Frequent Miler on the Air - HUGE credit card offers are back! | Ep 65 | 9/26/20

Episode Date: September 25, 2020

This week's main event: HUGE credit Card offers are back and bigger than ever. Which is best? What's coming next? We also cover the latest Marriott deals. Is it time to mattress run Marriott? 00:57 Giant mailbag 02:30 Crazy Citi thing... 04:29 Mattress Running the Numbers: Take advantage of Marriott's overlapping offers to get Platinum status Marriott Amex Offer: https://frequentmiler.boardingarea.com/marriott-amex-offer/ Marriott 10X Offer: https://frequentmiler.boardingarea.com/10x-marriott-points-on-us-gas-stations-us-restaurants-and-marriott-hotels-with-new-amex-offers/ Marriott gifting elite night credits: https://frequentmiler.boardingarea.com/marriott-gifting-elite-night-credit-dropping-many-redemption-rates/ 14:40 Main Event: Huge credit Card offers are back and bigger than ever. Chase business cards are fair game again. Sapphire Preferred 80K. Capital One 100K. Freedom 80K-ish. Which is best? What's next? Chase Biz Cards are Back: https://frequentmiler.boardingarea.com/chase-resumes-approving-business-card-applications/ Cap One 100K vs Chase 80K: https://frequentmiler.boardingarea.com/venture-100k-vs-sapphire-80k-which-is-better/ Will the Sapphire Reserve 100K offer return? https://frequentmiler.boardingarea.com/chase-sapphire-reserve-100k-offer-will-it-return/ 37:15 Post Roast Nick takes issue with Greg picking the World of Hyatt card as a must-have beginner card. Greg fights back... Beginner credit card plan: https://frequentmiler.boardingarea.com/beginner-plan-solo-no-business/

frequent miler on the air starts now today's main event giant credit card offers are back and better than ever but i'm feeling a little nervous about today's show neck oh oh you're nervous and it's not just because i've been on paternity leave and don't know what's going on there's there's another reason you're nervous It's because when we discussed what we were going to talk about today, you were like, oh, I'm ready with post-roast. I know it was over email, but it came across like you were rubbing your hands and cackling while you're saying it. I mean, I'm not going to lie. Like I physically wrote out notes this time around. I was like, oh man, I'm going.

I'm excited. All right. Well, luckily I've got some time before I get hit by that. So first we're going to drag out the giant mailbag. Let's do it. There it is. All right. Today's mail comes via Apple Podcasts reviews from Timor33.

Timor says, one of the best out there. If you have any interest in traveling, FrequentMiler has some of the best inside info out there. Though podcasts can be long, they are enjoyable to listen to. I've learned huge amounts of info and continue to learn from them. Definitely recommend. Five stars. So that's pretty cool. I want to talk about the can be a bit long part. So, you know, I think a lot of us tend to focus on the one slightly negative thing, but, but this is something that as I've been, while you've been on paternity leave, I've been, you know, editing the videos and they are very long.

So it takes a long time to go through and collect the timestamps and everything. And it'd be kind of nice if they weren't so long. So let's try to go through these a little bit faster, but keep all the humor, all the good advice, and all the good content. We'll just throw out all the bad. All the bad stuff.

As we're recording. I don't want to have to do it in post-production. Sounds good to me. You're right. It does take a long time. It takes longer than it looks like it takes probably. So it takes a while, yeah. So that's fine.

Let's do it. Okay, cool. We're going to do this in less time than we normally do. So let's move on to the next. You might have to edit that sentence out. All right. So the next thing then, let's move right into it, is what crazy thing did Citi do this week? Yeah. This week, we don't have a Citi thing,

although I'm sure there are some Citi things out there. But I kind of like this little story a reader, Nicole, sent us. She wrote that she was trying to use the, you might remember Capital One Spark business cards supposedly have price protection. You wrote that post about price protection, which cards still have it. And so she got the card specifically for price protection. And she said she even asked them before applying you know does this really have it yes yes um so now that she's going to try to use the price protection um she she uh is having trouble figuring out how to do it so she contacts capital one and

they say well that's a mastercard benefit you have to talk to them so she Capital One and they say, well, that's a MasterCard benefit. You have to talk to them. So she calls MasterCard. They say, no, you don't have that benefit. She gets both of them, Capital One and MasterCard on the phone together and they start arguing with each other. So Capital One saying, yes, she has a benefit. MasterCard saying, no, she doesn't. She's left. She's left without any solution. Oh, that stinks. That stinks. It's right there in the guide to benefits for those cards. Yeah. So I think we have to blame MasterCard for this one, although it's a little hard to say

because Capital One ought to back up their benefits of the advertisement. For sure. For sure. For sure, yeah. And that stinks if they're not. I don't know if it depends on how much of a claim it would be. I don't know if it'd be worth a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau complaint over something that's probably relatively small, but at the same time, it's there in their terms

that that's one of the benefits. So, I mean, if you're not getting any resolution from either Capital One or MasterCard, you put in your effort, I guess this time, you may consider something like that, that kind of forces Capital One's hand to get it figured out. Not a bad idea. All right. Let's jump into Mattress Running the Numbers. What do we have this week? Well, this week, Marriott is, you know, out with a new Amex offer. Amex is out with a new Marriott offer, I guess, depending on how you want to look at it. Spend $250, get $75 back, like 30% back. That's a terrific Amex offer, right? It really is. So, you know, if you're actually going to be staying in a Marriott

and spending about that much, then that's a 30% rebate on top of whatever other discounts are happening. You know, a lot of Marriotts, I'm sure, are having various discounts and things. So that's good on its own. It also, for those with Amex Marriott cards, there was this 10X offer going on, which still goes till the end of October.

So you could get 10X at Marriott hotels. It's also 10X at gas stations and restaurants, I think. So that stacks as well. So that's pretty good. You'd be getting 10 points per dollar, $75 back. Great. So is the 10 points per dollar on the 250, or is it on the 175 after you've gotten the IDT?

I think it would be on the 250, because I don't think they would track it that closely. I don't know. That's a good question. Yeah. I haven't looked closely you got to look through your statements with a fine-tooth comb but at any rate it's at least 1750 points on top right that earned from your credit card uh maybe 2500 if you

get it on the 250 and if you're actually staying obviously you're going to get more points uh yeah but if you're not going to stay some marriott sell gift cards at the front desk and if you buy one at the front desk historically those have also triggered the Amex offer. So if it's got a gift shop, you don't want to go to the gift shop. That's not going to trigger. You got to buy it at the front desk. And so the first trick is actually finding a Marriott hotel that sells gift cards. And then the second trick is finding a Marriott hotel that sells gift cards that has them in stock. And if you magically get those two things together, then the third part is you need to find an employee

who knows how to sell the gift cards. It's not always an easy task. Right, right, right. But once you find that magic combination, hold on tight to it because these offers come up fairly regularly. So it's a good way to lock in a discount for the future, even if you're not staying at Marriott right now.

And that's totally worthwhile, right? 30% back, you'd totally do that. So- Absolutely. So in a past, and I'm totally worthwhile right 30 back you totally do that so absolutely so in a past and i'm don't i'm totally gonna do that with my i i have you know mine and my wife's um envoy cards from amex and so you know i'll go buy if i can five hundred dollars worth of gift cards and get 30 back that's awesome but in a past episode we talked about whether people should be thinking about mattress running Marriott if they're in the position of being seven nights from gold. And the reason that a lot of people

are seven nights from gold is because Marriott did this thing where if you had gold status last year, they gave you this year half the number of points that it normally takes at gold status, plus you have a number of nights. And if you have both a business and a consumer credit card, you have 30 nights there. And so between those two things, a lot of people without having any stays this year are seven nights away from getting platinum status, which is the level of status that gives you free breakfast at many or most Marriott hotels. You need a, you need a chart to figure out whether you're going to get that benefit, but, but a lot of places you get that as well as, you know,

the potential for upgrades 4pm late checkout and other, other lounge access at most places that have a lounge. Right. Right. Right. Some extra points for a dollar that, that have a lounge. Right, right. Right. Some extra points for a dollar. That you get every, well, you get the extra points for a dollar everywhere, but you got to remember that the number of points you earn differs depending on the properties. That's true. All right.

All that aside, that's the sweet spot, right? That's the level of benefit that you want to get with Marriott. I mean, great if you get to titanium. Wonderful, I guess. But platinum is where the meaningful benefits are. Right, right. So, you know, I'm trying to remember what we talked about. I know we talked about that it didn't make sense for a spouse to do it, like, because I was in that situation where my wife has 43 nights because of all these things,

but it'd be ridiculous for us to book nights just for the point of her getting her to platinum when we could just book rooms under my account and get all those benefits. So it would make no sense to do that. I mean, the one advantage is that for free night certificates from her credit cards, you would get the platinum benefits, which you may not get without that status, but for one night a year, yeah, exactly. Not worth spending seven, you know, money or points on seven nights. And I think actually what we had said was that for a year. Yeah, exactly. Not worth spending money or points on seven nights. And I think actually what we had said was that for a lot of people, or at least my opinion

on it was that I thought seven nights didn't make sense for most people unless you're really going to get a lot of value out of that platinum status next year. I thought that it was more points or money than it was probably worth for seven nights. However, does this change that? That's the question. Now you're getting, let's say, let's say you can engineer it. So you're getting exactly 30% back and you're getting the 10 X points as well. Right, right. And, and probably you can do that. I mean, let's, let's, let's say you got two people playing in two player mode, so you can get $500 worth of gift cards and you're 30% back. Now, let's say you can find a Marriott that's, I don't know, $75 a night, right? And I just made

that number up, so that's probably not going to conveniently fit into $500 in any way, shape, or form, right? But that would get you pretty close to the seven nights, right? So two, four, five. I mean, it'd get you five of the seven nights, I think, if I just did the very quick math. I'm doing the calculation. Oh, no, no, that's plenty. There you go. I mean, you would get $7 times $75 is $525. So if it was a little bit less than $75, you'd be set.

So let's pretend you get all seven nights for, for $500. Right. And you're getting back, um, 175 times two. Right. You're getting back 5,000 points on top of, if you act in type of whatever points you earn from the stay itself, uh,

from, from having so platinum status, you're getting, I think it's 15 points per dollar, uh, from platinum status. So, um, 25 points you're getting, I think it's 15 points per dollar from platinum status. So 25 points per dollar total, I think. Although it'd be less at some, at some Marriott hotels. So probably a $75 hotel could be, you're getting a total of 10.

Yeah. It was hard, a little hard to predict, but, but let's, let's, let's just play with the numbers that you got there. So, okay, again, your layout there, assuming you got the two offers between two spouses, is going to be $350 for the seven nights, right? We said you can get seven nights for 500 bucks. It's actually going to cost you 350. And how many points are you going to get, did we say? Well, total, if you're at 25 points per dollar, is that what we're assuming? Well, you're not there yet, right?

Because you're at gold status. You're not at... Oh, you're at gold, right? I don't remember what gold gets. We're useless. So you're going to get 5,000 points from the 10 points per dollar on your Amex, right? So it's going to be 5,000 points right there. And then base earning at most Marriott properties is 10 points per dollar.

I think the gold bonus is like 25% on top of that. So I think you get 12 and a half. Let's just call it 10 to make the math easy. So you're going to get another 5,000 points based on the stay. So 10,000 points. So $350, you're going to get 10,000 points back, get your seven nights and your platinum status. Is it worth it? So, okay. So's let's generously just to make the math easy say the 10 000 points are worth 100 bucks just to make the math real easy right we wouldn't normally value it that highly but you know it'd be 80 or something but 100 bucks i think we're getting back um something like 350 no we're getting back no 150 we're getting back 150 so that's 250 total back in rebates right yes i mean if you count the points correct for uh 500 outlay so you could say it's costing

you roughly around 250 to do this roughly roughly yeah 250 bucks to get platinum status how many breakfasts you can eat i don't know i mean how many breakfasts are you going to eat? I don't know. I mean, how many breakfasts are you going to eat? Maybe that's at a point where I'm like, okay, 250 might be worth it. 4 p.m. checkout is worth it to me sometimes. I don't know if $250 for the year. Yeah, I might value it around there.

You throw in a couple of decent, nice, fancy breakfasts. That suddenly, I think, sounds a little bit more appealing. I think I'd do it. I think I'd mattress run it. Here's where it would come down to me is, do you think it's likely you're going to stay at a property where it's valuable? And if you're going to be staying, you could be staying in a lot of Marriott's, but if they're residence ends where the plan of status isn't going to get you anything free, you know, well, you might get a room upgrade. Anyway, it's not going to be worth as much. So, yeah, if you're going to be staying a reasonable amount of time

at like sort of higher-end Marriott, but not so high-end that they don't give you benefits, right? Ritz-Carlton does not give you much if you're platinum. They give upgrades to titanium, but not breakfast. But yes, St. Regis does. So if you're staying in a nice St. Regis, St. Regis is great. That's right.

That's right. Really depends on where you're going to stay next year. Right, right. So if you have one of those higher end stays or even immediate medium, like autograph collection, those give you good benefits. Then yeah, I think I would do it. I probably would.

I probably would. I don't know if I'd do it for player two because I don't necessarily, because you're looking at it for the free night certificate nights. But if you're, yeah, if you're one of those people that you are the only one in your household

that's going to go after this status, then yeah, I think it probably is worth it because you figure two people for breakfast, you know, five nights, that's, you know, what, 10 breakfasts, 250 bucks, you're paying $25 a breakfast. That's probably a good deal.

Yeah, it doesn't take long to make it back. Right, right. And then plus you get the intangible benefits. You might be able to use your suite upgrades. You might have some luck there. Okay, cool. We actually agree. Two thumbs up on that one.

All right. Now, welcome to the main event. The main event. Huge credit card offers are back and better than ever. So I want to start with the ones that aren't really better than ever, but they're back because Chase, during the pandemic up until now, has not been approving business card applications. Like, they still have those application links out there, and they let you apply, but then

almost everybody gets denied. But that's changed. So this month, they said, enough with that. Let's start approving people. And there's lots of data points of people now, just like the old times, getting approved with just sole proprietor, you know, simple business without having to prove, you know, all kinds of paperwork about their business. So that's good news. I'm especially excited about it because for years we've been saying, and I totally believe that Chase business

cards are some of the best rewards cards out there that you can get. Right. And while Chase can be a little bit more difficult in terms of approvals for business cards and some other issuers, I wouldn't have categorized them as difficult pre pandemic. It wasn't, you know, generally speaking, it wasn't going to require very many hoops. It's just a matter of whether or not they were willing to approve you. But, but there weren't usually a lot of different things you had to submit or paperwork and that sort of thing, like you said. So, so yeah, it's really good to see that come back because yes, they are great offers and they're great cards. The ink cards in general, the ink cash and the ink unlimited,

both no fee cards that are great cards to have. They're not just great cards for a welcome bonus. They're good cards to have in your wallet. Right. I mean, every points collector needs an in-cash. I mean, 5X at Office Supply and Staples and Office set up your auto pay to your like cable TV and your cell phone and all those things that it also gives 5x4. And you're getting a lot of points from that card and it's no fee. So and 50,000 points sign up on us that that has had for a long, long time. And generally in the past, we would have probably said sign up for the ink business preferred and get the larger welcome bonus on that. And then down the road, downgrade to an Ink Cash. However, these days now that Ink Business Preferred card requires $15,000 spend in three months.

That's a much more difficult bar to reach for a lot of people. So suddenly I think that the Ink Cash and the Ink Unlimited, especially the Ink Cash, like you said, it makes a lot more sense as a new application now than it ever did before right great to see it come back right right and and so the yeah the ink business preferred used to be an 80k offer with 4k spend i think and now it's 100k with 15k spend you could get the same 100k by getting both of the fee-free inks and what is it 3k spend each something like that 6k spend total. I mean, less than half the required spend. Yeah. It's almost a no brainer now that the preferred isn't as, as valuable an option anymore for most folks. So that's awesome.

We took away the asterisk from a lot of posts. It was like, you can't get Chase business cards right now. Now maybe you can. Right, right, right. So that's, you can't get Chase business cards right now. Now maybe you can. Right, right, right. So that's really good news. And then Chase and Capital One both hit the scenes this week with new great big offers. Let's talk about Capital One first.

Now, I'm going to say new big offers. Big offers. I don't know if I'm going to call the Capital One a new great offer yet. Capital One. Now, I'm going to say new big offers. Big offers. I don't know if I'm going to call the Capital One a new great offer yet. Go ahead, explain. What's up with Capital One? So Capital One is advertising 100,000 points after, and this is the downside that you're alluding to, after $20,000 spend. They didn't think Chase's 15,000 spend for their ink business preferred was enough, so they went with 20,000 spend. And if you can't spend that much, you could do the 3,000 spend that is their normal

offer and get the normal amount of points, which is 50,000 points. So yes, you're right. That's a good point. It's a very big offer, not necessarily a great offer. Yeah. I mean, so let's be very clear. So the way the offer is structured is you will get 50,000 points after the first 3,000 spend. Then if you do an additional 17,000 spend in the first year on that card, you'll get the additional 50,000 points. So really I look at that as, okay, it's the usual 50K for 3K, then it's another 50K for 17,000. And that's the part to me that 100k sounds nice and a thousand dollars worth of points sounds great and you know you can turn those in airline miles and get two points to capital one miles per dollar on all your spend so you're going to get that too however

i look at it and say that's not a great bonus for 17,000 spent i agree On the other hand, one of the things that it has going for it is it's already a strong card for your everywhere else spend. It's not the strongest, but it's got that 2% value per dollar spent. So it's a reasonable card to spend a lot on if you have a lot of spend

to do. So it's not like there's a lot of opportunity cost by putting that big spend on the Venture Rewards versus some other card, unless you happen to have a, you know, the Bank of America Premium Rewards with the Platinum Honors, that kind of thing, then you've got some more opportunity costs there. But even then, I bet if you add up that 0.62% on top of 17,000, it's going to be such a big number that would scare you away from getting the 50,000 points. No, you're right. You're right.

And hats off to Capital One for coming up with a smart offer. I mean, I think that it's a good eye-popping number of points, and they're also incentivizing you to make that your everywhere else card. They want you to spend on it. So they're going to give you a nice little bonus up front, like everybody normally does to attract a customer. But then they also want to entice you to keep using the card for the rest of the year, because most people aren't going to spend the original or the additional $17,000 in

a month or two. So it's going to keep that card at the top of wallet for a while. So I mean, I think that that was the creative, good way to do it from their perspective, from the bank's perspective. Yeah. And well, and also, I think people who aren't you know credit card bonus hunters will look you know a lot of people spend 20k a year credit cards without breaking a sweat and so you know if you're one of them and you're just looking for a single card a single decent card you know wouldn't call it the best out there but if you only if you want just one yeah it's a pretty good choice um and so I think for those people, it's actually pretty great. All right. I will concede that.

You're right. If you want to just get one card this year, definitely. I'd say that's a great offer. So a quick aside there. So did you ever watch the Peanuts cartoons? I think I saw those in a history book when I was growing up. No, I have not. I have not seen them.

Oh, my God. Well, all right. So a common theme with Charlie Brown is that, and it's- I mean, I know Charlie Brown. I know Charlie Brown. All right. But the common theme is- So Charlie Brown always wants to kick the football.

And so Lucy will hold it for him and she promises him every time. This, I'm not going to pull it away. I'm not going to pull it away. And he always like makes the mistake of believing her in the end. And then he runs to kick the football. She pulls it away and he flops on his back every time.

So that's me and capital one i i have not been approved for capital one card ever and so i saw this i saw this big 100k offer and it's like oh i'm gonna try again hold the football and she took it away again didn't i was I was denied. Very sad. The reason I thought I had a chance is minutes after I published the post about the 100k offer, a reader commented saying applied instantly approved.

And this is a reader, I believe it's a reader that has commented for years. And so I thought they probably have a history of signing up for cards. And so I thought they probably have a history of signing up for cards. And so I thought, okay, they probably ease things up. I should give it a try. I'm actually down to 324 right now.

So you've only had three new accounts in the past 24 months, which for me, that's very low. 524 slot to that offer? Yeah, because I was able to grab the... I have all the chase cards that I want to keep. Alright. Alright, so but no dice. They said no. They said no. So they gave me

an alternative offer that they approved me for to tell me this. Would you go for this? So the No F venture one with no bonus and a thousand dollar credit limit. And they were like, wow, guys, you shouldn't have. Right. So I chose not to give up a 524 slot for that fantastic bargain. Probably a good choice. All right. So maybe you can get that if you're one of those listeners that doesn't open very many credit cards. If

you're somebody who does open credit cards with any kind of frequency, just get that out. Capital One is just not eager to approve people who sign up for a lot of cards, or maybe it's just me. I don't know. Yeah, our Capital One cards are mostly old. Although my wife's Spark card, she opened a couple of years ago, and at that point, she already had quite a few cards. So I don't know.

Yeah, yeah, maybe it's just me. Maybe it's just you. They don't like you. Oh boy. Anyway, so- So Sapphire Preferred is the next up. Sapphire Preferred. So they've had their 60K offer for a long, long time, and they've upped it to 80K.

Limited time, I believe. It's unclear when it'll end, although Dr. Credit has some rumor about when it'll end. And that's all good, right? Yeah, I mean, that's a great offer. That one, I will say, a great offer. I was curious whether you agreed with me on that one. I was getting really nervous about this post-rust thing.

I am. I don't know what's coming. No, that's a great offer. Yeah, I mean, 80,000 Ultimate Rewards points. Excellent. A lot of value to be had there. If you're eligible for a Sapphire card, it probably makes sense now, as Greg has said and we've said before.

I give it a couple of weeks to see if anything happens with the Sapphire Reserve. And I'm sure we'll talk more about that in a second. But if nothing happens with the Sapphire Reserve, there's no increase there, then it's probably worth applying for a Sapphire Preferred if you're under 524 and you're eligible for a Sapphire card. Right. Because as things stand, at least as we're recording the show, the Sapphire Reserve is still at 50K. Hopefully, by the time we publish this, it'll be up to 150K or something. Love to see that.

Love to see that eat my words. But if not, then Sapphire Preferred is not a bad strategy to go after for now. And as we've said before, easier to get approved for it because it doesn't require the same amount of credit limit as the Sapphire Reserve. So an easier approval for a lot of people. Right, right. A couple other offers I found notable, you know, we've talked before about the Freedom offers that they're not really 80k offers, but what they are is, for years, or for a while anyway, you could get 20k points with $500 spend for these cards. but now they've added

also get five X at grocery stores for 12 months for up to 12 K spend. And so, you know, I say, all right, a lot of people will spend 12 K at grocery stores over a year. You're going to, you're going to earn a total of 80 K by, by doing exactly 12 K spend on those cards in the first year in grocery stores. Yeah, and as I've shown, that's like about 40,000 bonus points, give or take more or less. So 40,000 plus the 20 is 60. That's like the old offer on the Sapphire cards.

Right, right. And this is for two no fee cards. Right, right. That's notable. Right, right. So if someone's starting out just picked up to like picked up the sapphire preferred and one of these freedom cards um by the end of the year with without much work at all you've got uh 164 000 points right and then

the 4 000 from the spend on the sapphire well and if you happen to spend anything at restaurants you're gonna get 3x now on those on the Sapphire. Well, and if you happen to spend anything at restaurants, you're going to get 3X now on the Freedom Flex or Freedom Unlimited, either one. You're going to get 3X restaurants, right, and 3X pharmacy, drugstore stuff. So, I mean, you potentially could have a lot more points. I mean, really, you can hit the gas and end up with a lot of ultimate rewards points.

And bizarrely, you could get 5x by booking travel through Chase with the No Fee Freedom card as opposed to only 2x booking travel with the travel Sapphire Preferred card. So that's really weird. And I'm still shocked that they haven't rolled out 5x to the Sapphire line yet for booking through Chase. That's just bizarre. Weird. for booking through Chase. That's just bizarre. Weird, weird. Another bigger than usual offer I noted is the gold card. You know, it's been hovering around. That's the MX, MX gold. MX gold, thank you. Which had been hovering, I think around the 45K and sometimes less than that mark.

And now it's up to 60K at least. So that's a nice thing because that's a sweet card. A lot of people in general, you know, just from the, the perks, the four X at grocery stores and restaurants and some other benefits. So getting a nice signup offer for that is pretty excellent.

So. I mean, that's all exciting. No, I mean, that's pretty exciting stuff, right? I mean, it's a number of very good offers. So we went from like pandemic time of like, you know, everything kind of slowing down and getting really quiet to all of a sudden,

everybody's making a lot of noise. There's a lot of awesome offers out there right now. Yeah. And you know, we did during the pandemic, see some big offers from brands like hotel cards or airline cards, but this is different. These are all transferable points, currencies that we're talking about. And that's what we love here, right? It's points where you can take them and optionally use them to book travel at better than one cent per point value,

but even better, transfer them to transfer partners and ideally book super valuable rewards for less. And yes, I think that's very exciting. Which do you think? Do you think there's a best out of all these? You know, I think an objective best is a little difficult to determine, because obviously, it's going to depend a little bit on your situation. You mentioned before, with the Capital One card, if you just want to have one card and open one card and that's it and use it for all your spend for the next year or so, then it's very hard to argue against the

Venture card as a good option. Although I say that and the Sapphire Preferreds welcome bonus is worth $1,000 worth of travel. So it's worth the same amount with a lot less spend. So I guess I'd have a hard time. The issue there is that obviously you're gonna get more value out of your spend that you put on the card with the Capital One card on every day, on bonus spend anyway. So if you got a lot of unbonus spend throughout the course of the year,

maybe the Capital One card makes a little, the Venture card makes a little bit more sense. But otherwise, I think you gotta go for the Sapphire Preferred after we're sure that the reserve is not gonna bump up to 100K offer. I think you gotta go for the Sapphire Preferred after we're sure that the reserve is not going to bump up to 100K offer. I think you got to go for the Sapphire Preferred first. I agree. I agree. And I'd even go further and say,

if you're interested in having just one card, then get over that and get both the Sapphire Preferred offer and the Freedom Unlimited. They're a great pair together. And so you get the great spend bonuses of the Freedom Unlimited offers and the great signup bonus that the Sapphire offers as well as ability to transfer points.

So that combination is really good. It is, it is. And it's going to cost you the same as having one card since one of those two cards is fee free. So it's going to cost you one annual fee for two cards that give you an excellent one, two punch that is very hard to beat in terms of simplicity and return on spend. Exactly. Can't really do much better than that. So that might not be able to do any better than that with two cards. No, I mean, it's an excellent combination. Yeah. Yeah. All right, cool. So what do you think? So this is just what we've seen so far.

It feels like we're at the cusp of things happening, right? Like things are just starting to change as we get to this part of the pandemic world. I don't want to say the tail end of it, because who knows, but where we are now, things are happening in the credit card world. I don't want to say the tail end of it, because who knows, but where we are now, things are happening in the credit card world. And so do you have any predictions? What's what do you think is gonna happen next? Well, you know, I read with interest what you had to say about the Sapphire Reserve and whether or not we're going to see another 100k offer on the

Sapphire Reserve. And I think my prediction is unfortunately that I don't think we'll see the 100k offer. I think you are totally right, that at most we'll see an 80k offer. that I don't think we'll see the 100k offer. I think you are totally right that at most we'll see an 80k offer. And I don't even think we're going to see that. I think it's going to stay at 50. I don't think that they feel a need to market that particular card right now. They haven't seemed to felt a need to market it for a while. And there's not really an awesome standout increased card from a competitor, offer rather on a similar card from a competitor. We haven't seen anything crazy happen with the prestige card. We haven't seen anything out of the ordinary with the platinum card.

So I don't necessarily think that anybody is marketing those cards extra hard, those ultra premium $450, $550 cards. So I don't think we're going to see another offer out of the Sapphire Reserve. Now don't go applying for the Sapphire Preferred and come back next week and be like, Nick, you said it wasn't going to go up and it goes up to 100. I told you to wait. All right. I told you to give it a week or two. Just see if I'm wrong. And it does go because I'd love to be wrong and see another 100k on that. I just don't think so. Yeah, no, I mean, I can't remember the exact percentages I gave to my different guesses. But I think I was leaning towards the nothing's going to happen as well.

But that said, Citi's got to do something. That's the question, right? I feel like I read something about Citi losing money on their cards, but I don't know. But competitively, they've been sitting there. They need a new card. Do they? Yeah, they need a new card they need a new card do they i do yeah they need a whole new card why because they don't really have the same breadth of cards to cover the same variety of

needs i mean look at amex amex has got a ton of different membership rewards cards chase has more ultimate rewards cards city just doesn't have at first they don't have anything to compete with the rotating categories that chase has. So a rotating category card might make sense from city. Uh, second, I feel like they're missing a lot of, uh,

a lot of opportunity in terms of, uh, another everywhere else. Thank you card. Now, obviously the double cash is the kind of default everywhere else. Thank you card, except who really knows that only people that are into miles and points and nobody that's getting a double cash knows that that's everywhere else

and the double cash doesn't have a welcome offer on it i mean hello hey i guess i guess what i should say is first the double cash is going to have to come with with a welcome offer so that's my first prediction gotta introduce a welcome offer on the double cash second prediction there should be some sort of a card that shakes things up in terms of a new bonus category or a new level. I mean, give me a $250 card, Citi, and wow me with something that I'm not expecting. Oh, man. So I did not expect you to go there. And the reason I didn't expect you to go there is that I'm still pretty pumped about Citi's Premier and Double Cash and Rewards and rewards plus combination oh it's a good

combo right you have you have amazing 3x bonus categories for all three cards total annual fee of 95 bucks it's a i think it's a great combination if personally if if i wanted them to do something it would be more around uh well first of of all, don't get rid of the travel 1.25 thing that they say they're getting rid of with City Premier. But secondly, add some more useful transfer partners. That's what I would like to see from City. That would be nice too. And or, I mean, I don't think this is going to happen. So let me take this out of the prediction realm and say the desire realm. What I'd like to see is, hello, City, let's get some business thank you cards. I know there's that one business thank you card that you can maybe get in a branch

or something. I've heard rumors, and I don't even know anything about it. Nobody has that thing, right? So I mean, it would be good to see some other city business cards that are related to the thank you ecosystem. I don't think they're going to do that. It doesn't make any sense to do that right now. But I'd love to see that as a long-term goal since they're not going to do that throw us a bone give us another thank you card give us something that's kind of interesting and unique and different um what about are they are they gonna are they gonna up the bonus so the city premiere bonus has been sitting at 60k which was clearly designed to compete with the sapphire preferred so are they gonna say oh wait a minute we were set snoo. We better up this to 80K as well.

I don't see them being that quickly responsive, although maybe I shouldn't say that because they did update to introduce the new bonus category sooner because of the pandemic than they were originally planning to. So maybe they are more nimble than I give them credit for.

So maybe, I think it's more likely that we'll see something happen with the double cash. I think it's more likely we'll see. We haven't occasionally seen $100 on that. My prediction, that's true. My prediction is nothing with double cash, but City Premier comes out with an interesting new offer. And I further predict that they won't tell their reps

about that offer. So when people call to ask about it, they'll be told, no, there's no such offer. I don't know what you're talking about. Perfect, perfect. That's it. That's exactly it. I'm also going to add the prediction on there

that they're going to do something with these Sapphire cards. I mean, I think that the increase in offer made sense, but they got to do something about that 5X travel book through chase thing, right? I mean, and the fact that the no-fee cards are 3X at restaurants. They got to do something about that. Yeah, they do. They do.

That would be good. Okay. So in the interest of trying to get through this more quickly than usual, which probably just means like 30 seconds quicker, we're going to skip post-rolls. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. I saw that coming. I saw that coming.

So Post Rose. Post Rose is up. And since I didn't write anything this week, Craig doesn't have anything to say. I don't have a thing. I should have dug out some old posts. Yeah, you should have. Why didn't I do that?

Last opportunity. Well, you know, you are the person editing this. So maybe later on you can edit a voiceover. But assuming you don't do that here's the post all right what do you got all right so this week greg republished a post and updated a post about like the the roadmap for somebody who's new to the game like the best cards to get the kind of five cards you want to start with and build from there and the point was within that within a year, you could have like 500,000 points pretty easily with just a few new cards. Now, the conventional wisdom is that you want to go after those chase cards relatively early, but he's got the Venture card up front

because Capital One obviously doesn't seem to want to approve anybody once you have a bunch of new cards. And you know what? Stop sweating. It's fine. I'm not going to roast you over the Capital One Venture card. I think that's a good piece of advice. What I didn't like is that in those five cards that you recommended, you had the world of Hyatt card in there. And I got to tell you, Greg,

your doctor called me and said, you need to lay off. The blood sugar's getting high. You've got to lay off that world of Hyatt Kool-Aid, buddy. Come on, you're drinking the Kool-Aid too hard. The world of Hyatt credit card? No, totally disagree. Hard disagree. Now I'm going to hard

disagree on the premise that you wrote the post saying that this is an outline for somebody who mostly travels domestically. They might be interested in traveling internationally once or twice a year. They don't want to put a lot of thought and time into studying transfer partners and award charts and that sort of thing. So more or less a beginner to the game. That's what the idea is here, right? I think the World of Hyatt card was a terrible suggestion for a beginner. Now I have this whole list of reasons why. And on this list, it says stop drinking the Kool-Aid. I just want to know. That was right here. So Hyatt is good. I love Hyatt, obviously. We all love Hyatt. Anybody who's in the game loves Hyatt because they get a great award chart. It doesn't cost a lot of points for super luxurious, nice hotels.

And they have some really nice places and good customer service and the best top tier elite level of any of the hotel programs. Hyatt Globalist is amazing. However, Hyatt is not good for a beginner. There's a few reasons. Number one. All right. That's all the time we have. Number one. They're not even's all the time we have. So it's been number one. They're

not even in all 50 states, Greg. Like there's not even a Hyatt in all 50 states within the United States. Is that true? Yeah, it is. I counted them. It's like, which states are they not in? I don't even know which ones. Cause I didn't want to spend the time going through the list to figure out which ones it was, but there's like 47 that have Hyatts in them. And out of that 47, Vermont's got like one. There's a couple others in North Dakota, I think has one and it's not even in Fargo. There's a whole bunch that only had one. Now I shouldn't say a whole bunch. There's a couple that only have one. And there's a few states that have none at all. So I look at it and I say, if you're traveling within the United

States, Hyatt just isn't everywhere you need to be. Yeah, they're gonna be. So you're saying I should have recommended the IHG card? Not what I'm gonna say. They're not in all nine Canadian provinces either. And goodness knows Hyatt is not everywhere you need to be around the world because they only got like 900 properties. So they don't have the footprint of other people. So that's number one, especially if you're traveling in the US, you're going to do national parks, you're going to be driving, that sort of thing. Do rural areas right now because of the pandemic. You don't need the Hyatt card because there's probably not a Hyatt where you need to be. And then if there is, there's

probably only one. And so who knows, is it going to be the high end place you're looking for for your special trip? Or is it going to be a Hyatt place? Maybe you want the Hyatt place, but the only thing that's there is a park Hyatt. There's just not enough variety. So I love Hyatt, but it's not good for a beginner, not everywhere you need to be. And like I said, many times there's only one and that one may not match the level that you're looking for. So for a beginner, what do I say? Now, I know you're going to say I had a caveat in the post saying your preferred hotel chain might be different. So you go with another card. You know, don't bring up my counter arguments. Just let's get down your list.

Okay. But for beginners, it has to be the Marriott card. There's no doubt in my mind because number one, there are also Amex Marriott cards. And you said in your post, hey, you can get an Amex Marriott so you don't need the Chase Marriott. I'm going to say, wipe that out. You're a beginner. You need to build up a whole bunch of points. You can get the Chase Marriott card. And then once you're over 524, you can get an Amex Marriott and have a more meaningful

number of points. You get the Hyatt card, you're going to get 50K points. That's it. You're going to get yourself enough for one night at a top tier place. There's no other card to get. There's no upgrade downgrade path for you. You're stuck with just that one card. You get the Chase Marriott card and down the road, if you decide you don't want the annual fee, you can downgrade to the bold or down the road you decide, Hey,

I'm really enjoying this Marriott stuff. You can upgrade to the Ritz, get a couple of different Amex cards you can go after in order to put together a meaningful number of points and also multiple free night certificates, which you won't be able to do getting multiple Hyatt cards because, again, there's only one Hyatt card. So I think that that is a whole host of reasons there that are good for that. Then you're going to add on top of that, there are frequently Amex offers for Marriott, like the one we talked about during Mattress Running the Numbers,

where you can save money. Now, sometimes we see those for Hyatt much rarer than the ones for Marriott. So it's much easier to save money on your paid Marriott stays with Amex offers. You can also stack with portal rewards. You're not going to get that when you're paying for your paid Hyatt stays

because they're not on any of the portals. You can also often get gift card deals, get those at reduced prices for Marriott. And they're everywhere. Are you done yet? They're all up. So if you decide you want to go to, you know, I don't know, let's pick a city, Chicago, you can find yourself a town place suites or you can find yourself a nice high-end Marriott

of sorts. All right. You're not going to get that one. Come on, you're done, right? All right. So let me tell you the part of the argument that I thought was good. Okay. Only that one little piece. Okay.

One part was that with the Chase Marriott card, you have the option to either downgrade to the no fee card or upgrade to the Ritz card. That is a very powerful capability. I do like that. And that's not something I considered when writing the post. The question, the idea that you could get the Chase card and then the Amex Marriott card is dependent on having a PhD

in understanding terms and conditions, because Marriott, unlike any other brand ever in the history of credit cards, has made these Byzantine rules about if you have this card from Chase and you want this card from Amex, you can have it if it's been 90 days since your mother rolled over in her grave or whatever. Which is true. But you have two options. You either need a PhD or you need to be a frequent miler reader since greg created the chart in the in the marriott complete guide that shows you exactly which

card you're eligible for anyway the the point is if you're talking beginners you don't want to lead them down that path but anyway um fair the the the part the the reason uh I have the Hyatt card in there is not really because it's the ideal card for a beginner, but it's an ideal card to get before it's too late. Because if you keep up doing this stuff, eventually you're likely to get to a point where you say, gee, I wish I had the world of Hyatt card. Like for example, maybe they'll have a promotion where you could get up to four X points per

dollar, you know, up to quadruple points per dollar. If you have the card. Yes. And, uh, and so,

so, so if you're, if you think you're going to want to get that card down the road you need to get it before you're over 524 you're right if you think you're going to want to get it down the road but if you're a beginner you probably don't know that yet you're you're starting out that's why i'm helping them out by telling them now you're gonna want it down the road disagree the category one to four free night that that comes with can be useful if you happen to be going to one of the 300 places or whatever where there's a category one to four hyatt but you happen to be going to one of the 300 places or whatever,

where there's a category one to four Hyatt, but you need to be planning your trips around where you're going to use your category one to four night for the most part, or you need to be just happen to be traveling to places where there are category one to four Hyatts, whereas you're not going to have to probably plan your trip around finding a low enough Marriott in order to be able to use your Marriott annual free nights. Yeah, but the, you know, category four Hyatt's are often quite very nice, very nice hotels. And there are 35K Marriott's that are very nice when they're in standard, you know, price. And when they're in peak price, you can't use your certificate at them. You don't have to worry about that with Hyatt.

Right, and that's nice. And like I've stated, the Hyatt Regency Tokyo last year with my category one to four, with a free category one to four cert. And I mean, that's a great use of a category one to four. Expensive place is actually only a category three,

I think, but it was a great use of it. However, if you're not going to Tokyo, that doesn't really help you, right? So, you know, if you're going to kind of plan around- You know, my family used to go for years, has visited the Grand Hyatt in Orlando and great property, great resort. It's category three or four, you know,

and just, I think there are a lot of them in popular places, whether or not you happen to go regularly to one of those. Yes. That's going to vary by person. Right. But no, I, so, so I think you, I think you made a good argument that Marriott card is a good contender. I still stand by, I still stand by, I think it's, I think it's solid advice, but obviously yes, it'll vary by, and I see, and I'll, I i'll i'll frame all

this saying i don't have the hyatt card and i wish i do uh so uh i wish i did so yeah i mean i i understand where you're coming from in terms of maybe deciding you want it down the road uh i just didn't think it was nick wants to create an army of people like him that has to deny that Hyatt is good. No, Hyatt is great. Hyatt is just Hyatt hard. Didn't expect him. Gotcha. All right, so there's Post Rose.

So that brings us to question of the week, and there's no question because I wasn't working, so I didn't see all the questions. I think that was great planning to fit our desire to have a quicker show. There we go. All right, so that's it. I think that brings us to the end. It's time for the ending song, the goodbye song, the goodbye song, the goodbye song.

So the goodbye song is if you'd like to read more about what we're talking about, you want to subscribe and get on our email list and find us on Facebook and Twitter and all that stuff. Go to the frequent miler.com slash subscribe. Again, that's the frequent miler.com slash subscribe in order to get on all of our lists. And we will see you guys again soon. Thank you very much for listening. Bye everybody.