Frequent Miler on the Air - Keeper features of ultra premium cards | Ep153 | 6-4-22

Episode Date: June 4, 2022

00:50 Giant Mailbag https://www.allegiantair.com/military-discount https://www.caesars.com/myrewards/promotions/caesars-rewards-salute-card 5:13 What crazy thing.....double feature! First up: Virgin Atlantic takes away calendar view (but we've got ya covered) https://frequentmiler.com/the-virgin-atlantic-monthly-award-calendar-still-exists-heres-how-to-find-it/ 8:03 What crazy thing...did Germany do this week? https://frequentmiler.com/germany-offering-monthly-train-tickets-for-9-euro-june-july-august/ 11:22 Mattress running the numbers: Is the 50% transfer bonus from Chase to Marriott a good deal?  https://frequentmiler.com/50-transfer-bonus-from-chase-ultimate-rewards-to-marriott-bonvoy/ 18:20 Main Event: Keeper features of ultra premium cards https://frequentmiler.com/which-premium-cards-are-keepers/ 39:01 Question of the Week: Is it worth spending toward Delta elite status to get my family upgraded? Join our email list: https://frequentmiler.com/subscribe/ Music Credit: Annie Yoder

Let's get into the giant mailbag. What crazy thing did City do this week? It's time for Mattress Running the Numbers. Ready for the main event? The main event. Frequent Mylar on the air starts now. Today's main event, Keeper Features of Ultra Premium Cards.

Not the Creeper Features. Not Creeper Features. Keeper Features. Keeper Features. I love that phrase, Keeper Features. I don't think we've ever used that features. Keeper features. I love that phrase. Keeper features. I don't think we've ever used that before. I don't know if anyone else in all of history ever has. We just coined that term right here. Mark the calendar right now. This is the beginning of keeper features. And yeah, I guess someone's going to Google it and find out

it's been used before, but don't burst our bubble. Come on. Right. Right. Oh, that's going to be, that's going to be a fun topic. But of course, first we've got giant mailbag. Today's giant mailbag is giant because we've got two pieces of related mail that all packaged together in one nice topic. So we're going to start with the mail from Justin. Justin says, all airlines provide free check bags and benefits for active service members. And then he goes on to say, but I just have to put as an aside, I'm going to take it on faith.

I don't know that all airlines do that, but I certainly believe that most do, which seems reasonable. Anyway, moving on. He says, but Allegiant extends their generous benefits to. My father-in-law was in the National Guard 50 years ago, and it says veteran on his Florida license. Gate agents said he could have saved approximately $160 in bag fees and could have checked 100 pounds per bag instead of just 40. And this is the next sentence. If traveling with a pet, that would be free too, along with a carry-on bag. So, wow. Wow. So you should have some allegiance to Allegiant. Yeah. I mean, that's great.

I had no idea that Allegiant had all those features for veterans. So those are keeper features if you're thinking of which airline to keep flying. Yeah, yeah. I mean, you do have to take that with the caveat of, you know, Allegiant is not the challenge with flying Allegiant. Like I am much less averse to flying discount airlines than some people. I'm fine with Ryanair, EasyJet. I'll fly Spirit.

I had a great time flying Spirit last year with Greg. So I have no problem in the sense that I don't turn my nose up at Allegiant. The issue with flying inexpensive airlines, the discount airlines like that is that their frequency is so little that if your flight gets canceled, then you're in trouble. Because like, I know for instance, they fly on one route where I travel sometimes and I have friends who travel the know for instance, they fly on one route where I travel sometimes and I have friends who travel the same route sometimes and they fly once a week. And so if your flight is canceled, then you're not getting reaccommodated for at least a week. So, you know,

that might vacation might be over at that point. Maybe if you're a veteran though, they would, they would fly it anyway. Maybe just for you. Yeah. So, uh So so it's worth being aware if you're not familiar with the Legion, it's worth being aware of taking a look and saying, OK, do they fly this route daily or a couple of times a week? So if my flight gets canceled, are they going to have another flight to put me on? And if not, do I have some sort of a backup? I mean, if you got plenty of miles and points, then great. And if you're an active duty military person, you might have lots of miles and points, because I know that at least in the past, I don't know if it's still true. Amex used to waive the annual fees on all their cards for active duty military. So I don't think it's

just Amex either, but it's definitely worth checking with whatever bank, whatever card issuer you have cards with and see if they waive it. If you're active duty military, I don't think any of them do it for veterans. Right. Right. Right. This is great that this is for veterans also. So, I mean, that's a great deal if the Legion fits your needs. Right. Right. And then Todd writes in and says that Caesar's Rewards has this thing called a salute card that's for military active duty military, but also for veterans and their spouses. So here's another thing that applies to veterans as well. And it provides hotel discounts. It provides automatic platinum status, which gives you, and this is right from the webpage advertising the salute card, which gives you a free self and valet parking at, you know, certain properties

and a free stay at Atlantis. Although I've heard not so great things about that free stay, but, but still it's way better than nothing. Anyway, I thought, I thought it was cool to bring that up that here's another thing for, for veterans. So some good stuff there, and we'll put it in the show notes, the links to both of those, both of those things. So you'll have easy access to it. Very good. Excellent. Terrific. Okay. So then that's a mailbag out of the way. Let's talk about what crazy thing. And this week we've got a, what crazy thing, double feature. That's where the double feature music should come in. If I had double feature music, right? Double keeper feature. That's where the double feature music should come in if I had double feature music, right? Double keeper feature.

Double keeper feature. All right. So this week, first up, we've got Virgin Atlantic. And Greg, I know you made an entire video about this. So Virgin Atlantic, they took away the monthly calendar, so you can't see the monthly calendar anymore. Is that true? Yeah, it is true. So I was actually getting ready to write a new post about how to find

Delta Awards on Virgin Atlantic, how you have to like search kind of one week at a time until you find any results. And then once you find any results, you can get that full calendar view and then you could go a month at a time and that's much easier. But then they took away the button to switch to the calendar view. So they hired somebody from Turkish is what they did. They hired somebody from Turkish to run their IT and take away. They're like, no, we have too many buttons. We've got to take away some buttons. Right, right, right. So yeah, maybe it'll come back and not work the way the Turkish one did. We'll see. We'll see how that goes. But luckily I had in my search history, the calendar view URL. And I saw that

the only thing that differentiated it from the week view, which is a default view, is one word that's in the URL. It says calendar instead of, I don't know, whatever. And so when I changed that word, the calendar view, the full calendar view came back up and then you can hop around. So it's a little bit harder than pressing a button, but not a lot harder. And so, yeah, so we posted how to do that. It's easy peasy, but crazy stuff. I mean, their award search isn't that great to begin with and to make it even harder. Why would they do that? Right. I mean, that's putting it kindly, right? That it's not that great to begin with. I mean, it can be a downright pain. It's great if you're the airports that you want come up and populate automatically. But oh, what a pain when I was just doing a search yesterday and I was like, oh, my goodness, I got to find the country and select the country and

select the city. It's such a pain to get the airport you want sometimes. And then I won't let me pick points for this route. I got to first pick cash and then switch it to points after I get results. It's just annoying. So yeah. Why would you take away the one feature that makes your word search really good? I don't know. And not even take it away. They just took away the button because obviously the data is still there, right? If you can put that little one word into the URL, the data is still sitting there. They're just not giving you the easy way to display it. Right. No, exactly. And in fact, like, why don't they just default to the to the monthly view?

I mean, who the heck wants this weekly view? Anyway, I don't know. So Virgin Atlantic, you're crazy. Craziness and Virgin Atlantic. Cut that. Cut that out. Yeah. OK. Yeah. All right. So speaking of craziness, though, and European craziness, we've got to go to Germany next because Germany has a crazy deal going on for train travel. So for the next couple of months, June, July and August, the German rail system, Deutsche Bahn, is selling tickets for train travel. You can buy an entire month of travel on the local and regional train systems. And I think it includes city buses and everything the way it works there. It doesn't. Well, it's all like the regional public transport buses, funiculars, whatever, all for just nine euros, nine euros for an entire month for 30 days of travel, nine euros. And you could buy it all three months. If you want to buy nine euros for an entire month for 30 days of travel, nine euros.

And you could buy it all three months. If you want to buy nine euros for June, nine euros for July, nine euros for August. If you're going to be in Europe for three months or, you know, I just, if you're going to be there for a week, it probably makes sense to do this. Right. I mean, aren't you going to maybe visit Germany at some point? Would you do this, Greg? Would you pay the nine euros?

At first I was, I was excited because we're, my wife and I are going to be in Germany in July. And I was like, wow, that's great. We were thinking about taking a train maybe anyway to get from place to place. We were kind of on the fence, rental car or train. And then look at this and say, wow, this would be just ridiculously cheap. And then I stepped back and thought about it a little bit, especially when I saw an article predicting how crowded the trains are going to be. And if we're going to be like lugging around our luggage and trying to get on, you know, tightly packed trains, it suddenly sounds a little less, you know, wonderful. So let's go back to the rental car approach. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I could certainly see that because I imagine that it has to be popular because when I read through it, it sounded like even people who have monthly passes. So Germans

who have monthly passes, they were going to be able to do this instead. And I have no idea how much those monthly passes cost locally, but I know it's got to be a lot more than nine euros. You know, I've had to buy a couple of last minute train tickets in Germany before. And, you know, if you plan an advanced train travel is very affordable, but if you're at the last minute, it can be expensive. I was looking once for a ticket from Frankfurt to Berlin on like less than a day's notice. It was going to be like 200 euros for the train. I was like, you gotta be crazy. Right. Uh, and so I ended up having to buy a German rail pass instead. So I look at this, I'm like nine, nine and it's digital. It's just on your

phone. You don't have to reserve anything. You just get on the train because it's the local and regional. So anyway, if you're going to visit Germany, it might be worth a gamble, but it is a little bit of a gamble because the trains will probably be very full. And I hear that they're horribly delayed right now. Right. Yeah. Yeah. That's a lot. I don't know. Horribly you're saying like 20 minutes. I mean, come on. It's Germany. That's horribly delayed right now, right? Yeah. Yeah. That's, well, I don't know, horribly. You're saying like 20 minutes or whatever. I mean, come on, it's Germany. That's horribly delayed in Germany. That's, that's, that's, you know, right on time if you're American Airlines, but the thing to note is this does not include their longer distance, like high-speed trains at all. So at all. So if you're hoping to travel between Frankfurt and Berlin, I don't think you'd want to do this anyway.

That would take you all day and maybe all night. True. It might. It might. Depends on. Yeah. Because this is just the local regionals. So good point there. All right. So that's what crazy thing. Let's talk about Mattress Running the Numbers. So this week for Mattress running the numbers, we've got Marriott making an appearance. What's going on with Marriott?

Yeah, so Chase is once again offering a 50% transfer bonus to Marriott. So instead of points transferring from Chase Ultimate Rewards one-to-one, they now transfer one to 1.5. And we've talked about this in the past when, when they've done this in the past, and we've, we, we were pretty quick to dismiss it, but things have changed since then. And I think it's worth, I think it's worth bringing this up again. All right. So, so I mean, yeah,

cause you get one, one point and now you get one and a half points, Greg, my points are worth half as much more. Isn't that a great deal? Like, would I even question that, Greg? They're worth 50% more. Well, okay. So let me just go back in time. When we last talked about a similar transfer bonus, we had seen that Marriott points were worth on average about 0.7 cents each. And so one and a half, one and a half of those is worth just a fraction over a penny. And so you're not getting amazing value from your Chase Aldrin Awards points. You know, we want to be getting at least like around 1.5 or more. What's changed in my mind about this is that when I last looked at Marriott point values, just sort of almost randomly picking properties and looking at what the average value is you could get with points, that average value

had gone up to 0.8-ish. So that's making it closer because one and a half of 0.8 is getting close to that 1.5. But more importantly, in my mind, there were a lot more properties, like a bigger percentage of properties had better than one cent per point value when I looked than they had in the past before Marriott went dynamically priced. So if that holds true, and if you can find properties where you're getting better than one cent per point value from your Marriott points, then it seems like, okay, this is a way to get better than one and a half cents per point value with your Chase Ultimate Rewards points. Why not do it? Yeah. And it's a good point. It's not just

a theoretical point. I can stand here and say And it's not just a theoretical point. I can stand here and say, it's not just a theoretical point because a friend of mine just did this. All right. So a friend of mine is looking to go to Sesame place. And so she'd been asking me for help. She was going to use her points. And originally she doesn't know very much about points, pretty new to this world has a Sapphire preferred card. And so she was saying, oh, my points are worth $625 because that's what Jason told her. She didn't know anything about transfer partners. So I got, you know, explaining everything to her. Hey, you want to stay at a Hyatt? I can book a guest of honor stay for you. You can stay at the Bellevue or the Hyatt Centric right in Philadelphia,

free parking, breakfast, eighteen thousand points a night. But so we had all that conversation. And then and so she was going to get back to me dates, blah, blah, blah. And then I woke up this morning to a message from her, actually, this morning as we record this saying, hey, I got looking at it all. I put it all in a spreadsheet last night. I was really proud of myself. And I saw the 50 percent transfer bonus to Marriott. And so I transferred my points to Marriott because I'm going to book a courtyard and

it's closer to Sesame Place, blah, blah, blah. And initially I was like, oh, my goodness, no. But then I got looking at it and I realized room rates close to Sesame Place for this weekend when she was planning to go were like two, three, four hundred dollars a night at the Spring Hill Suites and the Sheraton and the courtyard and blah, blah, blah. And instead she was able to transfer twenty four thousand chase points to Marriott to cover two nights at the courtyard. Like, you know, so yeah, it did make sense. And I was like, I was like, it was like fingers down a chalkboard for a minute when I was

like, oh my goodness, you didn't just do that. Did you? And then, and then I looked at it and I was like, well, you did really well. You did even better than booking the Hyatts probably and ended up closer. So yeah, I mean, it's not impossible at all. In fact, I'm looking right now at a whole bunch of the hotels in that area. I pulled it up just out of curiosity

where you'd get well over a penny a point this weekend. So, you know, it's real world. It's not that unusual anymore. So yeah, so you could do well. Now you can argue that your friend is not really getting better than about 1.3 cents per point value because purchase point value, because Marriott is running a sale right now on points where it comes on the fact that she could have bought the Marriott points for about 1.3, a little over 1.3,

um, sorry, 0.8, 0.89, but it would give her because, uh, yeah. 1.1.

Yeah. Because of the transfer bonus, she would be getting, she'd be getting 1.3 point, uh, cents per point value. Yeah. You know,

um, and I told her that,. Yeah, I guess complex. And buying points and all of that is just another, I don't know, thing to wrap your mind around if you're relatively new. But the point is that we always would have said it's not a reasonable idea to transfer your points to Marriott even during a transfer bonus, but that's not necessarily true anymore. And I think that's especially the case if you're looking at properties in the lower to middle end of the spectrum. If you're looking at some of those courtyards and Sheratons where, you know, when they went to dynamic pricing, they said, okay, only these properties, this small group of properties are going to vary by more than 10,000 or 15,000 or 20,000 points per night.

So there's a whole bunch of these like courtyard-y type places that are still stuck at the old award chart levels. Even though they're dynamic, they're not going higher than the old award chart levels. And if you've been paying attention to hotel prices lately, they're really high. So you could actually do pretty well. Yeah. And as always, don't do it unless you have a property picked out the words available and, and you look at it and say, oh yeah, I'm going to get good value for my chase points by transferring. And even then keep in mind that it takes a day or two to get your points. So Marriott is not instant. And so that's another thing to keep in mind. They're not an instant transfer partner

with anybody. That is something I did not remember. That's a shame. Yeah. We have in our sheet about one day. Other places I saw one to two days or 39 hours. So that's something else to keep in mind that, you know, it's a little risky if you're down at the last minute or there's not a lot of availability. Right. So Marriott will let you hold the award sort of. But when you do that,

it doesn't guarantee the price. So if the word price changes by the time you get the points, you're out of luck. That would be a shame. Yeah. Yep. Okay. All right. So there we go. We got a crazy thing. We got mattress running the numbers. So I think that means it's time for the main event. Main event. Keeper features of ultra premium cards. The keeper features. We love saying that. We're going to say that several more times during the show. And now you are too, if you're listening.

It's going to be stuck in your head for the rest of the keeper features. You're welcome. Yeah. So what we're going to do, we don't have time to go into depth on any of these cards, really, because there's a lot of cards to discuss. We're going to talk about all the popular ones, ultra premium ones. And we're talking cards that cost over $300 a year. And they've got some awesome features. But Nick and I are going to take turns introducing a card and we're only going to mention one or two killer features, keeper features of each card. And then the other person is going to say, what is the Achilles heel of this card that makes it not a keeper? So basically we're going to be sort of arguing. Yeah, keep it. No,

don't keep it. Ready to go? hope i hope fingers crossed okay we're gonna start with bank cards as opposed to like hotel or airline cards and we're gonna start with the most popular ultra premium card or one of the most popular chase sapphire reserve that card is $550 a year. And I think the killer feature, and I use this word loosely, feature, is that it is great for purchasing travel. And I say that because when you purchase travel, any kind of travel with the card, you earn three points per dollar. You get the best in class, like automatic insurance, or you're covered every which way, medical insurance, you know, evacuation, emergency evacuation, all kinds of things. And you get per year, $300 back in credit in statement credits that's spent for travel. So the card ends up, you know, net being around $250 ish, uh, after that, after that credit. So that's the killer feature, use it to pay for travel. Okay. But, but you can get good travel protections on the Sapphire

preferred for just 95 bucks a year. Keep your extra 155 net that you want to call it. Use your $300 anywhere you want. I mean, really it's a $455 difference in annual fee because you can give yourself a $300 statement credit any day of the week, I guess, on your travel, right? So rather than lock that money up with Chase, just get yourself a Sapphire Preferred, 95 bucks. The travel protection is almost as good. The only difference is trip delay. I think basically it's like 12 hours instead of six hours. And I guess the overall coverage is a little bit less, but still more money than you're probably spending on your trips. If you're using your miles and points Sapphire preferred for the win. All right. And we are not, we did not bake in time for

rebuttals to the rebuttals. So, So everybody's going to have to just yell at Nick in their head at home or in their car. Actually, it doesn't have to be in your head. Yell out loud. Say why Nick's wrong. But I'm going to skip that part and we'll move on to the next one. Tell us about the VentureX. The VentureX. Okay.

So I had a really hard time narrowing it down to two for the VentureX. But I'm going to give you the two for the Venture X. Okay. So I had a really hard time narrowing it down to two for the Venture X, but I'm going to give you the two for the Venture X. Number one is that authorized users get all of the best benefits. So they get all the travel protections. They get the elite status with the rental companies. They get the priority pass. So it's a great card for authorized users. We got extra people that want to have the ultra premium card benefits. That's number one. Number two, isn't what Greg thinks it's going to be. Number two is that it's the only of the ultra premium cards that really makes sense to use as an everyday spend. It's the only single like single card solution, I think out of the ultra premium cards. So you can obviously do all your, since it's two X everywhere, you do all your spend on this card and do pretty well.

But, uh, so the, the, you're right. You didn't say one of the things I thought you were gonna say, which is the annual $300, um, credit, uh, you know, makes it a very cheap card and the 10,000 miles and the 10,000 miles makes it virtually free or, or better than free. Um, but it means buying travel through the portal in order to get that $300. And so that's probably why Nick didn't list it. So I don't have a good rebuttal to you. Beat him already. Okay. All right. All right. Next card up is going to be the what? The MX Platinum $595 card. All right. So killer features.

Number one. Okay. This one's for you. Okay. This one's for me. Okay. And then you're going to do the business platinum. Okay.

The rebate, it has all kinds of great rebates. You could make more money than the annual fee each year by collecting on this plethora of rebates. And the second killer feature is lounge access. Gives you Centurion Lounge, gives you Delta Sky Club when flying Delta and a few other miscellaneous things. So that's my two. All right. Yes. But it's $595 a year. I mean, that's a lot of money to lay out in an annual fee. And you've got to jump through all the hoops. It's a coupon book. You've got to jump through all the coupon book hoops. Ooh. Okay. True story. Business Platinum. Killer features the 35% rebate with Business Platinum when you pay with points, whether that's for your chosen True story. for an award ticket and you're going to earn miles on your ticket. So I think that 35% rebate is really the feature that sets the business platinum apart from the personal platinum.

I agree with that. But the thing that sort of kills the business platinum for me is that it doesn't have as many rebates as the personal platinum. And the majority of the rebates it has are for Dell. And you got to want a lot of Dell junk in order to make that work for you. Now, wait a second. No rebuttal, but I realized that when we were talking about this, did we say $595? These cars are $695. $695.

We did. We said the wrong. But these cars are $695. You're right. It's much worse than what we said. It is. All right. Okay.

Just wanted to correct the record. That was a better rebuttal than either of us said. All right. Okay. Next card up. The Altitude Reserve. Right. This is $400, I believe.

Now I'm questioning all my numbers, but I'm pretty sure it's $400. This card gives you 3X for mobile wallet, meaning like use Apple Pay, Samsung Pay, or whatever. You get three points per dollar. So anywhere you're shopping in person that takes sort of tap to pay or anything equivalent, you can use it and get three points per dollar. Points are worth one and a half cents each towards various things. And so you get about four and a half percent rebate on pretty much everything that you buy in person. Plus it has a $325 travel and or restaurant credit. So you get back a really big chunk of that $400 annual fee just by using it for those two categories. Yes, but you're listening to this show. So you don't buy very much in person. You go through a shopping portal and stack a card linked offer,

an Amex offer, whatever else. You're not spending a lot of money in person. You're spending a lot of money online so that you can take advantage of all of the various stacking opportunities, coupons, and this and that. It's just not that useful. You don't spend enough online to make four. Yeah, true. True point. I'm going to add my own rebuttal to my statement, which is this is also the only one in our list that does not have transferable points. So if you're hoping to transfer airlines or hotels,

out of luck. That's right. All right. Moving on to hotel cards. Nick's going to kick it off with the Hilton Aspire. The Hilton Aspire card. $450, right? $450 a year.

Yeah, absolutely. And there's a number of things I could talk about, but really I think the show stealer, so to speak, showstopper thing is the fact that it comes with a free weekend night each year. Every year you get a free weekend night that works at basically any Hilton property in the world. There's a couple of like timesharing type property exceptions, but, but I mean, you could use it at the Waldorf Astoria Maldives,

the new Hilton opening in the Maldives that both costs over a hundred thousand points per night, normal or any of the other top Hilton's around the world. That's a killer feature that can easily on its own be worth well more than the $450 that you pay in the annual fee. If you don't use any of the other features, but you use the free night, well, this card can pay for itself year after year. If you also use the other features, my goodness, this is, I think, the easiest win on the market.

Yes, but it is, under normal years, only available on weekends and only if Saver Award availability is present at the time you want to go. And boy, I've had a really, really hard time over my sort of points lifetime and finding that combination at Hilton Properties that I want to be at. as well. This one comes with a annual 50K free night certificate. So it's for any property that costs up to 50,000 points, or you could add up to 15,000 additional points. So you could use it to stay at a property that's up to 65,000 points if you add in some points on top of it.

And it gives you $300 back in easy hotel Marriott credits, just any spend at Marriott, $300 back. So it's a fairly cheap card to have if you stay at Marriott properties. Yes, but you have to earn Marriott points. I'm going to cheat here. Instead of rebutting, I'm going to actually add another reason to want this card, another keeper feature. I know I'm stepping way out of bounds here. It's like, well, in his eyes. But it's because I forgot to mention this about the platinum card, but it's a benefit they both share.

And that is Amex Purchase Protection. That, to me, is a killer benefit that's worth having one of these Amex ultra premium cards for just yesterday. My mother-in-law asked us to order some solar lights for lawn. And my wife said, which card should I put it on? I said, put it on the platinum card, but I could have just as well said it to put it on the Marriott Bonvoy brilliant. Cause it has the same purchase protection up to 90 days, up to $10,000, I think for purchase, if something gets, uh, you know, and the Hilton aspire as well. Uh, the, I think, for purchase if something gets... And the Hilton Aspire as well? I don't remember, to be honest with you. I'll double check. Yes. Yes. No. Maybe. I'd have to double check. So rather than read the benefit terms, probably yes. And I said specifically

with the solar lights, put them on there because my father-in-law has a zero turn lawnmower and drives the thing around like he's, you know, on a qualifying lap. So I know that a couple of those solar lamps are probably going to bite the dust between him and my kids that like to use everything as a baseball bat. So I figured, great, put it on a card that has purchase protection, gets broken, then we can get our money back or get it replaced. So that's a reason to want one of the MX ultra premium cards. Oh, there you go. Nice. All So that's a reason to want one of the MX ultra premium cards. Oh, there you go. Nice. All right. You're, you're up again with another ultra premium Marriott card, the Ritz card, the Ritz card about that one.

So best thing about the Ritz card is that you get the free priority pass for, for your authorized users and that each person's priority pass has unlimited guests. So that's a very, that's a huge part of the Ritz card. I think there's, I'm going to give you two features, but feature number one is that it has that priority pass with unlimited guests. I've gone to a restaurant before with my priority pass and made some friends in line and treated them to lunch because you can, because you get unlimited guests. So that's, you know, one of the, I think the hot things about the Ritz card. The second thing about the Ritz card is of course the annual 50K free night certificate that is only going up in value now, because as Greg said, we've found that Marriott

points are worth more now than they were before, at least in the short term. And now you can add up to 15,000 points per night on top. So I already have a couple of reservations this year for places that I wouldn't have been able to book with my 50K certificate otherwise, where I'm going to get good value out of it. So those are the two things that I think are the best features of the Ritz. Yes, but it's hard to get this card. It's no longer available new. So you have to get a- What do we call it hard to get well you have to get a a chase a chase marriott personal card and uh chase cards can be hard to get if you're over 524 uh and then you've got to wait a year and then ask to upgrade so yeah i'd say it's hard to get true um at least for a lot of people

true true true because i you have to get another card first and then upgrade a good good point okay so now we're on to i think airline cards right and so we have to talk delta because everybody knows greg and his delta cards and spending towards elite status so i i feel like i can see what's coming here with the delta reserve card greg what are the killer features there the keeper features yeah i'm actually not going to talk about spending towards elite status with a Delta Reserve card, but for $550, I hope that's the right price. I think it is. You get Delta Sky Club access when flying Delta. And you also get a companion ticket once a year upon your card's anniversary that can be used for domestic economy or first class. So you can add a companion for a round trip ticket sort of for free. I mean, you have to pay a few taxes for them. Yes, but you have to live somewhere where Delta is convenient

for you. And I don't. So it doesn't interest me because Delta is just not a convenient option for me. But I guess I'm probably in the minority on that. So otherwise, but I don't know, like I say that, and I feel like maybe I'm missing something. There should be another reason to help me out here, Craig. Is there another reason to not like the reserve? I mean, apart from the price tag, which you could say on any of these. Yeah. I mean, if you're, if you're a regular Delta flyer,

I think the question and you want to get into sky clubs, I think the question is more, do you want this one or do you want the Amex Platinum card? Not the Delta Platinum card, but the Amex Platinum card, because both give you Sky Club access. The one bite I would have had if you had introduced the reserve card is that the companion ticket can be really hard to use. Like often you don't find availability for when you want to fly and because it's only available for certain fare classes. Aha, see the things that people like me that don't fly Delta very often forget about with that certificate.

So there you go. All right, so now next up the United Club Infinite card. So, or I think there's a club business card too, right? Either way, these are pricey cards. So the United Club Infinite, $525 a year. So what are the keeper features? Well, of course, United Club Access. If you value that, if you would even remotely consider paying

for a United Club membership to begin with, then this is a better deal because you end up getting a card that also has a couple of other decent features and you get your club access. So that's one reason to want this card. I think the other keeper feature, and this is only going to be a keeper feature to those people who are seeking United Elite status, is the ability to earn a bunch of premier qualifying points through spend because you can earn up, uh, of premier qualifying points through spend, because you can earn up to 4,000, uh, premier qualifying points per year. You get 500 for every $12,000 spend up to $96,000 spend. That seems like a lot of spend to me, but if you really value your United, um,

club or rather a United elite status, then I guess maybe that's worthwhile for you. You know, I'm going to get two and a half. I guess maybe that's worthwhile for you. You know, I'm going to get two and a half. I guess there's also the 10% discount on the safer level economy awards, but how much does that really can add up to? I'm going to stick with the ability to spend toward elite status for number two. All right.

Well, so my yes, but is, is based on the fact that the primary reason to get either of these cards is the United club access. And we we've regularly been seeing Star Alliance Airlines outside of the United States offering some kind of status match or some kind of way of getting to Star Alliance Gold status more easily or cheaper than paying for a card like this.

And that would get you United united club access when flying any star alliance airline so uh yeah there you go there you go um i've got one more the american airlines executive card 450 killer feature is that it uh you get you know club membership to A clubs. But the reason that it's really a killer feature is you get up to, I think it's 10 free authorized users. And each authorized user also gets free access to the American Airlines clubs. So if I lived in a place with a good American Airlines presence and a good club, I could see getting authorized user cards for the whole family telling them all, you're not allowed to use this card for

spend, but you could use it to get into the lounge because why not? I mean, that's a great deal for getting a lot of people into the lounge. Yes. But you had to have a caveat in there. If you live somewhere with good AA service and with a good AA club, which is almost like an oxymoron, isn't it? I mean, I've been in a handful of admirals clubs. And I mean, like, unless you're in Dallas or New York, like, I mean, come on. Have you seen like the trail mix that they have, like in the little like dispenser? That's what they call food. I mean, come on, come on. Yeah. It's been a while since I've been in one. So I am. It's been a while for me too.

Hoping that they've hoping they've gotten better. But yeah, they, they were, they were not. Yeah. Not the world's finest lounges, not the world's finest. I mean, it makes you feel good about priority pass. So yeah. So yeah. But, but if you live in one with a good club then i will say okay maybe maybe so so that that wraps it up those were the keeper features of ultra premium cards keeper features okay so keep those cards for those features so that's going to bring us down i think to post roast do you have a post roast this week g, I don't. I looked hard to roast you because you wrote about the Intercontinental and I was very interested to see what happened. I guess I could roast the fact that your experiment

failed. You wrote this whole post. I had to read the whole thing just to find out that you failed. You were not able to achieve what you wanted to achieve and get yourself the presidential suite or whatever it was at that particular place that that's a fair fair roast i i really enjoyed uh writing that post and and uh i it's one of the things stacking all these sort of random things on top of each other to make an incredible experience for a reasonable price. That's the kind of thing that attracted me to this hobby in the first place. And, um, just got me excited. I think about blogging in the first place. Cause I remember, I remember similar things coming up with, I think it was Hyatt back, back in the day where if you have this and you get, and you match to elite status, you get this other thing. And so, uh, yeah, I, I just, I just love that kind of thing where, where you throw in every trick, you know, and, and, and try to make it all work together. And so, yeah, one aspect of it

didn't work. That's true. But overall it was, it was great. Yeah, I know. It definitely seemed like overall it worked out pretty well in it and it succeeded in almost making me excited about the intercontinental free weekend night coupon thing. So, uh, but I was glad to see that you called it a coupon. I appreciate, I knew that it was in there for me. I appreciate you were like, I'm not going to let him roast me about not calling this a coupon. Uh, that's right. So nicely done. All right. So that brings us, I think to the question of the week and this week's question of the week is a Delta question. And Greg has seen this one because you highlighted this one, but I thought it was a good pick. So Jeffrey says that they listened to the recent episode about big spend. So I'm curious to hear your take on shifting my spend strategy to earn Delta miles and Delta status. Jeff says I spend roughly 10 to $20,000 on credit cards per month with my business. And my wife and I fly economy multiple times a year to Atlanta with our two kids to see family. So earning Delta elite status has become increasingly appealing.

My question is, since we're traveling as a family of four with two young kids, is this strategy a mistake? Should we be discouraged? In other words, if we book our flights using points, does having two young kids, one of which is six months old, impact the likelihood that we'll be upgraded to first class in the event that four seats were open in first class and there was a second family, assuming no kids under 18, would Delta give preference to their family over ours? We're presently putting all of our spend on Amex and Chase for what it's worth. Thanks and looking for what it's worth. Thanks. And looking forward to hearing your thoughts. So what do you think? 10 to 20,000 spend a month. What should he be doing here? Yeah. So Jeffrey didn't mention where he's

flying to Atlanta from, but I'm assuming it's somewhere far enough where like being in first class would matter like LA or whatever. The thing that Jeffrey seems to assume from this message is that if he had elite status, then his whole family could get upgraded. That's not true. Delta will only put you on the upgrade list if you're flying with a maximum of two people on the itinerary. So you and one guest both get basically treated as your status. So no, I don't think this is a good option for you, Jeffrey. I'd say if Delta is the airline you're flying regularly and you want, and first class is important to you, I think a good option for you may be to have you and your wife both get the Delta reserve card and use that companion ticket to fly the four of you in first

class, the chance of finding of four people getting upgraded on any given flight. If you don't buy in first place, very, very low. So I think that's about the best way to secure it. I know I said earlier in the same show that a lot of flights don't show up with availability when using the companion ticket, but two tricks there. One, book way in advance and it'll usually be available because the fare classes that are available are the cheapest ones.

So you'd want that anyway. You'd want the lower cost ones and buy one, get one free. And the other trick is that sometimes the call center people can see better availability for this than is available online. I don't know why that is, but so you could try your luck at calling as well. And I would then put my spend on a card like the Venture X. And that way you're getting two points per dollar. And then when you buy your Delta tickets, you can erase those charges with the miles you've earned. Just do something like a cashback strategy. The other option that would be really good would be one of the Bank of America cards if you have or can get Bank of America Premier Honor status, Platinum Honor status, because then you could earn 2.62% cashback everywhere and use that cashback

to pay for these first class fares. I think you'll do a lot better than earning Delta Miles. Well, you know, I'm kind of surprised at the way you recommend this strategy. On the one hand, I'm not because I don't fly Delta very often, but I don't think that it takes a very frequent Delta flyer to imagine that four upgraded seats on any individual flight anywhere in America is probably pretty unlikely, right? I mean, I don't think it's very common that there are going to be four people that get upgraded, right? So that part of Greg's advice makes sense to me. I mean, the other thing you could try to do, I think, is, well, a couple of other things, but one thing is you could split the spend between the two of you, because how much spend do you have

to do? $25K for an MQD waiver, and then how much would it cost you in spend turn off mqms to each have platinum status greg i mean oh well uh with one card you can't quite get there alone you'd have to have the flying as well so you could get um 60 000 points with 120K spent. 60,000 MQMs, which gets you close. Probably, because it's 10 to 20,000 spend a month. I mean, maybe you're at enough. If it's 20,000 spend a month you're doing, that's 240 a year. So then maybe you could each end up with platinum status.

But again, I don't know if it's going to matter because you're probably not going to get four seats up front. The other thing I think might be worth considering apart from the reserve cards is having a business platinum card because Delta could be your chosen airline and 35% of the points back when you pay with points might make more sense than booking award tickets anyway. And on top of that, if your business charges are big charges, if that $10,000 to $20,000 a month is in charges that are $5,000 or more than you're talking, one and a half points per dollar spent on those charges on your business platinum card also. So that card might be one that makes sense if you don't already have it. Now, if those charges aren't over $5,000 at a time,

then the business platinum isn't the card you're going to want to put most of your spend on, but it's still a card that's worth having for the 35% rebate on Delta. So, and again, you choose Delta as your chosen airline for that. All right. So as usual, there's not one way to clear obvious answer, but a few options.

You have, you have our options. Yep. Okay. All right. Well, if you've enjoyed today's show, you can find us online and subscribe to our email list. You want to go to frequentmiler.com slash subscribe. Again, that's frequentmiler.com slash subscribe to join our daily or weekly email list. You can follow us on all the various social

media. We're on Twitter and Facebook and Instagram. We have a Frequent Miler Insiders Facebook group where you can ask and answer questions each day with lots of other members. And if you have a question or you have some feedback, you want to send it to mailbag at frequent miler.com. Thank you guys very much. And we'll see you again next week. We'll see you next week with less keeper features. Bye everybody..