Frequent Miler on the Air - Introducing the new and confusing Bilt 2.0 | Frequent Miler on the Air Ep341 | 1-16-26

Episode Date: January 16, 2026

In this podcast episode, we'll talk about how JAL awards can be changed, we'll talk about the Amtrak USA Rail Pass, and we'll discuss Bilt 2.0: Half-baked, confusing, but potentially very rewarding.(At the time of this recording, running ad for Bilt on the audio-only version of this podcast. Despite that, all opinions expressed here are our own. We will always tell you what we believe, good or bad.)Giant Mailbag(01:27) - JAL Mileage Bank awards can not be changed (but they can be cancelled for a reasonable feeSee Nick's post about the best uses of Japan Airlines Mileage Bank miles hereSee our podcast episode 325 "Sweet-spot awards courtesy of Japan Airlines" hereAwards, Points, and More(04:38) - Like MaxFHR but for The EditLearn more here(06:02) - Amtrak USA Rail Pass for $250 (usual: $499)(08:37) - Saks has filed for bankruptcy(11:53) - United MileagePlus Status Match ChallengeLearn more about the United MileagePlus Status Match Challenge hereMain Event: Bilt 2.0Learn more about Bilt 2.0 hereAnd find our opinion on Bilt 2.0 here(14:42) - The transition from old to new(19:36) - 3 Bilt Cards(20:52) - 2 rewards currencies...(22:20) - Is Bilt Cash valuable?(27:02) - More card details(29:49) - What do we know about Bilt Cash?(41:17) - Card Reviews / who are they for?(1:04:15) - Find out some answers to frequently asked questions here: https://frequentmiler.com/bilt-2-faq/Subscribe and FollowVisit https://frequentmiler.com/subscribe/ to get updated on in-depth points and miles content like this, and don’t forget to like and follow us on social media.Music Credit – “Ocean Deep” by Annie YoderMentioned in this episode:Check out this month's sponsor and support our showJoin the loyalty program for renters at joinbilt.com/mileshttps://joinbilt.com/miles

This is a Voyescape podcast. You can find all of our travel podcasts from around the world at voyescape.com. On today's episode, Japan Airlines Awards can be changed. Step aside, European Rail Pass. Amtrak is out with a USA Rail Pass, and we'll talk about Built 2.0. Half-baked, confusing, but potentially very rewarding. Frequent Milo on the air starts now. Today's main event, introducing the new and controlled.

confusing, built 2.0. Build is out with three different credit cards and a new rewards currency called Built Cash, and it's all potentially rewarding, but also definitely confusing. We'll get into all of that on today's main event. And don't forget that if you want to come back to something later on or you want to jump ahead to something, you'll always find the timestamps in the show notes. So just expand the description box to find all of those timestamps. And wherever you're watching or listening, don't forget to give us a thumbs up. Give us a like, leave us some feedback. Leave your comments. We always love to hear from you too. Before we get into the rest of the show, I do want to issue a little disclaimer about things. So it is awkwardly the case at the time

we're recording the show about Built that we're running built ads on the audio only version of this podcast. We hate the optics of that. But we promise we will always tell you, what we think, whether it's good or bad, regardless of advertising situation. Absolutely. All right. Let's drag out this week's giant mailbag. Okay. Today's giant mail refers to some things that Nick had posted and talked about around

Japan Airlines. So last year, Built started allowing one-to-one transfers to Japan Airlines, and then later on in the same year, Capital One started allowing less than one-to-one transfers. transfers to Japan Airlines. And this was exciting because there are lots of great award bookings that can be made with Japan Airlines Miles. And Nick did a really cool post about that, where he listed out best uses of Japan Airlines Miles. And we also did a podcast about it. The podcast was called Sweet Spot Awards, courtesy of Japan Airlines. And I don't know, I don't remember if we talked about this on the show or not, but I do know that there was some text in Nick's post

that said the following, that Japan Airlines Mileage Bank Awards cannot be changed, but they can be canceled for a reasonable fee. And he goes into, you know, lists the details of that. But the key part there is, as he had asserted that those awards could not be changed. So finally, we get to our giant mail. Today's giant mail comes from Anish, who, uh, says Japan Airlines Awards do allow changes. Anish writes, I had booked a British Airways Business Class Award through Japan Airlines with Miles transferred from Capital One. I wanted to change the flight for one day after, and there was availability.

Went into my confirmation, and what do you know? There's a button called Rebook at the bottom. I also saw this text about changes in the notes. It said, only changes to the flight date and flight number are permitted. Went through the change process, searched my flight, and boom, $0.00. It appears that the only change fee is the fair difference in the taxes and fees that they calculate. I was able to change the flight for free, and it looks like you can do it as much as you want online. No need to call. That's awesome. That's a great find. That's really useful. I imagine that people would find that useful in a lot of situations, actually. So very good. I think it's particularly awesome that you can do this online self-service. You don't even have to call anybody. I wish more programs would make it easier to do. change bookings online. Even if there's a fee involved, which, to be clear, I don't want there to be a fee or much of a fee. This is free and possible to do online. I think that's just another strength for booking via Japan Airlines mileage bank. Yeah. You know, it's worth noting that

A&A has a similar rule that you can change for free as long as you stick with the same airline and route and stuff. So you're basically just changing the data end or time. You know, with A&A, though, at least with the round the world tickets that they used to support, you had to call to make any such changes. And so it's really nice that this can be done online easily. Anyway, so that's great news, and it shows that we need to update that post at the very least. Yeah, absolutely. Very good. Good tip there.

All right, let's talk about awards, points, and more. First up, we've got a cool new tool out for the edit. Yeah. Some people might remember we've talked in the past about a tool called Max F-A-E-E-E-A-E-E. that makes it easy to find, find hotels and resorts properties where you can easily use your Amex Platinum hotel credits. Now a group has brought out a similar tool but for Chases the Edit. As you'll probably remember, the Sapphire Reserve card offers $250 credits for two-nighter, longer stays booked through the edit.

edit. And so this tool just makes it much, much easier to find where you could get a good deal through the edit. So we're really happy to see any tools like this that make it easy to use, especially these otherwise hard to use credits. Absolutely. Yeah, I'm excited about that. I've used Max FHR a bunch now to look for opportunities to use our FHR credits. So really excited to have something similar for the edit. Yeah. Disclosure, I haven't used the tool. yet. I mean, I played around on the map a little bit. It seems to work. But if it turns out not to be as helpful as we're hoping, please forgive us there. We don't really know yet. Yeah. All right, very good. Next, we have a deal from Amtrak. Amtrak has a USA Rail Pass on sale right now. It's

usually $500. Right now, it's $250. It's 50% off. And I think this is actually worth considering for people that like Amtrak. So you have to purchase it by January 20th. So for start, You're going to have to jump on this pretty quickly after this podcast publishes. Hopefully you've listened early on. This pass allows 10 segments, and it's valid for 120 days from purchase, but then 30 days from your first segment. So you can take 10 segments over the course of 30 days for $250. So that's pretty interesting.

Now, there are some caveats. It's not available on the fast train. What is this? Sella is they say that? I think so. Can't use it on the speedy train. Or the auto train or Maple Leaf Canadian stations, I guess, or the throughway bus series, 7,000 to 799. So it isn't available on those.

But otherwise, I mean, 10 segments for 250 bucks, that's like 25 bucks a segment. That seems like a pretty solid deal if you can take the train 10 times. Yeah, I mean, you know, keep in mind, it's like, what, five round trips within a 30-day period. So, I mean, you don't have to use it for round trips. But just give you an idea that, you know, to fully maximize it, you need to be doing a lot of traveling within 30 days. But if that fits your needs or even if you need only, you know, six segments, it's probably going to save you quite a bit of money depending on the routes. So, yeah, we thought it was worth mentioning because this could potentially be a great deal for a lot of people. Yeah, I mean, I live in upstate New York and I had to be in New York.

I took a train this week and I'm going to take a train again next week. And just those two round trips to New York City from Albany, which is a short train. That's a tiny little distance, really. Those two round trips running me about 200 bucks. So, you know, $250 to end up having another three trips round trip would be a good deal even just for something like that. If you have any, you know, desire to maximize that, I feel like you can end up with a really nice deal. If you don't mind traveling by train or you like traveling by train, I enjoy.

I enjoy it. The trains kind of comfortably get to see a little bit of the countryside. There's a lot of space. My bag always fits in the overhead. And I don't know. I kind of like it, even though the Amtrak trains aren't all in great condition. It depends. Some are beautiful and some are not. But I like the idea of train travel. So I think this is a fun one. Yeah. Yep. Next up, Sacks has filed for bankruptcy. So the doom and gloom has finally come. We kind of expected that Sacks was going to file for bankruptcy at some point. it's been very heavily rumored for a long time. It didn't really seem like a rumor, more like an imminent prediction.

So now that they filed for bankruptcy, and I say SACS, I mean, SACS global, so that covers a number of brands, actually, not just SACs, but a number of brands. So now what? I mean, we got platinum cards that have a $50 credit once January to June and once July to December. Some people are sitting on SACs gift cards. What do we do? Like, get on there and order as fast as we can.

What do you think? Yeah. So, I mean, for those who have the Amex Platinum credits, I mean, from my point of view, I just will forget them at this point. Because if you order, you don't know what's going to happen, right? Didn't you, Nick, have like an order just canceled by the shipper or something? Well, yeah. So, like, I got the shipping confirmation. And I was like, oh, you know, I never did see that package show up. So I went to the tracking information. And yeah, they printed a lot. label and started the shipment process, but then the vendor canceled the shipment. And of course, Sacks didn't refund me. I mean, maybe they will. They haven't proactively. I haven't reached out to

them either in fairness, but it's been like two weeks. And obviously the product didn't ship. I don't know whether Sacks knows that or not. But at any rate, it certainly wasn't an automatic situation. Now, I did get, of course, the reimbursement on my platinum card for the purchase. So I'm only out a few if Sacks doesn't refund me. And I assume that if I follow up with them, hopefully they will. But then again, I mean, they're not paying the people that are shipping their stuff. So I don't have a ton of hope. It seems to be the only good way to make sure that you can use your credits or gift cards

is actually to go in store if the stores are still open. Right. And, you know, find that pair of socks or some makeup or something that you can use, you can buy for around 50 bucks. And that would be good. But for those without a Sacks nearby, I don't know. My advice, just write it off. Well, not if you, if you have gift cards, I mean, I guess you might as well try to use them, right?

Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And, of course, if you have SACs gift cards, hopefully you know that you can use those at SACs off Fifth. You can't get the credit at Sacks off fifth. But once you have a SACs gift card, you can use that at Sacks off fifth also, which is going to be the same types of problems as SACs in terms of like things that aren't in stock or vendors that might not ship your order or whatever the case.

may be, but know that there's another option because there are a lot more options for reasonably priced stuff at Sacks off Fifth. Now, all that said, I mean, maybe this whole bankruptcy protection is going to keep them around for a while. I don't know that they're going to be gone next month. So, you know, it may turn into making it a little bit easier to use because around the holidays, man, everything was out of stock because I think just none of the vendors wanted to ship it. So, so, you know, we'll see. Hopefully it'll help it out, you know, if they find a way to at least last for a bit. But yeah, I would agree with you. It's not worth the hassle to use the $50 credit right now. If you have a gift card, it might be a user or lose that situation. You might as well

give it a shot if you got a gift card already. All right. Next up, United Mileage Plus has a status match challenge. What's up with that? Yeah. So this is interesting. In past years, you haven't necessarily been able to match all the way up to Mileage Plus Premier 1K, which is like their top sort of public status. But with the recent status matches from United, you can actually match to that top tier from either Delta Diamond status or American Airline Executive Platinum. So that's an improvement. When you do a match, so you have status with another airline, you match to United, you get that United status for 120 days. And then depending on what level you match to, you have to, fly so much or whatever to extend status through the end of 2026 and then and really actually

through January of 2027 when you complete those challenge requirements. I want to point out that is significantly less generous than most of the new status challenges we've seen from like Delta and I think JetBlue. I can't remember who else. But lately what we're seeing with status challenges is if you meet the requirements, the status lasts for all of the current year and all of the next year. This one is just for all of the current year and through January. So the way I see this, I think the best play for most people, unless you know you're going to be flying United or Star Alliance a lot, I think for most people, the ideal thing is to say, ooh, I've got a bunch of travel coming up. international travel and economy or whatever on Star Alliance carriers. So that Star Alliance status will help me. So make sure you apply for the status match within 120 days of the end of

your travel so that you can have that status throughout your travel. And then just don't worry about whether you meet it or not. So to me, that's like one of the best ways to use it. I do think there's a rule around like you can only apply every five years or whatever it is. So you have to think about whether it's worth doing it on this set of trips or if you might have more trips where it would be valuable in the future to use it. Yeah, absolutely. I've been locked out of the United match for a while now because I did one at some point. I don't even know how long it is now, but definitely you want to think about that before you do one of these. There's some matches where you might say, I'm not going to care about that status again anytime in the next five years. So it doesn't matter.

United might be different since it's one of the domestic programs. So consider that carefully. All right. That brings us to this week's main event. Regular listeners know that we love transferable points. And Billet has a terrific set of transfer partners. Hyatt, United Airlines, Alaska Airlines, Air Canada, Air France, and many more. You can earn Bill Paints paying rent and at restaurants, fitness studios, pharmacies, online shopping, and more. And now, starting in February, Built members can earn points on mortgage payments too. Join the loyalty program for renters at joinbilt.com slash miles. That's J-O-I-N-B-I-L-T dot com slash miles. Make sure to use our URL so they know that we sent you.

Main event time. Introducing the new and confusing, Built 2.0. Built is out with three new credit cards that replaced the one credit card that they had previously. They have a new card issuer, cardless, They used to be with Wells Fargo. And so there's a lot going on right now. There's the transition from old to new, and there's an introduction of all new credit cards, but there's also the introduction of new reward types in built's ecosystem,

built cash and hotel credits and things that we hadn't seen before. And so speaking specifically just about the transition from old to new, I can sum it up in one word that I can't say the full word. It's a cluster, right? It's messy. It's messy. Messy would be the word. So you've got a number of things having it.

First of all, this is so complicated. It's super difficult to understand Built 2.0. So trying to understand whether you're better or worse off from the old to the new is a challenge. we do know that people who previously earned lots of points from paying rent but didn't otherwise use their card much are going to be losers in this new structure. I mean, it's just simple. They clearly built was not making money off of you if that's what you were doing. And so they're trying to get rid of that particular pattern. that doesn't mean that Bill 2.0 is bad for everyone, not at all.

It's clearly a downer for that group. There's also this new currency called Bill Cash. There's just no clear information yet about really what it can be used for outside of waiving rent and mortgage payment fees so that you can earn points for paying rent and mortgage. Outside of those uses, they say, You could use it for all kinds of things. But when we ask them for details, there's just no details yet.

There's mention of there's probably going to be limits. We got one person to admit that there's probably going to be a $10 per month limit to using it to buy lift credits. So that makes it much more like a coupon than anything approximating cash. But as far as other things, we're just not getting. much information. And then we're also getting like scattered reports about people who tried to apply and getting denied and they thought they were getting, they were transitioning to the new card or something. But anyway, that is all very unclear at this point because this is so new. We're recording the show the morning after the cards went live for applications. So that's more

of something we need to keep an eye on what's going on there. But I'm back to it's a cluster. Yeah, you know, it's complicated. And so one thing I want to point out from what you said, because I feel like it's a little confusing, the way you said it, even though I understood, right? Yeah, funny because it's all confusing. Is that there's not a transaction fee to pay mortgage or rent. So you said you could use the bill cash to waive the transaction fee. That's not exactly it. you can pay your rent or mortgage without a fee. It's the fee to earn rewards, essentially. You know, if you want to earn points on that, then you can use your built cash to waive the fee to earn points on your mortgage or rent. And so that's at the time that we're recording this,

like at the time of launch here, that's really the only thing I'm thinking about built cash for. I would bet at least one built cash dollar. There will be some interesting uses of built cash down the road, but I certainly wouldn't apply or tell somebody else to apply based on my one build cash dollar bet that there are going to be some cool uses down the road. Like, that's kind of crazy. It's like saying, oh, get some monopoly money and maybe you'll be able to buy Parkplace later on. I don't know.

It's hard to, hard to say. But I think for now, the way I look at it is, okay, this is the way to earn points on your mortgage or rent. Maybe there'll be something cool later on. Yeah. And we'll talk more about built cash. what it is and what it isn't what we don't know a bit later. All right.

So that's the transition. We agree it's a confusing cluster, right? Yeah. Now let's shift gears and just say, based on what we do know about Built 2.0 and not considering the transition, but rather what the cards, the benefits look like, let's look out, you know,

let's evaluate the built 2.0, built 2.0 cards as they're defined and say, are they any good? Who are they good for? Who doesn't make sense for that kind of thing? So let's discuss what the three cards are. And then we'll go into some of our analysis of that later on the show. I will say real quick that we did a coffee break episode where we revealed rumors about these cards about a week ago. And it turns out that all those rumors were true. Yeah. So if you listen to that, then at least you got some prep. If you didn't listen to that coffee break, though, these are going to sound complicated. There's no way around that. I think that that's a big thing that both Greg and I have come to at these is that these cards are complicated to explain. Even for the people for whom they're a good fit, I think it takes some time to think about and understand. So let's talk about what the three cards are and what you need to know about them. So there's three cards. The built blue card has no way. annual fee. The built obsidian card has a $95 annual fee and the built palladium card has a $495 annual fee. No annual fee, $95, $4.95. And all three of the cards earn two reward currencies. They earn

built points and they earn built cash. And I don't really like the cash moniker on that at this point because we don't have any idea of it being a cash like thing. And I think from enough comments I've read, there are too many people hanging on the word cash there, and we don't yet know that it's going to feel at all like cash. So keep in mind, it's a rewards currency. I think, think of instead of built cash, maybe built coupon credits or something like that, you know. Built bucks maybe makes it seem more like built bucks. It seems less cashy. Right. Right. All right. So yes, totally. All right. So the built points themselves will still be able to be used for travel, book through Bilt, 1.25 cents per point, and they're still transferable. And

built has the best transfer partners on the market. I don't think anybody could argue otherwise. They've got programs like Hyatt, United, and Alaska and Japan Airlines, a bunch of programs that are not common across other transferable currencies or might only partner with one other transferable currency, if at all. So that's a great collection of partners. And they often have big rent-day transfer bonuses. And I say often, not every month, But a few times a year, we've seen big transfer bonuses, like way bigger than what any other transferable currency on the market has offered. So that makes built points interesting, I think, for a lot of people. Certainly it makes me interested in them.

Built cash, which again, keep in mind, it's like a reward system here, not cash. You can use it to waive the processing fees or the rewards fees to earn rewards on your rent or your mortgage payments. And we'll talk more about the mechanics of that in a little bit, I think. And you'll be able to use them for miscellaneous things. And we'll get into that a little bit more. And we don't know many details about the miscellaneous things. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. Now drilling down a little bit. All three of the new cards on everyday spend, they earn points and 4% built cash, which when we recorded last week, that sounded really excited. now that we know more or no less, I don't know. We know more about what we don't know. Yes, that's well put. We know more about what we don't know about built cash,

and we're not really thinking of it as anything approximating cash anymore. It's certainly less exciting about that part. Anyway, so, yeah, all three cards do that. They also, all three cards can earn one-eastern, points on paying rent or mortgage. So the ability to pay mortgage, that's brand new to this ecosystem. And if you want to earn one X points on these payments without paying a fee, then you need to use that built cash to cover what would be a 3% fee. And if you don't have enough built cash to cover the full mortgage, you could either choose to just like not earn points.

and the rest and still pay no fees. Or you can choose to earn full points on the payment, but pay a 3% fee on the part that is not covered by your built cash. Confusing? Yes. Very confusing because I mean, I think that somebody who's not deep into this would almost look at it as like, oh, I need enough built cash to cover the cost of my mortgage or rent. And that's not it. It's 3% of your mortgage or rent. And that you, you need to be able to cover. And, but yeah, it's, it's confusing. And it's actually the opposite.

The more I've thought about it. So, so as things stand right now, the only dependable value we know for using built cash is to use it for this purpose. And so the more rent or mortgage you have to pay, sort of the better because the built cash you earn from your spend then will have. a definite value. If you, if you, um, so if you spend significantly less than your rent or mortgage, then you can be sure that 100% of the billed cash you earn will go towards this one good use. Whereas if you spend more than 80% of your, um, rent or mortgage, you're going to have extra billed cash your earning. You don't know if you'll get any value from that. So, so anyway, so yeah. So it's kind of the opposite of what people assume about,

where the best sort of use of all this is. That's a really good point, a really, really good point. And we should back up and we'll probably get more into this, but you can pay rent or mortgage or be able to pay rent or mortgage for anyone now. So if you have more than one home or you have a kid in college, paying for their rent maybe, or you got a friend who you can pay their rent or mortgage and they can pay you. There are ways to put your built cash to use if you are in that group of people

who's going to spend more on this card than you have used for the built cash. There are going to be ways to use it still for that. But still, as we'll continue to hammer in, I'm only looking at that built cash as a way to earn rewards on rent and mortgage for now. Down the road, that might change. But for now, that's the only way I'm looking at it. Yeah, I mean, absolutely. Built, you know, says that there's going to be all kinds of great things coming that

built cash can be used for. And that's probably true, but I certainly wouldn't bet on it. Right. right or at least not in the short term so you're not going to take my one built cash dollar bet here i got i got one built cash dollar that says that's just going to be something great too steep for me i want to clarify one thing so nick pointed out that you can pay anyone's rent or mortgage um but also you could pay multiple so if you have renter mortgage you can pay yours plus your family members or friends you know of course you'd want to work out a situation where they pay you back for paying

their renter mortgage unless you're extremely generous Very good. Okay, so let's get a little bit further into the details. First up, of course, we've got the built blue card, which has no annual fee. It earns one X everywhere, so one built point per dollar everywhere, and four percent back in built cash, right? All of them earn points plus built cash, and they all earn four percent, by the way. So that's going to be true on all the cards. The built obsidian card has a $95 annual fee, and it earns three X on dining or grocery on up to $25,000 in purchases per year, two X on travel and one X everywhere else. The dining or grocery by default when you apply will be set to dining.

You'll have 30 days from the day you're approved to change to grocery if you want. And then you can change once every year in January. So if you want to have something else, if you choose grocery initially and you want to go to dining, you got to wait until the following January in order to change that. So it was the built obsidian. Built Obsidian also has a $100 or up to $100 in built travel hotel credit. It's a twice annual $50 credit. So once January to June, once July to December.

Unfortunately, there's a two-night minimum stay required, which for a $50 credit might make it a little bit less useful for some. Though in other situations, perhaps that will be desirable for you. Then the built palladium card has a $495 annual fee. That's a 2X Everywhere card. So no bonus category. It's just a 2X everywhere. and it comes with up to $400 in built travel hotel credits. It's, again, twice annual $200, once January to June, once July to December.

Same two-night minimum, but a larger credit in this case. And it comes with $200 in built cash annually. So a kind of nice feature there is if you were to get approved for the card that is also available in the first year on top of the welcome bonus and it's not contingent on spend. So if you were to get the plating card and you wanted to pay your rent or mortgage right away, you'd have $200 worth. the built cash to cover the feeder and rewards on that right off the bat. Right. Also, we've been told that when paying for hotels, we'll be able to use a combination of hotel credits and built cash and even built points at 1.25 cents per point value. But I want to strongly caution that just because we were told that, I don't think they have the details yet of how that's

actually going to work. So I would take that with a grain of salt. Is that what we take things with? A grain of Yeah, it is. And I don't know why. But yes, that's, that is it. That is it. But yeah, I totally agree. I'll be interested if it's easy to do. But not only do we not have any idea how easy it's going to be to do. I don't know that anybody yet does. So we'll see what, you know, how that all pans out in the end. All right. So we talked about the three cards there with the, those are the basic details you need to know about each card. But now we got to talk more. probably about built cash, right? Yeah. Everything you need to know about built cash is not going to be found herein. But we will tell you everything we think we know at this point. We already talked about how you can use it to earn points paying your rent or mortgage.

And because the rest of the uses are so nebulous, we think at least out of the gate, that's the best use for built cash. But built's website says you can use built cash for lift credits, built hotels, built neighborhood restaurants, built neighborhood fitness studios. You'll be able to buy up to better transfer bonuses and sort of more stuff to come. The details of all that, like all that sounds really good in theory if there were no limits, but we now know there will be limits. I explained before, like, for example,

there will apparently be a $10 per month limit to how much lift credits you can use. And the reason that makes us so much less bullish on built cash is that, you know, if you could do any amount, then, you know, you'd be able to, and if you rode lift a lot, you could just unload your built cash dollar for dollar to lift credit. And then you could think of it as like,

oh, maybe I could have gotten a deal to get lift credit for, you know, 10% or 20% off somewhere else. So you can think about it as getting like 80 to 90% of face value of your built cash. But that's not the case. You can only do $10 a month. And so that would hardly cover most built rides. Most lift rides. I mean, yeah, well, and there's additionally the issue that,

if you have a lot of extra built cash, if you're earning more built cash, like Greg was saying before, if you have somebody with big spend and not big rent or mortgage payments to make, so you've got an excess of built cash, you're not going to be able to liquidate much of that via lift. You know, you're not going to be able to dump a bunch to avoid expiration. And that's a key point here, that built cash expires on December 31st, regardless of when you earn it. So even built cash earned in December will expire on December 31st. You can roll over 100 from year to year, $100 worth from year to year. But, you know, the interesting thing there is that, like, if your rent or mortgage is due on the first of December, then the rest of your December spend is going to be earning

built cash that, I guess, can't be used to offset the rent, or I guess the first $2,500 of spend because it's earning the 4% will have to earn you $100 in built cash that you could roll over. but if you had any other built cash still left at that point, like it's going to get a little messy. I think come December, unfortunately, that's really, I don't know, it doesn't make a lot of sense to me, because you're almost disincentivizing people to spend on their card in December, at least beyond $2,500. Or certainly if they've already earned a bunch of built cash and they already have the hundred to roll over, then why would you use your built card in the month of December? But like, you wouldn't be earning the 4%. Anyway, I don't know.

That is all another discussion for another day. But I think truly, I think that they probably will come up with some interesting uses of built cash. But whether those interesting uses are applicable to me, I have no idea. You know, like maybe there'll be something I'll say, oh, that's really interesting. If I blah, blah, blah, then that might matter to me. But I don't know whether that's going to be a thing that does. Now, I think we've been given the idea that there's going to be a variety, some things that will be available to everyone and some things that will be targeted maybe based on where you live.

So built cash might end up looking a lot better for somebody who lives in area X than in somebody who lives in area Y. It's hard to say. Yeah. Yeah. So move to area X before you, you know, invest much in build cash. Yes. Cheers to that. Just to give another example.

So, for example, a restaurant that's one of the built neighborhood restaurants may want to incentivize people who haven't been, you know, frequent. customers of theirs to comments. And so they might enable an offer saying you can use, you know, I'm making this up, up to $100 of your built cash for your first dining experience at this restaurant. And so that would be if it's a good restaurant, a good use of your built cash at that time. But for everyone else, there might be, you know, maybe you could use up to $10 or something. We don't know. We don't know. And that's the biggest thing. We don't know. You know, and probably won't. And that'll be awesome for the person who wants to eat at that restaurant. And again, we don't know if you'd be able to, like, Greg, just made up the $100, right?

So keep that in mind. That's just something we made up because we don't know yet. But that would be awesome if you were able to use $100 at a restaurant that you were kind of interested in checking out anyway. And it'll be totally useless if you're located halfway across the country and that restaurant isn't anywhere near you, right? So it's going to vary. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, when the information about this 4% first came out, my first thinking was, this is absolutely bonkers incredible because I was thinking about it's sort of an uncapped. You can use it for whatever within the built sort of ecosystem. And, you know, even if it was worth just 50% of face value, that's like getting 2% back on top of, you know, the points you earn.

And so, you know, I was already looking at my son, for example, who doesn't spend a ton on credit cards and doesn't have a lot of uses for points and saying, you know, wow, the fee-free card getting 1x plus 4%. That's amazing. And he's going to love this card to now being like, I don't know. So, you know, we have to wait and see what Bill Cash can really be used for. But using for rent or mortgage is well defined. And so I think that's really what, as Nick said, that's what we have to concentrate on for now. And there's several ways you can think about using built cash for paying rent or mortgage. So for one thing, when you do it, when you use built cash to earn points paying rent or mortgage, you're basically, it's one way to think about it is it's like buying built points for the following amount. three built cash cents equals one built point. Like that's sort of the exchange rate. You're converting your three built cash cents pennies into one built point.

And so if you buy into that idea, then you're indirectly converting your 4% built cash into an extra 1.33x on your spend. So, for example, you know, if you were earning 1x on most of your spend with your built card, then your final earnings, the number of bill points you really earn per dollar, as long as all that billed cash goes into rent or mortgage payments, you're getting actually 2.33x on all your spend, which is actually phenomenal, right? Assuming that you wouldn't have otherwise earned any points on paying your mortgage. which is probably the case in the rules. That's right.

But if you had some other way to earn points or miles on your mortgage, then that's obviously not the case. I mean, because Greg, when he's saying that 2.33, he's not counting the mortgage spend in there because he's assuming, I think is a pretty fair assumption that most people paying their mortgage are just paying out of their checking account and not earning anything for it right now. So, and this is effectively going to work the same way since it's going to come directly out of your checking account anyway.

It's just it can come out and you can earn rewards or it can come out and you don't earn rewards for most people. And so if you're in that case, if you're one of those, if you're in that group, then yeah, this is like that. If you were like, well, no, I already figured out a way to do these like 18 steps and earn points on my miles or miles on my mortgage, well, great. And if you're like, oh, I want to use the Alaska card to pay my rent so that I can earn status, that's a whole whole other thing too. So I think this is most applicable to people who weren't earning points on those things. Yes, yes. And to those who have enough rent or mortgage that they can pay to use up all their bill cash. Yeah. And that's a big that's a big if. You know, a lot of people don't,

or don't have, you know, close enough family that they can make those kind of arrangements with. And so you should strongly consider that, of course. And it's all part of how confusing this is. Like, we can't say in a word, is this good or bad? Because it depends on, So many factors. Yeah. Yeah. If, if, if, if, so you could think of the value of the, of the, of the 4% built cash as being 1.33x or you can, and again, assuming you have enough rent or mortgage to pay. Or you could think of it, you can convert it back into sort of, if you prefer to think of it as like, what value do I put on it?

So I know whether to use it that way versus using it to get lift credit. and things, then you have to think about how much do you value your bill points. So if you value it at our reasonable redemption value of 1.55, then the 4% back turns into 2% of sort of extra value you're getting from your spend. But if you value bill points lower, or let me put another way, if you're willing to pay one cent per point to buy bill points, then the extra, the 4% built cash earnings are like 1.33% cash back, real cashback in that way. So more confusing.

Some of you will understand that. Some won't. That's fine. Yeah, there's a lot of math there. Yeah. A lot of math. So I know most people don't love doing, you know, math to that extent. And so that's kind of the part that makes it confusing.

That said, I mean, if you have a bunch of unbonous special, and you have a bunch of mortgage to pay. I am used mortgage because, apart from, of course, Mesa, there hasn't been a way to earn points on mortgage. And, of course, with Mesa gone, now if you got a bunch of mortgage that you have not been earning any points on and now you can and you also have a bunch of two X spend, I think this probably could be a very good fit. But it's not going to be a fit without doing a little bit of math.

And for some people, you're going to have to do a lot of math. It really is going to vary person to person. Like Greg said, I think that's the hardest part. that it's not easy to say, okay, yeah, this is very obviously good or very obviously bad. It's going to vary. And there are a lot of cards in the market, to be fair, that do vary from person to person, a card that would be great for one person and not great for another person. These are no different in that regard.

Yeah, yeah. All right. Let's kind of break it down now by, like, who should consider these cards and who shouldn't? And I think, let's start with who do you think should just ignore these cards because they're probably not right for them. Yeah, I mean, if you're somebody who's constantly opening new cards for new welcome bonuses, then probably these aren't going to be for you because you're probably not doing much unbonused spend at 2X on any other card. You know, there is a segment of people that listen to this show and read our blog that we know and love who are constantly opening new cards and only putting their spend towards a new card intro bonus. And we've always said and we'll always say that's the fastest way to accumulate lots of miles and points. is focusing that way because new card welcome bonuses are always going to be like 10x 15x 20 x your

spend like so if that's you probably these aren't for you except maybe the palladium i mean the welcome bonus on the pladium could certainly be appealing i think still even if you are that person and then it'll be like a one and done you get it and get the bonus and move on to something else totally yeah um another group that probably should not consider it or at least not until we learn good alternative uses for Bill Cash are those who prefer to use the rent payments as ways to increase spend for other cards. So to earn points on new welcome offers, or for example, Bill lets you pay your rent with Alaska consumer cards and earn three Alaska miles per dollar on those rent payments. You do have to pay a 3% fee, but that's like,

buying those Alaska miles for only one cent each, and you still earn status points, Alaska status points from that spend. So for people who are really into Alaska miles and status, that can be a really good deal. And so you might say, well, you know, the built stuff sounds good, but not as good as the deal I have now. And that's up to, you know, your individual situation, which approach is better. I think that last part is important because I think it's very tempting for a lot of people to assume that everyone is in their situation. It's very tempting to be like, oh, but everybody's opening a card every week or, you know, or every month or, you know, for a year or or to be like, oh, but everybody cares about Alaska Miles. And that's not necessarily true. So, you know, while those things are valid and good and we both would be like, well, yes, if that's your approach, those are good approaches. And don't let me tell you something.

I'm not trying to tell you that a different approach is good, but there are definitely other people that are in other situations. And so you've got to imagine that not everyone's situation is going to match yours if you're in one of those groups. There are lots of other people who aren't in those groups for whom this might be a fit. But I agree with Greg, those two groups in particular probably aren't going to be interested in this. And that's fine. That makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Let's now talk about the built blue card. This is the no fee card that earns 1X everywhere. Is this good for anyone? You know, at first glance, I think a lot of people are going to be like, oh, no, nobody would. I think it really, right now, today, probably not. If built cash ends up

being useful, I think that there are a segment of people who don't want to pay an annual fee. And if a world happened where you were able to use your 4% built cash to book hotels or flights and hotels through built travel and get full value out of that, or where you could get full value out of your built cash for restaurants and ride share, then I think maybe it would, but that's only if built cash becomes valuable. I don't think there's anybody I know who I would say get that card now, because we don't know enough about built cash. I think six months from now or a year from now, I can imagine the crowd for whom that will be a fit if built cash is really good. But if Bill cash isn't, then it'll be terrible.

So I have a slightly different take on it, which is it's around the rent mortgage stuff. So if you're not a big spender and your rent or mortgage, well, let me start that. If you're not a big spender, then the 2x card is not for you. You don't want to invest $4.95 into that 2x card. But if you do have rent or mortgage that's at least 33% more than what you normally spend, then your 4% built cash is actually turning into an extra 1.33x earnings on your spend.

So you're now getting 2.33 built points per dollar for all that spend. So it's not a lot of spend, but there's no other card that's going to be more rewarding unless you happen to spend in specific categories a lot. and you get other cards that have like 2x, 3x in those different categories, then, yeah, it could be more rewarding. But to get a flat 2.33x everywhere is really good. Obviously, I don't know, obviously, I keep reiterating how complicated this is. Yeah, you got to do math to figure out if you're in that category. But I think it's promising. And so, you know, I mentioned my son before that I thought it would be great for him because of the built cash component.

But now I'm thinking, oh, it'll be maybe not great for him, but good for him better than any other card he has for his daily spend, I think, to get 2.33. Well, I guess we'll see if that works. I think the thing gets me here is I think it's too complicated for that crowd to wrap their minds around. That's like, it might be good for that crowd. And this is kind of, I said this at the beginning. I think that, and I've also said this to people from Bill, like, I could see that card being the best option for my neighbor. I can't see myself taking the time to explain to my neighbor why. That's perfect.

That's perfect. That's right. That's right. It's only good for people who meet that set of criteria that I mentioned and are interested enough in this game to want to wrap their heads around it. And that's true in general, too, because really to get really good value from your built points, you want to understand the game well enough to know how to use the transfer partners, transfer bonuses and all that. So there is definitely a sort of minimum, you know,

knowledge you need before entry here to for it to make much sense for you, I think. But on the flip side, you know, if you look at it in that sort of 2.33x way, and you might need to listen back to the math to understand that, then that's fair. So if you're like, but what are you talking about this 2.3? Go back and listen to it again six more times and maybe the math will make sense. But if you look at it that way and you're willing to book travel through built travel, 1.25 cents per point, then, yeah, I mean, that is a good return. And there are plenty of people booking through a credit card portal and the 1.25. I mean, then you're getting pretty good value out of your spend towards booking travel through built travel potentially.

That's, but, you know, all right. All right. All right. Let's move on. Let's move on. So the obsidian card, this is a $95. annual fee card. This is the one that you can earn 3x for dining or grocery and 2x for travel, and it comes

with two $50 hotel credits. So I think that everything we said just a minute ago about the fee-free card really applies here with minor exceptions, which is like, you know, you're more likely to want to spend the $95 if you spend a lot. in either dining or grocery, so you want to get that 3x rewards, or you spend enough in travel at 2x that you want to get 2x. And then everything we said about adding the 1.33x, under certain circumstances, that all applies. And certainly everything we said about, you need to understand this whole game for it to make any sense whatsoever to you.

I wouldn't I wouldn't recommend this to my friend down the street who you know spends a lot on dining and travel not because it's not rewarding but because I mean I have to spend all day with that guy I don't like that guy that much poor guy you know I'm going to have a slightly different take on the on the obsidian card and here's why if I can earn 3x at the grocery store that I can transfer to Hyatt or Alaska that is probably worth 95 bucks to me and everything else aside. Like, you know, forgetting about mortgage and, and whatever, like, Brent or the 4% bill cash entirely, I would probably pay $95 a year for a card that offered three high at points per dollar at the grocery store or three Alaska miles at the grocery

store. And if it does both and also transfers to United and Japan Airlines, that's worth 95 bucks. Forget about the hotel coupons, everything else. I think that this card is a good fit for a wide range of people. Now, I said forget about all that, but let's say that you were to spend the $25,000 on either dining or grocery, whichever one it is that fits you. Then, you know, at 3x, that's 75,000 points over the course of the year, you're going to earn on that $25,000, a thousand worth of built cash that you can use to offset rent payments. And then also keep in mind, you earn $50 in built cash for every $25,000 points you earn. So you'd earn another $150,000 in built cash. So you'd end up with $11.50 in built cash with this card over the course of the year that

can again cover rent and mortgage i'm not talking about that as 1150 because it's not at this point we don't know why you can use it for yet uh but whatever like whatever you use that for on top of the three x of the grocery store i think that's the card that's most interesting for people in this hobby uh that that aren't big spenders looking at the palladium card i think if you're like a regular listener of this show you like hi it and you like a word chart sweet spots i think this is probably the card that fits most people Yeah, you know, you've convinced me it's better than I was thinking from that point of view. Yeah, interesting.

Okay, moving on. I kind of like that approach of just saying, you know, to the guy down the street, I'd just be like, do you want three X valuable rewards? And then maybe later after he gets the card and ask questions about it. I could say, oh, yeah, you can earn even more points by doing this or that. Right. Right. Agreed. I think that's, that's the easiest of the three cards to explain and also easiest to get good value without like trying to jump through any hoops or anything. And I really can't see an argument against that card for 90. I mean, people pay. You know, I guess like, you know, you get the Hyatt card and you get the annual free night certificate. Love that. I'm a long time high a card holder. But I think a big complaint amongst a lot of people is that Chase doesn't have a three X grocery card. Like I hear that all the time. It came up just a hotel the other day talking to a points of

Miles enthusiast. Hi, Lenny, if you're out there. And I think he mentioned, you know, he's like, that why doesn't Chase have a good card with 3x on grocery? And apparently they don't want to offer that for one reason or another. And here's your chance to get the three high points per dollar in grocery. It's too bad that you can't get both 3X and grocery. Yeah, it is. And grocery, but, you know. Yeah, and I keep saying grocery. And I know they're like, I think it's very divided. I think there are a lot of people that would love the 25K of 3x in dining and plenty of people that would love it in grocery. The reason I prefer it in grocery. here is because I feel like there are, well, there are ways to earn three high at points per dollar

on dining. Maybe not a last way. You know, if you, you know, if you like those things, then. But grocery, I think that that's the one that stands out to me. Anyway, obsidian card, I'm going to give it a thumbs up. Greg's going to like have it somewhere in the middle now. There you go. Next up, we get the built palladium card.

Yep. $495 a year earns 2X everywhere. You know, that alone is pretty exciting because of how valuable. built points are. Anyway, it also comes with two, $200 hotel credits and $200 built cash. And we've talked at length about why you shouldn't value that stuff at face value. So let's focus on the fact that it does have a $4.95 annual fee and has very good everywhere earnings. The one place it doesn't earn 2x is on rent or mortgage payments where it earns 1x. So, You know, if your mortgage and rent are high enough, we're really talking about the calculations

coming out to earning 3.33x everywhere, which is insane. And so for very big spenders, you know, the extra points you're earning by getting all those rewards should be well worth the big annual fee, in my opinion. For smaller spenders, probably not. And then I'm going to just kind of stop there. If you don't have any rent or rent mortgage to pay, then I think it's a tough call whether or not this makes sense because it's a fairly expensive card, and we don't know whether those coupons will be valuable or not. Well, okay, I can't let you out that easily. I mean, then the natural comparison point here is going to be the Venturex for a lot of people, because that's a 2x everywhere card, costs a little bit less at $3.95 a year,

has a very easy to use $300 coupon in the $10,000 anniversary points each year, but it doesn't give you the ability to earn points on rent or mortgage, doesn't give you whatever the built cash ends up being worth. Like, which one is the right choice? Yeah, we've talked a lot about this offline. I think that people who want something really simple, So frequent travelers who just want the simplest thing, VentureX is by and far the card I'm going to recommend. You know, for $3.95 with Venture X, you get your $300 in travel credit, which or travel discount, really, each year,

which we use for anything you book on the Capital One travel portal, anything. So it's not just hotels. It's not two-night minimums days. It's flights. It's car rentals. As we talked last week, you could even book theme part tickets. That's so freaking easy to use. So you get $300 value there.

You also get upon renewal, 10,000 points, which worst case, you can use to erase $100 worth of travel purchases you've made directly on the card. You don't even have to go through the portal for that. So getting $400 back each year or $400 in value is so simple. You know, someone just needs to be enough of a traveler to be able to do that. easily and earn 2x on all their spend, sort of for free and get priority pass sort of for free because of you're getting $400 in value automatically, and getting access to Capital One lounges, which are, you know, very highly rated. So all of that great for someone who wants to keep it simple. That said, for someone who's willing to take things to the next level and

is willing to do the extra work to, you know, pay rent or mortgage, owner to earn extra rewards. and who's willing to do the extra work to understand how much more valuable built points can be over Kappa 1 miles. All of that stuff for a person who's willing to take it the next level, I think this card is worth considering. You said you're in in your post. So you're in on this, right? And so it fits you, apparently. Fits me. Yeah, I'm definitely willing to take it to the next level and do the extra work to make the most of this card.

I mean, so if you can do the work, I think it's super rewarding, and I'm hoping to be able to use the coupons towards good value. But for me, I think there's enough there with, I think I can make it. I think I can make that 3.33x really work. And if I can, then that, that alone makes this card worth it. It also means when you spend a lot on the card, you're going to earn top tier platinum status, which gets you the best transfer bonuses. you also get the extra, you know, built cash every 25,000 points you earn. All that stuff adds up to be like it becomes even more valuable than what we're talking about in certain ways.

Yeah, you know, I think that a key here is recognizing that just because Greg is in and it fits his situation doesn't mean it's going to fit your situation. And that's like you have to do the math on these cards. These are not like easy to, there's nothing easy. There's nothing easy about them. They're not simple. but they're a great fit for some people. I mean, there were some people in comments who said, oh, but who's spending this much on rent or who's got this much on bonus spend? And I think the

thing is, you have to keep in mind that your situation doesn't apply to everybody. I mean, in big cities, there are plenty of people spending a lot on mortgage and rent and a lot on unboned purchases. I mean, some people were like, but who could spend $5,000 or $6,000 a month on bonus purchases? And it's like, well, I know a lot of people paying two or $3,000 a month, for daycare, you know, like forget about everything else in their life. Now, I mean, I know a lot of people who aren't spending two or $3,000 a month on daycare too who probably aren't spending two or $3,000 a month, period. And so there's people in different camps. And so I think that's the thing. Like, it just depends on where you are in that, you know, like, are you spending enough

and do you have enough to pay in mortgage or rent? And if you don't, then it doesn't make it wrong for someone who does and it doesn't make it right for you. Like it probably isn't if that's the case. But, but I find this really exciting myself and the Palladium card. I'm going to take a bunch of expenses that I ordinarily put on 2x cards and put them on this instead. Because like Greg said, I'll end up with a level of built status. I might not make platinum. I might only make gold because I don't know if I have enough in unbonous purchases to make platinum. And I'm not going to divert spend that I would otherwise use for like a welcome offer. I'm not going to divert my grocery spend to this and earn fewer points per dollar. I'm just putting stuff on this that would

have gone on a 2x card. I got plenty last year. I spent plenty of money on Adventure X and a Spark cash plus that were like 2x type purchases that were on bonus things. And I could do that instead on the palladium card. And so for me, that's a good fit because I'm going to spend that anyway. And here now I'll end up with built status, which we don't know if that'll continue to be value. people, but so far it's been a pretty good deal for people who had built status and were able to take advantage of the big transfer bonuses. So I'm willing to gamble on that because I know I'm like there's no status with Capital One. So putting that spend on the venture X isn't doing me anything other than the two points per dollar. And I like the transfer partners on the built side better. So as long as I can make decent use of the built cash, even if I don't get full value out of the built, even when I don't use all my built cash, I think it's going to work out to be good enough for me. Now that said, I, I, I, I, I'm looking forward to seeing changes already because I think it's really short-sighted the expiration of built cash. I can understand they probably want to create some breakage like every company out there that

has an expiration date on anything. But I think they've gone too far with the December 31st expiration. It doesn't make sense. And it's poorly thought out in my opinion. It's not even like just that I'm angry that it expires. It just disincentivizes the customers you want spending. on the card. That doesn't make any sense to me. There are a lot of things they do. I don't like that. I'm like, oh, I don't like that, but that makes business sense. This doesn't. I don't get that.

No. You know, if they had done like six months from earning, it expires, we would have hated that. Right. But, you know, you'd be able to use your cash before it expires. It'd be possible. Right. Right. This December thing, it's, it's bizarre. And so hopefully they'll rethink that. It wouldn't surprise me at all if that changes because that's, I kind of feel like, so I got a little bit of background on this, talking to some built people that I think they were originally thinking of built cash as more like status points, like, you know, towards like milestones like you get with American Airlines or Alaska or different programs or Hyatt. But and so having it expired at the end of the year felt to them like, well, that's what all the

loyalty programs do, but calling it built cash and how it's really being used is not like that. It's not like that at all. And so they need to rethink it. I think so too. And I, you know, the thing that is the positive and negative of built is that they are willing to adapt and change on the fly. And they're more quickly responsive and changeable than anybody else out there with a rewards program. Any other rewards program changes are slow. They take forever. They do a focus group and a survey and like spend three years rumoring a change before it happens. Right.

Yeah. Built isn't that way, which on the one hand is exciting because it's like, oh, well, they'll come up with some new stuff that I've never thought about. Like, I didn't think anybody was going to do 100% transfer bonus. I didn't think anybody was going to offer points on rent originally or mortgage. There's plenty of interesting things they've done. But the downside of that is that you're going to end up getting some things like this where it's like, well, maybe we're not too fast on that. Bill Cash thing because I don't know. It is completely bonkers that they release these cards without knowing what Bill Cash

could be used for and how. Unbelievable. But that's the way it is. So anyway, to sort of summarize big picture, big picture is if you can plow through the complexity, then you may find that one of these new cards is a really good fit for you, but you may not. we Nick and I happen to both find for ourselves that the 495 card appears to be a good fit. Of course, after using it, we discover it's not.

Of course, we'll jettison it at the end of the year. But that doesn't mean we're going to be recommending it to everybody. As I said, a few minutes ago, a lot of people, I'm still going to be recommending the Venture X. It's simple, rewarding, but people willing to go that extra step, then we need to have that conversation with that guy down the street and figure out which is best for them. Oh, and the last point I think that is worth making is you can only get one of these cards. And there's some basic info. You should check out our frequently asked questions because there's a number of frequently asked questions that we haven't talked about that are covered in

that post. One of those that's worth mentioning is you only get one of these. And you can be, but you can't be an authorized user on a different one. And so I think a big gap or hole or or a confusion point or something that I hope gets fixed is that like I would want the obsidian and the palladium. I'd want the obsidian for all the reasons I said before and I want the palladium because I have enough on bonus to expend that that's going to make sense for me. I can't get both of them. So my intention is that my wife will have one and I will have the other one. But I don't love that because Bill doesn't let you transfer points to somebody else's account. So then like her points are stuck with her and my points are stuck with me and then

we're earning status separately with built. And and I don't love that. That's that's one of my least favorite pieces of this. Of course, because I anticipate that most of our built points will probably go to Hyatt and Alaska apart from transfer bonuses, then I think it'll it'll still be okay because we can combine on the Hyatt side. My wife can send her Hyatt points to my Hyatt account. Hyatt allows transfers member to member. We talked about programs that offer sharing. And maybe last week's episode, we talked about the best programs for sharing or very recently anyway. So that's kind of a way that I could end up with the Hyatt points there. And Alaska, if you've got a Hawaiian credit card, you can transfer to somebody else or if they have a Hawaiian

credit card for free. And so we can easily combine with those programs. We also have our AeroPlan points pooled. Those are programs I use quite a bit. And so anyway, there's a number of options, I think, for working through that to be able to use the points together. I don't love that the spend has to be separate. It's all part of the complexity. Yeah, for sure, for sure. Yeah, yeah. Hey, if things weren't so complicated, we would not have a job.

Well, you know, I think that Capital One's marketing, the elevated, not complicated, certainly is paying off now because they have kept things uncomplicated. And, you know, maybe the complication will end up being interesting for some people, because it'll give you a choice. And I think that's, I think that's what built is going for to give you the opportunity to choose, which we're maybe,

you know, you don't have a ton of rent or mortgage and you'll be excited about restaurants and maybe you don't care about restaurants, but you have a lot of mortgage. And so you can kind of pick and choose what fits for you. Hopefully there'll be some good choices.

All right. That brings us to the end of today's episode. We'll hold question of the week for next week. But if you enjoyed today's episode and you'd like to get more of this stuff in your email inbox each day or each week, you can go to frequentmiler.com slash subscribe to join our email list.

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or a piece of feedback for a giant mailbag. You can send that too. Send it to mailbag at frequentmiler.com. Bye everybody. Travel Tales with me, Mike Siegel, is full of funny, inspiring and wild adventures. Listen now at voyescape.com. If you love travel, you'll love winging it travel podcast. Every Monday I share stories

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