Frequent Miler on the Air - Hyatt suite award winners and losers | Ep55 | 7-20-20

Episode Date: July 18, 2020

For links to more, see the posts included with the timestamps below: 00:21 Reader feedback: Is the Blue Business Plus not a better deal than the Premium Rewards card with Platinum Honors for most customers? 3:13 Correction: Greg says Blue Business "Cash", but he means Blue Business "Plus" 10:49 Hyatt adds suite booking online: Is this a win? Who loses https://frequentmiler.boardingarea.com/hyatt-allows-booking-suites-online-with-points/ https://frequentmiler.boardingarea.com/hyatt-offering-up-to-25-points-rebate-on-award-nights-free-parking-dining-bonus-points/ https://frequentmiler.boardingarea.com/bogo-miraval-offer-stacking-with-25-back/ 32:13 Mattress Running the Numbers: Is it worth mattress running Marriott Platinum https://frequentmiler.boardingarea.com/marriott-bonvoy-7-nights-to-platinum-what-to-do/ 54:29 Post Roast: Nick already toasted Greg, so Greg tries to swing back. 1:07:22 Question of the Week: Which Hyatt credit card offer is better?

Frequent Miler on the air starts now. Welcome, Nick. Hello, Greg. Great to be here. What's going on? Well, Hyatt now is letting us book suites, including premium suites, online with points. That's new. It's great. Or is it terrible? That's our main event for today.

But first, we're going to dip into our giant mailbag for feedback time. We need like a little mailbag sound effects. I have to work on this. If you watch it on YouTube, you'll see a mailbag. I'm sure they're like reaching in. I mean,

right. So as you know, we get piles and piles of fan mail every day. So we, we have to drag in the huge millions, millions of letters. Maybe multiple bags of mail. It's a lot like a Christmas movie with Santa Claus. So we dig through those, read every single one of those letters, and we pull out one piece of feedback to discuss each

week. It's almost like having feedback to discuss each week. It's almost like having one lucky winner each week that gets pulled out of the mailbag. Crazy lucky. When I think about it, that sounds kind of lame on our part. That's all, you know, people. That's all they get. Spending all this time. Luckily, there's no one really doing that.

So anyway, feedback this week is from steve he wrote in response to my post from not this week but the week before where i said why there really was no mail this week at all no this this was okay this was this week i see about a post from last week okay so so what is what did Steve have to say about that? Right. Yeah. Mailman don't,

you know, deliver things instantly. It's not like everything's via the internet. Patience. Good things come to those who wait. At least, at least I hope so.

I hope that Steve is bringing us something good. So we waited a week for Steve's feedback. I hope it was good. All right. Let me talk. This was in response

to why there, there are no 2x Everywhere cards in my wallet. That was my post. That was the title of my post. And in that post, so this, before I get into Steve's feedback, I need to give some explanation. So my post was about how I use my Bank of America card, which because I have 100K or more in savings with Merrill Edge, which is part of the Bank of America card which because I have a hundred K or more in savings with Merrill edge which is part of the Bank of America Empire I get the total of two

point six two percent cash back with my Bank of America premium rewards card and I use that card instead of a card that earns 2x everywhere transferable points, right? Like the Blue Business Plus or the Citi Double Cash. Or the Citi Double Cash, right. And so I have a whole explanation in there why I do that, and it boiled down to mainly that I already have enough transferable points, so I didn't want to invest in more of them by giving up that cash. Right. The other thing I need to mention before getting into Steve's thing is that the blue business cash, which gives you two X everywhere up to 50 K spend per year,

it earns membership rewards points, which if you also have the Schwab Platinum card... And you do. I do, yeah. Then it's possible to cash out those points for 1.25 cents each. So the Schwab... So the Blue Business Plus becomes a 2.5% cashback card, essentially, right? Right, as like a floor level if you've got the Schwab card, yeah. Right, right.

So that's background. So Steve... And also, I'm cutting out just two paragraphs of steve's feedback because it was it was kind of long anyway he says he wrote he waited all week long and then you're gonna cut two paragraphs no go ahead go ahead steve wrote what did he say no i'm giving him two paragraphs i'm cutting out the other stuff i see the fluff okay right to the point go ahead steve says in great situation I agree with the conclusion here i.e. to go for the cash however I believe that for most the Amex Blue Business Plus with the option

to cash out at 2.5% is the better option sure 2.62% is more than 2.5% but at that point, you're only losing 0.12% or $0.12 on $100. So in $100 worth of rewards, you're only losing $0.12. That's not much. That was my little editorial, by the way. I didn't think Steve wrote that. Right. He says to have the flexibility to use as – so you're only losing that $0.12 on $100 in order to have the flexibility to use that as membership rewards points, so as transferable points. If you decide you won't use them, you can still get 2.5% back by cashing out.

However, in the situation that you do use them for frequent milers value, our reasonable redemption value of $0.15 cents per point for membership rewards points, then you're getting 3.1% by using the Blue Business Cash, right? And he says you come out well ahead. So in the cases where you use the Blue Business Plus as MR points, you're coming out well ahead. In situations where you use it as cash back you're only losing a tiny bit so that's a way of sort of summarizing what he says right that's i mean that's a really interesting piece of feedback i think especially you know

we've covered something from cafes and alleyways a while back about uh expected value it's going to be a theory people use for gambling and that sort of thing. And I think it kind of applies here too, because, you know, when you look at this, you say, well, your expected value then probably is higher than 2.62%. If you're, you know, your best alternative is the two and a half, but you get the chance to get at least 3.1 and probably well more when you transfer to partners, that does seem like a reasonable strategy. However, that assumes that Greg is going to have a chance at using those membership rewards points

for better than the reasonable redemption value, which- Well, again, he's saying for most people. For most people. He said it made sense for me, but for most people. Yeah, I think that's a really strong argument for a lot of people. I think that there's a lot of value in that. I couldn't tell him lot of value in that.

I couldn't tell him he's wrong about that. On the flip side, if you know you're not going to travel anytime soon, that 2.62%, you can do something else with. So you can obviously spend it on anything you want. You can also invest it. You could toss it towards bank account bonuses, use it to buy points that are more valuable to you for one reason or another. So cash really gives you the ultimate flexibility in some ways. It's not going to give you the first class flight necessarily, the way that membership rewards points would. But I think

you can make a good argument for either side. Did he persuade you that most people should go blue? I mean, I feel like he didn't even have to persuade you. You already probably believed that most people should go blue business class. It was really going, reacting to your statement that maybe people shouldn't be going for 2x anywhere, everywhere, anyway. So yeah, it was really in response to that. Right. And in response to that, like I said, I mean, I can't really tell him he's wrong.

On the flip side, I feel like it is kind of a high price to pay for points, you know, and that's, yes, if you are confident that you're going to use them for better value, great. And eventually someday I will, but I'm also slowly inching my way towards a comfortable balance of membership rewards points and ultimate rewards points at the point where I'm not using them today or tomorrow or next month or next week or maybe not even next year. The way things are looking at the moment, I don't know. So I still like the idea of the 2.62%. We just picked up the premium rewards card.

We'll qualify for platinum honors soon. So I'll have that in the wallet as well. And I think I'm going to start using it too. But I won't say that most people should go that route. I'll say I can see using the 2X. You win, Steve. You win. Good job, Steve.

Well done. It was a good argument. So moving on to... Moving on to what crazy thing did city do this week? Well, the answer is whatever crazy thing city did this week. They kept, they don't know.

They didn't even tell us that that's what's crazy. We didn't even find out what city did this week. Right, right. They probably did something crazy, like informed their agents about whatever's going on this week and didn't inform bloggers like us. Right, right. Or they finally informed them about something they told us about months ago, but we're not going to know that they finally told them. So they did something crazy. I have

faith that they did something crazy, but nothing that we can talk about this week. Right, right. So moving on. Moving on. Moving on. Let's go right to the main event. But just to give everyone a preview, after the main event, we're going to be going into our new segment. Well, we started it last week, but we now have a name for the segment, Mattress Running the Numbers.

Mattress Running the Numbers. I like it. Who came up with that one? Well, last week, you'll remember, for two new segments, we asked for listeners' suggestions, and we sort of pitted them against Carrie, our creative director, to see who would come up with a better solution. So Billy Chen, via a comment on YouTube, suggested running the numbers. Carrie suggested she heard that suggestion

and suggested expanding it to mattress running the numbers. So we're actually using both of those. The hybrid. It's a hybrid. Yes. Everybody wins. Everybody's a winner. It's just like going to the fair.

And then following mattress running the numbers, we're going to go into our segment where Nick and I complain about each other's posts. And we have a name for that. It is now called Post Roast. Post Roast. I like it. I like Post Roast.

I do. I like the chance to roast you a little bit. I'm not going to lie. Now, who came up with that one, Greg? So that was solidly carry. You know, I do seem to remember saying that there wasn't enough faith in our creative director last week to come up with some great solutions or some great suggestions rather. And sure enough, sure enough, she did. So yes, I like it. So the person who had less faith in our audience in being creative was more right than me who had ultimate faith in our audience. So there you go.

There you go. There it is. All right. So on that note, let's get into the main event. So Hyatt, they came out with this crazy new thing, sort of, and they didn't announce it or anything. This is just something that I think it was U.S. Credit Card Guide that stumbled on it, right?

Or were they the first out? That's where I first saw it. That's where you first saw it? Yeah. And so what's going on with it? Tell us about it and what we need to know. Yeah. So for quite a while, you've been able to book Hyatt suites and premium suites with points.

And they have different award prices for each of those. And where premium suites, which could be anything from a one-bedroom suite to a presidential suite, the award chart is double what a standard room would cost. So a standard room that costs $30,000, premium suite is $60,000. And then a suite, which is generally whatever they consider a standard suite, which is generally like, you know, it could be a junior suite. It could be, I don't know. Anyway, it depends on the property.

But anyway, those go for somewhere in the middle. So a Category 7 hotel, which is 30,000 points standard, it's 48,000 for the suite, 60,000 for the premium suite, right? So anyway, we've been able to do that for a long time, but in order to book the suites in the past, or even to find if the suites were bookable in the past, we had to contact Hyatt and ask them, say, here are the dates. Is there anything available? Blah, blah, blah. As a result, that was kind of good because as a result, those suites were almost always available, even if the regular rooms were sold out.

So that was good, but it was hard to find them because they weren't available online. Now you can not only find them online, but book them online. So it's right there. If a premium suite is available, you'll see it in the search results. Same thing with standard suites. And that's pretty exciting. So we already had, for example, one person very excited who had booked my favorite high at the Ventana Big Sur. She had booked it over Valentine's Day for next year and excitedly wrote to say that she was able to rebook it for longer, which she had

wanted a longer stay, rebook it for longer in a suite. So, of course, she had to pay more for it, but she's very excited to get that, and I don't blame her. Yeah, absolutely. I think she had actually said that it was for around Valentine's Day, but originally she couldn't actually get Valentine's Day because there wasn't a standard room, but now she was able to actually get Valentine's Day

because of the fact that she booked a suite online. So that might know, that might open up opportunities to pick up rooms. We've talked about that in the past and said that when there isn't a standard room available, it's sometimes worth sending a message to the Hyatt concierge on Twitter, or at least it was, to find out if there were suites available because there often are suites available still. But, but, you know, now that this is out there i guess it's going to lighten the load on the hyatt twitter team now i say that back up a second a few months ago you were able to book suites at the ventana big sir online for a very brief window and then they took that back offline for a while so do we know that this is like official that this is something that

hyatt meant to release and it's going to keep up? Well, I mean, you're right. We don't have anything official from Hyatt, but this, it shows up in a more normal way now. When, the way it showed up before was under, I can't remember exactly, but, but it, I think it was under paid rates. It showed up as, as a like unpublished fare or something, something really weird, and so you had to click through and then find the details. So I like the fact that it's now showing up as a tab when you select that you want a points reservation. It just shows up, there's a standard award tab,

there's a, if both are available, then there's also a suite award tab and a premium suite award tab. There's a, if, if both are available, then there's also a suite award tab and a premium suite award tab. So it's pretty clear that this was intentional, you know, intentionally designed to be in there, whether they released it earlier than planned. I mean, there's no way to know. No way to know that. Yeah. But the good news is because we know it's designed, we know it's intended to be long-term, right? Right.

Not an accident that they designed a system for it. One thing that was kind of odd, I thought, I don't know, odd, notable. I don't even know if it was notable. But when I searched for a room at the Park Hyatt New York, the interface looked totally different than the standard ones. So I don't know if that's... I noticed that. Is that the only one like that?

Yeah, that's not true for any of the other ones I've looked at. So the grand Hyatt New York, it had the normal interface, Ventana normal interface, a number of others that I looked at. So maybe it's specific to park Hyatt. Yeah. I don't know. I was, I was curious when I saw that, but I, well, it's not specific to park Hyatt cause I checked the park Hyatt Mallorca and that was still the regular interface. So maybe it's not specific to Park Hyatt, because I checked the Park Hyatt in Mallorca, and that was still the regular build interface, so maybe it's something they're going to move to.

Anyway, now they're here and they're there. I didn't like it, though. I didn't either. I thought it was harder. It was. It was. I could see why they might have done it, though. It's more visual, so it's less like a boring data display and more like, hey, pick what

type of room you want, and then we'll tell you how much it is or something along those lines. But yeah, as far as usability, it didn't seem great to me. No, but maybe that's a good thing. Maybe it'll make those suites less obvious to people and easier for other people to come by. So I don't know. Is this a net win? Is this a net loss? What do you think? I mean, is this a good thing that now we can book some crazy? I mean, you showed in the post that you wrote, you booked the presidential suite at a Hyatt in Albuquerque for 10,000 points a night. I mean, they're not all going to be 10,000 points. If you want a crazy suite at the Park Hyatt in New York, it's going to cost you 60,000 points. And it's going to really vary. But is the fact that you can get those crazy suites easily

online, transfer points over, and it's done. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? Yeah, it's kind of interesting. I mean, I think overall for Hyatt members, it's a good thing. I mean, it makes Hyatt a easier to use program, right? You don't need to know the secret trick about inquiring about suite awards with Hyatt concierge in order to find these incredible deals. And I think more often people will be, who have Hyatt points or are looking to spend them, will come away satisfied because they'll search for a room at a particular hotel that they want. They might not have any rooms available, but they might have suites and they might say, oh, well, that's a reasonable price. I'm going to book that. And so I think they'll be pretty

satisfied. The losers in this, I think, well, I mean, anyone who's been relying on that trick of contacting high concierge is a bit of a loser, but I think there's more than that. I think there are too. I think there are some more losers. Go ahead. I'm going to be interested in hearing what you think. Well, you know, I'm of two minds. I'm not particularly happy about this, actually, even though it seems exciting on the surface. But who do you have as losers? Well, one thing I'm really worried about is the free upgrades that globalists get upon check-in. So, you know, you go to check-in, you haven't applied any kind of suite upgrade. It was not uncommon to get upgraded to a suite. In fact, my stay at the Ventana was booked into a standard room as a guest of honor where Stephen was the globalist. So I got his

globalist benefits. I got upgraded to what they consider a premium suite, not even just a standard suite. So I think that's going to become less common because the suites and premium suites will be more often booked up. Yeah, I mean, not to mention that the property may figure, hey, listen, if you want the premium suite, pay up for it then

because you can book it easily on points now. So if you didn't choose suite pay out for it then because you can book it easily on points now so if you didn't choose to it's not that important to you right right and then then also it might be also more or harder to apply our suite upgrade certificates so those of us who got them at at 50 nights or at 60 nights you know um just because places will be booked up. I'm not as worried about that because I think that because they could be applied at the time of booking, you know, you could plan way in advance and you have a better chance of using that. So, so, so my thing, I guess overall it boils down to,

I think the biggest losers are those who are, who have been counting on using the Hyatt Concierge track, and those who are hoping for a good upgrade at check-in. But who am I missing? Well, no, I think that you have

the two biggest groups, for sure. I think it dilutes Hyatt Globalist status. I think that's unfortunate. It dilutes Hyatt Globalist status. I think, you know, that's, that's unfortunate. Dilutes Hyatt Globalist status for the reasons that you gave, and also for the reasons that it's going to do the same for the Guest of Honor bookings. So for a globalist who wants to share that kind of stuff with anyone, the chance to get that nice upgrade and that sort of thing, I think those may be harder to come by for your Guest of Honor well. And so that's unfortunate because the guest of honor program or whatever you want to call it is one of the great benefits of Hyatt Globalist for sure.

And so I think that it takes Hyatt Globalist down a notch. Obviously, for me, as someone who's not a globalist, it's disappointing because I enjoy using those guest of honor bookings. But I think for an average customer who just wants to be able to treat a family member or a friend to a really nice night, it also takes away a little bit from it because it does make those upgrades a little harder to come by. Now, like you said, I think the average member comes out a winner here in the ability to use their points easily for a nice room. So I think overall, this is likely to be a very popular thing from Hyatt. But I think it is going to be fairly unpopular with globalists. Now, the other thing that I really dislike about this, and it's probably unfair to Hyatt, but I have been doing everything

I can all day to not go to Hyatt.com. Because I don't even want to be just marginally tempted to transfer points over right now because i've said again and again it it does not make sense right now to transfer points to a loyalty program so i do not want to transfer my chase ultimate rewards points to hyatt right now but man all i want to do is start looking for a great hotel to book next year so i'm doing everything i can to stay away from that stupid site today yeah i've been particularly happy about that. It's not Hyatt's fault. It's not Hyatt's fault.

And, you know, there's that Hyatt 25% rebate on awards that we talked about last week, which... Make it a little tougher. If you want to stay in a suite before October 8th, that's pretty compelling. There's also brand new a buy buy one get one on miraval properties with with points so uh you could stack those two things plus actually book into a suite i believe um so all that stuff might be pretty attractive yes it might be but you know the other thing that i have to say i'm a little glad that this came out now in some ways and a little disappointed in others, I suppose,

but a little glad because it came out at a time when we've been talking a lot about the value of points and the opportunity cost of points and that sort of thing. And right now, if you don't have Hyatt points, if you have chase ultimate rewards points that you're thinking about transferring over to Hyatt, then you know as well as anybody that right now, if you get the Sapphire Reserve, those are worth one and a half cents each. So that 60,000 point premium suite at the Park Hyatt, New York, which is really nice. I got upgraded to that one bedroom city view suite a couple of years ago, one of the nicest

rooms I've ever stayed in, but it's like $900 worth of points per night right now. Now that's a great deal compared to the cash rate, but that's $900 real dollars. It's not like $900 funny money dollars anymore. So it's almost a little disappointing that it came out now. Again, not Hyatt's fault really, but because it's at a time when I'm thinking more about the actual value. I mean, sure, those points were worth $600 before. It was a little bit easier to ignore that saying, I would never cash out points at one cent each now it's a lot harder to ignore it yeah well as we talked about recently uh chase kind of is is ruining our joy of free they are by making it but we love that they did this allowed us to cash out points at one and a half cents just by charging against grocery

purchases but it makes it harder to spend the points because it feels like you're spending real money and that's that's well right right right i mean it's good in the sense that i guess it's helping us make better more responsible decisions but on the on the flip side it does totally take away some of the fun because exactly i look at those nights at ventana at 48k each and i'm like i mean that's amazing the place looks great but also at the same time it's like 600 bucks would i would i spend 600 if i didn't have the points would i spend the 600 a night or whatever it's some change that is i guess now right 700 750 a night um you know would i spend that in cash

to stay there i wouldn't i know some people what people would. People do all the time, but I wouldn't. So it's kind of like a double-edged sword right now. I'm looking at it. It seems very exciting, but at the same time, never has there been a time when I've been more aware of the value of those points thanks to the grocery store cash out. So it's a little less exciting than it would have been a year ago. Right, right.

But that actually reminds me, two things that are sort of saving graces for those who are upset or who think that this is a devaluation of globalist status. So I'm getting back to that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. One is that Hyatt does not have a points advance feature like Marriott does. So Marriott, you could book an award even if you don't have enough points for it. Hyatt, you can't.

So how many people, so if you think about like these luxury resorts, you wanna stay in the premium suite for 60,000 points per night, how many people have 180,000 points sitting around to book just a three night stay? You know, I'm thinking that will thinking that prevents it from being, at least at that high end, from everything getting gobbled up right away. Now, at the low end, obviously, like the Hyatt Regency Albuquerque

that I highlighted in the post, it's 5K for the standard room or 10K for the presidential suite. That's gone, right? I mean, sorry I blew that for everybody. Probably would have booked it myself had I like had any thought I'd be in Albuquerque in the next year, but I don't think I will be. But yeah, so anyway, so that's one saving grace.

The other, I don't know know i'm forgetting my trade of thought so for globalists there's the fact that there's going to be obviously fewer people with a number of points i just remember i just remember okay this this is a really important this is like a brilliant thought okay i'm looking forward to a brilliant all right pre-advertising my brilliant like a little drum i'm gonna i'm going to slide a little drum roll into the recording. Okay, cool. All right. So a lot of Hyatt's have premium suites that are not available to book with points. I mean, a lot of them do.

And I know this because when we, so a year ago or so, um, we, you, me and Steven set out to try to find the cheapest Hyatt's that had the most luxurious premium suites. And that's where, like I found that Albuquerque one that had that presidential suite, right? Well, what we found in that exercise is that a lot of Hyatt's, if you go to their suites page you'll see all kinds of premium suites but then if you inquire about them they're not available to book by points like the the Albuquerque Hyatt Regency is an exception like there's very few that allow the presidential suite to be booked with points it's very very unusual right so anyway so where I'm going with that I see where you're going is that yeah if the standard suites are all booked up and the first level premium suites are all booked up, you check in as a globalist, they might be nice enough to stick you in that presidential suite or the equivalent.

I mean, a lot of hotels have quite a few premium suites that are not available with points. So maybe you're going to increase your chances of getting a presidential suite as a globalist. Exactly. That's what I'm thinking. I mean, that's an interesting thought. I think it's maybe not even just possible, but likely at properties in Asia. I feel like recognition of benefits tends to be really strong at properties in Asia and often upgrades are more generous. So I think that that is actually possible. I think of the Park Hyatt Kyoto we looked at, and there was another property in Osaka or somewhere. There were a couple that were in Japan that I remember a number of their premium suites weren't available on points. And I think those would be good examples where

perhaps you would have a decent shot. Yeah. Well, I just remember being disappointed over and over. I would, I would, I would message Hyatt concierge on Twitter. Like, how about this one? What, you know, which premium suites are available? And I'd get back like, you know, Oh, this junkie one, not necessarily junkie. I'm sure they're very nice, but you know, not the ones I was hoping for basically. The Twitter concierge got sick of that, by the way. So they were like, you know what,

we're just going to make these bookable online because we don't have another message from Greg. We heard he's going to update that post from last year. We got to get this functionality out, guys. Let's go. There you go. So I think it's interesting. Everybody can thank me or blame me. Yeah. And I didn't check some of the more popular properties that perhaps I should have, maybe the Asmawi and some of the... How properties that perhaps I should have maybe the as Maui and some of the how about the small luxury hotels were any of those available I don't think you were able you weren't able to book those with points anyway anyway yeah so yeah likely likely still can't I think an exciting development overall for people with chase points and with high points and

certainly you know those who are looking to create a special stay. And the key tip here, if you didn't catch it, that I think Greg made when he talked about finding extreme luxury in the high premium suites, is that one of the ways this can come in handy is if you're traveling with a family and you need a larger room so that you can get extra people in that room. This can really be handy and save you some points and some money. Sometimes the ability to book some of these suites that are larger, that can easily fit three or four or five or six or 25 people, maybe not 25, but more people anyway. Yeah. So cool stuff.

Did you look at any that you're like particularly interested in? Did you get tempted by something? I know Ventana is obviously a popular one for you. Is there anything else that stood out to you? The only thing I looked at for myself so far was to see whether I could actually make the stay I already have booked at Ventana a little bit longer. And it wasn't available at that time, which doesn't surprise me. Now Ventana, to get anything to show up at all, you have to be looking for two nights in a row. So you need to be strategic about how you do those searches and expect to see similar things, but maybe even longer periods of time for Hawaii.

Like a number of Hawaii places like the Hondas, Maui plays games like that, where you have to have a certain number of days before they'll show you anything. Although I will say that in the past anyway, I booked those certain number of days and then plans changed and I had to call in and see if they were willing to change my checkout date a couple of times. And that has worked for me. I don't know whether it'll work for you or someone else in the future, but certainly there's some techniques that you might try if you got Hyatt. That's a great little workaround to those issues. Now Hyatt used to require a three nights stay in order to book a suite award, I believe.

Yeah, you're right. I think they did. They dropped that at some point along the way. Yeah. So now it's a property-by-property thing. So good news. So if you're looking to book some Hyatt stays, you're looking to book some future travel, that sounds great. Me, I'm just not ready to do much of that yet. And, you know, I posted

this week also about a great availability to Australia and premium cabins in April of 2021. A number of people commented to say, you know, there's just very little chance that Australia is going to let tourists in as early as April 2021. Qantas isn't expecting flights to start until, I guess, at least July of 2021. And so they said it's just not worth booking anything then yet. And I was thinking, you know, if it's not worth booking a trip like that, nine months out, it just makes it hard for me to book any of these premium suites yet, which is so disappointing. The timing on this is killer.

But all right. So, Hyatt, thank you, I guess. Hopefully that availability is still there in like a year when I'm ready to actually book some travel. You know, even if it hurts some of us, I still think it was the right thing for them to do to make their program easier to access the great benefits that the program has. And I think that most people can't fault them for that. No, most people are going to find that to be a really good benefit, especially the people who just didn't know you could do it before at all. And goodness knows the majority of members probably didn't even know you could book

suites with their points before so so nice win for them congratulations all right very good now do you remember the the name of our next segment about mattress run of course i do because it was a great hybrid between the reader from youtube and our creative directors come up with mattress running the numbers. So very good. Very good. I have to insert the cashier, like the register sort of a sound.

So, all right, we need to get better at those like verbal sound effects so that we could just, well, or just along the way, cut the audio out, save you a lot of editing. I mean,

save our audio tech team, a lot of editing. So mattress running the numbers numbers, you wrote about this week about how you are well, your wife is going to be seven nights or is now seven nights short of Marriott Platinum status because thankfully Marriott gave everybody

half, say everybody and I'm kind of looking around like, well, not everybody got it correctly, but the idea was that everybody should have gotten half of the number of elite knights necessary for the same elite tier that they earned in 2019 based on whatever their stay activity was. So if you earned gold last year, then you got 13 knights added to your total. If you earned platinum last year, you get 25 nights added to your total elite nights for this year etc so if you're somebody who has both a business and a personal marriott credit card doesn't matter whether it's chase or amex you have one business and one personal you get 15

nights of elite credit from each of those you can't have two personal can't have two business one of each gives you 30 nights and then if you were gold last year you got 13 more nights as which you would have been gold because the 30 nights would have gotten you there exactly so yeah so that's 43 nights yep with with having no stays at all this year zero a number of people have 43 nights in their account my wife was one of them took a picture of her phone showing that as as the featured image on the post my wife should wife was one of them took a picture of her phone showing that as as the featured image on the post my wife should be another one of them but she only got five nights of the league credit for some inexplicable reason she did but okay so yeah you took a screenshot or shot of her phone for the post seven nights short and i i actually put a sort of Easter egg in that picture. The featured image of that post had a hand holding the phone

and the app, the Marriott app, showing the 43 nights. And, well, you know what number 43 is close to, right? I do. I do know what number it is. It's one off of a really important number. Right, right. So it's one off from 42, which is the answer to life, the universe and everything as I've explained to you before on this show. You have explained it to me. And I was familiar with really closely at the image because I haven't gotten any anyone, you know, mentioning it to me. So I had to I had to get rid of my wife's loyalty number, which was showing on it.

So I put in 42, 42 42 but i also wanted to change i changed her name before it had her first name and your your gold or whatever it was um and so i put in zafod which is the main character in the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy so little easter egg in there for any uh nerds or or ex-nerds out there that that love that series that's kind of funny that nobody caught that i would think that somebody would have in this community you know i was mainly disappointed that marriott didn't give us 42 nights instead of 43 because it would have been much better i'm disappointed that my wife only got five all right so i don't want to hear you crying about it you got her five and that's pretty disappointing 35 nights yeah yeah so i i personally on my account i i had titanium last year and i had

enough stays to get me to with this promotion got me to 82 nights which is seven nights above to titanium which those seven nights are useless to me, right? Cause I'm not going for concierge the next one. Right. And so they do me no good. So what I really want to do is take those seven nights and give them to my wife who is 43.

And then she'd be black. But I can't figure out how to do that. Cause I don't think there's a way to do it. So no, there's not. So in that case, that leaves Mrs. Myler seven nights short of 50. And of course, anyone who's familiar with the Marriott program knows why we're talking about being seven nights short,

because you get platinum status at 50 nights, and platinum status at 50 nights is really the status to aim for with Marriott. And titanium, I guess, is higher, but there's not really a lot of difference on paper between the two. So platinum, though, is a pretty significant upgrade over the gold status that you'd have at only 43 nights. You get to platinum and you get free breakfast at, like, I don't know, a lot of properties.

Right. That's the best we could say in a brief conversation, right? A lot of property. You have to go to, you have to consult the matrix on frequent miler to determine whether or not you're staying at one of those properties. But a lot of places you'll get practiced. A lot of places you'll get lounge access. Again, notice a lot, not all, but most places with a lounge, you'll get lounge access. Right. So, I i mean so that's nice any 4 p.m checkout some extra points blah blah blah and of course you get the choice benefit which you can pick the choice benefit the only choice there really is at 50 is five nights of sweet upgrades or sweet night awards as they call them right unless you're ready to buy a west and heavenly bed

and get a discount but as i showed before you could get discounts other ways that are probably just as good on those same on the same bedding so it really doesn't it's not right sweet night awards are the only thing now at 75 nights you have an option of getting a 40k free night certificate which has obvious value um yeah so so she's seven nights short. What do you think? I mean, does it make sense to bridge the gap? I mean, you wrote a whole post about whether or not it does.

But, you know, I thought it was interesting. I didn't feel like you really concluded one way or another whether or not it's worth it for Mrs. Myler. Yeah. Well, oh, I thought I did. Okay. Well, anyway, I mean, the way I wrote the post was intended to be here's what you need to know and what you need to figure out about your situation to try to estimated how much platinum status would be worth to you in

that scenario and then said, okay, if you can sort of buy platinum status, buy those seven nights for that much money or less, then you come out ahead. Otherwise, maybe you shouldn't do it. My wife's case is different though, because we usually book all of our stays with my account and so there's not a lot of value to her having uh platinum status except for when using the free nights that come with her credit cards so so to to get platinum benefits for two nights a year uh you know i i just can't see that being worth very much so so we are not going to go out of our way to get her to platinum although it's kind of excruciating because we actually have those two nights booked for later this year and assuming we do it then she's only five nights away but I just can't see it like you know I can't imagine the situation where we would look at spending even if we could find a category one off-peak and

all that stuff that's what 20,000 points for off-peak five nights I I can't see spending 20,000 points to get To get free breakfast? And most two free breakfasts You wouldn't spend 10,000 points on breakfast? Well so But it's even worse than that because So in some cases We're using them at a hotel where we book multiple rooms. So we have one room booked under

my account where we are getting free breakfast, the other room booked for our son. So we're not even talking about two free breakfasts. We're talking about one. And this particular hotel in the past has extended the free to everyone in our party anyway. So it might literally be worth nothing depending on how we would use her free nights. Yeah. So it's pretty easy from her point of view. So the numbers that you came to,

I mean, you gave some example numbers saying, yeah, independent of how many nights you'd stay and how much you value breakfast, how much you value the sweet night awards. And so the number that you came up with, which you admitted was very subjective and everyone would have to run the numbers for their themselves but it seemed like you thought a reasonable price point would be like 450 dollars right for the seven that platinum status for someone who's going to travel a fair

amount and would value getting sweet upgrades because they have some trips planned where that would be important to them yep yeah so i looked So I looked at that and I said, okay, first of all, no. No. If you are willing to spend $450 from area platinum status, stop it. What are you doing? Get the Hilton Aspire card. For $450, you can buy yourself top tier Hilton status. And it comes with a free night certificate that's valid for

two years, a welcome bonus on the credit card if you don't have it. $250 resort credit each card member a year, a $250 airline incidental credit each year. For $450, you could do just as well basically with Hilton. And you don't need to consult the matrix to figure out whether or not you're going to get breakfast because you're going to get it everywhere. So you're going to get breakfast, you're going to get lounge access. So there's a lounge, you're not going to run into this situation where you're like, oh, well, this is the Ritz. And so you don't get lounge access at the Ritz or, you know, the lounge isn't a lounge, it's the Chambers Club here at the St. Pancras. So these are all true stories. So if you're even contemplating spending $450, I would say you should definitely

be getting the Hilton Aspire card instead. Get your status, get your benefits, and get a whole bunch more. I mean, there's a lot more value, I think, in that. So I wouldn't even remotely consider spending $450 for those seven nights. Now, when you talk about sending the points and the different numbers of points, there may be a price point in terms of number of points if you can book a lower category hotel. Category one Marriotts are a little difficult to come by. Some parts of the US, you're not going to find one anywhere nearby. If you do, okay, maybe. But now, let's go towards your valuations for a second. Like I said, I think if you're going to spend $450,

Marriott ought to be out of your picture here. But I want to go into the nut and bolts of this a little bit. Because the value... Before I do... Okay, here, rebuttal. Okay, good. Let me just mention one thing. I don't sort of disagree with you at a high level,

but I just want to point out one little caveat, which is that even though the Hilton Aspire card gives you Hilton Diamond status, which is great, and a lot of other perks, which are great, Hilton Diamond status doesn't do you a lot of good when you are staying at a Marriott. No, it's true. You stay at Marriotts a lot.

The assumption in all those things was that you knew you'd be staying at least, I forget what I said, two weeks or something like that, at Marriott hotels next year. True. And so, least, I forget what I said, two weeks or something like that, at Marriott Hotels next year. True. And so, yeah, I mean, you're right. Switch to Hilton next year. If you could switch to Hilton and they're just as good, great.

But you have a stay at the St. Pancras planned and you're looking forward to it. There's a lot of value in platinum status there. Fair. I'll give you that. All right, that's a fair point. Although, if you have a stay planned at the St. Pancras where you're not going to get lounge access as a platinum member unless you get lucky and get upgraded to the Chamber Swing, right?

Do you get breakfast as a platinum member there? You do, yeah. You get free breakfast. So you can use your five sweet night awards to upgrade to the chambers club it's not guaranteed but um uh i'm betting or you can book the conrad london with your free night certificates from your aspire card and it's guaranteed you're gonna get get breakfast. So I guarantee it's not as nice as the St. Pancras. That may be the case. I don't, I actually didn't eat breakfast when I stayed there. So I don't, I don't know. It's fine. Anyway, let's go on. Okay. So now I'm glad you brought

up the Sweet Night Awards because the Sweet Night Awards, you had valued at around $200, which again, you said was subjective, it's going to vary from person to person. But I looked at that number and I was like, all right, so what you said, I think more or less, correct me if I'm wrong, is that, you know, you're figuring out a $200 value thinking that if you have a special stay coming up, where having a suite would be valuable to you, it might be worth spending $200 for the chance of getting a suite, which I thought was perfectly worded because that's exactly what you'd be paying for is the chance at maybe getting

upgraded to a suite, not finding out until five days before your stay when it's probably beyond the cancellation deadline. Because you know Marriott loves their 14 day and 45 day cancellation policies and some of those really nice properties, right? So you're going to already be beyond the cancellation deadline where you're locked in by the time you find out whether or not you're even going to get a suite. And then if you wait until the end of the year, if your special stay isn't until the end of the membership year, then you're going to just not have another chance to use those potentially. So there's a good chance for breakage there where you might not even get to use all five of them. Now, sure, maybe you will, but will but come on let's be realistic everybody's status just got extended through the end of next year right

then they made it super easy for everybody to get status again how easy do you really think it's going to be to use these sweet night awards i'm putting like very little faith on these sweet night awards working out i mean don't get me wrong i'm happy to get them i'll take them but i already had five of them and i just got five more thanks to the 38 free nights that Marriott gave me for having titanium last year. So I've got 10 of them now. And if I actually happen to get to 75, I'm going to end up with, I could end up with 15.

I'll take the free night certificate at 75 nights. But everybody and their brother is going to have a ton of sweet night awards now. Do you really think they're going to be, they're going to clear very often? I mean, you got to have a lot of Sweet Night Awards now. Do you really think they're going to clear very often? I mean, you've got to have a lot of faith to be willing to pay $200 for them. You wouldn't really pay $200, would you? Well, so... I mean, if you knew it was going to clear, of course you would. I mean, $40 or not, of course you would.

Right. But what chance is there? So my experience with it not clearing on a five night awards day was that they kept checking for me each day i mean i had to talk to the front desk about it but they were good it kept checking for me each day and and i think we spent two nights in a standard room then the rest in the suite and so it's not like it. Yeah. I mean, if, if it didn't clear it, if I'd never got the upgrade at all and never had a chance to use it again the whole year and then expired, that would, that would be a huge bummer. Yeah, no.

How many other properties? You make a really good point. I mean, if, you know, if we talked about, I've used this analogy before. If someone came to my door and said, hey. You might get upgraded next year. If I got a deal for you. You know that stay you have booked? I'm going to sell you the chance of getting a sweet upgrade. Right.

And it's only going to cost you $200. You're right. I would not. Right. I mean, it's like playing blackjack. I know you're not much of a gambler. So, I mean, I wouldn't't spend 200 to maybe get upgraded i mean imagine if people would do that hotels would sell that all the time they'd be like hey just you know pay 50 and maybe a check

and you'll get upgraded maybe not oh sorry you know they'll probably start doing that now that they heard this right right right so no i mean, that seemed like a highly overvalued valuation in my opinion. So we know that Hilton listens to these podcasts. So you better watch out. Unfortunately. You're next Hilton's day. Unfortunately. Well, you know, I've seen that from, is it Radisson that does that?

I think it's Radisson where it'll give you, it'll say like you could pay $25 or bid basically on an upgrade, you know, $25 and you don't get charged unless you get upgraded a check in kind of a thing. You know, it's kind of like the cheap way of doing that. But yeah, so I look at it and I say, I don't know. I feel like I've heard a lot of stories now. My elite status experience with Marriott is relatively limited. I had some great stays last year as a Platinum member. So I definitely don't mean to take away from the Marriott program, but I've heard enough stories from people who have had elite status with Marriott for more years that they've had trouble using those at particular properties they're looking to go to. And then obviously, you're going to have people on the other end that have great luck using their Suite Night upgrades.

I feel like it's one of those things where the expected value isn't $200. All right, I'll give you that one. So now, think back to your St. Regis Bora Bora stay. Yes. Okay. How much value do you think you got from having platinum status for that stay? I mean, a lot, a lot because of free breakfast every day and food is expensive in Bora Bora and you're stuck when you're at one of those properties there's not someplace else to go for breakfast so I mean a lot of value because I spent five days or five nights there so five breakfasts I think breakfast was probably like 50 bucks a piece so $100 a day in breakfast plus if I hadn't well my son still would have been free I think kids are still free there so I my son still would have been free. I think kids are still free there. So I think he still would have been free,

but still a hundred bucks a day plus a tip, maybe blah, blah, blah. I mean, it was huge there. So it definitely can be, you're right. If you specifically have a stay lined up at one of those top tier Marriott properties, you've already got the points earmarked for that and the plan made and okay. All right. But even there, I mean, $500 for 450.

A little questionable, but not a bad, not a bad. And okay. All right. But even there, I mean, $500 for 450. Not a bad, not a bad. So, but, but then on the flip side, you said that you looked at a couple of different examples of category one and category two, how many points it might cost you. And I think that, you know, you'd said, obviously if you get category one, it might be a better deal for you. But a category two, I think came out to like 75 000 points is what it would be if it was if you had to book at standard if you had to book at standard yeah right is that what it was whatever it's again it's 75 and i remember reading in your post that

you said 75k is more than the 450 but it's not an unreasonable price to pay for platinum i'm just going to add this as a punctuation point what that's not an unreasonable price to pay for platinum i'm just going to add this as a punctuation point what that's not an unreasonable price to pay for 75k i mean you're talking almost enough for a night at the saint regis borobora for platinum set no i wouldn't spend that much for platinum i feel like that you used to buy it for 32 000 points a year 40 000 40 000 i thought it was 32. 40,000 points a year. 75. But wait a minute. No. Yeah. All right. All right. But you know what? I say all that. I say all that in fun because my wife, I expected to be in the same situation with 43 nights. And I was already trying to figure out how I could get her to 50. So before you read the post.

So I definitely was tempted by the same thing, thinking the same thing with Greg in terms of being able to get those benefits on the free night awards in her name. But like you said, I'm not overly concerned about that. I'm not willing to pay $450 for it. So maybe if the opportunity presented itself you know where we needed a one night stay here or there like a spring hill sweets or something where my titanium status isn't going to do us any good anyway maybe i would book those in her name to get her a little bit closer

but uh but i wouldn't go out of my way right right yeah it doesn't make sense in a two-player scenario i mean right we're one of you already has it, yeah, definitely does. Right, right, right. If neither of you has it, maybe a little more. All right, so that was... So mostly you've convinced me that my numbers are probably on the high side. Unless someone has, you know, a couple stays

like the St. Regis Spore Board type of thing planned, you're going to get a lot more value. Yeah, I mean, if you've got a million Marriott points of thing planned, you're going to get a lot more value. Yeah. I mean, if you got a million Marriott points or whatever, and you know, you're going to be using a lot of Marriott points, then okay. All right.

Maybe, maybe it's worth it. Or if you're, if you're going to be staying a lot of Marriott, let's say for work, actually just getting, I didn't really talk about this in the post, but just getting the bonus points that you get as platinum

would be a big rebate over gold. It would be. If you're earning a lot. It would be. But if you get to choose your hotel for work, then I would say you can earn a boatload of points in Hilton too. And Hilton is probably everywhere that Marriott is. So it really comes down

to whether or not, if you want to say it, the St. Regis Bora Bora versus the Conrad Bora Bora, you know, or whatever else. I think there's a lot of businesses that use Marriott as their preferred, yeah, corporate hotel. Yeah.

More than Hilton anyway. That's fair. All right. So we agree that for some people, I don't know who they are, but for some people, it makes sense who they are but for some people it makes sense all right so yeah so um so the summary of that is is uh run the numbers greg's feeling like he got kind of run over a little bit a little bit that's part of the that's what everybody tunes in for it's good tv

that's just running the points the That's what everybody tunes in for, right? It's good TV. Matches running the points. Matches running the numbers. The numbers. Sorry, sorry, sorry. All right. So that brings us then to the next key segment, right? Which I know you're looking forward to because this is post-roast. Right.

Which you already did. You already roasted. I did. I did. I'm not going to rake you through the goals again. You have nothing else to do, right? No, I mean, you wrote like a world of high complete guide this week. How am I going to roast that?

What am I going to say? You left out the guest of honor part, Craig. It's incomplete, you idiot. Right, right. I know that. I know it's incomplete. There's not everything in there. Yeah.

Okay, so let's pretend that was your roast. Your complete guide was incomplete. Right. Right. So one of your posts this week was retirement planning. So you wrote about how you made a lot of mistakes early on. You trusted someone you shouldn't have trusted and invested in retirement plans that cost you a lot, basically. Right.

Because there were fees for buying in and fees, ongoing maintenance fees that all added up to mean that you're basically poor and homeless. Close to it. Close to it. Or will be in retirement, perhaps. Right. Oh, right. Certainly compared to the me that would have had a lot more money had I not done that for

the last 10 years. Yeah. Okay. All right. I probably could have bought another house for what I lost. I misread that a little bit. So, you know, I'm supposed to be roasting. I don't really have a lot to complain about with that post.

I mean, basically, you roasted yourself. I did. I did. You said in that post, boy, was I an idiot. And let's run the numbers and I'll show you what an idiot I was. And I showed off just how stupid it was. Yeah, I did. I agree. But you also unveiled something I didn't know that's not related to your retirement savings, which is that your wife had to convince you to apply for this job. I did not know

that you almost made the mistake of your life by not applying for this job. It was close. Yeah. I, I almost, I did almost, I admit, that would have been like, talk about compounding interest, compounding mistakes right there, right? I mean, could have gotten a lot worse. You're right. No, she has definitely had a few of the nuggets of wisdom

in my life over the years. And one of them was that you have to apply for this job. Because of course I had seen it on Frequent Wealth. We were both readers back at the time. So this was, you know, Greg put out a post looking for help in january of 2017 i think it was so i put out a post saying that he was looking for help and i saw it and i was immediately interested but also at the same time thought ah you know i probably wouldn't get that i i don't know blah blah blah you know all the basic kind of stuff that everybody doubts themselves to some extent.

And of course my wife saw it and she said, hey, Frequent Milers got a job posting. And I said, yeah, I know I saw it. And she's like, well, you're going to apply for it, right? And I was like, well, you know, I don't know. And she's like, what do you mean you don't know? And I said, well, I'm not sure. I don't know.

And she's like, no, you have to apply for that job. And so sure enough, she pushed me to do it. Yeah. And at the time, you know, I was, I was doing something else and I, I wasn't actively looking for something different and life was kind of in a routine and life was fine. It's okay. There was nothing I was, I was looking forward to be new and my goodness, what a mistake it would have been if I hadn't, or I probably wouldn't have known what I was missing out on much the same way

that I didn't realize how much money I was losing in my retirement. Because I just didn't look at it for a long time. So no, it was a great decision. Because it's been a lot of fun roasting Greg. So somebody else would be here roasting Greg. That's right. I don't have been Tom Brady. I mean, I remember. So my wife has long had a rule, basically, which is that in our relationship, a rule in our relationship, which is that she's always right. And it sounds like the same applies in your relationship. And so I just want to thank your wife for being right back then and making you apply. That was great.

Just shaking my head and not commenting. You know, it's funny. It's funny you said that because, so our families have these kind of strange, every family's got their strange things that are like these sayings that come from the family. And so big saying from my family is that Arreus is always right. So that's been a long stand.

And that my grandmother was always very. Logan. Yeah, I think I cut that out. Maybe I cut that out. I don't know. Maybe I had it in one of the videos briefly. Anyway, my grandmother was always very, very firm on that. Of course, you're right.

You're a Reyes. A Reyes is always right. And so that became a thing. It was a big speech at my wedding and whatnot. Reyes is always right. And so now, of course, now my wife is a Reyes. And so, you know, she's always right now because now she's. Reyes is always right. And so now, of course, now my wife is Reyes. And so, you know, she's always right now because now she's Reyes.

Right now. So right now she's right. So I will have to tell her that she was lucky to have been, you know, endowed with that ability to always be right. It came with the name. So it's not genetic. It's just the name. No, well, you know, it is.

It's part of the name. It does have a nice alliteration to it. Reyes is always right. It's just the name. No, well, you know, it is. It's part of the name. It does have a nice alliteration to it. Reyes is always right. It's true. And, you know, when there's a disagreement between Reyeses, it's still true that Reyes is always right. One of you is right. So that said, thank you for that.

Yeah, so if you didn't check out that post this week, you can go check out how I'm going to end up in the poorhouse someday. Or hopefully not end up in the poorhouse someday, or hopefully not. No, not anymore, because he's fixed it all, and he's on the right path. Actually great. And you're on your way to 2.62% everywhere. I am.

That's in your future. That's an exciting change. You got approved for the Bank of America Premium Rewards Card, and now you just need to get that platinum preferred honor status. And then you'll have the bonus on top of the one and a half percent to get you to 2.62. Right. And is that going to become your everywhere else card in your wallet? I think so.

Yeah. I mean, I'm kind of looking forward to being able to get rid of the Alliant card because it was a bummer when they, first of all, increased the annual fee and then put in the cap every month in terms of how much you can earn. You can only earn cash back in the first 10,000 in purchases each month now. So you got to kind of pay attention to that. Like I put taxes on it yesterday and my wife was going somewhere today to shop for furniture with her mother. And of course, her mother is happy to have us put it on our credit card and pay us for it.

So we earn the rewards. And I said, well, put it on the Alliant card unless she spends more than this amount because then we wouldn't earn anything, right? So I said, you know, then you got to pick out a different card and that's kind of annoying. That is annoying, yeah.

So I look forward to that being the Bank of America card. What about Steve's advice now? Why not the Blue Business Plus to get 2X everywhere? That's a good question. That would be a good pick. What I told her was if not the Alliant card, then the Venture card

because I'm able to cash in those Venture points for Marriott gift cards at 1.4 cents each. However, I'm getting, of course, less excited about that now because if I can get 2.62% cash back, then we're getting to the point where 2.8% in Marriott gift cards, 2.62 in cash. Cash might be more valuable to me for long term. So I'm definitely looking forward to having that card. So that's going to be a nice bonus. Also, by the way, if you're thinking about doing what I did, so for anybody who missed the post, the brief, brief version is that we ended up moving Roth IRAs from another brokerage over to Merrill Edge and Merrill Edge has mostly no fees. There's some fees, options trading,

a few things that have fees, but for the things that I want to do in my IRA and retirement and investment accounts, no fees on ETFs and stuff like that. So very, very simple, very easy. You don't need an advisor. It doesn't have to be. And also it's, you're not like selling your stocks and rebuying. Right. It's just changing control of the portfolio over to Merrill Edge. Yep. Yep. And, and so there was a bonus and there was an increased bonus that ended this week. I'm sure it'll come back again at some point, but so that also made it a good time to switch over because we're going to get some money for switching it over. And then additionally, I haven't actually gotten confirmation on this yet.

I'm only officially moved over one of them so far. I haven't moved both of them yet. But I had asked their chat reps whether or not they would cover the closure fee at the other brokerage. They were charging us $125 termination fee to close out there. And the chat rep from Bank of America said, we don't have an official program for that. But when you call up to make the transfer to transfer over custodians, ask because basically he said, we don't have an official, you know, announcement that we do that. But if you ask, they're going to do it. Kind of a thing is what he had said. And so we did ask and they wrote down notes that they're

going to call back, blah, blah, blah. It definitely didn't sound like it was a type of request that they don't get. So whether or not they actually will, I don't know yet. So I can't confirm that. But it sounds like I think they'll probably pay that $125 termination fee on top of the bonus. And if they do, great. And it'll really cost me nothing. Everything's going to move over as the investments they were. Now, of course, if you read the post, you know, I'm going to get out of those investments because I don't want to be in them because of the fees, but I don't have to, I could have kept them the way they are. Right. So, um, the, and the fees that you're mentioning are because of the particular investments, right? Not because of Merrill. Nothing to do with Merrill. It's just the mutual funds that I'm invested in have high ongoing maintenance fees. That was part of the mistake that I

got into these mutual funds that I should never have bought. So I'm very much looking forward to buying the right kind of ETFs from Merrill Edge and not paying those ongoing. Yeah. And for everyone who's listening, that's like, oh, bummer, I missed out on that enhanced bonus structure that Nick wrote about. What you need to know is every time it's come up with me where I've had accounts that I wanted to move into Merrill, I've just talked with a rep, a Merrill rep, and said, I want to move this much money. Are there any bonuses that you can offer me? And generally there are standard, they're the standard bonuses, but there's often more they can do. In fact, there was never a time where there wasn't something more they could do.

So what, what that one time, well, the, the offer that just went away that was like up to $900, I think, for if you could do $200K, but certain amounts for less than $200K. I'm pretty sure you can get those amounts just about any time if you talk first to a rep and get a note on your account about that. Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised by that at all. It definitely seems like that would be true. And I wasn't aware of that. I wasn't aware that that up to $900 offer existed. I found that on a forum somewhere and I did write a quick deal about it that same day before it expired. But yeah, I would imagine if you call up, it does seem like they're pretty flexible in terms of offering whatever it is that they can to get your business over, which is nice. Because my impression in the beginning, when you first wrote about this way back when, I know there were a couple of readers that said something about high fees at Merrill Lynch.

And so I kind of ignored it initially, even though you said that the fees weren't high. I was like, oh, but I've read a few other people said Merrill Lynch. And they're right. Merrill Lynch does have higher administration fees and guided advising and all there's that but Merrill Edge is the discount brokerage that doesn't have those things and so that was appealing to me now obviously if you want an advisor you want somebody to hold your hand through it blah blah blah then Merrill Edge won't be for you but but for me it works out well because I'm going to save a lot of money I'm going to hopefully make more money for my retirement and I'm going to get this lot of money. I'm going to hopefully make more money for my retirement.

And I'm going to get this credit card that's going to give me 2.62% cash back. And it's a fast track to the preferred rewards program, which sounds like must be, from what you said, must be kind of the standard thing. When you first sign up, you put your money in all at once kind of at the beginning, then they just go ahead and give you the money. Right. That's been my experience in both managing my account and my father's account back when is that we got whatever level of status was based on the amount of money that was initially in that first month. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There you go. So, so, all right. So good news there. Good stuff. I'm glad that we were able to do that. I'm glad for reader Larry, who had pointed out how much I was wasting by not doing that. Right. Right. All right. So that made it through, made it through post roast. We did. Yes. I only got lightly roasted. So, so that brings us to the question of the week. And the question of the week is going to

bring us back to Hyatt for a moment, but a little bit different than what we were talking about with Hyatt. So I'm going to try to kind of parse this too, because it was kind of a long email that came in. They were asking about the world of Hyatt credit cards. So right now, the public offer on the world of Hyatt credit card gives you 10 elite nights towards status this year, if you apply by the end of August, and then it's also basically 50,000 points. There's two spending tiers, but 50,000 points after you meet minimum spend in the first six months.

But this person who wrote in said that doesn't seem appealing to him. So this was Koshin who wrote in. And so Koshin said that that's not appealing because he said, I don't see myself doing a mattress runner, spending my way to globalist status this year. Then, so now we go into the meat and potatoes of the question. Tonight, I was looking to book a Hyatt Awards day and I got targeted for an offer for the World of Hyatt card I haven't seen before, a $200 statement credit after the first purchase and a free night award for a category one to seven, including the Ziva or Zalara brands, but not Mirrorball,

after spending just $3,000 in three months. So he said that offer is more enticing because not pursuing global status, don't need the 10 elite nights. And so he said it's like spending $2,800 to get 30,000 points plus a free night award that I can potentially use at a category seven hotel that goes for 30,000 a night. He thinks that's better

because of the $200 statement credit and the free category one to seven night. Where did the 30,000 points come in? Yeah. You know, that's, I just read it out of the email and that doesn't make sense. What I think cushion was saying there,

I remember from reading this before now, was that it's kind of getting the equivalent sort of 30,000 points. Cause he's getting a free night, sir. That's available category one to category seven. Oh, okay. So I think he's miss miss valuing that. Right.

Right. But, but, but the overall question here is, is it better to spend $6,000 to earn 50,000 points on the Hyatt card? Or would it be a better offer to spend $3,000 and get a $200 statement credit and a category one to seven free night award? Which would you pick? Oh, I would definitely pick the former, the 50,000 points. So the, um, the, the only exception would be if it's hard to spend the full $6,000. And so the reason I'm saying that if you just compare the bonuses themselves, on the one hand you have,

um, you have a free night award good for up to category seven for up to category seven, which means it's worth up to 30,000 points. But, um, that really constrains you. Like the only way to get 30,000 points value is to use it at a hotel that

costs 30,000 points. If you use it at a hotel that costs 30,000 points. If you use it at some, there's some really awesome ones that cost 25,000 for how to luck. And you can't, to my knowledge, use it for a suite award. So, you know, 50,000 points would get you five nights in the presidential suite at the higher Regency Albuquerque. And those points are really easy to keep alive. Whereas the free night cert is only good for a year. So, but even if we forget about how long it's alive, I mean, and if we forget about, like, if we assume you're definitely going to use it at a 30,000 point hotel where you would have spent those points otherwise, then you're talking about, in one case, getting 50,000 points total. In another case, getting 30,000 points plus $200.

So you're basically getting $200 instead of 20,000 points. And we value Hyatt points at about one and a half cents each for redemption. So that's more like $300, that difference. So I think the standard bonus is worth a lot more. So, okay. I agree. That was my initial reaction. let's let's jump back and run the numbers there for a second so we said that if you value that two hundred dollars or the twenty thousand additional points so to speak of the 50k offer around three hundred dollars that's more than the statement credit but it also requires double the spend so it requires an extra three thousand dollars spend which if your opportunity cost on that is two and a half percent cash back,

let's say. So that's $90, right? No, $90 would be 3%, 3K. Don't forget to subtract out the value of the points you earned from that spend, though. Right. That's true. So, okay. So $75, the opportunity cost on the spend side, but you'd get 3,000 high points,

so that's worth 45, so at $30. So there's a $30 difference there. So I guess still the points, even if you valued the Category 1 to 7 at 30,000 points, which is crazy, like Greg said, it's not 30,000 points unless you're going to use it at a Category 7. And even then, it's still not as good an offer for the $200 statement credit. Right. I mean, it gets very close. It's just not, I, you know, if you're interested in the card and you're not looking to get elite status this year and you don't need the card this year,

wait till, if you think you might be pursuing elite status next year, wait till next year and, and pick it up then if, and who knows, I mean, there probably won't be a 10 elite night benefit, but maybe there will be. Yeah, you know, and I look at it and I say, if you're interested in the Hyatt credit card, then you should probably be interested in the points in general. And right now, I think of all times

to take a one year restricted free night certificate that's gonna expire in a year. It's probably crazy timing on that because you don't even know where you're going to be able to go. You're not going to be able to really go anywhere within the United States, sure. And if you were planning to go within the United States, great. But if you're planning to go anywhere international with your Category 1 to 7 cert, then I don't know what that's going to look like next month or the month after. I don't think you're going anywhere probably next month or the month after that, or maybe not the month after that. Even in the United States right now, the way things are going. Yesterday, I think I

saw 18 different states have restrictions on people coming in from different places, and it keeps growing the number of states there. Who ever thought that we'd have restrictions within the United States in terms of which states you can go to and how long you have to self-isolate, that kind of thing. It's just a weird time to take, I'd say, a certificate that's only valid for a year. Now, he did tag on another question to it that's not really – I don't think there's really an answer to it. He said that Hilton this week announced, and this was kind of interesting, that they're going to roll over all the nights you earn this year into next year.

So if you earn any elite nights with Hilton this year, you already have Hilton elite status. You're just rolling all that over into next year so if you're in any elite nights with hilton this year you already have hilton elite status you're just rolling all that over into next year so it's going to add up together with next year's so he said he's wondering if there's any chance that hyatt will do that because if there is then he'd want the offer with the 10 elite ah yeah i mean i don't think they'll do that no is there a chance of course there's a chance there's a chance i i think that's extremely unlikely extremely i don't see them rolling over elite nights i think that's that's very unlikely so yeah 50k go for the points offer all right so yeah i think that brings us to the goodbye song so it does thank you to everybody who's been out there listening following along if

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