Frequent Miler on the Air - Is Marriott Dead to Us?

Episode Date: February 8, 2020

Following the latest Marriott Bonvoy devaluation, we're all feeling like we've been Bonvoyed yet again. Greg and Nick discuss whether it's time to get rid of our Marriott credit cards and to stop pursuing Marriott elite status. Also: A path to easy Delta Platinum status and why none of us are carrying the Chase Freedom Unlimited...though one of us might be soon.

Hey, Nick. Welcome to Frequent Miler on the Air. Hi there, Greg. Always great to be here. How are you doing today? Doing well. Doing well. Today, we have a fun topic. We're going to talk about whether Marriott is dead to us. With the latest evaluation, we need to take another look at it and say, It's a valid question. Should we be pursuing this stuff? But first, feedback time. Read her feedback. Well, you know what? We've been calling it read her but that's like listener isn't it listener feedback listener viewer reader i mean

all of those so audience member i'm i'm just thinking feedback time feedback okay screw it feedback time yeah so we have feedback from greg this is not captain greg that we had before this is a different greg and not greg the frequent miler greg greg says i love listening to your podcast but the january 31st episode was annoying greg had been doing great since the awesome episode, but he has reverted to saying a lot worse about halfway through the last episode. He started sniffing regularly. It was really annoying. Someone get him a tissue. Oh, Greg is brutal.

Yeah, Greg. Greg is brutal. I will confess. Greg is me. That was confess, Greg is me. That was my own feedback, I said to you something like, oh my God, I've been waiting 20 minutes to blow my nose. I do remember that. Yeah. So I got all, the nose was running a little bit and instead of blowing my nose during the podcast, I just kept sniffing. I didn't know I was doing that, but when listening to it, it is incredibly

annoying. I haven't heard from any listeners about it maybe they didn't notice maybe i'm more critical than other people but i need to do something about that so so i brought tissues oh nice good you're prepared so if i need to blow my nose i'm just gonna do it sorry audience uh especially video audience you're gonna have to watch this we we do our podcast our show in one take every time right i mean unless something goes wrong and so you know i don't have the luxury of of saying cut gotta go blow my nose now now i'm gonna come back and and resume because we don't have staff to you you know, put things back together and fix everything afterwards. So we do it all in one take. I think that's pretty unique for a podcast like this. I

don't know. Yeah. All in one take, no hair, no makeup. It's just, you know, just us. It's the real thing. It is the real thing. It's absolutely the real thing. i think that's good but i'm learning i've got to stop sniffing i've got to start stop uh ing you know it's fine that i it's good that i stopped um ing but now right now i think an occasional uh is okay then you gotta think i think i think there was a higher percentage than is acceptable yeah yeah we'll have to work on that. I'm going to have to keep counting the us now. I was counting the ums before we were down to like nothing. Now I'm going to have to start with the us. Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's important to do. Yeah. I think you wanted to say that's important. I could hear it. I could hear it was almost there. You stopped yourself. Well done. I could say, Hmm, that's important, but I don't think I should do that either.

Hmm. Well, I, oh, see, now I did it. It's infectious. It's infectious. It's happening all over. As long as you don't start sniffing, then we're okay. I'll try my best not to. That's really, really annoying.

I do have a sniffly toddler at home, so it's possible that I could be sniffly, but I'm not. So I think we're going to be okay. I did consider, could we use your son as an excuse? Say it wasn't Greg. It was, it was your son, but it was pretty obvious. It was pretty obvious. It was me. So I don't think anyone would buy it. You live and learn. Now, you know. Yes. Yes. This has been really good for me. It's an educational experience. Learning all kinds of things. Blow your nose when you need to. Glad those lessons are sinking in.

Hopefully the readers are getting something out of that too. Or the listeners are getting a little something out of that too. I mean, one nice thing is I can see myself on the screen. So if I blow my nose and I still have snot hanging out, I'll know it. And so I won't be all disgusting for the rest of the show. So, so we all appreciate that. Yeah. Yeah. Um, oh shoot. I just said, um, do you always listen to the podcast in audio form or do you ever watch it in the video form? I, I don't usually watch it in video form except, you know, I, I, um, when I put it up on YouTube, I watched just a few seconds of it to make sure it looks okay.

But I do like, I've gotten in the habit, it's totally new to me and it's because of what we've been doing. I've gotten the habit of wearing wireless earbuds when I go for a walk. And then I just listened to whatever podcast I mentioned before. I'm really into the Conan podcast, but I also really am into the frequent miler podcast. It's, it's actually, even though I should know everything we said, I forget a lot.

And it's, it's actually fun for me to listen to when I'm not sniffing or humming or eyeing. Yeah, it is. I agree. You know, I don't listen to every episode, but anytime I start listening to one, I have a hard time stopping. And I find that kind of funny. It is weirdly interesting since it was us.

And like you said, I should know what we talked about, but still, for some reason, it kind of draws me in. So hopefully it has that effect with some other folks, too. Yeah. I also, each time I'm listening, I realize things that I should do a correction the next episode for. And I think to myself, oh, remember to correct this or that. And it works out like, uh, yeah, exactly. Yeah. Well, I just don't remember. But so if you're listening or watching, just remember that some of the things we said might not have been 100 percent right. And hopefully they're at least Google it to Google it to check if you're about to do something crazy because of what we said. Good point. Good point.

Speaking about doing crazy things. Yeah. Is it crazy at this point to say, I'm done with Marriott? Because this week, obviously, we had a huge devaluation, actually coming from two different fronts, right? Because first off, we had the announcement that no blackout dates no longer means no blackout dates at any of the properties, really. It just is a nice little marketing sentence. But basically, they've added terms saying that all the brands now can set certain blackout dates. They don't call them blackout dates. They can set certain dates where there aren't awards available, which somehow is different than a blackout date. Or there's fewer awards available.

It's like it set dates where they don't have to make all standard rooms available for awards. And there's no evidence of how many are available in those situations. It's just that they're allowed to set some dates where they're not. And that's always been the case with Marriott. It wasn't the case with SBG. And when they first merged, they kept it that way. They still made the SBG properties have really no blackout

dates. Now they've changed it and said, oh no, you can be just as bad as the rest of them. So that's a bit of a devaluation already. It means that it certainly may be much harder to use your points and free night certificates. There's no guarantee that there's going to be availability for that. So that was one. And then the double whammy, the second piece came a couple of days later when we got, of course, the annual category changes. Now this happens every year around February, middle of February or so. Marriott sends out the list of properties going up in March. So that part is not unexpected or uncommon. However, this time around, it was kind of a continuation of a trend of a lot more properties going up than going down. So something like 1,680 something properties are

going up in category and only like 500 are going down in category. So more than 2000 properties around the world are changing category in some way. And most of them are going up and the ones that are going down in general look like, you know, that probably should have gone down by now. So, uh, most of them. So, so I mean, is that it? Should we be done with Marriott, Craig? Is that like the straw that broke the camel's back? The category changes are brutal, brutal. I mean, there are so many properties that we previously could have used our free night certificates at. Now we can't. And that's really painful. There's also a lot of category one properties that are gone where we previously could have mattress run if we wanted to go for elite status. And if you don't have

those available near you anymore, then that takes away one of your opportunities. Or if you don't have those available near you anymore, you know, then that takes away one of your opportunities. Or if you're on the road 24 seven, the way Steven is, I'm sure that hurts to have fewer, fewer cheap options to stay at. So I think it's a great question. I think that when we talk about, are we done with Marriott, we need to break it down into different ways. What do we mean by that? Are we done with seeking elite status? Are we done with their credit cards? That I think was the number one question we saw on the blog. Should we get rid of our credit cards? Are we done with spending on the credit cards to get points? Which if that's your question, you're way behind because

you should have stopped spending on your credit cards when it stopped being SBG, getting 1x SBG points and changed to 2x Marriott. That was the time to stop. But anyway, there are different questions like that. So I think we should take them each in turn. Let's start with the credit cards. Previously, when the merger first happened and they changed the credit cards to offer these 35K per night certificates, that was awesome in several ways. One way was that there was no peak awards at that time. So you were truly able to use them at any category five property, as long as it had award availability, then you could use your certificate,

right? And certainly at SPG properties at the time, if there was a standard room for sale, then you definitely could use it. Yeah. Another way it was awesome is there were a lot of really, really good 35K properties. And I remember you, when the preview charts came out, let alone the full charts, you wrote about how New York City had a whole bunch of 35K options. And now what are we left with? I don't even know what's left, but there were 24 in New York City that are going up from category five to six. So that basically eliminates those. And most of those have been really difficult for free night certificates ever since peak and off peak pricing debuted because they're pretty consistently only available at peak pricing. I say that the only times they're not at peak pricing are times when the value is

really poor, when room rates are really low. Like in the wintertime right now, you can probably use your 35K certificate, but you can probably get a room for 100 to 130 bucks a night. So it's not really any savings, not much savings, not enough savings to justify paying the annual fee on the credit card problem. Right, right, right. And that won't even be possible moving forward in general, unless those properties are at off-peak rates. Yeah, yeah. So it's getting closer, I think. I don't think it's there yet, but before all this happened, the Marriott credit card used to offer a 25K or whatever the category that that was equivalent to 25k certificate each year and that certificate except for some very few gems out there that certificate was great for

not much it was great for yeah i mean a lucky night when you happen to find something, you know, maybe a airport overnight or something like that. But it was a similar situation to where we are now. Right. Right. But but it was it was and it was good for those like airport overnight or if you're doing a road trip and you want to stop somewhere along the way at a pretty nice place usually you could use it for for those things and and you were often offsetting generously saying 150 dollars right for for the hotel so sometimes you got much better but that was pretty rare it tended to be they they tended to be in the 100 to 150 range i think so those certificates were good to a little more than make up for the credit card's annual fee, but it wasn't like a huge win. When they changed initially to the 35K certificates,

I think it changed to a huge win. I was regularly booking hotels that would have been $300 or more a night. And now I think it's gone way down. I don't think it's as far down as it was though. I think you can still get $200 a night hotels very easily with these certificates. Maybe not in New York City. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think so. Where? I mean, I'm asking because that's a that's a that's a big statement that's a big thing because i i where are those places i i don't know we know there's we know there's some in in right san diego right well well we know there are potentially somebody even when we stayed at the hotel republic it you know we didn't the roommate wasn't over 200 a night when we stayed so you know that's

because we used special rate we did but still that exactly i mean you can and that's that we used the rate we weren't supposed to use to be honest you know so i i i would rather use a certificate than cheap well that's fine you're you're a good guy And that's great. I mean, I'm happy for you, but it doesn't make it a $200 a night because, you know, many other people would have gotten it for less too. And that's the thing. I think there are only so many cities

where room rates are consistently over $200 a night within the US. And then if you go abroad, obviously you'll find some 35Ks. I think if you're going to go to Europe a lot, I think you'll probably find some decent 35Ks in Europe still. And I haven't looked at the chart to make sure that that statement is correct. So I could be wrong, but my impression has been that there have been plenty of nice

35 K properties in Europe. But if you're looking at Asia, room rates are typically pretty cheap in Asia, obviously incredibly cheap right now because of the coronavirus outbreak. Right. So it's not a fair comparison right now. Right. It's not. But even still, even when room rates are higher, I think that you'll have difficulty finding 35K properties there that are over $200 a night, I would think. I could be wrong. Again, I haven't double-checked. I haven't done a thorough look at these things, but a few that I've looked at in the United States are hotels that, yes, normally go for around $200, maybe a little bit over $200. But I've only spot checked a few here and there. So it's more of a, I call it an educated notion. It's not a guess.

It's not science, but an educated notion that says that these are more valuable than the old 25K Marriott certificates from back when. Plus, of course, there's a lot more. With the SBG properties, there's more variety in there than there was back then. Well, that's definitely true. There's obviously a lot more variety. So I definitely give you that. And, you know, I think it really is just going to depend on what your travel patterns are in terms of how much that 35k certificate is. If you're going to San Francisco, I don't even know if there are 35k properties, but I know room rates are really high. So if you find a 35k property, they're great. San Diego probably also is a good example of a city where I imagine that often, or at least during the peak travel times, those rooms

are over $200 a night, New York, obviously Chicago, maybe those Chicago's got so many hotels that I feel like it's pretty easy to find a hotel under 200 bucks a night, most of the time in Chicago. So I feel like you start to pretty quickly get lower. I mean, maybe Miami is an expensive market, but that's just a handful of places. I feel like, you know, it's getting harder to get value out of those certs. Sure. Yeah, absolutely. I'm not arguing that at all. But I think the question is, I think, yes, we can still get more than $95 value, but is that enough to warrant keeping the card? Yeah. So it's cause it's not even at $200. I mean, it's, it sounds like a big win in that it's double what you paid for the annual fee, but it's not a big win in the big scheme of things. That's saving a hundred dollars a year is not huge compared to what you

could do with some other credit card perks that are out there so okay so that's that's a good a good statement because then i'm curious when you say compared to i guess let's just ask that i'll go there and then i'll come back so compared to what what would you be better off with well the hilton card that gives you the annual weekend night, I mean, that's a much more expensive card than the 35K cards we're talking about. But, you know, that can literally be used at almost any Hilton. Unfortunately, it's only on weekends, which is aggravating if your plans require a weekday stay but but you know that that's a good example i think things like delta's companion certificate can sometimes be used for very very big value true point yeah so you know there are some things out there the but the alaska uh companion

certificate another one certainly worth a hundred bucks i'd say over the value more than double yeah but i was thinking more like things like you know gold status that the hilton card gives you that gives you free breakfast all the time everywhere that you stay at a hilton and so that can add up to a very big value whereas whereas this is capped at about 100. So what do you think, though? Should people be ditching their Marriott cards? I think if you don't have any idea where you might use that 35k cert, I think it's reasonable to ask yourself,

should I bother keeping this card? Because I think that it's going to take a little bit of effort, probably, to get a very good use out of it. Now, on the flip side, it's also not going to take a little bit of effort probably to get a very good use out of it. Now, on the flip side, it's also not going to take much effort to get a $95 or better use out of it or $125 if you're on the business card, I guess. I think that you'll probably be able to easily get your value back out of it still. It's just not going to be exciting. And so like you said, if there's a card that you'll be more excited about, then I think it makes sense to look another way. I'm glad to hear you talking about the Hilton cards because I think that the Aspire card is just such a no brainer. And I think that that's

definitely one that people should be considering, even though it's got a much higher annual fee, like Greg said, I think it's a much better card. And also when you compare that apples to apples with the premium ultra premium Marriott card, I feel like the Hilton card comes out way on top with the fact that the free night certificate is not capped by category. So yes, it can only be used on the weekends, but can be used on the weekends at any category, as long as the standard room is available and the ancillary benefits, the credits on that are much better. So I feel that that's a much better card and so is the surpassed than the 95 annual fee cards from marriott so yeah i think that that hilton is

worth consideration obviously the world the hyatt card can be good for people who who have hyatts nearby the issue for me at this point becomes elite status because now that i've gotten used to having the elite perks from Marriott, it's nice having those. And specifically for me, I really find that late checkout comes in handy for me quite a bit and having a guaranteed late checkout is helpful. And of course I could get that with Hyatt, but the problem is Hyatt just isn't everywhere I need to be. Marriott is, Hilton is, but Hilton doesn't guarantee the late checkout. And so that's, I feel like I get stuck with Marriott.

It's funny because I've never been so loyal to a company in the sense that I don't think I've ever spent so many nights in one chain in a year as I did last year with Marriott. I probably have never spent as much money with a hotel chain as I have with Marriott in the last year, but I'm angry about being loyal. I'm unhappy, but I'm loyal to them. But they got me and they know they do. And part of this whole devaluation scheme is the fact that they know they have us. I mean, the bottom line is they're everywhere. And I don't love their hotels in general. I like some of them. Some of them I have loved, but I don't love a residence. And I really

kind of like a Hyatt place. I don't know why I like Hyatt place. I don't love a residence. And I really kind of like a Hyatt place. I don't know why I like Hyatt place. I don't really love residence in or town Hill or town place suites or Spring Hill or town, whatever they are. Yeah. I don't love any of those. I deal with them, but they're going to keep me coming back because with the 4 PM checkout and

then the lounge access at the higher end places, I'm probably going to continue with Marriott for another year or so. Even though I thought I would probably get rid of those cards, I think I'll probably end up keeping them because between late checkout and breakfast, I feel like it adds a little bit more value than the room rate. So even if I only get $150 worth of room out of it, if I can stay in that room until four o'clock the next day, that more value to me but you'd get that if you paid cash as long as you have the status oh that's true that's a good point that's a good point i would think of it more as you're getting one more night to get closer to status for only you know

you're getting for only the 95 or whatever it is that you're paying because i think the business um chase card costs a bit more i can't remember exactly what 115 or 125 or something like that yeah so yeah with status i'm in a similar situation of of being locked in despite kind of wanting to move on to something else. So there's a couple of things going on with me. One is I'm only a couple years, two or three years away from having Lifetime Platinum. And I really want to get there. So that's a reason for me to keep,

you know, moving forward with Marriott, at least for now. And as you said, there's Marriott's everywhere. I often, I usually pick hotels first based on location, reviews, things like that. And secondly, I look at the chain and there's always, almost always a Marriott that gets good reviews where I want to be. And so it makes it fairly easy. Like I don't feel like I'm giving up much to say I'm going to go with Marriott when that comes up. The other thing that's made it even worse for me is I've had two or three

situations just recently where having United Silver status has been really helpful. So I've gotten upgraded to Economy Plus, for example, flying Avianca. And I didn't even think about that, that that alliance or partnership is close enough that you can actually get upgrades. It's a very minor upgrade, but still it's better than nothing on, on their partners. And, and then, you know, just on United, being able to book my wife and I into better seats right from the get-go versus, versus not. Right. So, so those things have been nice and i get them because of titanium status

so that's the 75 night status and so not only am i yes gonna keep going for platinum but i'm trying to i'm trying to figure out can i keep going for titanium because i'm because i'm actually liking it and i know i know that if I did the math, it wouldn't make any sense, right? Because if I said, I need 25 more Marriott Knights over platinum to get titanium and to say, well, how much benefit am I getting from those United flights? Shouldn't I just pay the fee to sit in better seats or even pay the fee to upgrade all the way to first class who knows if it's a domestic flight might be cheaper than preferring Marriott that often especially now that we don't have meetings to use to get 10 elite nights that way

and there's other tricks that have gone away as well. So we're down to not that many really great tricks for getting all the way up to the 75. Well, so now I have two different thoughts that I want to touch on both. The first I'll touch on quickly and the second one, I'll be interested in hearing what you have to say. So another reason why I think the cards might be worth keeping. And I say this as someone who wrote a post last year saying I was going to dump all the Marriott cards. So I know that I've turned all the way around on this. But another reason to consider keeping the cards, I think, is because we said before that it doesn't make a lot of sense to spend on a Marriott card.

At this point, they're just, boy, earning Marriott points is a really questionable venture. And so when I look at it that way and say, well, I'm not earning a ton of Marriott points from spend, or at least I shouldn't be, I'm going to come back to that in a second. Then this is an easy way to get a 35K night because most people are not earning enough Marriott points probably at this point to pick up 35k nights using Marriott points. So then basically, you're going to be faced with the option, do I pay cash or do I use a certificate? Because you probably don't have tons and tons of Marriott points anymore. You probably used a lot of them and you're not consistently earning them unless you're staying for work and work is paying for it. You're earning your Marriott points that way.

But if you're someone who has traditionally earned them through spend, then maybe those 35k certificates are worth hanging on to just because you're probably not earning that many hotel points from spend. You got your Hyatt points that you're getting from Chase Ultimate Rewards probably. And then if you're not in the Hilton ecosystem, then I mean, that's basically it, right? So that might make the 35K certs a little bit more valuable. On the flip side. That's interesting, yeah. On the flip side, I'm going to say, you said, well, is it worth the expense

and everything to go after the extra 25 nights? And the first response I think most people would have is absolutely not, right? It can't possibly be worth the 25 nights. On the flip side, I've talked about how if you can find an off-peak category one Marriott, you can theoretically get five nights for 20,000 points. So your 25 nights would be what? 100,000 Marriott points. Now that sounds like a lot of

Marriott points, but if you were to spend 50K at Simon malls and visa gift cards, right? $1,000 visa gift cards, we're talking $200 worth of gift cards. And then whatever your liquidation cost is, let's even say it costs you $2 per thousand to liquidate those. It's another hundred. So maybe it costs you $300 worth of MS costs to earn enough Marriott points to pay for the 25 nights you need. So is that better than paying cash for a cheap hotel? Good question. Depends on how cheap you can find it at 5 000 a night you you're getting you're getting two points per dollar with your marriott card so you need you need to spend 2 500 i'm sorry what what are you um no i'm sorry per night per night per night yeah 2 500 per night per night per night yeah twenty five hundred dollars per night to well actually two

thousand because of the fifth night free right exactly yeah so two thousand dollars to uh get one night versus a let me do easier math three percent cash back card would get you with that same spend would get you sixty. And it'd be pretty hard to find hotels that are consistently, at least in the US, that are consistently less than 60, especially after taxes and everything. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I actually think that spending on the cards, I've been spending quite a bit, actually, truthfully, on my Ritz card. I've been amassing on that quite a bit because I've been using the points at a category one. And so there's a category one that's located within a convenient

driving distance for me close to friends of mine, and also within a convenient distance of assignment mall. And so I've been buying gift cards and that way earning points for those nights, the room rates consistently been around 100 bucks a night, sometimes a little more, and quite often in the wintertime available for 5,000 points a night. So, it's pretty easy elite nights. Every $25 in spend is getting me another night there. And it works out to be convenient for me. Well, that's great, especially if you can actually enjoy the nights. Right. if you can actually enjoy the nights, you know, it's one thing for people that have to drive somewhere to check in and talk to the manager and say, please don't check me out for five nights,

you know, which is necessary if you're not actually staying there. For the five nights. Yeah, absolutely. And that's a good point. But I think that it is at least theoretically, not necessarily as bad as we might think to spend if you're going to use those points for an off-peak category one. Obviously, I think as you go up in the award chart, the value becomes more and more questionable in terms of when you start comparing against spending on a 3% card, 2% card, 2.5%, whatever it is, you could potentially use for cash back instead. But I've been happy to earn some Marriott points that way, actually, because I'm using them to decent value in that specific way.

And last year, I was coming up a little bit short of titanium. And so I ended up doing just that. I booked a five-night stay for 20,000 points. I only really needed one night of those five nights, but the additional four nights only cost me another 15,000 points beyond what I was going to spend anyway on the one night. In that case, did you check out? I mean, did you leave after one night? Yeah, I left after one night. So I checked in on a Saturday night, left on Sunday, Monday morning, I called and asked to talk to the manager. And, uh, and I explained that, you know, I was already gone, didn't need the room anymore, but it was close to the end of the year. I was really counting on those elite nights.

I just told them plans changed and I decided I wasn't going to stay the rest of the nights. And can you please just not check me out? And they were totally fine with that. Okay, cool. Yeah. Yeah. And I don't even know if it's necessary to have a story. Yeah.

Other than I just need the elite nights, right? Yeah. I think most places would probably be totally fine with that as well. You paid for it. Why shouldn't you get your full five nights? Right, right. Yeah, I mean, I think most places are probably happy to get, especially when you're looking at an off-peak Category 1. Probably the hotel is pretty close to empty if it's off-peak Category 1, right?

And so whatever reimbursement they're getting from Marriott at that point is probably a win. So they're not going to complain over getting reimbursed for those nights and not having to bother cleaning the room again and again. So, um, so yeah. So let me ask you something. We're, we're both saying we're sticking with Marriott at least now. Is that our advice to our audience? I don't know. You know, yeah. Is it one of those? Well, we're doing it, but we think it's a really bad idea for you. As I say, don't do it. Whatever the statement is, you know?

So yeah, I think it's really questionable for most people to bother keeping those cards. I think that you have to have some sort of a plan as to how you're going to use it and why you're going to keep it. If you don't have an answer to why you're keeping it or how you think you're going to use the certificates, then I think you really need to ask yourself, what am I doing with this card then? For keeping the card. What about for staying loyal and chasing status?

You know, I think I would tell people that if somebody wasn't yet loyal, if somebody didn't have a program yet and asked me, should I be loyal to Marriott? My answer would be no. Agreed. Get yourself the Hilton cards. Get yourself the Hyatt card. Don't bother. But if you're already invested in the system.

Now, I'm not invested in lifetime elite status, and I don't have nearly as much faith in that continuing to mean something as you do. But I'm not going to get there anytime soon either. So I'm not really concerned with the lifetime elite status. It's just year to year. And right now, obviously, if I had lifetime, sure, that's great as long as Marriott decides a lifetime last. But I think if you're already in the ecosystem, it is a little tough to leave because there isn't a terrific comparative competitor. Hilton is obviously the best potential option. And so it's worth considering if Hilton might be worth your time,

especially with the surpass offering 6X at US supermarkets. It's not bad in terms of MSing free nights on it. And you don't have to do anything to have status with Hilton. You just need one of their credit cards and you're there. Everything except for the free one will get you free breakfast.

I think it comes down to two things. Do you need sweet nights? Do you need the sweet night awards? Which also along with that comes, do you think the sweet nights are going to clear the places you're going to stay? Do you need the sweet night awards and do you need the late checkout? If you don't need late checkout most of the time, then I feel like Hilton makes more sense, doesn't it? Yeah, yeah, it probably does. Although in my personal travels,

still, as I said before, I usually look first at what hotel do I want to stay at? And a lot of the time the answer is marriage. It's pretty rare. It's pretty rare for the answer to be Hilton. So I think I'm on the opposite end of that. I think it's because I tend to answer to be hilton so you know i think i'm on the opposite end of that i think it's because i tend to stay more at the mid-tier brands than the top maybe that's it and and i i much prefer hilton's mid-tier brands i would take a garden in over like a

residence in or town play suites any day and as we've talked before i really like the boutique type hotels and i like the autograph collection. I suspect I would like the Curio collection that Hilton has. I've seen one of them. I wrote about one of them in Connecticut, but, and that looked great. I'd happily stay there, but it just, I haven't needed to, so I haven't. But I've often run into autograph collection wherever I go. Curio just doesn't seem to be that many or maybe not where I happen to be. Yeah. I think there are many,

many fewer. I've had a couple of good stays at Curio properties, but yeah, I think there are many fewer. There is much less of a focus on that boutique type hotel, which as regular listeners or readers will know is not usually my cup of tea. So that's a big difference between Greg and I, although. And also you have a toddler along with you, which, which if, when I did,

boutique was not in our vocabulary, right? That's when my wife and I used to be B and B people, not Airbnb. There was no such thing back then, but we would, yeah, we would call up. We had to use the phone back then and you'd call them and say, do you have any availability for, you know, this date and that? And yeah, it was quaint and, but, but they were great. I mean, most of them were fantastic and we loved it. And then we had a baby and we stopped going to them all together. They're not, most of them are not designed to bring along kids, right? So, why not go back to that now though? I mean, obviously,

it gives you some joy talking about it. And at this point, Marriott isn't giving you a ton of incentive to be loyal, or at least they're not showing that they appreciate your loyalty anyway. So, why not go back to the B&Bs? Oh, to a large extent, we have and we do. So, so why not go back to the B&Bs? Oh, in a large, to a large extent we have, and we do. So we do often stay at B&Bs when it makes sense to, they tend to be best in small towns or, or sort of remote locations. I haven't, I haven't found the value of staying in them like when going to a city. You know, usually the hotels are in a better location for what we want to do and everything. So it just kind of depends what kind of stay we were doing. When we did the last year, last summer, we did the Southwest Coast Path in England where we hiked from town to town and every night we stayed in a different inn.

They weren't technically bed and breakfast, but they all include breakfast. They're just these quaint little inns. None of them were chains at all. And they were great. They were all different and quirky in their own way. The proprietors were fun to talk to. I love doing that. And so, yeah. And that's actually part of the reason I was excited about the SLH deal with Hyatt is I think that there's more of those kind of small quirky things. Again, not technically B&Bs maybe, but still it gives me towards that same sense of

the small, quirky, you're chatting with the actual owners who are also making breakfast or whatever it is that's going on. And that's, it's nice. I like that. And again, like it more now that we're not traveling with a toddler. Right, right. Well, you know, and I have liked that at many stops along the way too in my travels. I've had some really good experiences at places like that. I guess I just, I enjoy the consistency now of like, you know, like the pattern of a Hildengarden Inn or a Hyatt place or whatever. Don't get me wrong. I'll take the Park Hyatt when I can get it.

And I'm happy places like the St. Regis Bora Bora and Domes of Alunda. I mean, really nice property. I love those places. I'm all in on those too. But when it comes to like in between, I guess, that's where I tend to be more comfortable at the kind of more predictable places. So I think that it depends on what kind of a traveler you are. If you're more like Greg, then you probably do want to continue to stay loyal to Marriott

because Marriott has that. And not only do they have autograph collection, but of course they have the SPG brands like that too. The luxury collection, the tribute portfolio, design hotel, you know, so there's a wide range of that kind of hotel. So if you're that kind of traveler, nobody else has that. Hyatt has a little bit of that with SLH now. Right.

And it would be a great question. Why, why stick with Marriott when you've got SLH? And the answer is there's just not enough. You, you won't find them everywhere you're going. There's, you know,

there's in the U S alone, there there's pockets in different places. Like there's a pocket of them in Florida and pocket in York, but most of the U S has none at all right now. Right. So, and I'm actually surprised sometimes when I run a search where I think that I'll probably run into them and I don't, and then other places where there's tons of them. So it's too unpredictable still at this point in terms of, you know, what there is, it can be great when it fits into your plans, but you know, I think that's why Marriott has got us.

The merger made them huge. They were already big and the merger, you know, didn't, didn't hurt them at all in that regard. So, so if you're interested in those nicer kind of places, I feel like Marriott probably, and I say nicer kind of places, those kind of more interesting, unique kind of properties that Marriott's got a lot more of those than anybody else has. They also have tons of the lower level properties as well. So they really kind of have something for everyone, so to speak. But I think that if that's your aim, the lower level properties and that sort of thing, then you might consider Hilton instead. I think that Hilton has a lot of value, especially with the ability to get gold status, free breakfast with a credit card. I've also had some great experiences over the years just as a

gold member at Hilton where they've taken good care of me and given me good upgrades and things like that. So that's not going to happen every single time, but it's the same with Marriott. Not going to happen. Yeah, exactly. Certainly not going to happen every time with Marriott. Yeah. Yeah. Some hotels are great at it. Some aren't. And that's, that's just going to be the way it is. Yeah. And I mean, I've seen people complain that they used to get great upgrades with Marriott, but now they don't. But I think it just depends where you go. Some places are better, some are worse. But the fact of the matter is you can get that level of status where you might get that lucky

upgrade for a $95 fee on the surpass. You can't do that with Marriott. You got to invest a lot of nights with Marriott, especially now that they've cut a lot of the shortcuts out. You really have to invest a lot of time and money or points in maintaining Marriott elite status. So I think it also comes down

to who's paying for your rooms. If you're paying for them on your own, I feel like Hilton probably offers better value for you long term. And that's probably a loaded statement because Hilton obviously has devalued their charts tons of times over the years. And a lot of people look at them as some of the most least or some of the least valuable hotel points rather. But I think that they probably offer more bang for the

buck if you're spending your own dime. Yeah. Yeah. Well, even with points, if you think about it, Hilton regularly is selling their points for half a cent each. And at the top of the chart, if it's luxury you're going after, the top of the Hilton chart, not that there is a Hilton chart, but the top properties go for 95,000 points a night when they're available, when standard rooms are available. There's one property that's 120,000, but either way, they're in the same range as Marriott's top. You know, their top properties at peak are 100,000 points, but they sell their points regularly for 1.25 cents each. And when they're on sale, I think it's just under 0.9 or something like that, but almost

double what Hilton sells their points at. And just to give you an idea, and also the credit cards earn more points. Hilton credit cards earn three versus base versus two with Marriott. So much more useful bonus category. If you're after that top tier or bottom tier, they both have similar top and bottom. It's in the middle where I think Marriott does better point-wise. But still, at the top or the bottom, Hilton is comparable award pricing, but much cheaper points to acquire.

And I think that that's a great point, much cheaper points to acquire, because they do have good or decent category bonuses on their cards, too. You've got an opportunity to earn a lot of points from spend. So if you're somebody who historically earned most of your Marriott points based on credit card spend, I think it's a no brainer. You move over to Hilton at this point between the supermarkets, gas stations, things like that, that are a bonus on their cards. I think that there's plenty of value to be had there. And then if you're also supplementing that with a cash back card and using your cash back to buy points at half a set a piece and pulling your points since you can pull them with 10 other people for, you know, no, no, no fee or anything like that. So you could be buying points from others and transferring them into your account to pull together the points you need for an award. I think Hilton becomes a no brainer in that scenario. I think it's really just the people like you and me that

are brainwashed by the, uh, by the loyalty program to do irrational things, which is exactly what they designed the loyalty program for. Yeah, yeah. Maybe you're stuck for a bit, but... Here's what kills me. So I think a lot of listeners, viewers won't know about this, that Marriott used to have an elite buyback program where I had challenged to get to 75-night status way back when, I think in 2012. And every year that that status was about to go away,

I just paid 40,000 Marriott points, and that kept me at that status. So once they had that deal with United where you get silver status, I got silver status every year just by giving them 40,000 Marriott points, which was a very simple sort of a no brainer to do. And that's the reason why I'm as close to lifetime platinum as I am is you need, I forget, 10 years or something like that. I think. Whatever it is of status. And I already had those once the merger happened because of all those years of buybacks. That's nice.

That's awesome. And I mean, I would love to see that again. Harriet, if you're listening. See that again, yeah. Bring that back. Bring that back. Stop saying bad things about you for at least 10 minutes. Yeah. about you for at least 10 minutes. Yeah, I think though that they probably are trying to,

just like Delta did and other places, trying to cull their top tier elites down in order to make it more valuable to have the perks that they give you. But I'm not sure that, well, maybe it matters. I mean, I guess you don't want to check into a hotel as a top tier elite and be told there's no upgrades because there's 100 other top tier elites here. And they probably are facing that, especially after the merger. I'm sure that makes some sense to try and call the herd, so to speak, and trim that back. On the flip side, though, of course, you have Hilton giving diamond status away to anybody who's willing to pay $250 for a card that gives you more than $450 without the diamond status. So they're giving it to everybody and somehow making it work.

Right, right. You get breakfast, you do get lounge access. So, you know, I look at that and I say, well, I mean, Hilton is making it work and making it work pretty well. So. I think it's two different philosophies. I think that what Marriott and Delta are doing, they're saying, we only want to be really rewarding our really loyal customers, those who spend a lot with us. Hilton, on the other hand, I've said this before on here, I think what they're doing is saying, hey, look, you get people to invest in elite status and they're more likely to stay with us so they can get those benefits when they stay with

us. I think it's an opposite strategy. The Hilton side is saying, we're driving customers to us by giving it away. And Marriott saying, we're only going to give it to those that are already coming to us a lot. Right. Right. Which, you know, it is just a different philosophy. And I don't necessarily think that, you know, from a business standpoint, either one of them is necessarily wrong to do that strategy. It's just kind of an interesting dilemma and different way of doing business there. Another thing though, that I'll add in terms of the benefit of being loyal to Hilton is not paying resort fees and city destination fees and stuff like that on your award stays because you don't pay those on your Hilton award stays. And whereas Marriott

charges those fees, even for their top tier elites you're still going to pay those silly fees on on stays and you know most of us are looking to stay at properties in desirable locations where they're going to tack on those stupid fees so tell you when you bring that up when you bring that up i'm like why are we why are we doing this we need to get off this marriott bandwagon well and that's when you look at your free night certificate may incur a destination fee. If you're going to use it in New York city, you may end up paying another 25 bucks on top or something. So it may not even be a $95 night anymore because you know, you're, you're adding on those fees. So yeah. Right. Although you would have paid it on a paid night as well. So the

paid night would actually have been more expensive if you had that in. So, but yeah, it shows again how much more valuable programs like Hilton and Hyatt are that waive those resort fees on awards days. So your free night really becomes a free night. And really free. Yeah. And I'm kind of surprised that Marriott doesn't do that. I can't imagine that those silly fees add enough revenue to the bottom line to make a big difference. And I feel like it takes away some of the joy of free, of using your free night, right? I mean, isn't it awesome when you use a free night

certificate at a really nice place and you walk out paying nothing for it? I mean, that I think is one of those highs that they're looking to give you. I'm surprised that Marriott doesn't wake up and realize that just Yeah. Well, I think all things could improve. Yeah. You know, the properties are mostly independently owned. They're not owned by Marriott. And I think that they just feel like there's a limit to how much they can push on them. And for the properties, the resort and destination fees are Moneymakers. Probably a big, yeah, big moneymakers,

kind of like the airlines charging bag fees and those kinds of things. Big money is in it. And so I think it'd be really hard for them to force that off. But on the other hand, Hilton did it somehow. I don't think Hilton owns all their properties either, but I actually don't know. And Hyatt does it too. So it can be done Marriott. You should do it. But we're not making a good case here because we're saying, we're saying you kicked us down, but we're still going to go spend money with you. What are we doing? So speaking of nonsense loyalty, there's an interesting opportunity right now that we've never seen before. Right. Which is Delta Reserve Cards.

They're really expensive, $550 annual fee, but they have really nice welcome bonuses right now, up to 100,000 miles. But more importantly, they come right now with, if you meet the signup terms, 20,000 MQMs, which are medallion qualifying miles, which you need to get elite status. So a single person can get both the consumer and business version of the reserve card if they wanted to. Again, that's a lot of money. You're paying over $1,000 in annual fees. But for the first year, you're also getting 40,000 MQMs. What you need to get gold status with Delta is 50,000. So, you're darn close. You already have silver status at that

point. You already have silver, but well, what you need to get silver and gold status and platinum status, you need MQDs, which are dollars spent with Delta, but you can get those waived with $25,000 spend on Delta credit cards on the platinum or Reserve credit cards. So third piece of this, with every $30,000 you spend on the Delta Reserve credit card, you get 15,000 MQMs that you could either keep for yourself or gift to someone else. So right now, somebody could get two Delta Reserve cards, let's say they spend $30,000 on each one. This is a hypothetical, right? Then what they would get from that, besides all the miles, is they would get the 40,000 MQM signup bonus, but they would also get a total of 30,000 MQMs from the high spend on those two cards. And so you're at 70,000 MQMs and the MQD waiver, meaning you don't have to have spent any dollars actually flying Delta at all

to get a lead status. So 70,000 MQMs and the waiver means you're well above gold status gold saskin was 50 000 platinum status is 75 000 so you're only 5 000 mqms which is not a lot of flying one round trip you know across the u.s and another short short flight right you you can get that very easily if you fly delta at all and if you don't fly Delta at all, why are we talking about this? But let's say you fly Delta semi-regularly. Getting to platinum status, you could do that. If you can spend the money easily, theoretically, you could get platinum status early this year. It would then be good for all the rest of this year, all of next year,

and through January of the year after that. During all that time, what platinum status gives you is, well, much better chance of free upgrades than you'd get at gold or silver status for one. You also get choice benefits, which you can get regional upgrade certificates, which let you, you apply the certificate to a regional flight and it puts you to the top of the upgrade list. Basically, sometimes it upgrades you immediately, but more often what it does is you get waitlisted and get at the top, even ahead of diamonds who didn't apply certificates. And so your chance of getting upgraded on those flights gets, is very high. And you get, and this is one of my favorite perks of Platinum, is you get the miles which you do because you just got 200 000 and almost 200 000 right in the with the sign up bonus and you got all the miles from the spend so

you have a lot of miles delta miles book book the award flight and you and and and you uh will be able to cancel it or change it later with with no fee you get your all your miles back you get your feedback if you cancel it. So it's a very good status. Of course, the Delta Reserve Card also gives you some other things, like it gives you lounge access to Delta Sky Clubs when you're flying Delta. Also to now, it's new, Amex Centurion lounges when you're flying Delta. You get access to those, just you not not any guests

you can guest in people for like 39 which to the delta sky club which is kind of expensive i think so anyway that's fascinating to me it's a lot of money but the the idea that people could basically spend their way to platinum status which is a really good status not as good as diamond but it's still really good for not really that much money i mean i shouldn't say not that much for a lot of money but but a lot less it's it's it's a lot of money from one perspective but another perspective is when people fall short of reaching Delta's elite status that they had maybe the year before, Delta at the end of the year sends an email saying, oh, for $1,500, we'll give you the MQMs and MQDs you need to get your silver status back or your gold status back. And people pay that, which is insane. MQDs you need to get your, your silver status back or your gold status back. Right. And people pay that.

Right. Which is insane. But what they do is don't do that. Right. Right. So don't do that. But if, if you, you know, if you have the money and you're interested in, in Delta status, I'm not saying it's necessarily a great idea, but what I'm saying is if you travel enough on Delta that it's valuable to you and that this is an opportunity that we've never seen before.

I don't know if we'll ever see it again. You could pay your taxes. So you could overpay. You could overpay your taxes so so at 1.89 percent fee and pay 30 000 on each card to to reach those those 30k thresholds get and get your your mqms from each of your cards and you're done and so so you've just paid money so you've paid the annual fees and you've paid the the whatever the 1.87 comes to and and you've got your 5k away from platinum size and a lot of delta flyers probably have mqms if you were at least silver last year you probably have some that you rolled over from last year you might

not even have to take another flight in order to get there right right like basically right away as soon as you're you're able to make those those payments or use your cards in other ways, if you've got other ways you're going to use them. But yeah, I mean, that came to mind right away when you were talking about the spend, it's a heck of a lot of spend. Luckily we're at the right time of year where a lot of people are doing a heck of a lot of spend all of a sudden and yeah, just, you know, amp that up a little bit more and spend a little bit more that way and, and get it back in the end. So yeah, I mean, I think that that's a really interesting idea because it does come out to be probably cheaper. Although, you know, I think about it and I'm like, so how 2%? So one,

yeah, no, nevermind. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the fee, the cost on that would be quite low. And like you said, I think the interesting thing there is, I can't think of a time when you've been able to spend a second from the top tier elite status with an airline like that. I mean, there have been challenges and things where you get that level of status temporarily for like 90 days, and then you have to fly a lot, like 30,000 miles in order to keep it. This is different. This is something you can do actually entirely from home. You never have to leave home to get 70,000 MQMs.

Of course, if you can spend a lot, you could get much more than the 70,000 MQMs because you can spend 60 spend 60 000 or 90 000 120 000 on each card every each of those 30k levels gives you another 15 000 mqms so you could actually get well past platinum status and roll over to next year if if if you're interested in doing that but which is another interesting idea because some people might say that they're they're not going to consider doing the rest of that spend because they're not going to spend enough to get the mqd waiver for delta platinum sorry i mean sorry delta diamond status that requires 250 000 but if you could do 90 000 let's say spend on one of those cards or 120 000 altogether across the cards

then you roll over a nice chunk of miles for next year you sure do yeah and so and then and if you're good at spending it probably wouldn't be that hard to spend enough next year to re-up platinum status again now on the flip side well it seems relatively inexpensive to do you gotta stop and say but wait a second what is your next best opportunity because all of that spend could go on a 2% or two and a half percent cash back card. Yeah. Cash back card. Right. So,

I mean, it's not cheap necessarily. If you're looking at the possibility of it going on a 3% card, for instance, that's what? $1,800. Right. On 60,000 spend.

So, I mean, you're giving up the chance for $1,800 cash in return for the, the status. In return for the status and redeemable by miles. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, you're looking at such a chunk, especially with the welcome bonuses of redeemable

miles, that that's probably a pretty good trade, right? You know, I think that there's going to be a lot of people out there interested in this opportunity. That's my guess. I think it's a really unique, really good opportunity if you fly Delta enough that, that you'll get value from that status. And if you have the capability, the capacity to spend that much float, float it if necessary.

So pay your credit card bill with other, other funds until the IRS pays you back or whatever it is that you're doing, then yeah, it's,, the year before. Yeah. So, I mean, yeah, for me, it wouldn't make sense. I don't, I'm not going to do it because I wouldn't be able to utilize the benefits of status often enough. However, I think for a lot of people, this is actually an interesting play. If you can, if you can meet the spend, if you have any experience MSing your way towards those kinds of levels of money, away from Simon Malls, let's be clear for anybody who is listening and caught pieces of Simon before Simon says no Amex at Simon Malls, because they're not going to give you any points or anything else. So make sure you're not using those at Simon Malls. So

definitely not that. But if you're going to do other things and you have other ideas in mind to meet that spend, I feel like it's really intriguing. Don't you wish the loyalty programs would play Simon Says with us? Where we could say, Simon Says, stop charging destination fees. Right. Please. Hello, Marriott. Are you listening? Right.

Yeah. Well, they're probably not going to play along with us anytime soon on that. So, all right. So, if you're interested in Delta status, I think that that's an opportunity you really have to look at. It's well worth it. Yeah. One other thing. Go ahead.

No, no, no. That's it. One other thing I want to talk with you today about is Capital One. Yeah. That's where I was going to go next. Okay. So, they introduced two new transfer partners, and they changed the transfer ratio for JetBlue. Right.

So what do you think about the new transfer partners? You know, I'm kind of intrigued. I was curious about Accor or Accor, however you say their name. I don't know how to say it either. I've never heard anybody say it before. So I'm not really sure. The ACCOR brand there that I think it's a European brand, right? French or something like that, maybe.

They're not based in the United States, I don't think. So I was intrigued to see if there would be any value there. I was really interested in the complete guide that you wrote about it. And it looks like there might be some decent value, especially if you're looking to dump Marriott, then it's not necessarily so bad, you'd end up basically getting 2.2% back on the Capital One cards towards stays with that particular chain. So and we did have a reader who said something about elite status being possible through point earning, I haven't looked into that at all. So I'm not really sure about that. But I'm at least marginally intrigued that I'll keep that in mind now as another possibility, especially if I travel to Europe, because I think their

footprint is better there, also better in Canada from what I've heard. So that's kind of interesting. Wyndham is potentially interesting to me because if you've been hopping on the status match bandwagon, the status match go round as I've called it, then you hopefully remembered to match your Caesar's diamond status to Wyndham diamond back in January when your Wyndham diamond or when your Wyndham status would have dropped to nothing. And then in February here, hopefully you have, and if you haven't yet get on it, matched your Wyndham diamond back to Caesar's diamond. That did go through for me already.

My status is at Caesar's diamond again. So this year I'll be able to get myself, first of all, no resort fees on Caesars stays, a free $100 celebration dinner, two free show tickets each month, potentially a free stay at Atlantis if I want it, sort of free. You still have to pay some fees on that. Why does the status matter to you as far as the ability to transfer points to win them? Then that's where we're going next yeah so okay another benefit of that status is you can get into the lounges so if you go to las vegas or atlantic city where there are caesar's properties and you'd like to be able to use the lounge you at least theoretically have access to it however you need to have tier credits in your

account or net tier credits you need caesarars points, whatever they call those in order to get into the lounge. You need like $10 worth of points, which is a thousand points. And so you'd either earn that from gambling or because of their partnership with Wyndham, you can transfer points from Wyndham over to Caesars. So the interesting thing to me with Wyndham being a partner with Capital One now is that there's a way for me to transfer Capital One points to Wyndham and then Wyndham over to Caesars so that I can get into the lounges there in Las Vegas or potentially use Caesars points for other things. So, uh, so I think that that's intriguing to me every now and then I find a Wyndham property. That's a good deal. Yeah. Last couple of years, I've some of the nicest, coolest places I've stayed have actually been Wyndham properties. It's not common,

but every now and then you might find something there's category changes. And I haven't looked closely at the category changes. Steven Pepper wrote the post about that when the category changes came this year. So I haven't looked to see if there's any really intriguing properties dropping in category, but I think it's nice to have that ability. I don't think that these are game changer transfer partners, but Andy stretched the imagination, but kind of nice to have a couple of hotel options. Sydney doesn't have any hotel options for transfer partners, not any direct options anyway for hotel transfer partners. So I think it's pretty cool to see that it's cool to see Capital One continue to expand the possibilities with their Capital One miles.

I'm really very positive on Capital One miles. I feel like they're making an effort to constantly do something to surprise us a little bit, to add more value. So if nothing else, even if I don't end up using those two transfer partners, I'm at the very least very, very optimistic that Capital One is continuing to try to add value. Yeah. And another thing to point out is, and I think you did in your post perhaps, that sometimes hotel chains do crazy promotions. And when there's no way to transfer points in, you can't necessarily take advantage of those. Like that incredible promotion that Wyndham did a number of years back when we were able to book basically mansions for 15,000 points

a night. And you and I did that because we were lucky we had points in our accounts at the time. Not many people did. So it wasn't really hard to do because there wasn't much competition in terms of folks that had the points to use because nobody had those points and there was no way to transfer in and you couldn't buy enough points to do it. So now you potentially have the ability to hop on something like that. If it came up, I think that's exciting. Me too. Me too. And we have no idea what that'll be, whether it'll be Wyndham or a core, but hopefully something like that will happen. And hopefully Capital One will keep expanding their transfer partners. So there'll be more opportunity along those lines. So that's all good news. Now, the JetBlue thing, they previously transferred two to one to JetBlue, I believe. Now they've moved to two to 1.5,

which is what they have with most of their airline transfer partners. So that makes it a decent value. It's not amazing, but JetBlue averages about 1.4 cents value per point. You get a lot more value for the very cheap flights. So a flight that would have cost 80 bucks might only be like 3,000 JetBlue points. So you get really, really good value on those kind of really cheap flights. And so there's actually some nice value there to be had. I also just wanted to point this out. I think it's kind of funny that Steven on his predictions for this year he predicted that amex would normalize their transfer ratio to jet blue and instead it's capital one i mean not it still could and hopefully will happen with amex but it's it's just kind of interesting that it did happen he just got the bank wrong so far so he's closer so far than anybody else's predictions, I think.

He's like 100 times closer than anything I predicted. Bravo. Well done, Steven Pepper. Sort of, I guess. Well done for getting it wrong but close. I guess we're playing horseshoes. Then Steven Pepper wins. You know, I think he was basing on the trend.

He was seeing other programs moving to one-to-one with JetBlue. And so he said, I might still do that. So I think his, his logic was right that, that, and it was just a different bank that, that did a first. Right. And, and I think that's definitely not wrong because I might still do it as well. Right. And, and it's, I think it's good value. You know, I think people get excited about the, the prospect of getting like, you know, 2.25 cents in value from the Freedom Unlimited with Chase when you're using those points with the Sapphire Reserve through the travel portal. And here I'm looking at it with JetBlue points. You're getting about 2.1% back towards JetBlue flights on those cheapest fares, of course. That's pretty good for the Capital One card. I think that a couple of

years ago, nobody would have really thought that you're going to be able to get more than two cents, more than 2% basically back in value for your spend on Capital One cards. So I think it's nice. It's nice to have, especially when domestic flights are relatively cheap, you don't want to pay for an award on another airline. JetBlue may work out to be your best bet in some cases where you've got them as an option. Again, this is another airline that I rarely ever fly these days just because they don't serve my local airport very well. So I'm probably not going to use JetBlue as a transfer partner, but I think that for a lot of people that adds a decent value. And I think it really makes the Capital One Venture card an intriguing possibility. And I think that they just keep adding things that make that a better and better everywhere else card or standard card. I think for years, the standard answer to what's the best travel credit card had been the Chase Sapphire Preferred was the obvious one for a beginner starting out in this game and i think for a lot of reasons that's still a good choice if you're going to get into the chase ecosystem with other cards that play well with it but if you're looking

at just getting one i feel like the capital one venture is kind of looking more and more like the one it is it is it's really strong and the And the Miles business card, right? Right. Spark Miles. Spark Miles. Yeah, same. It has the exact same structure, right? Right. Exactly the same card. Yeah. Just the business version instead. And keep in mind that the business version is not, it will count against 524 unlike other banks. So that's something to keep in mind. There's really not any advantage I can think of going for the business version, but it's worth noting that the business version offers the same structure because sometimes it has offered an awesome welcome bonus now and then. Right, right, right. Now, if only Capital One would approve one of my applications someday, then I could get in on all this.

That's the struggle. The struggle is real. And then I'm working on a time machine too. So I could go back in time, sign up for the card that you have that gives you, is it the Venture One? That gives you the gift cards you can buy at a great value with points. So I want to get that combination as well. Or you don't even necessarily have to do that, of course, because, you know, if you were able to get approved for a Capital One card,

since, you know, you know, me and we're friends, you could transfer those points to me and I could get, you know, the gift card. So I know, I just thought that a time machine would be a little easier and more fun. But but what I'm saying is, you know, like, if you find anybody in your family, like, I don't know, my family is the type that always was like a one credit card family. And the Capital One Venture was like the one that they had. So I wouldn't be surprised if some readers have a family member who happens to have a card they opened at the right time. It might be worth checking with them and seeing if they've got that capability. Though, I'm a little concerned that that might be on its way out for the people that do have those hotel special offers that we're talking about. It's a $900 gift card for like 64,000 Capital One points

at specific brands. They've moved where it is on the website to where it used to be as debt. It's not working and they've moved it into the regular gift card section. You're only going to see that if you happen to have one of those Capital One cards that was just open during some limited window of time. And we don't know when that was, but it was years ago. So I really I see that as good news. If they moved it means someone thought about it and said, let's keep it right. Yeah, that was that. And that's what I said to a reader in conversation about it on Facebook. I said, Well, I'm at least somewhat encouraged that they didn't kill the link to where this was, and just kill the whole thing altogether. Like you said, somebody thought to do whatever it is on there and they have to do to move that over to the

gift card section. On the flip side, when I first noticed that transition earlier this week, Marriott was not in the list of gift cards anymore. If I use the search box function, the Marriott $900 gift card came up without the search box function, Marriott wasn't in the list of gift cards anymore. If I use the search box function, the Marriott $900 gift card came up without the search box function, Marriott in the list Ritz one, but not Marriott. Now, now a couple of days later, I went back in and Marriott was in the list, but I had done a control F and search to make sure that I wasn't just missing something. Yeah, definitely wasn't in the results on day one when I noticed that. So they are now, but Four Seasons is gone. That used to be one of the options and it's just totally gone now. So I'm a little concerned.

I'm also somewhat concerned because it's like the super old Marriott branding and the old Ritz branding. So I'm a little worried that this is like a relic that at some point is going to go away. I hope not. Hopefully not. Hopefully not. But I redeemed for another one this week and I'm glad I did because my preferred category one is going up to category two and now using that $900 gift card is going to make more sense. Okay. All right. Good. Very good. So do we have any questions from readers, viewers, listeners this week? We sure do. We've got a reader question and it was a reader question that kind of came up multiple times but i thought that jim uh kind of it was a reader question not a listener or a viewer question okay an audience number question i don't know why i care but just

from a reader from a reader so i'm a reader and i'm happy to get questions from listeners and viewers and all the rest of that too but this was a topic that came up a few times this week because this week greg and steven and i each published the post about what's in our wallet. What are the cards that we actually carry around day to day? It wasn't an exhaustive list of the cards we have, because we're bloggers. We've got tons of cards. We write about these all the time. So that was the number one question, right? Was, don't you have this card or that card or the other card? And we were all like, yes, we do. We said in the post, we're not listing them all. I think each of us said that at least twice in the post

and yet still had at least eight questions about, don't you have this and that? Yeah, yes, yes, yes. We've got a lot of credit cards that we didn't list. We've got more credit cards than would make sense for most people. But the purposes of these posts was to show what is it that we carry around day-to-day in our wallet?

What do we actually spend money on when we're out at the mall or at restaurants or whatever else? What was literally in our wallet, not what's at home in a binder, not what's in the sock drawer, literally in our wallet. The wallet that's in my pocket right now. Stephen has the biggest wallet. He has the George Costanza gigantic stuffed wallet. He does. I remember days when I used to be like that, but I'm glad that I've moved towards a more minimalist wallet. Although some people told me I had too many cards. Yeah. Yeah. I never, well, I got that too, but I, I never liked having too many. I like having a thin wallet.

You know, it's funny. And one of the responses, Stephen said that, you know, he, he looked at our, our wallets and he thought, you know, oh, that kind of looks cool. But he's like, but I'd feel naked if I only had those cards. Well, I think what he means by it, not physically naked, but that he would be in a situation where he needs this or that card and it's not there. Not there. And that has certainly happened to me. Yeah, yeah. And I've had anxiety about that happening. I used to carry a lot more than I do now.

So I've definitely moved there. But anyway, on each of our posts, we probably got asked this question. But on Stephen's post, Jim asked it in the way that I'm going to read it here anyway. So Jim said, I'm most surprised how little action the Freedom Unlimited gets. None of you carry it in your wallets, and I'm not sure you even have it. I still use it for non-bonus spend. Am I out of date? Yeah, that's a great question because we talk often about how good the combination Freedom Unlimited, which earns 1.5 Ultimate Rewards points everywhere, how good that is combined with other Chase ultimate rewards cards. So when the Sapphire Reserve card came out offering 3X for travel and dining, I mean, I made a big deal about that combination. The Sapphire Reserve, use that for all travel and

dining spend, use the Freedom Unlimited for all other spend except international where it charges foreign transaction fees. And what you've got is you've got a nice multiple everywhere. You move those Freedom Unlimited points to your Sapphire Reserve so that they can be transferred to airline and hotel partners, or you can use it to, once it's in your Sapphire Reserve account, you could use it to book travel at 1.5 cents per point value. So people look at that 1.5 cents value on the Sapphire Reserve and say, oh, if I'm earning 1.5x Freedom Unlimited, and I'm redeeming that for 1.5, multiply those numbers together to say I'm getting a 2.25% return on that spend. Now that's true. It's 2.25 return towards travel booked through the

Ultimate Rewards portal. And I'm stressing that because, you know, depending on what you're booking, it might not be the best price through the portal you can't earn extra rewards by going through a cashback portal to book that thing uh you can't you can't you know price shop sometimes other sometimes you know maybe a flight like the best standard price is on the portal but you might find some off you know, maybe a flight, like the best standard price is on the portal, but you might find some off, you know, portally thing, flight booking thing that has a lower price for whatever reason. So you can't do any of those things. So there are limitations, but at the same time, that is solid return. And getting better than 2% everywhere is good, right? So why, why don't we,

why don't you use that combination? Well, I mean, that's a, that's a good question. And first up blogger confession time, which is a segment that we, that we ran a few times this year. And, and I'm going to bring back here. I actually product changed to the freedom unlimited, like yesterday, yesterday, I think it was. Yeah. Yesterday back here. I actually product changed to the Freedom Unlimited like yesterday. Yesterday, I think it was. Yeah, yesterday I called in and actually product changed a card to the Freedom Unlimited. So I do have it. I didn't have it before. I didn't have it when I did my wallet post this week. It wasn't in my wallet. It hasn't made its way back into my wallet yet. I'll say, why don't I use it? And then I'll say why I'm going to use it some. So it hasn't been in my wallet, A, because I didn't have it.

And along with that, why not? Why don't I have it? There's two reasons. Number one, I'm not going to apply for the Freedom Unlimited because the welcome bonus is only 20,000 points. And I could instead apply for a Sapphire Preferred or Sapphire Reserve and later product change that. So I can get a higher welcome bonus now and later product change or probably better yet apply for the ink business unlimited which

offers the same 1.5x everywhere structure with a much better welcome bonus of 50 000 points right and have the same thing so i wouldn't i wouldn't apply for the freedom unlimited it's only a card you're going to product change to so you have to have the card available that you want to want to do the product change on. So that's part of the reason why I haven't had it. But that said, why haven't I used it? And why will I probably start using it? Well, first of all, I think that the 2.25% back is a really inflated number. I look at it and say it's 2.25% back towards paid flights if you can find the paid flight that you want to book through the Chase Ultimate Rewards Portal. And that's because, for me anyway, I'm staying loyal to Marriott. Most of the hotels that I book are Marriott hotels

where I want my elite status and elite benefits. If I book through Chase, I'm giving up those things which have some value, giving up the chance to book through a portal, giving up the chance to use a AAA rate, giving up the chance to earn points on the stay. There's just too much that I'm giving up, I think. So to give it anywhere near 2.25% value, unless I'm booking a hotel that has no loyalty program or where the loyalty program doesn't matter to me. Now I have done that before. So it's not to say that that's impossible, but it's not a common use for me to be able to use that towards really 2.25% value. That's only going to be towards paid flights in my book. And I don't book that many paid flights. I book mostly award flights. So

that's part of the reason I haven't used it. Adding on to that though, is the fact that I typically prefer to transfer my points to partners. And now why is it going to make its way back into my wallet? Because I have transferred points to partners a lot over the last two years. And so I've used up a lot of my Chase Ultimate Rewards points. My Chase Ultimate Rewards points pool is much lower than I'd like it to be. So I am going to rotate the Freedom Unlimited back in specifically to build up my points balance. Now, once I get to a few hundred thousand million points or so, I'm just not going to use it anymore. Once you get to enough hundreds of thousands or over the million mark, I just don't think it's worth using that over using a cash back card, especially if you can get the Bank of America premium rewards

with platinum honors and get 2.625% back everywhere. I feel like it's really expensive to use the Freedom Unlimited. And if you're in a situation like Greg, where Greg is like got tons and tons of ultimate rewards points, he's got to spend those down at some point before they devalue. I think it makes no sense to use the Freedom Unlimited. That's exactly, yeah, that's exactly the situation I'm in. I have the Bank of America card, I get 2.62% everywhere. That's better. Even if the 2.25% from the Chase combination, even if I could spend that anywhere, any way I wanted, which I can't, I would still prefer the Bank of America card, right? Because it's earning better. So there's

that. It also has no foreign transaction fees. So I don't have to switch out what's my everyday card when I travel internationally. I keep using the same one, which is really nice. Get in a habit of which card you pull out, like to have it be the same one. And yeah, I don't need the points. If I really needed, if I was really short on ultimate rewards points, maybe I'd consider it. But honestly, I think what I would do is ramp up my 5x spending more than I've been doing on my ink cash and ink plus card. And that's a really good point. I only have one 5x card, I have an ink plus card. So I only have

50k in capacity on that. And I will max that out this year and get my 250,000 points there. And that's why I say the freedom unlimited is going to be a limited time play for me, because it probably won't take me more than a year to get myself back up to a point where I feel like I've got enough ultimate rewards points that the cost of acquisition on ultimate rewards points is just too high on the Freedom Unlimited. You know, if you have an opportunity to earn two and a half percent cash back then you know that one and a half points per dollar is kind of expensive for acquiring chase points especially with the ability to generate them at five acts on an ink plus or in cash if you don't have the ink

plus yeah and the ability to get more than one in cash potentially i mean and now you know previously i would have looked at simon mall purchases as it, if you, if you want airline miles, it's not bad to go in with the Freedom Unlimited and, and buy the, the Simon Mall Visa gift cards. But now with the city double cash being transferable to thank you points, which are transferable to airline miles miles i would much rather use the city double cash for that situation and so you know i'm gonna agree with you where well let me just say one more thing about that where it comes up for me at all is i have so much capacity for spend on my bank of america card but if i want to spend a lot more than that, then Citi double cashes next. I'm going to spend a lot more than that. Maybe I'd look at the Freedom Unlimited or actually in my case, the Business Unlimited

I'm more likely to use because if I don't pay back that spend right away on the Freedom Unlimited, they report that spend to the credit bureau, and then my utilization percentage goes way up and my score will drop. Whereas if it's on the business card, that won't happen. Yeah. And that's a very good point in terms of how you're going to do it. I'm going to mention also that kind of related to what you mentioned there about capacity and how much you're going to be spending. And that's the key for me in using the Freedom Unlimited or better yet would be the Inc. Business Unlimited. That would be the better choice, of course. But when I go to Simon and I buy, I usually buy 24 at a time because it makes the math a little bit easier in terms of not ending up with a partial card.

So I'll buy 24 and I'll split tender over usually four credit cards. I usually buy six K each. So I don't want to go too hard on one. I'm not going to go 24 K on one single card because I just feel like the risk in that is too high with bringing attention to the account. So I will split that and I would be happy to do 6k and a double cash and 6k and a freedom unlimited and 6k on the bank of America card. So that's why it will be in my wallet for those types of trips and those types of things day to day. I'm still going to probably mostly spend on the venture card, I think, um, because right now that that's working out pretty well for me. Um, but I think that the, the freedom unlimited will become one of the cards that I mix in, in order to earn some easy points where I can places like Simon.

All right. Good. So you're not out of date, Jim, you're not out of date. You're just kind of on a different wavelength. And if you're, you're using your points as fast as you're earning them, if, if, you know, if you've only got enough points to book the next trip, then I can see potentially using the Freedom Unlimited. It's not necessarily the best play. Like Greg said, if you can take advantage of the 5X categories, I think that's a little bit better.

But I can see it if you're relatively low on ultimate rewards points. I think that once you get to it. And also people without that many cards who don't have a lot of points in different programs might be saying, well, I'm all in with ultimate rewards, which is a perfectly fine way to go. for your everywhere else spend where meaning anywhere where you don't get bonus spend by spending at office supply stores with your in cash or by spending a travel and dining with your sapphire card right right so and i think that it's worth mentioning again even though we said this in our posts that none of our wallets were a wallet that we were saying readers should have readers should emulate i certainly wasn't saying that this is the best wallet for anybody else. And recognizing that it wasn't the best wallet for me necessarily either. I think it could be tweaked. And you said the same kind of thing. So I think it's important

to note that, you know, we were just trying to legitimately and honestly share what it is we're using and what's in our wallet, not necessarily that this is what should be in everyone's. So I definitely don't fault anybody who's carrying the freedom unlimited. Like Greg said, there are lots of good reasons to be using that card. It is a good card to have. It's not a good card to apply for in my opinion. And if you have enough points, you should be doing cashback or something else. Yeah. Great. All right. So we have a new goodbye song. Did you catch that in the email? I did not. You're going to have to sing it. All right. We have a really good new goodbye song, which is basically,

if you like what you're hearing here and you're interested in hearing more from Frequent Miler, just go to thefrequentmiler.com forward slash subscribe. And there you'll find all the ways to subscribe via email rss twitter facebook facebook group the podcast the youtube video it's all there thefrequentmiler.com forward slash subscribe join us and now a little bit before we say goodbye goodbye well first if you're a podcast listener and you don't want to hear stuff that means nothing to you bye uh you can hang up now but for the video for the video for anyone watching on video okay you might you might be you might be curious about a couple things one you might have noticed me switching my headphones every now and then and what's happening is is

these things work really well in that they they stay in my ear they're they're not falling out one one episode i had i had my headphones pop out and then i was scrambling to get them these stay in but they kind of hurt over time so i I've been switching back and forth between years. The other thing you might've noticed, I don't know if it's just me noticing this. Did you notice this Nick that the color on my side of the screen keeps changing? You know, I honestly haven't been looking at the video for the last like 20 minutes probably. Oh, okay. All right. So you didn't notice. No, I haven't noticed. All right. So I've been finding very distracting every now and then I turn sort of reddish. And what's happening is I bought a webcam light.

And so when I set up in the beginning, it has a few different settings and I can change between a sort of warm glow and now I switch to a brighter, harsher light. And here's a dim light. And then back to the warm glow. And at least initially, the warm glow looked really good. I think it's looking pretty good again. But over time, for some reason, it was just changing. And so I was getting redder and redder.

And I'm kind of red now. So that's what's going on now. And I don't know if I'll keep using it or not. I guess it's better than not having a light, but yeah, I don't know. Yeah. I'm looking at the video. So here's, here's no light. See how dark.

Oh yeah. That's dark. I definitely want the webcam. Need, need the light. Need the light. Definitely. I see the light. I don't yet.

There we go. All right. Like a blooper reel for the podcast listeners there. You can imagine what that all looks like. Yeah. Imagine lights going on and off in different colors. Imagine something really amazing. Because those who are watching a video didn't get to see anything that amazing.

But at least you, listening to my podcast, you can imagine something amazing. And we'll appreciate that. We appreciate you listening in and imagining amazing things from us. Do you think we should stop rambling and let people get about their lives? All right. They got other things to do. They got walks to take. Other podcasts to listen to. All right. I'm going to say bye everyone. And I'm going to wait like half a second before pressing stop. Sounds good. Thank you. Bye everyone.