Frequent Miler on the Air - Must-have Chase cards | Ep215 | 8-12-23

Episode Date: August 12, 2023

Big wins start with solid strategy. This week, we talk about which cards you must have before you start applying with reckless abandon as well as which cards you should probably be considering that are all likely limited by the 5/24 rule. If you play your cards right, you can easily end up with all the cards you want and need before you get locked out of more. 00:00 Intro 00:55 Giant Mailbag: A "wea culpa" 03:41 Card Talk: Chase Freedom Unlimited & Chase Freedom Flex cards https://frequentmiler.com/cfu/ https://frequentmiler.com/cff/ 11:47 What crazy thing . . . triple header? 12:08 What crazy thing . . . did Wyndham Rewards do this week? https://frequentmiler.com/how-to-prevent-wyndham-points-from-expiring/ 15:32 What crazy thing . . . did Avianca LifeMiles do this week? https://frequentmiler.com/current-point-transfer-bonuses/ https://frequentmiler.com/having-issues-booking-with-lifemiles-try-using-the-firefox-browser/ 17:38 What crazy thing . . . did Avianca LifeMiles do this week? https://frequentmiler.com/cancelling-a-lifemiles-award-ticket-maybe-less-painful-than-you-thought/ 21:25 Award Talk 21:27 Air New Zealand Business Class wide open close-in https://frequentmiler.com/air-new-zealand-business-class-awards-wide-open-close-in/ https://frequentmiler.com/avianca-lifemiles-awesome-mixed-cabin-award-pricing-first-class-for-less/ 29:30 Contacting the hotel works out well https://frequentmiler.com/gift-hotel-points-free-night-certificates-and-award-nights-booked-with-points-rules-by-program/ 34:50 Main Event: Must-have Chase cards 36:37 Determining your 5/24 count 41:05 The Ultimate Rewards points cards https://frequentmiler.com/chase-transfer-partners/ 47:21 Fee-free UR cards 49:58 Which Ultimate Rewards cards are must-have keepers? 57:53 Which Chase airline cards are keepers? 1:03:30 Which Chase hotel cards are keepers? 1:10:44 Question of the Week: How do you audit and chase down your missing points? 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 miler on the air starts now. Today's main event, must have chase cards. Gotta have them.

Must have. Gotta have. Gotta have chase cards. So here's the thing. Last week, we talked about how you can earn millions, literally millions of points and miles from signing up for credit cards. And it was just basically we were just talking about you sign up for the cards, you do the spender and the welcome bonuses. And then after a year, you cancel or downgrade the card. But in reality, there are quite a few cards that are actually

worth keeping and we're going to start talking about chase cards and we'll tell you why we want to start talking about chase cards first um but that's in the main event time so first we have giant mailbag today's giant mail comes from uh a mistake we made last week. A huia culpa. A huia culpa. Wow. Shoot, in my notes, I forgot to mention who wrote this comment, but a comment in response to last week's show said,

hey, guys, slight error on the JetBlue cards. Only the business card has group A boarding, while only the personal card can offset certain charges for three quarters of a penny per point. And he goes on to say, for me, group A is huge, comparable to group one on United or like group three-ish on Delta. So, wow. That's a big difference. That's a big difference. How did we miss that? How did we miss that? one on United or like group three ish on Delta. So, wow. Um,

that's a big difference. That's a big, I looked into this. How do we miss that? Well, you know, uh, most airline cards,

when there's a business and a consumer card that are mostly the same, they're like almost entirely the same, you know? And, and usually the only difference is with like how how they earn bonuses in spending categories like business cards tend to earn extra points for like office supplies or something businessy like that um and and uh in this case they just threw in some random things that are different for no reason.

And so that's totally my fault. I prepared the notes for the show, and I didn't catch the fact that there were these differences. We don't have the list. Well, then you sent me the notes, and I didn't catch it either. But yeah, like you said, because what other card does that? There's not really another comparable situation. Yeah, so I blame Barclays and JetBlue. I mean, this is ridiculous.

You know, it's fine to not allow business card owners to offset certain charges for three quarters of a point because why anyone would want to do that in any way is ridiculous. So just whatever. But for the Group A boarding, who would have thought if you knew that the business card gave you that like who would have thought you could sign up for the jet blue plus card and not get that i that doesn't make any sense somebody i think just did they just make a mistake like did they mean to give you jet blue plus what card i mean like

it doesn't give you priority boarding like it seems pretty ridiculous. Yeah, I don't get that at all. Yeah. Yeah. So as much as it's my fault, it's really JetBlue's fault. So shame on you, JetBlue. Agree. Agree. There we go. Shift the blame. That's the perfect strategy. All right. So I think that brings us next to, are we doing card talk next? Card talk. It's time for card talk. Let's get something else wrong. Okay. That's what we should do.

We should talk about cards immediately after we mentioned the mistake we made with cards last week. This week's cards we know a little bit better, I'm going to say. We know these a little better. We do. We know these cards better. I think we both have these cards. And luckily, like these cards, there's not as much to say about perks. So we're not going to get the perks wrong on these, I don't think. Anyway, today's card talk is about the Chase Freedom

Unlimited and the Chase Freedom Flex cards. They're very similar cards. They're both fee-free cards. They both do charge a 3% foreign transaction fee, so don't use them outside of the United States. The Freedom Unlimited is a Visa card, whereas the Freedom Flex is a MasterCard. And they are both advertised as cashback cards, but they actually earn ultimate rewards points. And that's really the key to why we're interested in these cards at all. Because if they were cash back cards, we wouldn't even talk about them. Right. And unfortunately, that's misleading on a couple of chase cards. And we'll get to that a little bit later too. Misleading is the wrong word, but it often confuses newcomers

because they're advertised as cash back cards, but really they earn ultimate rewards points. And if you're not going to play the game the way we play the game, then your only option is to use those points for cash back. So that's why they're kind of advertised as cash back cards. But if you're going to unlock the power of your points by being able to transfer them to partners, then you could do much better than cash back. So yeah, these are an ultimate rewards points that are redeemable for cash or potentially transferable to partners

if you have the right other card along with them. That's right. And we've talked in previous card talks about the Sapphire Preferred card and the Sapphire Reserve card, and there's also the Ink Business Preferred. Those are three cards that you could get that if you have one of those in your household you can move your points from the freedom card or another ultimate rewards fee-free card to one of those cards and then transfer your points to like hyatt or united or one of the other transfer partners that they offer so um so so they're actually great the points you earn from these are great as long as you have that key to unlock the value by having another card that gives you that value. So moving on about these cards, they both earn five points per dollar if you book your travel through the Chase travel portal. They both give you five points per dollar.

If you use them for Lyft rides through March 2025, they both give you three points per dollar for dining and three points per dollar at drugstores. So that's actually pretty good. I mean, 3X dining isn't like the best possible out there, but it's actually very competitive with many other cards. And 3X drugstores, I don't know where else you would see that except here. No, yeah, there's nothing else that really has a meaningful benefit in terms of drugstore spend. And the 3X dining is as good as it gets in the Chase Ultimate Rewards ecosystem, too. You know, it's worth mentioning that. So there are a couple of other cards that offer that,

or at least one other card that offers it anyway, two other cards, I guess, at least. So anyway, you can get that on a couple of other ones, but you're not going to do better than that. So if you value ultimate rewards points, that's great. Absolutely. Absolutely. Now here's where they differ. Freedom Unlimited card, very simple. If you're outside of those categories that I mentioned, you get one and a half points per dollar everywhere else. So this makes, if you're really into Chase Ultimate Rewards points, this makes the Freedom Unlimited card a great everywhere else card.

That's what we call these cards that are good to use when you're not spending within a bonus category. Because let's say you have the ultra premium Sapphire Reserve card and you use that everywhere. In most places outside of dining and travel, you're only getting one point per dollar. Whereas with the Freedom Unlimited, if you use that for everywhere else, you'd be getting one and a half points per dollar. So you'd be earning a lot more points that way. That's the Freedom Unlimited. The Freedom Flex is more complicated. So what it offers is five points per dollar in rotating categories each quarter. So every three months on up to $1,500 in spend per quarter. So for for example currently as we're recording this the 5x categories are gas stations electric vehicle charging and select live entertainment

um gas stations is the most easy one to explain but uh you use your freedom flex at gas stations uh and you'll this quarter and you'll get five points per dollar as long as you uh enrolled you have to activate every quarter which is kind of a nuisance but um not very hard to do and unlike the freedom unlimited for any spend outside of any of these category bonuses one point per dollar pretty much like every other card. It's just most cards are that way. One point per dollar if you're not within a bonus category. Yeah. And the Freedom Flex is popular with a lot of people anyway, because if you max out that 5X category each quarter, that's 7,500 points per quarter you could earn at 5X anyway. So potentially you could do quite well. And often

there's at least one option most of the time where you could really be spending on a variety of different things. For example, gas stations are one of the categories this quarter. And so you could go to the gas station and buy gift cards that you could use in other places. So you're not really limited to gas stations per se. And that frequently happens because you may have home improvement stores and you can go to Home Depot or Lowe's and buy gift cards there, etc. So it's pretty easy a lot of times to max that out if you're into that angle. Yeah. And actually, for even very common even very common, uh, types of spend, let's say grocery spend. So in a quarter where they offer five X for grocery, you could go to

your favorite grocery store and, and buy, uh, you know, $1,500 worth of, of gift cards to that grocery store and use that going forward, um, until you use it up. And that's a way of sort of, you know, pre earning the five X and, and maxing that out. Same thing with gas stations. If you spend enough gas, you could do that with gas stations as well. So, you know, there's, there's like little tricks like that, that are easy to do without going outside of your normal spending habits very much. So that's terrific. Okay. So what do you think? I mean, I think these are good cards to have if you're invested in the Chase Ultimate Rewards ecosystem. They're not necessarily the best cards to get. And we'll talk about that a little bit more later on in the sense that the welcome

bonuses are usually relatively small. And you could, for instance, get a Sapphire Preferred card and then down the road downgrade it to one of these cards. So that's the technique I would use if you want one of these long term. I would get a much higher welcome offer to begin with on a Sapphire Preferred or Sapphire Reserve if that's an option for you, and then look to downgrade in the future to one of these and you know keep in mind you could have more than one of them also if you're downgrading from other cards so uh so if you already have a freedom flex you could potentially have another one if you downgrade a sapphire preferred so there are uh you know i that that's the technique i would go after probably for most of these totally great both of these. Totally agree. Yep.

Yep. All right. Great. Very good. So that brings us to what crazy thing. And this week there's a lot of crazy stuff going on. We've got a, what crazy thing? Triple header.

All right. Triple header. You know, of all the segments that I'd want to have a triple header, I think crazy is it? I mean, it's most fun. It's the most fun. It is. And this week, I'm particularly excited about the first bit of crazy because it involves one of my favorite types of crazy, which is the Wyndham shopping portal craziness, or well, Wyndham craziness. Wyndham's bad math. So tell me, what crazy thing did Wyndham Rewards do with you this week, Craig? Yeah, I was working on a post about how to keep your Wyndham points alive. Because it's not obvious.

If you don't use your points for a long time, they will expire four years from when they're earned, even if you've had activity in your account. So there are workarounds to get around that. But while I was working on that post, I noticed that the page that shows you how many points will expire is not probably all that reliable. There's a little Wyndham bad math going on. So on my page, it said 59,601 points will expire on September 30th, 2026. And on that same page, just inches away, it said how many points I currently have, which is 9,000 fewer points than were listed as how many are going to expire. So 59,000 of your 50,000 points are going to expire soon, Greg. You better get using those. I'm worried about those yeah uh so uh on uh frequent miler insiders uh someone named chris said don't they have those weird promos where

they say you get 5x but really earn 3.9x or something random maybe you discovered where the rest of the points went they're out there somewhere somewhere. They're out there and they're going to expire if you don't figure out where they are and how to get at them. Wyndham thinks they're out there. I don't have the answer to that. Right. I think it'll be funny if you use all 50,000 points and then on like October 1st, you have a negative 9,000 points or something.

They expire some points that you never had in your account. I mean, would Wyndham do that?'t i don't know it would be interesting if i use a 50 000 and if it says i still have like 9 000 that are going to expire yeah well let's still say that i don't know i don't know i mean there's only one way to find out and it's not just my account by the way other other readers have mentioned that they've seen similar patterns. Some weird numbers. Yeah. Who knows? I mean, Wyndham is good at that though, right? I mean, they frequently do confuse us in terms of the numbers. Professionals at messing up easy math, actually.

Easy math, right. Yeah, yeah. And if you don't remember what we're talking about, there have been many shopping portal promos where, for example, it'll say you get 5X on all these things. And you'll look at how many points you get, and there are none that are five times as many as you would have previously gotten. And then you'll shop through the portal, and it'll say you're going to get nine points per dollar, but you'll really get like 8.6327 or it's not ever an even number. It's so weird. I don't know. I don't get their math at all. So yeah, that's why we're kind of joking about the fact that Wyndham's math never adds up. So it's not at all surprising. It's just kind of amusing that they're telling him he has got more points set to expire than he has in his account and i actually have yeah yeah weird weird okay all right well windham not to be outdone this

week uh life miles though is uh making a play at what crazy thing so what crazy thing did life miles do this week greg well so life miles has been not working very well lately. A lot of people have been complaining that the website isn't letting them search. It's been like DeadMiles, basically. DeadMiles. You know, the website hasn't been letting them search for awards. Nick, you know, found a workaround, which was to use their app, but then their app stopped working. And so now the workaround is to use the Firefox browser. That seems to be the solution for the moment. Who knows if it'll be true by the time this recording publishes. But it seems to be working so far,

and it's worked for me on mobile too, actually, and the Firefox browser on my phone too. So I guess. How hard did they work to make it like work on one browser, but not others? Like, I don't know how you could even do that on purpose if you wanted to. I don't understand, but there you have it. Use Firefox for now, if you're having trouble getting LifeMiles to do anything. So, cause that's for weeks now, LifeMiles has just been showing like a blank screen or it gives you some weird error. I can't even remember what it says, but you have to go back to the beginning for it to give you the same error again, over and over again. But for whatever reason, Firefox doesn't seem to be doing that. So there you have it, Firefox, which, you know, it's like kind of funny that the website

breaks at a time when there's a 15% transfer bonus going on. So a lot of people are probably interested so they can take advantage of the transfer bonus. And you can still. You just have to use Firefox, apparently, in order to find any awards. Transfer bonus from which program? I knew you were going to ask me that. I think Citi, thank you, if I remember correctly. But you should go to our current point transfer bonuses page, which I will link to in the show notes, to find out whether I was right about that or not, which is where I should have gone before we even talked about this segment, because then I would have known where it was from. So there you go. Current point.

I think, you know, actually, I think it might be from any, isn't it from any credit card points? I don't know. Let's figure that out right now. All right. So is that all we've got from Life Miles? No, no, no, no, no. Life Miles isn't done.

I got the joy of canceling a Life Miles award ticket this week. And it was so, so cool. So interesting. It was actually much easier than I expected. The entire phone call to cancel a Life Miles award took just over 11 minutes start to finish. So it was pretty, pretty good in that sense. But it was not without a little bit of Avianca-ishness. And by that, I mean, it was a little convoluted. I called and had to enter my LifeMiles number and talk to somebody and give them my confirmation code and verify passenger names. And then, of course, they had to transfer me to another system to enter my PIN. I couldn't tell the agent, of course, they had to transfer me to another system after putting me on hold two or three times to enter my PIN. I couldn't tell the agent, of course, they had to transfer me to another system after putting me on hold two or three times to enter my PIN so that that system could say, yes, you've successfully verified your PIN. And then after all of that, I have to pay the cancellation fee. But no, you can't just pay the agent you call. Of course, they have to send you

an email in order to pay the fee, the cancellation fee. And the email doesn't come from Avianca. It doesn't come from anything that looks like Avianca. The subject or the sender just says do dash not dash reply. And the subject line says something like information about your order or payment for your order. Like I didn't order anything. Who would ever think to click on that email? That just sounds like a phishing attack right there. It does. And it doesn't say that it's from Avianca anywhere. The from address is not from Avianca.

It doesn't reference Avianca within the email at all. It's like, if you look in the URL, you can find Avianca in the like, gobbledygook of letters or whatever. But you'd have to be looking for it. And so even after the agent told me she was sending me an email to pay for it, I never in a million years would have thought that that was the email if I hadn't just happened to have read a post on One Mile at a Time

that said the email was not going to come from Avianca, but from Do Not Reply. Otherwise, I never would have clicked on that thing. So yeah. Yeah, yeah. And then, but luckily, once you clicked on it thing so yeah yeah yeah and then but luckily once you clicked on it opened it it was very clear inside the email like uh that it was from avianca and that you should click a link in there no no not at all there's nothing didn't say i mean

anywhere it was just like some weird link for you know worldpay.com or something uh weird but once you click that link then it did have the Avianca Life Miles logo at the top of the page and you just had to enter your credit card information. That's so bizarre. So yeah. Like who designed that? That's just insanity.

But anyway, I mean, you've encountered that before with other things with Avianca, I remember. Well, you know, I gotta say, like as much fun as it was to joke about how weird that is. And let me be clear, it was very weird. It was much easier than in the past when I've done manual bookings and you have to wait for somebody to call you from some specific right in. But she did tell me that I would have three hours once the email came in order to make payment. And I was a little nervous because I was in Europe and it was late at night. So I was thinking I'm going to go to sleep soon. And if I only have three hours to make payment, I'm going to have to set the alarm to get up and check

my email. But sure enough, the email came through while I was on hold. So it worked out okay. But yeah, weird, weird, Avianca. Keep it weird. Keep it weird, Avianca. All right. All right. So I think that wraps up our crazy triple header. It does. It brings us right to Mattress Running the Numbers, but we're not going to Mattress Running the Numbers this week, right? No, that would be crazy. That would be crazy after a crazy triple header. No. let's let's move right on to award talk award today's award talk uh we're going to start with flying to new zealand so there's a lot going on there um first of all air new zealand business class has been wide open over the next three weeks or so. So if you want to fly Air New

Zealand business class, it's pretty widely available to fly all the way from the United States to Auckland. I should mention, so that's the good news and if that pattern continues it means you might not be ready to fly in three weeks now but maybe you could wait until three weeks or five weeks whatever the pattern is we haven't really figured out yet

before when you actually want to fly and book it then so that's kind of exciting quick question you were going to say something. Well, I just wanted to ask, so is that on a specific route or is it on... Because I know they fly San Francisco and they fly Chicago, right? I don't know where else they fly off the top of my head. They fly, I believe, LA, San Francisco, Houston, Chicago, and New York. houston chicago and um and york and the only one where i didn't see any availability was new york so all the others had some i'd say probably la had the most i'm not 100 sure about that okay um

so so uh that's exciting because air new New Zealand historically hasn't released like anything. Yeah, it was like total unicorn time if you found anything. So to be able to find not just one, but multiple award seats on many flights is incredible. You should know, though, that their business class does not get good reviews like it's the type of business class that would have been reviewed well about 20 years ago and yeah that's a long way to go in a bad business class it is now they do have live flat seats so that's that's good um they they face they angle out towards the aisle so so you get to look at your your neighbor across the aisle for the whole flight there's

no room to store anything there's uh it's just not not very good it's not competitive with today's things so um so there's that but good news on that front okay uh united polaris to new zealand is a very good product i've reviewed that i loved it um and it's been fairly well wide open not wide open it's been fairly open as well the business class awards saver awards to new zealand on united i like close in i saw quite a bit but not every day the way i sing with air new zealand but about three times a week uh and um but they also had some openings like much further out like you could see them in december you could see some spotted spotted ones in february or march or whatever well. So here and there, they are releasing award space, which again, is not something that

was common to see in the past. In fact, United Business Class in general has not been very reliably open. So to see that is fantastic. And there's some great ways to book these things. So both of these are really good candidates to book with ANA because ANA, which you could transfer from your Amex membership rewards points, ANA only charges 120,000 points round trip.

And one of the downsides of ANA is that if the carrier imposes fuel surcharges, they'll pass them along, but neither of these carriers do. So it would be cheap to book either one of these carriers to New Zealand. And you can mix and match, right? You do one way in United and the other way in New Zealand. Yes, you can. Yep. Yep. Great point. And then another great way, maybe even a better way because it has fewer restrictions than ANA is Virgin Atlantic, which they charge only $62,500. So really just a tiny bit more, but allow one way. So that's a one way price. um so 125 000 round trip for the same flights uh now that would be only air new zealand not not united so that's the big downside there um and uh but uh more star alliance options are like aeroplan 75k life miles 80k are good options well. United's not a great option because they charge a hundred K to fly United one way or 110 K for their partner.

So I mean, you could get there with United miles. It's just a cost a lot more than the competition. It's worth mentioning with aero plan, the 75 K that you're quoting, that's going to vary based on the distance span, though, right? So depending on where you're starting, it may cost a little bit more. And or if you want to add on any flights beyond Auckland, then it may cost a little bit more. But keep in mind that they allow you to add a stopover for 5,000 miles. So you could stop over in Auckland on your way somewhere else from there on a Star Alliance carrier.

Or they also partner with Virgin Australia, keep in mind. So if you wanted to get to Australia from Auckland, you'd have a number of different options to get there on an Aeroplan award. So that might make that appealing by the same token if you can find onward space on Air New Zealand with life miles that may be appealing because you're probably going to be stuck in economy class on Air New Zealand since they don't release very much business class award space. So beyond Auckland, if you're connecting on somewhere in Australia, let's say on Air New Zealand, then you may be able to pay even fewer miles because of the way that Avianca runs their mixed cabin pricing. And I'll leave a link to a post about Avianca's mixed cabin pricing magic in the show notes so you can see what I mean there. you book a, and you use your life miles to book United to San Francisco in economy,

and then onward in business class to Auckland, the price will come down considerably because that's a pretty long economy flight. And it's sort of based on the distance flown in economy, how much of it would be charged at the economy rates. So to sum up, and ironically, Air Canada Aeroplan starts off a little bit cheaper, 75K instead of 80K versus LifeMiles. But if you add on more segments, Air Canada will become more expensive. With LifeMiles though, if you add on more segments in economy, it'll become less expensive. So the two programs go in opposite directions as you add on segments, which is just kind of weird and is probably making some listeners' heads spin, but that is just the way it is. That is the way it is. So that's why we've got jobs writing about this stuff, guys. So yeah, yeah. There's a lot of fun to be had there potentially

if you can find those itineraries anyway, which, you know, with LifeMiles, good luck because some things will show up and some things won't. So there you have that. So that I think wraps up the New Zealand talk, right? So I wanted to- Are you ready for the main event? Hold on.

No, you're not. You're not. I know. I forgot. I'm sorry, Nick. You told me i did tell me at a time that you had another you had another thing here and i forgot to write it i'm gonna i'm gonna add in another small uh award talk bit and so uh it's sort of a two two-piece

deal but uh very quickly i wanted to talk about the fact that in the past i've talked about emailing a hotel manager before your stay if you have any special requests. And I've said before, I often aim for a general manager of the hotel, not expecting that person to actually handle the request, but to pass it on to someone and whoever they pass it on below them is going to take a request from the boss seriously, hopefully, and help me out. Well, I had a really good experience with that and I wanted to mention it because it's a situation that readers might face. So we were making a four-night reservation at the Ghent Marriott in Ghent, Belgium. And my wife had a couple of 35K free night certificates in her account. So we wanted to use a couple of those. But then the third night and the fourth night in this particular stay were pretty cheap in cash.

And so I booked those two nights as a cash day. So the way we had it set up was two free night certificates on separate reservations and my wife's name for the first two nights and the nights three and four were paid nights in my name. Now my wife only has gold status and I have platinum status. So there's going to be a change in benefits potentially. And of course, you know, the separate reservations, all the rest of that. So I emailed the general manager ahead of time before our stay to say, Hey, listen, we're coming. We have these three several reservations, all the rest of that. So I emailed the general manager ahead of time before our stay to say, hey, listen, we're coming. We have these three different reservations, two individual free night certificates, one

paid stay for two nights. First things first, we want to keep the same room the whole time if that's possible. I wanted to minimize confusion because we're going to arrive late and I don't want to figure this out at the desk that night. So I want to make sure that this all gets put together. Obviously for the last couple of nights, since I have platinum status, we want to be able to take advantage of the breakfast benefit. And so like I mentioned all that stuff, I didn't ask for anything. You got to get that in there. Well, of course I wanted that in there to at least plant the seed that, well, A, because I

wanted to make sure I got breakfast right for those two nights and and and b to give them the opportunity to extend breakfast a couple extra nights if they wanted to i didn't think they probably would but i figured why not uh we'll add that in there too so i had all that in there and not only did everything get put together so that it was nice and easy didn't even have to stop at the desk to get rekeyed had the same room the whole time but not even the same room the same rooms because what they did for us was they gave us two connecting rooms. So we had one room with two double beds booked. And instead, they gave us two rooms with one king bed in each that were connected by a door. So they said they're going to give us a second room on them so that we'd have

more space because we're traveling with the kids. And they knew that would probably be helpful. And they were going to, of course, extend breakfast to us, not just for my night, but my two nights rather, but all four nights. So that was awesome. It worked out really, really awesome. Terrific. That's a way to play it. That's yeah, well, it worked out well.

And I wanted to mention it because I know a lot of readers will end up in that situation where player one, player two have maybe different statuses, both have free night certificates. It's always worth reaching out in advance because sometimes they'll go above and beyond and the manager introduced himself at breakfast and you know it's a really nice guy and so we had some good conversation he gave us some tips for things to do in the area and when we returned to brussels so uh so yeah absolutely great experience with that it's it and it's worth just mentioning that that marriott will not let Nick's wife give her certificates, her free night certificates to Nick so that the rooms can be booked under his account and get his elite benefits automatically. They just don't allow that.

Hyatt does. And I don't remember all the other chains who does or doesn't, but Nick does have a post out there that does go over that. So that's worth checking if you're wondering about whatever your situation is. I do. And if I was hoping for free breakfast for all four nights, usually what I would try to do is book those first couple of nights in my name and the last couple of nights in my wife's name, because I think it's more likely that they're going to not want to tell her, no, I'm sorry.

We don't value your loyalty enough to have free breakfast. That was only on his nights. So I think it's more likely it's going to get extended for nights three and four. But it just didn't work out in this case because the first couple of nights would have been more expensive with cash rates and the second couple of nights were cheaper. So that's the way that worked out. Worth mentioning, this doesn't only work at chain hotels. We stayed next at a boutique property that we booked through Amex Hotel Collection in Brussels. And same kind of thing.

We had two rooms booked this time around, asked if we could get them connecting. And they had one of those situations where at the very end of the hallway, there were two rooms that were blocked off by a third door. So there's a door going to a hallway that led to two more rooms. And so we were able to keep the two doors from our rooms open and have like this long weird hallway in between. So it's kind of like having a suite. So, and that's actually where I am right now as we record this. So the kids are asleep in the next room and can't hear me. So it's great. That is great. That's awesome. It still seems like you're using your sort of quieter voice than usual, though. Are they maybe, are you trying to be a little bit quieter?

I mean, I'm not looking to wake them up. It's like, you know, I don't want to wake the dragon or dragons as the case may be. But yes. So anyway, that's it worked out well. I always encourage you to send an email in advance if you have those types of special requests. All right. So now are you ready for the main event? Now I'm ready.

Let's talk about the main event. It's what the people tuned in for, Craig. Main event time. Must have Chase cards. All right. So yes, we've talked many times and last week in depth about how you can sign up for lots and lots of credit cards over time and earn the welcome bonuses and earn millions of points. Once you start doing that, that's going to lock you out of being able to sign up for certain new cards and most

notably Chase cards. Chase has the infamous 524 rule, which basically means if you've opened five or more new credit card accounts in the past 24 months uh with most of the time when if you apply for a new chase card they're gonna say no because you're you're at or over 524. um and so that's why we uh we think it's worth looking at what chase cards do you want to have and to hold from this day forward and get them before you reach 524 and it's too late, before they're just not an option anymore. That's what today's main event's all about. You got to have a little strategy. I mean, that's really what it comes down to. You got to have strategy going into it or you don't have to, but it helps if you do. And so if you're at that point in the game, then let's talk some strategy

for you and the things you need to know. So the first thing you need to know is that 524 situation. So you just explained 524 in a nutshell, right? So how do people figure out their 524 status if they're not sure? What else do they need to know? Yeah. So the 524 count, Chase gets that from your credit report. And so they look at how many accounts have been opened in the past 24 months? It has nothing to do with inquiries. That's a whole separate thing. But how many cards have been opened in the past 24 months? And even if you've canceled some of those that were open in the past 24 months, those still count. Those are still on your credit report as having been opened. What does not get on your credit card credit report and so does not count towards your 524 is most business credit cards, including bizarrely chase business credit cards.

So if you sign up, you could sign up for 27 different chase business credit card. I mean, you can't because they wouldn't approve you for 27 different ones. But for example, if you could sign up for 27 different Chase business credit cards over a two-year period, and that's all you signed up for, and then you go to apply for a new Chase card, you would be at zero out of 24. They would look at your credit report. They would see the credit inquiries from when you open your accounts, but they would not see new accounts on there because most business credit cards

do not get reported to the personal credit bureaus. And so they don't hurt. So a big part of the strategy is if you can get approved for business credit cards, that's a great way to go to earn a lot of points without going over 524. And to be clear, those cards are subject to 524. So you need to be under 524 to get the business cards, but they don't add to your 524 account once you get them. So you have to be under 524 to get approved. But once you get them, they're not going to add any more. Whereas consumer cards you get add to your account. So if you get an Amex Platinum card or you get a

Barclays Aviator Red card, even if they're not from Chase, those other cards will count towards your 524 account on the consumer side, but most business cards do not add to your 524 account. That's right. That's right. So I get it that that's can be hard to wrap your mind around, but I don't know if we can help any more than I think Nick explained it pretty well. Hopefully that helps. So, all right. So, you know, you got to be under 524. That's important.

And creating a strategy for what those five cards are going to be within 24 months makes sense. And, of course, you want to fill those five slots with chase cards first if you can, because if you get an Amex card or a Barclays card or a Citi card on the consumer side, that's going to be one last chase card that you can potentially get approved for. So now I often caution people not to overvalue the whole 524 thing. If there's some incredible, amazing offer that comes out on a card from another bank, don't be silly and ignore it just because it's not a chase card. However, if you've got the time to create a strategy here, then you want to figure out which chase cards you want first. Yeah. Because the point is that there are chase cards you're going to want to get and to keep long-term. And so this might be, if you get really into this game of signing up for lots of cards, this might be your last chance to get these cards while you're under 524. Or I should put another, or it may be a very long time before your credit report shows

it's been more than 24 months. So, um, let's talk about different types of chase cards and which ones are, are we consider must have chase cards. And so there's three groupings of chase cards. We're going to talk about there's the, the cards that earn ultimate rewards points. Uh, then there are airline cards and then there are hotel cards, ultimate rewards points. That's, that's where it's at. Um, as far as like the number one thing I think you need to be thinking about, um, we've talked a billion times about how valuable transferable points are. These are points that can transfer to hotel or airline programs.

Um, and chase ultimate Awards are transferable points. Among other programs, they transfer one-to-one to Hyatt, which again, we've talked many times about how valuable Hyatt Awards can be. They transfer one-to-one to United, to Virgin Atlantic, to Air France, and each of these, I mean, they've transferred to a lot of programs. I'm not going to name all of them. I will slip in Air Canada. That's another very valuable one. That most of these that they transfer to, you might think, well, gee, I don't fly Virgin Atlantic. Why would I care about those points? But in almost all cases, you can use those points to fly partners of those programs. And sometimes those programs have the best rates. So for example, Virgin Atlantic, you can spend only 62,500 Virgin Atlantic miles to fly

Air New Zealand business class to New Zealand from the United States. And I mean, that's incredible. So that's an example of where it doesn't matter that you're not flying Virgin Atlantic, but those points can be super valuable. So that's why we value ultimate rewards points so highly, but you need to have at least one card, one card that not only earns ultimate rewards points, but unlocks this ability to transfer points. And there's three that are on the market, Sapphire Preferred, Sapphire Reserve, or Inc. Business Preferred. The Sapphire Preferred is a $95 card, Sapphire Reserve, $550 annual fee, and the Inc. Business Preferred is another $95 annual fee, but business card. What do you think, Nick? Is there one that people should get of these three? Because they don't need all three to have transferable points.

No. And it's worth mentioning, not only do you not need all three, you only need one in your household. So if you're playing in a two- player household, if you're a married couple, for instance, then only one of you needs to have one of these three cards. So because you can put all your points together, you can combine them with one person in the same household. So you only need one of these. And is there a one size fits all answer? No, I'd say there isn't. I think any one of them could make sense depending on your scenario. So I don't think there's a one-size-fits-all answer. Do you, Greg? Do you think there's a clear winner? I don't think so. There's really not. So the nice thing is you're not really stuck. You can't really make a wrong decision here because the key here is to have that sort of

slot of having signed up for, let's say, the Sapphire Preferred or the Sapphire Reserve, whichever one you signed up for. Later on, you could product change to the other, even if you're over 524. You won't get a new welcome bonus for doing it, but you might realize, oh, this won't get a new welcome bonus for doing it, but you might realize, oh, this one or that one's better for me. Same thing, sort of with the ink business preferred. If you had another ink card, like the ink business cash, which we'll talk about in a minute and you, you decide, oh, I'd rather have the ink business preferred. You should be able to product change to it. Now, Chase does have some rules about who can product change to what. So I'm not going to

promise you, you can definitely do that product change, but probably can. Yeah. So I don't think there's a clear right answer in terms of which one you want long-term, but you're going to want one of those three. And so, you know, I would probably say start with one of those in order to make sure you have one, like Greg said, you could product change them. You can't, I want to know, you cannot transfer or rather product change from a consumer card to a business card or from a business card to a consumer card. So you can product change between the two Sapphire cards, or you can even product change your Sapphire card to a Freedom card, like a Freedom Flex or Freedom Unlimited, but you can't change that into a Chase Inc. business preferred card, for instance. So keep that in mind that you may want one side

or the other for the ability to go up and down. And if that's the case, I think maybe one of the Sapphire cards makes a little bit more sense for a lot of people because those two cards do both offer transfers to partners and different sets of benefits that may be important to you at different times in life. Yeah, yeah. And the great thing too, so you could get the welcome offer and a year later, if you decide, oh no, I was wrong. I should have done the ink business preferred. If you can get that, then you could downgrade the either Sapphire card to a fee-free freedom card and preserve all your points and move your points instead to the ink business

preferred when you have that one so that the points become transferable again. So yeah, so again, you have to have at least one of those three cards. Now, there's several fee-free Ultimate Rewards cards that they are advertised as cash back cards, but they actually under the covers earn Ultimate Re points now if all you had was those fee-free cards then the best thing you could do with those points is cash them out for a penny per point and you're done and so it makes sense they they advertise them as cash back cards from that point of view but what they they don't advertise, but what is true is that points earned on those cards, you can move to your Sapphire Preferred,

Sapphire Reserve, or Inc. Business Preferred card. And then once you've done that, transfer to all the partners that we were talking about earlier. So you can make those points much more valuable by doing that. All right.

So I'm just going to dive into some specific cards. So there's the Freedom Unlimited card, which gives you three points per dollar for dining and drugstores and one and a half points per dollar everywhere else. There's the Freedom Flex card, which gives you 5X in rotating categories, but also 3X dining and drugstore. And there are two Inc. business cards that are fee-free. There's the Inc. business cash card, which gives you 5X at office supplies and also for cell phone, landline, cable on up to $25,000 to spend each year. And then there's the Inc.

business unlimited, which is like the Freedom Unlimited that it gives you one and a half points per dollar everywhere. So that's a roundup of the fee-free cards that are advertised as cash back, but actually earn ultimate rewards points. And the super cool thing is they earn in higher amounts than some of the cards that have premiums. And then you can move the points to the cards that have premiums to make those points more valuable. Yeah. And so to add a little bit of clarity for somebody who's new, when we say that they're advertised as cash back cards, let's take the Freedom Unlimited card to start. So that card is advertised as earning one and a half percent cash back because it earns 1.5 ultimate rewards back because it earns 1.5 ultimate rewards points.

And those 1.5 ultimate rewards points could be redeemed for 1.5 cents if that's the only card that you have. But it actually, again, earns 1.5 ultimate rewards points. They're advertising it as 1. half percent cash back. Similarly, they advertise the welcome bonus as cash as a $200 back after you spend however much money. Just as an example, that may or may not be the welcome offer right now. You'll have to take a look at our best offers page to see what it is. But if it says $200 welcome offer, keep in mind that that's actually awarded as 20,000 ultimate rewards points. So if you also have a Sapphire Preferred, well, you can move as 20,000 ultimate rewards points. So if you also have a Sapphire Preferred, well, you can move your 20,000 ultimate rewards points from your Freedom Unlimited card over to

your Sapphire Preferred card and then transfer them to Virgin Atlantic or Hyatt or whatever transfer partner you want. So same as true on the business side. If you see a welcome bonus of 50 or 75,000 or rather, I should say a $500 or $750. Keep in mind, those are really like 50,000 ultimate rewards points or 75,000 ultimate rewards points. It's advertised as cash, but it's awarded as ultimate rewards points. Yeah. Yeah. So among these, which ones do you think are keepers? I have it in my mind, which ones I think are. What do you think is a must-have keeper? I mean, I think the Inc. Business Cash is a must-have keeper for anybody who is even remotely interested in business cards because 5X office supply stores and cable and internet, all of those things, really valuable. I mention it, of course, because office supply stores are popular since they sell a variety of different gift cards. So if you want to buy an Amazon gift card, you can

earn 5x with your Inc. business cash card, for instance, and then use that to buy whatever it is you want on Amazon. Or obviously, we often write about Visa gift card and MasterCard gift card sales where they waive the activation fees on those. And you could go and potentially buy, say, a $200 Visa gift card with no activation fee when it's on sale, and then use that $200 anywhere you want and have earned 5x on basically any type of purchase. So I think the Inc. Business Cash Card is one that everybody's going to want in the long run if you get into this game. Absolutely. Yep. Yep. Absolutely. Absolutely. Then I think another one, if you are going to be sort of wedded to the ultimate rewards ecosystem as where you're going to want to earn your points, I think you want a card that earns one and a half points per dollar as a baseline. And there's two options there. There's business unlimited and the freedom unlimited. Um, for most people, I kind of slightly prefer the freedom unlimited because

that one also gives you three points per dollar for dining and drugstore. Um, and one and a half points per dollar everywhere else. So, so that has that additional, those three X categories, which the business card doesn't have. But I think it's worth mentioning that with this card, there's no advantage to having more than one in a household because you could make, let's say your significant other, an authorized user on the Freedom Unlimited card, and that doesn't affect, in a primary way, their 524 account, adding them as an authorized user. Now, I said that in a weird way because it could lead to complications having too many authorized user cards, but it doesn't prevent you from getting approved. So you could look up our posts on 524

to figure out what I'm talking about there. So my point is you'll earn the same one and a half points per dollar within your household with just one account versus having multiple. That strategy might not be how you tackle, for example, the Inc. business cash card, because if you get into this in a big way, you might want to have more than $25,000 worth of 5X spend available per year. And so you could do that by having multiple cards in your household is one way, or even one individual could have multiple of those in business cash cards. Same answer, the Freedom Flex card, that's the one that has 5X rotating categories. I don't see that as a must-have card, but if you're interested in sort of optimizing your spend and getting 5X in these different categories, that one, there is an advantage to having multiple in your household because

then you're not limited to just $1,500 per quarter of 5X spend. So just a couple of considerations there. But so I think we're down to the in cash and the Freedom Unlimited as two sort of must-haves, if you want to talk about it that way. Yeah, and there's two related things that I want to talk about that are a little bit different. So the first thing is, in making or adding something to Greg's point about the Freedom Unlimited versus the Inc Business Unlimited, that both earn one and a half points per dollar

everywhere. But like Greg said, the Freedom Unlimited has a couple of 3X categories. However, a counter argument for that is that the Business Unlimited often features a much higher welcome bonus. And so that might offset how much 3X earn you're going to... You have to look and say, okay, well, how much am I going to spend in the 3X categories on the Freedom Unlimited? And how long is it going to take me to earn the difference in a welcome offer over getting the Ink Business Unlimited?

So that may tip the scales in the business direction there. But anyway, you slice it. I think my opening strategy here would be to get one of the Sapphire cards and the Ink Business Unlimited somewhere near the beginning, because those offer typically the best welcome offers. And then from there, you could product change whichever side it is you don't want to keep in the long run. So for instance, if you decide, okay, well, I want to keep the Ink Business Unlimited, then downgrade your Sapphire preferred, let's say to a Freedom Unlimited, or to a, or I'm sorry, I misspoke there, didn't I? If you decide you want to keep the Inc. Business Preferred, the $95 card rather, as your card that transfers to partners, then you could product change your Sapphire card to something else that matters

more to you. Or the flip side, if you decide you want to keep the Sapphire Preferred forever, let's say, then you can take that Inc. Business Unlimited and product change that to an Inc. Business Cash or Inc. Business Preferred. My goodness, I keep misspeaking there, don't I? I'm sorry for all the confusion. But the idea is you want to start with two cards that give you the best welcome offers possible. And the Freedom Unlimited card and the Freedom Flex card typically offer really weak welcome bonuses. Yeah. Yeah. Actually, that's a fantastic point. And since the Sapphire Preferred tends to have a really good welcome bonus, and all of the ink cards tend to have good welcome bonuses, if you're playing in two-player mode, you might want to start off, like,

you know, both people getting Sapphire Preferred, for example, and both people getting whichever the ink cards you want to go for, first for the welcome bonuses. And then you could do some product changing to get to the right combination of cards within your household. Let's say you had two Sapphire Preferreds and you like Sapphire Preferred. You could downgrade one of them to the Freedom Unlimited and use the other one to add the other person as an authorized user if you want to both be able to use that card's benefits. So that's a way of playing that.

Absolutely. Yeah. So I think my strategy would be to first go for the cards that offer the best welcome offers. And like we said, in two player mode, you could be doubling up on those and then product change your way around. But, you know, key point on this product change thing, like we said before, is you're only going to be able to product change

a consumer card to another consumer card or a business card to another business card. And then additionally, you can't product change a card that earns ultimate rewards into, say, an airline card or an airline card into an ultimate rewards card. You got to stay in the same product family. So you're only going to be able to do this

on the consumer side between the Sapphire Reserve, Sapphire Preferred, Freedom Unlimited and Freedom Flex cards or on the business card side with the ink cards. So keep that in mind up for one personal card and any number of business cards and haven't signed up for any other consumer credit cards, even Chase or other banks, then we're only at 124. Our credit report is not going to show those business cards. So, um, so there's plenty of room for additional chase cards beyond the ones that are in ultimate rewards, even after, uh, getting what you need there. All right, let's talk airline cards. All right. So, so chase has chase offers a whole bunch of cards from United that are United branded, a bunch of Southwest cards, an Aeroplan card, a British Airways card, Aer Lingus card, Iberia card. So they have a bunch

of airline cards, any one of which could make sense if you're big into flying that airline. But let's talk about, are there any that are really notable as... Yeah, well, close to universal, like something that almost everyone should have. And really the only card that I've identified as one that like makes sense for pretty much anybody is the United Gateway card because it has no annual fee and yet it gives you some benefits. It unlocks improved economy saver award availability on United. And if you're interested in the United business card now or sometime in the future, it makes that card more valuable. Having a United consumer card makes the business card more valuable. Before I explain that, let's say that the same strategy we talked about before with ultimate rewards cards totally applies here, which is that United Gateway card is not going to have a great welcome bonus, but you might be able to get a great welcome bonus with

like the United Quest card or one of the other United cards, consumer cards. And then you can uh later like a year later product change to the gateway card and just keep that around yeah it almost always makes sense to go after the card that's offering within the card family that you ultimately want to go after the one that's offering the best welcome bonus initially because that welcome bonus is almost always going to be worth far more than the first annual fee on that particular card. So Greg mentioned the Quest card, which I think has a $250 annual fee, if I remember correctly, right? Hopefully I'm right on that. And whatever the welcome bonus is,

it's going to be typically worth well more than that. So you start with that card and then down the road, you downgrade to this. When we say down the road, I should also clarify that after a year has passed, when your next annual fee comes due, rather than pay the annual fee and keep the card, if you don't want to continue paying for the benefits of the card that you've chosen to start with, you can call Chase and downgrade it to a gateway card, which has no annual fee. And that, like Greg said, has the great benefit of unlocking additional Saver Award availability on United. And that's an important benefit because United doesn't release a ton of award space to partners anymore. So if flying United is going to

be useful for you at some point, which for almost all of us eventually it will, then it'll be helpful to have access to expanded Safer Award availability. And since you're likely going to be earning Chase Ultimate Rewards points, remember your Ultimate Rewards points transfer to United one-to-one. So there's going to be situations likely at some point where you're going to want to transfer to United to book something and having access to more Safer availability will probably come in handy eventually. Yeah. And just to be clear, that feature is true of all the United cards. It's just pointing this one out because even if you're not a United flyer, you could probably handle the $0

annual fee on this card. And so it's not going to hurt you to have this card. And now let me talk about the United Business Card because it's one that is close to good enough if you hardly ever fly United. Close. It's not a no-brainer, but I think it's just worth mentioning. It's a $99 annual fee card. And if you also have a consumer United card, which the gateway card counts for this, then you get 5,000 bonus points every anniversary that you have the business card. So those 5,000 points are going a long way, maybe a little more than halfway anyway, to paying back that $99 annual fee. And it also gives you two United Club passes each year. So just using that once a year would be well worth, between that and the 5K bonus points,

I think it'd be well worth the annual fee. You also get a free check bag if you pay for your flight with United business cards. So quite a few little perks that add up to make it definitely not much of a loser to keep, even if you don't fly United. And if you do fly United a decent amount, it'll easily, easily pay for itself. Yeah. And like Greg said, I mean, there's situations with all the other airline cards where that will be true, where if you fly that particular airline, it'd be worth it. I mean, there's situations with all the other airline cards where that will be true, where if you fly that particular airline, it'd be worth it. I mean, I'm a Southwest flyer, so the Southwest priority card makes tons of sense in my household, but it doesn't make any sense for Craig since he never flies Southwest. Aeroplan is probably one of my favorite, if not my favorite, frequent flyer programs, the airplane card has some attractive features, but it's not a no-brainer for everybody because if you're not going to be booking a lot of Star Alliance awards, then

having the airplane card probably isn't going to be huge for you. So there's a lot of reasons why you might consider some of the other airline cards. So when we're talking about must-have chase cards, we're talking about the ones that are pretty widely applicable. But certainly for you, there may be another airline card in there that is a must-have card for you. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. All right. Let's talk about hotel cards now. What do you think? Are there any Chase hotel cards that make sense for everybody? You know, I think that everybody, I'm going to hesitate on a little bit,

but I think that out of the Chase hotel cards, I think the one that's probably closest to, I'll say the easiest to come out well ahead on is the Ritz card. And it's ironic because it's probably the most expensive Chase Hotel or airline card, but yet it's the one that's probably the easiest to come out nicely ahead on. And that's because the card costs $450 a year. That's the annual fee, $450, which is steep, but it comes with $300 a year in incidental credits. So you could use it for various different types of fees. And we found a lot of different types of travel can qualify under that $300 airline incidental credit. So it's pretty easy to get your money back out of that. And then it also comes with an annual 85,000 point Marriott free night certificate, which means you

can use it for a free night at a Marriott that costs up to 85,000 points per night for a standard room. And we're talking in that category, some potentially really expensive properties. I reserved recently one in New York that would have been $1,000 a night with one of these 85K free night certs. So those can be really, really valuable. So between that and the $300 in airlines dental credits, it's pretty easy to come out ahead of the $450 annual fee. And then it adds on the best priority pass in the business. And the reason we call it the best priority pass in the business. And the reason we call it the best priority pass in the business is because the Ritz cards priority pass offers unlimited guests. So you can bring as many guests as the lounge or restaurant will allow you to have. And that doesn't cost you anything.

And not only does it offer that type of priority pass for the primary cardholder, but every authorized user gets their own priority pass with unlimited guests as well. In fact, just two weeks ago, I added a family member to my Ritz card and called Chase and asked them if they could expedite her priority pass so that she'd be able to bring that on an upcoming trip. And so now she's got her own priority pass with unlimited guests whenever she travels. And it didn't cost me anything to add that authorized user. So the Ritz card is a really good one to have. That last thing you just said, that it doesn't cost anything to add authorized users. That's so clutch because it means with just one Ritz card in the family, you could add your extended

family as authorized users. You don't ever have to give them your RITS card. Like you might have family members you don't trust to have your credit card, but you might want to still give them Priority Pass. And you can do that because, yeah, Chase will send you the Priority, I'm sorry, the RITS card in their name, but with the same account number as yours. But you just don't give that to your family members. But what you do is get Priority Pass cards that are in each of their names and hand those out like candy. And then they can go to Priority Pass lounges at airports, Priority Pass restaurants, and even guest in people at those things.

Yeah. And it has best-in-class travel protections. So, yeah. And it has best in class travel protections. I mean, it matches the Sapphire reserves, travel protections. If you're using it to pay the award taxes on an award flight, for instance, you're going to get the,

you know, the trip delay and cancellation coverage, et cetera, et cetera. So it's a great card to have, but you can't apply for it new. So you can't go get the Ritz card. Now,

if you wanted it today and you don't have any Marriott cards, you couldn't get it. You would have to first get a different Chase Consumer Marriott card, which actually is the only option for Chase cards these days. So get a Chase Marriott card of some sort, and then you could product change it after a year has passed to the Ritz card. Or if you've got a Chase Marriott card that you've had for more than a year, then you can call Chase and most likely you'll be able to product change that to a Ritz card if you want to have the Ritz card. And that's certainly one that I think Greg and I both have and hold and keep, and my wife has one also. So it's just a valuable one to have, I think.

It sure is. And I agree. It's probably the best one that most people could get, you know, more value than the annual fee without really thinking too hard about it. they have both a consumer and a business card that are almost identical. So I'll talk about those together. But I think both of these are close to being, you know, cards that everyone could get more than the annual fee value from each year. So it's a good idea to have. And in both cases, if you have a significant other that you often travel with, I recommend both of you signing up for the cards at around the same time. Because both of these cards come with annual free night certificates that are valid for a year. And it's just really, really helpful for the deadlines on those cards to line up.

And so I'd recommend doing it that way. IAT card. It it's 95 annual fee every year they give you a category one to four uh free night certificate and so um you can stay at uh hyatt hotels now hyatt has up to eight categories so it only goes halfway up their award chart. And unfortunately, this does not include staying at any of their all-inclusives, which has a separate award chart. But there are still a lot of Hyatts that are category three or four that would normally cost, let's say, $300 or more for the night. And so if you use your free night for something like that, you're coming out well ahead. And so it's just a cheap way to have a nice stay each year. The main downside of that, go ahead, Nick. I just wanted to add to it that they're valid

at category one to four, and that includes peak pricing. So category four Hyatt properties are at standard rates, 15,000 points per night, but peak rates, 18,000 points per night. And you can still use your category one to four free night certificate. In fact, I just recently used two of these properties that were peak priced awards that were 470 and a little over $500 a night where I was able to use one of these. So I mean, they can really come in handy. There you go. What I want to mention is that Hyatt in recent years have adjusted the categories of a lot of hotels. And within the United States, a lot of our favorite category four hotels became category fives, which is really unfortunate because now you can't use your certs at those properties. But in other parts of the world, like in Europe, a lot of category fives move down to

category four. And they also have lots of small luxury hotels of the world properties that they're partner with that are category four or below in Europe. So if you travel to Europe at all, these can be amazingly valuable or amazingly useful, I guess is a better way of saying it. You're more easily going to find a hotel that you want to stay at, I think in Europe, unfortunately, than in the United States these days, but there are still some good ones. Don't get me wrong. Card also, just a couple of other things I'll mention quickly. If you spend $15,000 within the calendar year, you get another Category 124 certificate. And having the card un get this many. And you'll also get two elite nights towards elite status for every $5,000 spend on that card. So I like it.

I think it's a good like keeper card. So if you're at all interested, again, this is a card to sign up for before you go over 524. Yeah. And if you get into the Ultimate Rewards ecosystem, Hyatt quickly becomes a favorite for a lot of people because they have a really reasonable award chart. And so you may find yourself becoming more and more, even if you're not a Hyatt person right now, you may be surprised a couple of years from now, you may become a Hyatt person. And so this is one to keep in mind because it may become something you'll decide that you wanted and wished you had gotten in the beginning. So it's worth a look. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Do you want to talk to us through the IHG

cards? The IHG Premier and Business Card both offer an annual 40K free night certificate. So it's a free night certificate that's valid for a property costing up to 40,000 points. But the nice thing on the IHG Premier Card and the IHG Business Premier Card, I guess it is, is that the 40K free night certificates can be topped up with points. So you can use them for a property that costs more than 40,000 points per night. Let's say you want to use them for a property that costs 60,000 points per night. You can use your free night certificate and kick in 20,000 of your own IHG points in order to stay at that property. So that can be useful because 40,000 points will already probably buy you a hotel that is worth more than the cost of

the annual fee on these cards. These are both what $99 annual fee cards, $95 annual fee cards, around a hundred bucks. I can't remember within a dollar or two, anyway, around a hundred bucks. So you can easily get a hotel that's worth more than $100 with the annual free night certificate. It's an easy annual win. And then, of course, you get some other ancillary benefits. Fourth night is free on awards days when you have one of these cards. And so that can be valuable because IHG does it in such a way that the actual fourth night

is free. So if you find a situation where the first three nights are pretty reasonable on points and the fourth night is expensive, you could potentially get that fourth night for free with that benefit. So that can be cool. Or even if that's not the case, the fourth night free still can save you a nice chunk of points on your award stays. And then the business card, does the consumer card come with the $25

United Travel Bank credit? I think it's just the business card, right? I thought they both did. Maybe they both did. So there's a $25 United Travel Bank benefit that you get once every six months. Maybe it's not both of them. And that, I don't know, I'm lukewarm on that particular benefit. If you fly United a lot, that'll be useful. If you don't fly United a lot, it's kind of like, eh, you only get it once every six months. You can't bank it in order to use it in a future quarter or something to be able to put it together. So it expires after six months. So it's nice if you come into a situation to use it.

I was excited. Mine have been getting expired every six months, but I finally had a flight where I was able to use it. I was like, yay! I wish you could use it towards award booking fees, but you can't. You can't do that. That's too bad. And you can't use it on

an itinerary on a foreign partner. It's got to be just on United Metal. There's some restrictions. So anyway, I think these cards are keepers. Pretty similar rationale as the Hyatt card, where it's like if you're going to use the free night certificate each year, you'll easily make up for the annual fee. And that fourth night free benefit, as Nick said, can come in really handy.

It's not something you'll probably use like every year, but when you do use it, I mean, it could have huge value on a four night stay. Even if every night is the same price, you're saving 25% right there. I had a, I just recently booked a five-night stay. And because of how it works, I was able to look at booked a stay for the four nights where the last night was the most expensive. And then I booked the other night with a free night certificate plus points. So, um, yeah, so that's the way you do that. And, and, uh, yeah, it can be, it can be, uh, crazy valuable. So I, I like that a lot. So yeah. So let's kind of sum up here as to the must-have chase cards.

You're getting started. You want to make sure you have all the necessary cards. What do we say? For ultimate rewards cards, you want to have at least one personal and one business, right? Right. You want at least one of each. And you probably want to long term have a Chase Inc. cash card and either a Freedom Unlimited or an Inc. Business Unlimited. So however you start your strategy, you want to keep those in mind. And we only briefly touched on business cards. But if you listened this far and thought that you aren't eligible for business cards because you don't own a large business, we probably should have mentioned sooner. And

we've mentioned it plenty of times before that it doesn't take a large business to get approved for business credit cards. Any small business could qualify and you probably have a small business and don't realize that you do so it's relatively simple to get approved for business cards so you if you started with your mind closed to that idea you may want to open it up and become entrepreneurial yes definitely um and don't forget you do need to have have a card that transfers to transferable points to airline and hotel programs. So you want to have in your portfolio a Sapphire Preferred, Sapphire Reserve, or an Inc. Business Preferred in addition to the Inc. Business Cash and probably the Freedom Unlimited. um with with airline cards i mean we we talked about like united uh fee free card and the united business card being pretty good ones but really there there's there's lots of good um airline

cards and just depends what you fly right so so look through look through the different airline cards they provide if any of them, yeah. Yeah. If any of them look like, yeah, this is, this is the right card for me. Uh,

like we talked briefly about the United quest card. It, it, it, yeah, it's something like $250 a year, which sounds like a lot, but it also adds a lot of,

it offers a lot of perks that could be way more valuable to you if you're a regular United flyer. So it's definitely worth considering those if you fly often. Similar with hotel cards, right? That like Chase has Marriott cards and Hyatt cards and IHG cards. So any one of them could make sense to you. We think the ones that you should definitely be considering are the Ritz card, uh, the Hyatt card, and, uh, one of the IHG, uh, either the premier or business card. Um, and, uh, that all of them offer, offer value, the Ritz, probably most of all of those three.

Yep. Absolutely. Absolutely. And in our households, all of those things are our keepers, right? I mean, I don't actually have the IHG Premier or the business. I have a different IHG card that's not available anymore, but I still have one and we've got Ritz cards and Hyatt cards. So, and same, I'm sure it goes for your household too. So we're talking about these cards as must haves because we don't have experience with them. And we know that they are things that you're likely to want at some point.

You don't necessarily need to have all of them like we do, but it's likely you're going to want at least one of those three hotel cards in the long run. And you may do well with a couple of them. All right. That brings us to the end of the main event, I think, and brings us to this week's question of the week. So we're going to shift gears a little bit with the question of the week with a question that I thought was really good. So Rick wrote in with a question and said, Hi, Nick and Greg, big fan of the podcast and everything you guys share. Thanks for the hard work. One of the situations I run into pretty often is points not attributing like they should.

Recently, my Uber Eats purchases spontaneously stopped earning Marriott points. Working with Uber to get it fixed has been difficult, blah, blah, blah. I've also run into this not getting built points for a Lyft ride, not getting Rakuten for an Instacart order, not getting the AA miles for an Advantage shopping portal purchase, etc. It can get really frustrating auditing that everything posted as it should, chasing down missing points, and even finding where or how I chased down the missing points. Do you guys have any wisdom

to how to make this more efficient or any master list of how to contact the various entities or complain and get your points back? Thanks again, Rick. What do you say, Craig? How do you audit all this stuff and keep track of who's giving you the points

and who hasn't and where you're missing something? What do you do? I don't sweat the small stuff. That's what I do. That's exactly what I was going to write back when I saw that question come in. Yeah. Word for word. And it's so true. I believe it. I do that kind of tracking for big things. I sign up for a credit card that has a hundred thousand point offer. Of course, I'm going to watch and make sure that those points actually appear. A, you know, Lyft ride or, or, you know, a shopping order, a small shopping. I'm just not even going to worry about it. So that's it. I mean, yeah, you're going to lose some points, but gosh, life will be so much less stressful

if you just hope that those points come in. And most of the time they will. And just trust that. Trust that. What else can I say? Yeah, that's the thing. Exactly what Greg said. I don't sweat the small stuff. And a lot of it is small stuff, not to steal somebody else's line. But yeah, I mean, if you're looking at the $35 Uber Eats order that you didn't get the 35 Marriott

points on or whatever, I'm not even sure how many it is. But that number of Marriott points to me is pretty inconsequential. And I know that I'm going to earn way more points from a welcome bonus or from 5X spending at an office supply store or whatever the case may be that it's going to dwarf whatever that 35 points is. So I'm not going to waste the stress on dealing with that. Now, I am going to link up accounts and make sure and if it's not working, then I probably would reach out to Uber and Marriott and say, hey, what's going on here? Why am I not getting this to fix it for the future? Because I do want to earn those points and link up all that stuff and go through the shopping portal. But the vast majority of the

time that stuff works. I mean, it just does most of the time. And if I'm making a big purchase, if I'm buying like, you know, a thousand dollar laptop and it's 10 miles per dollar, so I'm expecting 10,000 miles. Well, I would follow up on that one and make sure that one posts. But if I'm, you know, buying a $50 item where I'm supposed to earn two miles per dollar and I'm expecting the 100 miles, I'm not looking through a microscope to make sure I get the 100 miles. I mean, I know I probably will. And if I don't, I'll sleep. Okay. So that's that's our approach. I think on those things. I just don't know I probably will. And if I don't, I'll sleep okay. So that's our approach,

I think, on those things. I just don't audit. Absolutely. And when you're doing one of those big things, take screenshots all along the way. Just do it. Most of the time, you'll never go back and look at those screenshots. But some of the time, if those points don't appear and you need to plead your case, sending in screenshots can make the difference and get them to credit your account, even if they weren't able to track the order or whatever it was where you should have earned the points. Great point. Great point. Excellent. All right. I hope that helps you, Rick. I hope it takes away some of your stress. I bet it probably is just adding like, oh my goodness, these guys aren't following up on the points. I'm sorry, Rick. I apologize, but not on the small ones. All right. Anyway, that brings us to the end of this week's show. If you've enjoyed this and you'd like to get more of this stuff in your email inbox each day or each week, you want to go to frequent miler dot com slash subscribe. Again, that's frequent miler dot 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 you can discuss this kind of stuff day in and day out with other folks who are enthusiastic about it. And wherever you're

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