Frequent Miler on the Air - Mastering Avios | Frequent Miler on the Air Ep241 | 2-10-24

Episode Date: February 9, 2024

Avios is the rewards currency for British Airways, Iberia, Aer Lingus, Vueling, Qatar, and soon Finnair. This means it's worth some attention. On this week's episode, we discuss how you can earn, use, and maximize this reward currency. Here are some of the topics you'll find in the episode... (01:41) Player Two chimes in (Mailbag) (03:37) Chase British Airways Visa Signature® Card (Card Talk) Learn more about this card: https://frequentmiler.com/ba/ (09:30) Turkish award search shows random non-partner flights (Crazy Thing) (13:30) Best Western: Stay Twice & Earn Free Night Voucher (Mattress Running the Numbers) Read more about this: https://frequentmiler.com/best-western-stay-twice-earn-free-night-voucher/ (17:37) Turkish devalues (Award Talk) Read more about this: https://frequentmiler.com/turkish-might-be-demolishing-its-award-chart/ (22:03) SLH ditches Hyatt for Hilton (Award Talk) Read more about this: https://frequentmiler.com/small-luxury-hotels-slh-ditches-hyatt-for-hilton/ (26:10) Bilt announces milestone rewards (Award Talk) Read more about this: https://frequentmiler.com/bilt-introduces-unrewarding-milestone-rewards/ (31:50) Referral points don’t count towards Bilt status, h/t Chris from All the Hacks (Award Talk) (32:58) Mastering Avios, the rewards currency for BA, Iberia, Aer Lingus, Vueling, Qatar, and (soon) Finnair (Main Event) Read all about Avios here: https://frequentmiler.com/complete-guide-to-avios-british-airways-iberia-and-aer-lingus/ (33:22) Earning Avios (34:30) Moving Avios between programs Read more about this: https://frequentmiler.com/how-to-transfer-avios-between-aer-lingus-ba-and-iberia/ (40:52) BA Household Accounts (42:40) Using Avios Read more about using Avios with Jet Blue: https://frequentmiler.com/jetblue-mint-to-the-caribbean-for-26000-avios-where-and-how-to-find-it/ (01:03:37) How do you plan acitivites? (Question of the Week)  

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 Miler on the Air starts now. Today's main event, Mastering Avios. Avios is or are the rewards program for British Airways, Iberia, Aer Lingus, and soon FinAir. So a whole bunch of programs that you may know nothing about. But if you're into points and miles, these are things you ought to know about. This is sort of a workhorse program that is good in a lot of ways, lots of ways of earning the points and using the points. And so we're going to talk all about them and give you the basics you need to know to make the most out of your obvious.

And if you happen to know nothing about them right now, you won't be able to say that tomorrow because you'll have listened to this show. And so you'll know lots of stuff about them. And if you need to go back and find a key point that you wanted to revisit or you want to skip ahead to something else, don't forget the show notes are always in the description of the show. And we have the timestamps for the various places where you can skip around and jump ahead or jump back if you need to. Wherever you're watching or listening to this show, don't forget to give it a like, give us some feedback, a thumbs up, all of that type of stuff helps. And subscribe and enable notifications so that you get notified as soon as we post a new episode

because you may have noticed there was a bonus episode this week and that may not be the only bonus coming your way sometime soon. So you'll want to make sure that you're subscribed and have your notifications enabled so you don't miss anything. Get that out of the way.

Let's drag out the giant mailbag. All right. Today's giant mail comes from a player two. So in this game, we sometimes talk about player one and player two. And the idea is that with a couple who are working together with points and miles, usually there's one person who's more involved than the other or knows more or takes more initiative and everything. And we refer to them as player one and the other person player two so this time a player two wrote in to our giant mailbag and this is from yeah it is fun this is from carter carter says i love what you guys do i am a player two that has started listening to your podcast so i can speak intelligently with my boss player Player One, also my wife, an amazingly smart, beautiful lady, despite her choice in life partners. In 2023, she spent nearly 1 million points taking me on some of the most amazing trips. And we already have over 1 million points worth of trips scheduled

for 2024. Did I mention she is amazing? Oh, and if you could mention Cheryl Wetherington every few minutes in one of your podcasts, that would also be amazing. Not like Qsuites to the Park Hyatt, sorry, to the Park Hyatt Maldives amazing, but right up there with. Thank you. A lower player twos input. Keep up the great work, Carter. Well, very good. Then we'll have to make sure that we indeed mention Cheryl Worthington every once in a while during this episode. Cheryl Weatherington. Cheryl Weatherington. Weatherington. Yeah, no, sorry, Carter. We are not going to mention Cheryl Weatherington at all on the show, but we really do appreciate you calling in.

And I'm sure that Cheryl Weatherington is a very good player one. So congratulations. It would be ridiculous for us to mention her over and over. So let's not do that. Okay, very good. Excellent. Well, let's talk about a card instead. Let's get into this week's card talk.

And for card talk this week, we've got the Chase British Airways Visa Signature Card. So tell me what's special about this one. Yeah. Well, since today's main event is all about Avios, we figured we'd talk about a card that earns Avios as their currency. The Chase British Airways card costs $95 a year. There's no foreign transaction fees. It earns three British Airways Avios per dollar on British Airways on Iberia and Aer Lingus. Those are British Airways primary partners.

It earns 2x for any hotel stays where you book directly with a hotel and 1x everywhere else. So that's okay earning, but nothing really exciting there in my opinion. Where it gets interesting is with its perks. So it gives you 10% off British Airways flights that originate in the United States. And it gives you up to $600 in surcharge rebates. So when you're booking award flights with your Avios, you can get up to $600 back per year from those hefty surcharges. You have to book a reward flight to London on British Airways. And you'll get $100 back if you pay with your card and pay taxes, if you pay for the taxes on your card with an economy flight or premium economy flight, or you'll get $200 back if it's a business class

or first class award ticket. So again, this is like you're booking award ticket, you're paying with Avios, but there are those surcharges that you have to pay as well. So it's giving you that rebate. You get at most three rebates per year. So that's how it taps out at up to $600 total for business class or first class. Okay. Now, I think one of the most interesting pieces of the card is that if you spend $30,000 on the car in a calendar year, you get a travel together ticket, which is valid for two full years. And basically what it is, is you can either book an award flight and add a companion for no more points. You still have to pay the taxes and fees for that companion,

but no more points. Um, or you could get 50% off an award for one person. So for yourself, for example. Uh, so, you know, combine when, when you combine that with the surcharge rebate, you can, uh, I think you could do pretty well on, on flight or two each year with with this British Airways card. And especially if you earn the travel together ticket. Yeah. You know, I think it really just depends on how much you value a flight to London. Right. I mean, because I think that has to be the situation where you have to really be wanting to fly to London in order to even consider the surcharges, I would assume, on this. And not to mention that in order to get the rebate, right, the rebates that you get through the card, you have to be booking an award flight to London. So the surcharges, I mean, can you give us an idea of what the surcharges on a business class flight to London? I think what range? Yeah, well, so here's the thing. British Airways lets you book with more avios and lower surcharges.

But even then, you're talking about like a business class flight. You're talking about paying about 80,000 avios one way and about $350 in surcharges. I think you're paying about in the range of double that if you pay fewer Avios. So yeah, I mean, the surcharges are significant and that's a big problem with booking British Airways itself with Avios, but the card helps make less in the sting on that. Yeah, absolutely. All right. So I could see it perhaps for somebody who likes to fly birdie shareways quite a bit. What about for spend for ongoing spend? I mean, you've got to put $30,000 in spend on the thing in order to get that travel together ticket

benefit. I mean, is it worth spending $30,000 on this card for that? Yeah, you know, that's a great question. Since it's only earning 1x for most spend, and there are plenty of cards that earn 2x everywhere and can transfer to Avios, it's not a great card in that point of view. And so if you think of it as like instead of that travel together ticket, and you spend like with a 2x card, you're getting 30,000 more points than with this card. It's probably not the right pick for most people, but someone who flies British Airways a lot, it may be. Yeah, I think that's it. If you fly British Airways a lot, especially on paid tickets, maybe you're flying a lot for work and your flights are getting reimbursed. Well, then it

might make some more sense. But otherwise, I'd have a hard time, I think, justifying the $30,000 spend, because I would essentially look at it as it's costing me 30,000 points to get either a 50% discount on one ticket, which is not going to amount to a lot more than 30,000 points in most cases, or getting the companion ticket for free, which still isn't free because you still have to pay the award surcharges on that. So yeah, you know, it's kind of one of those things. I think it's very niche as to, you know, where that makes sense. It wouldn't make sense in my wallet, but there probably are some folks for whom it does make sense. Not to say that Avios doesn't make sense. I do like Avios and they have plenty of great uses, which we will talk about during today's show. So listen on for more of that.

But before we do, we have a couple more segments to get to. Next up is Crazy Thing. This week, what crazy thing did Turkish Miles and Smiles do? Yeah. So what did what did happen there, Nick? I know you were you were playing around looking for partner awards on Turkish's website, and you found something interesting. Well, you know, so Turkish Airlines, it was discovered this week that Turkish Miles and Smiles intends to, we think anyway, devalue their award chart in just a few days on February 15th, 2024. We think award prices are going up.

They've shown a new award chart when that does seem to be the date when award prices are going to change. But that date was not published initially. So initially, when we saw they published a new award chart, I was searching just to see if prices were pricing according to that new award chart or still the old chart. And I found that by and large, well, in fact, in all of my searches, awards were still pricing according to the old award chart, which makes sense because I was searching a few days before we now think things are slated to change. However, what didn't make any sense was that I did some searches to Hawaii to try to verify the pricing on award tickets to Hawaii. So I was searching, for instance, from Chicago to I can't remember if it was Maui or Honolulu.

But either way, I was expecting to get results on Star Alliance partner United. And I did get some United Airlines results. But in the search results, I also got a bunch of results that were entirely flown by airlines that don't partner with Turkish Airlines. They were entirely flown on American Airlines or Alaska Airlines or even a combination of United and American Airlines. And they included like the flight numbers and the type of equipment, like which kind of plane would be flying the route. It said no seats available. So in fairness, you couldn't redeem miles for it. But what was that even doing in the Star Alliance award search tool? That is a total mystery to me. I mean, what data are they searching? What API color are

they using that they shouldn't be that's coming up with that? I have no idea, but that's so weird. Like one world flights in the Turkish Airlines, Miles and Smiles, Star Alliance search tool. Just, yeah, like you said, clearly wherever they're getting their information from, maybe this should give us a hint into why they have such a hard time finding availability, because like, are they searching Google flights or something? Like, are they using expert flyer to search for some sort of cabin class, you know, across airlines? Like, what are they pulling in order to find the seats that should be available?

Because there should not be any results on American and Alaska when you're looking for Star Alliance awards. Yeah, that's crazy. Maybe there's a Turkish rep who's like looking at the departure screen at the airport from whatever origin airport you put in. They're just like, oh, yeah, there's an American Airlines. They're just listing the flights yeah i have no idea but yeah so uh so if the devaluation wasn't crazy enough that was the craziest piece to me like i pulled that out and i just i laughed i literally laughed out loud as i was searching i was like can't make this up like the website is just so uh i don't know riddled

with i.t problems so so while we do expect that devaluation to take place in a so, I don't know, riddled with IT problems. So while we do expect that devaluation to take place in a few days, I don't necessarily expect it's going to go smoothly. So I'll be pretty surprised if all of a sudden award prices change and magically price according to the new award chart. Of course, with my luck, I guess that will happen because the new award pricing is absolutely horrific for the most part, though those flights to Hawaii are not really getting affected by all that much. It's going to be another 2,500 miles each way. So that's still going to continue to be a sweet spot for flights on United, unless they're going to announce some partnership with American in Alaska, which would be a big shock. But who knows? Stranger things have happened. Maybe.

All right. So that's the crazy thing for this week. Let's do some mattress running. Mattress running the numbers. This week's mattress running the numbers. We've got a Best Western promotion out. One of our, no, I'm not even going to say one of our favorite programs. I can't say that with a straight face.

We're not big into Best Western Rewards, but Best Western Rewards has a stay twice and earn a free night voucher. And that actually sounds pretty good. So what's the deal with this? Is it something we should be considering? This one's worth talking about. So here's the deal. You have to stay twice, and this could be two one-night stays, at any Best Western Hotel in the United States, Canada, or the Caribbean Islands. And you have to complete both stays by May 5th of 2024. You do have to register before doing that, by the way. And if you complete those two stays, you'll get a free night voucher that is good for one night at, again, any of their hotels in the United States, Canada, or the Caribbean islands. And you have to complete your stay by August 25th of 2024.

So you basically have the summer to use your, you know, late spring and summer to use that free night. And so, you know, I could, I could totally see a couple maybe each going to like a really cheap Best Western hotel, checking in for, you know, a couple stays. So they each get one of these vouchers because you're limited to one per person, but a couple could each get one and then have a nice weekend stay somewhere that's expensive. And I believe there are some Best Westerns that are in expensive places and may even be very nice. I don't have any experience with actually staying at them in many, many years, but I have no reason to believe that there aren't some good ones. My understanding is there's have properties close to national parks and things where

most other chains don't. So there might be some really good opportunities there, I think. Yeah, I think so too. Before I get into miles and points, before I get into this whole world of award travel, Best Western was one of my go-to chains because I often found that their properties were relatively clean and well-kept. And of course, that's obviously going to vary from location to location. I'm sure there are some that aren't. But I had plenty of good experiences with them for years and years of being decent spots. And sure enough, like you mentioned, there are Best Westerns in some places where hotels are expensive or certainly during special events when hotels get expensive. I think there's an eclipse coming up at some point this year or something maybe, right?

I don't know. That rings a bell. Yep. Something like that goes through lots of rural areas where you might find something like a Best Western. And, you know, rates could be really high, but you might be able to make a good play with this promotion. So like you said, I think if you find a particularly cheap one that's near you or convenient for you to check into, I could see where two nights might make this worthwhile. But, you know, it's not going to be worth it just for fun.

And, of course, keep in mind that you got to use the free night by August 25th. taxes. And the, the night you're going to be using is like $175. You're only saving $25 for all that effort and might not even work out. We don't, we don't know how hard it'll be to actually redeem the certificate. So, you know, I'd be looking for, um, you know, a lot of at least $100 savings before I would personally step into that one. Yeah. Yeah, I agree. That seems pretty reasonable. All right. So maybe mattress running the numbers on now and maybe it's worth mattress running. But again, consider how much you're going to save. All right. This week's award talk has a whole bunch of stuff going on. The first thing up on our award talk list is that Turkish devaluation that I mentioned during our crazy thing segments. So just to dig into that a step farther, Turkish launched new award charts this week. They debuted new award charts on their website that increased partner awards substantially.

When I say substantially, I mean almost doubling most sweet spot partner awards. So for instance, a partner award to Europe in business class under the old award chart has been 45,000 miles one way for years. And under the new award chart, it will be 85,000 miles one way. So that's a huge devaluation, right? Yeah, that's just sad. Painful. And stuff like the US to India has long been long been 52 500 miles one way and it'll be a hundred thousand miles one way under the new awards are they at least getting rid of surcharges as uh part of this i mean they haven't announced that although as we mentioned before they haven't

really announced anything no exactly prince of travel noticed this i think they were the first to notice it and report it anyway. And somebody sent that post to me and then I got looking into it myself and saw that, yeah, they have replaced their award charts. And my first thought when I saw Turkish changes, the award charts was, oh, somebody must have looked at it and just thought the wrong thing because they always had a couple of different award charts. It was really confusing. But then I took a look and saw, yeah, no, they really did completely change the award charts and they still had links to the old award charts really weird they like prettified those old award charts like you know made them kind of colorful and put them in pdfs just to have them

around for a week i guess i'm like it's kind of a weird the whole thing is weird but yeah again based on the award pricing that they're showing under the new award chart, partner awards are going to be unreasonably expensive under the new award chart. Now you're saying partner. So right now, right now is where we're recording this. It's historically been 45,000 miles one way in business class. And under the new award chart, flights on Turkish metal will only be 65,000 miles one way. And I say only as compared to 85,000 on partners, but 65,000, assuming that they continue to charge two or $300 in surcharges, which is what it has been on Turkish operated flights. It's I mean, not horrible, but it's also not great because you could book the same flight usually through Avianca Life Miles for 63,000 miles and no surcharges.

You know, they're twenty nine dollar partner booking fee or whatever, but not the hundreds of dollars in surcharges and a couple thousand miles fewer. So there's probably not a lot of cause to book through Turkish, even for their own flights, unless they happen to release more availability to their own members than they do to partners, which has not been the case in the past, but maybe will be the case in the future. Yeah, we can hope for that. And then the sweet spot of flying within the U.S. to Alaska or Hawaii, it was 7,500 points one way economy. That's to fly United, but booking with Turkish miles., it's going up to 10,000 miles one way, which I mean, is like 33% increase. So percentage wise, that sounds really bad. But realistically, 10,000 points one way for an economy class flight to Hawaii is still the best deal in the business, probably. So for many types of flights, anyway, that will be a great deal. Now, there will be times when you're within the lower 48, whereianca LifeMiles will be an equal or perhaps better deal, or Air Canada could be as

well. So you'll have to compare against them. But yeah, 10,000 miles one way in economy class domestically, 15,000 one way domestically in business class, if you can ever find United availability that's available to partners, which again, if you're able to fly to Alaska or Hawaii for those prices, 10K in economy or 15K in business, even though those are still fairly thing on the award talk agenda, which is that it's official. Small luxury hotels of the world are saying goodbye to Hyatt. You know, they've partnered up for a long time. We saw this coming because Hyatt had bought Mr. and Mrs. Smith, which is a similar type of thing, and Hyatt had announced that they were going to start integrating Mr. and Mrs. Smith into their program in early 2024. That hasn't happened yet as we're recording this, but it is slated to happen in quotes soon. So we knew we knew that probably meant that SLH and Hyatt would stop partnering. And but what we didn't know is who they would partner with, which it turns out it's Hilton.

I think that's less of an ouch. Like you just said at the beginning that speaking of ouch, but I was thinking to myself when you said that that's not as much of an ouch as I was afraid of. Actually, I'm kind of excited about the partnership with Hilton. Now, let me preface this by saying that the awards for standard rooms surely will not be nearly as good of a value as they have been through Hyatt historically. And there's a lot of great ways to earn lots of points that can transfer to Hyatt. So there are reasons to have been happy about the Hyatt partnership. But what I'm excited about with Hilton is if these SLH properties become bookable with Hilton points, then presumably they'll be bookable with Hilton free night certificates.

And that, to me, greatly increases the value of Hilton free night certificates and makes it much more worthwhile considering spending for those free night certificates and makes it much more worthwhile considering spending for those free night certificates. Now, if I'm able to get a night at the Grand Hotel Victoria, for instance, and Lake Como that I loved, those nights cash rates are often $1,000, $1,500, $1,800, no more than $1,000, $1,500, $1,800, $2,000 a night during peak summertime dates. And so if you can spend $ 15K on the right Hilton card and get a free night certificate that gets you a night like that, I mean, that's not a bad deal at all. So that'll, I think, make it more worth spending towards free night certificates on

the Hilton cards. Yeah, absolutely true. and if they bring the fifth night free availability, then it might even make point bookings a decent value. But that might be wishful thinking. But we will see. So, so, yeah, so I think I think you're right. I think it's good news that that they partnered with Hilton as opposed to, you remember we had, there was news about them partnering with Capital One that kind of slid out, but was never really confirmed anywhere else. Um, and I was kind of bummed about that because through Capital One, there wouldn't be any opportunity to get like outsized value, like, like from free night certificates, like you're talking about, but with Hilton there, there should be some ways of doing it hopefully. And so, so there's, there's hope there in SLH land. And, uh, I think, you know, I'm still excited about the prospects of Mr. and Mrs. Smith. We'll see, we'll see what happens when Hyatt actually starts integrating them um because there's a lot of uh amazing properties in mr mrs smith's uh portfolio so um i don't know a lot of a lot of

good uh possibilities for stays going forward with uh through booking through hilton and hyatt to uh slh and mr mrs smith respectively once, once those things come out. Because even though Hilton and SLH announced the partnership, they did not say when it would be live. Right. Just like the Hyatt thing, it's soon. Soon. Soon. Soon. Who knows what soon means? But yeah, it's a great noncommittal answer to everything. Soon.

It's going to happen soon. So, all right. Soon we'll get excited or not excited about that. But right now, let's move on to the next piece of award talk, which is Built. Built has announced their milestone rewards for people with Built Elite status. And tell me, Craig, are you excited about these milestone rewards? What are they? And should we be excited? Well, first, let me say, you know how Bilt keeps surprising us in a positive way with things like these monster transfer bonuses and things? Well, Bilt did it again. They surprised us, but not in a positive way.

These milestone rewards are... They stink, Greg. They stink. They stink. Big nothing burger is what I was about to say. All right. So let's talk about what these are. Every time you earn 25,000 points with Bilt, you get a milestone reward selection. You get to choose how you want to be rewarded for hitting that milestone. And it's stuff like double points on built dining for seven days, double points at grocery stores, so two points per dollar at grocery stores for 30 days, or two points per dollar at gas stations for 30 days.

And, you know, some people might be listening to that double points at grocery stores as like, oh, I could spend a lot at grocery stores so I could earn a lot that way. But they're capped at a thousand points, a thousand bonus points, a thousand bonus points, and you're done. Your milestone reward is done. That's like two trips to the grocery store for a family. I mean, like, it's insane. It's not worth much of anything at all. I'm really surprised.

I sure hope that this means that those 150% transfer bonuses are going to continue because I expected more. 1,000 points for the cap on that? I mean, that's nuts. I know. You know, like, why not just more. 1,000 points for the cap on that? I mean, that's... I know. You know, like, why not just give us 1,000 points? I'd be much, much happier than having to choose which nothing burger I want each time I hit 25,000 points.

I mean, come on. Once you get to 250,000 points, though, they blow the doors off those caps and go up to 4X at grocery stores or 4X at gas stations for 30 days. And the cap is way, way higher. 3,000 points. $750 worth of spend instead of $500 worth of spend. It's insane. I mean, can you hear the eye roll?

Because I think my eyes just rolled audibly. I'm really surprised. Like I said, I expected something better out of the milestone rewards. I hope that Bilt has more up their sleeve because I'm not even sure that those are worth talking about. Obviously, we have to talk about them, but I just don't understand why they bothered. Right, right. So in last week's show, we talked about how Build is now a worthy contender of your spend because of these big transfer bonuses and things that they have. And I do remember us sort of mentioning at the time, we didn't know what the milestone rewards would be. We conjectured that they might be exciting,

but I'm so glad I specifically said that everything that we said in last week's show was based on what we knew without any milestone rewards. And that all stands. The milestone rewards, as they showed up, make no difference whatsoever to that analysis. I would have thought it would have made it more compelling. It does not. It's just as equally compelling or maybe now i can't say it's last because we haven't lost anything but um but i i'm mildly irritated by it yeah i just yeah me too because i i had the impression that there was going to be something

actually interesting for these milestone benefits. And I just even for I mean, forget about the fact that we're award maximizer type people. But for just like an average person, a thousand extra points, especially like let's say you're a renter, right? You rent like a thousand extra points. That's not even a month of rent for a lot of their customer base, probably in terms of extra points to access. It just doesn't feel like anything exclusive. And if you're not going to offer enough points to be worth much, then offer a benefit that you can't get elsewhere. I'm just I don't know. I'm surprised and I'm disappointed that that's what they have.

Maybe there'll be something more coming down the pipeline. But for now, those milestone benefits won't make any difference at all in terms of whether I'm interested in status. I'm still probably going to spend towards status. My wife, anyway, will still continue to spend towards status in the hopes that the big transfer bonuses continue. But this will have nothing to do with it. I don't even know that I'll waste the time trying to figure out which one of these to do and doing it. For 2X, grocery store, you know, other cards that are better than that at grocery stores anyway, or gas stations.

So I just don't even see myself probably taking advantage of these. Yeah. Yeah. No, I, I probably won't either. I like, maybe I'll just like pick one just in case I happen to spend in that

category, but I, I can't see myself wasting my mental energy, you know, really thinking much about it. So that's why I find it irritating. I happen to spend in that category, but I, I can't see myself wasting my mental energy, you know, really thinking much about it. So that's why I find it irritating. It's just like, I don't want this extra thing weighing down, like, you know, using up my, my mental space, my limited mental capacity. One more thing to remember to do.

That's like not even worth much. Yeah. One K cap. Exactly. Exactly. Agreed. All much. Yeah, 1K cap. Exactly. Exactly. Agreed. All right. Last thing about Built.

One last thing about Built. Last week, we talked about how you can earn points through referrals. And we didn't know when we talked about it, whether those points earned through referring friends would contribute towards your elite status with built. And, um, I got a text from Chris Hutchins. Who's the,

uh, he runs the podcast called all the hacks, which, uh, is a pretty good show. You should check it out. Uh, anyway,

he, he told me that he has gotten lots and lots of referral points, um, from, uh, built and it hasn't helped him one bit towards elite status. So there is the answer. More bad news from Bilt.

Yeah, well, telling all your friends about it will not get you the 2X at grocery stores for seven days or 30 days or whatever it is. Who cares? Yeah, so if you're going to want the big transfer bonuses, if they continue to offer them, referrals aren't going to do it. So. All right. Well, that's that. So now I think that wraps up our award talk for today. Let's get into this week's main event. Mastering Avios. All right. So Avios, as we said at the one of the cool things about it

is that if you earn them in one program, you can move them from one program to the other. So you can sort of think of it as one giant pool, which is very, very convenient. And so that makes it possible to earn Avios in lots of different ways. There's multiple Chase credit cards, like one for British Airways, one for Iberia, one for Aer Lingus. Every major transferable points currency transfers to at least one of these programs so that you can then move them yourself to the other ones if you don't

need it in the one that it directly supports. And many of them offer regular transfer bonuses. So if you transfer to Bridge Airways or Cutter or whatever from a certain program, when they're offering a transfer bonus, you'll end up with more than the number of points you started with from the transferable points. All right. Let's talk about moving Avios between programs. So that's so key. Why do we care about Avios? It's like, I don't think we'd be having this program at all if British Airways had one program, Iberia had another, Qatar had another, and so on. It's because, you have to set up an account with each of these programs and you have to set up your loyalty account with each of these programs. Make sure your personal details, your name, your phone number, your email address, all that stuff matches exactly. I mean, you can't have one little letter or dash or whatever off because it's not

going to work. Uh, which brings me to the second point, which is don't have a hyphenated name. Like I do because, uh, boy, uh, I don't remember exactly, but I think it was British Airways allowed me to use my hyphenated name. Iberia did not, but I was able to correct it after about a month of customer support work. Cutter did not, and I couldn't correct it through customer support. And so I had to, I don't even remember how I got around that. Eventually got around and was able to link the programs. But just don't, if you have a hyphenated name, just don't even try to put in the hyphen for the first of these programs you set up and follow. Whatever you decide to do about it, follow the same pattern for all the others.

And then let me ask you a question because I don't know much about having a hyphenated name. I've never had one before. Is there ever a time like, have you ever put in your name without a hyphen and had a problem like, like with your flight, for instance, have you ever written your name without any hyphen at all and not been able to board? Have you tried that? Do you always put the hyphen in? Oh yeah, that's a great question. Um, no, uh, I've never had any problem, but in that way, but, uh, what usually happens is I put in the hyphen originally, uh, Davis Keene, Davis hyphen Keene. And what goes into the computer is, um, it runs all together. So airline computers don't know what a dash is for in a name. So it just takes it out. And the types of issues I've run into are where sometimes you end up,

instead of it running together, you end up with a space. And so when I'm trying to look up, let's say it's not loaded into my loyalty account, a trip. And so I'm trying to look up like, let's say it's not loaded into my loyalty account, a trip. And so I'm trying to look it up under the manage your flight type of interface. I have to try my name like four different ways. I have to try it with the hyphen. I have to try it with a space, with no space. I have to try just the keen part at the end because sometimes Davis becomes my middle name. So there's all kinds of ways it can happen. By the way, I've had to, at times, do all of those variations also to get onto Marriott's

Wi-Fi, because they have you put in your name and your room number. And I've had to call the desk sometimes, what is my name exactly as, as you see it, because I can't get onto this wifi. So the lesson of today's show is don't hyphenate your name. If we can help it, you know, I think it's a,

it's a nice idea until you encounter a computer anywhere in the world. Right. Right. Well, I was, I was just wondering if you, if it would kind of obviate the problem altogether if you just always spelled it as though it were one name, but I don't

know. But I don't know if it would. So I don't want to advise anybody the wrong way. I think Greg's advice seems solid. I don't think I would consider hyphenating my name anytime soon. So yeah. So one little story about it is one time I was at the gate, I think it was Delta probably, and they were calling someone up to the desk, Mr. Daviskian, Mr. Daviskian. And I was just like, you know, minding my own business. I'm not Mr. Daviskian. Then they were like, Mr. Gregory Daviskian. And I'm like, wait a minute, Gregory. Oh my gosh Mr. Davisky. And then they were like, Mr. Gregory Davisky. And I'm like,

wait a minute, Gregor. Oh my gosh, that's me. That's hilarious. There you go. So, uh, so you see putting the two names together might not work either because then you'll have that situation where you won't even recognize that it's your own name. Yeah, there you go. That's not suspicious at all at the airport. So, uh, all right. So make sure that everything matches correctly, avoid hyphenated names. But then once you have that, like my name is pretty simple. So I've never really had a hard time transferring between the different programs. I do use the same email address and of course, you know, home address and all the rest of those things match up. If they don't, again, like Greg said, you're going to have a problem. So make sure that everything is matched up correctly.

And then you can relatively easily and instantly move Avios back and forth between the various programs. I've done it plenty of times before. And it's, again, instantaneous, relatively easy. I haven't ever done it with Vueling, by the way, which I'm going to be the first to correct your pronunciation. I think you said Vueling, because it's like vuelos or flights in Spanish. So I haven't ever done it with Vueling. I never set up an account with Vueling, but all of the other Avios programs I have, and it's been easy enough. Finnair, of course, is new to the family. They have not yet fully adopted the Avios currency. They will soon, there's another use of that soon,

sometimes soon in the early part of 2024. Here, they're going to take over or adopt the obvious currency. So I obviously haven't moved anything to Finnair yet from other obvious currencies, but I assume it'll be as easy as it is between Aer Lingus and British Airways and Iberia. So hopefully that'll all be simple, but that's not the only positive point there. You also have the household accounts. Now, I haven't actually set this up. So what can you tell us about household accounts? Yeah. So if you're in the British Airways obvious program and you have multiple people in your family or friends or whatever that where you want to share points and book an award,

you know, from a pooled set of points, you could set up a household account and put them all together. If I remember right, though, there are some limitations once you do that. I don't think you can move your points to, you know, Qatar and Iberia and everything if you've householded them. So you have to end your household account and then all the points go back to where they started from. But it's a nice feature that they have as an option, I think. But that's only if you're booking awards through British Airways that you'd want to do it, not if you're booking awards through Iberia or one of the others. I've never bothered with it because I know that it does cause issues transferring with the other programs.

And so that's why I haven't done it. But if you travel with a family often, you're going to be crediting flights to British Airways. It might make sense to be able to pull those together. Also, I want to mention, and I don't know much about this, so I'm just going to briefly mention it. But when I was checking the award cancellation fees for Finnair, I noticed that it looks like they have the ability to transfer points to another member for 25 euros. Now, I don't know whether that'll continue when they join Avios, and I don't know much about doing it as it stands because I've never had reason to do that. Didn't realize it was even an option. So that's something to keep an eye on, though, because maybe in place of a household account, if it does just cost 25 euros to transfer from one member to another, that might be an easy way

to combine your Avios together. Again, if that even continues and is easy and doable when they join the Avios program, something worth keeping an eye on. Yeah. Yeah. Great tip. All right. So, yeah. So Avios are easy to get because of, mainly because they transfer from everywhere and the transfer bonuses. And they're, I'm not going to say easy to manage, but there are ways to manage the points by moving them around from one program to another or setting up household accounts with British Airways. But let's talk about using them. I mean, they're not the sexiest, like we're not going to be talking about how you could set up these flights like Nick did in the Three Cards, Three Continents challenge where he used Air Canada, Aeroplan to fly pretty much all over the world on a single ticket in business class and stopped a whole bunch of times. You can't do that kind of thing with Avios or you wouldn't want to because it would cost you an arm and a leg.

Most Avios programs are going to charge you for each segment you fly separately. And so they are and they usually charge more for longer distance. So they're distance based in most cases. Finnair is an exception there. But so the point is they're more often good or very good for short distance flights. They're often like decent for long flights if they're nonstop or direct, but they're usually not great for multi-segment long itineraries. Right, right. That's exactly true. I mean, I think there might be an exception with the British Airways multi-carrier chart if that still exists, but that's a pretty complicated thing to use. And when Greg mentioned that it's usually going to cost you more, part of the thing to consider is that surcharges, potentially depending on which of these programs you book with, could become a really significant part of the cost of a ticket.

And so if you're trying to do something super complicated with Avios, it becomes even more complicated in figuring out how to manage the surcharges that you're going to incur. So I totally agree. Best uses are usually going to be really short flights or maybe longish flights if they're nonstop. But when I mentioned that the surcharges are something to consider, we got to mention that you need to compare the prices of different programs because the prices can vary both in terms of the number of avios you need and in terms of the surcharges, right? Yeah, absolutely. So first of all, when you're booking to fly British Airways itself, you're probably going to get high fuel surcharges. When you're booking with any of the programs with pretty much any other carrier, you may or may not have high surcharges, but even with a specific carrier that's not British Airways, you can have wildly different surcharges depending on which type of Avios you use.

So here's an example. Let's say you want to fly Boston to Dublin on Aer Lingus. You can move your Avios to Aer Lingus and book that economy flight for 13,000 points and $115 in surcharges. Or if you search for that exact same flight through your British Airways account to use your British Airways Avios, it would cost the same 13,000 points, but it would be $237 in surcharges. So slightly more than double the surcharges just because you chose to book through British Airways instead of booking through Aer Lingus. So that's an example. That's one example, but I see that all the time just by looking at the exact same flight through different Avios programs.

And so the idea is find the one that has the best pricing and book from there after moving your points over. And that's really important. That makes a big difference. You know, that's one very small example. And that's you're talking about one hundred and twenty two dollars per passenger. If you're flying with a few passengers of the family, you know, you're talking about a family of four. What that's like five500 each way, $1,000 round trip if you just don't take a few

seconds to click the mouse a few times and move the obvious to Aerolingus first. So learning how to search through the various programs is worthwhile. It pays off quite literally because the difference can be significant. I mean, again, that's a small example and there are examples where the differences will be larger than that. So you definitely want to take some time to figure out, okay, which is the best of the obvious programs for the specific thing I'm trying to book. Right. Right. Okay. And another thing about when you book award flights is change in cancellation fees can matter. Um, and they're not consistent across these different programs, right? No, they vary a bit. So if you book via Aerolingus as things stand now, anyway, the change fee is 42 50 in euros. So you're going to pay 42

50 in euros, but you have to cancel at least 24 hours in advance. And what I learned doing a little research before this show is that apparently you need to call during the right business hours for the U.S. customer service for obvious.com in order to cancel that. And if you call after, like, I think it's after like four o'clock Eastern, maybe the agents that handle this are gone. And then you'll wait on hold for a long time and potentially get transferred to a British Airways agent that can't help you. So you need to pay attention to whatever the customer service hours are to be able to do that, which means planning in advance and making sure that you're ready to cancel well over 24 hours in advance so you don't end up missing your window to cancel. Because if you cancel fewer than 24 hours in advance, I think you forfeit all your Avios. Now, I say as things stand because right now we've been booking Aerolingus awards through Avios.com, but I think they're migrating to booking via the Aerolingus website. And I don't

know what may or may not change when that happens, but worth a mention anyway. British Airways charges a $55 change or cancellation fee on their awards. However, if you're canceling an award where the taxes are less than $55, then you have the option to just forfeit the taxes. So, for instance, if you book a domestic American Airlines flight, that comes with $5.60 in taxes usually. And so if you're canceling that, instead of paying the $55 fee, you can just forfeit the $5.60 and get your Avios back. Though sometimes I've even gotten that $5.60 back and gotten the Avios back. So it just depends. Sometimes you get lucky, I guess. But that's very different.

Either of those are very different than what Iberia does. So if you book via Iberia, if you cancel something that is operated by an airline other than Iberia, British Airways or Aer Lingus, you don't get any obvious back. It doesn't matter what you there's like there's no way to cancel those. So if you book an American Airlines flight with your Iberia obvious, it is just non-refundable. There is no way to get the obvious back. It doesn't matter what happens. You're never going to see your obvious again. So so I mean, it's a really punitive policy.

They charge 25 euros if you're canceling a British Airways flight or an Aer Lingus flight or an Iberia flight. But it's very clear online that that doesn't apply to whaling. So if you book a whaling flight with your Iberia Avios, again, totally non-refundable. So there's no fee to pay. And you can only cancel up to 24 hours before the flight with British Airways, Iberia or Aer Lingus. So within really painful. So for example, um, during, when we went as a team to Asia, there were, there were some flights that would have been much, much cheaper to book through Iberia than any other program, but they would have been flying, um, Cathay Pacific or, uh, Japan Airlines. And, um, I didn't want to risk it. I didn't want to risk if we had to make a change and we would have just lost everything. So I ended up booking, I think, with American

Airlines, if I remember right. So paid more miles, but free changes with American Airlines if we needed them. So yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that's a great point. I typically avoid using Iberia obvious for any partner flights unless it's like close to departure. If I'm like two days before departure kind of a thing, then I'll consider it because I'm reasonably confident the trip is going to happen. But for something far in advance, I tend to avoid it unless it's booking with Iberia. And I've also gotten bitten with the 24 hour cancellation policy thing that also applies with British Airways under 24 hours. Obvious or nonrefundable. So if you wait until a few hours before the flight kind of a thing, which is a bad habit I've gotten into and canceling awards occasionally, then you'll just forfeit the obvious.

So make sure to keep that in mind, too. Yeah. Good to know. And then Qatar. However, we're going to gonna i know somebody's gonna correct our pronunciation they always do i thought it sounded good good that's a 25 fee as long as you are uh canceling 24 hours in advance or more so you pay a 25 cancellation fee so it's less than everybody else so far i guess it matches the iberia fee for those few airlines but But with Qatar, it applies to all of their partners, as I understand it. So you'll pay a $25 change or cancellation fee if you change or cancel at

least 24 hours in advance. It's $100, goes up to $100 within 24 hours, up to three hours before departure. So if you cancel between three and 24 hours prior to departure, $100, within three hours before departure. So if you cancel between three and 24 hours prior to departure, a hundred bucks within three hours, you just forfeit the obvious. So it's not as punitive as the others, but still, again, if you have to cancel really close to departure, then you don't get any obvious back, which is just crazy to me. It doesn't seem possible that you can't pay a fee and get them back, but that's the way it works. So again, it's less punitive than it is with the other programs when you're canceling with Qatar because, you know, you got the up to three hours in advance to cancel.

So, so that's that. Not so bad. Finnair, $50 change cancellation fee. And so that seems pretty straightforward. It's the same $50 to change or to cancel. All right. So in all of these cases, that's per passenger? Yes. Yes. Per pass, per ticket. It's always going to be per ticket.

That's pretty standard with any award program. You pay whatever the fee is per passenger. Yeah. Right. Right. I was just thinking that they all sounded pretty good, all around $50 or less. But when you think about it, if you're booking for multiple passengers, that can add up quickly. But yes, that's true of all the programs when they have change or cancellation fees, it's per passenger as far as I know. Another thing to know about these Avios programs is that they have different partners. So most of them belong to the One World Alliance, but I don't think Aer Lingus is part of it yet. And they each have different partnerships that mean that not only, you know, we already talked about how they could have different award pricing or different fees for the awards or different change fees.

But also, there could be programs that you can book through one of these Avios programs and not through others. So JetBlue is an example. You book JetBlue flights using your Cutter Avios but not with British Airways or Iberia or any of the others, because they're the only one that partners with JetBlue. So that's another kind of cool, interesting thing. If you get like deep into your Avios is learning how you can book certain non one world airlines like JetBlue, like Latam with certain Avios programs because they partner with these things. Yeah. And so it becomes strategic then in terms of moving your Avios around. Just like we said before, that's one of the strengths of the program, that you can move them around. And so if

you'd had booked an American Airlines flight with your British Airways Avios and you canceled it and only had to forfeit your $5.60 in taxes and got your Avios back, which again, you wouldn't get back if you had booked with Iberia. But if you did with British Airways taxes and got your Avios back, which you wouldn't get back if you had booked with Liberia. But if you did with British Airways, you get your Avios back. And then later on, you decide, oh, man, I need a JetBlue flight instead. Well, you can move those over to Qatar and book the JetBlue flight. So that's pretty cool. I think that that makes this one of the major strengths of Avios as a transfer partner, even though I don't use Avios all the time. I feel like it's a really valuable tool to understand

and have in your belt because they do have those different strengths like the different partnerships. And I don't know if Finnair has any interesting partnerships. I haven't actually spent a lot of time digging into the Finnair program, but as they join Avios,

I'm certainly gonna be more interested in that. Yeah, that's a really great point. I haven't really looked at that either. All right, should we dig into some example great uses of these points? So we'll just run through these quickly. But there are some pretty nice sweet spots. And I think one of the sweetest of the sweets has got to be this ability to fly Iberia business class from certain East Coast airports to Madrid or Barcelona for as low as 34,000 points one way, plus as low as $118-ish in taxes and fees. That's stellar. It is. It's great. During off-peak dates from New York, from Boston, from I think Washington, D.C., perhaps Chicago. Yeah, $34,000 one way is a

fantastic price for a business class. And when you hear off-peak, you might think, oh, well, I don't want to go to Barcelona in January. And well, maybe you do. I have gone to Barcelona in January, and it's not bad. But but the off peak dates are much wider than what you probably imagine. There are summertime dates that are in the off peak every year between June and sometime in the summer anyway. So I've also been able to fly this during like, you know, what seemed like peak times to me anyway. So the peak and off peak dates are worth checking because at 34K, that's a great sweet spot. And it's worth mentioning that even when it's peak, it's only 50,000, which is still

pretty good. And again, when you book through Iberia, that award surcharge is far lower than what you might have expected through British Airways and far lower than what you would pay if you tried to book that same flight through British Airways. So again, that just goes to show that it's worth paying close attention to the differences there. So that's a great one. But there are others. Oh, yeah. So another path to Europe for it's not as cheap in business class, 50,000 points one way from certain cities. You can fly Aer Lingus to Dublin, for example, from, I don't know, cities like Boston. I actually haven't looked up what all the options are, but that's one example that definitely works. And only about $130-ish in fees. But if you're willing to go economy, only 13,000 points and about $115 in fees. So pretty good deal there.

Yeah. Yeah. So that's another good one. Also, of course, you have one that you've mentioned quite a few times before, and that's that you could fly Cutter Airways business class, like maybe even in Q-suites for a really reasonable number of Avios, right? Yeah, from anywhere in North America to Doha, which is Qatar's hub in Qatar, for only 70,000 points one way and flying from the US to Doha is about $100 in taxes and fees. So that's, you know, yes, there are other programs where you could get similar pricing, but because Avios are so easy to earn, it's a pretty amazing deal to be able to use your Avios, in my opinion, for those few Avios for those flights. And the Cutter Q Suites is just spectacular. What a great way to fly business class. Yeah. But that's not all. Tell us about flying to Hawaii. Yeah. So we mentioned earlier in the show about using Turkish to fly on United. It offers a

pretty good value. But if you want to fly on American or on Alaska, then Avios could be the way to go. So if you book with British Airways Avios, it'd be 16,000 miles one way from the West Coast to Hawaii or Alaska. Now, again, I'm saying from the West Coast because it's a distance-based program. So if you're flying from farther east or you're including connecting segments, then it's going to cost more. But for your non-stops like Los Angeles to Honolulu or San Francisco to Maui, or I don't know which routes the American and Alaska fly from the West Coast, but 16,000 one way can be a good deal at the right times. Yeah. Yeah. It's not like a smoking deal compared to other programs, but it can be solid.

Short flights within Europe can be great. They start as low as 4,500 points one way and 5K for peak. That's for the shortest flights within Europe. Business class, not too bad either for the really short flights, 9,000 points one way, 10K one way peak. So that's a little better than within the U.S. because within the U.S., the short distance pricing keeps creeping up. So the shortest flights now cost 8,250 avios and slightly longer flights cost 11,000. So short flights are going to cost from 8,000 to 11,000 one way. Yeah, I find the flights within Europe can be a pretty good deal, particularly also on connecting itineraries. Connecting itineraries where you have a European connection are not necessarily such a bad deal because those shorter distance flights can be a decent deal within Europe.

Then, of course, there's JetBlue. And so you could book JetBlue Mint. We talked about JetBlue before being a partner of Cutter Airways Avios. And so if you book JetBlue Mint, you could fly Mint to the Caribbean for 26,000 Avios one way on at least a number of New York JFK to Aruba prices at 26,000 obvious one way or to St. Thomas is 26,000 obvious one way. Those are for itineraries that I believe are under 2,000 miles flown. Once you jump over that 2,000 miles flown barrier, then it starts to get unattractive for at least Caribbean flights anyway, because I looked up, for instance, New York JFK to Liberia, Costa Rica, and that was 74,000 points one way in mid-class. And that's not going to be a particularly attractive deal. Although if you're crossing the pond and you're going to Europe, I think it's 78,000 on most routes is what you're going to run into one way, which isn't a smoking deal. But again, very similar to what you mentioned before, because Avios are so easy to earn and

put together that you can transfer from basically any program, 78K, while it's not the greatest deal ever, is potentially a decent deal when you consider that you could combine forces with all your various transferable currencies and the fact that JetBlue pretty frequently has quite a few seats available for those awards. So if you're traveling with a family, this is one to keep in mind because you may actually be able to find the availability if you live in like New York or Boston, where they have flights to Europe from those places. All right. And one last one that I wanted to mention, actually, is that Avios for flights within Japan can sometimes present a good value. Now, I haven't looked up paid fares in Japan in a long time now, so I don't know exactly how these compare anymore. And they have increased the rates for those flights a bit, but they start at

10,500 miles one way in economy class, or you'll find some business class flights in some of the longer routes like Tokyo to Okinawa, for instance, that I saw pricing at $26,400 Avios one way. And again, you'll have to check whether or not that's a deal as compared to paid flights. But the one thing that I think is kind of interesting about flying Japan Airlines domestically with your British Airways Avios is that there's no taxes on those awards. It's $0 in taxes. So that's kind of an oddity in this world of miles and points. And you often think of Avios programs as having high taxes or really it's high surcharges, but we kind of lump it together and assume that it's going to be a lot. But it's not for domestic flights within Japan.

And as I understand it, those flights can sometimes be expensive. So it's worth checking those out. All right. Very good. I think that wraps up today's main event. I think it does. And that brings us to this week's question of the week. So this week's question of the week comes in via email from, I think, Aiden. And so Aiden was curious about how we go about booking activities and things. And I was really curious as to your answer on this. So Aiden says, one idea I had for a podcast topic

would be after you've traveled to your destination, how do you save on excursions? And how do you go about finding things to do? Thanks as always. So this is something that we don't really talk about very much. And sometimes people ask me questions about, oh, do you have any tips for this destination or that destination? And we just don't often write about travel tips, which is kind of odd for people who travel quite a bit, I guess. So what do you do? How do you figure out what to do? What's your go-to move, so to speak, uh, where, where you pay, uh, by tip. Um, I've done, I've done paid walking tours and, and they can be so hit or miss as to the quality, but, but the, the, the ones that, that work off tips, um, they're just more often good

because people don't get tipped that much if they're not good. And I don't know. I just find that a really good way to get, you know, right when I go to somewhere new that I've been to before, to get a lay of the land. And also to get someone local. It's not always someone who grew up there, but it's usually someone who's been there a number of years, who's giving the tour. So to get someone local to give recommendations for restaurants, things to do, and so on, once we're on the ground. In advance, I mean, I don't have any particular amazing recommendations that I can think of for how to get those really good ideas. What about you? Is there anything special you do? No, I mean, yes, I outsource it to player two. That's what I do. I say, okay, I'll figure it to player two. That's what I do.

I say, okay, I'll figure out how to get there and where we're going to stay. You figure out what we're going to do. That's the division of labor when it comes to travel planning. So she does most of that. I don't honestly focus a lot on saving on excursions, so to speak. I don't take a lot of organized tours, which for better or worse, I don't necessarily think that's a better way to travel. I've taken some tours that have been really good. So I don't necessarily think that's a good thing or a bad thing. I just don't typically book specific excursion tour type things. More so we look for stuff to do. And because I travel with young kids, we often look

for stuff to do that's more kid friendly, like what's outdoors, what's going to be fun for the kids. And because we travel with miles and points so much, I focus less on we have to do everything. Like, for instance, we're recording this show right now. I'm on a cruise ship. I'm in the Caribbean. And so we've had a bunch of different shore stops, but we haven't booked an excursion through the cruise line. Instead, we just look up, OK, well, what's a good beach that's not too far away that we can get to relatively easily because the kids just want to play in the sand. And I'm not as pressured that we need to go sightsee everything there is to see in Barbados, because I know that if we like the beach we go to in Barbados or we see something while we're riding in the taxi, then we could plan a trip there using our miles in the future. So I tend to be less pressured about that end of

things. So I was curious though, for you, cause I know that you do tend to like to walk. So I know you've done some big walking. I mean, that's just a free walking tours, but you've done some of those like really long walking trips. Oh yeah. We planned a whole trip in England around, around walking. We, we, we did a segment of the Southwest southwest coast uh path which which goes around all of southwest england uh something like 500 miles long we didn't do 500 miles but but uh we we walked from uh one town to another and had a service like bring our bags it was fantastic loved loved that trip um how do you find that i want to okay i'm sorry thing? I want to do over on my answer. I mean, keep my original answer.

But my wife and I are now planning a trip to Taiwan. And I posted to Frequent Miler Insiders basically saying, we're planning a trip to Taiwan. What recommendations do people have? If a certain thing was important to me, like if I had kids along, I would have said, keep in mind we have little kids or whatever. But got so many really great recommendations just from posting it there. And yeah, so what I did, I put together a spreadsheet of all those recommendations and made it public and posted it back to the same Q&A thing that I set up on FrugalMiler Insider so other people, if they come along to it later, don't have to go through all the different comments and can just hop onto the spreadsheet.

But yeah, I think that's a great place to go and get advice from other travelers because we've got, as we're talking, we have close to what, 40,000 people in our insiders group. They're all travelers. No matter where in the world you're going. Somebody's been there. I bet you. Someone's been there.

Someone has opinions about what to do, what to see, what to eat when you're there. So take advantage of that. No, that's a great tip. And I'm surprised I didn't think of that because that is one of our go-tos also. I was looking for recommendations too recently. And again, that came up. In fact, I think my wife was the one who gave me the idea at first. She's like, well, why don't you ask in the Freak of Mylar Insiders group? And I was like, you're a thinker. It's a smart idea. So that is definitely a good tip.

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