Frequent Miler on the Air - Nick's 30 night mattress run | Ep 64 | 9/19/20

Episode Date: September 19, 2020

This week: With Hyatt's generous overlapping offers, Nick is thinking of going big. Will he book a 30 night stay? Also: Chase is out with huge signup offers. Should we grab what's there now or wait for even better? 00:23 Giant Mailbag: An earnest defense of Best Western 04:20 What Crazy Thing Did Citi Do This Week? 07:02 Mattress running the numbers: Should Nick book a 30 night stay? Analysis of Hyatt's promos: https://frequentmiler.boardingarea.com/hyatt-bonus-journeys-q4-2020-promo/ 22:20 Should Nick book with Points or Cash? Testing the spreadsheet Worksheet: https://frequentmiler.boardingarea.com/hyatt-cash-or-points-worksheet/ Avoid taxes on long stays: https://frequentmiler.boardingarea.com/staying-30-nights-in-a-hotel-you-might-not-have-to-pay-the-taxes/ 42:05 Main Event: 80K in the hand or 100K in the bush? Should you go for those 80K offers now or wait for a potential 100K offer? Details about 80K offer: https://frequentmiler.boardingarea.com/chase-sapphire-preferred-80k-offer-should-you-go-for-it/ Will Chase match 60K to 80K? https://frequentmiler.boardingarea.com/will-chase-match-the-sapphire-preferred-60k-offer-to-80k/ 56:40 Question of the week: How to spend $20K? Best Big Spend Bonuses: https://frequentmiler.boardingarea.com/best-big-spend-bonuses/

Frequent miler on the air starts now. Today's main event chases out with huge signup offers. Should we go for it now or wait for something? Maybe even bigger. Let's get into that soon. But first we've got a couple of things. Let's drag out the giant mailbag. Pull it out.

Drag it out. Okay. Just dumped it on the Gregreg's desk over there oh man what a mess all right the uh this feedback is from michael all right and he titled his feedback he says an earnest defense of Best Western. You might remember a few weeks ago, we made fun of some of the Best Western promos. And so Michael wrote in. Greg and Nick, I was glad you mentioned the Best Western exploding gift card deals on your show, since I just completed a first ever stay with them

and have another one coming up. I never thought I'd be raving about Best Western, but as a Bay Area resident in COVID times, I'm taking more road trips and there are many beautiful places on Bolt Forest, Central Coast, and California where they're actually the best ranked or the only chain hotels. I would usually go for a Hyatt Place, Holiday Inn Express, or Hampton Inn, Hilton Garden Inn, Duren, and Use Points. So that's it. What do you think? Were we too hard on Best Western? Too hard? No. I mean, the promotion comes with these like short-term gift cards that have to be used by the end of the year, which I feel like for most people

is probably, you know, restrictive enough that it creates a high likelihood of not being able to use those gift cards. So I don't feel like we were too harsh. Now on the flip side, yeah, I mean, Best Western can be good in some places. And truthfully, I stayed at lots of Best Westerns in the years before I discovered Miles and Points because I always found them to be clean and fine and pretty cheap. And most of the time I was traveling for the place and not the place I was staying. So, you know, so I know that Best Westerns can be good. And in some places that they certainly are the only option. I've definitely found places abroad to where they were my best option by a decent margin. So, so they certainly can be but a promo that gives you a gift card that's only good until the end of the year in which there's a global pandemic, that's more or less shut down

travel is not really a good promotion, you know, no matter what, like, even if I think that even if that was a Hyatt promotion, dare I say, it would be questionable as to the value of something like that. Absolutely. It was a ridiculous promotion. But I think I did sort of joke about like, and you'd have to stay at a Best Western too, as if that was like a big negative. Right. And truthfully, it's been so many years since I've stayed at Best Western. I don't know, there's, there's probably really nice ones. I know some of them are called something like Best Western Plus. So really, that must be better, because there's a plus. Yeah, it's more than I knew. I didn't know

there was a plus. So there you go. I mean, you know, and I think that with the renewed focus on road trips, I think that definitely those programs like Best Western and Choice are potentially worth a closer look for a lot of people because they do have locations and places where you're not going to find a Hyatt and there's not going to be a full service Marriott for free breakfast anyway. So you might want to take a closer look at some of those promotions. I think, I don't know if choice,

is choice out with their usual like 8,000 points or gift card for two days or whatever. Yeah, something along those lines. They have a twist on it, which is this time you can also redeem those 8,000 points for a gift card at double the usual value. It works out to less of a scam than usual by turning points into gift cards, but it's still not a great use of points.

But if your stay at choice was really bad and you're like, I'm never going to stay at choice again, then you might want to cash out four gift cards, cash out four gift cards instead of keeping those points. But as you know, we've, we've encountered situations where choice points are fantastic. Yeah. So yeah. Yeah. Okay. All right. So moving on. That moves us into next segment.

What crazy thing did city do this week? Yeah. So city does not disappoint in this category lately. No, no, no. They're stepping up their game. Bank of America tried to one-up them, and Citi came back, and they said, no, guys. That's right. That's right. So instead of doing a crazy thing, what they're doing is, or what they've done is apparently grow craziness within. And so

a senior IT manager was running a popular QAnon website. This is apparently like one of the top QAnon websites. And he was raking in like $3,000 a month, or no i'm sorry a week we're doing with this website and um they've laid him off or sorry no he's on paid leave right now oh not a bad deal so he's collecting not a bad deal at all right he probably spent more time on his website right uh move up from number three to like number two i mean but so apparently where he broke the rules i don't think it's because it was a q anon website particularly but um uh he broke the rules, I don't think it's because it was a QAnon website particularly, but he broke the rules because employees are supposed to disclose and obtain approval if they're going to do a business that's outside of their regular job. And he didn't do that. Interesting.

Yeah, all kinds of craziness happening there. So does that make it harder for Citibank employees to get business credit cards because they need to get approval for whatever the outside business is? Is that like a new wrinkle? I don't know. Yeah, we might need a special part of our site for like, if you're a Citi employee, here's how to get business cards. I'm glad you said that. And now here's how to set up your QAnon website. Although maybe, I don't know, maybe if they don't like their job, it's a good deal because you get paid leave. Right, right, paid leave. And you make three grand a week on your side gig, you know, if you're QAnon sites.

That's the crazy part of all this. I didn't even think that city would continue to pay this guy. Yeah, yeah. I mean, not that they should stop paying him because of his you know political beliefs i suppose but you know but you know it's kind of crazy to get put on leave for having a site like that and get paid from both jobs yeah okay anyway thank you thank you city i can't wait to see what you do next week all right ideas city i'm here on paternity leave you're Give me ideas,

Siddy. I'm here on paternity leave. You're giving me ideas, Siddy. Hey, wait. I'm the employer in this situation.

I don't know. Oh, whoa, whoa. Did I say that out loud? Did I say that out loud? Sorry about that, Siddy. So, all right. So what crazy thing, we know what crazy things

Siddy did this week. So now, that brings us to Mattress Running the Numbers. It does. This week, I'm excited about Matt'm excited about mattress running the numbers yeah you're excited i think because hyatt has been piling on the promotions like right just absolutely piling them on so i published a post about how there's at the moment five five overlapping promotions, and it's possible to, you know, get multiple benefits

for, you know, for one stay because of all these overlapping promotions. So tell me what part of that excites you. So all right, so what excites me here, mostly is the fact that Greg uncovered, I think that the diamond in the rough here, and I shouldn't even call it the diamond in the rough, because these are a bunch of great promotions, but really the best, the cream of the crop, maybe is how I should say it. The cream of the crop in terms of the promotions is the fact that if you have a stay that spans 2020 into 2021, where you check out in 2021, you're going to end up getting a lot of extra elite nights. Because what's happening is right now, for every elite night you pick up before January 4th, you're also going to get an elite night in 2021.

So if you stay at a Hyatt tomorrow night, then you're going to get one elite night this year, one night towards elite status. And you'll also get one night towards elite status next year. So that's a decent little promo, but where it gets exciting and interesting, as Greg uncovered, is if, let's say, you stay from December 31st to January 2nd.

You stay two nights. You start in 2020 and you check out in 2021. Well, you're going to get those two nights that you would normally get, and they get applied towards 2021 based on your checkout date. Plus, you get two additional bonus nights in 2021. So your two-night stay would get you four nights. So the moral of the story here is that if you have a stay checking in sometime in December and checking out in January of 2021,

you're gonna get double the number of elite nights in 2021. So if you were to stay, for example, 30 nights and check out on January 2nd or January 3rd, January 4th, say 30 nights, check out at the beginning of January, you're going to end up getting 60 elite nights in 2021. That's instant globalist status right after you check out basically, right? I mean, it takes a couple of days or whatever to update, but within the first week of January, you'd have globalist status covered for all of 2021, all of 2022, and up until February 2023, right? That's right. Yeah, yeah. So why is that so great? I mean, so, you know, so you've spent,

you spent money or points for 30 nights. Now you have globalists, but so what? Well, so you've gotten globalist status at half the number of nights that it would normally cost. So on its own, that would be a pretty interesting possibility. Like even if we weren't in the crazy times we are and there were no other stacking promotions, right? Getting globalist status, top tier Hyatt status for 30 nights spent at a hotel, whether that's in cash or points,

would be a pretty fantastic deal because globalist status, of course, gives you a sweet upgrade awards. Now I say globalist status gives course gives you a sweet upgrade awards now i say globalist status gives you hyatt has milestone rewards and so as you earn more elite nights you earn extra milestone benefits so for example you get two lounge access upgrade awards i think when you hit 20 nights and if you hit 30 nights 30 elite nights that is then you get a free category one to fours day so if you get all the way to 60 nights early in the year, then you would end up with a bunch of milestone benefits

too. So you'd end up with four suite upgrades. And those upgrades are good for up to seven nights confirmed in advance at booking. So you could confirm yourself into a suite the day you book, you book an awards day, confirm it right into a suite totally different than the way that Marriott and Hilton handle that kind of thing. That's super valuable. You get a free category one to four night when you hit 30 elite nights and a free category one to seven night when you hit 60. There's another milestone in there in the middle somewhere where you get your choice between $100 Hyatt gift card or 5000 points at 40. Yep. Something else at 40. So you can get a whole bunch of these different things. So if, again, let's go back to the beginning here and say, if you checked in in December, check out in January, you spend 30 nights at a Hyatt hotel.

When you check out in January for your 30 nights day, you're going to end up with four suite upgrades, one category one to four night, one category one to seven night. And let's say you decide to take the points, 5,000 Hyatt points on top of it. And globalist status, which gets you free breakfast, free lounge access to properties with lounges, free parking on awards days, no resort fees, upgrade to a suite if it's available when you check in, lots of different good benefits, right? So that would be pretty good if that was it. But that's not it. That's not it.

So yeah, right. So on, as if all that wasn't enough, on points days, so if you book those 30 nights as points days, you're going to get either 15% or 25% of your points back. And that depends on whether or not you have a Hyatt credit card. They reward Hyatt credit cards, cardholders more. And if it's a paid stay, you'll get triple base points, meaning normally you get five points per dollar to begin with. So during this promotion time, you'll get 15 points per dollar plus some extra points if you have already have a lead status of some kind. I know, Nick, you probably have Explorer

status right now, I'm guessing. So you get an extra point. So it'd be 16 points per dollar. If your paid stay happens to be at a participating resort, you could get four points per dollar, but only if you have a Hyatt credit card. And so there's a bunch of things there, but no matter how you stack it, like it's gonna be more rewarding than usual, even if you don't have a Hyatt credit card. A lot more, a lot more.

Because Hyatt doesn't, it's not like Hilton where Hilton's doing double points all the time. Hyatt doesn't do that kind of a thing to begin with. And then triple, triple points, base points. I mean, has Hyatt ever done anything like that? Not that I can remember. And one of the great things, too, about, you know, it might not sound like 15 or 16 points per dollar.

Again, if you're comparing to Hilton doesn't necessarily sound incredible but you have to think of hyatt points as being worth about three times what hilton points are worth so you know think of it as being more like 45 uh or more hilton points which i think we have seen that we have at times but that's when they really and that's a good deal yeah and that was that was a great deal when we saw it that high, but that's unusual. That's very unusual. Right. It is unusual. And it's a good deal when that happens. And when it happens with Hilton, it's not coinciding with the opportunity to also get

yourself a bunch of milestone benefits and elite status and all that other stuff that hides. Right. Also, Hilton, it's too easy to get meaningful status with Hilton. You just get a credit card and it would be easier than booking nights. With Hyatt, the only other way to cheat your way to high-level status is through credit card spend on the World of Hyatt card because that will give you two nights for every $5,000 spend.

So if you're not going to do it through spend on that card, actual nights is the way to do it. So, yeah. So so it's a great opportunity. So you're actually thinking of doing this? I mean, I am. Yeah, I am. I'm considering this because, OK, so you got a category one, a couple of category one Hyatt's that I could book. And I check to see if they're available for award stays and they are. So let's just very quickly run the numbers as far as what that would look like in terms of the math. So if I were to book 30 nights, which seems kind of crazy, if you read Greg's post, you might not really actually do this with 30 nights because you're presumably going to have some other highest

stays. You may not need to do all 60 of this web, but let's for a second, right? Keep it simple. Let's keep it simple. 30 nights at 5,000 points per night for a category one is 150,000 points. So it costs me 150,000 points upfront to book that 30 nights day. Now I don't have the Hyatt credit card, so I would only get 15% of those points back. So that's 22,500 points back if I did the math right on that. So that drops my net cost to 127,500. And like I said, one of the milestone benefits that you'll pick up, you could choose 5,000 points. So let's say I did that. My net cost would be 122,500 points to end up with globalist status. The two free night certificates, one's capped at category four, the other one's valid all the way up to

category seven and globalist status and my sweet night awards, my free breakfast, free parking, all that jazz. For all of next year, all of the year after that, and a couple of months into 2023, which normally I wouldn't put too much weight on, you know, the couple of months into 2023. But January, February is the time of year when I like to get away from New York. So, so I definitely would probably use that also in 2023, a high likelihood anyway that I would. So, so. All right. So let me play devil's advocate here. So you've written about how you can book Hyatt stays through Hyatt Privé and get globalist like benefits, some benefits even better, I think, than globalist benefits.

Of course, you could do that while you're globalist too, but a lot of it's duplicative. And you know, and you've done it before, if you have a friend who has globalist, you could send them your points and they could book a points day for you and you get all the globalist benefits. So is it really worth spending one hundred and thirty some thousand points?

One hundred and twenty something thousand. Sorry, I was way off. You're right. Don't get it twisted. For something for benefits you could get anyway, for free. I mean, that's a good question. That's definitely a good devil's advocate question. Is it worth it? Maybe not for some people.

If you're in a situation like me where you know a lot of globalist people, then maybe not because I could, like Greg said, potentially transfer points when I want to stay. That does become somewhat of a pain, though, because Hyatt only allows you to transfer points in or out once every 30 days. So if I wanted, for example, if Greg's a globalist and I want to transfer points to him so he can book a stay for me, then he can't get points from anybody else for the next 30 days. And I can't send points again or to anybody else for the next 30 days. And so it kind of can cramp your style if you're booking a lot of different stuff.

And then I got to, you know, bug Greg to make the reservation and contact Hyatt and put it in my name and all this stuff. So that stuff is somewhat of an inconvenience now. Yeah, I mean, I think as long as you bug Steven instead of Greg, I think it's all fine. Well, there you go. So and I happen to be in that rare situation where yeah i have a couple of people in my close circle here who have globalist status but i think that looking at it from the average person's perspective 120 so you're looking at right now that's about 1800 worth of points

you cash those out if you have the sapphire reserve if you're transferring from ultimate rewards that is to say then you cash out that 120,000 ultimate rewards points for 1800 cash, so to speak at the grocery store right now, or use it to get yourself globalist status for two plus years. Now, is it worth it? Yeah. I mean, that's definitely the biggest question mark. I could rely on, on guests of honors days when I need benefits. So, I mean,

you are getting some tangible benefits back from those milestone rewards like the certificates points the free nights you know two free nights along the way um so it's not it's not entirely spent 1800 isn't entirely spent on globalist status per se. Right. Of course, most of it probably is. If you took the values, how much you value all those particular things, maybe it's, I don't know, let me make up a number, $600, $700 or something. So you're still paying somewhere around $1,200 maybe.

Right, for the benefits. And for benefits you can get. Otherwise, as Greg said, of course, you know, one of the other pluses is that if I am globalist, then I can do that favor for other people, too. Then I can all of a sudden make my own guest of honor reservations. And that's nice to be able to do a favor for someone else sometimes because then, you know, one hand washes the other and down the road, maybe they can help me out with something else. So being able to do that is somewhat appealing to me. But, yeah, I mean, that do that is somewhat appealing to me. But yeah, I mean, that's definitely something to consider. Now the category one to seven cert, I could show a hotel

up to 30,000 points, definitely wouldn't value that quite the same as 30,000 points, because 30,000 points are infinitely more flexible. On the flip side, I'd be happy probably when this is all over to head down to the Park Hyatt New York and use my category one to seven cert. So I'd love it there. And I'd be happy to spend a night there. So I'll almost definitely get a 30,000 point night out of it. Would I have spent that 30,000 points out? That's an argument for another day. But but but so 30,000 there and 15 for the category one to four cert, I'm sure I'll use that at a place that charges 15k too so so i get decent value out of those two things alone yeah the rest of the upgrade certificates i mean with the family you could definitely get good value from that that's the big thing to me

so especially now that i have two kids being able to confirm a suite in advance is huge so next year i booked a trip to hawaii and there's definitely a large part of me that's thinking, oh, man, I had a great suite at the Grand Hyatt Kauai last time, if I could book a stay at the Grand Hyatt Kauai and apply one of my suite upgrades, I know I'm going to have a suite in advance, then I would really want to make that trip happen, because it'd be much, much, much better, you know, traveling with two young kids, that would be awesome. So that is really valuable to me. That's the thing that's drawing me in. Because Marriott, they have their Sweet Night Upgrade Awards,

but you don't get to earn until a few days in advance. Not really all that worth it. So yeah, I mean, that's a big thing. All right. So I was going to kind of make fun of you about this because it's like, that's usually your role in this. When I say I'm going to do something crazy. Yeah, crazy, yes.

Like do a mattress run for 30 nights. You're usually like, what? Are you insane? And that was kind of my opinion going into this, believe it or not. Well, when I look at just that alone, the premium suite, you know, like a standard suite, you know, I can easily recoup those points on one or maybe two of

those suite night upgrade awards. Right, right. You mean instead of booking it at the suite point rate? At the suite point rate, exactly. I want to know that I'm going to have a suite, which to me at this point in my life with a baby that's just a week and change old here, that's definitely going to need nap time, which to me at this point in my life with a baby that's just a week and change old here, that's definitely going to need nap time probably a couple times

a day for the next year or two. Being able to confirm a suite in advance is valuable enough that I will definitely consider booking them with points. So this would save me that. All right, cool. All right. So one of the things that's come up is because both paid stays are super rewarding with the triple points and reward stays are super rewarding with the rebates. Everyone's wondering, how do I figure out which to do?

Do I book a cash rate? Do I book a points rate? So that's why I created a spreadsheet for people to use. And as we're doing this, I haven't yet published it. But once this podcast comes out, it will be published if all goes well. So you're going to be the guinea pig. I'm going to use my spreadsheet to plug in numbers that you feed me about your stay, your 30-day stay. And we'll see whether you should book it with points or with cash. How does that sound? That sounds good. That's all right. That's

perfect. That's because that was definitely one of my big question marks. Initially, it seemed like oh, no brainer 120,000 points global status for two plus years. Yeah, I mean, that's that's got to be worth it. Right. And then I got to thinking about the cash rates. And I was like, well, I really need to do the math here because you're going to get quite a few points back if you pay for it. And especially if you're going to have global assets, presumably you're going to be doing lots of Hyatt stays. So those points will be really useful.

Really useful, yeah, absolutely. Okay, so let's start. I'm going to start questioning you because there's a bunch of questions first about you, like what you think about things or what you have, what credit cards you have, and then about your stay, right? Okay. All right.

So first, how much are Hyatt points worth to you? If you could buy Hyatt points at a discount, what's the most you would pay? Well, that's a good question because before you added that last part, if you could buy them at a discount, what's the most you would pay? Because if you ask me what higher points are worth to me, one and a half cents was going to be on paid stays uh you're you're sort of exchanging cash to to earn those points in a way you know indirectly so that's why i'm asking it that way um let's say 1.3 cents okay 1.3 yep all right now chase ultimate rewards how much are they worth to you but i'm going to ask this in a different way. If you could sell your Chase points, what's the best, what's the least, lowest price? The lowest price. I don't have my reading glasses on, so I'm sorry.

What's the lowest price you would possibly accept? The reason I ask it this way is because if you have to transfer Chase points to Hyatt, they're only going one direction in this whole operation. You're getting rid of them. So in a way, you're selling them. Yeah, it's totally true.

You are. And so I've written about the fact that with the current promotion, the Chase pay yourself back promotion, that everybody should be considering redeeming their points at the grocery store at one and a half cents each because it's a really good deal, blah, blah, blah. I've written a ton about that. We've talked about it on the show.

I haven't actually done it. So there's a part of me that says one and a half cents is the bottom line, the lowest I'd tell them for, but then there's a part of me that says, well, I haven't sold them for that yet. Interesting. Okay. So can I really, can I honestly say one and a half cents? I don't know. I'm going to say, because I haven't, to be fair and conservative, I'm going to say the lowest I would sell them for is 1.7.

1.7. Okay. I think 1.5 is probably the right answer, but I'm going to say 1.7 to be extra conservative because I haven't redeemed them. All right. Now, the next question might not matter to you. How much are American Airlines miles worth to you? And the reason I'm asking this is because if you have American Airlines elite status and only if you have elite status, you can earn American Airlines miles during paid Hyatt stays. Okay, so I wouldn't pay more than a cent each, I don't think. Like, they're worth more than that to me in terms of, I know I'll get better value that way. I am asking in that way, how much would you buy them for?

I wouldn't, yeah, one cent. Okay, okay. I know I can get way more value than that out of using them, but I'm not going to buy it. The next question, we've already established you have explorer status currently, so I'm going to leave that. Explorer status, yeah. And which Hyatt card do you have? You don't have

any, correct? No, correct. Alright, now, what would be the rebate value of whatever card you would use to pay for a stay? So for example, if you're going to use the Sapphire Reserve and you would get three points per dollar, and if you valued at one and a half cents, that would be a 4.5% rebate value. Or if you use the Bank of America cash rewards and you've picked, you know, if you pick travel and

all that, you get up to 5.25%. Right. Let's go with the Sapphire Reserve, three points per dollar. I think that four and a half percent, that's fair, even though that's lower than what I said I would sell the points for. I think the one and a half cents is a good value. It's a more conservative way. Okay. All right. Now, for the paid stay you're looking at, what is the room rate for the entire stay to pay for all 30 nights but not including taxes and fees? All right. It is $2,070 even. $2,070.

Okay. And what's the rate with taxes and fees? With taxes and fees, $2,370. Okay. And what's the rate with taxes and fees? With taxes and fees, $2,318.40. $2,318.80? $0.40. $0.40. Okay. Would you have to pay for parking? No, right now nobody does, right? Oh, is that right? I thought that was just for award nights.

But anyway. Believe it. No, I wouldn't though at this property. Right. Okay. And do you have any rebates? Do you have one of those Hyatt Chase deals loaded to your Sapphire Reserve or anything like that where you'd get a few dollars back on a paid stay I think I do have that but I think it expires well before that right so

so we'll just leave that at zero um and are I don't I'm not aware of any but are there any um fixed point bonuses for paid Hyatt stays going on that, that you would be eligible for? You know how sometimes they do like a hundred points for every stay or things like that. Not that I know of. So no. All right. And then the point multiplier, we're going to assume, we know this is during the promo period. So the point multiplier is three. That's right.

And we also know that you don't have the Hyatt card. So you, even if the hotel was eligible for the 4X multiplier, you would not be eligible for it. I think so. So three is the right number. Do you earn any American Airlines miles? That is, do you have a status with American Airlines? I do not. Okay. Put in zero there. Okay. So my handy dandy spreadsheet says that your net cost for this 30 night stay is, and this is, so it's adding up all your costs and then subtracting out the value of all your rewards that you've earned is going to be $1,783. I'll get back to that. Okay, so now let's do the awards day. So we know it's 150,000 points, right?

Yep. And how many points will you have to transfer from Chase Ultimate Rewards in order to make that happen? Let me make sure that I get the answer to that right. Or if you don't have it in front of you, you just make up a number yeah no i i do so let's see uh 123 off of that so whatever 127 000 27 000 okay and your point rebate will be i mean your percentage rebate will be 15%, right? Right.

Your awards day. Okay. So, so what's happened here is because you valued the ultimate awards points so highly, uh, it's telling me that the net cost of your points day is $2,000, $165. Ooh. Um, so it's with the numbers you gave me, the points day is significantly more than the paid stay. So we had, again, the points day would cost you over $2,000, $2,165, and the paid stay $1,783. So if you believe the numbers you gave me,

and if I did the spreadsheet calculations correctly, both of which are pretty big ifs, then you should book a paid stay. I should book a paid stay. Interesting. So the paid stay, so we're talking about, on the paid stay, obviously, I would earn points. Can you tell me, does your spreadsheet tell you

how many points I would earn? Yeah. You would earn? Yeah, you would earn. Let's see, does this include? You would earn wouldn't earn the American Airlines miles, right? So you would earn 33,000 points, 30,000 and change 33,000 and change points. So about $400-ish worth of points. Yeah, so that, well, let's know. How did that come out to a net cost of 17 then? There's a lot of math involved there. Because you were rewarded for the credit card spend.

Oh, right, right, right, right, right. That took over $500 out of it. Right. Okay. That makes sense. There you go. Yeah, that's I so that's pretty interesting. There you go. So maybe I should consider booking at a paid stay. Now, for some reason, that feels to me like it stings more than the points. But I knew coming in that this dollar figure had to have been pretty close when I looked up the place where I would do my category Wednesday. I said, oh boy, the cash rate is low enough. That's got to be pretty close to the point where the cash rate might come out better. And in fact, it's not even that close. It comes out quite

a bit better. Right. Now let me just correct something I just said that the credit card rewards are not over $500. It's the combined rewards, the value of your points plus the credit card rewards. Yes. And I should have mentioned that because I knew that. So let me, I'm going to real quickly put in 1.5 for the, your value of ultimate rewards instead of the 1.7. And let's just see how that changes things. So now what we have is the paid stay is at 1783.

So that hasn't changed because you didn't spend any ultimate rewards points for that. But your reward state goes down in 1911. So it's getting much closer. So now it's only about $130 difference in value and cost to you. Yeah. So and that's really interesting. So I think this is a really neat tool for people to take a look at. Now, we're talking about this from the lens of a 30 nights day, which as Greg pointed out, is not necessarily what's going to make sense for most people, because presumably, if you're going to be going after global status, it's because you plan to stay at Hyatt quite a bit. And so you probably don't need to do all 60 nights in the first week of January of 2021. And the flip side, I'm looking at it saying the first couple of trips that I have

booked in 2021 are trips where I would want the globalist benefits. So that's important to me. And then the other thing to consider is, but am I going to stay at a Hyatt at all between now and December? Because if I am, I'm going to pick up an elite night for each of those nights next year. So if I were just naturally going to be staying at one, which, you know, I may take a road trip at some point before the end of the year, and then I have to consider that as well. Let's do one more scenario before we get away from this. I'm going to put back your 1.7 for ultimate rewards. But now I'm going to say,

now I realize you might be over 524 and all that, but I'm going to say, what would happen if you were able to pick up a World of Hyatt card? Right, I wanted to ask you that question. How that would play in. Let's change some of these answers. So I'm going to say you have a World of Hyatt card

and I'm going to put a zero for credit card rewards other than world of Hyatt. And then I'm going to, well, actually, let's just start with that. Oh, yeah. And then we change the rebate to 25% instead of 15%. The other thing that I would do here is say, let's assume that you spend the $6,000 on, on the world of Hyatt card that you just picked up so that you get the signup bonus, the 56, 50,000 point signup bonus, plus the 6,000 for your spend. So that subtracts 56,000 from your 127,000 ultimate rewards, right? That's how many, there'll be that many fewer 50s

using the spreadsheet to do the math. So now you're only transferring 71,000 ultimate rewards points over. And so now, this is kind of funny, the two options come out almost dead even. The paid stay net cost, 1767. Point stay net cost, 1746. Wow, very close, very close.

Almost, you know, too close to even matter. So there, I think it would just be purely, do you feel better about spending points or do you feel better about? Now, here's one more question while we're playing with the spreadsheet because see the spreadsheet is a lot of fun now we know that steven pepper has written in the past about the fact that sometimes on an extended stay you may not have to pay the taxes on this day it's more than 30 nights that you may not have to pay the tax now it depends it depends on, I think, the municipality, I think.

I imagine it's probably an area thing. Maybe it has something to do with the chain also. I don't know. But let's say for a second that I didn't have to pay the taxes. Can you figure it out? So let's say the total stay is the $2,070. Do you want us to go back to the you don't have the World of Hyatt card scenario

or with the current scenario? It doesn't, it should more or less reflect which one makes more sense either way, right? Right, so I'm just, then I'm just going to change the total cost to $2,070. And the paid stay, the total cost goes down to $1,531. $1,531, there you go. And so the award stay is still the same price, but the paid stay cost goes down to $15.31. $15.31, there you go. And so the awards day is still the same price, but the paid stay cost goes down quite a bit. Right, right. So that actually, so you already were looking at it. The paid stay being a little bit better. To go with the paid

stay. So now it's looking at even better. Yeah. If that's the case. So that's going to require a little bit of research to determine whether or not that's the case. So it has me intrigued, though. So am I crazy? Am I crazy to be considering this like $1,500 or $1,700 to go after elite status for a stay that I'm not really going to stay there for 30 days because I'm not going to spend Christmas and New Year's at a Category 1 Hyatt somewhere. Are you going to enjoy some of it or are you just going to check in? I assume that I will use some of it. That's's my assumption but how much of it i don't know maybe not much yeah um but maybe maybe your friends would go go have a little holiday at the at the uh hyatt place or whatever the hyatt place or what have you. Maybe not. Anyway. You froze up on my side a couple of times there,

which might be my fault. Did I freeze up? Yeah. I think it'll be okay because I think once we do all our behind the scenes tech magic, it'll be fine. So we'll try to keep it going even if we freeze. Okay. Sounds good.

But are you crazy? So here's what I think. i think on one hand yeah you're it's totally wackadoodle to do this on the other hand wackadoodle i haven't been called wackadoodle in quite a while this is city city type of crazy no on the other hand i know lots people. Do you remember Hyatt used to give you top tier status for 25 stays per year? And so I knew tons of people that would check in and out of Hyatt's like over and over in order to get those 25 stays. And this is this is like, you know, barely more than that. And it's like 100,000 times easier, because it's just one stay, you just check in once. Yeah, done. It is. Yeah. Now, let me ask you this. So you think I'm kind of crazy, but not totally crazy,

which I still I didn't mean to cut you off. So if you have more to say about that, I'm curious. But let's also throw something in the mix. Last year, Hyatt gave American Airlines top tier status to globalist members. That's true. So there's certainly. It's like rolling the dice for that possibility. Or something like that. Yeah, I don't know.

Is there any value there? And is that something, does it tip the scales? I don't know. Does it make it any less crazy to you? And so, you know, maybe book a economy flight even to Hawaii, it would be worth, I think, you know, maybe upgrading to, especially if it's on one of their lie flat routes. And so, yeah, it could be, could be. crazy in that like the idea of basically paying Hyatt here's all this money to give me this sort of make believe thing called elite status you know and so that's the part that seems especially crazy plus

the fact as we talked about before that most of the benefits you could get even if you don't have status yes it's a little more work to do it but really it comes down to spending 15 or 1700 for four sweet night upgrades and the two starts right i mean that's really what it comes down to yeah because otherwise you can get everything else right you're a friend so i don't know yeah it's a it is kind of crazy it's a little crazy but i don't know i shouldn't speak i considering i crazy. It's a little crazy. I shouldn't speak.

I ran up spend on credit cards in order to get globalist status. And I don't know that you could, you could argue that's crazy too, instead of getting almost, you know, 2.62% cash back on all that spend would have been a lot. Probably. I bet if I ran the math,

it'd be similar. Like as far as how much I'm out for doing that versus, versus doing this stuff. So, all right. So moving on. So I think we should try to do the main event kind of quickly because we kind of treated the mattress. We did. And it deserved to though. I mean, let's be, this is the best, like we've seen in a long time anyway so chase um has wowed us with an 80k 80 000 point sapphire preferred offer at the same time they

have underwhelmed us by not doing anything to the sapphire Preferred to make it more attractive to keep long-term, right? So they're basically saying, hey, sign up for this card and take it, and then a year from now, downgrade it to an OV card, right? It seems to be what they're telling you, yeah. Yeah, yeah. But there's a couple other great chase offers

that are best-ever size things, the two Freedom Cards. So both of them are 20,000 points after a $500 spend, plus you get five points per dollar for grocery spend up to 12,000 spend. And I think it all adds up to about 80,000 points if you spend the full 12,000 at grocery stores, right? Right. It's not 80,000 bonus, but 80,000 total points you'd have at the end of spending the 12,000. So I think of those offers as being similar as far as how big they are. So what should people do? You know, should you get all three? I mean should you get all three? What do you think? I mean, should you get all three?

That sounds nice and all, but in the current environment, the likelihood of that being easily doable is low. So I think that, you know, given the current pandemic environment and the fact that Chase has been more conservative, I would say, over the last several months, I think that getting more than one, certainly getting more than two, is a relatively low likelihood. So you have to figure out which one, at least which one is most valuable to you, which one you want to get first, and then which one you are going to try to fight for on a reconsideration call, I suppose. So yeah, I think this is really interesting. So we talked recently about how Chase had to do something to the Sapphire Preferred and Sapphire Reserve to catch up with the Flex and the new Freedom Unlimited benefits. And as soon as we got done

talking about them, we stopped recording the podcast, I said to myself, you know, I should have predicted that there's going to be a higher welcome offer on the Sapphire Preferred Reserve, because they thought that might be the angle that they're going to go after. If they haven't announced anything in terms of benefits to go with the Flex and the Unlimited, maybe that's their plan. And sure enough, it is. And now, of course, I can say that I thought about it, but nobody will ever believe me.

So yeah, I mean, you look at it and say, okay, well, I think that kind of makes some sense, not from the perspective of the card. I mean, the card itself still won't make any sense to keep beyond year one, like Greg said. So it's kind of weird to create your flagship products as products that nobody really wants to have beyond the first year, I guess. But the welcome bonus, 80,000 points, well worth it. Now, the big question mark is, what are they going to do with the Sapphire Loser?

Came out as a 100,000 point offer originally, but it's been sitting at 50 000 forever and also it's great perks that were so exciting at the time now seem meh not only because the competition has stepped up but because chase freedom has stepped up chase freedom cards are offering 3x in attractive categories, even 5x. And Sapphire Reserve is still sitting there at 3x. So what do you think? Does this mean that 100k offer is likely? No, I don't think so. I think that it should. I think it should be. And so I can definitely see why some people think that it is. And I think it's worth waiting to see if it comes. I don't think you waiting to see if it comes. I don't think you need to jump on the Sapphire preferred 80k offer right away. This was obviously something Chase planned. It's not like some, you know, something that came out of left field that's

going to be gone tomorrow. It'll be around for a little bit. We don't know when it'll end. But typically, when these kinds of increased offers come out, they're around for a little while. So I think you can probably afford to wait and see if they do anything with the sapphire reserve but i'm not confident they're going to because they've allowed the sapphire preferred welcome bonus to be higher for a long time now like i said it had some other ancillary benefits but still they have decided that it didn't need a higher welcome offer to compete with the sapphire preferred they figure the card kind of stands on its own and i don't know that i agree with them but i think that's the perspective that chase has

had i can't see them increasing it to a 75k offer and making it just a little bit less than the sapphire preferred uh so i don't think they're going to do something like that so i think that they're probably just not going to they're going going to leave that there. That's my prediction. What do you think? I think that's reasonable. I mean, I'm sort of of the opinion, you know, maybe there's a 30% chance we'll see a return of the $100K offer. Let me go back to something we both said earlier, and I'm going to disagree with us. Okay.

We said that there's no reason for people to keep the Sapphire Preferred card. But if somebody is starting pretty new right now, I think it's very attractive to get both the Sapphire Preferred and maybe the Freedom Unlimited, let's say. That's true. And that way, first of all, you'd have these two big signup offers. So assuming you spend the full 12k in 12 months at grocery stores, you're gonna have over 160,000 Ultima rewards points, which if you wanted to, and you hurry up, you can turn into globalist status by booking a 30 day high end stay at the end of the year. Right, right. But where was I going with it? Oh, so the Freedom cards are so attractive with their 3X and 5X categories and Freedom Unlimited with 1.5X everywhere else that the nice thing about keeping the Sapphire Preferred in that scenario is that you keep the ability to transfer those points to transfer partners like Hyatt

or to get better than one cent per point value by cashing out through their pay yourself back feature or by booking travel directly through Chase, like booking flights, for example, at 1.25 cents value, which you couldn't do without a card like the Sapphire Preferred. And normally we would tell people, no, don't get the Sapphire Preferred, get the Inc. Business Preferred for that purpose,

because it has some attractive other features, but it's been hard to sign up for business cards lately. Certainly with Chase. Certainly with Chase. And I think that an interesting side note now, and I'm about to hop on a tangent for a second, but the post I want to see is, does it make sense to book travel at 1.25 cents

or one and a half cents per point when you could instead use the Freedom Flex or Freedom Unlimited and earn five points per dollar on the paid travel. I'm sure that there's some reason to do one or the other. Maybe you would normally redeem points for your leisure travel. And if somebody else is paying you back,

obviously you would want to spend the money and get the five points per dollar. One complexity is the Sapphire Preferred is going to give you much better travel protections than the Freedom. And so, you know, whichever one you book with, even if you're using points, you're going to get that card's protections. So, yeah, I think there's some reason to do that. Plus just not wanting to spend out of pocket, right? Right. And when we say the Sapphire Preferred, is it worth keeping long term?

Definitely should mention the fact that it does have those travel protections and they're not as quote unquote as good as or they don't cover as much or as quickly as the Sapphire Reserve does, but they still are good travel protections and primary CDW coverage when you're renting a car. Right, right. They stack up really well against almost any other card. It's just it happens that the Sapphire Reserve is even better. And so is the Ritz card, which has the same. Right, right. So we're perhaps unfairly harsh on the Sapphire Preferred and saying that there's no reason

to keep it. There are some reasons to keep it. There's no reason to spend much money on it after the first year, I guess, is the key. Once you've earned the welcome bonus, generally speaking, you're probably going to be able to earn more assuming you like this plan of getting both a premium card and a freedom card which freedom card do you get that's number one and number two do you get the sapphire preferred now or do you wait a few weeks to see if the sapphire reserve comes out with something better because you can't have you can't get both uh so it's one or the other if you get for the sapphire Preferred now, you're out of luck with the Sapphire Reserve bonus,

at least, for a very long time. You could always later upgrade to the Sapphire Reserve. Yes. So, oh, there we go. So I think that when it comes, I'm going to answer this in reverse order. So the second question first, does it make sense to wait?

Yeah, wait. Wait a few weeks and see if anything happens on the Sapphire Reserve because I'm predicting that they're not going to increase the offer, but I'll be happy when I'm wrong and you'll be happier that you waited to find out that I was wrong

if indeed I was. So I definitely think it's worth waiting a couple of weeks. Don't get caught up in the hype and jump right now. Give it a little bit of time. See what happens with the Sapphire Reserve. I don't think that they're going to wait a really long time.

If they're going to do something with the Sapphire Reserve, I think it'll probably happen in the next few weeks if something's going to happen. And to reiterate what Craig said, we don't have any inside info on that. So I don't have any notion that they are going to. I'm just saying I expect that if they were, it'd probably happen in the next few weeks. So wait a couple of weeks before you do it. Now, in terms of which of the freedom cards,

if you're going to go with either the Freedom Unlimited or the Freedom Flex, it's somewhat of a difficult question to answer. I talked about that when I wrote my post about whether or not to get the Freedom or Freedom Unlimited a while ago. Now you get the Flex. And so you would think that that might change things up a little in terms of that discussion. But since the Freedom duplicates the bonus categories of the Freedom Flex, I think the calculation is probably still the same. I think for most people, the Freedom Unlimited is probably the better choice between the two. But for some people who are definitely going to spend in those bonus categories on the Flex, the Flex will make more sense.

I think I would probably rather have, if I was starting out, I'd rather have the Good Everywhere Else card. I'd want to have the Freedom Unlimited for one and a half points everywhere else. That's probably what I would suggest. Somebody who's starting out looking to get both, get the Sapphire Preferred and the Freedom Unlimited right now. Be happy that you got a card that earns great in most places, most scenarios.

Right. So, okay. So on those questions, I'm going to put my two cents in. I agree with you. Freedom Unlimited, I think is the better pick. There's so much overlap between the two that you can't really go wrong with either.

But it's the one I've been kind of, when people have asked me, like my uncle asked me recently, I was like, probably Freedom Unlimited for you. The Sapphire Preferred, do you go for it now? Here's this, I totally agree with Nick. I don't think there's any harm in waiting two or three weeks. I wouldn't wait much more than that if you'd be very upset if you miss out on this ADK offer. But one reason not to worry about waiting is if you're sort of on the fence about whether you're going to get approved for two Chase cards, because it's going to be easier to get approved for the Sephora Preferred than the Sephora Reserve. They need to be able to allocate a bigger credit line to you for the Reserve.

So that's one reason. The other reason is if the idea of putting $550 up front for the Sapphire Reserve bothers you. Now, you're going to get a bunch of that back through various rebates. But if that's just like, you know, no way am I going to spend that, then Sapphire Preferred is only a $95 card. So that becomes like, well, you're probably going to pick that one anyway, even if the Sapphire Reserve does come out with a $100K offer. So, yeah, but overall, I think we agree on the general approach, right? Yeah, I think so.

Now, what about somebody who has a Sapphire Reserve right now, signed up for it four years ago and got the $100K offer, and now they're trying to figure out, what do I do? Do I downgrade it right now and apply for a Sapphire Preferred? What do you do in that case where you're already in the game, you're not new and starting out, you're in the game, you know what you're doing, you've got to get rid of it. If you want to get a new Sapphire card, you've got to get rid of the one that you have right now because you can't have two of them. Right. Is it time to downgrade? What do you think? You know, maybe. I mean, so I could see, if you spend a lot of grocery stores, you know, maybe you'd want to just get the slightly lesser offer

of one of the Freedom cards if you have a Freedom slot open. And most people have the Freedom Flex slot open right now. So it might be both easier to get approved for the Flex. I mean, it definitely should be easier to get approved. And you'll end up with a similar number of points in the end. So I think that's worth considering. I don't think it's a bad strategy to product change your current Sapphire down to one of the freedoms and then apply for the Sapphire preferred.

But I think there is a bigger risk of getting denied for that application. Yeah. And then you have to, I don't know whether you'll be able to upgrade back to the Sapphire Reserve right away or not. I would expect you'd probably be able to, but you're adding extra wrinkles. You are, right. If it was not a non-pandemic world, I think probably you would say, yeah, downgrade the Sapphire Reserve and get the Sapphire Preferred

after you wait a couple of weeks and see what happens with the Reserve, of course. You'd say downgrade and get the Preferred, right? But right now, a little bit more of a wrinkle. True, yeah. And also, if you have lots of other chase cards, I mean, they are hesitant to allocate new credit lines to you. So that might be another reason to not do that

or to go for the freedom instead, yeah. All right, so that wraps up the main event. Do we have anything sitting around in our question of the week? We sure do. We sure do. So I thought this was a really, this means Nick is prepared. He's been on paternity leave and yet, yet has been spent spending time doing work coming up with the question of the week, or at least preparing the question of the week.

So I appreciate that. I appreciate that you're putting some time in for that. You know, I'm representing all the time, 24 hours a day, three cups of coffee every day. For those listening, Nick is drinking from a frequent miler mug that he designed on, what is it called? Zazzle.

Zazzle, that's right. I'm all frequent miler all the time. Water bottle over here. 24 hours a day, seven days a week. By the way, Zazzle, we're going to send you a bill for the free advertising. For the free advertising. Not free anymore. It was free advertising.

Question of the week comes from Glenn in our Frequent Myler Insiders group. I thought this was an interesting question because I think that you probably would have a canned answer to this, but I think that it's more interesting because of the current situation. So Glenn says he has a big expense coming up, $20,000 plus in a non-bonus category. And so his options, he thinks, are one, put all of it on an Amex Blue Business Plus for two membership rewards points for dollars, so 40,000 points,

or two, put 15,000 of it on the Amex Hilton business card for three X Hilton points and a free night certificate, and then the rest on the Blue Business Plus. Or three, open a new credit card or two for signup bonuses. He tried opening a new Sapphire preferred but couldn't get it uh he's under 524 wondering if there's any suggestions for high signup bonuses for high spend amounts or any other suggestions so the question boils down to is a big expense 20 000 plus coming up in today's environment what would you do which card would you put that on or which welcome bonuses would

you go after knowing that i know that your regular answer would probably be an ink business preferred but nobody's getting approved for those right now so that one i think is kind of out of the window or you know out of the discussion what would you do right so yeah i mean so you know i think it comes down to do you think you'll get approved for some of the big bonuses that are available? And, you know, we couldn't, I couldn't answer that without looking at what cards you have and all kinds of things, right? So what would be your target? I mean, let's say you don't have very much. What would be the ones that you'd be looking at in terms of those big bonuses?

Which cards for the, so I'm sorry, what was his 524 status under 524 or 524 right yeah so what would be the top two or three cards you would go after for a big welcome bonus that requires a lot of spent right well i mean i think if he's under 524 this is a great time to pick up the Sapphire Preferred. He got denied for that card. Oh, I missed that. He tried. He got denied. Both he and his wife, I think you said. Right.

And I'm going to assume that he can't do things like go buy Visa gift cards at the grocery store with the Freedom card if he signs up for that, just because that's kind of cheating. As far as this scenario goes, you know, who knows if his big expense would accept those. So I don't know. I can't think off the top of my head. I would go to my best offers page and start scrolling down and say, which ones do I think I could get? And do I value those points or, you know, whatever the rewards are enough for it to be worthwhile but let me go back to the two first things he said like the the um blue business plus versus the hyatt card the 15k spend um i i'm much more the hilton card sorry that i am much more uh attracted by by the hilton card, sorry. I am much more attracted by the Hilton card free night from spend

than I normally would be. Because if you earn it this year, which I think you will, right? Right. The free night will be good for two years instead of one. And it'll be good for any day of the week instead of just weekends. So I'm kind of leaning that way. So you put 15K on the Hilton card in order to get the free night cert and to get the three points per dollar

because that's the base earning rate on that card. Now there are also, on some of the Hilton cards, there's been an offer for an extra like thousand points for every thousand dollars you spend. So up to- That would be a nice little extra win. Yeah. A little extra win if you had that. So then you'd be talking about four points per dollar.

So you have that 15K, 60,000 points plus a free night certificate. That's not a bad little return on your big spend. In the current environment, would you be more likely to apply for new cards or to use a card that you already have in your wallet? Does it make a difference? Does, does it make a difference? Does the current environment make a difference or would you just go after it? Of course it makes a difference, but it kind of depends what issuer I'm looking at. So, you know, I don't,

I don't think it doesn't seem like Amex has made things harder and, you know, it's mainly Chase we've been hearing lots, lots from that's, that's harder. So it kind of depends when you go through the list of sign-up offers that you're eligible for, who the issuers are, and I wouldn't hesitate to do maybe a combination. So you do $15,000 on that Hilton card, and you have $5,000 left to meet a minimum spend on maybe, I don't remember what the Aspire card's minimum spend on maybe i don't remember what the aspire cards minimum spend

requirement is but uh then you'd have you'd have two uh nights that are good for uh any day of the week and for two years so right that could be a really good way to go all right so last tag question because i know we're trying to get through this last tag question on this so another consideration if you're going to be doing that kind of spend is big spend bonuses and which cards offer a big spend bonus? Obviously, we're talking right now about the Hilton Free Night Cert, and that being a particularly good big spend bonus. Are there any other big spend bonuses that you'd be particularly excited about? Because, I mean, in a normal world, those Free Night Certs are nice.

In a world where you're not traveling very much in the near term, maybe they're less valuable. The Hilton Knight, I think, is still valuable. It's going to be valid for two years. That's right. It's valid for a long time, so I think you're good there. But like the Radisson Knights may be less appealing. Yeah, I always find those less appealing. There's a couple nice properties

you can spend them at, but I guess they should be more appealing now because since they're only available within the U.S., most of us can't travel outside the U.S. anyway, so they're as good as they can be right now. Anyway, you know, I think one that pops into mind is the Delta Platinum card or Delta Reserve card

because Amex and Delta are running a special promotion where if you had the card already by July 8th or something like that, then you have an offer in your account for basically, I think it was 500 MQMs, which get you towards elite status for every $1,000 spent up to $25,000, something along those lines. I don't remember the exact details, but the point is that will stack with the normal MQM bonuses you get with either $25,000 spent or $30,000 that the Platinum and Reserve respectively offer.

So by lumping all that together, basically you're getting a lot more elite credits towards Delta elite status. So if you're a Delta flyer, that's something I expect you're already doing. Because I think people who are into Delta, they saw that offer and are pretty excited about it. What else? One big spend thing that has sort of lost its luster is JetBlue Mosaic because Mosaic status, which you get with, I think, 50k spend. One of its big benefits is you get free changes on even paid flights. And with all the other airlines offering free changes, JetBlue hasn't done that yet.

But, you know, right now anyway, Mosaic's just not looking so exciting. So how about the World of Hyatt card? So if you did the 15K spend on that, you get the free category one to four night, plus you end up with six elite nights this year. Would that double and you get the six elite nights next year also on that? So the first version of the post I wrote said that, and then someone wrote in, wait, it's membership year that this accrues.

I had forgotten that, so I updated all my calculations. But, yeah, so the World Hyatt Card is a good choice, although it's better, if you're going to be doing this promotion, it's better to sign up soon but not finish the full 15K spend until next year, until like January 1st. Because any elite knights you're getting are better gotten in 2021, right? That's when you're going to be going to elite status, or trying for elite status. So, you know, it's still not a bad choice. It's just that, so you'd spend

$15,000, you'd get the sign-up bonus, you'd get the free Category 1 to 4 night for spending $15,000, and you'd get six elite nights that, if you're starting from scratch, are worth zero to you. You have to get to 20 for those elite knights to be worth anything give you anything yeah awesome there you go so you have

a bit to chew on glenn in terms of how you're going to make your your spend there hopefully that helps a little bit anyway it gives you some ideas the delta cards are an angle that i kind of expected you'd go after there if you have Delta cards, that's definitely something to consider if you have them for a while because of the ability to spend towards status. And so, and because Delta is rolling over those MQMs into next year. They are, right. Certainly make it worthwhile.

That's a really good point is that unlike Hyatt, so Hyatt, to get them to sort of roll over, it's, I don't know, it's not the exact same thing. And the credit card elite Knights don't apply to next year roll over. It's, I don't know, it's not the exact same thing. And the credit card elite knights don't apply to next year at all. But Delta's just straight up. Whatever MQMs you earn this year are going to apply to next year.

So yeah, so Delta's done a lot, just like Hyatt has, towards helping people who want to try to get to elite status quicker. So that's kind of exciting for Delta Flyers, I think. All right. Well, my friends, that brings us to the end of this week. So if you are interested in subscribing to our various lists, getting on our email list and joining our Facebook group and following us on social media, you want to go to thefrequentmiler.com slash subscribe. Again, that's thefrequentmiler.com slash subscribe and get on all of our lists. And we are hopefully

going to be starting up our card talk series again here relatively soon. So you want to go to thefrequentmiler.com slash card talk for more information about that if you're in need of a credit card intervention. But we have been a little bit behind on getting through our backlog there because of my paternity leave. So hopefully we're going to be coming out with a new one of those relatively soon, but TBA, TBD, TBD, to be determined. Yeah, there we go. Thank you guys very much for listening with us. And I look forward to being here again next week. Thanks everyone.