Frequent Miler on the Air - Hyatt Elite Milestone spending vs Mattress running | Frequent Miler on the Air Ep270 | 8-30-24

Episode Date: August 30, 2024

CORRECTION NOTE:  We've got a correction to add to this episode! In this episode Greg says with the Hyatt Business card you can get back $100 per year on spend at Hyatt hotels: $50 in first 6 monhts and $50 in second 6 months, but we need to correct that! In truth, you can get up to $100 back per membership year, $50 at a time, but you don't have to wait 6 months: you could make two payments in rapid succession to get the full $100. Thanks for your patience with this correction! Hyatt's elite program can be really valuable - for instance when you reach certain milestones you can get valuable perks, and there's multiple ways of reaching those milestones. In this episode, Greg and Nick debate the best way of getting there.   (01:21) - Multiple readers (coincidentally named both forms of "John") chime in with feedback from recent podcast episodes... (01:42) - Find podcast Ep269 Alaska/Hawaiian Airlines Wedding Planning here. (04:21) - Find podcast Ep262 How to get great value from you Platinum card here. (07:34) - Nick experiences a crazy Hilton resort fee for using the pool (11:42) - Bilt's September 1 Rent Day promo. Should Greg transfer his points? Read more about Bilt Rent Day promos here. (20:58) - Bilt adds Walgreens FSA & point earning Read more about Bilt rewards adding points-earning at Walgreens here. (28:34) - Delta (probably gone) : US to Taipei on Delta One from 98,000 SkyMiles (83,300 for Delta cardholders) Read more about finding this US to Taipei deal here. (33:26) - Find our World of Hyatt Complete Guide here (35:10) - Read Greg's post "Hyatt milestone spending -- what's my X?" here. (36:59) - Read Nick's "Hyatt Milestone chasing: should we all mattress run to Globalist status?" here. (39:49) - Hyatt Milestone Details: Earn valuable benefits after every 10 qualifying nights starting at 20 nights (but real value starts at 30)... (47:20) - First let's talk about mattress running... (52:54) - Credit card spend options... (52:56) - Learn more about the World of Hyatt card here. (53:43) - Learn more about the World of Hyatt Business card here. (56:26) - Which is better - mattress running or credit card spend? (1:07:33) - A reader just discovered you can redeem Cathay Pacific miles for hotels and wonders if we've heard of anyone doing this?

Let's get into the giant mailbag. What crazy thing did City do this week? It's time for Mattress Running the Numbers. Ready for the main event? The main event. Frequent Liler on the air starts now. Today's main event, Hyatt Elite Milestone Spending versus Mattress Running. Hyatt's Elite program can be really valuable.

There's lots of great things to it, including when you reach certain milestones, you can get valuable perks. And there's multiple ways of reaching those milestones. We're going to debate what's the best way to get there. Yeah. And no time like the present to talk about this because I just had a great stay at the Grand Hyatt Tokyo, enjoyed globalist benefits and was actually just having a conversation with my wife about how valuable some of those globalist perks have been. And it never has stood out more than after we checked into a Hilton property today, but more on that to come. So we'll talk about all that. Don't forget that the show

notes are always where you'll find the timestamps. So if you want to jump ahead to a segment or you want to return to something later on, you can always find the timestamps in the show notes if you just expand the description box. And wherever you're listening to this or watching it, please don't forget to leave us a review, give us a like, leave us a thumbs up, a comment. We always appreciate all those things. All right, let's drag out this week's Giant mailbag. Today's giant mail comes from two different Johns. So this is the Johnny on the spot edition of the giant mailbag. Our first John wrote in to say, one thing you were talking about in your last podcast was being able to transfer points from one account to another to top off for larger awards. Now, John's talking

about our podcast, the Alaska Hawaiian Airlines wedding planning, where we talked about how the Hawaiian Airlines cards allow you to freely move points from one person to another. And we're hoping that you could use that to merge your Alaska miles together, basically, because those should eventually become Alaska miles. But John goes on to say, while this is good for smaller amounts to top off an award ticket, it might not be needed in all circumstances. When you call into Alaska and book over the phone, they have the ability to deduct miles from each flyer's account, meaning that you don't have to have the miles all in one account,

so long as each account has sufficient number of miles. This way you can have one reservation, but still pay for the trip with multiple accounts. And this comes from John of Nomas Coach. That's a blog that you might find that you'll find on boarding area. Yeah, absolutely. That's a fantastic hot tip. I had no idea. I have definitely booked Alaska awards in an unideal manner in the past, not knowing this. So I wish I had known that we could call and they could deduct miles from both my account and my wife's account. Now, what I assume John means when he says so long as each account has a sufficient number of miles, my guess there is that each account probably needs enough miles for a ticket or a multiple of tickets is

the way I interpreted that anyway. So for instance, if I had enough miles for three of the tickets in my account, my wife had enough for one in her account, it sounds like we could call in and have one reservation, one PNR with all four of us on it. And that would be really useful. So that's a great tip and one that I'll keep in mind for the future. Yeah, for sure. That's how I interpret it too. I'm sure John will let us know if that's not true. But that's great because yes, you could separately in that situation, separately book three together and then one by themselves. But when you have the reservation separated like that, even if you call in and ask them to tie them together, airlines just sort of write notes. Like a bow tie, right?

It's like a loose bow tie. And then what can happen if there's irregular operations where you're put onto a different plane or whatever? There's no guarantee that all four of you would go together unless you're on the same reservation. So really good tip there. Yeah. And it's not just that, it's like selecting seats and checking in, just having to manage multiple PNRs is a pain. I love it when I have just one, it's nice and easy. Absolutely. Absolutely. All right. Thank you, John. And moving on to John. This is actually a fairly old submission. This comes from a show that we published on July 5th about how to get great value from your Amex Platinum card. So John wrote in and said, thanks for your latest episode on getting great value from your Amex Platinum. I just wanted

to follow up on the Walmart Plus membership benefit. I don't know why the membership is so overlooked by so many. I do want to point out two inaccuracies that were mentioned in the episode. Nick said that you receive free shipping from Walmart with a minimum purchase. There actually is no minimum purchase for free shipping if your items are being shipped by Walmart. All right, Well, that's great to know. Now, Greg said gas station discounts, I think, at Walmart gas stations. And John says it's actually 10 cents off per gallon at Exxon, Mobil, Walmart, and Murphy stations. Also get member gas prices at Sam's Club without needing a Sam's Club membership. And then he goes on to saying how valuable that 10 cents back per gallon is.

So anyway, yeah, thank you, John. I think we kind of made light of that benefit of getting free Walmart Plus subscription. And John's pointing out that it's actually pretty darn valuable. Well, it can be anyway. Yeah, I mean, 10 cents a gallon is good. And obviously I'd love to get 10 cents a gallon off. It depends on how many gallons per month you're buying, right? So, I mean, if you're buying, you know, 40 gallons a

month, you're talking about what four bucks that you'd save if that's 10 cents off of the best price available out there. I don't generally tend to chase those things. It's not enough for me because I'm not using enough gas, but if I were filling up in 80 or 100 or more gallons a month, well, I mean, that certainly could become a benefit that I'd start to say, well, you know what? I mean, that free $13 a month membership is kind of paying for itself in savings pretty quickly. I mean, obviously, if it's free, it's free. So it's a good point. And I had no idea ExxonMobil was included. So that's much more broadly applicable than I had assumed. And also the Sam's Club member pricing.

I had no idea you could get the gas at Sam's Club. So I appreciate that. Thank you, John. Well, and the free shipping with no minimum, if that's the case, that's really useful. It could be, except there's so many things on walmart.com that aren't sold by walmart and it's a pain to it's like it's not as clear to me as i like when i've looked at it i guess there's a there is some sort of a thing sort of like amazon prime but i don't know when i've looked for things the things that i've looked for i guess are just

things that generally walmart doesn't stock it's a third-party seller so i guess i've run into that a bunch but that's that could just be circumstant. So if you're buying stuff that's stocked by Walmart, certainly Staples and things like that, then yeah, that could be very good. I also like the free delivery from store too. I can't use that at home because I don't live close enough to a store, but when I'm traveling, I've used it a number of times. So that can be useful too. So you can get something in just a few hours potentially, and that's a nice benefit, I think, when you can take advantage. So very good. All right.

Appreciate that. Thank you very much. Let's move on to this week's crazy thing. What crazy thing did Hilton do this week? And so I say Hilton. It's not really Hilton. It's a specific Hilton property. So right now as we record this, I'm at the Hilton Tokyo Bay Resort in Tokyo. It's one of the properties

like sort of on property at Disney at Tokyo Disney. So it's on the monorail at Tokyo Disney, which is really nice if you're looking to go to Tokyo Disneyland or the Tokyo DisneySea, because literally we're one monorail stop from Tokyo DisneySea, for instance. And so that's really nice. So a lot of benefits, good service, a lot of reasons you might consider this if you're doing a Tokyo Disney resort. But the crazy thing is we got here just today, checked in and told the kids, you know, we're going to go to the pool, we're going to check it out and maybe we'll go swimming. And so we went to the pool right away just to go check it out and see it. And as we walked in, somebody kind of

chased us down and said, are you just looking to look at the pool? Are you looking to use the pool? And I thought maybe it was a problem with how we were dressed because we had like shoes on, like sneakers or whatever. And so no, we're just looking to take a look right now. Maybe we'll come back later. And she said, okay, well, because if you want to use the pool, it's 3,000 yen per person. And 3,000 yen is like, I mean, that's about 21 bucks almost, more than $20 anyway, I think right now with the exchange rates. So it's more than $20 a person to use the pool. And we were like, wait, $20 a person to use the pool? And my wife said, per day?

Like thinking that seems nuts. And she's like, well, no, actually per session. And I looked up at the board and the sessions are like basically like three or four hours long so so you you'd pay twenty dollars a person use the pool from like 8 a.m to noon and then from like 12 30 to like three or four or five 12 30 to five i think it was and then six to eight or nine or whatever it was so you'd have to pay for each session yeah Yeah, and that works out so well when you have like little kids who aren't really ready.

You spend all morning trying to get them ready for the session that goes till noon and they're ready by about 11.35 a.m. Right, right, exactly. Yeah, and then if you wait until 12.30, everybody's hungry and so then you gotta eat and then you're only gonna get to that one. Yeah, exactly. Oh, I couldn't believe it. I was like, and my wife said, even though I'm a Hilton Diamond member, and she said, yeah, it doesn't

make a difference. And we were just mind blown. So then I got back to the room and I started looking up the place. And so I looked up on the website. Sure enough, it does mention that the outdoor pool is subject to a fee. So I mean, I guess the full pause on me for not knowing that ahead of time, who would have thought that the pool at a resort you have to pay for separately? So, it turns out that Hilton Diamond members do get free access to the indoor pool. So, there's an indoor pool and I haven't seen it yet. I haven't found it. So, at least we could go to the indoor pool. But what that should tell you is that if you're not a Hilton Diamond member, or I think maybe gold also gets it,

you have to pay even for the indoor pool. And that's separate from the outdoor pool. Wow. Wow. So these are, these are like, like Mike, like resort fees that you have to pay every,

every four hours or so as, as you go, as you pay, pay as you go. I have, I have made fun of resort fees before saying that it's kind of like, you know, if you went to a restaurant and they're like,

okay, we're going to charge you a gas surcharge to fire up the stove and charge you free shipping. I guess they're just taking that literally here. They're like, you know what? We will charge you for each individual thing. No resort fee. You should pay for the stuff you want. It's kind of like Spirit Airlines. I'd like to see the conversation where someone who booked the stay with points says to a like a manager so this pool fee would you consider that like a resort fee and if you could get them to

say yes say well because i'm not supposed to pay resort fees on on points days but uh yeah no that's yeah that's not going to get anywhere don't try that right right all right so crazy crazy my craziness helton otherwise though good service so far far. So not certainly not a reason I wouldn't stay here. It was just very surprising, especially coming from the Grand Hyatt in Tokyo, which, you know, had a great lounge and we got an awesome upgrade and has a beautiful indoor pool. So with hours for kids. So it was a surprise anyway, when we got here. Anyway, that's that for crazy thing. Let's talk about points talk. So for this month's points talk, we got built rent day coming up. What's up for a built rent day in September? Yeah, we actually have two built related topics today, but the first one is about their September 1st rent day promo. Now I went back and forth about whether we should talk about this promo for this show because the show is not going to be released till two days before rent day. A lot of people won't listen to the show until after it's too late anyway. And so what I realized though is I want to talk about it because I need advice. I need your advice, Nick.

Oh, I don't know. I don't know what that's worth. We'll see. Should I go in on this rent day promo? So here's the deal. On September 1st, I'll be able to, or we, anyone who has built points, we'll be able to transfer to either Avianca Life Miles or Virgin Atlantic with transfer bonuses. And the transfer bonus to Avianca Life Miles, 50%. So you get one and a half life miles for every one built point you transfer. This is for all members. So like in the past, they've done things where you get a bigger transfer bonus if you have higher levels of elite status. That's not true for this.

It's just flat out 50% transfer bonus. They also have a elite-based transfer bonus to Virgin Atlantic, where if you have platinum status, it's 100% bonus. And I do have platinum status. If you have gold, you get a 60%, silver gets 40%, and basic members get 20%. So those are the two things on the table. Now, when I wrote about Bilt, so Bilt is no longer going to be giving rent day doubling above being able to earn 1,000 bonus points per rent day. So this is about earning points now. I'm switching temporarily. Starting October 1st, you're only going to be able to double the points earned on spend up to 1,000 bonus points. And so that's so little we've talked about you know it's just not something that's big enough to be worth like even thinking much about so so my plan was to basically keep earning built points in big quantities until after uh october 1st so you know take advantage of uh the last one and then or no sorry september 1st i i'm getting confused about which one is the last one as and then, or no, sorry, September 1st. I'm getting confused about which one is the

last one as I'm talking, but. And I can't have any clarity. I thought October 1st was the last one, but now that you say it, you've got me confused too, Greg. Anyway, it was basically to keep earning at a big rate until it's too late to do so. And then to wait till the biggest transfer bonus, the biggest best transfer bonus comes along while I have platinum elite status, which I'll have until the end of next year. So I've got quite a ways to wait for a transfer bonus that I really like. So on September 1st, I expect to have 65,000 built points. So the question is, do I go for it?

Do I transfer all those points to Virgin or to LifeMiles or some combination thereof? Now I'm going to, I'm going to knock the Virgin question off, off the table right away, because even though it's a hundred percent transfer bonus, which is great, I have over 950,000 Virgin points. I don50,000 virgin points. I don't need more virgin points. You don't need it for more. That's not a priority for me. I don't have any life miles, though.

So, you know, I could transfer my 65,000 and end up with over 90,000. I mean, almost 100, right? The 50% transfer bonus should be like 97,000. Yeah. Whatever, 500, 250. I can't do the math right now. Late at night here in Tokyo. So anyway, almost a hundred thousand, like I said. So it's almost a hundred thousand Avianca life miles and you have no Avianca life miles right now. So, I mean, that sounds kind of appealing, right? Because that's easily more than enough

for a one-way business class to basically just about any of the regions of the world. So certainly to Europe and obviously other areas as well. And then you don't pay any surcharges when you're booking through Avianca LifeMiles. So apart from their booking fee anyway, there's no annoying fuel surcharge type thing. So Avianca LifeMiles is a favorite program of mine. I love it. I use a lot of them every year or almost every year. Ironically, probably not a lot this year, but most years I use tons of Avianca LifeMiles. So I love that program. I think a 50% transfer bonus sounds great. It's better than anybody else has ever offered to LifeMiles as far as I know.

It takes some of the sting out of the recent devaluation of LifeMiles, which was pretty minimal to begin with. But with a 50% transfer bonus, certainly that takes away that sting. And if you join Club Life Miles from like 20 bucks a month, it depends on how much you want to spend. But then you can get 10% of the miles back when you use them too. So that kind of amps up the value too. So I like Avianca Life Miles. I think it's an interesting option. I think it's a good option for a lot of people to consider. I probably wouldn't do it if I were you, Greg. I don't think it's worth it for Greg. And there's a number of reasons why. Number one, you have zero life miles because you don't use life miles. So I know you don't use them enough for that to even come into play. And if you're not going to use them regularly, there's no sense in speculatively transferring. So that's probably reason number one, very easy. But it's not the only reason I have that I think Greg shouldn't do this. So

there's a few other reasons. The first other reason is that I know Greg has a lot of transferable points. And so I know that he probably could have Life Miles anytime he wants them if he wanted them. And there are frequently 25% transfer bonuses to Avianca Life Miles. So if he times things right, he could, I'm not going to say always, but sort of almost always have a 25% transfer bonus to Avianca Life Miles. If he wanted to get speculative, he could be speculative a number of times a year with a 25% bonus. So really, this is an additional 25%. So we're talking about an additional 16,250 miles.

That's not enough for me to like place a bet on this because you got enough transferable points that that's not enough savings overall to like bet on maybe using LifeMiles at some point in the future. And then there's of course, the final reason why I wouldn't do it. Avianca LifeMiles has the worst expiration policy of any of the programs with a good expiration policy. And what I mean by that is it's not a hard like three years or something like some of the worst programs out there, but it's expiration after 12 months of inactivity, which is really short compared to everybody else like 18 months or 24 months of no activity if they're going to have a rule like that. But Avianca Life Mills is 12 months. So if you were to transfer

on September 1st, then you're going to need to set a reminder to make sure that you transfer again before the next year, September 1st, in order to keep those miles alive. And because I know you don't use them very often, there's a high chance you're going to have to remember to do that. And if you don't, you're going to lose them all and then your 50% transfer bonus goes away. So I don't think you should do it. Thank you. To add on to what you just said about the expiration policy, I think also redeeming points does not reset the clock, which is unusual. Most programs where activity resets the clock, it's redeeming or earning. With LifeMiles, it's only earning that resets the clock. So that's another thing there.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. That's all of that. I totally agree. So thank you for that. I another thing there. Yeah. OK. Yeah, that's all of that. I totally agree. So thank you for that. I will not transfer. I'm going to I'm going to wait and hope for, you know, something like if I could get another

hundred percent transfer to Flying Blue. I found I took advantage of that last time I found myself using them very quickly. So that's that would be a good one. Or, you know, you never know when they might add a new transfer partner. And when they do add new transfer partners, they might be compelling on their own. And who knows if that, like you said, you've got all the way until the end of next year to keep your eye out for a good transfer bonus. So there's a really good chance that there'll be at least one more to Air France. And that also was in my mind because I knew you used the Air France miles really quickly. And that's a useful program for you. So I would hold out for that.

And or I wouldn't be surprised if we see another transfer bonus to Avianca Life miles before the end of next year. So I don't think this is probably a one and done before your platinum status is over anyway so yeah i would definitely hold out for that also for either a program they use more often or a new program because i'm built has continued to add new programs over time so i certainly wouldn't be surprised to see new programs come in and and when they have they've very often had a transfer bonus i mean another, another transfer bonus to Alaska, too, would probably be something popular. So anyway, yeah, lots of good reasons not to do that. So that's number one. That's points talk number one. But that's not all for points talk. And in fact, it's not all for

Built because Built this week added a partnership with Walgreens and the ability to use your FSA money and earn points. So I was on vacation. Tell me what's up with that, Greg. Yeah. So the first part is something that's useful, if not exciting for anyone. So if you are a Built Rewards member, which you can sign up for free, you don't have to have the credit card to be a Built Rewards member, then just by linking your credit cards to Built, you can earn two points per dollar spent on Walgreens branded items and one point per dollar and everything else. Now, this is in addition to whatever your credit card earns by itself. So for example, if you're using a Chase Freedom card that earns three points per dollar at drugstores, you'd be getting three points from Chase for that. And you'd be getting an additional one or two points from Bilt for having linked your card to Bilt and turning on pharmacy rewards. You also get 100 Bilt Points per prescription refill.

So these things should happen automatically once you link your cards and turn that on. The other thing that they added was a way to make it easier to use your FSA, your flexible spending account or health savings account when buying things at Walgreens. So Bilt will, this is a story anyway, I haven't tested this, but that Bilt will automatically notice that things you've paid for at Walgreens that are eligible to be reimbursed out of your FSA or HSA accounts and will basically show you a list and you can uncheck ones that you don't want to be paid and or keep checked all the ones you do. And it'll automatically then basically pay your credit card bill from that account for

those items. So it takes the work out of using those accounts, which is pretty darn cool. Yeah, yeah. I think that'll be useful for a lot of people that have one of those that want to regularly use it to pay for purchases, but it's kind of a headache trying to track it all and figure out what's eligible and how to do it and how to file for it and everything. I think that that's a great simplification tool for a lot of people. Personally, I look at the HSA as like a long-term

savings account for me because my understanding of the rules is that you can withdraw against medical expenses you incurred at any time as long as you keep the receipts. So I'm looking at that account as essentially an investment account that will grow over time. And I won't take that money out until someday long down the road and I'll take it out against old receipts. And I won't take that money out until someday long down the road, and I'll take it out against old receipts. So I don't want to use that money as I go. I'd rather wait and use it in my retirement to pay myself back for my Walgreens purchases now. But I know that it's not very likely I'm going to hang on to every Walgreens receipt. So there'll probably be things that I miss that this would catch. And I think I don't know how the FSA

works. I've never had a flexible savings account, but I would assume that that type of account, there's not as much benefit in leaving it as a long-term savings vehicle. I've never had one, but if I remember right, the reason I never signed up for one is I think you have to spend the money each year. It's use it or lose it, right? I believe it is. So assuming that's true, then this helps you get your full value out of your FSA, which is great. And I would totally, like personally, if I had an FSA and if what I just said is true, I would totally be like, you know, I've got to buy things at a drugstore. I would be going over to Walgreens instead of CVS, for example, because this would make it that much easier. And so I don't have a strong preference for one or the other anyway. Someone did point out though that, I think it was Steven Pepper pointed out to us that

Rakuten, the shopping portal, also has in-store offers and that they frequently have big CVS in-store offers and that they frequently have big CVS in-store offers. So you might be getting, so if you link your cards to Rakuten and enable those offers, you might be getting more like 10 points per dollar at CVS than the one or two at Walgreens. So definitely, if that's what you're looking for, it's just the extra rewards, then you could actually do both. You could do built for when you're shopping at Walgreens and do Rakuten or whatever when you're at CVS. So here's an important question that I have now that this wouldn't have mattered to me

much before. I hadn't linked many cards to built because most of the extra earning opportunities for doing that weren't very applicable to me. But Walgreens happens to be highly applicable to me because I live just like a mile from Walgreens and I end up buying a lot of general grocery type stuff there that most people would buy at a different type of a store, but it's what's convenient and easy for me. So I do end up shopping at Walgreens a fair amount. And so this is of interest to me. But now my question when you mentioned that is, how does this work in terms of unlinking your card from other things? Because I know, for instance, if you sign up for one of those card-linked dining portal

thingies from one of the airlines, and then you later sign up for a different card-linked one, it can unlink you from the previous one and whatnot. So I don't know which network built is on here or how that affects other networks. So for instance, if you had your freedom card because it earns three points per dollar at drugstores, if you linked that up with this, is that going to de-link it from Rakuten? Yeah. And I don't know the answer to that. My guess is that it wouldn't, but it's definitely worth checking that because you're right. If that happens, then you can't have your CVS cake and eat your Walgreens cake too. Well, without like relinking every single time, I guess, that you want to go back and forth.

And that's kind of a bit of a pain. And that's less of a concern for me personally with the Walgreens CVS thing because I don't have a CVS around. So the CVS thing isn't useful to me. However, there are reasons why I might want a card linked to other programs like that. You know, like for instance, Rakuten is a great example because there are other store linked offers that I do use where I may want the same card link. So that's a question that at least even Pepper can dig into for us there you go all right uh but you can't link any card and like greg said you don't need a built card for this this is not a benefit you know this is something you can be earning on top of your regular credit card

reward so it does make sense if you can earn it on top of regular credit card rewards why wouldn't you want to so how do you do it just like how do you do it pharmacy thing uh you enable it you uh you have to go to like in the app there's like neighborhood or something and then in there you should see the option to turn on pharmacy rewards there you go very good oh and by the way i i the first question in my mind was are they collecting information like do i want them to know that i'm refilling my prescriptions who are they sharing that info with? And someone else did ask that when we were told about this, and Biltz was adamant that they don't sell data and that they don't actually receive the data in terms of which prescriptions, you know, what medicines you're getting, for instance,

apparently with whatever rules there are in terms of medical record sharing, they don't actually get access to that. So that's what they tell us anyway. So that apparently should not be a concern. All right. Okay. All right. Let's talk about award talk. So for this week's award talk, Delta miles are actually valuable.

Sometimes. Yeah. So what made me want to put this into the show is that we reported on a Delta deal where some flights from the US to Taipei on Delta One, that's Delta's business class, were available starting at 98,000 sky miles one way and only 83,000 and change for Delta cardholders because Delta cardholders get that 15% discount. Now, that's probably all taken up by the time you listen to this, but I just thought it was worth talking about how it's kind of good news. I mean, it's good news that Delta miles still at times can be worth quite a lot. So I randomly looked at Detroit to Seoul, Korea, because I knew there's a nonstop flight to Seoul from Detroit. And flying Delta 1, I saw a lot of dates where one way was 155,000 miles.

Now, that may not sound like an incredible deal, but for cardholders, it's more like 132,000 miles one way. Still doesn't, I agree. Don't mind that, it's not like a great deal. If you compare that price to what other programs can potentially get you when there's award availability, that's not great.

But anyway, let me tell you why it's worth talking about. So roundtrip, we're talking about about 263,000 miles roundtrip for cardholders fly Delta 1 and only $48 in taxes and fees. For those who have huge numbers of Delta SkyMiles, this could be pretty exciting. When I looked at the best round-trip fare I could find, and it wasn't even available on the days that I saw the lowest award price, but just lowest I could find at all was $8,165 on Delta round trip business class. And so that adds up to a per point value of just over three cents per point, which is spectacular for your Delta miles.

Delta miles more and more. And the key caveat is for your Delta miles. For your Delta miles, yeah. Well, I mean, actually it's pretty darn good for any miles, I'd say, but it is absolutely spectacular for Delta miles. For your Delta miles, yeah. Well, I mean, actually, it's pretty darn good for any miles, I'd say. But it is absolutely spectacular for Delta miles, which are increasingly only worth around one cent each. Anyway, I think it might even be worth,

in some circumstances, transferring from Amex membership rewards to Delta for something like this. But only if you can't find better deals to Asia using other miles. So there might be other miles where you can go for, gosh, about half or maybe a little over half of the number of miles, but that's only if there's save reward availability on the right flights, and those can be really hard to come by. So if you can't find the better deals, that's a good reason. Another reason is you might want to

fly on Delta. That might be your preferred option, either because of the particular route and timing and everything, or maybe you just love Delta, or maybe you're going for elite status because awards on Delta count towards your elite status credentials. So all those could be good reasons to book with Delta Miles and even transfer Amex points in those situations. Yep. I think that wraps it up pretty well. I wouldn't be too excited about this personally because I'd rather hunt out a better redemption. Greg said you pay somewhere around half of this if you find award availability

that matches your needs, which is absolutely the right caveat for that. Actually, even a little bit less, right? Because American Airlines be 60,000 each way to from North Asia. And I think this was, oh, no, this was, yeah, this was Seoul. So that would be in the 60K mileage marker. So it'd be talking about 120 round trip versus 263 round trip. But that's if you can find availability on, you know, like Japan Airlines and business class, which not very easy. Or maybe you can do that in Cathay Pacific too. I can't remember whether or not Transiting Hong Kong changes the price there when you're going to North Asia. Anyway, that's theoretical and difficult for a lot of people to find. And like you said, if you've got a huge pile

of Delta miles, you're not going to do much better than this for the most part. So I think that made it really interesting for that end of it, for people that have got like millions of Delta miles, this is a great chance to use some for a very reasonable value. Okay, that's good. I think that wraps that one up, right? And so that brings us to this week's main event. Okay, that's good. I think that wraps that one up, right? And so that brings us to this week's main event. Yeah, main event time. Hyatt Elite Milestone Spending

versus Mattress Running. All right, so Hyatt has some great elite benefits for top tier globalist elite members. And they also have valuable milestone benefits that you start getting every 10 qualifying nights you spend at Hyatt hotels within a calendar year, starting at 20 nights, you earn milestone rewards. The valuable ones start at about 30 nights

and get more valuable as you get up towards 60 nights. And so what we're going to be discussing here is, let's say your natural stays, the number of nights you actually spend at a Hyatt are less than, you're maybe getting close to reaching certain milestones, but it's not enough by itself. So you look at those milestones that are up ahead, like maybe the 40-night milestones or the 50-night milestones, 60-night, and you say, ooh, well, how can I earn those extra elite qualifying nights so I can earn those valuable rewards at those next thresholds? And there's two particular ways we're going to be talking about doing that. One is mattress running. That's where you book a cheap hotel stay just to earn the night. You don't actually need that to stay over

that night, but you book it in order to get the night credit. Another way is through Hyatt credit card spend. You can earn elite qualifying nights from spend. And so we're going to be discussing which is better. Now, before we do that, two things. There's some background. We have posts that were the inspiration for this topic. One is I wrote a post called Hyatt Milestone Spending, What's My X? And so what that was about was this, that the idea is that when you're spending on your Hyatt credit card, you're usually earning just one point per dollar. But when you spend enough to get to a milestone, because the card also earns elite nights from certain amounts of spend. So if you spend enough to reach a milestone that gives you points, then your return on, how valuable is that to me? Maybe that's worth, because you're going to use it for a stay where being in a suite would have cost you

60,000 additional points if you had booked it all with points. So you could say, you could be more conservative and say, so that suite upgrade is worth 30,000 points to me and add that to your estimate of how much value you're getting from your Hyatt credit card spend. And so that was the point of the post. And what I specifically did in that post is I realized that nobody's going to have the same answers to how valuable each of those perks are. So I created a spreadsheet that everyone can make their own copy of and put in their own assumptions for how valuable each perk is so that they can see how useful it is to spend a lot on those cards and how much return you'll get on that spend. So that's the first part of the background. The next part is, Nick, you wrote a follow-up post.

Why don't you talk about that? I did. Well, because I was in a situation where I said, well, is it worth it to me to spend X amount on Hyatt cards in order to earn the elite nights to get 60 to pick up the milestone rewards specifically at 50 nights and at 60 nights? And so I read Greg's post with great interest trying to decide, should I spend an extra whatever it was, $15,000 or something like that on a Hyatt card in order to earn the nights I need for the next milestone? And then as I thought about it a little bit more, I was looking at Greg's values and I said, okay, well, my values are probably a little bit different than Greg's, but let's take Greg's, for instance. Let's just say that I agree with all of Greg's. Let me add all those up and see how much the perks at different levels are. And then is it worth, instead of spending on the Hyatt card at one X, is it worth mattress running in order to earn the elite nights to get those perks?

And so I added up the value of the perks at 50 nights and at 60 nights and I said, well, boy, I should probably just mattress run because if I can get a category one property at 5,000 points per night, then I can look at that as my cost to receive however much value, depending on how much you value all of those perks. And then that led me to say, well, if I add up the value of all of the perks at all of the milestone levels, based on the values that Greg had written down, it'd be like 288,000 points worth of perks. And so I said, well, should we mattress run the whole thing? Like, should somebody consider doing all 60 nights? Because at 5,000 points per night, you'd be paying 300,000 points and getting 288,000 points worth of perks. Well, that probably wouldn't make sense. But then,

you know, as you have a few nights that you're actually staying in Hyatt's, it starts to bring down the cost of the mattress run. And at what point does somebody say, well, you know what, it's worth mattress running 10 nights or 20 nights or 30 nights or more. And I was, of course, basing that on a category one property, which may be really difficult for you to find to begin with that's standard price. But if you're able to find one off peak that at 3,500 points, then the math gets potentially even better for a mattress run. So my question was, you know, who should consider this and how many nights should you consider mattress running? And then how does that affect your valuation? Do you step back and say, well, Greg and I have talked about mattress running to globalists before and answered

questions about this on the show. And I feel like we've told people that we probably wouldn't consider mattress running like 10 nights, for instance, but those last 10 nights between 50 and 60 pick up a lot of really valuable perks that might be worth spending the 50,000 points that a 10-night mattress run would get you. So that's essentially the main idea of my post was looking at that saying, okay, is it worth it? And I kind of decided that, yeah, for me, it's probably worth mattress running 16 nights so that I can get the 50 and 60 night milestone benefits. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Let's take a step back a second now and say, why are these benefits so valuable? Now you're at a, or you just finished a Hyatt stay, right? Where you reflected on how valuable these benefits are. Can you talk a little bit about that?

What stood out for you? Yeah. So I stayed at the Grand Hyatt in Tokyo, and I booked a standard room. But at the time of booking, which was, gosh, almost a year in advance, well, well, well in advance, I saw that there was a standard suite available. And so I called and applied one of my suite upgrades. So we stayed for five nights and a standard suite at this property for five nights would have cost us an additional 75,000 points, but instead I used a suite upgrade. So that one suite upgrade, if I wanted the suite, which I certainly did, would have cost me an additional 75,000 points here. Thankfully, I was able to use one of my suite upgrades. So that was nice. And not only did we get upgraded to what would have been or use a suite upgrade to get what would have been a very large suite, we got upgraded

from there to an even bigger suite. And so that was great. Huge suite in Tokyo, lots of space. The kids could run around and make noise and things, which was good. They needed a little bit of that. And we needed a little bit of extra space to manage that too. So that was fantastic. It was very comfortable. My wife didn't want to leave. That was nice. But that wasn't it. Of course, with global status, we got lounge access. And so we had free breakfast every day in the lounge, which is nice and certainly saves us time and hassle. We would have spent getting breakfast somewhere if not in the hotel. But even better yet, the evening spread there ended up replacing dinner for us. We would go out for lunch during the day and there was even at least one or two days where

we didn't even end up getting lunch. We ended up eating both meals. And I know some people are going to say, you were in Tokyo and you didn't eat a meal out. Yeah, I mean, I have kids. They're kind of picky. So it's not so easy to eat out. But at any rate, there was enough food in the evening spread to very easily be a dinner. So I figured that we saved probably, you know, between the two,

at least $100 a day, probably more like 150 or 200 a day that we would have spent getting something for everybody in different places. And we didn't have to do that because we had lounge access. So that was great. I mean, between those two things, getting a massive suite in Tokyo and getting free breakfast and what essentially was a free dinner every night was out of terrific value, I thought. So, you know, we really enjoy that. And of course, we would have had free parking if we had a car, but we didn't need one while we were in Tokyo. And we could have up to a 4 p.m. late checkout. So again, also valuable. We weren't hustling to pack up and leave this morning when we moved hotels. We were

able to just kind of take our time at breakfast, go back to the room, let the kids play some Nintendo while we pack stuff up. So that's all really nice to me. Yeah. Yeah. Great. So I'm going to talk through a few of the milestone rewards you get at different thresholds. So at 30 nights, you get a category one through four free nights certificate. So that has obvious value. I mean, you could use it for a hotel that would have cost, let's say, well, actually, if you're talking about points, like it could be a hotel that would normally cost like 15,000 points or 18,000 points peak. And Nick just entered the witness protection program. The lights went off where he's doing his work. But I'm going to keep going. We'll keep talking while Nick's in the dark.

So you also get to pick a few other things that are maybe less valuable at 30 nights. At 40 nights, you get a guest of honor certificate, which I'll explain in a second. And then you get your choice of 5,000 bonus points or one suite upgrade award or $150 find experience credit. Nick just talked about how valuable those suite upgrade awards can be. And I also, I have an upcoming stay where I save something like 72,000 points over booking a suite directly, which is just an amazing value right there. The guest of honor thing, what that means is either for one of your own stays or for a friend's stay, this can be applied to turn a single stay into one as if you had globalist status. So that means whoever's using this guest of honor certificate, whether it's you or someone else, will be treated like a globalist for the length of one stay. And that means all the other

things Nick was talking about, like free access to the lounge, free breakfast each morning if they don't have a lounge, 4 p.m. late checkout, waived parking fees on point stays, waived resort fees on paid stays. So these things are really, really valuable. If you give your Guest of Honor certificate to someone else, they get all those benefits, but you get one Elite Night credit. So that'll help you get to the next milestone

by giving that away. At 50 nights, you get a choice and one of those choices is two sweet upgrade awards so if you're staying at hyatt's enough each year i mean that can be crazy valuable at 60 nights is where you get a whole slew of things automatically you get globalist status you get a category one through seven free night certificate so that's like worth up to like what 35 000 points uh peak or something like that um you two suite upgrade awards uh you get your my hi at concierge so like a personal person you can uh who can help you with things like like

applying suite upgrades and two guest of honor certificates so um anyway so that's that's the peak i think where like you get the most valuable benefits all at once is that 60 nights then at at 70 nights and 80 and so on, all the way up to 150, you keep getting more different types of milestones, which we won't go into, but you can look up on our site. We'll have a link in the show notes to our Hyatt guide. There's no doubt that these can be really valuable, right? I mean, I think you hit the nail on the head with a whole bunch of these. And depending on how you use them, they can give you tons and tons of cash value too. You know, we're looking in terms of points.

We're talking about kind of the point value we get out of them. But, you know, the suite I just had, for instance, the Grand Hyatt, would have cost $2,000 a night. And that's way more than the cost of a standard room. And the cost to add on club lounge access was again, a ridiculous, I can't even remember exactly, but it was a ridiculous amount that you would have had to have paid if you were paying with money. But of course, you know, those things can be had with points with Hyatt as well. So that's why we talk in terms of sort of point value to us, that they can have even more outsized value if you're looking at cash. So which one makes sense?

Should we be doing one or the other or both or neither? I mean, how do we figure this out? Right, right. So first, let me say that I'm not advocating that people who never stay at Hyatt's go out and do one of the things we're about to talk about to get to 60 nights. I mean, that would be insane. I think it'd be actually insane to do any of this if you don't stay at Hyatt's because the value you get is from actual Hyatt stays where you use these benefits. So you have to be committed to doing a certain number of Hyatt nights each year anyway. And so if you're going to be having actual stays, which count towards your elite qualifying night total,

then you don't have to mattress run or credit card spend all the way to 60 nights, um, because you're going to be earning some nights on your own. Um, okay. So with that background, the, the, the, the two options we're going to be talking about is, uh, mattress running and, uh, credit card spend. So first let's talk about mattress running. I mean, what mattress running is, first of all, is where you book a cheap night or nights at a Hyatt hotel, and you do it for the sole purpose of earning those elite qualifying nights. Now, that can be done with cheap cash days or with cheap points days. So Hyatt's award chart starts at only 3,500 points for category one off-peak hotels.

So that's a really cheap way to earn some nights. Do you have any like tips for people about like how to go about mattress running? Because we always get questions like, do you have to actually go in the room and ruffle the sheets to make it look like you stayed there? You know, I think it's hard to say. I think it's going to vary from place to place and situation to situation. People often ask, do you need to check in in person? And probably is the answer that I would give you in most cases. Last year or the year before, anybody who followed conversation in private groups and things, I'm sure was aware that you could mobile check in

at some of the properties in Las Vegas, Excalibur, for instance, which of course, there's no longer a Hyatt and MGM partnership. But when there was, you could mobile check in in Excalibur or Luxor or places like that that were really cheap. Sometimes, I mean, we're talking sometimes I was able to find rooms from like $2.65 a night and mobile check in and check out did work. But of course, there was no guarantee that it was going to work. And of course, that's well, let me say this. Maybe it will work somewhere. I don't know. And I don't know of the places where it will. And I think there's a risk that you'll do a mobile check in and then you still won't end up getting the elite credit and you're going to have a hard time following up and getting it

if you didn't actually show up in person. So that's one of those kind of risky plays that, if you want to give it a shot, if the room is cheap enough, like when I said $2.65 a night, at that rate, I was willing to gamble and say, maybe it'll work, maybe it won't work. I don't know. So whether or not you're willing to gamble is going to depend on how much it's costing you for that gamble. So that's my first thought in terms of that. In terms of ruffling the sheets and that kind of thing, again, probably depends on the situation. I've been in situations where I have done that and kind of gone into the room periodically during the stay. But if that's not convenient, because maybe you don't live there, you're not going to stay there the full amount

of time. The other thing I've done is just explain to somebody at the front desk that, listen, I'm only going to be here for one night. I'm leaving early, whatever the case may be. I had plans changed, but I still need the elite night credit. So I want to make sure that I don't get checked out. And when I say somebody at the front desk, I usually ask to talk to a manager and explain that if that's what I'm hoping to make sure that I don't get checked out, because I want to make sure that it's like noted somewhere that I, you know, am not to be checked out of the room. Because a lot of places, if you don't use the room after some number of nights will automatically check you out. And they even if you decline housekeeping, usually every few days, somebody's still going to check and make sure that you're not expired in there.

So I think that your chances of mattress running like a 10 or 15 or 20-night mattress run are very slim unless you're able to A, go in in person, and B, explain to someone that you don't want to be checked out. And if it's a really long one, I don't know unless you're able to a go in in person and b explain to someone that you don't want to be checked out and if it's a really long one i don't know whether they're going to be amenable to keeping you checked in or not so that's going to vary probably do you have any better points yeah um no i mean i think that's exactly right that that when you're um checking in in person but not staying for if it's only one night, I don't think it matters at all. Once you've checked in, you don't have to go in and ruffle sheets or anything. You don't have to do anything. I don't, I don't actually, I don't think ruffling sheets is ever necessary. Um, but the, uh, what,

what is necessary if it's a multi night stay, you absolutely, if you're not going to be coming back in, you absolutely have to talk to someone and tell them what you're doing. You don't have to make up a story. You can be completely honest that you just want the elite night credits. And so it's important that they don't check you out. So hopefully they'll leave a note on the reservation so that that happens. And I've never had any trouble doing that. I haven't done a lot of multi-night stays though. So, so, you know, your mileage may vary on that. The other thing to say about checking in not in person is that sometimes it's possible if you could get a contact info for like the, the desk manager, they might be able to check you in like over the phone or one time, like I had someone say, well, I just need a picture of your driver's license in order to check you in remotely.

And so there are ways that it could work if you talk to someone over the phone about it. Yep. And we didn't really discuss either of us cheap cash days. And we did just mention it a minute ago, but neither of us in our post addressed the idea of cheap cash stays. But that is another option to consider. I mean, Rio and Las Vegas is very cheap in the middle of the week. So if you are going to Las Vegas, if I were going to Las Vegas, I would probably be booking a few nights during the week at Rio, whether I was going to stay there or not, because I think it's very frequently around 30 bucks or maybe even less sometimes. So that would be another cheap way to pick up elite nights. That would be even better, I think, than using points. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Let's

talk about the credit card spend options. There's the World of Hyatt credit card, the personal card, which earns two qualifying nights per $5,000 of spend. So that averages, if you always spend exactly in $5,000 increments, that averages one night per $2,500 of spend. Some other notable benefits that the card offers is it gives you five qualifying nights every year, just automatically. Boom, you get a five-night head start just for having the card. You get an annual Category 1 through 4 free night certificate. Of course, when you use that, that's another elite qualifying night when you actually use it for yourself. And you can also earn another Category 1 through 4 free night certificate after a $15,000 spend with that card.

All right, so that's one option. The other option for credit card spend is the World of Hyatt Business card. This one doesn't give you any elite nights automatically each year, but it'll give you five qualifying nights for every $10,000 of spend. So that's an average of a qualifying night per $2,000 spent. So that's a little better than the one night per $2,500 spend of the personal card. One big difference between the two with the spend is that the personal card, the 5K spend is cumulative over all time. So if you had spent $4,000 last year, and then you spend $1,000 this year, that adds up to $5,000 and you get your two qualifying nights. The business card is, I believe that it's entirely based on within the calendar

year. So you better end at a 10K spend increment or else you're not sort of maximizing that. The other notable card benefits for the business card is an annual 10% rebate after you've spent $50,000 on the card. And you get a $100 Hyatt credit per year. So $50 for six months and $50 the next six months for spend at Hyatt Hotels. So a total of $100 back. You get Hyatt Leverage, which is their business program. You get access to that with no minimum. So normally to join Hyatt Leverage, after the first year, they look at your account and say, have you spent 50 nights at Hyatt hotels. If not, they supposedly will boot you out. But if you have the World of Hyatt business card, they won't boot you out because it keeps you enrolled. And that gives you discounts on paid stays up to 15% off. employees stay at Hyatt and paid nights using your Hyatt leverage code, you'll earn two

elite nights for every $5,000 of eligible spend at Hyatt properties that you and your employees made up to a maximum of 60. So that's a really nice benefit for if you have employees who are traveling. So you can earn those elite nights that way. Yeah, yeah, that actually is great. If you've got a small business, I mean, that's awesome because you're not only earning the points from the spend on the card, but you're also earning not only points and elite nights from the spend on the card,

but you're also earning elite nights based on cumulative spend from your employees at higher properties. That's sort of double dipping. I think that's a great deal. Yeah, yeah. So which is better? Yeah. So figuring that out is kind of interesting, right? Because there's the sort of, I guess, where I started out writing my post about mattress running was that there's an opportunity cost. If you're going to spend on a Hyatt card, then that's spend that could go somewhere else. And in my specific circumstances,

the first milestone I was looking at would require $15,000 worth of spend for me to get to the 59 milestone. And that number in particular gave me pause because not only is 15,000 a lot of spend to put on a card, but because we've seen some really good new card offers lately that require about $15,000 in spend. And so I was like, oh, well, man, I could redirect that 15K somewhere else potentially and earn a lot more, which is always going to be the case with a welcome bonus. But backing up from that, even if you're not working on a new welcome bonus, there's an opportunity cost of spending at 1X on a Hyatt card in order to earn these

milestone rewards. Yeah. Yeah. So I sort of modeled like, what if your option, if your best alternative is to earn two points per dollar on a card that earns transferable points? There's a number of cards out there that do that. There's the Amex Blue Business Plus. There's the number of Capital One cards, the Venture, VentureX, and so on.

And there's like the Citi Double Cash. And there's a way to do this with Wells Fargo as well, a little more complicated. Anyway, so two points per dollar, transferable points. Let's say that's your best alternative, because when you're spending on the Hyatt card, you're usually only earning one point per dollar. So let's assume for this analysis that you value Hyatt points equally to transferable points. Now you might say, wait a minute, I should value transferable points more, but I'd argue that it's actually a pretty fair comparison that most people, like if your transferable points are able to transfer to Hyatt, that's probably your number one use of those transfer points. So I think for most people,

that's actually a pretty fair. All right. So we're saying that 2x is worth double the 1x that you earn with your Hyatt credit card spend. Now, so what that means is the opportunity cost of spending your way to elite status, to elite milestones with the Hyatt card is that you're losing one point per dollar, basically. That's the opportunity cost. You're instead of earning two points per dollar, you're earning one. So your cost is one point per dollar. So every $2,500 of spend to get an elite night with the personal card is costing you 2,500 points. Or every $2,000 spend on the business Hyatt card is costing you 2,500 points or every $2,000 spend on the business Hyatt card is costing you 2,000 points. Now, from that point of view, you know, if, if, if you,

if you agree with all those assumptions, then I think spending on the, on either one of those Hyatt cards, you're losing either 2,500 points or 2,000 points easily beats out spending 3,500 points for a cheap point-based mattress run. Yeah, I mean, I think that that is absolutely true. And it's a great point. If your best alternative is 2X, then yeah, it seems like it would make more sense to spend on the Hyatt cards. However, you do have to stop and ask yourself, okay, well, is 2X my next best alternative? And we've talked plenty of times before about how generally little spend we're putting on 2X cards these days, because there's so many ways to earn 3X or more. I mean, if any of your spend would be at a Walgreens, for instance, then you'd be much better off earning three points

that could transfer to Hyatt plus two more points that could transfer to Hyatt, you know, earning five points. I guess one of those are the built points of those that could get earned even if you're using your Hyatt card if you link it up. But my point is anyway that your opportunity class goes from one point per dollar to two points per dollar right away in that category. And same thing in dining and, you know, a bunch of other categories where you could earn three or four X on other transferable points cards. And so if your opportunity cost becomes two X, two points per dollar spent, then all of a sudden you're looking at 5,000 points in cost. If you're comparing against the personal card, then a mattress run is either better if you get an off peak or equal if you find the standard

category one. So it depends on how much of your spend would be totally unbonused. I mean, if you get really high taxes, for instance, where you're not going to earn much better than 2x otherwise, then okay, yeah, maybe this does make sense. Although if you're in that kind of a situation, maybe you've got the Bank of America card with platinuminum Honors and you could be earning 2.625% back. And then I say, would you rather be earning the 1x Hyatt in the milestones or earning the cash back and using a little bit of that to mattress run? I don't know. That's, I think, an interesting thing to consider then at that point.

But yeah, I think if your best alternative is two points per dollar, then you're right. I guess it makes more sense to spend on one of those cards. And certainly if you don't, if you're not flush with lots of points, you know, that's another point that, you know, if you don't have tons of points to mattress run with, then yeah, of course it makes more sense to spend on the cards than to use points. And so how, how much, how many points you have probably influences your decision somewhat here too. But from a base level, yeah, I think you're right. Spending on the card makes more sense versus a 2x card. Yeah, yeah.

And I think it's important to reiterate what you led with earlier, which is spending towards a welcome bonus would be way better. And in that case, it would blow away. Typical welcome bonuses, you're talking about 10x or more rewards for your spend to meet the minimum spend requirements. And so in those cases, it's not even close. The mattress run easily beats out the Hyatt spend. So it kind of depends. And the environment that we're in right now, I think, makes that stand out more. Because we've seen just

one phenomenal offer after another for the last couple of years. So that's always been true and will always be true that spending towards a new welcome bonus is always going to be better than the big spend bonuses on any of the cards. It's going to always like you said, 10, 15, 20x, it's going to be worth more than spending on anything else in your wallet. So that's kind of a constant that's always been true. but it stands out to me more because we keep seeing such great offers on transferable currency cards. Right, right. So I see that as the first thought, if you don't have, if you have very limited spend, then your spend, no matter what we're talking about, spending towards Hyatt Milestone, spending

towards a Hilton free night certificate, all these things, you're probably going to do better if you have very limited spend, spending towards a new welcome bonus. But if you're in a situation where high spend is easy for you, and so you can do both, you can both get new welcome bonuses and take advantage of great category bonuses where you're spending at office supply stores or whatever and run up spend on cards that don't have a category or for type of spend where you wouldn't earn a category bonus. Well, then I actually think that this Hyatt spend is a good way to go in that situation. Don't know how many people out there are in that situation, but if you are, then this analysis is for you.

Yeah, yeah. You know, I think it's tough because of the high spend requirements. It does require a lot of spending to spend towards these. So you've got to have capacity for a lot of spend to make a spend-based mattress run, run so to speak to earn elite nights from spend and so that's an additional thing that i think makes it tough to consider because anybody with 15k worth of spend is probably considering new cards uh or should be anyway considering new cards whether you know you are or not maybe that maybe that's not correct that they are but they should be probably considering new cards uh you know So unless you've got like hundreds of thousands in spend or lots or $100,000 worth of spend where you can earn whatever welcome bonuses you want, plus direct some here, then I think

it's tougher to consider spending towards these. But I think mathematically it makes sense. So I think you hit the nail on the head with all of the analysis there. It's interesting. Nonetheless, it's interesting because before we wrote these posts, would you have considered, well, let me go to mine. Would you have considered mattress running 10 or 15 or 20 nights? Would that have seemed reasonable to you?

If I told you I was going to be 15 nights short of globalist status, would you have told me to go for it? To mattress run it? I don't think so. That just seems like such an extreme number of nights to go for. And, you know, except under very special circumstances. Like, remember during the pandemic, there was like, they were doubling and in some ways and sort of indirectly quadrupling your nights.

But that's different. Without any kind of promo going on. Uh, no, I wouldn't have yet. When you look at how valuable that 60 night, you know, getting to 60 nights is because you're adding up not just the 60, but also the 50 in that case that you wouldn't have gotten to otherwise it makes sense. And it's yeah. So, so then the question is, I and it's yeah so so then the question is i think it's not whether to do it how to do it and that's where this analysis comes in more yeah for sure and i think that a key point that neither one of us touched on today is that you don't want to overshoot the milestones or if you do then you're wasting something right so that's i think another key point to consider

you know like there's still a few months left Maybe I'll end up with some other stays that I didn't plan to have this year. And so I don't want to commit either spend or mattress running nights yet because I don't know how many I'm going to end is just wasted points or spend. So, I mean, that's another thing you have to consider and ask yourself, okay, am I sure I'm not going to make it? Or am I sure how far short I'm going to be? Really good point. Yeah. This is one of those things that like, you just look like a crazy person when you tell people, you know, I'm going to be booking all these nights,

paying for all these nights and not actually staying. what no i died it totally does sound insane but by the by the benefits i mean the category one to seven alone is gonna save me 25 000 points i'm sure over what i would have spent and so you know if i conservatively value that then that 169 milestone makes a pretty decent size dent in the number of points I have to use to get there. Now, obviously there's still need more points than that. And there are other benefits, but, uh, but yeah, anyway, I think it's, it's interesting. It's, I found it very intriguing because I wouldn't have considered mattress running so many nights before, but when you made me think about the value of each benefit separately and individually and

kind of pointify that, then it certainly did. Um, I don't know, give me a different perspective on it. So here we go. All right. So that I think wraps up this week's main event and brings us to this week's question of the week. This one comes from Annette who says, because of a canceled trip, I ended up with a ton of Cathay Pacific miles. Well, the miles don't last forever and I've been trying to figure out what to do with them. Turns out you can redeem Cathay for hotels, and the redemptions look pretty good. Have you heard of anyone doing this?

So, no, I haven't heard of anyone doing this. I saw this question. I thought it was a really interesting one. So, Cathay Pacific Asian Miles have an expiration. I can't remember exactly what it is, the amount of time without activity, but they do expire eventually if you don't have any new activity. And so interesting to bring this up because we did talk about using Finnair Avios for hotel redemptions recently and how it can be surprisingly good for specific brands, chains within parts of like the Nordic countries anyway. So there are potentially some good uses

of points for hotels out there. Now, it's really rare though. And so when I saw this, I said, you know what, that thin air thing is so niche to make that worthwhile and useful and good. I am not aware immediately of any other good opportunities to use miles for hotels. So I saw this and I was kind of interested. So my first question, Greg, is like, is this true? Can you get good value using your Cathay Pacific Asian miles to book hotels? Yeah. Short answer, no. At least not on any of the hotels I looked at. I looked at a few different places booking hotels with Cathay points. And every example I looked at, you're getting less than one cent per mile value. I wouldn't use my points for that value.

Me either. Yeah. But then that brings me to the second thing, which is really the first thing I thought of when I saw the question. And that is, well, I wouldn't let these miles expire and I wouldn't use them to low value. Instead, I'd keep them alive because I think, if I remember correctly, these are pretty easy to keep alive nowadays, aren't they? Yeah. So it actually depends when a net got the miles.

So a number of years ago, Cathay Pacific Asia miles would expire after something like three years and there was nothing much you could do about it. But they've changed it. So now miles earned after a certain date, I can't remember when, as long as you have an activity in your account every, I think it was like 18 months, it'll reset the clock and you'll be fine. And so you could do something like just, if you have, assuming you have transferable points, let's say Amex points, you could transfer, you know, a thousand points once every 18 months to keep those points alive till you get a good use of them. And while Cathay Asia miles aren't as super valuable as they had been in the past, there's still plenty of good uses, if not great uses. You can use them to book One World partners you could use them to book british airways awards and and in some cases

one-way awards you'll pay much less in fuel surcharges than you will with any other program booking those british airways awards and flying cathay itself can be a good use and um i think you'd find better award availability um Cathay to book Cathay itself. So you can get very good value, much more than one cent per point, assuming you travel a fair amount. And even domestically, you could use it for American Airlines. And it's not the best program for that, but still, I bet you'd get better value than you would with hotels.

Yeah. And so for the record, Greg mentioned that long ago, they used to expire after a certain amount of time and they changed that. So that was January 1st of 2020. So if you've earned your miles since January 1st of 2020, they don't expire or they don't have the hard expiration. They can be extended with activity. And even if you had miles from before that, there was a way to

extend them. Now, I'm not sure if it still works because it was a long time ago, but if you Google Frequent Miler, the trick for extending your Cathay Pacific Asia miles, you'll find an old post. And it's a little tricky because you got to let the miles expire first. And so I'd be a little uneasy. I'd want to look for some more recent data points on that. Maybe I would ask in our Frequent Miler Insiders Facebook group to see if anybody has done that. If your miles are from before January 1st of 2020, then you may want to check in on more recent data points with that. But if they're from since then, then yeah,

I mean, I would definitely just transfer 1,000 miles into Cathay Pacific Asia miles and keep them alive until you have a use for them. Yeah, and if you have the older form of miles, I would also consider just like calling them and ask, is there some way to convert these? Now they had offered me a way, I can't remember the exact deal, transfer a certain number of points into Cathay Pacific and it would convert all my points to the new kind.

And I did that because I didn't want the headache of having to worry about it so much. So there probably is ongoing ways to do that if you have those old miles. Yep. Good point. All right. So you got some options there. Don't waste them on poor value hotel redemptions. You've got other options. Okay. That brings us to the end of this week's episode. If you've enjoyed this 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. Join our Frequent Miler Insiders Facebook group so you can ask and answer questions just like that one anytime you want. Unfortunately, we are out of time for today, but if you've got a question that you would like to

be considered for a future question of the week or a piece of feedback for our giant mailbag, you can send that to send it to mailbag at frequentmiler.com. Bye, everybody.