Frequent Miler on the Air - Is Chase dropping the hammer on manufactured spending? | Ep83 | 1-31-21

Episode Date: January 30, 2021

00:24 Giant Mailbag 2:03 What crazy thing did....Spirit Airlines do? https://youtu.be/U8CRj6t3KuU 9:17 Mattress running the numbers: The Motley Fool https://frequentmiler.com/hugely-profitable-rewarding-the-motley-fool-subscription-with-amex-offer/ 21:22 Main Event: Is Chase dropping the hammer on manufactured spending? https://frequentmiler.com/updated-chase-business-card-cash-like-transaction-terms-what-it-might-might-not-mean/ 38:10 Post Roast (Greg roasts Nick) https://frequentmiler.com/united-flights-now-from-3k-miles-each-way-making-for-cheaper-excursionist-perks/ https://frequentmiler.com/saving-thousands-of-miles-with-united-excursionist-perk/ 44:11 Post Roast (Nick roasts Greg) https://frequentmiler.com/brex-bonus-110k-transferable-points-without-a-credit-inquiry/ 48:29 Question of the Week: Is the Turkish sweet spot for United domestic flights gone? https://frequentmiler.com/turkish-miles-smiles-complete-guide/ Don't forget to like, subscribe, comment, and turn on notifications! To join our email list, go to https://frequentmiler.com/subscribe Music credit: Annie Yoder

frequent miler on the air starts now today's main event is chase gonna drop the hammer on manufactured spending sounds ominous it is ominous so we will debate that and and decide for chase what they're gonna do about that of course, we have the giant mailbag. Let's see what we have today from the reader feedback. Today we have a message from Devereux H. Who says, just discovered you guys a few weeks ago, and I can't get enough. Could listen to you talk points and miles forever. Keep up the great work. And we hope you do. We hope you do.

That's right. We're going to do our best to fill you up so you get enough. Hopefully. No, no, no, no. There's never enough, Greg. There's never enough. Always more coming at you next week never is gonna be fed up in a couple weeks don't worry about it we'll see we'll see i mean i it's good to have you here though with us and you know that's kind of fun because that comment where did that comment come in from uh remember was it like podcast youtube email i can't remember to be honest that yeah usually i write down what you know where they came from but i didn't this time so right right right always nice to get new people discovering us and if they were discovering the

show hey that's awesome that's great that's you know we hope that people are doing that so absolutely that's nice that's i thought this was a good counterbalance i think it was last week that i read one that was that was a little bit on the negative side and and it's nice to nice to have a good pat on the back every now and positivity right right remind us that we're doing something right right right once in a while yeah all right so on. So what crazy thing did Spirit do this week? Yeah. So Spirit Airlines, in their attempt to woo us as bloggers to write great things about them, they sent us each, me and Nick, a box of Spirit swag. And it's not just any swag it's like we're not talking most pens and eye shades here this was like right right i mean there were pens but uh that was the very least of

what was there so this was like amazing stuff i mean yeah stuff i've never seen before do you want to uh quickly run down? Yeah, I mean, after you get through the pens and the pad and the stuff that you might expect, there was a nice water bottle. And I mean, I've got a nice frequent miler water bottle, but this was another nice water bottle.

But that's, you know, kind of pedestrian still too. Then they had packing cubes. And hey, I like packing cubes. So I was kind of happy with that it'll be kind of fun to pull out my free spirit packing cube at some point on a first class flight i look forward to pulling that out and getting a picture with my my free spirit packing cube so that was kind of fun but then you know they upped the ante well first i guess i skipped right over the silicon cups here that you know it's coming in handy here um but no

wait just one more thing about the packing cubes though aren't there there's some hotels where you have like a butler who like unpacks your things like that's where you need those packing cubes perfect the free spirit packing cubes when they're yeah it's a saint regis or wherever and you know i wonder if they'll even know spirit airlines to the. Regis someplace else. But I'll know. And that's all that really matters. Yeah, don't feel good about it. So in the up the ante a bit, they gave us a battery pack, but not just any battery pack.

It's a wireless battery pack. So if you got a wireless charging phone, you can charge off of that. Also had built-in cables for iPhone and Android. So fumbling around to see if you have the cable to connect. I loved that. I was like, oh, that's perfect. I'm always looking in my bag for the cable.

Awesome to cut out the middleman there. Absolutely. Then maybe my favorite or second favorite thing was an umbrella and not just any old umbrella. An umbrella with a built-in Bluetooth speaker. Yes. Which might be the most impractical idea I have ever seen.

Have you ever seen, there's an old show called Get Smart way, way back when. I think I read about it in a history book at some point. Yeah, yeah, this would be in a history book. So in that show, the hero is like a spy, like a good spy for the U.S. And he has very impractical devices. Like so his phone, so this was back before cell phones were a thing, right? But he had a shoe phone. So he would take off his shoe and talk on the phone. And another thing he had was when he had to meet

in private with someone, they would pull down the cone of silence like over their heads and have to shout because this cone would like keep all noise away from even each other. And this umbrella thing reminds me of both because I was looking at it it's not just bluetooth for playing music you could talk on the phone I didn't realize that you could talk on the phone oh that's fantastic so you pull this dome over your head driving down for and then talking to your umbrella phone of course why not why wouldn't you right so it's it's get smart all over again. You know, the funny part of that story is that I sent an email out to their marketing person afterwards. Say, oh, thanks. It was, you know,

really surprising. There was some, you know, fun stuff in there. And I mentioned the umbrella. And he said that originally he had, well, he had put it together. He said, and he said, originally he had just had a regular umbrella, but one of his colleagues had ordered a bunch of those Bluetooth umbrellas. And he was like, oh no, this has to go in those boxes. So, you know, automatic up and down snazzy stuff. I don't know where and when I'm going to use the Bluetooth, but Hey, it's, it's fun. Right. You got to admit it. Yeah. You could also put an SD card in there. So if you don't have your phone paired up with it, you know, if you've downloaded a bunch of episodes of frequent miler on the air and you want to just listen every time it's a rainy day right you know that's why not why would you that's

that's what everybody does i think right that's what is it devo that's what devo is going to be doing pretty soon yeah you know maybe maybe our listeners in uh portland oregon or i don't know where does it rain a lot you know maybe uh they'll be like this sounds totally logical why wouldn't we do this of course here all this time i've been holding my phone in the rain now i can keep it in my pocket right that's what i know there's at least a couple of people thinking that right so uh so yeah yeah nice nice desk lamp for the you know built-in charger is awesome yeah yeah it's bright it's got like some different color temperatures so so spirit like known as like the you know the the budget extreme budget airline is sending us like this ultra premium swag right right i mean

there's well over a hundred dollars worth of swag in there right right right right and so so their their goal of getting us to say nice things has worked because we're saying nice things about the swag so right there you go good job there you go you win spirit you win so swag then the swag master there deserves a raise well i i clearly that's i i wrote and i was like whoever put that together deserves a pat on the back because I mean, you know, every now and then maybe come across an opportunity to get some swag of some sort. Or over the years, I've done other types of promotions and gotten some sweat, never swag like this. This was definitely like up a notch. And come on, seriously, would anybody have expected that from spirit? You know, I would have expected a T-shirt that rips the first time you wear it or something.

Right. And well, I mean, that's the funny thing is they sent us swag a few months ago, which was like more normal swag, like a notebook and a, and a coffee mug. And mine actually came chipped. The coffee mug was pro chipped. So that was what I expected. Um, no, this, this was, this was great. Yeah. Kind. Yeah, kind of cool. Kind of cool. And you know, so they won because we're talking about it now and they won because I spent some extra time looking at Spirit this week and wrote about it because I found some things

that I thought were good. So, you know, maybe we'll talk about that later, but I have a feeling there's a roast coming on that. But at any rate, it was kind of fun. So, crazy thing, Spirit, you're crazy. I don't know what you're thinking. I don't know how much mileage you thought you were going to get out of that box,

but I'm going to get a lot of mileage out of it because there's some stuff in there that I wanted. Right. And, you know, hopefully all the other airlines and hotel programs are listening and are just like preparing giant boxes of swag to send us. Right. Because they want to get on the show. That's right, City.

I know you're sad that you haven't been on What Crazy Things for a few weeks here. So come on, send us something crazy, City. Yeah, let's do that. All right. So that brings me then to Mattress Running the Numbers. Speaking of crazy stuff this week, Mattress Running the Numbers,

should everybody you know be getting a Motley Fool subscription this week, Greg? It seems like it, doesn't it? Well, let's back that up. Nick here with something I recorded after the show. So at the time we recorded the show, the deal we're about to talk about was available and seemed like an amazing deal. Unfortunately, yesterday, the day after we recorded this, but the day before this podcast publishes, The Motley Fool reached out to us directly to tell us that this stack will no longer work and they have since been removed from all the various shopping portals. So you're going to hear about this deal here, but if you didn't hop on it right

away, it's going to be too late. You'll want to go to frequentmiler.com slash subscribe and get on our instant email list so that next time there's a deal like this, you'll find out about it right away. All right, back to Greg. All right, so what's going on is that Amex has a broadly available offer that you could load to your to one of your amex cards that's what is it it's 99 off of 99 spend with motley fool which is exactly what it costs right for a what one year subscription whatever the cheapest one year email subscription is right so so far this is probably only moderately interesting to to most listeners because it's like, okay, that's great. You get moderately full for free for a year, but I don't really want that or I only mildly care about it. But that's not really where it's interesting. Tell me where does this get

really interesting? Well, it's interesting because A, there are portals offering nearly 100% back on the cost of the subscription. So there's like dollar dig and rebates me. We're offering like 87, 50 or $85 cash back. I think glamour rewards was $80 cash back when we first posted it. Swag bucks was 75 bucks, but I think they pulled that since or then airline portals had payouts like the American airlines portals offering 7400 miles at least they still are at the time we're recording this for signing up for the 99 subscription

alaska was 5400 and united was 5800 other airline portals were offering something to chase portal 7500 points not totally sure that it'll pay out properly via chase i think it probably will if you use an Amex, but I'd probably stick with one of the other options just in case it doesn't pay out through Chase. And then it gets even better because there were also some card-linked offers that Stephen linked to

where you could link your card, your Amex card, to Caesars Rewards or Choice Privileges. Caesars Rewards is paying 36 points a dollar. So you're talking 3,600 Caesar's rewards points for, for using the Amex card after you click through the portal. 36 bucks. I think so. Yeah.

And Caesar's rewards. I think that's what I, that's what I understand Caesar's rewards to be. So right. Right. Like 36 bucks worth of food, potentially help you get into a lounge or whatever. Or if you're not a big into Caesar's choice privileges was offering 26

points per dollar. And that's the one I did because I was like, I could always use 2600 Choice Privileges points. Why not? So especially if it stacks, I did the 7400 American Airlines miles because one of our accounts was like a little short of a useful threshold with American Airlines. Sure. That 7400 pulled us right up to one of those useful thresholds where I was like, okay, that's an amount that I might use on an award ticket. Perfect. Cause that just kind of threaded the needle to get me there in one fell swoop. What about you? Did you, did you sign up first of all? And if you did, what did you sign up through? I haven't done it yet. So, you know, I was waiting for this conversation so I could learn about all the options so that I didn't have to read because I hate reading.

Reading is tough. Sorry. Right. Right. So you're lucky that all of those, I think, are still going on. I think they're all still going on. So I kind of like American Airlines miles for the portal because there's not that many ways anymore to get American Airlines miles. Like we've talked before how there's no good, you know,

banks that have AA as a transfer partner. And it used to be you could sign up for American Airlines credit cards over and over and over and get the miles forever, but you can't really do that anymore. So, you know, I, so I guess taking, if you compare it to $75 back, it's like paying just barely over a penny per mile. So that seems, that seems good. I think reasonable to me. I'm likely to do that. We'll see. Yeah. And I figured I could probably leverage it for a little bit more value than that, at least a little bit more. And then if I get lucky with these web special awards,

I mean, I could probably get a one way saver award if you have an American Airlines credit card and 7,500 one way. So that's basically a reduced mileage award one way within the United States domestic economy. Or with a lot of the web specials, you may very well get, you know, a decent, another decent one that's not on the reduced mileage award chart. Or even last year, at some point, we saw those flights to Australia or New Zealand, probably a mistake, but they were like 5000 miles each way, right? So right, right. So I'll take 7400 American miles. Yeah. And now that Americans, you know, award flights are freely cancelable. You get your miles back. You get any taxes back.

I'm just, you know, much more excited about the program than I ever was before because of that. So, yeah, the same kind of argument can be made for Alaska because they're not an easy transfer partner either. Only fifty four hundred Alaska miles, which I tend to value more than American miles. So normally in a normal world, I feel like, or I shouldn't even say that, but if I wasn't in the same situation, all else was equal. I might've gone towards the Alaska side, but in our case, my wife and I each have six figure balances in Alaska miles right now. And we don't have as many American miles. We spent a whole ton of them a few years ago so uh so you know this was a good opportunity to pick up a chunk in one fell yeah yeah yeah at no cost so all right cool there you go so hop on that definitely also a crazy thing but certainly

worth doing now if you got multiple people in your household how do you play it can you go through the american airlines portal over and over again for each person in your household? How do you play it? Can you go through the American Airlines portal over and over again for each person in your household? Do you know? Well, yeah, I mean, well, I guess what I what I'm wondering is, are there any limitations on the Amex offer or on like Motley Fool subscriptions to somehow be tied to a household as opposed to a person. I would guess, though, that you could get all of those dips per person as long as the card link offers. I think you'd probably have to have separate accounts, maybe. Actually, I don't even know if that's true. The card link offers, I don't know.

I didn't look at the terms there. But I know the American Airlines portal terms say you can do it once so if you're using the American portal once per person so you gotta do it under each person so you sign in as another person yeah exactly I mean the other person signs in

right the other person signs in and use their own card that they have with the offer because they logged in themselves correct exactly right right so you know make sure card that they have with the offer because they logged in themselves. Great. Exactly. Right. Right. So, you know, make sure everybody in your family does it.

That's all I'm saying. Make sure. It sounds like there's, there's, is there any risk? So, you know, some people are worried,

especially after what happened with that wine insiders thing, where that was an Amex offer to get up to $60 back from $60 spend on wine. But if you went through a portal or if you bought discounted wine or if you sort of looked at the website funny, then they wouldn't pay out. You know, are there any similar risks here? I don't think so. I don't think so. This one, it says you have to buy it directly from the Motley Fool. But I think that was all it said in terms of a specification. And you are buying it directly

from the Motley Fool. You're clicking through the American Airlines portal, but it's taking you right to the Motley Fool's website. I already received the Amex offer email saying congratulations to use your Amex offer. I already received the email from American Airlines saying you got a traffic or a purchase rather that's tracking to post. I haven't received anything from Choice Privileges yet, but I'm not that concerned. That's the smallest piece of the deal. That's gravy comes through. Great. I don't see why it wouldn't because it's a card linked offer. You don't have to click through anything on the Choice Privileges site. Just have to link the card number. So I assume that that's going to work, too. But but no, no confirmation there. But two out of assume that that's going to work too, but, uh, but no, no confirmation

there, but two out of three, that's good for me to get my money back. One thing I guess worth noting is when I checked out, it was saying 99 bucks and then I didn't really take a close, close look at the end. And, and they did charge sales tax, or at least it looks like they did. Anyway, the preauthorization shows tax. So, so it was a couple of dollars more expensive, like one Oh eight, I'm going to get 99 back. So it is going to cost me like nine bucks for my 7,400 American airlines miles, but I'll take that trade. Gotcha. Yeah. Do, do they have, I know it's a, it's a electronic subscription, right? It is. Yeah. So there might be, there might be a way, like the people who, who live in New Hampshire, Delaware, you know, one of those tax-free states probably

won't get charged sales tax and i wondered if it wasn't the kind of thing where that's what it showed but then later on it wouldn't actually charge you that and it's possible and and i think that that might be possible here specifically because initially it showed that amount but i didn't receive an email from the motley Fool, oddly enough, after completing checkout. I assumed I'd received like a welcome to the Motley Fool email. Right. Nothing from the Motley Fool at all. I was able to create an online account and all that jazz.

No sort of email confirmation from them that I had bought anything and nothing from Amex immediately. But then very early the next morning, I got the first email from Motley Fool saying, welcome to Motley Fool. Here's your first email. And I also received the Amex offer. Congratulations. You redeemed your offer. So I'm wondering if they just didn't put the finalized purchase through until the next morning. And so there's a possibility. Yeah. So did the Motley Fool email have some tax advice? Did it say things like sell short on GameStop and BlackBerry? Because now's the time. No, I mean, it should have or something like that. Because, yeah, I mean,

yeah, if you've been watching that at all this week, been a crazy week on that, that's for sure. So, you know, I didn't see any mention of GameStop in there. Didn't see any mention of AMC or, you know, all these other craziness that's been going on all week. So if you haven't been following that, it's been nuts.

Because that could be where the real risk is if you follow some advice and lose a bunch of money. Right. You know, that's always true with stock. Right. Right. And let's be clear here. I'm not saying that you should get The Motley Fool

to follow their stock advice. I have no idea if their stock advice is any good. And my personal opinion is that anybody who knows the future is going to, you know, first of all, their crystal ball works better than anybody else's. And why would they tell anybody that they're able to predict it? So I don't really buy into anybody's stock advice, just personal opinion. So I have no interest in the subscription. It's just the miles here. I'll look at it for entertainment value, but you know,

I'm not telling you that you should buy the stocks that they tell you to buy. Yeah. There you go. All right. So on this, uh, what we're calling a mattress run, even though it has nothing to do with mattress running, I think we're giving it two thumbs up. Like why wouldn't you do this? Right. I mean, get on it, get on it. Come on. I guess the, the, the, uh, thing you have to make sure you do kind of

right away and i i did was was actually register for that amex offer because sometimes offers go away uh prematurely or they they have some limit maybe of how many people they're willing to sign let sign up something like that yeah yeah so get on it get on it okay so on it. Okay. Get on it. Okay. That brings us to the main event. It does. It does. So Chase sent out some emails this past week and people got nervous. They did. They did. We got like one email after another from people who were like, oh my goodness, I just got this email.

Oh man, this email came through, you know, it was posted in Frequent Miler Insiders. Everybody's waking out like, oh my goodness, it's the end here. Right. Right. So what do you think? Listen to Frequent Miler Insiders. Everybody's waking out like, oh, my goodness, it's the end here. Right, right. So what do you think? I mean, Chase sent out an email, and they basically said, hey, we're not going to give you rewards for some transactions, right? Right, right. So actually, I have some of the content of it here, so I can read out the relevant parts.

The relevant stuff was that they said certain cash-like transactions will be treated as cash advances and I hope everyone knows why that's bad you get charged for them you don't earn rewards on cash advances you just don't want that to happen it's almost like a snowball too of bad things happening because you start incurring interest on those charges. Immediately, yeah.

Immediately, yeah. Okay. So then it goes on to say cash-like transactions include, but are not limited to the following transactions to the extent they are accepted. So that's kind of interesting. There's kind of right off the bat saying, if we don't approve of a charge, then you won't be charged a cash advance, which I think is obvious, but it's in there. Anyway. Okay. So here are the things. The first bullet is purchasing traveler's checks, foreign currency, money orders, wire transfers, cryptocurrency, other similar digital or virtual currency, and other similar transactions. What I want to point out here is this is the bullet where if they had wanted to say gift cards, they should have said gift cards, but they didn't.

Right, right, right. And I mean, so if you're a conspiracy theorist, maybe you think, oh, well, they said other similar transactions so that they can penalize you for buying gift cards. Except why? Why would they do that? If they want to charge a cash advance fee, it isn't because they're going to make billions of dollars on gift card cash advance fees. It's to discourage the behavior. And if they want to discourage the behavior, why wouldn't they be explicit and just say, hey, you can't buy gift cards? Right.

Right. So, yeah. And buy gift cards? Right. Right. So, yeah. And they didn't say that. Right. And so manufactured spending, for anyone who hasn't listened to a bunch of our shows, is ways of increasing credit card spend in ways that you either get the money back or you use it to pay bills that you would have had to pay with cash anyway. And people often do that by buying gift cards,

buying like Visa or MasterCard gift cards, then using those gift cards to either buy money orders or pay bills. And so, yes, it says in here you can't buy money orders, but that means buying directly with credit cards. We're talking about this like in-between thing where you buy a gift card, then you buy money order with a gift card. There's nothing explicit in here that says you can't buy the gift card. So that is, I think, very good news. I think it's great news.

They easily could have had that in there if that's what they wanted in there. And I can't imagine that they're not aware that people have bought some gift cards with their cards before. So, you know, it's not that I think that that's their preferred use of their cards. But clearly, I think it's clear anyway, it's not bothering them that much. Yeah, I mean, it seems that they're very, very aware of what people are doing. I mean, there's just no question about that and the fact that they made the deliberate decision not to list it i think it's very telling and and somewhat surprising like you know i kind of thought that they would follow amex's uh footsteps at some point and and try to uh you know lay down the law against gift cards. But they don't seem to have done that.

And I don't know why. Yeah, I don't either. I share in your surprise. It doesn't, I don't want to say it doesn't make sense to me. It's surprising to me that they haven't gone that route. Because they could certainly reduce the rewards that they're paying out that way. But clearly they don't think that that is in their best interest they think right people like their cards and use their cards a lot and you know i presume they find that it makes them a lot of money and so you know they're not upset about it

i think i mean that's yeah i don't know you know in the past we've talked about how like the cards like the ink cash which gets five points per dollar at office supply stores and you go to Staples or Office Depot and buy gift cards. We've talked about how it has limits to how much 5X you get per year. And so that's how they kind of limit their damage. And so, you know, that was kind of like how we believed, since they're explicitly managing the risk that way, maybe that's why they're not cracking down on gift card purchases. But then this year, sorry, last year, they came out with new bonus categories for their Freedom Cards.

It includes 3X at drugstores where you can buy any gift card you want and there's no apparent limit. So I don't know. I don't know if that's a, uh, an oversight or intentional. Yeah. You know, I don't know what, what, what's going on there. And let's kind of wish there was a limit. We're not saying right. Right. Cause then you'd know where the, you know, where the speed limit is. Let's be clear. We're not telling you to go buck wild at the drugstore or that you can manufacture, spend all day long on all your Chase cards because that's not necessarily the case. People do sometimes get shut down.

And, you know, if you start all of a sudden ramping up with activity, that's nothing like your usual spending patterns. You're just asking for attention that you don't want. So, you know, we're not saying that it's like the Wild West here, but rather that Chase had an opportunity to say, no soup for you, and they didn't. They said, you know, they're going to charge cash advances for things that pretty clearly are cash advances, right? Right, right. Well, hold on, though.

There are some more bullets here that are worth discussing. All right. The next bullet I think is not that surprising, but for anyone doing these things, purchasing lottery tickets, casino gaming chips, racetrack wagers, and similar offline and online betting transactions. I haven't done any of that, so it's not like something that affects me, but I could see it being an issue for people.

It'll disappoint some people. Yeah. Another one, person-to-person money transfers. Let me stop there. So like theoretically paying someone else with Venmo, even though you're paying the Venmo fee, might result in a cash advance if this is true. Account funding transactions.

Well, and that's not really new. Let me stop you there. That's not really new. And there was a New York Times article last year about that happening. And there were a number of posts, Doctor of Credit and other places about issuers starting to charge cash advances on Venmo transactions. So you're already in dangerous territory with Venmo for months already. So that's not exactly news. Okay. Right, right, right. So that's not news, but it's just something to be aware of. Account funding transactions that transfer currency. So here's the thing. Doctor of Credit maintains, and we've talked about this many times, a list of bank accounts where you can fund the initial funding of a new bank account you could do with a credit card. And they maintain a list of which ones are treated as cash advances versus purchases.

And I don't know that we'll be able to trust that list once this new rule goes into effect, because theoretically, they're going to be going through and changing some settings. You know, just theoretically, it might be that nothing in practice will change, but it could be that things that before where you could open, I'm just going to make one up. I don't know if this is true. Let's say you could open a PNC bank account today and, you know, load it with $500 from a credit card. maybe before it wasn't a cash advance transaction, but maybe it will be in the future. So something to watch out for. And so in that scenario, what can you do to protect yourself apart from just not using a

Chase card? I mean, that seems like an obvious potential answer, but what would you do in order to try to avoid that problem? Yeah. Well, I mean, what you could do is you could call Chase and ask to lower your cash advance limit, ideally to zero. Sometimes they won't go all the way to zero. So whatever, they'll lower it to. Then as long as the amount you're trying to load to the bank is more than that limit, theoretically, they'll deny you rather than approve you and charge you a cash advance fee.

The downside of that is there are some cases where a transaction gets approved as a cash advance, but then the actual transaction is a purchase. And so you'd be locked out of those kind of situations. But that's kind of risky anyway. Right. Right. So, and that's, that's disappointing. It's not the end of the world because it's not, there aren't accounts, like back in the day, there were accounts where you could fund an account with, you know,

like 50 or $75,000 and put it on a credit card and. City bank a hundred thousand. Right. Right. Right, right, right. So I mean, that was hugely rewarding. These days, I don't think I've seen one that you could fund with a credit card for more than like $1,000. And even that is not particularly common. It's more like a $500 limit.

So you're not gonna earn, you're not gonna become a points millionaire funding bank accounts, most likely. The nice thing is it could be an easy way to help you towards a spending bonus. Obviously may not, maybe not anymore with Chase. Right, right, right, right. Okay. And then this one could affect a lot of people potentially, depending on how this plays out. The last bullet is making a payment using a third party service,

including bill payment transactions not made directly with the merchant or the service provider so we're talking plastic bill payments melio bill payments um some rent uh payment services i don't know i mean i don't know if they'll really charge show up as a cash advance in a way that would be kind of surprising to me, but that's what they say, so I guess we'll find out. It also makes me wonder, technically, if you just read the letter of the words I wrote here, technically paying your taxes with a credit card would fall under this as well. Well, you know, a lot of things things I feel like, like Square, right? You're paying Square,

you're not directly paying the merchant, right? I mean, you are paying the merchant, but there's a third-party processor there. Where's the difference between that and PayPal and plastic? You know, it's like, I don't know where the line is. And like you said, I can imagine where the line might, I hesitate to use the word ought to be, but where perhaps they intend the line to be. But technically, I don't know how they're going to, you know, are they going to one by one code this? Like, okay, plastic is bad. PayPal is good.

I don't know. So I guess we'll see. Right see right yeah i think we'll see i mean it's not out of the question that there's enough running through plastic that they'll specifically code it against plastic as an example and then and then they'd be open to specifically coding against any other thing they see as a problem i don't actually see why they see it as a problem but but they already limit what kinds of things you can pay bills to. And then they limit the percentage of your credit limit, right? Because I think with Chase cards,

what is it, like 20% of your limit or something? Yeah, I forget what that is. But that's only on consumer Chase cards, I think. Consumer cards, yes, correct. Yes, that's correct. So so yeah i don't know we'll see that i mean that could be a bummer for people that do a lot of bill pay via plastic for sure so right that could be a downside i don't know if i'd call it dropping the hammer but now it's maybe on your toe adding a big and adding a big inconvenience in a way um so what if we're wrong what what if what if gift card purchases are no longer right a thing with chase i mean i

think that's a stretch but um what are we what are we losing what are we what are we really losing here um the most obvious to me is is the incash, ink plus, five exit office supply stores. Gone, right? Right. I mean, all these staples fee-free deals, $1,000 a day by the terms of the ad, picking up easy points. Yes, that would be a hit, right?

Right, right. Yes, that would hurt. The other thing that would hurt down the road is for Hyatt cardholders who have been counting on being able to manufacture, spend their way to top tier status. Doesn't matter at all this year because Hyatt's made it so easy to earn. And the world of Hyatt card, of course, lets you spend $5,000 on the card to earn two elite nights towards status. If you can't buy gift cards and you can't do bill payments, how are you going to, you know, how are you going to get more than five, 10,000 on there? I mean, right. You know, I guess if you used it everywhere, which is what they want you to do. Right. Ouch.

Yeah, yeah, right. That would hurt. And so definitely that would be one that I think people would be upset to see that go. I also think in the shorter term, all these Chase grocery bonuses that people are working on, that would certainly take a hit too, because you get a lot of cards offering grocery bonuses with Chase and you're not able to get rewards or you're going to get charged a cash

advance fee on gift card purchases that hurts for earning bonus points. And it also hurts for the Chase pay yourself back feature, because that's certainly one of the nice things there is you could go to the grocery store, buy gift cards and pay yourself back for the gift cards at one and a half cents each. If you've got the the sapphire reserve they start coding those purchases as cash advances ouch you know that that one right right so nice um yeah and though let me let me say though even if they had written gift cards into the list i don't think it's likely that purchases at staples for example would code as gift card cash advances. You know, these are stores that sell all kinds of things and they have to go down to the lowest

level detail and say, this part of the purchase is a cash advance, but not this other part. You know, I just don't see that happening. I don't see that happening either, especially because, you know, you got to always remember that our hobby is niche. You know, we make up a very small percentage of customers. And overall, a lot of people buy gift cards legitimately, you know, they don't buy a thousand dollars a day, but right there. Exactly. You know, they buy it for a holiday or birthday or whatever. People buy gift cards. That's why they're there. And so can you imagine like, you know, Susie cardholder that bought a gift card for, you know, the kid's birthday or, you know, the coworker or whatever else, all of a sudden gets charged a cash advance

fee for buying a $50 gift card at the, you know, office supply store. You're like, right. Are you crazy? What's going on? And, and so, you know, how is Chase going to differentiate? Are they only going to charge cash advance fees for people buying a thousand dollars at another? I mean, they can't, that would be too technically demanding, I think.

Right. Right. Right. So if it happened at all, it would be like Simon mall gift card purchases, right? A gift card, mall.com gift cards.com,

those kinds of things. If it happened at all, we don't think it will happen. I don't think so. I mean, we could be wrong. There's, there's room for that. I think they were wrong once, but I don't think it will happen i don't think so i mean we could be wrong there's there's room for that yeah i think i think they were wrong once but you know i don't i don't remember what

it was about but at some point i don't think we've been wrong in 2021 yet not yet no there's time but not yet so uh yeah so i mean there was a non-event from the gift card angle but some bad news potentially in terms of those other things we just mentioned. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. It is time for post-roast. It is. And I'm going to give you the option to go first or second.

I'll go second. You go first. Oh, okay. All right. So this week, I went back and forth about what I was going to roast here, but I decided that it would be... I gave you that much material, huh?

Yeah, there was a fair amount. I decided that... Do you remember last week, I roasted Matthew from Live and Let's Fly and Ben from One Mile Time? Right. roasted Matthew from live and let's fly and Ben from one mile time. So I realized Matthew from live and let's fly has already roasted you. So I'm just going to read his roast and I shortened it a little bit. This was your post about saving thousands of miles with United excursionist perk. You had found that, um, overnight that United had, um only 3,000 miles.

And so you wrote two posts on how to take maximum advantage of that. I'm pretty sure. I wish I could have found it. I couldn't find it. I'm pretty sure there were places where you said, you know, I don't think this is going away. So if you don't want to do it now, it's something to keep available. But anyway. We haven't run into do it now, it's something to keep available. But anyway. We haven't run out of anything in 2021, Greg.

Slow down. That's right. So Matthew, and I'm condensing his reply a little bit. He said, great job. This is particularly valuable with the current sale going on now. And of course, he was talking about the united sale which made the awards go as low as 3 000 miles only for that one day now they're back to 5 000 as the as the least which is kind of sad yeah it is it is kind of sad it's unfortunate yeah yeah so i mean yeah

unfortunately he was absolutely right it was a one-day sale and little did i know i just happened to stumble on i was i was doing research for something totally separate and i was just i was doing comparisons of award prices and i started stumbling on these united flights that were 3 000 miles and i was like 3 000 miles i've never heard of a united flight that cheap before. And then I searched some more routes and I found more of them didn't even cross my mind that it would be an actual published fair sale. Cause I mean, this was like midnight or, you know, like it was late at night that I was still going through and compiling this data and stumbling on these things. So, so I just assumed it was something that I hadn't seen because I hadn't been looking at domestic airfare very much.

I mean, I shouldn't say that domestic award tickets. I hadn't been looking at domestic airfare very much. I mean, I shouldn't say that domestic award tickets. I haven't been looking at those at all for a while. So I didn't realize short term thing. Now they're back up to 5K. But the nice thing is that there are a lot more 5K awards than I used to see. I'm seeing a lot. I'm seeing them out of my own

home airport. I never saw those before out of my home airport. And if they dropped it to 3k once we'll probably do it again right right right so i actually think uh you know it's really good for people to uh spend some time trying to digest uh nick's posts on the excurs on its perk because next time this happens, if, if you're interested in, in, um,

it, it, it opens up some great deals, but we're not going to get into the whole reason why and how complicated it is. Well, you know what I am? Not exactly,

but here's, see, here's, here's what I'm going to do the next time it comes around. So last year, Iberia had a sale. It was 50% off award tickets to Europe. And so I booked round trip business class to Europe for 34,000

miles with Iberia, right? So I got a ticket to Spain that was scheduled for this spring. I already had to change it. So it's now scheduled for October of this year, right? So I've got this round trip business class flight to Spain and I booked it for like 10 or 11 days. Not really sure what I do. I figured out I'll figure it out when the time comes, when it gets closer, if it seems realistic, I'll do some planning. Right. And I probably won't just go to Madrid. I'll probably go someplace else in Europe, but I hadn't thought about how I'm going to get there, where else I'm going to go or what else I'm going to do yet. But here's the thing, like as we get closer to those dates, if I see these 3000 mile trips come back up and if I've gotten vaccinated and I feel

safe taking a domestic trip, I'll book myself a round trip, 6000 miles, same day turn, like I talked about in the post. And by doing, by using the technique that I showed in the post and taking one round trip domestic flight, I'll be able to get myself a free place to hop over to in Europe later on this year. So I'll be able to fly round trip from Madrid to, I don't know, maybe I want to go up to Iceland and see the Northern Lights or the top of Norway and see the Northern Lights or go to Athens or whatever else. Nice thing is that if I see this cheap thing and I decide I want to do a quick domestic getaway, I can nest them like I showed in the post and hopefully get myself a free round trip in Europe by nesting two separate trips.

You got to read the post if you want to know more about it. See the links in the show notes. But that's the kind of way that I look at this with these cheap United flights. It's a great opportunity to build on another trip that you already have semi-planned. Right, right. So that's as far into the future.

If it happens to be that you could use a round-trip domestic flight that is only 6,000 miles round-trip or whatever, when there's another sale, all the better. Then you can do these tricks to take a trip that you want to take and then later get a one-way across one of the international regions that United has. And that leg would be totally free. Actually, you'd get two if you do it the way you described.

So, okay. Potentially, yeah. So, yeah. So, there's some fun to be had there. At any rate, go see those posts. Definitely. All right. So that was your roast.

That's it? Okay, good. So I'm going to roast you now, Greg. So this week, you wrote about what was probably the deal of the week and what some people are saying is the deal of the year or potentially a deal of the year candidate with this Brex cash account. So this Brex cash account, whole bunch of miles for opening what's essentially like a debit card account.

It's not even a credit card. There's no hard pull. There's no chase five 24 effect here. You just basically open a debit card account for a business and you can get yourself like 110,000 points. Now, my roast here, Greg, is that you wrote about this and you said you can't do it as a sole proprietor. You have to have an LLC. And so I count on Frequent Miler to break these things down for me, to give me the easy guide to tell me, OK, here is how you create an LLC in five minutes. And you didn't do it, Greg. Why not? Oh yeah. That's a good point. I should have done that.

Probably the reason is I don't know. You know, I did, I did do a quick Google search and there's all kinds of services that sort of advertise for your very cheap LLC creation. And it might be worth doing, but I don't know enough about that topic to know. I do know that each state chart has different fees involved in LLCs. And I think in Michigan, I think I only pay like $25 a year to maintain my LLC, but I don't remember how much it costs for initial setup. So, um, yeah, that would be, that would be great. It'd be great to know that. Um, it'd be great to know if, uh, you know, if the rules that say you have to have, um, an LLC are, are actually, you know, adhered to. I think they are because I, I heard, I, I read a couple of data points from people who got declined for

having a sole proprietorship, which is funny because it said one of the reports I read was from somebody who was a little upset because they said, there was a place to mark that I have a sole proprietorship. I still had to fill out all this information just to get denied for having a sole proprietorship. They were kind of annoyed. Dad read our post. They'd read about it. Somebody was reading comments and some other site and realized that they were upset about it. Or maybe it was on Facebook or something. So so so I think they are declining people who don't have an LLC legitimately. Yeah. You know, I wanted to roast you about it, but really, I should be roasting myself because I feel like since I don't have an LLC, this is a perfect assignment for me, right? I need to create an LLC.

Oh, there you go. This Brex Cash account because, I mean, it's a lot of points. Then we'll be able to answer the question. So we talked about earlier about discussing whether it's worth opening an LLC for this deal because 110,000 transferable points with very little very few requirements what you know as besides having an llc um uh is it worth actually setting one up just so that you could qualify for this and i don't know but if you do go through the steps you'll have a better idea of you know how much is involved we could know, we could give people our judgment, like, is it, is it worth all this rigmarole or was it super easy? And, and of course you should do it. So that would be, that would be fantastic. I will, I will mention

just on the topic of this post that you, you'll remember that one of the comments was, was like, man, this isn't a credit card. It's just a cash account. And you don't get a credit limit, which is true. Actually, you only get your credit limit on the card. It's not really a debit card. It's just a credit card that's tied to your cash account. And your credit limit is actually less than how much is in your cash account. Your credit limit is only 80% of it. So I've updated the post to say that. I didn't know that when I wrote the post. But anyway.

So it's like a super secured card. Right. This person went on to say, you know, they're terrible transfer partners and you only get one cent per point if you cash it out and and so it's it's a it's a terrible deal so you only get eleven hundred dollars that we cash it out right only eleven hundred dollars for with very few requirements yeah right terrible deal right it's terrible right up there with you know right up there with when i hear people say oh is it worth doing? Cause you think you get taxed on it.

And if you get to pay taxes, is it worth doing it? And I'm always like, I mean, is it worth showing up to work today? Cause you're going to get taxed. You know, you're going to make some money and you're going to get taxed. Of course it is. It's easy money. Right. Of course it's worth paying the tax on it. Yes. Come on. Let's not be silly. Yeah. So I've been $1,100 or 110,000 transferable miles.

Hello. I mean, that would be a headline credit card offer. You don't even have to have a credit card. So yeah, I got to set up an LLC. I'm very confident it's going to be more work than it's worth and probably cost me more than it's worth, but it's probably worth experimenting and finding out, right? I think it is.

Yeah, you need to do that. Better you than me. So I think that brings us to the question of the week. This week's question came via email from Mark. Mark sent an email asking about the Turkish Airlines Miles and Smiles sweet spot for United Flights. airlines miles and smiles sweet spot for United flights. Mark said, I was looking at the Turkish miles and smiles award chart. And it says that flights in North America are 10,000 miles each way in economy or 15,000 miles each way in business class. Is this a new development?

Is the sweet spot gone? Are the 7,500 flight mile flights a thing of the past? And so, of course, those who have followed along know that the Turkish sweet spot is that domestic US flights are 7,500 miles each way anywhere domestically in the United States, including to Hawaii in economy class or 12,500 miles in business class. So is the Turkish sweet spot dead, Greg? I love that, that you're, you're kind of trying to trip me up or something with something that you've answered a million times. No, what I remember reading Nick right about is that there's there's the award chart for the country. So what you'd spend for flying within the United States, and then there's the award chart for the country. So what you'd spend for flying within the United States. And then there's the award chart price for flying within the region, which is North America.

And so even the regional prices is pretty cheap, but it's not as cheap as flying within the United States. And it's so cool that Hawaii is within the United States in their award chart. So there you go. Boom. I got it. That's exactly it. Yeah. The problem is they don't list the domestic award chart on their website anymore. They used to, but they took

that off in November of 2019. It's been a long time now since they took down the pricing for domestic Star Alliance flights. So now you only see the regional. So I can see where the confusion comes in because you think North America, we may think a flight within the United States is North America. It seems reasonable. But again, like I said, the region is for international flights within the region. So if you're going to visit anywhere in the US, obviously 7,500 miles each way with Turkish, but also if and when the world returns to normal, remember that Air China is a Star

Alliance airline and flights across China would be 7,500 miles each way. We're 12.5 in business, same with Air India in India. So there's some large countries with Star Alliance carriers. So keep those in mind for the future. So if you enjoyed what you're hearing today and you would like to read more about what we've been talking about and get our posts in your email inbox you want to go to frequent miler.com slash subscribe again that's frequent miler.com slash subscribe to get on our email list follow us on twitter join our facebook group and all that fun stuff thank you guys for being out there with us today we look forward to being here again with you next week. Bye-bye, everybody. Got the code of silence on.

That's right.