Frequent Miler on the Air - Hyatt's top tier status: Easier than ever. | Ep75 | 12-4-20

Episode Date: December 5, 2020

00:20 Giant Mailbag 3:28 Bonus segment: Free gift for readers/listeners 6:14 What crazy thing did American Airlines do this week? https://frequentmiler.com/american-ai... 12:07 Mattress Running the Numbers: Are the Marriott / Hilton transfer bonuses worth it? https://frequentmiler.com/american-ai... https://frequentmiler.com/40-transfer... 14:58 Main Event: Hyatt top tier status is easier than ever https://frequentmiler.com/wow-hyatt-s... https://frequentmiler.com/ludicrously... 56:20 Greg's top picks: How high should the World of Hyatt credit card be? Should existing cardholders cancel and re-apply? https://frequentmiler.com/top-current... 1:01:56 Post Roast: No tips on how to get the Sears ThankYou Mastercard? https://frequentmiler.com/store-credi... 1:07:36 Question of the Week: What might be asked on an Amex Financial Review and how should I answer? Don't forget to like, subscribe, and comment! Music credit: Annie Yoder

frequent miler on the air starts now today's main event hi it makes it crazy easy to earn top tier status we'll get all over that soon of course we have the giant mailbag first today's mail comes from several readers who commented on a show we did a few weeks ago where we talked about retention offers. And in that show, we said that most retention offers don't have a requirement to keep the card like forever. And that usually as long as you keep it until you get the bonus, you know, that's the only requirement that's there. A few people wrote in saying, not so fast. Amex retention offers specifically state that you must keep the account open for 12 months from receiving the bonus, or else it can get clawed back. So I don't know if that's true of all Amex offers. I, you know, I haven't,

I mean, retention offers, I haven't paid that close of attention to them when I get them. I know that when the rep and when I'm on the phone and the rep starts reading the terms and conditions, I totally zone out. Exactly. Yeah. I feel like I'm done. I got the retention offer. Now I can, you know, just sit here and say, uh, wait for it. Wait for them to say, do I have your permission? I don't even hear that. I just wait for the pause. Whenever the pause comes, I'm like, yes, yes. You just hope you're saying yes to the right thing.

And that's something catastrophic. Wave your permission to shut down all your accounts and take back all your points. Wait a second. Wait a second. Wait a second. That's not what I called about. You're right. I shouldn't have pressed option C.

What was I doing? Got me with the new menu. So, yeah. So, I guess. I haven't actually seen that term but i i could believe that it would be there from amex so it's not unbelievable and yeah and the thing is with amex you'd want to keep it for a full year anyway just because their terms and conditions for all their cards basically say they can take back your points for any reason whatsoever at any time. And they've really gotten into doing that. So they do that. And so what seems to be safe in these type of situations is at least wait

till after your next annual fee hits and you pay it to, or I mean, at least it's on the statement before you cancel for the next year. And then you won't have to pay it. Right. Right. So, all right. So good, good point to always check the terms and conditions of whatever it is that you agree to. So it's probably good. You probably should listen closer than Greg and I do on the phone. But also I would say that probably the reason we haven't listened all that closely is because generally when we get a retention offer, I mean, I don't know, I usually, I am going to keep the card. I'm not intending to cancel it. I just want an offer to be able to keep it. Right. I mean, so I don't really listen

that closely because I don't intend to close it afterwards. I mean, I figure you probably could, but I don't, I'd like to get another offer next year. So why would I do that? Right. Right. There's, there are also, you know, there's a sense sort of an implicit agreement, even if it's not explicit that you're going to keep it. Anyway, I also have another segment today. I'm throwing in a little added bonus. Bonus segment. A gift for all of our listeners and watchers. Free gift for everyone.

Happy holidays. You can register by December 16th. Here's the gift. It's a prediction for something that I think is going to happen next year. Hopefully next year, sometime next year, I expect that travel will open up. Not meaning that everybody's going to start traveling again, but rather that we will no longer be prevented from traveling to places we want to go, that most countries at some point next year will allow us to come again and we'll be allowed to go there. When that happens, what I expect will happen is we will see a return of Amex and hopefully

Citi as well, transfer bonuses to airlines. Throughout the pandemic, we've seen some hotel transfer bonuses from amex but most airline transfer bonuses have not come from amex or city like there have been a few but i think they've all been initiated on the airline side and so yeah so so um you know we've been missing those transfer bonuses to virgin atlantic and everything and and uh i think we're going to see sort of a flood of them once they're sort of an all clear for travel. So keep that in mind. We'll see if that comes true or not.

I think that's probably a good prediction. You said that we've been missing them. And I was thinking as you were saying that I haven't been missing them because I don't really want to be transferring right now. So I'm kind of glad. Hang on to the Amex if you're listening. Hang on to those. Like, wait until we're ready to travel again. Then throw them all down the pipe all at once.

And that'd be A-OK with me when I'm ready to actually transfer and book something. Right, right. It's a really good point about the way I phrased that. Very few have been actually missing them. Maybe someone who's been trying to save up for their Necker Island trip, which now costs one and a half million miles. You know, they could use those transfer bonuses.

Surely. But in most cases, yeah. I don't want to lock up my points in a currency that is a one-way transfer anyway right now. But I hope that you're right. On the other half of the prediction, I'm certainly hope that you're right on the other half of the prediction. I'm certainly hopeful that you're right, that travel will begin to open back up next year. I'm looking forward to that and remain hopeful that it comes true.

Me too. It wasn't that long ago that the world felt very small and that we could get everywhere easily. And now it feels quite the opposite but we're in our little part of the world but isolated so right yeah looking forward to that changing sure okay all right crazy thing yeah what crazy thing what crazy thing did city or someone else city-ish do this week right what crazy thing did american airlines do this week? Tell us all about that. Well, American Airlines decided to be really generous and they spent days kind of putting out the word that they're going to give a holiday gift to all of the members. Every member is going to get a holiday gift. All you got to do is show up, log in, click around, whatever in your account,

and you're going to get a gift from American Airlines. So they advertised this and got everybody excited about, you know, what's the free gift coming from American Airlines? I mean, I could sense that some people were wondering, am I going to get free airline elite status? Am I going to get like a global upgrade? Am I going to get something worth more than a dollar? And they were all sadly mistaken because, of course, American gave most people like 100 miles. 100 miles. So how far can you go? If you want to redeem an award ticket,

how far can you go with that? I mean, you can probably taxi to the runway. And that's it. They're going gonna throw you out the window at that what about those web special awards though can you can you go to like Australia they're not quite that special no to value the miles of what American tells you they're worth it's like two dollars right right which I mean hey they got millions of members don't get get me wrong. I mean, what did you expect? I mean, what did you think they were going to give everybody? You can't give everybody a brand new car, right?

So, you know, it had to be probably something small. But I think it's fair to say that most people thought, why did you even tell me you were going to give me a gift just to give me like a dollar, right? I feel like that's what most people think, right? I mean, I think it would have been right i mean i i still think it's good i mean you know maybe the way it was messaged is the problem like so if it was just a surprise like hey there's a little something for you right right as a gift click here to see what see what it is then everybody would be like just oh cool i gotta you know right 100 miles it doesn mean much, but at least it resets my expiration date for my miles, right?

Right. I assume. I assume so too. And probably they could have marketed that and said, hey, you know, now this totally resets your expiration. So you don't have any fear about your miles expiring over the next year. But I mean, they could have played that up a little bit or something. Yeah.

Although that might just point out that their miles do expire, which is probably something they don't want to shed light on, given that more and more airlines have miles that don't. Right. So, yeah. I did get, I will say, in fairness, I did get a preferred seat coupon, and so did my wife. And, you know, that's something that we would probably enjoy if we were actually traveling, especially the two kids now. But of course, given the number of flights we have booked in the next few months, I'm not too excited about my preferred seat coupon. I think that's only like you get a seat a little bit closer to the front.

It's not a main cabin extra coupon. It's just a preferred seating coupon. When does it expire? That's a good question. i didn't look that closely probably the fine print says expires the day before you actually fly again right right i think that's what it said actually now that you mentioned it so so thanks uh that was a check check some people did get 500 mile upgrade certificates i did see some but live and let's fly maybe it reported that they got four of those 500 mile upgrade certificates. I did see some, but live and let's fly. Maybe it reported that they got four of those 500 mile upgrade certificates, which I mean, Hey, I guess you can toss that together and get an upgrade. So that's not bad. Yeah, that's not bad at all. So,

so some people did get something in fairness. Right. Right. And, uh, you know, I got a hundred miles, uh, Steven Pepper got 250. And so, you know, I, I did a lot of hard math and worked out that Steven is worth two and a half times me, at least from American so, you know, I did a lot of hard math and worked out that Steven is worth two and a half times me, at least from American Airlines point of view. But that's fair because he has top tier elite status for all that he flies with American, which is zero. He can taxi all the way to the far but of course he has top tier status because last year, um, or I guess now maybe it was the year before. I don't know.

I'm losing track of things, but I think it was last year. Um, uh, American airlines are gave top tier status to a lot of Hyatt top tier elites. And, and, um,

Steven had high globalist status and his wife, uh, travel full-time in their car, uh, around the U S so they don't fly hardly ever. And, uh, so, so he has a status that there's not a lot he's doing with, but, um, but, you know, assuming that's going to be valuable again, then, uh, it's suddenly kind of exciting the prospect of, wow, if only we could get, you know, top tier status, could we get benefits not just with Hyatt, but also things like magic gifts of top tier status with an airline. Right. And with that combined with that 250 miles, you can go places. Right. Not very many, but somewhere. Maybe, yeah.

I don't know whether American lets you buy drinks and stuff like that in their clubs the way Delta does with miles. I don't think so. I think that's unique to Delta. I think that's a unique Delta thing. Pretty sure anyway. That's one of the rare places where Delta miles are consistently worth more than a penny. They're worth about two cents each towards drinks. And so you could buy premium drinks and even tip the bartender with miles and they'll get two cents to every mile, which is kind of

an interesting perk that Delta has there. Yeah. All right. So that brings us then to Mattress Running the Numbers. Mattress Running the Numbers this week, what are we talking about? So this week, speaking of transfer bonuses, which I brought up earlier, American Express has transfer bonuses to both Marriott and Hilton.

So you've always been able, long been able to transfer Amex membership rewards points to both of those programs. And now you can get a few more hotel points when you do the transfer. So what we're going to talk about is basically, is it worth it? Should we be transferring our membership rewards points to either of these programs while the bonus is in place? What do you think? Well, I mean, it's a really exciting opportunity to get your hands on some top tier. No, I can't even lie for like three sentences. No, no. It's terrible. Horrible. You know, yeah. Can't even make up a reason why you'd want to do this.

Right, right. Please don't. Yeah, so two thumbs down. So the problem for us in planning this episode is that there actually is the ultimate mattress run opportunity to talk about, but that's our main event. Right, right. So we couldn't do it for mattress running. Stretch for something else, right. So we could stretch for something else. Yeah.

But it's worth pointing out to people why, why you don't want to do this, right? Because there might be somebody out there who says, oh, well, I mean, I can take my membership. I'm earning four membership rewards, points per dollar at the grocery store on the Amex gold card. And now I can transfer them to Hilton. And what is it? Twenty eight hundred to a thousand. So you're almost getting like almost 12 points per dollar, right? So, I mean, that's not too shabby, right? That's a pretty good return. One might think,

except, you know, when you consider the fact that you can buy those points for half a cent each, like basically all the time and almost to an unlimited degree because you can pool them with nine other people. So each person can buy like i don't know how many lots and lots of hilton points every year so more than you'll probably ever need at half a cent each so if you really wanted hilton points you could open a platinum schwab platinum card and cash out your membership rewards points at 1.25 cents each and and buy the points when you actually wanted the points or have a cash back card that you're in cash back in order to do that with and yeah get a good return so return. So you don't want to do that with your membership

rewards points. There's too many more valuable uses. Same kind of thing with Marriott. Exactly. Exactly. I mean, there are probably situations where you can talk specific situations where it makes sense, but to do it prospectively, just no way. No way. There's too much potential value in your membership rewards points compared to the potential in the Hilton or Marriott. Right, right, right. So, all right. So don't do that, guys. Let's ignore that. Let's move on to the real mattress run story, right?

Because, I mean, that's what we got to talk about. Everybody's been talking about it all week long. Super exciting. Hyatt has just made this whole global. They like blew the roof off this whole globalist thing, saying, you know, come on, come do your mattress runs. Like you were tempted at 30 nights. Ha! We'll one-up them. That's right. That's right. So this is so crazy. So we've been talking for many months now about Hyatt's overlapping promotions where they had promotions that overlap through January 4th before. That was the end date for these promos. And one of the promos lets you get elite nights

for the nights you stay, plus they would match them for 2021. And by checking out of the hotel next year, it basically effectively gave you double elite nights. And so you were able to schedule a 30-night mattress run where you checked out on January 1st, 2nd, 3rd, or 4th and would earn 60 elite nights from that stay 60 elite knights is how many you need for hyatt's top tier globalist elite status which is a level of status we rave about all the time we've we've talked endlessly about it so i won't go into too many details here but uh it you know it gives you true like um really valuable perks like like real full breakfast at every Hyatt you stay in it gives you things like like wave parking which could be incredibly valuable in cities like New York City and stuff and anyway let's not go into all of them but but the point was the point was we had a way to get to that status for half the number of nights. Plus, you would earn either a lot of points back if you paid for the stay with points,

or you'd earn a lot of extra bonus points for the stay if you paid with cash because of all these overlapping promotions. Well, now what have they done? First, they've pushed these promotions through to end of february so now you don't have to do a single stay that where you where you uh check out in in the beginning of january you could do any number of little stays if you want real actual separate stays january through february and you can and you get double elite nights during that time and you get all those same uh points that I was talking about before.

But that's not all. That's not even close to all. That's not even close to it. That's not the headline. The headline is it no longer takes, at least in 2021, it doesn't take 60 nights to get to global status. It takes 30 nights. They cut in half the elite status requirements for 2021.

And so because in January and February, you can get double elite nights from any stay. And because you need 30 to get to top tier global status, 15 nights is all you need during that period. Doubled becomes 30. Just 15. 15 nights. Are you listening out there?

Hello. This is suddenly not even necessarily in the realm of mattress running anymore this is like engineering like your stay like real vacations to get top tier status with two you know two like week-long vacations uh is pretty much there and so you know i've got one uh plan that's i can't remember enough seven or eight nights that ends in the beginning of january which i think i'm going to keep. I think I'm still going to do. So, you know, if I was doing this, if I didn't already have a lot of elite nights from other things, I would only need one more week, you know, end of January, anytime in February to get to global status. Come on. It's insane. It's insane. It's crazy. And global status, like Greg said said i mean it's the most

valuable hotel elite status hands down barna and not even like a marriott person if you work at marriott you know that hyatt is the most valuable elite sorry like nobody's gonna nobody there might argue in front of their boss but nobody behind closed doors is really going to argue that hyatt is anything but the most valuable top tier elite status. Now, mid tier, Hyatt doesn't really compete. Top tier Hyatt is it. It's the status to have. And so to be able to pick that up with 15 nights, I mean, that's just a total incentive.

Right. Like with Marriott, I think you could get to silver status with that number of nights. Right. I mean, it's just a ridiculously small number of nights and let's be clear about how long that will last because you'll have status for the rest of next year right all the rest of 2021 all of 2022 until like march of 2023 right so all through february of 23 and then it then it expires march so it. Until March 1st of 2020. So you're talking about two full years

of globalist status for 15 nights. Right. And it potentially is much easier than that because if you signed up for the World of Hyatt credit card since I think it was like October 1st or so and by the end of this year, you get 10 elite knights as your starting point. So you would really only need 20 elite knights, but because of the doubling, you'd only need 10 knights in January and February to get to

Globalist by the end of February. That's just crazy. I mean, come on, that's out of this world. So that's incredibly valuable. And again, even if you don't think you're going to travel much next year, like maybe you're looking at it and you're saying there's probably not going to be a widespread vaccine for the first half of the year or whatever, you know, I'm not going to be comfortable yet. The first part of 2021 that that's toss that aside for a second right and think about the fact that it's going to be valid all through 2022 also and into

the beginning of 2023 and you gotta i mean if you don't think the travel is going to resume and be comfortable and normal again by then uh you know then i we've got a much more difficult world ahead of us and i i prefer to assume that life will be normal enough again to invest 15 nights. Now, I mean, that's a, there's just such a good chance that you'll be able to leverage the

status, even if you don't use it much next year, at least the year after that. So, so I mean, that's an amazing unprecedented opportunity. And Greg had already on a 30 stay, had to create a spreadsheet so you could figure out whether you should use points or cash

because that's how good the opportunity is, that you had to consider whether you use points or cash on it at 30 nights. So now you get down to just 15 nights or maybe even less, 10 nights, if you've got the credit card or whatever. So does it change the math at all? Does it change how you look at it change the math at all? Does it change how you look at it in terms of how you would book it and why? And, and, and it does, it changes a few things. So, so one thing that changes before you had to book it all at once, because if you

broke it up, then some of the checkout dates would have been in 2020 and you wouldn't have gotten double elite nights in 2021. Um, now though, because you have two full months in 2021, as I said earlier, you know, you could do, you could do five, let's say you needed 15 nights because you don't have the credit card. Just as an example, you could do five nights at the beginning of January, five nights at the end of January, five nights in February, you know, and you're done. And so it changes the math that way. Another thing that changes, though, is it becomes more important to understand that Hyatt has separated out milestone rewards from elite status perks. So milestone rewards are rewards you get sort of every 10 elite nights that you earn during a calendar year,

starting at 20 elite nights. So when you hit 20 elite nights, they give you some upgrade certificates to get into the lounge. And 30, they give you some more of those certificates and also give you a free night and so on. And then at 50 nights, they give you two sweet upgrade awards, which are super valuable because you can use one of these certificates to upgrade, for example, a seven night stay that's booked with points or with cash and upgrade to a suite.

And you can do that at time of booking, which is fantastic. No other hotel chain has anything like that. And then you get those again at 60 nights along with a category one through seven free night that you get then. So there's a bunch of different perks you get along the way as you keep going every 10 nights. And so the interesting thing here is if this promotion or set of promotions causes the elite ranks to swell a lot, people are worried about losing their upgrades. So there's free upgrades that globalists get. When you check in, you could get upgraded to a suite. If there is a lot of competition,

you might find that you're not upgraded to a suite because people have already gotten there and already gotten the upgrades. So a way of protecting yourself competition, you might find that you're not upgraded to a suite because of, you know, people have already gotten there and already gotten the upgrades. So a way of protecting yourself is to try to earn 50 nights so that you get those suite upgrade awards so that you can, at the time of booking, upgrade to a suite on, on stays that are important to you to be in a suite. So, so you have that option. So I think that while the decision is much easier, like I think almost every frequent traveler ought to be at least considering doing enough

to get to Globalist, much harder decision, do I go much further to try to get those suite upgrades and other perks that you get along the way, right? Right, yeah, definitely. I mean, that's a dilemma that I found myself in right away when I started to read about this. And I said, Oh, my goodness, wow, I could pick up globalist status with just 15 nights, I had this 30 night mattress run book, should I give up the 30 night mattress run and go for 15 nights because I can get globalist status very easily. Should I go after the 30

nights and keep it as is because then I'll get the full range of milestone benefits. I mean, let's not leave out the fact that you also get a free category one to seven night along the way if you do this. So if you say 60 nights, you're going to end up with, so let me back that up. If you earn 60 elite nights, which if you do that 30-night mattress run we've been talking about forever that checks out in the beginning of January, you're going to end up with 60 Elite Nights. And if you have that 60 Elite Nights, then you're going to get club lounge upgrades that don't matter to you at all anymore because you got global status. But you'll also get a Category 1-4 free night certificate, a Category 1-7 free night certificate, and four suite night certificate, a category one to seven free night certificate, and four suite night upgrades once you've gotten to 60 nights. So I mean, that's a pretty compelling suite of benefits, so to speak. Whereas if you only do the 15 night mattress run in the beginning

of 2021, it'll give you 30 elite Hyatt nights, you will get that free category one to four free night certificate, but you won't get any of those other milestone benefits. I also left out the 5,000 points you can pick up at 40 nights, I guess. So yet another one for somebody who stays more nights. But if you just do the 30 nights, you're going to get a category one to four certificate, no suite upgrade awards, right? You don't get any of those yet. That's right. That's right. So it kind of depends how much you value those as to whether it's worth going further. And it's interesting, you know, I created spreadsheets to help figure all this out. So you mentioned one of the tabs on the spreadsheet that lets you, helps you figure out should you

book with points or cash. Another one is, helps you figure out how much you value these different levels of status and, and, um, and milestone rewards. So I updated that, that tab, like I added a new tab that where, uh, where for next year you get to global status of 30 nights, but you also only at 30 nights, only get the regular 30 night milestone rewards and have to get to 60 nights to get the really, or 50 nights to start getting the really good stuff. What I found interesting in looking at the sort of bottom line when I put in my numbers to that new spreadsheet is that it kind of smoothed out the numbers a little bit.

Let me explain that. In the original spreadsheet, the cumulative value of getting to like 20 nights or 30 nights or 40 nights or 50 nights, well, let's say 40, up to 40 nights, wasn't all that big. But getting to 50 nights, there was suddenly a big jump. And then 60 nights was a huge, huge jump as far as the cumulative value. But now what we're seeing is really big jump at 30, another big jump at 50, and another jump at 60. And so it makes it less. So before it was like, if you're going to mattress run at all,

you have to go to 60. It was like just not worth it if you didn't do that um now it's like it's yeah it's absolutely could be worth it at 30 but it depending on your situation it absolutely could be worth it to go further as well um not sure i can figure out a 40 night plan why anyone would do that uh because you just get like 5,000 points or $100 gift card. Yeah. But yeah, that's something that everyone needs to, I think, look at. So what should I do?

If it was just your opinion, I'd say, what should I do, Greg? Should I keep my 30-night mattress run and get the full 60-night benefits, the whole suite of benefits right from the get-go or should i just do 15 nights next year because let's not forget if you do 15 nights in january february you're going to end up with 30 elite nights and you have the rest of 2021 to pick up the other 30 if you really want you know to to hit those other milestone benefits you can legitimately stay another 30 nights throughout the course of the year and who knows maybe they'll run another double elite credit promo or something like that,

that makes it a little bit easier to get there. So during those days, you'll have the globalist status. So you get all the perks that you that you want, except for confirmable suite upgrades. Right, right. So yeah, I mean, how much you did the math for your post about the 30-night mattress run. So you came up with a valuation for those three-night certificates. Are they worth half? Well, that's extreme because you also came up with valuations for other milestone rewards that you get along the way. But, you know, I would go back to that math and say, and say, is it worth it? The price I'd be paying for another 15 nights? Is it worth it to get these, these extra milestone rewards?

And you're right. And that's entirely what I should do. But I'm not going to even be that analytical. I'm gonna say, of course, I'm going to do the 30 night mattress run still. Really? Yeah, absolutely. It's not even a question for me. Because the suite upgrades are the majority of the reason why I want to have globalist status, because I travel with the family now. I've got two kids. I need the extra space. The suite is super convenient to be able to put kids to bed and have a separate space for two different kids and whatnot. So the confirmable suite upgrades in advance are the most valuable perk to me of the whole bit. Now the free night certificates, like a category one to seven is also really nice. And here's the thing. I probably won't use any of that in 2021. Like I,

I may take a trip or two, maybe I'll use one suite night upgrade next year, but I'm really counting on hopefully using those awards in 2022. So I'm, I'm like trying to save them up and get them in advance. I don't think I'm going to travel enough next year. I don't think I'm going to do 30 more nights on top of this next year. So I think in 2022, I'm going to make up for lost time and I'm going to get out there and travel a lot so i want to have those four suite night upgrades for sure i like not having any of them to me is like well so hold on a minute i think your best play is to is to go to 50 nights then because once you use the if you use the suite upgrades this year, I mean in 2021. If I do. If you do, right.

Okay, so that's the question. If you do, even by the end of the year, if you ended up using both of them, you'll probably have gotten to the full 60 nights and earned some more. That's totally true. You're absolutely right. I mean, if I used two of them,

presumably I would have stayed at least 10 nights, right? And so those 10 nights, hopefully will have earned me the 60 that we're talking about to get the entire, you know, the extra two suite upgrades and the category one to seven night. You're totally right. I just don't have confidence that I'm surely going to be able to do that. And I definitely want the suite night upgrade. So I, right. To me, it's worth the additional investment to know that I've got four of them lined up for 2022. And if I get to use one or two of them next year, hey, awesome. That's great. But I don't want a chance that I don't get there. All right. One other consideration. I don't remember off the top of my head how this works. How long are these suite upgrades good for? Like, are they is it relative to when you earn them?

Or is it is it one of those for the rest of it? Is it sort of like the elite status, the rest of this calendar year, all of the next and through February of the year for that? I thought, and wait, now that you mentioned it, I better check on this after we finish recording. But I thought that they are now, originally they started out

and they were only valid for a year from the day you earned them. And people argue that that was ridiculous. I remember Lucky arguing a number of times that it's disincentivizing people to stay when they're close to hitting status for a while, because they may want to hold off so they can have the sweet upgrade award to use during the vacation, they really want to use it. And so it just was a silly thing. And as I recall, I believe how you change that, because I think at some point, they realize this is silly. We're encouraging, I think you're right. I think they

did change it. I think it's okay. I don't think you have to try to game it by getting it late in the year. But if we're wrong about that, that would be a consideration for you. Yeah, that certainly would be a consideration. Same for the category one through seven certificate also. Because, yeah, you wouldn't want that to expire without. No, and you know, that's a good point, though. Actually, the free night certificates, I don't think work the same way

because I earned a category one to four last year and it was valid for six months, but they extended it, of course, because of the pandemic. So I don't think that actually now that you mention it, those free night certificates may not be valid for very long. I think that's right. I think that's right. I think it's six months. So something for you to think about. Yeah, that is, that's definitely an, that's right. Yeah. Because you mentioned that that's, I don't know,

will I use those within the first six months of 2021? I wasn't sure that I would. So, yeah, see, I don't, I wasn't sure that I would. Yeah. See, I don't know. I feel very confident that I'll be back to traveling a lot by, let's say, fourth quarter next year, you know, at the latest. So, you know, I wouldn't. So to the extent that other people feel that way, I would recommend only going to 50 nights early in the year, if it means mattress running and just having a wasted stay, basically. your actual stays where you're enjoying elite status, you're enjoying your upgrade certificates and all that stuff are what's going to get you to the 60. And then you'll get, you know, you'll have

that category one through seven certificate for a time period in which you're more likely to be traveling a lot. Yeah, that's actually a really reasonable strategy. That makes a lot more sense. Perhaps I was, I was pretty firm that I was going to do the 60, but that actually does make a lot of sense because then worst case scenario, if you really want those other upgrade awards, then you might just run the additional 10 nights, right? So it's going to end up costing you 10 nights.

It'll cost you more. Yeah, a little bit more. But it's- It'll cost you 10 nights instead of five if you literally had no stays throughout the year and you got to December and you're like, uh-oh, but what's the chance of having no stays? I don't know.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's a good point, an optimistic viewpoint. And, you know, probably a reasonable one for a lot of people. Right. And, you know, and if by the end of the year we're dealing with COVID-20 or COVID-21, then they'll probably extend the certs again. Right. Right. Right. And hopefully roll over our lead nights or something. Yeah. Watch, they'll throw triple

nights at us at some point and be like, oh man, I wish I had done fewer nights to begin with. So the other reason that I'm tempted to go for the full 60 nights right off the bat is because I do recall that, so Steven Pepper got the American Airlines elite status last year because they gifted that to a number of globalist members. And the way I recall that happening was that some globalist members were proactively contacted by their concierges in order to get the status. And then not everybody got contacted. So some people started reaching out to their concierge to say, hey, what about me? Do I get it too? And as I recall, those types of emails continued to happen into January, where globalists were like, hey, can I get in on that too? And people were getting the elite status. So I am interested in being able to get that only because I do have a speculative trip booked in

economy class where having global status would be helpful to at least get like an exit row or something. Sorry, executive platinum to get at least an exit row or something. So if that trip happens, which obviously I'm not confident whether or not the trip will happen. And if it does, there is not a Hyatt Hotel where I'll be going. So the Hyatt status itself won't help me. But being able to get American Airlines status would in that case.

So it's not the main reason I'm mattress running for globalist, but it's like, you know, it'd be a nice little cherry on top if it were to come through. So that would be nice. The other thing is you only get a concierge if you get 60 nights, right? So that's right. If that matters to you, I don't know if it does to come through. So that would be nice. The other thing is you only get a concierge if you had 60 nights, right?

So if that matters to you, I don't know if it does to me or not, because I feel like I've heard really mixed reviews and some concierges being excellent and some being not excellent. So I don't know whether that matters. You know, so I've had the concierge now for, I don't know, some number of months.

And, you know, I've used them. For the most part, I've been happy with what she's, what she's done, but I haven't noticed a particularly like better outcome than going through Twitter and direct messaging Hyatt concierge. So. You know, so, so like the example that comes to mind is, so I've had a couple of last year i had i had several um stays that friends booked for me as guest of honor bookings uh for me and for other people who are traveling with me so i had a few different friends booking guest of honor stays

for me and and i remember that one person's concierge was very difficult slow and getting back and not easy to work with and get it booked, whereas somebody else's concierge was just a matter of firing off an email and half an hour later it was done kind of a thing. Right, right. You know, it's possible. Here's a kind of interesting thing.

So we haven't talked about the devaluation of Hayek globalist status. We should. If everybody is elite, then nobody is elite, that kind of thing. And we should talk about that. And maybe you're saving it for the post-roast. I don't know. No, no, I'm not.

That's something we should talk about, yeah. But before we talk about that, you know, it occurs to me there's a possible, what's the opposite of devaluation? D-devaluation? Revaluation. Revaluation, there you go, of my concierge. Because I expect that they're going to have a lot fewer 60-nighters out there than even if they keep the globalist ranks high or higher, whatever,

I expect that the number of 60 night people is going to be less, be fewer people with access to my Hyatt concierge. And so maybe they'll have more time to actually focus on their value, you know, customers. So that'd be interesting. Well, I guess we'll find out. Well, we will. So, all right. That naturally segues us then into talking about that so i mean this is obviously a no-brainer

opportunity for people who travel with any kind of frequency value height even a little bit i mean modicum of value there 15 nights is kind of you know when i talk about globalist so i i have not been as big of a hyatt fanboy as everybody else, only because I'm jealous. I don't stay 60 nights a year in hotels, right? So I'm never going to make 60 nights. You know, back when you can do 25 stays and they can be one night stays, I like stretched in order to hit that a couple of times. But no way I'm going to stay 60 nights usually.

I just don't stay that many nights in hotels usually. So especially not in one brand. So I was just not going to hit globalist status before, but now it's definitely well, I mean, 15 nights to get the same thing that would normally cost you 60. And not only that, to put that in perspective,

we've been jealous of people who work for companies where they could get the Hyatt Challenge, where it took, I think, 20 nights to get globalist, 20 nights. Something like that, yeah. To get globalist, 20 nights in a short period of time. We'll be like, how come Frequent Miler isn't set up for that? Like, all right, let's go.

What's wrong with that corporation? So, yeah, I don't know. And so this is less. This is less than that. And you're getting more perks than usual. I mean, more points back and all kinds of things. Or does that work from Hyatt rate that lets you get all kinds of extra perks during longer stays,

just all kinds of things going on at once that make it so much better than a 20 night challenge. So everybody's going to want to do this, right? Right. I say everybody, lots of people that are listening, if you're listening to this, you're probably at least thinking about this, right? I mean, there's a good chance anyway. So with all of these people at least thinking about it and many likely to do it, right? Many of the people that are reading blogs and following this kind of thing are likely

to put this together. Are you going to have any value in being globalist? Is it just going to all be torn away? I mean, you wrote a post about that this week. So what do you think? I mean, does that not totally devalue the status if everybody has it? Yeah. So, you know, most of the perks that are really good, or many of the perks that are really good, aren't limited resources. Things like free parking, uh, breakfast, free breakfast. Those are things that, you know, Hyatt or the hotel has to pay for, but, um, you know, you're not going to get, um, worse free parking because there's, there's 20 other globalists staying at the hotel at the same

time as you, right. It'll be just as good as it was if there were no other globalists there. Um, there are a couple of things that could be impacted. And I already mentioned before that upgrades at the time of check-in. Yes, obviously, if there's more globalists than before at that hotel, you're going to be fighting for more upgrades. Another one is lounge access. You'll still get the lounge access but it could be more crowded than it was would have been um not to mention the fact that lounges i don't even know

what they're like right now i haven't been in a hyatt lounge in quite a while so i don't know if that's as desirable as it once was i mean certainly the idea of grabbing the buffet spoon that everybody else has been grabbed is slightly less appealing than it once was so right right well i mean and that's a good point for at least for the time being that might not matter much uh especially because if they have like like the airport lounges a lot of them have grab-and-go food now um if the hotel lounges have the same thing then uh unless people picked over it all before you got there uh you know it's not gonna be crowded in the lounge because people will just take it and leave. So then the other thing that,

that I think might affect some people is if, if there's a lot of globalists is things like 4 PM, 4 PM late checkout, which is guaranteed at a lot of Hyatt hotels, but not at all of them. It's not guaranteed at resorts and casino properties and a couple others. And so if a lot of people are competing for that 4 p.m. late checkout, and there's a lot of people checking in that next day, then of course you might not get that request met. But you argued that you don't really think that that's going to be the case, right? I don't. So I think, and this is totally, you know, without having any real numbers, but just sort of logically, I bet that the vast majority of Hyatt globalists in the past

has been, and is sort of today as well, because people who are globalists today are that because they had earned it from previous travel, are business travelers who, you know, travel a lot for business. They're on the road all the time. And, you know, so the vast majority of those business travelers are now Zoom participants as opposed to travelers, right? Right. And so I don't see that crowd jumping on this 15-night thing. Like, they won't even be all that aware of it. Like, they might, you know, some people who care about their status will probably be aware of the third, that it got reduced from 60 nights to 30.

But understanding how that combines with the other promotions and knowing you could get there in half that, most people aren't going to be aware of that. So it, yeah. So I think that the big trend, even with them cutting the night requirement down to 30, the big trend is for them to be actually losing globalists as opposed to gaining them. But there will be a pocket of people, and that will be the miles and points crowd, the people who are fans of our show, who read the blogs and everything. And yes, there will be a lot of people in that crowd

that are suddenly globalists that weren't before. I mean, you're going to be in the lounge looking around and being like, I've seen that person's profile picture in Frequent Miler Insiders before. I know that person. Right, right. But think about these people. So these are people who didn't have status before with Hyatt for a reason, which is that they're not business travelers who are on the road every day. And so even once they have globalist status, it's not like they're going to be on the road every day. hotels 60 nights out in 2021 or 2022. They'll be at hotels maybe 15 nights or something much less. They'll be getting a lot of value from it during that time, but it's not going to be like they're there all the time. And so that means that even if the number of globalists stays the same because, you know, business travelers go down, but, but the number of hobbyists goes up. I expect that the number of globalists on average at a Hyatt hotel at any

given time, like across the world will be less than before. And, and so, so that's actually good news. The bad news is that. You had an interesting theory on actually good news. The bad news is that... You had an interesting theory on the bad news. Right. So the bad news is, and I'm pretty confident of this. I think you're probably right. That there are certain hot properties.

I know that I and Lucky over at One Mile a Time always rave about Ventana Big Sur, just as an example. The previous big hotspot, and you've raved about it, is the Grand Hayagin Kwai, right? Right. There's certain properties like that that get talked about a lot in the points and mile circles. And as a result, a lot of us go to these properties. And I know from experience going to these properties like the Andaz Maui, I run into people who recognize me. And that doesn't happen in most places. It's not like a well enough known to recognize. But in these places,

because this crowd goes to it. And so those are the places where, yes, you might have less chance. You probably will have less chance of getting that, that upgrade at the time of check-in than you would have before. Is it going to be a big problem? I don't think so. I really don't. I mean, especially not because like, like you said in the post, if you have earned enough nights to get the suite night upgrades that are valid at the time of booking, then on those days where it really matters to you, you're going to apply that in advance

and have your suite night already set up and ready to go. Don't count on getting upgraded at check-in if you're staying at one of those hot properties that everybody's writing about in the blogs. Right, right. It may not happen. I mean right. It may not happen. I mean, it already may not happen. Like, I've gone to the Andes Maui a few times and haven't seen any kind of meaningful, you

know, complimentary upgrade there. Right, right. And you have to fight in order to get, like, 2 o'clock checkout. Forget about 4 o'clock. 1 o'clock, I had to fight for it. Yeah. 4 o'clock. So...

Be tight with those perks. Yeah. So, I mean, so some of those types of properties, you're going to have trouble with anyway, I mean, in a normal world, you have difficulty. So it's probably not going to change when you get the hobbyists going after status and, and specifically looking to book trips to those places. But for the vast majority of Hyatt's, I think you're totally right, you're not going to have much trouble at all. If you're anywhere other than those handful of places that everybody likes to write about.

And let's be clear, there are a lot of nice Hyatts in the world. So it's not just the four or five that everybody's talking about. If that was it, none of us would be even talking about going after 15 nights. It was four. Windham has four or five nice hotels somewhere, but nobody's talking about Windham status. You can get it from credit card, but we're not talking about that for four or five. We're talking about Hyatt because there, right? And you can get it from credit cards, but we're not talking about that for four or five Wyndham. We're talking about it about Hyatt because there are lots of great places to go.

So you got tons of options. I think you're absolutely right. I think that was a really good observation to have made about it, that it's not really going to matter all that much if all the hobbyists go after it. And let's also remember that it gets really easy. I've said this before.

When you're involved in this game, so to speak, and you read blogs, and you're in the Facebook groups, it can be really easy to feel like everybody is doing this. You just have to stop and take a step back and look around at your family and friends and say, wait a second, is everybody really doing this? No, they're not really doing this. This is like a really small, small, small, small, small niche of people compared to the overall segment of travelers who might consider elite status. So I don't think that it's going to make a measurable impact either. I

think that initially I had the same fear everybody else, like, oh man, it's not going to get any benefits. I think you still will. I think it's still worth going after the mattress run, unquestionably. Yeah. Yeah. You know, it occurs to me, I think there's a, there's a, there's a funny psychological thing too, which is if, if someone had, had earned 35 nights during now 45 nights during the year. And so there were 15 away from globalist. You know, I feel like they would definitely be

like trying to figure out how do i get those extra 15 right right um and and you'd be much more motivated because you you have so much sunk into it but um now we all are all 15 away or less if you have the world of hyatt credit card and so um yeah so a lot of people won't do it but but uh it's just a almost mind-boggling good opportunity to get top tier status you brought up the credit card and we mentioned that kind of a fleeting pass there but i know that you put that into the top picks now because you see an opportunity there comes the poster let's go no no no'm not gonna roast you i'm gonna ask you to defend it so all right i mean is it worth considering right now i know i know you always feel like the hyatt card is a good card to get and i'm always kind of like the hyatt card doesn't excite me as it much as much

as it excites everybody else but should it excite me now like does this does this really make a big difference should i all of a sudden be like, Oh no, that's, that's a card worth going after. And here's part of the reason I'm asking. I've already got my 30 night mattress run booked. Should my wife be considering high globalist status too? I mean, if she opened the card, she should get 10 nights, right? Cause if you open the card now, you get 10 nights towards status next year. Right? Yeah. I mean,

I don't see any value in having two people in your family both having that status. A chance to get the Sweet Night Awards. Well, okay. Do you think you'll use them all? Not necessarily, but I'm asking you. I don't think that's worth getting a second person. But as far as sort of the, is it exciting? Is it worth getting now? It was, to me, it's not that the bonus is that big.

The bonus is the same, the 50,000 points, that's the same it's been for a long time. The thing that's different is, one, that you get 10 elite nights for 2020 and 2021. And then it goes back to the usual five elite nights each year after that. And even that, like by itself, that wasn't that exciting. The reason it's exciting is because of all this other stuff going on. Suddenly it's like, you know, whoa, you can get there in 15 nights. But if you have this know whoa you you can get there in 15 nights but

if you have this credit card you can get there in only 10 nights because uh well we talked about why to be clear that's not just if you have the card that's if you get the card new right because that's right bonus right not for existing cardholders that's right existing cardholders only get five elite nights each year which which um that in 2021, you need 25 knights to get to Globalist, which is unfortunate for the whole doubling math situation, because that means you need 12 and a half elite knights doubled. You know, 12 and a half knights of actual stays doubled to get to Globalist. Well, there's no such thing as a half elite night so you'd really need 13 which doesn't sound all that different from 15 i mean it saves you a little bit but um but uh you know what you could do is um you know just do the 13, do the 12,

and then use one of your free night certificates to do another one at any time. It wouldn't have to be during the doubling. And then you'd get there. So here's a question that I saw somebody asked in Frequent Miler Insiders that's very relevant to that point. So if you have the old world of Hyatt card,

not the new, I'm sorry, the old Hyatt credit card, not the world of Hyatt one, the old Hyatt credit card is a 75 bucks a year or whatever it was that, that, that has fewer perks, but it's still a good card to have. I guess if you don't have the new version of the world of Hyatt credit card, right? The old one, it's going to get converted to the new one in January. And so you're going to end up with the new one, but you won't end up with a new card members perks. If you're an existing card holder, you'll just have five elite nights still. So if you have that old world of, or excuse me, we have the old Hyatt credit card right now, should you cancel it and apply for the world of Hyatt credit card if you're under 524 and eligible? Should you cancel and re-up there in order to both get a

welcome bonus and get 10 nights stored status? Is it worth it? Worth the 524 slot to get a card that you kind of already have? That's a great question. Wow. You know, I don't know. So, you know, I put, it's sort of a question of also of whether it deserves a spot in my top picks. And this is why I put it not in the top section of the, you know, most amazing opportunities, but at the top of the next section of my picks. So it is a very good offer. It's not mind boggling. I would personally lean towards, think playing it safe so the risk is that you you um cancel your old one you apply for the new one and don't get approved and then you don't get even the five elite nights each year which you would have gotten had you just waited for it to uh to change um so i guess it kind of depends how sure you are

that you're going to get approved. That's interesting. I'm surprised to hear you say that because I thought before you finished that sentence, before you said play it, so when you said play it, before you got to the word safe, what I thought you were going to say

is say that you'd play it as canceling the card now and waiting to see if they offer a better bonus because the bonus right now is not mind-boggling it's not it's not amazing it's not the best they've ever offered by far they used to offer two free night certificates valid anywhere for years that was the bonus until they started going to points and so this 50 000 points is like i mean it's not bad but you can open one of the ink cards for 75 right now uh or 100 if you get the ink business preferred and transfer those to hyatt and have way more points so i'm not particularly excited but you can open one of the ink cards for 75 right now, or 100 if you get the ink business preferred, and transfer those to Hyatt and have way more points.

So I'm not particularly excited about the welcome offer on the Hyatt card at all right now, apart from if you really want those elite nights. And my argument would be it's not that special, because it's going to save you five nights next year. That's it. I mean, instead of needing a 15-night mattress run, you'll need a 10 night mattress run. That to me is not enough value to make that a slam dunk card that you need to

get right now. And you didn't say it was a slam dunk card that you need to get. So I'm not, I'm not saying that, but I think it's not probably worth, I think it's not worth converting because you're going to lose the chance to get the card for a while. Right? I mean, I guess maybe you won won't lose you always cancel down the road and reapply if the offer goes maybe you're right maybe you play it safe and wait for a better offer this offer doesn't excite yeah i mean what if though what if what if they had an offer for um sign up for the card now and you'll get um 20 000 points roughly uh a free category one to four certificate and two years of globalist status would would that be exciting for you off the top of my head without doing any math it sounds exciting i mean what about this thing here? You're tricking me. Yeah, I mean, so the reason I asked it in the way I did is that if you use the sign-up bonus to book a Category 1 property for 10 nights, actually, you'd only have to do, I think it's nine nights because when you meet the spend requirements for the bonus, you'll earn two

elite nights that way. So you use 45,000 points for category one for nine nights stay, and then you're going to get 25% of those points back. And I think it works out to you. You end up with about 20,000 points left over from the signup bonus and from the rebate. And then you get all the perks. You get the milestone rewards for 20 and 30 nights, which only a 30 night milestone reward matters. And you get globalist status for two years. So that's one way to think about it. If you have a category one property nearby. I mean, that's an interesting way to put it. if you have a category one property nearby i mean that's it that's an interesting way to put it i feel like that's a post right there but uh i yeah that's an interesting way to look at it i i wouldn't have thought about it that way although i guess you could then make

a very similar argument on bank cards for instance and how i mean they can get global status for a couple of years and have a lot more points left over you know or that's true you could sapphire preferred or whatever else i mean because they all come lot more points left over. That's true. You could. Sapphire Preferred or whatever else because they all come with more points than the Hyatt card does. They don't come with the two Elite Knights for spending 5k, so that's your difference there. They also don't give you you won't get 25% back

on your Matches run, you get 15% by not having the card. That amount of difference is minute when you're talking about spending 45,000 points. I'm talking about a difference of 10%, it's 4,500 points, right? Yeah. I mean, I shouldn't say minute,

but not a huge difference. I think it's more than made up for with the additional points in the long haul. Right, right. So you're kind of convincing me even more that people probably shouldn't risk. I think if you want the Hyatt card, just let it convert because uh if you

have a 524 slot you could use it for more valuable offers with with other things besides hyatt and and this way you still are sure to have high what you're losing out on is an extra five elite nights that you would get um and the signup bonus but we we agree. We agree. All right. It's not worth applying for the world. The Hyatt card is basically what we just said. So exactly what we just said, but no, it's not worth canceling.

I think you're right because you would want to use that slot for more value. You can get similar value or better value with a five 24 slots. So, right. So that's that. So keep your card. Whoever was that asked about that keep the

card let it convert don't play any games is the moral of the story we ended up agreeing i think so all right all right so i think that brings us that wasn't the question of the week oh no no we have post roast do you have a post roast of course oh now i'm sweating right. So let's see. You wrote about store cards that don't suck. I did. It's true. So store cards are things like your Macy's card and your Banana Republic card and whatnot. So in that post, you talked about the Sears MasterCard and the version that earns thank you points. Right. Right.

Okay. That is correct. And that one doesn't suck, right? It doesn't suck at all. I mean, it's a very exciting card in that it offers all kinds of regular big earning promotions and you're getting, instead of worthless shop your way points, you're getting thank you points um and you know it's it's very easy to get the sears card that earns shop your way points and it used to be easy

to convert that to uh a card that earned thank you points but you wrote in the post that you don't think it's easy to get the card as a product change option, though it may be possible in some circumstances. And so I was excited. I was like, oh, great. What are those circumstances? Please elaborate. And so I clicked the more button that I couldn't quite find on the post.

I was missing there. Scan through the comments for your tips. Must be your browser. Must be your browser. Where were the details on that? Is it really possible or were you just sort of saying it might be? I don't know. Yes, it was more of the might be because I feel like I've heard it from several people over the last couple of years that somehow they got the conversion. And then in the comments of the post,

if I recall correctly, somebody commented to say that they were successfully able to convert sometime within the last year or so. oh, really? I missed that. Yeah. Yeah. So I think I'm fairly certain anyway, that's what the comment that I had read, somebody had successfully converted to the thank you version. So I think it is possible. I don't think that there's like a set criteria. I think it's one of those weird things that some people get the ability to do it and some people don't. And so it's a bit of a gamble because you're going to, that's the key with it. You're in a waste of 524 slot on having to apply for the shop your way version of the card that nobody wants.

And you know, nobody should be applying for in the first place to hope that you'll get an offer to, to, to upgrade that to the thank you version. And it's not a slam dunk. It's like probably not even a low shot, but an extremely low shot of being able to convert that over. However, like I said, I'm almost 100% certain that somebody in the comments had said they'd done it recently. And I've heard from people at conferences, that it is still potentially possible that it happens now. And then I don't know if there's if there's any secret sauce on it. I don't know what the secret sauce is.

All right. So as far as you know, they just call and ask and some people are successful and some aren't. I think you receive it. I think you receive an offer to upgrade via email is what was my impression that you get an offer to upgrade to it, so to speak. I don't even think that, see, typically with Citi, you call and you tell them you want a product change and then they say, okay, you can product change to, well, basically anything. Sometimes they'll start reading a list, but then basically nine times out of 10, they're like, well, more or less anything you want.

And so you could just go ahead and change to various different cards, but that card has not been something that's been widely available. And so I think, like I said, that it's a great offer you get, but, but I honestly, I don't know. I don't have the card. And so I think, like I said, that it's an upgrade offer you get. But I honestly, I don't know. I don't have the card. I wish I did. So I don't have the card. I haven't tried for it because I'm not going to waste a 524 slot

on hoping and praying that I get it. I'll just more so be jealous of all of the folks who do have it, who wasted that 524 slot. All right, here's an experiment. I can do this. What if I call and product change my one of my useless thank you preferred cards to the sears card and then see if i get an opportunity to product change that to the thank you card i mean that there are worse things you could do with your

time i mean i don't think that that's necessarily a bad especially because you're not really using probably all of those extraneous or extra cards that you have because i'm sure you have a few of those dividend cards right so uh not dividend but um or the the no fee thank you preferred or rewards plus which i have more than one of which you know having one is good having more than one doesn't seem to help yeah yeah so so i think that's fine so somebody i did look through i was looking through while we were talking about this somebody comments say i was targeted in january to pc my cash back sears to the thank you points

version they offered me 30 000 thank you points with 3 000 spend in three months so the card is so great so so yeah somebody had said in January this year they got that opportunity another person had commented to say that they have the Sears MasterCard that is growing currently giving 25 points per dollar on utilities wow 25 points per dollar on utilities right right they're running around like asking their neighbors, can I pay your utilities? Right, right, right. They're reaching out to an apartment building manager to say, is there any chance I can just pay this? You pay me back, give you a little discount. Let me pay this. Or prepay 10 years of your gas bill or whatever.

Right, just how far will they let you go. So, yeah. So, all right. So, it's possible. You're right. I did not include any instructions. So, I wasn't aware. All of that dialogue would be great to throw in there. There you So, all right. So it's possible. You're right. I did not include any instructions. So I wasn't aware. All of that dialogue would be great to throw in there. There you go.

All right. So I'll see what I can do about that. I don't know what else was for you. We talked about your posts at length here. So I'm just going to move forward into the question of the week. All right. Let's go. Question of the week is, now we have a habit, by the way, of asking question of the weeks

where we don't know the answer to the question. So I just pick these questions just to basically hear Greg shrug his shoulders and say, I don't know. So I get it. That's my standard answer. I got another one of those for you this week, but I thought it was interesting because I'd like to know your strategy. So Joshua in our frequent miler insiders said, I haven't, or not. I said, have an Amex financial review phone date on Friday.

It's the second one for my wife. The first one was seven years ago. They wanted tax forms sent in and it was easy. This time I asked the guy if I could just send the forms in again. And he said, no, we might not even need the forms, but want to ask some questions about some of the account activity.

Then he told me that my wife couldn't authorize me to speak on her behalf. She has to do the call herself. I'm quite comfortable on these calls but she's not anyone have ideas about what she can expect to be asked or what the best answers are when they ask why a teacher is spending so much oh oh wow so so sounds like sounds like someone's doing a little manufactured spending with with Amex card. Sounds that way. So I guess, first of all, what do you know, or what do you think somebody could reasonably expect from a financial review call? What would be your strategy? That's really what

I'm interested in. What would be your strategy in terms of answering those questions? Like, why and how are you spending so much money? You don't have that kind of a salary. I mean, that's a question that you could be asked, presumably, at some point, right? I mean, so. Yeah. So, you know, in the past, I've always said, like, in most cases, it pays to just be completely honest about what you're doing. But in this case, what I would do, I wouldn't lie about anything. But what I would do is, is, is focus all my answers on not what I'm doing or why, but rather why I know I can pay, why I'm not going to go default on these charges, right? That we have all the savings over here. And if that's not true, if you don't have like savings to cover like the spend so that you can show that you're good for it, then that could be pretty risky.

But assuming you do, assuming you have like, you know, some accounts that you'd be willing to share with them the balances of and say, look, I've got all of this. And so I'm comfortable that I can keep up this level of spend and, and I never have to worry about whether or not I can pay it back. Uh, or maybe not a bank account, but, but, um, some sort of income that you have that like, that you could show that, that money's constantly coming in, that's enough to cover these things. That's what I would focus on and try to basically dodge the specifics of what I'm buying, assuming what they're buying is gift cards or some other financial equivalent that is explicitly not allowed by Amex. But if it, if it comes down to that's not enough,

I would tell the truth, because I think then you're more likely to have points clawed back rather than have your account shut down. That makes sense. I knew you would, you're an honesty is the best policy kind of person. So I knew you wouldn't advise lying about it. But I was curious what you would say to do, because, yeah, I mean, it's, it's a tough situation to be in if you're spending more than you theoretically should be spending. But I think that's as good a strategy as any explaining why you can afford to do it and how you can afford to pay it back. And you're not a default risk. Because, I mean, really, at the end of the day, that's the risk that the bank is trying to assess.

Right. That's what financial review they're worrying about. They're not the rat team that's trying to catch you for manufactured spending. Right. Right. But you want to sort of avoid them handing you off to the rat team. Right. Exactly. Make them feel good. Make them feel good that you're not going to default and you'll probably get through it. That's a good point because that's what the financial review is all about to make sure that you don't default. And that person is probably not as well versed in or as concerned. Maybe not. Right. Maybe not anyway, as well as much concern.

Now the other interesting piece there was, he said that he was told that he wouldn't be able to talk on behalf of his wife. And that's something that maybe some readers don't know that is often an option. So, so I thought that was also worth addressing quickly that, you know, that's something that have you found in your experience that many issuers will allow for you to, for example, for you to talk on behalf of your wife or wife to talk on behalf of your son, to be able to talk on

behalf of somebody else? Is that something that's usually an option? So a lot of people do that routinely where they'll have their spouse call and say, I'm going to hand you over to my spouse because I want them. And people tell me all the time that's what they do routinely. I've tried it a couple of times and it didn't really work out that way. The people on the phone kept talking to my wife and she was mad at me because I promised her that she wouldn't have to talk and, and they made it harder on her. And I'm sure there were some magic words that, that she could have used to, to hand the phone over, but I kind of burned that path. So, um, so that's a problem, you know, and, and if you have

a spouse like I do, who doesn't like, and will do anything they can to avoid being on the phone with with banks and this type of thing, especially because she doesn't know, you know, anything about this stuff and so doesn't really know, you know, why we're doing what we're doing on the card. It would be very uncomfortable for her. And so I, you know, I feel for, you said Josh, I think, I feel for him because, or his wife, because I know that, you know, in my case, my spouse would be very mad at me if she was forced to do a call like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, I mean, it's worth keeping those risks in mind when you're, you you're engaging in activity that might draw that kind of a phone call, I guess. But also good to know what some of the options are, and some of the strategies anyway. Many people have made it through financial reviews just fine. Sometimes that kind of call, from my understanding, can be actually relatively easy. It's not always the big intimidating thing that people make it out to be. Now, if you're spending a lot more than you, quote unquote, should be for wherever they see your income and means, then certainly it's possible. It may be a more challenging call, but it's worth answering. And I think like Greg said, honesty is typically the

best policy. So best of luck to you and anybody else in that kind of a situation. So. Right. And just one last thing, of course, you know, Josh's wife has the option of changing her name to Josh, and then Josh should be able to do the call without lying about it or anything. You guys will be all set there. Yeah, yeah. All right. Well, if you've enjoyed this week's show

and you'd like to read more about what we've been talking about, you want to get on our email list so you can find out all about the latest posts as soon as they happen. You want to go to frequentmiler.com slash subscribe. Again, that's frequentmiler.com slash subscribe in order to get on our email list and follow us on social media. Thank you guys all very much for being out there today. And we look forward to seeing you again next week. Thanks, everybody. Bye now.