Frequent Miler on the Air - Must-have Amex Cards | Ep224 | 10-14-23

Episode Date: October 14, 2023

American Express has a the largest stable of rewards credit cards on the market, but which Amex cards are must-have cornerstones of your wallet? The answers aren't universal, so this week we discuss the Amex cards that could make the cut and who should keep them.   01:23 Giant Mailbag   05:05 What crazy thing . . . did JetBlue do this week?   https://frequentmiler.com/jetblues-mosaic-founderscard-benefit-is-this-a-joke/   13:52 25% transfer bonus from Amex to JetBlue   https://frequentmiler.com/amex-membership-rewards-25-transfer-bonus-to-jetblue-250250/   16:42 Award Talk   16:52 JetBlue is enhancing their elite program for 2024 and beyond   17:45 New JetBlue Signature Perks   19:37 Mosaic 4 members will be able to give Mosaic 1 to another member   20:27 Booking the BLADE helicopter transfers for Mosaic 4   23:21 JetBlue credit card approvals   24:28 AAdvantage Aviator card approvals   https://frequentmiler.com/barclays-aviator-red-now-up-to-75000-miles-with-two-purchases/   26:34 Main Event: Must-have Amex cards   27:40 Transferable points cards   27:44 Blue Business Plus card   https://frequentmiler.com/amxbbp/   30:16 Amex Gold Card   https://frequentmiler.com/amxgoldcard/   32:34 Platinum card   https://frequentmiler.com/amxplat   36:18 Amex Everyday card   https://frequentmiler.com/amxed/   38:50 Amex Green card   https://frequentmiler.com/amxgreen/   40:45 Pick one Membership Rewards card   43:21 Amex Hotel cards   43:27 Amex Hilton Aspire card   https://frequentmiler.com/amxhiltonaspire/   45:51 Amex Marriott Bonvoy Business card   https://frequentmiler.com/spgbiz/   47:23 Amex Marriott Bonvoy Brilliant card   https://frequentmiler.com/spglux/   52:33 Hilton Surpass card   https://frequentmiler.com/hilton-honors-american-express-surpass-card/   55:20 Which is the one Amex hotel card for you?   56:33 Airline cards   57:00 Delta Gold cards   https://frequentmiler.com/dlgold/   https://frequentmiler.com/dlgoldbiz/   57:32 Delta Platinum cards   https://frequentmiler.com/dlplat/   https://frequentmiler.com/dlplatbiz/   59:18 Delta Reserve cards   https://frequentmiler.com/dlrsv/   https://frequentmiler.com/dlrsvbiz/   1:02:22 Which Delta credit card   1:04:27 Question of the Week #1: Is credit card cell phone insurance worth it if you have Apple Care?   1:06:07 Question of the Week #2: For American Airlines partner award bookings, which airlines are not shown on the AA.com website. Can you search Aeroplan's website? Can you call to book more than 331 days in advance?   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 Liler on the Air, starts now. Today's main event, must-have Amex cards. American Express has a huge selection of rewards credit cards they offer, and some of them are great to have for just about everybody. A lot of them are really good to have for people who could really use the particular perks and things that they offer. We'll dig into some of our favorites for today's main event. Yeah, I mean, some of the Amex cards are my favorite cards, period. So I'm excited about this because I'm definitely a big Amex fan. So

we'll talk all about that ecosystem today. But first, if you haven't yet done it, please don't forget to like this video, subscribe, enable notifications. I should say like the video if you like the video. But if you know you're going to like it, feel free to like it right now. Like it in advance. You know, at the end, don't forget to go back and like it and subscribe. I say video and I know some of you are listening in podcast form. Wherever you're listening to this, we always appreciate reviews, comments, you know, and a little bit of fan participation, so to speak. Audience participation. So please let us know what you think.

All right. That brings us to this week's giant mailbag. Greg, drag out the giant mailbag. Yeah. Today's giant mail comes from Matt from Kansas City. Matt says, T-Mobile recently changed their auto pay discount to only include debit cards and bank accounts. However, when I expressed my frustration and disappointment to a T-Mobile rep, she told me that I could set up auto pay with a debit card, but then go in and manually pay with

a credit card before my due date and still receive the discount. I tried it last month and this month. And while it's not as convenient as simply letting my autopay take care of it, I like that I don't have to let consistent spend go to waste. Great job. Well done. You know, I am the part of this story that really impresses me and like wildly impressed. And I'm just a little bit. I can't understate how impressed I am is that the T-Mobile rep knew how that worked to be able to suggest it. Because it's so rare that a customer service representative would understand how to game the system, right? That's a great point. I didn't even think about that too much.

But yeah, that's a really good point. So when we wrote about this change, I think it was announced in like March or so. And when I originally wrote about the change, I said that I hoped that this would work. So I suggested this right away because it was something that I had thought of in the beginning, because this type of thing has worked with other carriers that have auto pay discounts also. Maybe not all of them, but I know it's worked with others. So yeah, I've been doing this since they instituted the change. And I think it was the end of May or beginning of June or something that they started requiring that you had a debit card or bank account linked for auto pay. So yeah, I have a debit card linked for auto pay. And as soon as my bill cuts, I go and make multiple

payments with my business platinum cards that have a $10 monthly wireless services charge or wireless services credit rather. And then I pay the remainder of the bill with now the MX Business Gold. And that's a new change. So I'm doing that because, of course, that card now gets both a good multiplier and has good cell phone insurance. So yeah, this is certainly a good technique. I'm glad that the rep was able to tell you to do that. It is more of a pain. I agree. But it's just on my list of things to do now. I was already making payments with the business platinum cards for the $10 credits. So it's just one extra step, basically. So not the end of the world, but a good technique

for anybody out there who's on T-Mobile. It definitely works now. Will it work forever and ever and ever? Who knows? But I'll take advantage of it while it does. I wonder if that T-Mobile rep might be a Freakamiler reader and read your speculation in that post. I don't know. I wasn't the only person that speculated that. That's for sure. Other people had that idea before me, probably. So yeah, but good that it works. Good that they told you. And also one other tip there, though, is just be careful that you do remember to do this because, for instance, once already, I had to charge my debit card because I totally forgot about it. And it charged my debit card. Luckily, I had money in that checking account, but I don't usually keep a

lot of money in that particular checking account. It's not my primary one. I don't like to use a debit card from a primary account anywhere online. Just so if it gets hacked, I don't have to deal with the hassle of all of the money getting pulled out at once. So I don't usually keep much in there. So I was like lucky that I kept enough in there to pay my team a little bill. So so just be careful about that. All right. That's the giant mailbag. I should have mentioned, by the way, before the giant mailbag that if you wanted to skip over the giant mailbag and I'm glad you didn't. But if you did, you could go to the timestamps. Those are always in the show notes. So if you're watching on YouTube, you might have to expand the description box. Or if you're listening on a podcast platform, just go to the show notes and you can see the timestamps. So you

can skip around if you want to skip some of the segments. Like today, we're going to skip right over card talk because we're talking about cards later on. And we're going to go right to what doing the skipping for you. That's right. Skipping right ahead for you. Right to the next timestamp. What crazy thing did JetBlue do this week, Greg? They did some crazy craziness here. Yeah. So JetBlue, one of their mosaic perks, so mosaic is their elite status.

And the way their elite program works is each time you reach a level of elite status, a level of mosaic status, you get to choose from what they call perks you pick. And one of those perks is a Founders Card Blue membership. And so since JetBlue has been offering a status match from Delta Elites, my wife and I both signed up. So both of us were automatically given some of these perks you pick. That is JetBlue picked for us when they gave us elite status, which I'm fine with. That's totally cool. But one of the things they picked for us was the Founders Card Blue benefit. And blue is a pretty color, so that must be awesome, right? It must be awesome, right?

So Founders Card, as a general thing, what it is, it's a card that normally you have to pay for that gives you sort of like elite status and a bunch of different things, and it gives you a bunch of elite challenges and, and coupons. Again, there's a lot of different coupons for different, like both travel related ones for hotels and for rental cars and things. And then also some for an airlines too,

for that matter, discounts and various things, but also for like, you know, clothing stores, you know, I can't think of the word department stores and various fashion brands and things like that. So there's a whole bunch of a long list of those types of discount,

couponing discount type things. And then, yeah, you get some elite status. Well, some elite statuses or elite status challenges or fast tracks for various programs. Yeah. In fact, we posted a few months ago now, I think, that Founders Card had a Hyatt status match for people who missed out on the built one that happened in the beginning of the year. So that's nice for those who have Founders Card. So anyway, I didn't think I really was going to use any of the benefits that I knew about that Founders Card had. But I signed up for Founders Card Blue through JetBlue because why not? It was a perk they had already picked for me, and I wanted to report on it and show, like, how good is this? Is this as good as Nick had done a trial membership a couple years ago and did a post about it?

And, you know, it was kind of mixed, but he identified a number of things that could be valuable under the right circumstances. So I jumped in. I got the membership. And I didn't realize that blue had a special meaning here. But blue, it turns out, means nothing for you. Blue is no perks for you, Greg. Yeah. So I had to wait a few days to a week or so for them to activate my founder's card, Blue membership.

And the first thing that happens when you log in is it says, basically, do you want a real membership? You could pay $295, which is our discounted rate for a one week only to upgrade to Elite. And then you click through the next page to find out what the difference between blue and elite is and there's a huge list of benefits all of which are just for elite none of which were for blue and there were just a couple vague things about blue that where it said partial benefits or something like that um i couldn't find any worthwhile benefits at all without upgrading obviously i didn't upgrade because i have no

interest in that but um it's it was shocking that jet blue would provide this not just as a so-called perk for elite status but one that someone chooses so you have to give up a valuable perk other perk like valuable miles or maybe if you travel with a pet and you want a wave pet fee things like that where it's real money that that you're uh giving up or real value that you're giving up for this trial like thing i i can't even call it a trial it's's like a, it's, it's, it's just a way for them to get your email address and advertise to you an upgrade. I mean, I don't see any other, I don't see any benefit to it, to, to you. I see a benefit to Founders Card, but not to, not to the end user who doesn't upgrade.

No, it's a great deal for Founders Card because they get access to a bunch of customers who travel a lot so they can try and market their product to people that travel enough that might be interested in paying for the perks. Because Founders Card, to be clear for somebody who has never heard of it, this is not a credit card. This is a membership card. So this is just something, just a membership you buy in order to get discounts, essentially. And so they get access to a whole group of customers that presumably spend a lot of money flying around on JetBlue and the chance to

try to funnel you in and get you to pay for an upgrade. But yeah, I mean, it just reminds me of those like Grant Cardone. I don't know much about him, but I've seen him on YouTube now and then. And he advertises these funnel systems for websites that, you know, like you just kind of suck people in and like, oh, no, take this. Oh, you want to buy this instead? And and and so it's kind of it feels that way. And it's too bad because, you know, it would be nice if JetBlue were going to offer. So Founders Card actually has three different levels. There's like this blue level, there's some middle tier, and then there's the elite tier. And it sounds like through the JetBlue trial,

your only options are either the nothing benefits basically of the blue tier. And it sounds like through the JetBlue trial, your only options are either the nothing benefits basically of the blue tier or paying for an upgrade to like the top, top tier card that normally costs like a thousand dollars a year. Right. So in reality, there is one in the middle that's like five hundred dollars a year. And that's still too much for me to consider paying for it. But there is another tier there, but you don't even get access to that. So like JetBlue is just totally giving you a nothing burger here and not giving you the at the very least, give you a discount on the middle tier. Right. I mean, if you want to give a perk, JetBlue say, OK, well, you know, we'll give you two hundred dollars off of the middle

tier. And truth be told, I think if you sign up through a referral, you can get it for two ninety five, I think like normally but you know jet blue could bill this as a perk hey you know save 200 and at least it would feel like they're giving you something a little yeah man yeah yeah yeah it's true i mean it's it feels more like a punishment than a perk the way it actually plays out so they should give it to people who like try to get to mosaic but fail to and i knows, like, do they know how little comes with this? They just get talked into like, oh, yeah, we've got a blue tier that, you know, we can sell you to give to your elite members and people get access to all this interesting

stuff. And I wonder if that's the wrong thing. Yeah. And I don't know what it is they're buying. Yeah, I don't know. Now, one person on our Facebook group, I think, said that they were able to contact FoundersCard and actually get sort of upgraded for free, if you will, to the, I Card Blue thing and actually want to activate it, consider contacting them to see if you can get sort of subscribed for an annual subscription, I think to that middle tier Nick described. So in a year, if you don't do anything to cancel, they'll charge your credit card for a year of that middle level. So yeah, it's just all bad news. I will give Founders Card one small bit of credit here. And that's that I did one of these trial

things once and I got charged because I forgot to cancel it. And they do have a policy that if you if you contact them within X amount of time after you get charged, they'll refund you. And it was very that's got refunded and canceled. And it was it was much simpler than I assumed it was going to be a big pain getting my money back out of that. And it wasn't. It was actually really easy. So I'll get credit where credit is due. If you mess up, at least I should say double check the policy that it hasn't changed because that was a few years ago. But back when I did it anyway, they were good about that. So, all right, that's the crazy thing. And really the craziness, I don't even put it on Founders Card there, sort of, because they offer this sort of meaningless

teaser perk benefit but mostly on jet blue for not knowing that they're giving you a crummy perk agree your elite totally agree all right that brings us to mattress running the numbers this week's mattress running the numbers american express is offering a 25 transfer bonus to jet blue true blue 25 bonus that sounds pretty good greg can you tell us a little bit more about that? How does this work? Yeah, at the headline, it does sound good. But the thing to know is the American Express membership rewards, which most of their transfer partners, Amex transfers one-to-one, but to JetBlue, the usual transfer ratio is 250 Amex points to 200 JetBlue points.

So with this 25% transfer bonus, it becomes a one-to-one transfer to JetBlue. And, you know, even at one-to-one, it's not like great, great value. Now, I actually just booked a flight with JetBlue points, and it's just a little domestic flight. And I got almost exactly 1.5 cents per point value. So it wasn't bad, but still, you can often do much, much better transferring to other partners with Amex than 1.5. And not only that, why else would you prefer not to transfer from Amex to JetBlue, Greg? Well, I mean, the other thing is you don't have to hurry to do it if you have other points, because both Chase and Citibank offer one to one transfers to JetBlue every day of the week.

So and no need to hurry. All right. I'm going to throw you a hint, Craig. Oh, OK. I missed. I didn't grab the didn't pick up what I was putting down on the first round. No, no, I didn't. Let me ask you a question, Greg. Do Chase and City charge you to transfer to domestic programs? Oh, I forgot about that.

They don't. No, they don't. No, they don't. Amex, though, has this bizarro thing where only if you transfer points to a U.S.-based airline, do they charge you a weird excise fee or something. And it's not a lot of money, but why would they charge you anything? It's insane. So anyway, from Amex, if you transfer to Delta, JetBlue, Hawaiian, I think that might be the whole list. I think that's it. You get charged. Yeah. Oh, good reminder.

You got to pay something, too. Like, crazy Amex, get out of here with your 25% transfer bonus. I don't want to hear about it. No, it's a bad deal because you got it. Like Greg said, you can transfer one-to-one every day day from the other programs and it's not going to cost you anything. So please don't transfer your MX points to JetBlue unless you really have nothing better to do with your MX points. It's not that TrueBlue is bad.

Like Greg said, I've actually redeemed JetBlue points several times recently. So I've actually gotten pretty good value out of the JetBlue points. But yeah, bad transfer from MX. So that's Mattress Running the Numbers. Let's talk about award talk. We are really on a JetBlue kick this week. We really are. Award Talk, we got some JetBlue stuff to cover.

What's up with JetBlue? Yeah. So first up, JetBlue has announced that they're enhancing their elite program for 2024 and beyond. So we talked about this earlier in the show that they call their elite tiers Mosaic. So you have Mosaic 1 through 4, basically, which is each level of elite status. And as you reach each level, you get these perks you pick. So you get to pick one perk each time you reach a level of Mosaic each year. And they're adding new ones.

So they're adding two new ones. One is you can pick IHG Platinum Elite status. And the other one is you can gift 20 tiles to somebody else. So basically, that means you could help someone else get to Mosaic status because gifting 20 tiles gets them two-fifths of the way to Mosaic right there. So that's pretty nice. They also introduced new signature perks. Those are the perks that you get automatically based on the level of Mosaic status you reached. So all Mosaic members will get Avis Elite status.

But Mosaic 3 and 4 will get enhanced phone support and they'll get this. This is the one I'm excited about. There's already this move to mint benefit that mosaics three and four get, which they get these sort of like certificates for you book economy and you use these certificates to move to mint, which is JetBlue's business class. And what I don't like about how it works today is right now, you don't upgrade until 24 hours before the flight starts. So you have to wait till right

before the flight to know whether you're going to actually get the upgrade. They're going to change that to now they're going to be confirmed upgrades at the time of booking. And you'll get to choose which flights to use them on, which today they automatically get applied to every flight if you have enough. So you get to choose which ones you apply them to. The one downside is they're going to vary how many certs are needed for any given flight. And they were not specific yet about how that's going to work um but my understanding is uh they'll top out at four is the most that you'll need so uh so that means uh mint three level people get get four certificates so you'd be able to upgrade at least one flight for one person uh with your certs um but still i'll take that confirmed i'll take a one

way like international upgrade confirmed over a round trip not confirmed personally so i'm happy with that finally um uh mosaic fours are also going to have the ability to gift mosaic status to uh another person so that's a pretty pretty valuable benefit to give to someone who's a JetBlue flyer. Absolutely. That's pretty cool. Those are really great enhancements. I mean, is there a downside? Is there something negative that came out of these enhancements? Because it's rare that you get an announcement about enhancements and it's all good news. Yeah. No, I mean, I'd say the only downside is they didn't take away the founders card, uh, so-called benefit. That's still an option.

Still there to entice those who are the unwary. Um, all right. So that's good news there. Good news out of JetBlue, but that's not it for JetBlue. We're not done with JetBlue for a word talk today. the perk she got was four laid helicopter transfers between New York City airports and Manhattan. And so we went online yesterday and booked a round trip JetBlue flight to New York City and submitted a request. She had received an email saying how to request the blade thing. And we made the request and got a confirmation saying when they're going to pick us up and all that stuff. So it's pretty exciting. I did learn a few things in doing this. I'll mention real briefly. If you want it to be entirely free, the helicopter ride, each person is only allowed 25 pounds of stuff to go with them. So you're allowed one carry-on

size bag and one personal size bag, but combined 25 pounds maximum. Since we're just going for a short weekend, I don't see that being a problem, but we will get out our scale to measure things before we go. And the other thing is to be careful about timing. So they don't run as frequently on the weekend as they do on weekdays. So I had gotten onto Blade's website to sort of do a dummy booking, dummy paid booking to see what hours they run, to see if I could book ones that matched up with JetBlue flights back to Detroit. And in order to get it all to match up, I had to go on an earlier JetBlue flight on Friday than I probably would have picked otherwise, and a later

one on Sunday than I probably would have picked otherwise. So it's a slightly longer weekend than I would have planned. Not a big problem, but we know that for Saturday night at least, Hyatt or Marriott will get my business because of the guaranteed 4 p.m. late checkout so that we won't have to check out earlier than our helicopter ride. They're very good. All right. Well, that's exciting. I think that's really awesome. That's fun. And that's a great tip to know that you want to take a look at the blade schedule before you book your flight, probably, and not just book your flight and assume that there'll be a blade helicopter transfer that matches up nicely. Because I mean, I'm assuming there are probably other transfers. But if you

had booked different flights, and you either would have been at the airport way too early, or, you know, you would have to wait around forever, that kind of thing. So that's a great tip. I would have had no idea what the blade schedule is like. So very good. And one last piece of news from me about JetBlue is, if you remember, for my wife and I to keep our new JetBlue status throughout 2024, so beyond this year, we had to either fly a bit or we had to get JetBlue credit cards. And so we each had applied for JetBlue business cards. And yesterday I got an email saying that I was successfully enrolled in the electronic billing or something. And I was like, for what? I still don't know why that happened. That's what they do. But that's how I knew something had happened. I logged into my Barclays

account, saw the JetBlue card there. We logged into my wife's account, saw the JetBlue card there. So obviously we were approved for those cards. So that's great news. That means we'll both keep elite status through next year, which also means we'll get another set of things like those mint upgrade certificates and another set. She'll get another set of those blade helicopter transfers. So we're excited. Very good. That's awesome news.

That's exciting times. So and I'm going to add another piece on here. Now, since we're talking about approvals for airline cards, I thought of something else I should have added here. So related in the sense that it's an airline credit card situation, my wife and I were both approved for Advantage Aviator cards last week. And the reason that I want to bring that up is because we wrote recently about a new offer on the Advantage Aviator card. So it's 60,000 miles after first purchase and 15,000 miles after you add an authorized user and they make a purchase within the first 90 days. And you have to pay the annual fee for the first 60,000 also. So anyway, 75,000 total miles. That's

the time that we're recording this. Of course, if you're listening to this far after it gets released, I don't know what the current offer will be, but at the moment, that's what it is. And the reason that I brought this up is because when we wrote about that new offer in the comments, a couple of readers pointed out the fact that there is lifetime language now on the application for the Barclays Aviator card. I don't know if that's new or if it's been there forever, but it basically says you may not be eligible for the bonus if you've had the card before. Both my wife and I have had the card before and both of us were approved and both of us see a signup bonus tracker in our login. So you can see that it's going to be 60,000 points after first purchase and 15,000 miles rather after the authorized user makes a purchase.

I think I mentioned that last week, but I wanted to mention it because we both got approved. We both had the card before. I think only maybe one of us had done it before we recorded last week. And we both see the welcome bonus tracker and we both made our purchase. So I fully expect the miles to come in. But we got a number of questions about that on Facebook. Also, people saying, oh, are you sure? Can you get it again? And we haven't earned the bonuses yet, but I'm very confident that we're going to. And if we don't, I would obviously post about that. But yeah, I expect that that lifetime language is just in there and not actually being enforced as these things sometimes go. you know you might not get approved um if you've had the card before but if you are approved chances are uh they will honor the uh welcome bonus that you applied under um so that's really good

absolutely okay that my friends brings us to this week's main event main event time must have amex cards we're gonna dig into some of our favorite Amex cards and talk about why we consider them must-have cards, or more specifically, who are they must-have for? Because a lot of these are pretty specific, make sense for some people, but not all. So what we're going to do, I'm going to dive in first to membership rewards cards and talk about each one very briefly. And Nick is going to say who that card is best for. And when I said I'm going to talk about each card, I'm not talking about all possible Amex cards. I'm going to talk about the ones I picked out as I think that there's a case to be made that there must have for some people. And I'm only talking about like points and miles cards, not cashback. Very good. A lot of caveats there.

Starting with membership rewards cards. So these are the cards that earn transferable points, which you know are our favorites. First up, Blue Business Plus card. It costs $0 a year. That's the annual fee. It earns two points per dollar for all spend up to $50,000 spend per year. Now it does have foreign transaction fees, so you don't want to use this outside of the United States. So Nick, who's this good for? Everybody in America. Everybody who has a business is what I guess we would say, but you should have a business if you don't. I mean, it's easy to have one in the United States. You just have a sole proprietorship. Anybody can have a sole proprietorship. And then if you have

a sole proprietorship, then you can use your social security number as the business tax ID. And so it could be really small. I mean, there's no requirement as to how big your business has to be, really. I think maybe Amex won't let you put in less than $1,000 in annual revenue for your business. But I mean, come up with something, sell stuff on eBay or Facebook or write a blog or be working on the great American novel or consult or babysit or mow lawns or something that you can claim $1,000 worth of income a year from because you want this card because it's 2x everywhere. So it's good rewards, a good everywhere else card to have, period. It's got no annual fee and it keeps your points alive. You can transfer to all of Amex's partners. If you only have this card,

you can still transfer to all the airline partners. And as we said earlier in the show, you don't wanna transfer them to JetBlue necessarily, but to the other partners anyway, they're gonna be one-to-one and you'll be able to transfer and keep them alive forever. That way, if you open other cards

and you decide you don't wanna keep them, you can close them because you have the Blue Business Plus and that's gonna keep your membership rewards points alive as you open and close other cards. So if you don't want to keep them. You can close them because you have the blue business plus, and that's going to keep your membership rewards points alive as you open and close other cards. So if you don't have a business yet, I recommend finding something that you can do as a business and having this card. I think it's a keeper for everybody. The only person I would say it's not particularly good for is an expat, somebody who lives overseas, because in that case, and you'd get hit with a foreign transaction fee if you use it.

Although I would say keep it and buy an Amazon gift card once a year or something online in the US or have somebody buy a pack of gum for you in the US once a year, just because that card, again, it doesn't cost you anything and it keeps your points alive. So I still would probably have it. I just wouldn't use it if I lived overseas.'s all yeah totally agree and that's why i listed this card first because to me it's the the most obvious like uh everyone should have card in in amex's lineup in in my mind um next up amex gold card 250 a year uh but it gives you 4x for dining worldwide gives you 4x at u at U.S. supermarkets, up to $25,000 spend per year. And it has $10 per month of, in quotes, dining credits and $10 per month of Uber credits. So a total of up to $240 in credits back in exchange for that $250 annual fee. What do you think? Who's it good for?

Anybody who spends a bunch on dining and on US supermarkets, I think this makes a lot of sense. I think it's very easy to justify if you've got a family that you're feeding because you're going to need to spend a lot on groceries. And even if you don't spend a lot on actual groceries, you may find a gift card for Home Depot or this or that or whatever at your grocery store that helps you increase your rewards. So I think this card makes a lot of sense for the average person, really. Yeah, I totally agree. And I have to say, I used to be very down on their $10 per month dining credits. But what I've been doing in recent months is I've been buying myself a $10 Gold Belly gift card with a $10 credit. And I just bought my niece a birthday gift through Gold Belly and was able to stack five of those $10 gift cards. And then I spent $30 on top of that with the Amex gold card

to get an $80 gift and, um, $60 of it is, you know, all was reimbursed. So it was really easy and a nice way to, uh, to, uh, I think use those credits. So I'm, I'm, uh, sort of more, uh, you know, uh, happy with those credits than I used to be. Thanks to having an easy way to do it like that. Very good. Yeah. I mean, I didn't use to use the $10 a month Uber credit because it's not around me when I travel. I use Uber or Uber Eats quite a bit, but I didn't use it much at home. But now I'm making more and more of an effort because I have a bunch of cards that have credits. And so I basically I just try to plan in a meal that's going to be covered by Uber credits once a month. And that's easy enough.

And we're going to eat out at least once a month anyway. So works out for me. So yeah. All right. Gold card is good. What's next? Next up, platinum card. So there's three versions of this.

There's what we call the vanilla platinum card, which is the one marketed directly by American Express. But there's also one labeled with Schwab and another one labeled with Morgan Stanley. They're all $695 cards. They all offer five points per dollar for flights, even when purchased directly from the airlines. And they're loaded with rebates. They're loaded with perks like airport lounge access and Hilton and Mary Gold status and all kinds of other things. So what do you think? Who are these cards good for? You know, this is where it starts to get a little more questionable.

You have to be somebody, I think, who values the perks quite a bit. I mean, there's a lot of high-end perks, but if those don't matter to you, then that's one strike. And then number two is you have to be somebody who can use a bunch of the rebates because these cards have tons of rebates that can be valuable if you're going to use the rebates. But if you're not going to use them,

you're not going to make an effort to make sure that you find creative ways to use them, then this card becomes really expensive really fast for a card that doesn't offer much in terms of return on spend. So I feel like this one really comes down to devalue the perks, devalue the credits. And maybe one last caveat that even if the answer to those is no, if you are a really big spender and you earn tons of membership rewards points every year, then maybe if you're earning so many points, you can't possibly use them. Then the Schwab card perhaps makes sense so that you can have a way to get 1.1 cents per

point in value or the Morgan Stanley would be one cent. So the difference there is relatively minimal. But either way, one of those might make sense just for cashing out your points. If you've got tons and tons of points, that'd be the other reason I'd consider one of these cards. Yep. Makes sense. All right. Now the business platinum card. It's very similar. $695 annual fee.

You don't get 5X directly with airlines, but you do if you go through Amex Travel to buy your fare or prepaid hotels. And it has fewer rebates than the consumer cards, but it still has a lot of them, but they're different. But one thing that it adds that the consumer cards don't have that's significant is the 35% pay with points flight rebate. What do you think? Who's this good for? Well, I mean, anybody who uses points to pay for flights. So if you're somebody who would otherwise consider, for instance, with chase points, using your chase points with the Sapphire Reserve for one and a half cents per point, well, this is going to be actually slightly better value than that. And up to whatever the maximum rebate is

per year, I can't remember, is it a million points a year now? Half a million points a year? There's a maximum rebate. So up to that maximum rebate anyway, you're going to get better value using your points to pay for flights with this. And keep in mind that that works with any airline in business or first class. So if you're somebody who either flies a lot of paid business in first class or is willing to hunt out the good deals for paid business in first class, then you may actually do better than award tickets in some cases by using this rebate. And with your chosen airline, it could be even an economy class. Of course, your chosen airline has to be a U.S. domestic airline.

So there's some limitations there. But if you can use that, it's good. I don't get particularly excited about the 5X through MX travel on this or the 5X airfare on the platinum card because the travel protections are not as good as other cards. So I'm, I'm less interested in putting flights on an Amex card even for the 5X. All right. Very good. All right. Moving on the everyday card.

It's has no annual fee. And you know, that it has some bonus categories, but nothing too exciting in my opinion. It does, if you have one of these every now and then you might get a nice upgrade offer to the everyday preferred. So it's a potential source of extra points through upgrading. What do you think about this one? Yeah. If you're against getting a business plus, if you're like, no, I don't have a business. I don't want a business. No business, no business. I mean, if that's the perspective for whatever

reason, and of course, I'm joking a little bit there, but I know there's some reasons somebody might not want to have a business, then I guess this would make sense because it's the no annual fee consumer card. So it might make sense for that. And the upgrade offers, by the way, keep in mind that, well, if you apply new for a card, usually most of the Amex cards have lifetime language. And we've seen that spreading in some nasty ways, which we should have mentioned. I'm going to mention that again in a second. But anyway, while you usually cannot get the welcome bonus on a card,

if you have or have had the card before. Upgrade bonuses typically don't have that restriction. So even if you've had the everyday preferred before and you've got an everyday now and an upgrade offer, usually you'll be eligible to still take that upgrade offer. So that's kind of nice. Give me some extra points that way. I should have mentioned on the whole family restriction earlier. This didn't come to mind because it was relatively new. But when you asked me, who is the gold card good for? And I said, oh, just about everybody, blah, blah, blah. I should probably add, it might not be great for somebody who has had a platinum card

or has the platinum card right now, because nowadays, if you have a platinum card, you're not eligible for the welcome bonus on the gold card. And that would kind of stink if you've never had a gold card before. Although I guess that doesn't really affect the long-term value proposition of the card.

You'd still probably- No, but it does change the equation. If you have a platinum card and you'd rather have a gold card, we used to say, don't product change to the gold because then you'd be missing out on the welcome bonus. But now, might as well product change because you're not going to get a welcome bonus anyway, unless you find an offer that... Sometimes there's offers floating around. You might get targeted for one that doesn't have the family restrictions on it. So you might be able to get a gold card and a bonus. But for most people, it's probably just

product change and get the card you want. Yeah, that's sad, isn't it? All right. So every day, keep your points alive. No annual fee. Okay. Not exciting. A little boring. Yeah, that's sad, isn't it? All right. So every day, keep your points alive. No annual fee. Okay. Not exciting. A little boring. Yeah. All right. Last card in the membership rewards lineup that I'm going to talk about is the green card. $150 a year gives you three points per dollar for travel as a broad category and dining. What do you think? Who this good for oh i should mention it also gives you a couple other perks like a clear membership yeah uh i don't know i don't have it i've never had it so i i can't think of the person for whom this is a really good deal i don't know if you i know you've had it before because you got the welcome bonus at some point right but is this

a card you've kept no no not at all i i have trouble thinking who i'd recommend it to i think it would have to be someone who who uh spends a lot on travel outside of airfare because there's there's fewer cards that bonus um like travel in general than there are cards that bonus like airfare for example um and uh this is one of those but at the same time like i would i would much rather have either the sapphire reserve card which gives 3x for travel and dining plus great travel protections or some combination of chase cards like the ink business preferred which has 3x travel and any one of several chase cards that offer three X for dining. So, you know, yeah, I can't think of many people where this is the right card.

And I think we struggle with that mostly because the annual fee is higher than comparable cards from other issuers. Right. So it's. And it's an Amex. I mean, it's not like you could use it everywhere. Internationally, you know, so as a travel card, which this is, you know, I don't know. That's a good point. I'm not saying it's, I'm not saying it's a bad card. I mean, it's a pretty good one. It's just that I think there are better solutions for most people. Yep. Okay. Agreed. Very good. All right. So those are the membership rewards cards, but that's not all MX has. No, but before we move on to hotel cards,

Nick, you could have just one, just one membership rewards card. Which one would it be? consistently spend a lot at supermarkets and on dining. And that's just the fact of life for me. I've got two young kids. They eat a lot. Two young boys that eat like they're, well, my six-year-old, I'm a five-year-old, almost six-year-old. He eats like it's the end of the world and he's got to fuel up. My younger son doesn't eat as much, but he, of course, eats a lot of fruit and that gets expensive. So I spend a lot of grocery stores and, and certainly eating out at restaurants is always going to be a high spent category too, especially for anybody who travels really. So I think my pick would be the gold card because I would spend enough in those Forex categories to make it worthwhile. And I make enough use now of the monthly credits that I feel like it's, it doesn't feel like it's $250 a year, or at least not a $250

loss each year. So the gold card would be my pick. What about you, Greg? Actually the same, the gold card. If I could really only have one, it has the best combination of earning rate with those 4X categories. And like I said earlier, I'm happier than I used to be with its coupons. It's monthly rebates. I found I could actually use them. So it becomes a not very expensive card. And so a nice combination. Yeah, I think I'm more likely to earn a useful number of points with those two 4x categories than I would be with just the 2x everywhere, because the 2x everywhere these days is less exciting than it used to be. I've got enough other cards that the 2X everywhere, because the 2X everywhere these days is less exciting than it used to be. I've got enough other cards that the 2X everywhere doesn't feel like a home run.

Right, right. Because you could do the city double cash. You could do any of a couple Capital One cards to get. I think there's at least four that I can think of Capital One cards that give you 2X everywhere. And then you get the altitude reserve that gives you 3X if you're using mobile wallet. So a lot of places that's going to work out and 3X travel. And so there's Bank of America premium rewards. If you have Platinum Honor status, you're looking at 2.625% cash back on that or the unlimited cash rewards card if you've got platinum honor status with thank you america so at 2.625 percent back versus 2x it becomes a debate as to which is better so

there's a lot of uh a lot of other options to consider anyway that i would pick the gold card and i guess you would too yep yep sounds good all right let's go on to hotel cards. So Amex provides cards from both Hilton and Marriott. So first up, Hilton Aspire card. It is a $450 card. It earns 14 points per dollar on spend at Hilton properties. It gives you an annual free night, good at pretty much any Hilton worldwide um any day of the week um when there is a free night award availability though um standard room free standard room availability thank you uh gives you top tier diamond status with hilton and uh five hundred dollars a year in credits. So $250 for airline incidental fees and $250 for Hilton resort credits. Who is this good for? I mean, I would say this is good for almost anybody that's going to stay at a Hilton at least once a year. And I would say that's true even if it's not a Hilton resort.

I would say that this card, if you can use the $250 airline incidental credit money, which is pretty easy to use. We have a whole post about ways to trigger airline incidental credit. So it's pretty easy to get good value out of that $250. So even if you don't use the Hilton resort credit at all, and you're looking at, if you, let's say you value the $250 airline incentives at 90% of phase. So you're at what? $225 there. So if you take that off of the annual fee, you're looking at about $225 a year for a free night certificate at like any Hilton in the world. That's already a win, I think. And then if you additionally are able to make use of any of that $250 in resort credit,

then you're just winning even more. And that's totally ignoring the diamond status with Hilton, which doesn't give you much over gold. It gives you lounge access if there's a lounge, but it also gives you the chance to status match to other things sometimes when those opportunities come up. If you're going to do one of the free MSC cruises I've written about, you should probably be able to match from Hilton diamond. In fact, my wife did from Hilton diamond to MSC diamond. And so it opens up opportunities like that too. So, uh, so this card is, I think a pretty easy win in general. And if you will stay at a Hilton resort at least

once a year, then I think, you know, it's a mic drop moment. It's like the definitely hands down easy one. Yeah. Yep. I totally agree. All right. Next up Marriott. Well said Greg. The Marriott Bonvoy business card is $125 a year. It gives you a, each, each year you renew,

you get a 35 K free night certificate. You get automatic gold status and you get 15 elite night credits towards elite status automatically. Yeah. So I think this one is, well, first of all, the free night certificate, I think it's really easy to get more than $125 in value out of the free night certificate. Really easy these days with the way that prices have gone up for hotels in general. I have found it super easy to get lots of value out of those 35K free night certificates. For me, I end up staying near JFK or Newark Airport once a year. And these days, the cost of an airport hotel just blows my mind. And these 35K certs

come in really handy for those types of stays for me. So I think it's easy to do that. But I would say more importantly, this card is a keeper for somebody who's chasing Marriott elite status because you get 15 elite night credits each year and that stacks on top of the 15 that you get from having at least one consumer card. So if you don't already have a chase Marriott business card, those aren't available for new applicants anymore. This is the only Marriott business card available and it'll give you 15 nights that stack on top of the 15 nights you get with a consumer card. So if you're chasing Marriott status, whether that's each year or lifetime status, is an easy way to get nights towards that. And your only option to add more than the 15 you get from any number of personal cards.

Yeah, yeah. I agree with all of that. All right. Moving on to the Marriott Bonvoy Brilliant Card. The Brilliant Card costs a whopping $650 a year, but it gives you an 85K free night certificate each year upon renewal, gives you platinum elite status with Marriott, which gives you things like free breakfast at many Marriotts, lounge access at some Marriot, which gives you things like free breakfast at many Marriott, lounge access at some Marriott, so on, and 4 p.m. late checkout guaranteed at hotels, not resorts. And it gives you $25 per month in automatic dining rebates. So you just use that to pay

for a restaurant or things like Uber Eats at least once a month that gets credited back automatically. And unlike every other Marriott consumer card, this one gives you 25 elite nights towards elite status rather than the 15 that the other consumer cards give you. Yeah. So, I mean, again, you can do really well with that 85K free night certificate. So if you're willing to rotate this into your wallet for the $25 monthly rebate on dining, or if you have a way to remember to trigger that automatically, excuse me, once a month or with very low effort once a month, then I think the combination of those credits and the 85K free night certificate are pretty good on their own uh the other perks are nice also this one's a little rich for my blood i don't really need another 650 a year card so i haven't been very excited about this one personally what about you though you you have a couple of these in your household

don't you uh no we have one just one in our household and you know, so the problem with the 85 K free night certificate is that to really get great value from it, you have to be staying at a, at a hotel that, uh, you know, costs a lot and, but not too much because, you know, some of the top level properties, they they'll charge over a hundred thousand points per night, at which point you can't even, you're allowed to top off these certs with up to 15,000 points. So that means you can use a cert at a hotel that costs up to 100,000 points. That's going to be a really nice hotel, but an equally nice hotel might cost 104,000 points and you're out of luck using the free night certificate so that's the biggest problem i have with them is just that um you might not be in that situation every single year where you're gonna get great value now you'll easily get like if you if you're okay using it for more of a mid-tier hotel

you'll easily get you know four hundred dollars five hundred dollars value i i think from these certificates it's just if you're chasing, trying to really maximize the value, it can be a little challenging depending on how much you travel. It's very interesting that the elite credits, like having those extra 10, it's valuable to me in a weird way. And that weird way is because

I mean, I have actually lifetime platinum elite status so i don't need platinum status and it gives you platinum status so i don't need that benefit but having those uh extra 10 over what i would have otherwise gets me closer to marriott titanium status each year and and uh i kind of like that because that gives me, among other things, United Silver status. And so I like that. I wouldn't go way out of my way to keep Marriott Titanium status, but this kind of pushes me over the edge enough that it's like, ah, I'm going to keep this card until I get frustrated.

If it comes to a point where I'm having trouble getting good value from the 85K Free Knight certificate, or I'm not able to get them to extend it for another year, that kind of thing, then maybe I'll get frustrated and cancel the card. But for now, it's good enough. I think the most interesting piece of that is that it can be a struggle for me to accept getting less than full value out of a free night certificate. And it's easy to do that with 35 K free night certificates, because there's plenty of properties that cost 35,000

points or 37 or 39 or 42, you know, something where you can top it off. But it's a really good point that the top, top tier properties just often are slightly over a hundred. So you can't use this. So then you might have to accept less. And in fact, I'm in a situation where early next year, I have a state plan where I'm going to be using it at a property that only costs like 65 or 70,000 points per year. And I'm using it early in the year for the certificate, which hurts me. It pains me a little bit because I'm like, maybe I'll find a better use later in the year. But at the same time, it's a property that would cost $600 a night.

And so I'm like, well, you know what? I'm going to get a good stay at a nice place using the certificate that I wouldn't have paid for otherwise. And so I'm going to, I'm going to accept that, but it's hard. It's not easy to do that. I know exactly what you mean, but the bird in the hand, that's, that's I would take it. I would take it in that case, but it gets, it gets harder at like, if you get down to like 55 K or you know, the lower, the lower the price of the hotel that the harder it is to use that cert for that for that thing for sure um yeah okay uh let's move on um the hilton surpass card 95 a year gives you automatic gold status um gives you

10 priority pass uh passes per year now a lot of the cards we talked about before also give you some priority pass. I'm calling it out here because it's a $95 card. And so that's a little unusual at that low price. 12 points per dollar at Hilton Properties, which is nice. And six points per dollar for grocery, gas, and dining in the US. And 3X everywhere else. To get a free night certificate with this hotel card, though, you do have to spend $15,000 on the card each year.

Yeah, you know, this is a tough one for me. It's good for supermarket spend because the 6X U.S. supermarkets is, well, I shouldn't say it's good. That's decent. It's okay. It's not great. It's okay. And if you're going to spend $15,000, then it becomes a good card to have. You're going to spend $15,000 at US supermarkets, specifically where you're getting that decent multiplier.

Then I think it's probably worth it. And the 10 priority pass visits a year, I wouldn't have valued long ago. And I, I still don't value them now because I have other cards that offer unlimited priority pass. But when I look at it, I don't actually use priority pass lounges that many more than 10 times a year. Of course I have a family, so it would cost more. I, you know, take, take cost me for each time nowadays, but, but if not for the fact that I had the kids with me, I don't think I would probably use more than 10. So maybe this would be fine. It doesn't wouldn't have restaurant access. That's the downside, I guess, because it's an Amex. But but yeah, I mean, I feel like actually that might not be bad for somebody who doesn't

want to spend $500 a year on a card and isn't going to go to lounges more than that anyway, which is probably a lot of people. So so I don't love this card myself, but I feel like it probably appeals to a lot of people. So I don't love this card myself, but I feel like it probably appeals to a lot of people still. Yeah. One thing I would say about who it's good for is anyone who stays sort of a moderate amount at Hilton properties and doesn't have Namex Platinum card or the Hilton Aspire card, something else that gives you Hilton Gold status or higher, because getting free breakfast outside of the US or the property, I forget what they call it, dining credit or something within the US, that can be a really nice perk. And I think, especially if you're

with a family, I mean, easily cover the $95 annual fee each year just with a stay or two. So, um, yeah, I think, you know, I think it's, it's a good, uh, low level card for a lot of people who stay, you know, as I said, sometimes regularly at Hilton's, but not enough to have status already. Yep. Good. I agree. All right. So which one, Greg, I'm going to ask you, I'm going to be you to the punch. If you could only have one Amex, Amex hotel card, which one would it be? And I just, for, for the listeners, I just want to point out, that's not what it says in our, in our show outline. It says, Greg asks Nick,

but I beat you to it, but Nick beat me to the punch. He knew what was coming out cause he read ahead. Okay. If I could just have one, it would be the one I don't actually have yet, which is the Hilton Aspire card, because that's just an awesome card, but I don't even have it yet. Oh, yeah. Well, Greg's right. I mean, that's the pick. I think that that's the one. Although I do tend to chase Marriott status. And so I feel like the Marriott business card, there's an argument to be made for that one. And I thought about, am I going to make the argument that that's the one because I need the help to get to Marriott elite status? I wouldn't make it otherwise. So I did think about making the argument for that. It's just that it's such an easy win with the aspire that it really is yeah that's good to know okay all right let's move on to airline cards where nick's gonna be sorry that he used up his one chance to ask me the the bottom line which one is best um because mx uh offers exactly exactly one airline type within the US, which is Delta.

They have a whole bunch of Delta credit cards on offer. And for each one of these, they have both a personal and a business version. So I'm just going to be talking about them in general. Delta gold cards, $99 a year. You get a free check bag. You get priority boarding. You get 15% off award flights. Who's this good for?

Someone who flies Delta more than me and values the free check bags. So, or I mean, the award discount, actually, the 15% off awards. If you book any decent amount of Delta, really one Delta award a year with what Delta charges, then the 15,000 or 15% rebate rather could be pretty useful. Yeah, totally. All right. Next up is their platinum card, Delta platinum card, not to be confused with the Amex platinum cards, which are totally different things. But the SkyMiles platinum card is $250 a year. Each year upon renewal, you get a domestic economy companion certificate. And there's some other smaller benefits. What do you think?

I mean, I think if you value the companion certificate, if you use that, I think it's probably really easy to get more than $250 in value out of a domestic economy companion certificate these days. Maybe that wasn't true five or 10 years ago or whatever, but these days with the cost of airfare domestically, that I feel like could be a really easy win for a lot of people. Yeah, I totally agree. So the certificates can be a little frustrating to apply, especially if you're booking flights sort of close in because the companion tickets are only available on certain discount fare classes. And so those tend to

sell out quicker. And so if you're waiting a while, you might not have luck. But when you are able to book them, yeah, absolutely. It's easy, easy to save $400 or more, I'd say on a round trip domestic flights with this thing. It also, I should have mentioned, gives you all the perks that the Delta Gold Card gives you pretty much, except for Delta Gold Card also has this perk

where you get $100 flight discount with a certain amount of spend. Platinum Card doesn't have that. But in general, you get all that stuff including 15 off award flights so um i i think that one for is a pretty good one for most delta flyers really a lot of value there for 250 um next up is a delta reserve card 550 all the perks of the previous cards that we mentioned um but the companion ticket now you can book up to first class you're not limited to economy um it gives you sky club access which we know in 2025 is going to be limited to 10 visits per year

it gives you centurion lounge access when flying delta same day and it gives you Centurion Lounge access when flying Delta same day. And it gives you elite status light. So it's sort of like all the benefits of Delta silver status, but your priority for things like first class upgrades is just below any silver elite. So you could actually get free upgrades to first class when booking economy if you have this card. You could. Whether or not you actually will, who knows, but it's possible anyway. It's unlikely, but it could happen. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, you'd have to be able to get a decent amount of value out of those perks. The first class companion certificate, very much the same as the platinum companion certificate, better, obviously, but same in the sense that you could easily save the card's annual fee or more using that certificate once a year. So if you are going to look for an opportunity or you're going to have plenty of opportunities to use that to get good value and you like the Sky Club Centurion Lounge Access because you're going to be able to use that, then OK, great. I mean, this card isn't a fit for me, frankly, but it would be for somebody who's going to make use of those benefits. Yeah, yeah. You know, for me and my family flying out of Detroit, which is a Delta hub, we go to

Sky Club so much that it would really hurt to think about giving up access. So, yeah, we'll see what happens when in 2025, when they start limiting access, they're going to start limiting it to platinum cards will be limited to six visits per year. Delta Reserve cards limited 10 visits per year, unless you spend $75,000 on the card. So I don't think I'll be doing that. But maybe, you know, by keeping a Delta Reserve card and a platinum card, 16 visits might be enough for me. Let me let me figure that out. Let me clarify quickly for anybody who might have gotten confused there. When Greg talked about six visits to the platinum card, he's talking about the American Express platinum card that

earns membership rewards points, not the Delta platinum card. That card doesn't come with any visits. So he's talking about six visits on the MX platinum. Yes. Yes. Thank you. Yeah. Confusing. It's confusing.

So, yeah. So anyway, as a frequent Delta flyer, even, even the, I used to love this card for earning MQMs towards elite status, but I'm not chasing that anymore.

But it still has a lot of value so i may just keep it um um sort of reserving my judgment on the reserve for a while and see see how things play out in the next couple years dad joke alert yes yes all right nick if you could have just one delta card if you had to have one Delta card, which one would you have? Can I get another hotel card, Greg? Pretend you fly Delta like three times a year. Okay, good. Which one?

The Marriott business card. It's not that I dislike Delta. All right. I have nothing against Delta apart from of course, the fact that sky miles are difficult to use to great value, but, uh, but I don't have anything against the flying experience with Delta. They just never fit my schedule or needs. They're not a major player at my local airport. I just don't end up flying them much at all. So, uh, so these cars just don't appeal to me. I've never had any of them because I've never really had much of a reason to have either Delta SkyMiles or any of the perks. If I flew three times a year, I guess it would be the gold card because that would cover my check baggage fees. And I'd get a little discount if I decided to use some Delta Miles.

But I think the easy win is the platinum. So you know what? I'm going to pick the Delta Platinum card because I feel like it's easy to get more than $250 in value without very much effort at all. I'd still get those free checked bags. I'd still get the award discount. And I'm sure that I could use the Companion Certificate to good value, even though Delta is not usually the best option for me. I could accept a slightly subpar option and save a bunch of money probably once a year. Yeah, I think that's the right answer for most people. And as I said, I'm still conflicted about it personally, because there are reasons I might prefer the reserve personally. But anyway, let's move on. All right. So I think that that I think ties together our main event. So you get the Amex membership rewards cards, the hotel cards and the airline cards. So we talked about the must have ones, the one that we would pick from each of those and the reasons why they might be good for a lot of different people. So you can go back and

check out the timestamps. Like I said, if you want to hop around and go back to certain parts of the discussion. But but we've got now the question of the week. So this week's question of the week, I actually, depending on how quick you are with the first question, there's two questions that I wanted to ask. But one of them, I felt like I had to ask you because I have no idea what the answer to this is and you might. So we had a question that came in from Eric who said he enjoys the podcast. He got into the game about two years ago. His question surrounds cell phone insurance. He says there are many posts about the best credit card or various credit cards that offer cell phone insurance. But for many Apple users, AppleCare is an alternative. I'd be curious as to the opinion whether credit card insurance is better than AppleCare and what

everyone's opinion is. I have plenty of credit cards that offer insurance and currently use my Chase Inc card to pay my monthly bill in order to get the points bonus. But I've never used one of my credit cards when I have a phone issue because we've always had AppleCare. It seems redundant. Appreciate your insights. Now, I've never owned an Apple iPhone. I've had an iPad maybe once, but I know nothing about AppleCare, Greg. I know you're an iPhone user. So tell me, do you need both? Yeah, this one's easy for me to answer. I don't know. I've had an iPhone for years. I've never, ever even considered paying for AppleCare, so I don't know what it includes and how it compares to insurance. So please feel free to let us know. Everyone listening, if you know the answer to this question, let us know. It'd be great to hear your wisdom on

that. All right. So we're going to throw that question of the week out because we didn't get an answer to that one. I was hopeful, but I had a feeling. Maybe it'll become the giant mailbag slot for a future episode there you go there you go so all right new question of the week comes in from david because i was prepared to get this happen so david came in and said uh he recently opened a basque bank account and so now he's collecting some american airlines miles basque bank of course offers a savings account where you can earn uh instead of interest you earn american airlines miles essentially and so now, suddenly,

David's reading up on best uses for American Airlines miles. He asks, for American Airlines partner award bookings, which airlines are not shown on the American Airlines website? Then he continues on with, do you use British Airways or Aeroplan to check American Airlines partner availability? And can you call American Airlines for bookings 355 days out, even though the American Airlines website is only 331 days out for availability? So we got three different questions all about American Airlines, and I know you're going to know the answers because you've been talking lately about how much you're loving collecting American Airlines miles and how valuable they've been for you.

So which partners are not shown online, Greg? I don't know that off the top of my head, but the answer is more nuanced. So there is probably a partner or two or three that aren't shown online under any circumstances. But worse, there are partners like Etihad and Cutter, which are often available online, but not always. And there's really no way to know when that's true. And I suspect that it's because of Etihad that David asked about whether to use Aeroplan to search for awards. Because Air Canada also partners with Etihad. And so you could search there, although lately American Airlines has been a better option. Anyway, the answer is so confusing. So for Qatar, you're better off using BA to search for awards. And if BA finds them,

you might be able to book them by calling in American Airlines, but you might not. So I don't have a good answer for you, David. What was the third part that I can answer poorly? Okay, good. One more swing at this one. We're swinging the pinata here and leave everything inside. So can you call American Airlines for bookings 355 days out, even though the American Airlines website is only 331 days out for availability? Yes, you could call them, but you're not going to have any luck booking. No, you'll have to book through another partner of whoever you're, whatever airline you're trying to book, like BA and Cathay. And I don't know who else can book further out than American Airlines

can. No calling won't get you further. Right. No, it's just the 331 days with American Airlines. So, you know, I didn't know the answer to which partners aren't shown online either, because I could think of all the partners that are shown online, apart from like Greg said, that it doesn't always show availability that should be there. And that really is the worst part, because you don't know what should be there that's missing if you're only searching American Airlines. But when I look at the list of partners, actually, I think the only one that I'm not positive is ever shown online or two, maybe, are Silver Airways. I don't even know where Silver Airways flies. I think maybe it's somewhere in the Caribbean. Maybe. Is that it? I'm not positive. So I wouldn't know. I've never seen one on the

American Airlines website. I wouldn't know whether they show up. Cape Air, I know you can book with American Airlines miles. I don't know whether or not those show up on the website. Cape Air flies, I think, if I remember correctly, between Boston and like Nantucket or Martha's Vineyard or places like that, some small destinations like that. They also may do some places in northern New York state, if I remember correctly. But most of the airlines that American partners with will at least sometimes show up on the American Airlines website. You mentioned when I searched British Airways, British Airways is one site you can search. Their site is sometimes a little glitchy. I think a safer bet for one world availability is the Qantas website. It's a little bit of a

pain because you do have to set up an account and log in in order to search. But the Qantas website tends to be relatively reliable in terms of one world availability. But I'm not sure which airlines Qantas doesn't show online. So this is where a tool like Points Yeah or Point.me or AwardLogic comes in handy if you understand the partnerships. Because if you see that there's a flight that's available to book with your British Airways Obvious and it's on a one world carrier, then you know Americans should probably have access to that. So even if you're not seeing it on American Airlines, then you can call in. But when you're using one of those aggregator sort of search tools, you're just more likely to be able to see a bunch of things at

once. You could go to separately to BritishAirways.com and aeroplan.com and this site and that site. Whereas if you use one of those, you could search one and search various programs at once. And none of those tools are perfect because they're all missing some, but that's, I guess, my general approach. Right. They're all missing some and they all sometimes miss certain awards that are available. And there's all kinds of technical reasons. None of them are doing it on purpose, but it happens. So yeah. So good luck. Good luck to you. Easy. It's easy. You got it now, David, you take notes on that. You write all that down. I hope so. Cause I'm not sure what we said either, but anyway, hopefully that helps at least a little bit. It is tough. I mean, award booking is not the easiest thing ever. It does require some effort. But the good news is

with American Airlines, most of their partners show up online and it's pretty easy. They're one of the easier programs, despite how we just made it sound. They're one of the easier programs to use your miles online to book many of their partners anyway. So best of luck with that. All right. That brings us. I'm thinking David wishes that he had asked more about AppleCare rather than. Right, right. It was a much easier answer. Much easier.

Eric did a much better job with that question. Thanks, Eric. Keep those coming. All right. That, my friends, brings us to the end of this week's episode.

If you've enjoyed what you've heard this week and you'd like to get this stuff in your email inbox each day or each week, you want to go to frequentmiler.com slash subscribe. Again, that's frequentmiler.com slash subscribe. You can join our email list, follow us on all the various social media,

join our Frequent Miler Insiders Facebook group where people are talking about this stuff every day all week long so you can ask and answer questions there. And if you have a piece of feedback that you'd like to be considered for a future giant mailbag segment, you can send that too. You can send it or your knowledge about AppleCare to mailbag at frequentmiler.com. Bye, everybody.