Frequent Miler on the Air - Magical point conversions | Ep143 | 3-26-22

Episode Date: March 26, 2022

Did you know that your Ultimate Rewards points can still transfer to Amtrak? Or that Citi ThankYou points can become British Airways Avios? This week we talk about ways to wave your magic wand and convert your points creatively. 1:18 Giant Mailbag: Award availability disclaimers 5:33 Confession Time! 9:36 What crazy thing...did British Airways do this week? https://frequentmiler.com/qatar-airways-now-using-avios-book-qsuites-to-from-doha-for-70000-avios-each-way/ 12:22 Mattress running the numbers: Are the IHG cards worth big spend? https://frequentmiler.com/ihg-premier-cards-worth-big-spend/ 33:54 Main Event: Magical Point Conversions First up: JetBlue to Amtrak https://frequentmiler.com/opportunity-missed-dont-forget-about-that-jetblue-to-amtrak-conversion/ 38:04 The Avios Collection 42:30 Wyndham to Caesars Rewards or vice versa https://frequentmiler.com/how-i-saved-my-wyndham-points-from-expiry/ 44:33 Hyatt-->LATAM / Aeromexico 49:40 Chase, Citi, Capital One, or Bilt to Hilton https://frequentmiler.com/transfer-partner-master-list/ 56:51 Question of the Week: What hotel card combo do you recommend for free nights? https://frequentmiler.com/manufacturing-free-nights-hyatt-hilton-marriott/ Subscribe to 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, magical point conversions. This past week, Nick has talked about magically converting his JetBlue points to Amtrak. He forgot all about that and could have done it for a trip to New York City on Amtrak. And there's reasons why that could be a good thing or reasons why you might not want to do it. But regardless, it's kind of magical to turn one type of points into a whole different type of points and still get good value out of it. So- Gives you access into a whole different type of points and still get

good value out of it. So gives you access to a whole new bucket of points, right? You're like, oh, wow, I didn't know that I had Amtrak points, but I do. They're just in my JetBlue account. That's right. That's right. And a lot of people are sitting on JetBlue points because, you know, for various reasons, they earn them and maybe you're not using them and maybe you can use them

for Amtrak. So that's a really cool thing. But as I said, lots of other cool little back door ways of getting to different types of points that we're going to be talking all about. First, of course, giant mailbag. Today's giant mail is quite giant. So I had to trim it down. It's still going to be giant. So bear with me. This comes from Alex who says, and again, I trimmed this down a little bit. I'm getting comfortable. Okay. As an avid, frequent Mylar reader and listener, in parentheses, fanatic, you have all been helping me to fantastic trips for years. One frequent problem I have is

the way all of us in the points and miles community talk about great award charts and redemptions while only casually mentioning award availability. This is not to imply it isn't mentioned, but rather it seems to be maybe even more important than a good award chart. For example, Aeroplan's chart isn't as great to Europe as Virgin Atlantic, except you can find Swiss Air and United availability far more easily than Delta. And don't even get me started on American. Anyway, you guys do it better than the others, but I would love to see this information included more

whenever there is a discussion of award sweet spots, which seems to happen regularly. I mean, that's a good piece of feedback. I think we do typically mention that award availability is tough, especially like on Delta, for instance, that it ebbs and flows. Sometimes you'll see a bunch and sometimes you won't see any at all. But I mean, it is a good point and availability. The thing is, it's so variable as to A, when you're going to find it, and then B, as to how much it matters to different travelers. Like, you know, for me, now that I need four seats, you know, availability

is, and that my kids are starting school and things like that. Availability at the right times is much more important to me than it was a couple of years ago when I only needed two seats and we could take off tomorrow or next month or next year or whenever. So I totally understand that there are people in very different circumstances and award availability is, I don't know, a difficult challenge. It sure is. And there's no magical answer to that. And, you know, the problem with, and Alex knows this, it's clear from his email that he knows the problem, which is that it changes all the time. So we can't really say, you know, that this one never has a word of ill or this one frequently does. I mean, we try to say that if we know it, but it's just so variable that there are trends. Like I agree with him that Swiss Air and he didn't mention Lufthansa, but they tend to open lots of business class award space. And that's fantastic. Tarkish is releasing a lot.

I also mentioned United as being easier. I don't agree with that. I don't agree with that at all. I thought the same thing. I was like, well, yeah, I always see Swiss seats, but United seats, that was the first thing that hopped out of me. But that's the thing about award availability, right? Like, I mean, I could tell you what usually is the case,

but it won't matter at all if your vacation is during dates when whatever I tell you is not true, you're going to think, oh, Nick's a liar. And the thing is, I think a lot of us that are in this hobby are the type of people that aren't going to accept a less than sort of like close to ideal, at least redemption. So like, I'm going to keep hunting until I find that Delta availability that I want. Now I know not everybody has that luxury. So some people will be like, well, I have to travel during these two weeks when the kids are off of school and that's it. So I know some people won't have the same flexibility

that I do, but I know there's a lot of us also in this game who are like, well, you know what, if I have to leave on a Tuesday at three o'clock, but I get first class for 20,000 points, that's what I'm going to do. So I'll find a way to make that work. And so I think it's worth highlighting those sweet spots because I think a lot of us like to hunt for those and are willing to hold out for them. And like we said, I think it's just hard to come up with universals as to what's always true. Right. Right. So Alex, we agree with you completely. We just don't know really what to do about it other than we will try to keep making point of it when we know one way or another about

award availability. What you just said, Nick, made me realize I should share a little story about my own award booking experience last night and this morning. So I need a particular flight in Europe, just a short hop across Europe. Usually those flights are really cheap, right? Right. In this case, there's really only one flight that meets our needs, and that's on Air France. And it's- Let me guess, it's not really cheap. It's not really cheap. It's well over $300 for just this one way little hop from Paris to Italy. And when I look up award availability,

there's no economy award availability. There is business class. Now, we know that these little- Fine intra-European business class, huh? We know, yeah. European business class, what that means is you sit in a coach-like seat. It's closer to the front of the plane than the other coach seats. And the middle seat is blocked. So you don't have someone

next to you, not even your spouse. Because it's literally blocked off, right? Literally blocked the middle seat. So they'll be on the window and you'll be in the aisle or vice versa. So that's what business class is. So it's not usually worth spending a lot on. But so Delta shows the award, the business class award, 25,000 miles per person. Air France shows it for about 40 something thousand per person. Aeromexico shows it for about 156,000 per person. Going in the wrong direction here. Virgin Atlantic shows it for 8,000 per person.

Okay. So that's exciting, right? Right. Bingo. I've got Virgin Atlantic miles. I get on, I try to book it. It says, and it goes all the way through. I put in the credit card information, everything.

It says, oh, the, you know, tickets are no longer available. Seats are no longer available. These things change all the time. I go back to another search. They're still there. I check on Delta. It's still there from Delta and run it again and again, again. They no longer seem to, Virgin Atlantic no longer seems to have their like text-based chat feature or anything like that. And their website says, basically, don't bother calling. It'll take forever to get through to anyone. So I tried again this morning and the search results say only two left. Get the same error message.

I ended up booking through Delta. Really? 25,000 per person. You didn't call Virgin Atlantic and try? Adam Draper I didn't have time. So it was before us recording the show. I would have called, right? But it's like these two seats, if just one person comes on and snags one of them, then I'm in trouble. I don't really have a good backup plan because the cash rate is very high.

And yeah, so anyway, I did not like doing that, but I don't know that that was the best decision, but it hurts knowing that that 8K award is out there and I couldn't figure out how to use it. Anyway, there you go. That was sort of confession time, I guess. Even if we told you that, hey, it's always available. When you look at Virgin Atlantic, you see those Air France flights are available all the time.

I can tell you that, but it may not be true as it turns out. When you get to the booking stage, it may not actually work. I think something about the Virgin Atlantic website is broken in actually finishing the booking part. Because I did think, oh, maybe it's just not really bookable. It's like Phantom Award space. But the fact that I was able to book it through Delta means, nope, it was really there. It was really there, yeah.

You know, I would have to bet that a phone agent would have been able to make that happen, but I don't know for sure. But we'll never know. We'll never know. Well, we may never know. Unless two seats reappear, then I'm going know for sure. Yeah. But we'll never know. We'll never know. Well, we, we may never know unless, unless two seats reappear, then I'm going to keep trying and then I could cancel the Delta award.

Right. Right. That makes sense. That makes sense. All right. Fun times. So that brings us, I think too,

speaking of craziness, what crazy thing did another European airline do this week? What crazy thing did British airways do this week? Yeah. So British airways was, you know, they've gotten really tight with Cutter, you know, so, so Cutter has changed their award program to earn Avios, which is the same currency British Airways and Iberia and Aer Lingus uses. And so there's sort of a tighter connection there. And they also specifically advertise ability to move points back and forth one-to-one between British Airways and Qatar. And then you can indirectly then also move stuff from Qatar to like Iberia because you could go to British Airways and move it from there to Iberia. Um, so anyway, so, so that happened this week that became live this week.

And the other thing that, that became live is British Airways apparently didn't like having awards that were way more expensive than Cutter's own awards. So, uh, in particular, the award that everybody raves about is, um, US to Doha on Cutter Q Suites is a fantastic product. And it's a fantastic deal with Cutter miles for 70,000 points per person or with American Airlines miles, 70,000 miles per person. But British Airways has a distance-based chart, right? So they're going to do the math and figure out how far it is. And they're going to charge you tons of obvious, right? Right. Right. And so flights from California should cost a lot more than flights from Boston and so on. It's a long way to go. Nope. They changed their minds on that one. They

said, enough with this distance-based award chart. We want to play with the others. 70,000 points is what we're going to charge you for this, which is great. How are you going to change the rules of the game? I mean, yeah, I'm not complaining. Let me get that straight. I'm not complaining. It's great. It is great. It's awesome.

But weird, isn't it? It is. It's crazy. I mean, because they have a published award chart. And so how do you know what you're going to get now? You just have to do the searches and find out, I guess. So who knows? Are there other deals like this hanging out there in British Airways world? Who would have ever looked, right? I mean, who would have ever looked? Right, right. At least at the time that we're recording this,

we don't know. Maybe we'll have, by the time you listen to this, who knows? Maybe we'll have published all kinds of other sweet spots from British Airways, but nice, nice new feature there. Thank you for the craziness. Okay. Good job, British Airways. Keep up the good work. Let's have some more good values using British Airways obvious. That would be nice. We appreciate that kind of a change. Yes. Yes. Yes. Speaking of doing the math and figuring things out, let's talk about, I don't know if we were talking about it. I just, that was a transition there. Let's talk about mattress running the numbers. We're going to talk about IHG this week and run the numbers with IHG because the credit cards are now newly revamped. The business card is now out. So the question on everybody's mind,

I'm sure is everybody's mind. Should I spend like 40 or 60,000 bucks on an IHG card, Greg? Right, right. That's the question. I'm going to expand it. Should I spend 20,000? Should I spend 40,000? Should I spend 60,000? That's the question. This is going to be fun because hold onto your hats. We're going to be doing lots of math. Bust out your calculators, folks. All right. And everybody, if you're a podcast listener, you're almost certainly a podcast listener because you love listening to math. And that's not the case.

Look at the timestamps and just skip ahead to the main event. All right. All right. Let's get into this. So this is kind of fun because IHG cards previously were like, it was an easy question to answer. If someone said, should I charge things to my IHG card? No. You have the IHG card in the past for the annual free night cert.

And that was it. Oh, well, also for the other perks, like the annual free night certificate and things like that. I'm sorry. For the platinum status and for the fourth night free awards. Wow. You got to correct me more, Nick. Sorry. Sorry. Let's go with that. Let's slide with that. I shouldn't have. You're right. You're right. I was thinking to my, I was, I was going through my head. I was like, and they have those every now and then Chase has those spending offers for five X points, but even those have been a little questionable on the IH card right yeah yeah you know it's it's like you get sort of goodish value but but often there's competing cards that

will give you a better value even with five extra words and the thing is like the reason i spaced out was because my next thought was do i have one of those right now where is my ihg card that was that was literally that was the thought pattern right right right right, right. If you had my filing system, you would know to go to the binder that's not for Amex cards and go to the letter C because it's a chase card and search through there for the IHG cards. Keep following us for other nerdy tips. All right. So, okay. So here's the thing.

That all changed because IHG cards used to earn only one point per dollar for non bonus spend, but now it earns a base, the, the premier cards, premier, um, consumer and business cards are in three points per dollar. So that's a, that's a huge, you know, bump up in the, in the value of using it for regular spend. And not only that, both cards offer perks at $20,000 annual spend and at $40,000 annual spend. And the business card offers additional perks at $60,000 spend. So is it worth doing those levels of spend? So let's get into that. When we last looked at the value, the redemption value of IHG points, we're looking about 0.6 of a cent. That's our RRV. That's the average value you get without trying to cherry pick awards. That means you can get much better than that by only using points

when you see a good value. But let's just say on average, you get 0.6. That means when you're spending three points per dollar, you're getting about 1.8 cents value, which we wouldn't do, right? If that was it, because anyone can get a 2% cash back card and do better than that. And there's even better award options than that. So I just said jump in because you told me to jump in. You said when you're spending 3X. So what Greg meant there is you're earning 3X everywhere now is the base rate on the card. So if you're spending with your credit card and earning 3X points,

you're essentially earning like 1.8% back towards IHG stays, which isn't particularly exciting. Right, right. I'm not listening to what I'm saying. Well, it's not like you were saying spending points. And so I just wanted to be clear for the three new listeners out there that we're not talking about spending IHG points. The three new listeners who stuck it out through the math section. That's been generous. Okay. All right. So anyway, so just spending on your credit card and getting 3X points, not great by itself. If you know that you're going to be using those points for high value awards, not just average value awards, it could be very well worth it, but that's not what we're

going to talk about. We're going to say, well, what if it's only worth 0.6 cents each point? And when you spend $20,000 on an IHG Premier card, you get 10,000 bonus points and $100 statement credit. Okay. So the 10,000 bonus points adds $60 of value. If we're valuing the points at 0.6 and the a hundred dollars statement credit adds a hundred dollars of value. So $160 value. Tricky math on that one, Greg. Thanks. Right. You got it. And the, the regular spend, so you spent $20,000, you earn three points per dollar on that spend. So you got 60,000 points. Those are worth $360 at that 0.6 valuation. So 360 plus the 160 equals $520 worth of value you got from that spend divided by 20,000 gives you 2.6% back in value. Look at that. I bet there's some calculators out there showing exactly that amount right now.

They've been sitting there punching in the numbers. 2.6, I mean, 2.6 is pretty good, isn't it, Greg? It is pretty good. And, you know, and here now the question of whether you're going to get average value or better than average value from your points is kind of, it's almost irrelevant. If you just think that you have a good shot of getting better than average value or better than average value from your points is kind of, it's almost irrelevant. If you just think that you have a good shot of getting better than average value, it might be worth doing, right? Right. Because I mean, even if you're a little bit below average value, it's still going to probably beat out a 2% back card if you value points for IHG awards.

I mean, that's the thing to keep in mind whenever we're making these comparisons with cash. If you're earning cash back, you have a bit more flexibility. If you're earning IHG points and we're saying it's like 2.6% back, it's like 2.6% back towards IHG awards days. So keep that in mind, I guess, as you're doing the math. But still, I mean, that's better than what most people are going to get day to day on most of their credit cards on unbonus spend. I mean, we're not even talking about the bonus categories here, right? We're just talking about the three acts everywhere. So you use this for taxes or for health insurance or for whatever, like whatever it is that you're not going to earn bonus points on normally for 20 K spend. And that's reasonable value. It is. It's reasonable. You know, it's not enough to go out and like

ditch like other opportunities, but if you're into IHD, it's reasonable value. Now, a Nicholas from an episode or two ago would have said, but wait a minute. But wait a minute. Hold on. You can't really value the IG points at 0.6 because- Well, that's- Okay, good. I'm they're often available on sale for half a cent each. And so, you know, another strategy, of course, is to get a 2% cashback card. And whenever the points are on sale for half a cent each, you buy them and you're essentially earning four points per dollar instead of three by earning cash back. So what I did is for each 20K of spend that I analyzed, I came up with the half cent equivalent. So if you were only valuing the points at half a cent, what would be your rate of return? And at 20K spend, your rate of return

is 2.25%. There you go. Okay. So I'm glad you brought that up because when you were talking about before you're talking about the six tenths of a cent per point, so 1.8% basically for when you're spending on unbonus spending, earning three points per dollar, you're saying kind of like 1.8%. And you were like, if you know you're going to redeem them at better value, then that's very reasonable or something along these, you used an adjective there or an adverb where I was like, well, I don't know if I'd say it's highly reasonable or very good because that was my thought. Like you can buy these points for half a cent each. So slow down, let's not get out of hand. So I'm glad you thought that through Greg nicely done. So 2.25, that's why they, that's why this man is Greg, the frequent miler guys.

You see how he thinks about these things. So the frequent calculator, that's right. That's a whole nother site. That's a better, better, better buy that domain right now. The frequent calculator.com. So 2.25% is still better than what most people are getting. There are cards on the market where potentially you can get more, but 2.25 is still reasonably good. And I totally agree that we probably shouldn't overvalue these points, anything beyond half a cent each, even though you may be able to redeem them for better. You would always buy them for half a cent because you always can basically.

Right. That's, that said, we're going to have to keep an eye on the sales and see if those continue. Because in the past, they haven't been as regular a few years ago as they've been in the past couple pandemic years. And so if it goes back to being rare or non-existent, then I think 0.6 is a reasonable number to use. That's true.

So, all right, moving forward. So, all right, so you spent the 20K, you got your bonuses. Right. Should you spend another 20K? Because another 20K spend will get you to 40K, which at 40K, you get diamond status, which is their new name for their top tier elite. So before it was called

Spire Elite, and now it's called Diamond Elite. So what do you think? Should you... $40,000 on an IHG? This just sounds a little crazy, doesn't it? $40,000 on an IHG card. I mean, first thing that we should mention when we're talking about big spend bonuses, and so this really kind of backs up the truck and should have probably been put out there right at the beginning. The big spend bonuses are only worth considering if you already have enough spend to meet whatever other welcome bonuses you may be interested in going after or opening as many cards as it is that you're comfortable opening. Because I definitely would not definitely would not dedicate 20 or $40,000 spend to an IHG card if that was going to prevent me from earning other welcome bonuses that are

worth far more. So that's great. Great point. It's questionable here because I mean, you could do better out there with other cards and other card bonuses and maybe even other big spend bonuses. But getting back to the question, so you said, is it worth spending another 20 and spending 40,000 total for diamond status? For IHG diamond status? What, for like two bottles of water, Greg? What are you doing? So, all right. First of all, we don't yet know what perks diamond status is going to have. We know that they're planning on revamping the program and we know that that's been delayed until sometime in April and who knows, may even go later than that. And so we just don't know. If they had amazing perks, maybe you can make an argument for it. So what I did is I based the analysis on the way Spire Elite works, which is when you earn Spire Elite status, you get a choice benefit.

And one of those choice benefits is 25,000 bonus points. So I don't know if that'll still exist as an option, but let's just do the analysis as if that's an option. You spend another 20,000, you get 25,000 bonus points. So that means that the extra $20,000 you just spent, um, we'll give you the base 60,000 points. Cause remember you're earning three points per dollar. Um, so plus the 25,000 points is 85,000 points. At 0.6, that's worth $510. At 0.5, that's worth, what, $425. And so that comes out to either 2.55% or 2.1%, depending on whether you're using the 0.6 or the 0.5 value. This is where, you know, mathematics is useful, but it comes to a point where you're

kind of like, yeah, okay, you can make the numbers work, but it kind of still feels a little icky to spend $40,000 on an IHG card, right? I mean, I don't know. I have a hard time suggesting. I get you. I get you. But let's just do the math here instead of the icky feelings. Okay. All right. All right. All right. So just make this sterile and just go with the math with the mathematical numbers there. That's not bad. It just seems that's kind of surprised me. I did not expect to see that, that, you know, that it's not bad. Now, remember, it is contingent on this ability to get twenty five thousand bonus points. We don't know if that'll be true. Right.

And we also don't know what other perks they may come out with. Although I don't get the sense that it's going to be the kind of perks that we really want. I mean, IHG is mostly focused on rewarding people for spending money at their hotels. And so I don't know,

I view IHG as being a great program. If you're spending a lot of your employer's money on hotels and they fit whatever the budget is for your per diem stays or whatever. So I feel like they're best for people who are spending a lot at IHGs already. And if that's you and like 20,000 of this spend is already going to be your IHG stays for work that get reimbursed by your employer. Well then, okay, now maybe I could say, all right, well then you spend another $20,000 on unbonus purchases from your day-to-day life to get that status and a reasonable return here. Yeah. I mean, we'll have to see,

because it wouldn't surprise me at all if diamond status includes things like a regular discount on awards on top of things like Fortnite free. And so, you know, it could be very valuable from that point of view too, if they do something like that. So we'll see. What I agree with you that we shouldn't expect the kind of like elite benefits that we're used to with Hyatt, for example, of the free, full, hot breakfast and sweet upgrades and things like that seem unlikely to me. Right, but a discount on awards, that's a reasonable guess

and also potentially a reasonably good benefit that'll differentiate them. So yeah, I mean, I guess we'll see. We'll find out. So if we determine that it's worth it, if we say, okay, yes, whatever benefits they've come out with, it's worth spending 40 to get to diamond status. Then you got to pump the brakes, right?

You don't spend any more money on an IHG card, do you? So the question is, do we spend 20,000 more to get to 60,000 spend? And the answer with the personal card is super easy. No, because there's no bonus at 60,000 spend with the personal card. I mean, that was the answer. That was an easy answer for me too, Craig. I need the analysis, but yes.

So there's no reason to do any more spend at that point because three acts is not worthwhile. On the personal card. On the personal card. You'll have plenty of points at that point. Business card. Business card though, we'll give you another free night certificate. So another free night worth up to 40,000 points per night. And if you remember, they indirectly made these cert somewhere that costs 50,000 points for that night, use the

certificate for, for 40,000 of those points. And you throw in 10,000 of your IHG points to get to the 50. And because of that ability, um, I, I think everyone's going to have an easier time using their certs for full 40 K value basically. So, so here's what I did. As I said, certificates are never worth as much as points because they expire in a year. They can't be used, like a 40K cert can't be used for four 10K nights. There's a lot of limitations, but let's just say that we value it at three-fourths of its point value. So we value it at 30,000 points instead of 40,000. All right, the 20,000 spend to get you to 60 will get you the base 60,000 points

because you earn three points per dollar. Now add the value of 30,000 points for the free night certificate. So that's 90, thousand points value, which at point six is worth five hundred and forty dollars, which gives you a two point seven percent return on that final 20 K spend unless you value at half a cent. And then it's a two point two five percent return. That's it. I'm dumping Hyatt. It's over Hyatt. It's over. Go on IHG. Right. So, all right.

So this was fun for the three people who stuck it out. Thank you. Thank you for sticking it out there. It's interesting. The longest mattress run segment ever. It's interesting. Because who would have ever thought? Yeah, all right.

So maybe. Maybe it's worth spending on the IHG cards. You know what? I'm going to wait and see what, what the, what the, you know, elite benefits are and so on, because I could see if they are really desirable, you know, I, I could see wanting to dedicate 40 K, whether I'd go another 20 K, that seems, that seems very questionable to me, even at, even at that high rate of return. Uh, it's kind of easier to make sure that everyone in the family has like both the business card and personal card. So you're getting,

um, the free nights every year, uh, automatically. Right. You know, and I, I, I know we got to get into the main event here, but I'm a little more lukewarm, like more days that pass with this concept of topping off free night certificates with points. I'm becoming more lukewarm on it. Just this morning, I was, yeah, I was looking at it this morning. I was looking at a hotel stay in New York city and intercontinental there, which I wouldn't have probably picked for this particular stay anyway. Uh, but it was 40,500 points. And I was like, oh, well, pretty soon maybe I'll be able to top off a free night certificate with 500 points. That seems great. And then I was like, wait a second. If they charged a surcharge to use your free night certificates, like if Marriott and IHG said,

you know what, you can use your free night certificate, but there's a $25 redemption fee or a $10 redemption fee or, you know, 18, whatever it might be. Wouldn't we be saying that's ridiculous. You get a free night certificate and then you have to pay a surcharge in order to use your free night certificate. We would be up in arms if there, if there was a cash surcharge, we'd be up in arms, but it's points. So we don't think about it like money, even though it is. And with IHG, it feels more like money because I just view the points as half a cent each since they're always on sale for that. So I think that's why it triggered that reaction. I was like, it's like paying $2 and 50 cents to use my free night certificate. That's ridiculous, isn't it? I don't know. So I'm becoming more lukewarm on it just

this morning. So that just feels like an emotional reaction as opposed to a logical reaction. To me, this ability unlocks. So what I hated was when they capped the free nights. They used to be uncapped. You could use them everywhere. When they capped it, yeah, I hated that. But now it's like, given that they're capped, meaning you can only use it for up to 40,000 points for the free part of it,

over and over, I want to stay somewhere and it costs more than 40,000 points for the free part of it. Um, over and over, you know, I, I want to stay somewhere and it costs more than 40,000 points. And so I don't use a certificate and I end up at the end of the year, like trying to figure out how do I use these things last year? I think I let one expire. Um, and that, that really bugs me. I don't think that'll happen anymore. They won't expire. I'll get full value. Cause you know, I'm going to see that 40,500 award and that's where I want to stay. I'm going to book it and 500 points. That's like nothing. That's what Marietta and I, she wants you to think. I mean, you're right. You're definitely right. When I thought about it more like money, I was like, if that was a cash surcharge, I think people would be less excited. Now, if there were still award charts and it was

like, okay, pay $25 for a category six or $50 for a category seven or, you know, a hundred dollars, whatever it might be, then maybe people would be more excited in general or not, not as upset about the cash surcharge thinking, oh, well, it's still a really good deal. But I feel like that general, like, you don't know how much there's going to be an award surcharge. It's basically like a fuel surcharge, right? On your award certificates. I mean, one, you don't know how much there's going to be an award surcharge. It's basically like a fuel surcharge, right? On your award certificates. I mean, when you don't mind paying, I guess, cause you're going to get a better product out of the deal. Some people don't mind paying the British airways fuel surcharges or Lufthansa fuel surcharges. Cause the flight, you know, meets their needs, but I'm not going to pay those fuel surcharges. So I feel kind of

annoyed by the free night certificates. I'll probably use the points and top them off. Don't get me wrong. Just getting off my soapbox. Okay. Let's talk about, let's move on from Nick's nonsenserak to, no, from JetBlue to Amtrak. And the idea is that when you have your JetBlue points, you can transfer them to Amtrak. Now, you only get half as many, but with Amtrak points worth up to 2.9 cents each towards Amtrak travel, that's like getting 1.45 cents per JetBlue mile, which is not bad, not bad at all. Exactly. So that's what they're usually worth about towards a JetBlue flight, right? Exactly. And often less. So that's a really nice option if you want to travel Amtrak. I used this conversion recently for my son because his Amtrak points were getting almost ready to expire. Two months before expiry, we shopped through the Amtrak portal to buy something for like a dollar just to earn some

Amtrak points to generate activity in his account so that his points would not expire. But guess what? Even though the points are pending, they still haven't been applied to his Amtrak account two months later. So his points were still going to expire. So instead I jumped on and converted some of his JetBlue points to Amtrak. Boom. In our case, it took about five hours for that conversion. So other people said it took them about a day, but either way- Yeah, it was about 30 hours for me.

For you, so a little over a day. But still, the fact is you could renew. If your Amtrak points are about to expire in a couple of days, this is still a viable option. So there's some coolness there. And it also gives, you know, some programs, some transferable points programs, the ability to convert their points to Amtrak. Now, again, it would be two to one, not one to one, but by going indirectly, by you transfer your transferable points to JetBlue, and then from there, you transfer it to Amtrak. So Chase and Citi both allow one-to-one transfers to JetBlue, so you could do that with them. MX allows transfers to JetBlue, but they have a lesser transfer ratio. So I wouldn't do that. And Capital One dropped JetBlue, I think, altogether, right? So yeah, that's interesting to me because I think you're getting reasonable value potentially because like we said, even though you're getting half as many Amtrak points, the Amtrak points

are worth more than the JetBlue points. So 1.4 something cents per JetBlue point or 1.4 something cents per city thank you point or whatever, that's reasonable value for a redemption. And for something that you wouldn't otherwise ordinarily have easy access to Amtrak points for. So I thought that was really good. I also personally was excited about this because I have a bunch of JetBlue points. I've earned a bunch from, they have the card link to offer for Lowe's. And so I've earned a bunch spending money at Lowe's where I've earned three points per dollar in-store or shopping on the Lowe's.com website also earned three points per dollar.

So I got a bunch of JetBlue points and I have not flown JetBlue in like almost 10 years at this point because they just don't have a 10 years at this point, because they just don't have a good presence at my local airport and they just never meet my needs. Now I know lots of people love, I like JetBlue a lot. I find their economy seats particularly comfortable. I've flown them a bunch of times in the past, just they haven't met my needs the last almost 10 years here now. So I've got these points just collecting dust, doing nothing in my accounts. And I was thinking, ah, someday I'll use them for a mint flight or something, even though it might not be a great value. I'll just splurge or points I wouldn't have had otherwise, whatever.

I'll use them eventually. Now I'm like, oh, well, I have a really good use for those potentially. So that's exciting. Right, right. It is, it is, it is. And, you know, let's talk beyond JetBlue and Amtrak now. We brought this up earlier about Cutter joining the Avios collection. The Avios collection. That's what we should call it from now on. The Avios collection. Things like that can make transferable points currencies more valuable. So Citibank, for example, one of its Achilles heels for its thank you points program is that it then from Qatar to British Airways. And then if you want to

from British Airways to Iberia or to Aer Lingus and all of them have slightly different ways of pricing awards and pricing fuel surcharges. So you kind of never know what you're going to get. It's sort of worth running searches on all the programs to see what it would cost to book your award on any one of them and then move your points around. Yeah. I mean, and they have different sweet spots where there is a particular sweet spot that it's really good for this or really good for that. And so that ability to move the points between the programs is great. Like you said, it increases the value of city thank you points for sure. And also just gives you a lot of flexibility in taking advantage of good award chart sweet spots. And there are quite a few different issuers

that don't list all of the Avios partners. For instance, Capital One, now I can't remember, but I think they list that they transfer to British Airways maybe, and they don't actually list that they transfer to Iberia and Aer Lingus because you can't transfer directly to those programs, but you can just through British Airways. Right. And now Amtrak, Chase, and Capital One,

all of which had the ability to transfer to, and still have the ability to transfer to British Airways, now can indirectly transfer to Qatar as well. Okay. You just said Amtrak, but I think you meant Amex. I was like, wait a second. Is there another Amtrak transfer that I'm not aware of? I'm just trying to keep you on your toes there. I got to pay attention now and jump in on these because a few people got lost in the math weeds there and they're still trying to find their way out. So just try to give them a little light here. Follow along. And one thing that's unique, almost unique about these transfers of obvious points from one program to another is that you don't lose any value if you go back the other way. You can move from British Airways to Qatar and back to British Airways and you have the same number of points. That's not true in what we were talking about before. So when you transfer from Amtrak to JetBlue,

you would lose a lot of value. It's not one to two at that point, as you would expect going the other, you know, because the other way is two to one. And this is a good point because a very common misconception amongst newcomers to the game, and in fact, a question that we got at the Travel and Adventure show last weekend was,

how do I transfer my miles from... In fact, the question I think last weekend was, how do I transfer my miles from United to Turkish in order to take advantage of Turkish award pricing? And the answer is, oh, you can't do that. Because generally speaking, you can't move miles from one airline specific program to another airline specific program. This is a really odd exception that doesn't exist in many places in this space where you can move the points freely between different airlines that all use Avios as a common currency.

Right. It's super confusing because we talk about how you can use Turkish miles to book United Awards. So to book actually flying on United. But that's different from moving Turkish miles to United or vice versa. Right, right, right. Those are two completely separate concepts. But I get why people who don't know the ins and outs of this, that would be confusing. You hear that,

and what's the difference between moving the points? I totally get why that would be totally mystifying. I tried to think of some kind of analogy earlier today before recording to explain the difference. I could not think of one. Preston Pyshko Yeah, no, there's not a good one. So, Avios, that's your strange exception to the rule where you can move them back and forth between the different airlines that use Avios. So, because there are different airlines that use the same common currency. Right. So, I'm going to jump to another magical transformation of points that allows one-to-one in both directions is Wyndham to Caesars Rewards. You could go Wyndham to Caesars, Caesars to Wyndham. It's still one-to-one. There is a cap of, I think, 30,000 points per year. So

there's limited utility there, but it means that if you have Citibank thank you points or you have Capital One miles, you can indirectly transfer those points to Caesars. I'm not sure why you'd want to because they're only worth a penny each. But you can move them to Wyndham and then to Caesars. You want the joy of free from getting a massage or dinner or whatever it is at Caesars, I guess. You have that option. Or then also, if you want to get into the lounge, if you have Caesars Diamond status and you want to get into the lounge, you need 1,000 rewards credits for that. So you can move them from Wyndham over to Caesars. So the other thing is, by the way, not only, I mean, you're talking about from Citi and from Capital One, but the other option there, too, is if you've got the Wyndham Rewards business card, then you're earning eight points per dollar at gas stations and effectively earning 8% back towards Caesars spend.

So that may be worthwhile. Or if you have Caesars points that you've earned from the Caesars sportsbook, then you also have an option there. Or from actually being on site and doing whatever you do to earn Caesar's points. Move those over to Wyndham if you'd like. Move them to Wyndham and book a Vacasa vacation rental, like great, great value. No kidding. You know, that's a pretty cool little partnership there. And it's very niche, you know, very specific, but again, super cool that allows two-way transfers. Okay. If you have Hyatt points or you have a Chase Ultimate Wards or built points that transfer one-to-one to Hyatt,

then you can transfer one-to-one to LATAM or LATAM, however you say that program. Or LATAM. I don't know. Yeah. LATAM. L-A-T-A-M. That's how I've always pronounced it, but I don't know. Yeah. Who knows? Well, I only pronounce it that way because it was LON and it was TOM. So I pronounce it LATAM now. I don't know if that's right. That's just the way I pronounce it. It's right for the show. There you go. All right. So you could transfer them to La Tom and maybe they have some amazing award chart sweet spots. I know we were talking about this just before the show and there was a reader that had pointed out a few sweet spots with them a few years back. I think it was just pre-pandemic or something. And so I remember starting to look into it and then not going too

far with it. But one of the things that I remember, I seem to remember anyway, is that they release more availability to their own members. And the reason that might be special is if you want to visit Easter Island, because that's your ticket to Easter Island. It can be very difficult to snag those award tickets from Santiago to Easter Island. So if they have more availability for their own members, transferring from Hyatt to LATAM or from Bilt to Hyatt to LATAM or Chase Ultimate Awards to Hyatt to LATAM

could be worthwhile for that. And then of course they also fly on to Australia, I think from Easter Island, if I remember correctly. Right, right. They also partner with Delta and you might be able to find some good values there. I don't know. I suspect that it's often not good value, but there could be some secret values in there. So that's worth keeping an eye on.

Another one is Aeromexico. You could do the same thing. Hyatt, one-to-one to Aeromexico. Now, a year ago, I would have said, don't ever do that because Aeromexico's awards seem to be way overpriced. They do have a round the world award that sounds good in price, but everybody I've known who's tried to book such a thing has failed because their support for that is so miserable. But Nick recently ran across a good use of Aeromexico miles. Yeah, they have access to expanded availability on Delta flights. So Aeromexico actually has more availability, or I should say they have access to more Delta award seats than other Delta partners like Air France or Virgin Atlantic.

Aeromexico has this basically non-saver access to Delta flights. And of course, it'll cost you more miles, but not necessarily as many miles as Delta would charge you for the same flights. And at the time when I had written about it, there was a transfer bonus to Aeromexico. So it worked out even better from Amex. But still, there may be times where the flight you really want, Delta wants a lot of miles for and it isn't available to Virgin Atlantic or Air France. You might just want to hop on to Aeromexico's site and take a look and see because it may very well be available. We wrote about a whole bunch of different examples like that. Now, as we were talking about this, or as you were

talking about it, I thought to myself, you know what? We're leading readers astray here though, because when we talked about transferring to a lot of time and transferring to Aeromexico, we're saying you can transfer one-to-one, but that's not exactly true. You can't transfer a thousand points to a thousand, right? You have to do this in specific blocks. That's true. That's true. You have to do it in, I think it's 50K blocks, which, right. Which, which that's a really good point because stranding a bunch of points with Aeromexico, that'd be very sad. Right. Right. Nobody wants to strand their points with Aeromexico. You don't want to be stranded

like that. So take both of these, Latam and AeromeMexico, more as interesting curiosities than something you're really going to rush out and do because most of the time it's not going to be good value. And if you do find good value with AeroMexico and if you have Amex points, Amex even without a transfer bonus- Which you should because Amex is giving them out like cotton candy here. I mean, come on. Exactly. If you have Amex points, even without a transfer bonus, they transfer one. Oh my gosh. You should Andy here. I mean, come on. Exactly. Uh, if you have MX points, even without a transfer bonus, they transfer one to 1.6. So it's absolutely,

uh, a much, much better way to go. And you can do it, you know, a thousand Amtrak MX. Whoa. That was an MX points at a time, uh time for those transfers. Greg's got a one track mind. Oh, that was, I'm leaving. That was so, so follow me for more great dad jokes. All right.

So, so, so those are two examples you're never going to do, right? You're not really going to transfer your high points a lot of time, unless you get that elusive flight to Easter Island that you can't find otherwise. And you're not probably going to be transferring to Aeromax anytime soon since you have easy access to Amex membership rewards points. Amex, that is, Greg. So what are some

other ones that people might actually use? All right. All right. So you know that Amex has a standard transfer to Hilton, one to two. And you probably think that they're the only transferable points or even built to Hilton, 10,000 points in any one of them becomes 15,000 Hilton points. So it's one to 1.5, not as good as Amex, but it's kind of cool that it is possible. So how do you do it? You transfer first to Virgin Atlantic one-to-one and Virgin Atlantic lets you transfer 10,000 Virgin Atlantic points to 15,000 Hilton points. Again, as I said before, you can't go the other way. If you go the other way, Hilton to Virgin Atlantic, you'll lose super like ton of value. I think you'd only end up with, you know, um, 1500 Virgin Atlantic miles, something like that, maybe 3,000 at most. So don't do that.

But if you don't have Amex points, which seems strange, but it's at least possible to do. Now, should you do it? Oh, wait, wait, hold on a second. Let's back up the track. So the Virgin Atlantic to Hilton transfer, does that have to be in blocks of 10,000 points? I think so.

You think so? Okay. Well, then maybe it doesn't work. Well, actually, you could probably do the math and figure it out. So what I was thinking in my mind was, as you were talking about that, so Amex offers transfer bonuses pretty frequently, right? So would it be? No, but it wouldn't work out better, would it?

I guess it wouldn't. No. No, it wouldn't work out. No, nevermind. Nevermind. See, I needed the calculator and I didn't have it out yet. So the, I know, I know where you're going now, now to answer the question, should you ever do this transfer? The answer is easy. No, no. And, and, and here's why, um, Hilton, we talked earlier in the show about how IHG sometimes has half cent sales. Hilton frequently has half cent sales on their further points. You could buy their points for half a cent each. That means if you have, let's say you have Chase or City Points that you can just cash out for one cent each, that means you can indirectly convert your Chase or Citi points to Hilton points at a one to two ratio.

That is, you convert the first two pennies and then from pennies convert to twice as many Hilton points because of these half cent sales. And so if you really need Hilton points, it's still not a great way to do it, but it's better than the alternative. Right. You cash out 10,000 points for a hundred bucks. You buy 20,000 Hilton points and you skip this whole Virgin Atlantic intermediary to only end up with 15,000 instead. So yeah, totally that is what you would do.

Now, by the way, we mentioned earlier that we don't know if IHG will continue to run sales as frequently in whatever the new world order is here. Hilton, though, I'm more confident will. Their most recent point sale, one ended and the next one began. I think it was four days in between before the next half cent sale started. So also, yeah. Also, you know, when I've looked at the average value of Hilton points recently, you're looking at 0.4. So on average, buying at half a cent each is a bad deal. Can you get better value than that?

Of course you can. It is possible. But on average, Hilton is making out like a bandit with these sales. That's why I do expect it to continue. No doubt about that. Good point. All right. Next up on the docket for, all right. Last one is, is perhaps even a worse value is, is, is you can do the same thing. Virgin Atlantic. So transfer to Virgin Atlantic, then Virgin Atlantic to IHG, but Virgin Atlantic to IHG is one-to-one. So you don't even get that 50% bonus. Should you do it? I mean, no. Probably not. I mean, these are things that I guess if you're a few points short of a valuable award and you have some orphaned points in Aeromexico, well, that's not going to do you

any good. But you have some orphaned points in Aeromexico. Well, that's not going to do you any good. But you have some orphaned points in Virgin Atlantic or something like that. And maybe you would take advantage of one of these for a few points to make up the difference to do one of these. These magical conversions. When we say magical, we mean magical because it's kind of weird and interesting.

We don't mean magical because they're so awesome. I think that out of these, the JetBlue to Amtrak is clearly the best one, right? Well, the Avios around is a great capability. You're not losing any value when doing that. And, you know, yeah. So I'd say those two are great. And Wyndham to Caesars and back has strategic use

that would be good. Um, so, which could also be good for extending the value or the life of your points with Wyndham and Caesars thing. Right. Cause I think that didn't, didn't you find that renewed your points? So when your points are about, yeah, it's, it's, it's very interesting because Wyndham has, has one of those awkward programs where the points expire, um, based on when they were earned. They don't get refreshed when you have activity. And that's terrible. But by moving them to Caesars and then back to Wyndham, they appear to be like new points.

And so you earn them when you move them back. So yeah, that's a way to keep them alive. So interesting stuff. So I mean, there are some potentially interesting values there. And it's always fun to look for these hidden things and, and it's easy to forget about them. And so that's, that's why I think the, the transfer partner master list page is very useful as are the individual transfer partner pages that we have on frequent miler for each of the major transferable currencies. Because had I looked at any of those, when Greg, when I told Greg on Friday, I was booking a train and he said, using points, if I had looked at one of those, I would have said, oh yes, I'm transferring my JetBlue to Amtrak right now. And they wouldn't have transferred

in time and I still would have paid cash. But at any rate, I would have at least known sooner that I could have done that, but I forgot. And I had read Greg's post about that transfer before, but it's hard to remember all of the partnerships all of the time. So it sure is. So yeah, as you said, our transfer partner master list page has not only all the transfer partners of the transferable points currencies, but it also has indirect transfers like the ones we're talking about here. So you can get most of this information right there. So there you go. I think that's it for the main event. That's it.

So we're going to move on to the post roast. Post roast. I don't know. You flubbed up something earlier in the show and I know I did. So we're going to call it even? Let's just call it a host roast. A host roast.

And be done. That's right. That's right. Amex, not Amtrak. All right. So yes. Unless you have something. No, no, done. That's right. That's right. Amex, not Amtrak. All right. So, yes. Unless you have something. No, no, no.

That's good. That's good. Let's move into the question of the week. And I actually forgot that I just clicked off the question of the week. But the question of the week was relevant for me this week because I ran into a very similar sort of a situation. I'm going to modify a bit. So, Jesse writes in and says, Jesse is an avid reader of frequent miler. Curious what are to hear what you think is the best card setup for leveraging as many

free and or award stays as possible for hotel stays. So he says for context, flights are free flies, non-rev. So he really has to focus on earning points for hotels or free night certificates for hotels. He says, I've seen frequent miler write and talk about utilizing a cash back strategy for hotels, but was curious if you had to do a card setup for points or certs, what's your ideal two person setup or progression search to not found anything. I have a tag on question that I'm going to add, but I want to get your answer to that first. So what's your ideal setup for hotel points and or certificates? Because, you know, I really, the miles, even if you don't fly free non-rev,

lately, the miles have been pretty easy to come by. It's the hotel points that are harder. So it's true. It's true. Yeah. Well, you know, most of the programs, most of the major hotel programs you get those annual free night certificates and they're valid for a year, you have like one date. They're valid at the same time together. So you can book a weekend stay or whatever. It's hard juggling expiration dates when they're offset. So that's like a first tip, I guess. Just off the top of my head, I mean, if you like staying at IHG properties like Kempton's and whatever, then each of you could get both the personal and business premier cards. So that would be four IHG nights you'd be getting each year for a combined, um, 400, a hundred dollars each, basically nine, what is it? $99 or $95, the annual fees, $99. Yep. Um, so, you know, that's a really good deal for, you know, hotel nights costing 40,000 points. Um, so, you know, um, and you could do a similar thing with

Marriott and Nick just did a post about what's the best Marriott card. You look through there and pick which ones make sense for, for you both to get, but you know, it, it could make sense for both of you to get to up to two Marriott cardsriott cards if you think you could use four free nights a year. Hyatt, you could do one each of the personal card. The business card doesn't come with a free night, if I remember right. And then you could also decide, do you spend $15,000 on each of those cards each year in order to get another free night, which could make sense depending on your needs? Hilton, the Aspire card, so that's the top end one, comes with a free night every year,

uncapped, but it's usually a weekend free night, not a weekday. But that could be a fantastic weekend getaway for a couple. All of those, I mean, it adds up to a lot of money, a lot of annual fees, but the amount you'd be saving if you were actually using these as opposed to paying for lodging for the same time periods could be really, really substantial. So I kind of like a combination like that of going after all the ones that you're pretty sure you'll use. Yeah. Interesting. Okay. That's not at all what I expected you to say. So that's actually not a bad strategy. And it kind of mirrors what I guess we do in my household because we have a whole bunch of cards that have free night

certificates, right? I mean, that's what we do. So I'm curious what, so you said that's not a bad strategy and not what you expected me to say was what you expected me to say a bad strategy or a better strategy. No, a different strategy because, you know, chase ultimate rewards points is what I figured you would point to for Hyatt stays and because he said certificates and or points. And so, you know, if you're not needing to use points for flights at all, then collecting a lot of ultimate rewards points can be relatively easy with the freedom cards rotating 5X categories. Or if you have a business and you can get a Chase Inc. cash card and earn five points per dollar at office supply stores, then your Hyatt points can be pretty easy to accumulate via Chase ultimate rewards rather than the Hyatt cards. 100%. So that's the other piece of it, which is, you know, all of what I talked about are the

mostly set and forget cards. So you get them and you get the annual fee every year. I mean, you get the annual. You do get the annual fee every year. You do get the annual fee, yeah. That's true. That's true. Guaranteed.

Yes. And but for spend, yeah, I like, I like getting a collection of Chase Ultimate Rewards cards and that transfer then one-to-one to Hyatt because you can earn as, as Nick said, you can earn, you know, 3X to 5X and lots of great categories. And then 1.5X everywhere else, if you get the Freedom Un card. So, um, makes it very easy. Really, really good. Lots of points that are valuable with Hyatt and Hyatt points are so valuable. So that's a really good way to go. Yeah. But you know, there was something else I was going to say on that. And then I just totally lost it as we were talking and shoot, uh,

because we were talking about the ideal two card strategy, ultimate rewards, five. Oh my goodness. I forgot. I was going to make it built. I mean, cause the other, the other option is not to go with chase cards or in addition to chase cards. If you pay rent, look at the built card because you're earning Hyatt points up to three points per dollar in certain categories and you're earning extra points for paying rent. So all those transfer one-to-one to Hyatt as well. Yeah. Okay. Good points there. No, I don't remember what I was going to say, but I want to tag on the additional question

that I had. Maybe I'll think about what I was going to say to Jesse also. So the additional bonus question is related because I had a couple of paid stays recently and they were Hyatt stays and my wife has the Hyatt card. I don't. Originally, she was going to be coming with me. So I wasn't concerned about the fact that I didn't have a Hyatt card to pay for this day. And then plans changed. And so she didn't end up with me. So I was by myself and I thought, okay, well, I have her Hyatt card on my Samsung

Galaxy watch, but they didn't have a payment terminal with mobile payment technology kind of a thing set up. They had to actually physically take the card to swipe it. And so I didn't want to take the watch off my wrist and hand it over. So what I got thinking to myself about was what card would you use for a hotel stay when A, you just don't have that chain's credit card or B, you don't have that card with you? What would be the best card to be paying for paid stays with, Greg? Yeah. So outside of like when you have certain bonuses, like the VentureX used to have a signup bonus that gave you $200 in credit towards certain things and it was crediting at some hotels. So outside of those kind of weird things um i like the uh i use my sephora reserve for that purpose 3x points at all travel if you had an amex green card that would also give you

3x um premiere city premier i think would give you 3x at hotels so all of those i think would be good choices is there no i'm missing anything that you thought of no you didn't no well only because the ink plus was in my wallet did I think about the fact that the Ink Plus earns 2X on hotels, I believe. So I looked it up. And oh, Ink Business Premier, though, 3X travel as well. 3X travel, there you go.

So that would have been a good choice too. So there you go. There you have it. There's some things for paid stays. Now, I did think of what I was going to say to Jesse. I'll put a link in the description because another thing to think about when you're trying to figure out your hotel strategy is what kind of hotels do I want to stay at? Because you didn't mention what level of hotel. Do you prefer a limited

service hotel? Do you want someplace that's a five-star kind of a thing? And the reason that came to mind is because Greg wrote an excellent series on manufacturing nights at different chains and how much spend you have to do at grocery stores with the Hilton Ascend or Surpass or whatever it's called now, the Surpass card in order to earn free nights at lower tier Hilton properties and top tier and compared that with Hyatt and with Marriott. So if you want mid-tier nights, the answer for you, depending on your spedding patterns might be different than the answer for somebody who wants top tier or just the type of places. So I'm going to link those in the description for the show. So make sure you take a look at those. Okay. That brings us to the end, I think. So if you've been listening today

and you've been enjoying this and you'd like to get our posts in your email inbox, you want to go to frequentmiler.com slash subscribe. Again, that's frequentmiler.com slash subscribe to join our email list. Follow us on all the various social medias wherever you are listening to this. Make sure you like and subscribe and enable notifications. Leave us a comment. Leave us some feedback. We always love to hear from readers. Maybe you'll end up on the next Frequent Miler reader feedback or a giant mailbag segment or question of the week. If you'd like to get

featured on one of those, you can email us at, at mailbag at frequent miler.com. Oh, you know, it's so sad. Everyone, all these podcasts, listeners putting away their podcast calculators, because we're all done with all that math. Done with the math. Done with this weekend's math. Sad, sad time. Sorry. Sorry that it's over, fellas. See you later, everybody. But don't worry. We'll see you next week. Bye, everybody.