can post together or are we doomed forever? Thanks, Joseph. You are so doomed, Joseph. No, I mean, what you could do is just cancel one of those accounts and apply again for it later when it would match up with the other person's free nights.

And you probably won't be eligible for a welcome bonus when you do that, but that's okay. I mean, if your goal is just to synchronize the free nights, I think that that should work. So that should work on, you know, cards that are available new. I think those would be harder to accomplish if it's an older type of card. But with the Hilton cards, which we've been talking about today, that should be fine. Another technique that's similar in result but slightly different if you want to get another welcome bonus what you could do is open a surpass card at the time when player 2's Hilton aspire card was open. So let's say you're a spire card you're a spire let's make this really easy your spire card anniversary date is January and your player 2 is this July.

And so what you could do is open a surpass card in July and meet your spend on that, earn your welcome bonus because there's not family language on the Hilton cards as I recall. And then a year from that, around a year from that, upgrade that to another aspire card and then you'll have two aspire cards. Then if your original aspire card you could downgrade to a surpass or cancel it or whatever that way you'd earn a welcome bonus on the surpass card. You'd keep your diamond status and have whatever

certificate you have, but you'd be able to get a second MX card with a free night certificate that will line up if you upgrade around that time. Great advice. And also by the way, of course, the surpass card if you meet 15 K spend. Great advice. And also, by the way, of course, this is your pass card. If you meet 15K spend in a calendar year, you could earn a free night certificate that's valid this year also, and line that up relatively close if you have 15K

in expenses relatively close to your Player Two's anniversary. So there you have it. All right, if you guys have enjoyed this week's episode and you'd like to get more of this stuff in your email inbox each day or each week, you can go to frequentmiler.com slash subscribe to join our email list. Follow us on all the various social media. You can join our frequentmiler insiders Facebook group to ask and answer questions like these every single day. And if you have a question that

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