Frequent Miler on the Air - "It's a credit card and it works" | Ask Us Anything Ep88 | 7-8-26

Starting point is 00:00:00 This is a Voyescape podcast. You can find all of our travel podcasts from around the world at voyescape.com. Welcome to Ask Us Anything, where the Frequent Myler team answers your questions live. All right, we are live. Welcome to Frequent Myler's Ask Us Anything. I'm Greg, and we've got most of the rest of the team here. We've got Carrie, Tim, and Stephen. But Nick is on vacation.

Starting point is 00:00:32 And so nobody is here to say, please follow, like, subscribe, and all that other stuff he usually says. So if you usually watch these and know what he says, just think that in your head because none of us really remember it very well. With that, do we have any questions to get us kicked off? We do have a question initially, which was from our Ask Us Anything post. This came from 1990, who asked, why does Bilt still have coming soon for Black Lane and Blade Built Cash Redemptions after nearly six months?

Starting point is 00:01:04 sure feels like many of us are going to have a glut of expiring unusable built cash at the year's end sigh so any thoughts on when we might get to see those to sort after redemptions let's start with gregg well i think built might just have a different idea than 1990 about what coming soon means um because it's been uh you know just since what um february when they um officially launched um so yeah i don't know i I don't know when it'll come. I guess I don't think there's a nefarious plan to keep it away until it's too late. But I just, I bet it took them longer to work out the deal with those two vendors than they expected.

Starting point is 00:01:53 All right. Does anyone have anything to add or shall we move on to our live questions? My question is, if we had a pool, so right now, the first, prize is 50 frequent myler bucks, 50 miler bucks. When do you think Black Lane and Blade will both be live? When will Black Lane and Blade be live for Bill bucks? Oh, there's no month that begins with B. All right.

Starting point is 00:02:19 I'm going to go to October. October? It's funny. Like, I was going to say, I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt and say October for one of them. One of them, the other one won't be till 2027. But because they announced Bill Cash, I want to say like back in October, November last year, they made it live

Starting point is 00:02:36 in early February this year. So if they haven't been able to get a partnership sorted out for at least one of those two within a year of announcing that they're going to be sorting out a partnership that does suggest there could be some kind of level of concern, but yeah, benefit of the doubt in the next

Starting point is 00:02:52 three months. I'm going to say September just to be a contrarian because I don't really know what that, I don't really know what you're talking about. But in first grade, I did win a basketball draft by not knowing what any of the teams were and just putting things down by random. Nice.

Starting point is 00:03:11 I want a giant Hershey bar. All right. So we're going to kick things off with our live questions. Tim, this one's for you. Actually, this isn't everyone, but we'll start with Tim. What do you guys do for internet access on your phone when traveling abroad? Pay for international service through your carrier, purchase a VPN, something else I maybe don't know about. What do you do, Tim?

Starting point is 00:03:33 Yeah. So mine is pretty boring. I get international service through my carrier. And it's not a ton, but thus far, I've never gone over it between both my wife and I traveling because we each get a, I think it's five gigs of high speed internationally and then 15 when we're in Canada and Mexico. But if I were to do something different besides my included service, there is, you can get five, what's the, Greg or Stephen or Kerry, can you remind me?

Starting point is 00:04:11 What's the free, the free E-Sin? Gig Sky. Yep. You get the five, and that's five, or it's five megabytes, right? Five gig, I think. Five, right, sorry, five gigs. Yeah. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:04:23 And they, and so there's a, and several, I think it's Bank of America cards. Greg actually probably knows better than I do because he did it. He did an episode on this, but that's what I would use. There's several credit cards that I would get a complimentary 5 gig e-sim through GigSky. And you can get that one card. So what it is is, if I remember, right, Visa Infinite and Visa Signature cards get different amounts. But there's a free U.S. Bank card. The U.S.

Starting point is 00:04:55 Connect. It's not, it's altitude connect, I think, which comes with a bigger amount every month that you can get. And that's, that's a, you know, more reasonable deal. I think you're less likely to run out using that. Although, I believe the visa signature and visa infinite deal, I think if you have multiple cards that qualify, you could just keep signing up for it. Yeah, yeah, it does. Okay, I was just going to say, if you go to Frequentmyler.com forward slash tag forward slash gig sky, that has like our probably half a dozen posts that have mentioned Gig Sky.

Starting point is 00:05:35 And so that has all the details about which cards have it. And I think that it's like all the visa signature and visa infinite, and there's a very good chance that you've got something like that in your card wallet. And yeah, there's some kind of US Bank card. We'll have that in one of those posts that's tagged with Gig Sky. So that's an easy way to find out about that one. That's cool. And Tim, are you on T-Mobile as you're, you said you're, okay.

Starting point is 00:06:00 So you're probably, yeah. And there's, and there's, and because a variety of other stuff, like, there's no reason for us to have compared it with other carriers. And the plan that we have automatically, like to automatically get that international service is effectively costing us nothing extra based on what we would have to do to get the same level of other stuff that we need. So that, and that's, and it's per line. So we get effectively 10 gigs whenever we travel internationally. or 30 gigs in Canada and Mexico we've never run out so far. That's nice.

Starting point is 00:06:30 Steven, is there something different you do? So I'm in a bit of a unique situation like living in the UK. So back when I was in the US, we had Google Fi service, and so we had the service that had data internationally. But what you can do is you can

Starting point is 00:06:47 switch up and down with Google Fi, so you can have a cheaper rate that's much lower for while you're in the US. and then if you're going to be going overseas, then you can upgrade your plan to have one that has international service and then downgrade after. So the timing of it's a little bit weird in that you have to have it like for a full for at least an entire month of billing service.

Starting point is 00:07:12 So even if you've passed like one day into your new billing cycle, you have to pay for that like higher service for the entire time before downgrading again. But that can be a good way of ensuring, like if you're only going abroad once or twice a year, that can be a really good way of doing it. We're still on GoogleFi, but because we're overseas, GoogleFi has this rule where I think it's if you're outside of the country for more than six months using their data, then they'll basically cut off your internet. You can still have Google Fi service, so we still have our Google Fi number, but we just have the like very basic plan where we're just kind of like paying for

Starting point is 00:07:48 like texting and phone service and stuff for whenever we're back in the US. And then in the the UK we have service with Talk Mobile which costs I think it's £7.95 a month. So about 10, 11 bucks a month. That's for I want to say like 20 gig of data and then unlimited texting, unlimited talking. So it's an incredibly good plan as things go like compared to US plans. But the good thing about that is that it also provides roaming service like throughout Europe. So I don't think it's necessarily every single country in Europe, but it's like 20 25 countries or something like that. So if we go to France, we go to Germany, go to the Netherlands or anything like that, we get basically our plan carries over internationally within Europe.

Starting point is 00:08:34 And so it's not like we're even limited to one gig of data or anything like that. It's whatever plan we're paying for, we get that much data overseas as well, which is quite handy. So if we end up going to a different country where we can't do that, then we can then add on, I want to say it's like 10 pound or something like that for an additional. or five gig of like data elsewhere in the world, stuff like that. So I want to say we did that at some point. I can't even remember which trip it was that we went on. So yeah, that's pretty handy.

Starting point is 00:09:03 And so if you're going to be coming to Europe, I'd recommend, especially if you're coming to the UK, getting a local SIM and you can do an ESIM. And so I don't actually have a physical SIM in my phone. And so you can set that up while you're still in the US, subscribe to Talk Mobile, and then you've got service in the UK and then throughout Europe. And I imagine that a lot of other European countries have a similar kind of E-Sim set up as well.

Starting point is 00:09:27 I'm just more familiar with the UK. Greg, is there something different you do? I just do the lazy thing of we have AT&T mobile service and we just pay the, what is it, $12 a day. 15, yeah, something like that. They cap it at, I think, 10 days in a billing cycle. It's the most they'll charge for that. Oh, I actually didn't know that. I also have AT&T.

Starting point is 00:09:48 So you can do, so your 12 days cost the same as 10? Or you can't do it for more than 10. Okay. Unless you're traveling over a billing cycle changeover, then you could, you would pay more than, more than 10. And secondary people, like so if I'm traveling with my wife, like one of us pays 10, the secondary person pays 5. I'm sorry. First is 12, I think, and the second one is 6. Yeah, I think it is 12.

Starting point is 00:10:18 It used to be 10 and 5, but they moved it up. Yeah. I also have AT&T. If it's a short trip, I'll do the lazy thing like you, Greg. If it's a longer trip, especially if I'm going somewhere remote. If I'm not going somewhere remote, sometimes I don't even pay for service. I'll just assume I can use Wi-Fi in my accommodations. But if I'm going somewhere super remote, then it tends to be too remote for the, like, gig sky, you know, these kind of like mass company e-sims.

Starting point is 00:10:51 And so then I just end up looking up what the internet provider is for like the local hotels or what the local, the main local phone network is for that regional area. And then I try to set up a sim there. But that's kind of a pain in the butt. But it is what works best. One more, very quick tip before we go into the next question. I'd also recommend downloading offline maps in Google Maps or I'm assuming that Apple Maps has that kind of functionality because there are times where I'm traveling internationally.

Starting point is 00:11:21 even though I have service in that country, the service just isn't necessarily all that great. But if you download offline maps for the location where you're going to be, then that way you can get driving directions and things like that, even if you've got no internet connectivity. And so that could be really helpful when driving around or just walking around a city until you end up somewhere with Wi-Fi access. So just a little tip on that front. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:11:46 All right. Great. Let's move on. Stephen Curious what each of you would say Actually another all play But we'll start with Stephen Curious what each of you would say

Starting point is 00:11:58 Are your top favorite Hyatt stays I want to book a couple hotels For next year before Hyatt Continues their devaluation rollout So I think we've answered this one before Okay I'll try and keep it concise Off the top of my head

Starting point is 00:12:12 So the Glen Hyac Hawaii in Hawaii I don't know if I would book it now with how expensive it's gotten with the various devaluations. But I guess if you can get it at lowest pricing by some miracle, then that could be worth it because, yeah, it's an amazing property. We really enjoyed the Hyatt Regency Lake Tahoe, really lovely property, fantastic outdoor area with, like, heated pools and things like that, and so on us, and so many different activities.

Starting point is 00:12:40 It does have a resort fee, but if you're booking an award, that resort fee is waived. And there's so many different activities. It's pet friendly as well. So we had our dog with us. Some of the activities are pet friendly too, especially like the hiking, like guided walks and stuff like that. So love there.

Starting point is 00:12:57 And then one where it's not necessarily an amazing hotel itself, but the Hyatt Regency in St. Louis. It's an absolutely fantastic location right next to the Gateway Arch. And we stayed there, I want to say like two or three times. And I just love just like stepping outside and just having the arch right there. It's a beautiful park to walk through. And there's just something about the gateway arch. I don't know why I loved it so much.

Starting point is 00:13:21 And it's just absolutely fantastic. And yeah, I just loved every time that we were staying there in St. Louis. So that was another one. And that was, I don't know if it's gone up a category, but it had been only category two. And so it can be fantastic value. So yeah, not an amazing hotel, but yeah, lovely location. How about you, Greg? I'll second that location.

Starting point is 00:13:41 It's stunning. I mean, just we had a taxi, pull a set or Uber or whatever, pull a up from the airport, you know, up to there. And as you're just like getting out of the car, the arch is like right there. It's like, it feels like you could touch it. It's really stunning experience to be that close and very nice. All right. And I guess, I mean, I think I've said this a number of times on Ask Us Anything that I've

Starting point is 00:14:08 always really liked going to Alila Ventana, Big Sur, which is a Hyatt property in California. I haven't been there for several years, though. I noticed a debate on Freakle-Miler Insiders Facebook group about has it like gone downhill. And some people think it's not as good as it used to be. But others say, yeah, it may not be as great, but it's still great. And so I don't know. I can't weigh in that because, as I said, it's been a few years. How about you, Tim?

Starting point is 00:14:36 Yeah. Well, so I would say that in terms of thinking through anything that's going, like the new Hyatt Award Chart's already live, the category changes are already live. So if you're looking to trying to book stuff prospectively, what I would be looking at is trying to find out as how it starts to integrate the five-tiered award chart, are there places that you can get for what would be a value in comparison to what you've had previously? Because theoretically, there's a bunch of properties, I mean, pretty much every property around the world can now cause cost significantly more if you get it in a peak upper or moderate upper or whatever their

Starting point is 00:15:22 top three categories are. But there's also options on the lower two now that you might actually get cheaper options based on the new award chart. So that's kind of what I would be looking at. I mean, I could talk to you about what my favorite redemptions are, but they may not be a good value to book prospectively. So that's kind of where I mean, I would sort of be looking at, looking at that award chart and saying, where am I getting off peak value where I may not be expecting it? And that's kind of how I would look at it. That said, in terms of the answer, I'll just throw out a recent one. The last two, we went to a mirror ball recently. I had a marvelous time and we're booking more mirror balls now. I don't know that it's necessarily a great

Starting point is 00:16:04 thing to book prospectively because a lot of the dates that I've seen, like I booked a bunch prospectively and they were either almost the same price or slightly more slightly less like there really wasn't much variation but we were just in uh new york a couple weeks ago and i don't particularly care for staying in midtown manhattan unless i need to be there i prefer lower manhattan and there's a hotel that i looked we had looked at i'd looked at several times before called the hotel 50 it's not necessarily in an ideal it's in the bowery which is sort of like in north it's like like like South or um,

Starting point is 00:16:40 southeastern lower Manhattan. It's like in the Chinatown Bowery area. But terrific location in terms of what I loved about it is, A, it was fairly cheap, but also because it's in lower Manhattan, it's like a 20 odd story building. There's only, I think nine floors per,

Starting point is 00:16:58 nine rooms per floor. But because you're not in the middle of the skyscrapers, every room has a marvelous view of something. And we had a, We paid 23,000 points a night during the World Cup. And we had a suite that literally had a 180-degree view of the East River, lower man or midtown Manhattan. And then you go up to end the place where you had the breakfast on the top.

Starting point is 00:17:26 Literally, you have a panoramic view of all of Manhattan. It's really a cool. It's really a cool property. And that on low, the low rate for that now is 15,000 points for night. So, because it's still a category five. So I would say, like, for instance, that would be what I would be looking for. Hey, are there days that are unexpected that that might work out for me that I'm going to be in New York? And I can get this for 15,000 points a night, which to me, to my mind, would be a steal for that level of property in New York.

Starting point is 00:17:53 All right. Cool. Thanks. All right. This one's going to be for Greg. A question on credit card travel protections. If you use different credit cards for different parts of your trip, for example, one for flights, another for hotels, maybe a third for car rental. I think their question is, how does that protection work? Is that the question?

Starting point is 00:18:16 Or are they asking, do we personally change it up? Because it could be either one. So, I mean, like, if you do use different cards for different parts of your trip, then, you know, each one will, you have to look to that one's coverage for the thing that you're getting covered. And yeah, I'm not sure really what to say about that. Do you try to coordinate it that way that you're using the best one for flights and the best one for hotels? No, I usually just, if I'm worried about travel insurance, I think the Sapphire Reserve and the Ritz has the exact same, they have the best travel coverage overall. And so I try to put

Starting point is 00:19:02 all the paid charges on those. And then I just... just know I've got decent coverage all around. All right. We'll stick with that as our answer then. And Tim, I'm now at 424. So I want to apply for the 100K Chase-Sephyr preferred card for myself. Is being an authorized user on the card you want to apply for, does that have any negative consequences that you know of?

Starting point is 00:19:32 So first of all, let me preface this by saying Chase has been kind of fiddling with the application rules for the Sapphire cards over the last year. So there have been rules that they've said that we've heard that like, oh, this is, this is how we're evaluating prospective applicants eligibility. And then we find that it's being inconsistently applied to say the least. And then they've actually made some changes to that. But all but so with that caveat aside, it should not. You should be able to be an authorized user on the Sapphire preferred, like on. I'm assuming on like a Player 2, or Player 1 Sapphire, Player 2, Sapphire Preferred, whatever, and then be able to be eligible for the Sapphire preferred welcome offer.

Starting point is 00:20:17 Now that's said. There may be an issue where Chase flags you for some reason because you aren't an authorized user, and you could always call reconsideration at that point and say, I don't actually have this card. I, you know, this is an authorized user, but it shouldn't affect your ability or eligibility for the welcome offer. All right. Great. Stephen, how does the Hyatt milestone 100 plus nights reward for American Airlines platinum status for a year work?

Starting point is 00:20:44 What's the process after that to earn platinum pro? So it doesn't give you loyalty points to get you up there. And so you're basically awarded the status. And so I picked gold status last year after hitting 70 nights. And it didn't give me any loyalty points for that. And so if I wanted to earn gold status or like beyond that for the same year, effectively, then I would have to start collecting enough loyalty points. So, yeah, if you've earned zero loyalty points so far,

Starting point is 00:21:17 then you're basically going to be starting from scratch if you want to be getting into Platinum Pro, if you've picked Platinum as your 100-9 award. Greg, sorry if there's been asked before. Is there going to be another live podcast? I really want to go if there will be another one. My vote is Omaha, center of the country, and not too far for everyone. What do you think? Oh, we just did a live one in Omaha last week, and you missed it.

Starting point is 00:21:40 No, we haven't, we are going to do a live one at the Chicago Travel Points Festival in October. But beyond that, we haven't scheduled, like planned for doing any live ones. We'd be totally open to doing that, but we haven't planned or scheduled it. Okay. But glad to hear that people like it. From Nebraska. So I can say this, but the subtext is Greg saying, no, it's not going to be in Omaha. Or, I mean, maybe sell us.

Starting point is 00:22:20 Sell us on Omaha. Tim, this one's for you. Do you have any advice for upgrading from Club World to first class on British Airways? Can it be done with avios or cash? You guys are the best. Thanks for all you do. I'm going to punt this to Stephen first and then Greg second because I know that it can be done with both. As far as I know, it's not a very good deal to do either one, but I'm not really sure where it's at. So punt.

Starting point is 00:22:47 Yeah. I've never looked into it too much for the, it's been interesting because the BA flights that I've booked recently as award flights, it basically says, there's no upgrade options or anything like that. So I don't know if it becomes available like closer to the time, like if you speak to someone, but I've never seen that availability happening online at least. The exception I would say is that when flying back from the US on BA, they did offer the opportunity to upgrade just the domestic leg from London to. Newcastle and it was only, I want to say like 50 pounds or something like that.

Starting point is 00:23:35 I'm to upgrade to like business class, although that's like intra-euro business class effectively. And so it's just a broad to middle seat. But it did give additional baggage allowance and a meal. And so I ended up doing that just because it was going to be cheaper than paying for like, so I had like two or three suitcases with me. And so I got an additional baggage allowance because of having American Airlines gold, but then this got me an extra suitcase that I had with me. And so that was cheaper than just paying for the separate suitcases.

Starting point is 00:24:00 case. In terms of like for long haul flights and things like that, though, I'm not 100% sure what the situation normally is. Have you ever had a chance to do that, Greg? No. I, yeah, I don't know. I don't have any experience with us. All right. I think that means we're ready to move on. This one is going to go back to Greg because it relates to the most recent coffee break where you were trying to decide what to do with your milestone benefit. This person says on your latest coffee break if you go for the American Airlines elite status on your high at milestone when does the AA expire so actually this might be better for Stephen to answer if he's actually done this but my understanding is it's based on

Starting point is 00:24:46 the American Airlines elite year so that's so I think it would I think when you pick it would sort of count as if you had just earned status at that time and so it should be good for the rest of this American Airlines status year and all of the next. Is that what happened to you, Steve? It's kind of like a mix of the two qualification years. So I got to 70 nights very late in the day with Hyatt in 2025. And so I picked the 70 night one at the very last minute because I was hoping that if I picked picked it when the new AA status year had started in March or whenever it is, then that would

Starting point is 00:25:37 then give me it for like effectively two years of status. It doesn't do that. It starts it based on when you actually earned it with higher. And so because I earned it in 2025, it's good through to like March 27. So I got it effectively for the end of 2025, even though I didn't actually pick it until 26. So it sounds like, it sounds like. It sounds like it is what I said, but the difference is that the clock starts when you earned those hundred nights rather than when you made your selection. Right. So waiting the 90 days or 89 days to pick it doesn't help.

Starting point is 00:26:14 It makes no difference. And it does say within the terms of conditions of that was the case. And so I kind of like knew that going into it. I was just hopeful that they weren't necessarily enforcing that. So I figured I'd give it a try. Yes, certainly not. So I have AA status through like March or whenever like the strategy ends. All right.

Starting point is 00:26:34 That's a really helpful data point. Just just def why I see. And like I would I would have assumed just like what you said, that it would be based on when I made the selection, not on when I actually got to that level of milestone reward. It's impressive that, you know, they say that there's no IT in Hyatt. But it's amazing that they're able to actually track it based on that or that that's that they can. actually do that. Right. Because I would just assume that it would like you that like, oh, well, if you can get it into the next program year, then you could effectively double up. It's rare for us to be sad that the technical integration is so good. Yeah, right.

Starting point is 00:27:15 All right. So Tim, we're going to give you this next one. Do you have any tips for how to get a business card, no lifetime language offer from Amex? I have zero. tips as far you know there is and so just to back up a little bit the nlll what that means is no lifetime language and amex has on most of its cards all of its membership rewards earning cards now a what's called lifetime language it says you're not you're effectively you're not welcome for or you're not able to get a new welcome offer if you've previously received a welcome bonus within the last within your lifetime. The way Amix actually figures lifetime out is five to seven years,

Starting point is 00:28:01 and then they kind of forget that you had it, and then it goes away. But occasionally people will be targeted, and not even occasionally, but frequently people would be targeted for offers or links will come out for offers, where that language isn't there. And if you've had, sometimes even if you currently have the card, you can still get a welcome offer on the same card. Or if you've had it previously, you can get the offer on the same card. I don't know of any way to make yourself be targeted for that.

Starting point is 00:28:29 When we publish, so there's kind of two different types of NLL links. There are the ones that Ammix sends out that oftentimes are on publicly available links. And then there's one that are effectively hacked where people have taken a no lifetime language offer and effectively hack the URL so that it gives you a no lifetime language offer to a card that that offer wasn't intended for. and those are very prevalent. We don't publish those anymore. We don't necessarily have a lot of data points when those come out. We don't have a lot of data points that people have gotten in trouble for them, but they are dodgy enough and we don't ever know where they came from or who did the hacking or all that sort of stuff.

Starting point is 00:29:10 So we don't really, you'll never see those published anymore on frequent Miler. But they are, they do exist. And there's a variation. It's sort of a your own risk assessment as to whether or not you want to take that on. as to whether or not that might get you in trouble with Amex further along. The other side is Amex will sometimes do these public links where and oftentimes they will say like, expand your membership or that you already have a business gold card and they want to give you a second business or a third or a fourth or a fifth or however many.

Starting point is 00:29:39 And it seems to be more frequent on the business side. So I mean, I guess that's a tip that maybe get involved into business cards because I get a lot more in an NLL offers and find myself targeted for them much more often on the business side than on the consumer side. But the other thing, what I would say is whenever we do come across links that we know are safe because they're on a public application page, we will share those and we'll say there's NLL offers. So click on it and see if you're targeted. There's always a link. And you can target it'll, you can go click that link. You will log in and it'll tell you whether or not you're

Starting point is 00:30:14 targeted for it. So don't just go by what you're seeing in your online account to determine whether or not for an offer. Oftentimes, you may find yourself targeted for a public offer that's out there and you don't know it because you haven't seen it pop up in your online account or you haven't received a personalized mail or email or something like that. But anything else that for Greg or Stephen that you guys would? I mean, one thing that I add is that the wording says that you may not be eligible for it. And sometimes even if you have the card or even if you've had the card, even if it's not a no lifetime language offer, you may still get approved anyway.

Starting point is 00:30:52 So I'd had that happened to me probably six months ago. I'd just been Googling something random. And then it wasn't even credit card related, I don't think. But then I had an Amex business platinum ad sponsored results show up, saying like get up to earn up as high as 300,000 membership rewards. So I was like, yeah, why not? Like, let's give it a go. Like, the good thing about Amex is that they don't do a hard.

Starting point is 00:31:16 or anything like that. So even like when you click to submit your application, it lets you know before you accept whether or not you're going to be getting a welcome offer. So I submitted it. And yeah, it said that I would get, I want to say like 250,000 points or something like that. Maybe it was only 200. But either way, I already had like several business platinum cards. And it approved me regardless, even though it had lifetime language. So you could just lob in an application and just hope that you're successful. All right. We hope you're enjoying the Frequent Miler on the air podcast.

Starting point is 00:31:50 Did you know that Frequent Miler is also a website? At Frequentmiler.com, you'll find all the latest deals, news about points, miles, and rewarding credit cards, the single best best credit cards page on the web, guides to all popular rewards programs and many other terrific resources. If you'd like to get our posts sent to your email, go to Frequentmiler.com forward slash subscribe and sign up for free. Right. Stephen, this question is for you. And I'm curious if this differs from the post you did this week where you listed your favorite underrated U.S. destinations. This person wants to know, what are your favorite U.S. destinations?

Starting point is 00:32:35 Is that different than what you featured in your post? So quite a few of the destinations I featured in my post are my favorite overall. So New Mexico was my favorite state. Second favorite state was Vermont. Third favorite state was Washington State. I still need, like, to go through and, like, bank or 50 states, like, and just, like, go through. But it's such a big, like, projects. I want to write, like, posts about it and stuff like that. And there would just be so much to write.

Starting point is 00:33:02 But, yeah, those are definitely my top three states. Yeah, New Mexico, just absolutely amazing. Probably spent two, two and a half months there in total. I'm in, like, a whole bunch of different places. And just the entire state has really interesting. stuff to do. So those are my favorites. Wondering if either of you, Greg or Tim,

Starting point is 00:33:22 have your own answers for this. Greg, do you have a favorite U.S. destination? Wow. Yeah, it's so hard. But I'm going to go with Acadia National Park. Ah.

Starting point is 00:33:36 That's a good one. Yeah. Tim, how about you? I feel like I know what you're going to say. Do you really? What do you think I'm going to say? Well, you have to say it first, and then I'll Have you ever been to Newark? Because Newark is absolutely. Well, I know how much you love Dallas.

Starting point is 00:33:52 Yeah, I know I love Dallas. No, you know, honestly, I think that I agree with great. I honestly wouldn't know how to say a favorite. Like, I have, because of family, I've spent a ton of time in Hawaii over the years. I love Hawaii. I think it's a marvelous place. I've spent a ton of time in Alaska. Alaska is to me a hauntingly beautiful.

Starting point is 00:34:16 and evocative place to spend time in. I love San Diego. You know, I think, you know, I could go on and on. Like, there's places all over the world. I honestly, I honestly don't know how I would be able to come, to actually pick one destination that is my favorite. There's just, there's too much. And it depends on the time of year.

Starting point is 00:34:36 It depends on, uh, uh, what, uh, what's going on, what's going on in terms of festivals and things like that. I just, I, I wouldn't, I really wouldn't want to. know where to how to rank that but i don't step no stephen so before i'm curious you know your top three do you know your bottom three oh um okay bottom bottom bottom is connecticut um oh really next bottom two yeah um so can i yeah we just found it really dull like there wasn't like we spent three weeks there we didn't there just wasn't all that much that was particularly interesting that we found about the state and like we tried. I will say it is absolutely beautiful

Starting point is 00:35:20 in the fall. I went to a concert there. Like we was staying somewhere, somewhere nearby. I think maybe in New York State or something like that. But then I went to a concert in Connecticut and that was in the fall and like that was just beautiful there. At that point with all the leaves like driving there. But other than that, yeah, we weren't at all that. So apologies. Any Connecticutians? Yeah. I mean, the other tough thing is that there were states where, like, I would be busy with work and stuff like that. And so because I was doing Ging-Sigel at the time. And so there were some states where we just didn't have time to really explore the states as much. So we didn't really do New Jersey justice just because I was, like, so busy at the time when we were there.

Starting point is 00:36:03 Is there a way to do New Jersey justice? I mean, it has some, like, parts like Kate May is a cool place, especially at Christmas time. and like this like some like we stayed at like a nice Airbnb over Thanksgiving and stuff like that Texas I wasn't overly impressed with it has some parts like like Justin like San Antonio Telingua was fantastic and like they're like various things that I liked overall but it certainly certainly didn't enjoy it as much as a lot of like Texans seem to enjoy it so but I would I just want to add two other places though Sidona absolutely amazing like beautiful beautiful place and great places to go hiking. And the Finger Lakes in New York as well also deserves

Starting point is 00:36:46 a mention. Also stunning, like all of the lakes, there's so many different waterfalls around there, like hundreds of wineries and things like that. We were planning on like living there after our road trip before. So yeah, it's a lovely place. Nice. All right. Very good. This person recommends we feature that in a podcast sometime. So we'll save the rest of that chatter for a podcast maybe. Next question. I'm going to take this one. This person says, what's the summer 2026 challenge? Can we get India involved as a destination layover or stopover? And we're not going to tell you what the challenge is yet, but we are cooking it up and you can watch for information here in the near future. That's what we'll say. We'll just give you a teaser on that.

Starting point is 00:37:32 All right. So Greg, actually, no, this one is for Stephen and Tim. We'll start with Tim. This person is looking for your thoughts on the built ecosystem currently and how you two use the new 2.0 cards. So Greg and Nick got to give their input on a recent coffee break. So what do you guys think? Starting with Tim. Well, so I'm going to give, first of all, I'm going to give a hard pass Stephen Pepper on this question because Stephen Pepper doesn't actually have a built card. So Greg and I can bandy it back and forth because we both do. But so yeah, I, So I waited for some time before I wanted to get the, I wanted to let the original, let's just call them crinkles, wrinkles in their release kind of get ironed out. And I now have the built palladium card.

Starting point is 00:38:25 And essentially, my basic goal thus far has been, I've been effectively using it the way Greg does, where I'm using my built cat. to buy accelerators that allow me to earn 3x everywhere. Where Greg and I have a little bit of a difference of opinion. I'm not even sure if it's difference of opinion, but where I'm suspect in Greg's opinion is those accelerators only take you up to $25,000 and spend a year. So effectively, you can end 3X up to $25,000 spend per year. And to me, that seems like a good baseline.

Starting point is 00:39:10 Like to use built cash for that and move up to get 3X everywhere for $25,000 spend. Now, Greg is a huge proponent, huge proponent. You can see his visage, the lighting in getting to built platinum, which takes you, which requires you to spend up to $50,000 a year. Now, what that requires you to do also is spend $25,000 at 2x. And for my personal situation, that's where I'm less sold. Like, I kind of, where I'm at right now is I feel like it's a decent card. I found a, and I think the other, so in the other asterisk, because I think sometimes we kind

Starting point is 00:39:53 of gloss over the fact that it's a $495 a year card because you got, you have these two, $200 hotel credits that kind of make it seem like a. it's much cheaper. However, I've heard a lot of people that can't use those hotel credits to good value. I actually found one property, literally one property, everything else that I look on build on build hotels is way more expensive. And it's a terrible deal. But there's one property that actually happens to be near us, that it's a great weekend destination, that it's a really good deal. And so I can use my built hotel credits for that. So it does take that, those $400 in yearly hotel credits kind of take it down to much closer to let's say a two or two hundred fifty

Starting point is 00:40:36 dollar card um so to me it makes sense to use those as a as a as a three X everywhere card i have no qualms with saying that built has the best transfer portfolio i don't even get into alaska because i have a ton of alaska miles on my own but there's still a bunch of other very useful things they have great transfer bonuses as long as the transfer bonuses to is to a destination that you want to go to. And so as a card, at this point, I think I will probably end up renewing it for a second year, even without the welcome offer. And what got me on originally was it saying, well, I can get 50,000 points to begin

Starting point is 00:41:18 with. And I'm pretty sure that combined that with the first year of what I can do, this is worth the investment for me. I was much less confident that I would want to renew it. and I still, to be very frank, I am not sold on built as a company. I have a lot of, I have a lot of doubts. I have a lot of misgivings about built in the way they do business, frankly. But I don't necessarily need to feel great about that to get value out of built.

Starting point is 00:41:47 And I feel like there is some value there based on that, based on kind of using that. For me, it's a three-x car, $25,000 a year. and then after that it will be using some variation of getting points on my mortgage and or using built 2.1, which is a whole other earning system that I won't get into right now. But Greg, what do you think? Well, I mean, I've already talked at length about built in a recent podcast episode. So I don't think we should take up the rest of the time. I'm rehashing that. I'll link that.

Starting point is 00:42:22 But I am curious, even though, Stephen, you don't have the card. can you talk just a little bit about why you chose not to get the card or your you know your thoughts this person wants to know what you think so for me i just wouldn't end up getting enough value from it especially not living in the u.s um so if we had excess um built cash then wouldn't be able to use it to earn points on mental mortgage or anything like that um and so for me the i mean the palladium card can be good for someone who's got who's generating a whole ton of um unbonous otherwise um bonus to spend. But for me, just, yeah, none of the cards made sense, especially like living in the UK. And so I had been collecting build point. I had my Racketon earnings set to build while they were still transferring one to one. I don't have any built elite status though. And so now I've changed it back to membership awards. So I still have some built points. So I'll take advantage of some kind of transfer bonus I imagine in the future. But other than that, I'm not heavily invested in at the moment. But if we ever moved back to the US, then I might look into it a little bit more.

Starting point is 00:43:31 That was my question actually really quickly, Stephen. And just to, I know we've belabored this topic for longer than we need to. But if you were to move back, so if you were in the US, would you, do you think there would be a fit for you? Potentially it might be, I'm not entirely sure that I would make good use of the hotel credits on the palladium. And so I might be more inclined to go for the, obsidian card for the 25k of grocery earnings or bonus spend on grocery spend. So I'd probably be more likely to go with that card, especially with it having a low annual fee. However, if I was back in the US and generating a whole lot of otherwise I'm bonus spend,

Starting point is 00:44:16 then I might be tempted by the Palladium, but it would need to be a whole time of spend to make that worthwhile. So, yeah, obsidian more likely, though, of the two. All right, Greg, this is technically for everyone, but we're going to start with you. Have any of you personally interacted with EES yet? And maybe someone can resurrect from their memories what that actually means. That's the EU kind of electronic system right now, right? Entry exit system.

Starting point is 00:44:50 Okay, entry-exit system. How long was the delay leaving the EU? and is it less when leaving a similar airport or a direct flight to a U.S. destination? Does anyone have experience started with you, Greg? Well, is it less when leaving a smaller airport, right? Smaller airport, sorry. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:45:07 So my experience is not with a small airport, so I can't answer that part. I've only experienced it once. It was flying into the EU where there was a big delay in Amsterdam because we had to line up on a great big line to get our biometrics scanned and then move to another line to actually enter the Schengen area. And the machines weren't working correctly on the second line.

Starting point is 00:45:38 So the first line was fine. I mean, it took however long it took, and it would have certainly made things slower just by that by itself. But then the second line, just trying to get into the EU, now after the biometrics were successfully scanned, it wasn't reading people's passports or fingerprints or both. For me, it had problems of both, but it just depended. Most people ended up having to go to a person anyway. Leaving EU, I left from Barcelona airport, and it was no problem at all. The system just worked.

Starting point is 00:46:17 We went right in. Okay. Does anyone else have a different experience? or more to add? I wasn't necessarily aware that I was doing EES when we went to Crete back in April. I'm assuming that because Crete's part of Greece, that would have been the case, but didn't really notice any kind of major issues coming in or leaving, maybe because it's like a smaller airport or something like that,

Starting point is 00:46:45 rather than Amsterdam or Charles de Gaulle or something like that. But yeah, we didn't have any kind of issues. All right. Overall sounds okay. Tim, would love to hear your experience with the Atmos Summit Card and reaching status. So I'm not entirely sure what the question is about, but my wife and I both have at the Atmos Summit card. We love it, not only for the various benefits, but because of in terms of the status-related

Starting point is 00:47:17 stuff, it gives us 10,000 status points per year on our anniversary. every year on our anniversary. How does it know when your anniversary is? Well, you know, it's really fun, great. They, the utmost people actually called up and they said, it must be at most five months into the year. And so we knew at that point. But the, so what we like about it is the last,

Starting point is 00:47:46 the other two, the other utmost cards give you one status point for every $3 that you spend, whereas this gives, you one status point for every $2 that you spend. And so for instance, right now we're on an extended trip. I'm in Canada right now. And I use the summit card everywhere because I get 3x on all foreign transactions. And so regardless of what I buy, regardless, I put my rental car on it because it has primary rental car insurance.

Starting point is 00:48:13 I put restaurant car, you know, whatever spend we do. And we're also, every time we do that, we're also getting a half of a status point on that. So I think the the the and we also do a lot of flying on Alaska as well. It's our primary primary domestic airline. But what has been cool, I think now is my wife is currently titanium. I'm titanium. My wife who travels less than I do is also titanium, which is the top tier for Alaska status. And she would not have been titanium last year, nor would she be qualifying again this year without the summit card.

Starting point is 00:48:47 So our experience is good. But that to say, it's very, it's very, very valuable for us. So we are intentional in doing so. I'd be curious. I know Greg is a summit card holder, and he's been kind of playing around with that for status. So I'd be curious to hear what his experience is. Yeah. I haven't pursued, you know, trying to get status through the card yet.

Starting point is 00:49:11 Because right now I have Platinum Pro with American Airlines. And so it's going to be a while before I care about that. but I am trying to get to the 60K spend required to get the 100,000 point award, companion award. So I'm close-ish, and I need to complete it by early September. So that's what I'm working on with the card. I mean, I don't know what I'll say about it. It's a credit card, and it seems to work. That's good.

Starting point is 00:49:48 Put that on the marketing on their website. It's a credit card and it works. Was it the curve card? Greg, that always... Oh, that didn't work. It never worked.

Starting point is 00:49:59 That card was terrible. Yeah, so that's saying something for Greg because he's actually had credit cards. It didn't work. That's why Greg's bar starts there. It's the memory of curve. It's not. I want to see Greg,

Starting point is 00:50:12 Greg, do a whole series of review, credit card reviews where, effectively, the ending point is, I'm not sure what to say, It's a credit card. It works.

Starting point is 00:50:20 It doesn't work. I mean, if you compare it to my most of my Citibank cards or most of my Capital One cards, working is a good thing. So since you brought that up, Greg, there have been a few people asking if there's an update there. Didn't know if you wanted to share on that or not. Feel free to pass if you don't want to. About being shut down by Citibank. Yeah, I guess an update is the fact.

Starting point is 00:50:48 that my American Airlines Globe card has not been shut down yet. It still seems to be alive and kicking and really careful about like touching the card too much. I don't want. That's why I wasn't sure if you even wanted to load or something. But that's sort of exciting, I guess. That's good, sort of good news, but you never know when the shoe will drop on that one. other kind of surprising news is for a post that probably just published to the blog a few minutes ago, I wanted to look up how much a hotel would cost booking through city travel. And so I at first asked the rest of the team, could someone jump on and check for me? But then I thought, maybe I can still.

Starting point is 00:51:39 And I was able to. I just logged in my city account, went to click through to city travel, and it still showed, it still thought I had all the cards I had before, and so I could pick the elite, the strata elite card, and see what the hotel costs through that program. I don't know what would happen if I tried to book it, but that was kind of interesting. See it. It's interesting. All right, well, thanks for that update.

Starting point is 00:52:11 Okay, so this is an all play, but we'll try to make it quick, since we only have about five minutes. Starting with Stephen, do you use any apps to manage and monitor all the cards, credits, and their benefits, or do you just use an Excel sheet? The ones you have personally, I assume, yeah. Yeah, I don't use any app. I do have a spreadsheet where I have, like, my cards listed,

Starting point is 00:52:33 and kind of like when I applied for them, what their annual fees are and what the welcome offer, and stuff like that. I don't list all their benefits and things like that there. I do have a reminder set up every quarter to remind myself like two weeks before the end of a quarter to use up any kind like quarterly or like twice yearly credits and things like that just to make sure that I'm not forgetting about those. So things like the Lululemon credit and things like that. We just ordered some like stuff with our friends just because we had zero use for it and the gift card thing doesn't work online anymore. unfortunately. So that way it wasn't going to go to waste. And then I also use our best office page

Starting point is 00:53:17 quite a lot. So if I'm trying to remember what particular benefits one of my cards has, because I've completely forgotten that my United Explorer card has a hotel credit on it. And so I just checked the best office page on the frequent minor website and was like, okay, that's right. You get two credits a year of $50 that you can use for United hotels. So, I haven't used those ones yet. So just that's a really useful resource for me. Yeah. Greg, how about you?

Starting point is 00:53:47 Yeah, I use a spreadsheet, a Google Doc sheet, and I just put all the like monthly, quarterly, semi-annual, annual credits that I care about in that sheet. And, you know, I mark it when I've used particular ones. and then I try to check it at like the end of each, as each month is nearing the end. Are there any that I want to use before the end of the month? And Tim, how about you?

Starting point is 00:54:18 So yeah, I have a couple of apps that I use to track various stuff with credit cards, but not credits. I essentially use the exact same system that Greg uses, except I like to delete things. Like I love when lists get smaller. And so what I will do is when I have done. something that I think will trigger credit, I put that in bold, and then when the credit posts, I delete it. And so for a beautiful week at the end of June, all of my little perks that I

Starting point is 00:54:51 needed to use were completely blank, and it was just a magnificent time. And now they're all full again, because it's July 1st, but it's effectively a problem to have so many perks to use. I know. But I will say one thing that I do that's, unless that it is different than some, I am very proactive about using my credits. So like January is a tough time for me. It has been in the past when I have all these new credits. I try to use them as quickly as I possibly can. I don't put them off.

Starting point is 00:55:23 I'm not, I'm never the person that's like it's, you know, December 31st and I'm looking to see what fine hotels and resorts credits I can book for the next year. I always try to be really, really proactive about trying to use those at the front end. I was hoping one of you would have some amazing app that just keeps, but none of those exist yet. We should probably mention travel freely, so I don't use it myself, but it does seem like for a lot of people that travel freely is a really useful app to keep track of all the credit cards that you have and all their benefits and things like that. It's great for tracking credit card signups and reminding you, like, you know, have you hit your minimum spend and whether it's time to cancel a card. but I don't think it does the actual benefits. There is an app.

Starting point is 00:56:12 I think there are several apps that do. I'm trying to remember the name of one that came across a month or two ago. But yeah, sorry, it's not coming to me. But there's plenty of apps out there. There are apps out there that if you want to do it by app, you can do it. If you all watching have your favorite apps, please comment it on this video. So we can get some other names out there. there. All right, but I think that brings us to the end. One final, final, final question. Stephen,

Starting point is 00:56:43 did you ever try the clam pizza in Connecticut? I don't think I did, although for some reason that's ringing a bell. We did like go to Mr. Pizza. We did go to like two of the like pizza places that you're really supposed to go to. And we just weren't overly impressed. And as someone who does some particularly like cheese, then that then that's obviously not saying. My wife loves pizza. Yeah, like she loves pizza and she wasn't even a huge fan of the pizzas that we had in in Connecticut. Safe to say if you tried it, you didn't love it. So on my blog, we had written about our experience of one of them, I forget what the name was of that. And there was someone in the comments who was really annoyed at the fact that we hadn't enjoyed the pizza and was like, kind of like getting personal.

Starting point is 00:57:29 And it's like, I'm one random person on the internet who didn't like the taste of this pizza. I'm like, why? Welcome to 226. So I don't know if it was like the owner of the restaurant who was like commenting onto like some kind of guys. But yeah. All right. I'd be willing to try clam pizza. It sounds interesting.

Starting point is 00:57:49 Not cheese pizza, but yes to clam pizza. Absolutely. Yeah. No surprises here. Okay. Thanks so much for joining us. And you can join the next one, the first Wednesday of the month, live here on YouTube. And subscribe so that you can see a notification.

Starting point is 00:58:05 And thanks so much for joining us. Hi, I'm Mike Siegel comedian and since 2011 host of the Travel Tales podcast. When I'm not traveling the world telling jokes for money, I'm traveling for fun out of curiosity and love of new places. And I love talking about travel with other people who share my passion. Whether they're travel experts, influencers, expats, or I'm just catching up with a fun friend, the subject is always my favorite one, travel.

Starting point is 01:07:36 So if you love travel and want to listen to other people who love travel, and maybe even laugh or learn a thing or two, Check out the Travel Tales podcast with me, your host, Mike Siegel, anywhere you get your podcasts. If you love travel but don't always have time to plan, we've got a podcast for you. It's called Travel in 10, and in every episode, in about 10 minutes, we give you a smart, practical overview of destinations all around the world. We cover what to see, where to stay, where to eat, and what actually matters when you're planning out a truck. It's designed for real life. Listen on the way to the airport, in the car, or while you're thinking about your next getaway.

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Frequent Miler on the Air - "It's a credit card and it works" | Ask Us Anything Ep88 | 7-8-26

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