Frequent Miler on the Air - No longer traveling? How to cash out your transferable points | Frequent Miler on the Air Ep314 | 7-11-25

Episode Date: July 11, 2025

On this podcast episode, we find out that Turkish has killed their million mile promo, we talk about Ritz card rumors, and we shed some light on how Greg's uncle can redeem his transferable points for cash.Giant Mailbag(01:30) - One reader tries to convince Greg to do the JetBlue 25 for 25 promotionMega Airline Promo Updates(04:53) - Turkish kills their 6 continent, 1 million mile promoFind out more about that promo in our previous podcast episode here. (Or read our post about it here.)(09:09) - Etihad tries to make their promo relevant(13:20) - JetBlue promo(s)Learn more about the JetBlue 25 for 25 promo here.Learn about the Dunkin' promo here.Card News(21:25) - Citi® / AAdvantage® Platinum Select® World Elite Mastercard® (new offer)(22:17) - UBS Visa Infinite: increased fees, increased benefitsCrazy Thing(28:01) - Rumor: Is the Ritz card going to increase fee to $695 on Aug 1? Apparently not...Bonvoyed(36:31) - Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan seems to be having a spat of hacked accountsAwards, Points, and More(38:49) - Porter Airlines now bookable using Alaska Airlines miles. Prices start at 4.5k/6kMain Event: No longer traveling? How to cash out your transferable points(41:03) - The premise...(43:23) - Brokers? Please no. Explicitly allowed options only will be discussed today(46:00) - American Express Membership Rewards(53:06) - Bilt Rewards(55:53) - Capital One Miles(57:18) - Citi ThankYou Rewards(1:01:01) - Chase Ultimate RewardsQuestion of the Week(1:06:35) - How can you book a JetBlue flight with Etihad miles to an airport Etihad claims doesn't exist?Subscribe and FollowVisit https://frequentmiler.com/subscribe/ to get updated on in-depth points and miles content like this, and don’t forget to like and follow us on social media.Music Credit – “Ocean Deep” by Annie Yoder

This is a Voyascape podcast. You can find all of our travel podcasts from around the world at voyascape.com. Today's show, we'll talk about how Turkish killed their 1 million mile promotion early. We'll get put them by the ritz. And we'll talk about how Uncle Mylar can redeem his transferable points for cash. Frequent Mylar on the air starts now. Today's main event, no longer traveling. How to cash out your transferable points.

Recently, I've had multiple family members ask me what should they do with their points if they're not traveling? And of course, I won't let them redeem for bad value. So they're kind of stuck. So this show, the main event is intended to tell them and anyone else in a similar situation, what they can do with their points and how they can turn it, turn them into cash. Very good.

All right. Well, we'll talk about that in a little bit. And remember if you want to jump ahead to that or you want to come back and visit something later on, you can always find the timestamps in the show notes. So just expand the description box to find that. And wherever you're watching or listening, don't forget to like, give us a thumbs up,

leave a comment, or some feedback. We always appreciate hearing from you. So thank you for that. Let's drag out this week's Giant Mail bag. This week's Giant Mail is about the JetBlue promo, which we'll talk a little bit more about the promo a little bit later in the show. But what Sam says is, Greg, you've got to do this. You are the frequent miler. Seriously, I've learned so much from you over the years and have always been inspired by your know-how, but also your adventures

The Richard Branson Necker Island deal is when you had me hooked. It's the game This is basically a challenge written for frequent Myler and I think you and Nick being about to soft Compete on this could be a fun element too. Who knows if JetBlue will be here in 15 years I'm not sure that that matters. You'll write a book one day and I bet you will regret not having done this. It's totally on brand and totally you. Right, Sam, thank you for this note.

I do have to mention a couple of things. Jeff Liu, yeah, might not be here in 15 years or 25 years for how long the status would last. But also, you're committing me to a lot here, Sam, not only are you committing me to doing the JetBlue promo, but writing a book as well. I get an autographed copy of the book that you write someday, Greg. Sure. Okay, good. Just for you. Good. And Sam, of course. Good. Good. You see, Sam, you heard it here. It's going to be

recorded forever and ever. So yeah,, I mean, did Sam convince you? Are you going for it? What's going on? Not not quite. So here's the thing. It's it's a ton of work. I've I've promised my wife I wouldn't be as away from home as much as I was last year. This does not help with that promise. I was last year. This does not help with that promise.

If I could get away a handful of times midweek when my wife is working and just be gone for one night or at max two and get all 25 through like, you know, maybe five separate trips like that, then I would probably do it. I don't know if I have the time to plan at all. So if someone can come up with a plan that meets those requirements where I'm only away from home, maybe five nights nights total and the travel is like midweek then then I'll do it so if you have a plan for me Sam send it in maybe I'll send Greg a plan for him I'll put it together for you Greg midweek I could come up with something for you probably something hopefully not too torturous. Yeah, no, I, you know, and if not, I look forward to reading the chapter about how much you regret not having mosaic status just like I do.

Hopefully, at that point, when you write the book. I've been watching Nick jet around in his with his mosaic extra leg room seats for years, rechecked bag every time he's going to be very jealous. I'm sure I look forward to reading about that. But anyway, so but but it's a fun one. And like Greg said, it takes a lot of time and effort. We'll come back to that. Let's talk about speaking of like these challenges like the JetBlue thing.

These mega airline promos are all over the place and in some cases just over. So let's talk about some mega airline promo updates. Yeah, first up, Turkish. We spent a whole episode talking about their great promo where you fly to six continents, you get 1 million Turkish miles. And Turkish just all of a sudden just killed the promo, just out of the blue. They're like, yeah, we've had enough of that one. So on their website for the promo, it now says,

thank you for the great interest you have shown in our Route 6 Continents campaign. In line with recent updates, which who knows what that means, the campaign is officially concluded as of July 8, 2025. Members who purchase at least one ticket or completed a flight across six continents by July 8, 2025 will retain their eligibility. If these members complete their all flights, I'm reading it verbatim, across six continents by October 27th, 2025, they will be

earned one million miles. How very Turkish airlines of them. This was on brand. This was on brand for them. Let's have something awesome and then let's all of a sudden just take it away and tell you right when it's ending that it's over. And I was very not surprised, but also I found this very frustrating. There were probably people out there that had spent time planning or whatever, and surely there are some people who will not go back to the promo landing page

before they start booking their flights that probably heard about this and will book a flight after July 8th, not realizing that because they didn't before July 8th, it doesn't count. Who would expect that they announced a promotion and planned a promotion and set out dates for the promotion and then they just were going to pull it like in two weeks. Oh, it's amazing. I mean, the part that I don't think is on brand for Turkish is that they did put it on the website that I don't think is on brand for Turkish is that they did put it on the website

That it's that it's ended. You know, what would be much more on brand is for them to end it without telling you Oh, no, that one was over. I'm sorry. We ended that July. Yeah. Yeah line with updates Ended that July Right. Yeah. No, you're right. You're right. That would be more So somebody got through and was like no guys come on. You gotta put something on the website Let let somebody know so yeah, that was a surprise and disappointing. Although I wasn't going after this one myself as we talked about, although my wife kept bringing it up, like saying that I should be trying to do that and including in the day or two before that.

And there's a part of me that spent a minute thinking about it, not much more than 60 seconds. But I'm kind of relieved that now I don't even have to worry about it. It's just over. Yeah. It feels to me the way they handled this a bit like for Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy fans, the book, if I remember, it's so many years since I read it, but if I remember right, um, earth was scheduled to be bulldozed to make way for a, like an intergalactic highway and, and so they posted the news, like on some planet somewhere far, far away.

It was posted, you know, you should have known. That's right. Ouch. Ouch. Turkish. Apparently they, they did not budget to print enough miles for that one. So, uh, I guess the monopoly money ran out on that one. Yeah, I'm guessing that they were somehow surprised by how many people were intending to do it or something. I don't really know.

I feel like what what happened there. I mean did they analyze how many people had booked flights, how many individuals had booked flights to six continents and they were like, oh wow, that's more miles than we thought. Cause you wouldn't, if somebody had only booked one or two flights, you wouldn't know that they're going after this. Cause how many people probably in any given time period book a flight or two with Turkish

with no intention to visit six continents. I mean, probably the vast majority of their customers. So they had to be probably only looking at the people who had booked to six continents and they were that surprised like two weeks in by how many people were. Yeah, well, maybe it's just what they said. It's in line with recent updates. Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for that. All right. Now, on the other side of things is Eddie had Eddie had who had have their own Multi million mile promo going on and they sat there going Why is nobody talking about this? Why is nobody doing this?

They're like frequent Myler hasn't done a podcast about ours. They did Jeff blue. They did Turkish We've been around a while here and they haven't said anything right? What's going on? So Let's first remind you what the Etihad promo was and then we'll talk about what's happened. So the promo was that Etihad had 15 new destinations that they flew to around the world that they fly to and they said the first person to fly all 15 will get 5 million miles. Second person, 3 million miles.

And third, 1 million miles. So that sounds great, except that, first of all, one of those 15 is in Russia. And I don't know a lot of Americans that are flying to Russia right now. And so, you know, it would be difficult for our audience to do this. But also the thing is you would have no idea. You'd have to book all these flights and you have no idea if you'd be first, second or third. And so it just seems like why even bother when chances are really good, you'd get nothing. So what Etihad decided to do was introduce extra bonuses along the way, which they should have had from the get-go.

So now what they're doing is the first 100 people to visit five of Etihad's new destinations will earn 25,000 bonus miles, and the first 100 people to visit 10 will earn 25,000 bonus miles. And the first 100 people to visit 10 will earn 100,000 bonus miles. And those are cumulative. So if you're first to five and 10, you'd get the 125,000 miles. So what do you think, Nick? Does this make it podcast worthy? Should we be? Not at all. not at all. I almost feel guilty that we have this much time dedicated to it. It's no no.

I mean you'd have to be one of the three and I think if I read it right and that's an F but if I read the latest update right it sounded like so when they first launched this sounded exactly the way Greg just described it first person to get to the 15 gets 5 million miles and only three people get anything and so everything Greg just said. Cosine on that. But when I read the most recent

release it sounded to me like they were actually kind of reframing the rules so the person who makes it to 15 in the shortest amount of time perhaps is gonna get the 5 million miles because the way it was written sounded like the cumulative shortest amount of time for the 15 destinations, which made me wonder, oh, is this like amazing race style now where you got to get 15 done in the shortest physical amount of time? Because they mentioned that it's going to go through next May.

So that sounds to me almost I thought when I read it anyway, I read it as though it was going to be a competition where you might hit all 15 and not know until next May whether you were the person that did it fast enough or not. OK, yeah. And and maybe I'm wrong. It doesn't really matter because nobody's going to do this. Like Greg said, it's a waste of money either way to chase this. If you were already going to these 15 places or you were going to 13 of them maybe and you have a visa to visit Russia, maybe, you know, maybe, but no way

you're starting at zero. And the bonus is 25,000 miles for going to five destinations. So you're going to get an extra 5,000 miles per destination if you're one of the first hundred people and another 10,000 for the first, you know, 10 destinations if you're, if you're one of the, those first hundred. So best case scenario, you're going to extra, what is it? 12,500 miles per destination over the course of those 10 destinations. If you're in the first hundred for both of those out enough, not enough. Nope. Sorry, I had to hide. I needed

to do way more than this. Totally, totally agree. Yeah. Yeah, you're not in the running any hell. All right. So so let's let's give an update about the JetBlue promo. Do you want to summarize it real quickly? And then we'll talk about Yeah, so the JetBlue promo we talked about in a previous episode. So if you've missed that episode somehow or missed the promotion, very simple. You fly to 15 JetBlue

destinations by the end of this year, by December 31st, and you'll get 150,000 JetBlue True Blue Points. If you fly to 20 destinations, you'll get an additional 200,000 points. So if you fly to 20 JetBlue destinations, that's a total of 350,000 bonus points. And if you bump that up five more and you fly to 25 JetBlue destinations by the end of the year, you'll get 25 years of Mosaic one status with JetBlue. And that's between June 27th and December 31st. So flights you took before that don't count. So that's the basics of the promo.

Unlike at the hot, it's not like the first three people are the first hundred people. It's everybody that is a JetBlue member that meets those those qualifications. And you do have to fly blue fairs are better and you have to have your JetBlue number attached to the booking, etc. There are some more rules you can see our post, which will be linked for sure in the show notes for more information about that. And then they had an additional separate promotion that I guess we also have to

discuss. Then they had an additional separate promotion that I guess we also have to discuss Yeah, yeah, so the other promotion is the Duncan like Dunkin Donuts Promo where they have this plane that's all decked out with the Duncan branding all over it and They have almost every Monday They have almost every Monday of the summer, if you fly the Duncan plane, and the schedule's released the Tuesday beforehand. If you fly the Duncan plane on one of the routes

that it's flying on the Monday, then if you don't already have Mosaic status, you get Mosaic 1 status for three months. If you do already have Mosaic status, you get 20 tiles towards the next level of status or to re-up your status. Um, so Nick and I flew the Duncan plane on Monday, this past Monday. Uh, also our friend Julian, who's the founder of points path also was on the,

on the plane and, um, we showed up at the airport and looked out the window at the plane and what did we see? We didn't see anything Duncan. That's for sure. We saw just a plane old jet blue plane. But yeah, so there is nothing special. No special delivery. It wasn't. It was not the Duncan plane,

so I almost jumped in a minute ago and Greg said so we flew the Duncan plane the other day to be like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. We booked the Duncan plane on Monday. We didn't fly the Duncan plane because it wasn't there. So apparently something went wrong. They had a broken plane. I had to fix it. So so we ended up in a different plane equipment swap.

And so that was kind of a bummer, except I don't know if I really care what the outside of the plane looks like that I'm flying in. I know that, yeah, that that's something that airlines do. They paint them with different things and people get excited about that. Not my thing. Right, right. But the inside was a bummer because there were no, like, there weren't like donuts just floating in the air everywhere that you could just pick out of the air and eat them whenever you want. There was just Dunkin' Coffee, which...

There was Dunkin' Coffee available, I guess. I didn't ask. So anyway, we were, despite that, we were pretty confident that they would honor the promotion. And the interesting thing is the next day, we all found that we had 20 tiles in our accounts, in our JetBlue accounts, which are, again, they are the sort of currency that's used to get you to elite status. So you need 50 to get to mosaic one. So we had 20, but it also gives you sort of milestone rewards along the way. And so we were able to each pick 5000 bonus points because we had 20 of these tiles. And then we're left crossing our fingers hoping that we would get mosaic status also because that's what we're supposed

to get in the first place. And the next day after that, mosaic status appeared in my account. I'm waiting to hear. I'm waiting to hear what's happening with next account. Must be nice. Yeah, mine is still just a regular true blue member. I don't have mosaic status. Greg got an email. I think even confirming that you got the mosaic, but I've not seen any email this morning as we record this, which is we record on Thursday usually. So this is Thursday morning for us right now as we record it. And the points showed up this morning from the flight in the sense that you earn points on a paid flight so

Those points and the tiles based on the spend on that flight showed up this morning in my account So I know that they have a record that I was on the plane and I got credit for it But I don't have any status yet as far as I know Julian doesn't either so It's so far only Greg the frequent miler that got the mosaic one status, but I'm pretty confident it's going to come through because it's it isn't the flight shows in my account. I got the 20 tiles that Greg did also. And I got the tiles based on the spend and also credit for the spend as though it was a blue fair, not

like a blue basic or something you might remember I booked through Capital One Travel. And I was confident it was a blue fare because it said so in Capital One Travel and it matched the price on JetBlue.com but now I have extra confirmation because if it was blue basic it would have earned fewer points. Speaking of earning fewer points, one thing I learned that I didn't realize before, I had looked up airfares before on the JetBlue site and it showed that blue fares earn six points per dollar so I just assumed that that it, even though I've probably written a JetBlue guide at frequentmiler.com explaining that blue fares only earn three points per dollar.

You earn an additional three if you book through JetBlue.com or the JetBlue app. But because I booked through Capital One Travel, I only earned three points per dollar, which I now realize is indeed the correct number of points for a BlueFair that you don't book through them. So I talked about booking all my flights through or most of my flights through Amex Travel and I assume I will earn fewer points than somebody who books their flights through JetBlue.com. So that's just something I figured was worth a mention because when I did the math actually in the table that I have in the post, I think I use six points per dollar as my metric for buying

all the flights, but I actually I'm going to have to go back and have all of that because I was intending to book most of those ceramics travel. So anyway, so for the it wasn't a big difference. Doesn't make a big difference because the points you earn on the flights are pretty small in comparison to what you're going to earn in terms of the bonuses from the promotion, but I thought it was worth mentioning anyway. I'll share one last thing on this that maybe I'll come back to later in the show that I did actually put together an itinerary that probably would interest Greg the Frequent Miler where we were intending to hit eight airports in three days at an average cost of about $134 an airport. So I was pretty excited about that for my whole family. And then a piece of it fell

apart. I'll probably come back to that later in the show. But anyway, I thought it was worth mentioning that it is possible because I did plan a trip to hit eight airports in three days and only backtrack once and no red eyes. So I uh, I'm not going to share all the details of that yet, cause I'm hopeful that I can put the pieces back together for a different set of dates, but I will share another piece of that later on. That's, that's really impressive. Yep. So, so next steps, uh, and we'll follow up on future shows is, um, you know,

for Nick to actually, um, book and complete the promo to get his 25 years of status and all those points. And, uh, for him to also convince me to actually do this. So those are the, those are the follow-ups. All you need is three days like that. I, I planned a three day trip for eight airports. If you did that three times, you'd be at 24 crack. Yeah. And, and all the stress of spending all day. Yeah.

Of figuring it out and then the flight getting booked up or whatever before you book it is. Yeah, let's move on. Let's move on before I think about that anymore. All right. Card news is up next. So for this week's card news, we've got a new offer out on the city advantage platinum select card. What's the new offer? offer out on the City Advantage Platinum Select card. What's the new offer? Yeah, it's really good. Uh, 80,000 points after $3,500 spend. So, uh, American airlines miles are super valuable for, for booking,

uh, their partners, especially international business class awards on partners. Um, and can be really valuable on, on American airlines itself. It just, they, they have a dynamic pricing for their own awards, so it just varies. And with this card, the $99 annual fee is waived the first year. So 80,000 points, no annual fee first year, 3,500 spend. That's a really good combination.

If you are eligible, I would certainly go for that. Very good, excellent. Another card news tidbit to share is the UBS Visa Infinite card. Now, not to be confused with USB or US Bank. This is UBS, which is a different bank entirely. The UBS Visa Infinite has increased their annual fee, but increased the benefits.

And this actually looks pretty interesting. Yeah, luckily Stephen dived into this and wrote a post about this. These are cards that we haven't talked about much, we haven't written much about because there's no welcome bonus and it's kind of a hassle to to apply you have to call and they're mainly looking for you know High value accounts. So, you know, I doubt like students would be able to to get approved but The cards are six hundred fifty dollars each and when I say cards, it's just that there's both a business and a personal version Otherwise, they're pretty identical as far as I can tell. And here's what they have for $650. First of all, you get a really good version of Priority Pass

where it includes unlimited guests. As long as the Priority Pass lounge allows unlimited guests, some of them have limits that they set themselves. And it does include restaurants. So if you're at a place where there's a restaurant at an airport where there's a restaurant that accepts priority pass, that means you get your meal for free or up to $28 usually. And so that's awesome. And I'm pointing that out because many versions of Priority Pass now do not include restaurants. It also offers free authorized users

and each of the authorized users get their own Priority Pass with unlimited guests and restaurants. Then to offset the 650 annual fee, you've got a $500 annual airline fee credit for whatever domestic airline you select as your preferred airline. So it sounds like it works a lot like the Amex airline fee credit, but this is $500.

And if you've learned the tricks of how to earn back the Amex airline fee credit, then all those tricks plus more probably work for this. So it shouldn't be too hard to get the $500 back. And further, if you spend $25,000 with one of these cards, you get $500 back towards restaurants, Amazon Prime and airport lounge fees. So, you know, that's like an extra, if you think about just using it on restaurants, for example, or whatever you would have spent anyway, then it's kind of like an extra 2% back on $25,000 spend.

One commoner said, so the way it's written does sound like this is true. One commoner said that you only have to spend the $25,000 every other year in order to get the $500 back every year. Cause the way it's written is that, uh, this, this perk is, is valid for the rest of the calendar year in which you spent 25,000 and all of the next calendar year, and it doesn't say a total of $500 is valid, the $500 seems to be calendar year anyway, so I think that person's probably right, which are really It doesn't say a total of $500 is valid. Right. The $500 seems to be calendar year. Anyway, so I think that person's probably right, which are really interesting and weird way to do that.

But that's nice if true. Um, I noticed I didn't dig in too much, but it seems to have excellent travel protections, uh, very similar to Sapphire reserve, uh, with six hour trip delay, uh, emergency coverage, and, and, you know, all the other standard stuff is cell phone protection and event ticket protection. So I've found that kind of interesting. So if you're, if you, uh, bought a event ticket with the card and, uh, you

know, you get sick or, you know, for, you have to cancel due to a covered reason, which I didn't get into the details of what that is. You're covered for up to $500 per ticket. And then there's other limits, how many tickets can be covered for that. Yeah, that's great. Yeah, there were some city cards that used to have that but don't anymore. So, so yeah, that's that actually sounds like a really good deal for 650 bucks, actually. Like, that. Like that's an interesting card. Yeah, yeah. The downside is like the earning rate isn't that great. The opportunities for getting outsized value from your points are limited. There's no transfer partners.

You can get outsized value using your points for airfare, but the best value is when airfare reaches an exact threshold and so it's kind of complicated to get great value so I don't love those parts about it. Yeah so I guess my point more so or should have been that if spending $25,000 on this card every other year is easy for you, then the return here looks really good because I don't I don't know what the return is on everyday purchases, but even if it's zero,

you're essentially going to get four votes at least. It's a minimum one percent. Right. So I mean, you're going to get essentially another four percent over the course of two years after you've spent the 25K, the $500 airline fee credit and the great priority pass that's that's a good trade for 650 bucks I think it is it is yeah all right so it's it's pretty compelling yeah nice all right that's pretty cool good to hear about that card that we have had on our best offers page for a long time but I had never bothered really

to dig into it because it's not like Rick said, not easy to get in the sense that you can't just apply online. And so I kind of ignored it. But yeah, very cool that Stephen dug into that for us. All right. Yeah. What crazy thing did Chase or Ritz Carleton credit card? What crazy thing did Chase do this week? Let's let's frame it that way. What crazy thing did Chase do this week? Yeah. So there was a rumor out on Reddit and some other forums that people were being told

by Chase representatives that the Ritz card, the Ritz-Carlton credit card, the annual fee was going to increase from $450 to $695 on August 1st. And that the only major addition and perks was going to be a $200 card member year credit for renowned hotels and resorts, which is the hotel program that, that they have rebates for with certain United cards now. And someone posted that there were also going to be three Ritz Carlin bar vouchers, but that doesn't seem consistent, but the other part

of the rumor seemed to be very consistent in that multiple people would post the same details. And when we posted the rumor, um, someone commented as Jack and said, I just talked with a customer service rep who confirmed that the annual fee is increasing to 6 95 for renewals on or after August 1st, an announcement is pending the finalization of $200 statement credit mentioned in the article. And it was mentioned by name on the call.

No other statement credits are being added. So there you have it. And, um, so that's, so And so that's what we knew going in. But then we get an email the other day from the head of external communications at Chase Card Services who said, I want to let you know that there are no upcoming annual fee changes to the Ritz-Carlton card.

So we wrote back saying, okay, great, but why are all these customer service reps saying these exact details, 695, August 1st, and whatever's going on, they're not telling us. So the reply was no additional details to share at this time, but to be clear, there are no upcoming annual fee changes on the Ritz-Carlton card. Well, that's really interesting in a lot of different ways. So first of all, I would be very bummed if this card increases $6.95 and just added a $200 coupon for a hotel booking, because I've often said that you'll have to pry this one out of my cold dead hands and I would have probably had some

cold dead hands at that point. It was going to be 695 with a $200 coupon added. So I was very bummed initially thinking, oh, my Ritz cards are going away, you know, just when we're getting started with them. Cause we finally have flew three of them between my wife and I now for through upgrades and whatnot. So the 85k starts are now more useful since you can use multiple of them in

a row, so to speak. But anyway, um, yeah, so I was initially bummed. But then I was also kind of like, you know what, maybe this is gonna help me because I need to get rid of some of these ultra premium cards, it's getting kind of expensive. So maybe it was a good thing that it was going to kind of force my hand. And then they came out of nowhere yeah with this email saying yeah no that's not right and to be clear like probably most readers just expect that we hear like hear from reps all the time like this and it was atypical let me put it that way it's very atypical for somebody to have reached out like this

this is not something that happens on a daily regular basis So that was out of the ordinary for someone to reach out and say, hey, this isn't right. We're gonna, you know, we're not going to increase the fee. So I don't know, what do you make of this? I mean, do you think the fees going to increase? Do you think they were planning it and they, they changed their minds for some reason? Like, what's the real story, Greg? Yeah, yeah. I mean, there's all kinds of possibilities, right? I mean, one possibility is that for some reason that I can't imagine why, it was a hoax that people posted under different aliases about this, but it's such a niche card. Like, I don't know what the point would be of that hoax, right? So if we say it's not a hoax, then that means that multiple reps that people were

talking to had the same information that is now wrong. So I'm saying it's now wrong because it almost seems like it had to have been right or at least somebody thought it was right at Chase in order to release that information to call center reps. And so now did they back out? I mean, the other possibility, right, is that what this head of communications is telling us is a lie, but I really don't think that's true.

Because to send something that is provably false, will be provably false in like less than a month to, you know, podcasters and bloggers and stuff, because they also send it to other people, other blogs and things, would be crazy. I mean, they would lose all, you know, goodwill and we would just kind of go nuts on them about that. So I don't think that's happening. But what do you think? Well, yeah, I think it's, I'm going to go on a limb here and I'm going to say go on a limb because obviously I don't work at Chase and I don't have any insight there. But I'm

going to go on a limb here and say that it is about as likely that pigs fly as it is that the annual fee is going to go up. Like I, I, I can't imagine that they will increase the annual fees soon on the Ritz card after reaching out to blogs like that. And, and the person who reached out, like it was easy to verify that this is somebody that has been on other emails like long ago in the past and whatnot. So it's not like it was somebody spoofed an email address, probably. Like, I think it's legit that Chase is saying this is not increasing.

And so I believe that because they wouldn't they wouldn't be explicit in the way that they were. It would be more like we don't have any information to share at this time. Like, that's more common corporate speak. Like, oh, well, we don't have any information to share about the R. Like that's more common corporate speak. Like, oh, well, we don't have any information to share about the Ritz card right now. But that wasn't this. This was, the fee is not increasing on the Ritz card. It was very direct.

And so like you said, I think there's no way they can go back on that now, or if they do anyway, that's a pretty big embarrassment, I think, for them. So I don't think it's gonna increase now. I think somebody thought it was, and with the level of detail, I mean, I know I often think that incorrect things pass through call centers really quickly because once one person

says this is the answer, I think it's probably very easy for that answer to spread around from rep to rep or supervisor to supervisor. So I think it could be that this was discussed. Maybe this is planned at some point in the future and it was mentioned to like a supervisor or something from someone who is in the meeting and then got passed around as though it's coming even though maybe they weren't ready for

that yet. So I wouldn't be surprised to see this change eventually and I don't think they care whether we like it or not like I don't think that they're responding to oh people were unhappy that we were going to do this. I don't think they care whether we like it or not. Like, I don't think that they're responding to, oh, people were unhappy that we were gonna do this. I don't think that matters at all. I just think that they decided they weren't ready for this and somebody got the game of telephone at the wrong point in the game

and released this information at a time when they aren't doing it. So I don't think it's gonna happen yet. Maybe it'll be a year from now. Maybe it'll be next August 1st. I'd keep my eye out because maybe it was August 1st. It was just August 1st of 2026 and I didn't get communicated right. I don't know. Ah, that could be. That's about the most reasonable explanation I've heard about this. Anyway, it firmly fits into a what crazy thing situations one. Thanks for providing us some material chase

And I will say also it's boy. It's odd how crazy lately things have been at chase, isn't it? I mean, they've been very reliable kind of like customer service has been very reliable and most of their card launches and everything out and then the whole Sapphire Reserve thing feels Like it's been very shaky kind of botched launch on that, to be honest. And then, and then this too, it's just, there's a lot of odd, odd stuff coming out lately from them. So totally agree. Yeah. Yeah. So hopefully they return to form and, and these little slips stop happening. All right. Let's get, let's get into the next piece of today's show,

which is our bond void segment. So let's talk about how many people have been bond void recently by Alaska Airlines mileage plan. Yeah. So, I mean, I don't have much specific to report other than lots of people have been reporting that their mileage plan accounts have been hacked and people have been redeeming their miles. And so it's worth checking your account.

And if you've lost any miles, call Alaska right away and get that fixed. Now, this isn't Alaska, it's Alaska Airlines itself intentionally bonvoying us, but they really ought to think about improving the security around logging into their account. I mean so many programs now have some form of two-factor authentication and if Alaska is not requiring that yet they are to really think about it. Yeah I mean to be clear hacks happen you know the bad guys I remember a line in a book when I was a kid that I read that was like you know a box-only work essentially I can't remember man I can't remember the line but it was basically like you make a

smarter lock and you're gonna get a smarter thief and so you know it's it's gonna kind of continue to be a cat-and-mouse game so there are probably always gonna be bad guys out there doing stuff bad guys and girls bad folks out there doing stuff that uh you know stuff that hacks into people's accounts. But this seemed more widespread. It was kind of, that was the thing that kind of caught our eye here. There were more reports.

I mean, you get reports all the time here and there, like little trickle reports of somebody who's now got hacked for one reason or another. Maybe they were reusing a password. Maybe they were, their individual situation, it might be hard to read, but this was a wide range of folks that were reporting it. So that was the more concerning thing. And some of them certainly didn't sound like it was a password reuse type of a situation.

I don't know how it happened, but nonetheless, I agree. Alaska got an increased security there because that was a little concerning to see so many. I was updating my balance and reward wallet obsessively for a couple of days just to make sure that everything was cool there. But that's part of the value of, I think, using a tool like that that I could at least keep track of it. And if something happens, I'll hopefully know pretty quickly. Yeah, yeah. All right. Let's move on to awards points and more.

And for awards points and more, we now have speaking of Alaska mileage plan a new option for your Alaska miles because Porter Airlines is now bookable via Alaska miles and Redemption's start at 4,500 miles each way in economy and is it 6,000 in business? No they don't have business they what they have is like actual legroom type of seating or something for 6,000 miles one way. Starting at, I think. Anyway, that's a great price. Obviously, Porter's a Canadian airline with a pretty, look to me, like pretty extensive route network across Canada and dipping into the US in many places. So it can be a great way to save money on flying Porter and potentially connecting to other longer haul flights as well. Yeah, that's really what I was thinking about when I saw this, that from a positioning standpoint,

this could be useful because I sometimes find far more awards out of major Canadian cities different times a year than I do out of US cities. And that's not terribly useful for someone who's far from the border. But if you're in a city where it's a relatively short hop to one of the major Canadian cities, it could be worth looking at positioning. And this would certainly be, I think, the best deal for positioning

that you're likely to find anyway. So I think it's worth keeping in mind for that. Also flying blue promo rewards. More frequently put awards on sale. It feels to me anyway, business class awards on sale from the Canadian cities, often Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto are in there. So it's worth keeping an eye on those things and seeing if maybe you can position for just 4,500 miles or not very many miles, however many it may be depending on your distance. So I think that's a cool addition. many miles, however many it may be depending on your distance. So I think that's a cool addition.

Yeah, one little thing to be aware of is that I think their main hub is the Toronto City Airport, not the main Toronto Airport. So using it to fly, I don't know that they don't fly to the main YYZ airport, but if you're using it, if you're using it to, to fly onward in Toronto, make sure you have a really long layover, you know, uh, because you'd be going to the city airport most likely. Good safety tip there. All right. That brings us to this week's main event. Main event time.

So you're no longer traveling. Here's how to cash out those transferable points you've got. All right. This started because, uh because a while ago now, my uncle reached out to me. He had been signing up for Amex cards when the offers were really big and he has a whole lot of membership rewards points,

but he's gotten to the age where he's just not traveling much anymore. So he was asking me, what can I do with these points? Is there a way to cash them out and, you know, just get a decent value out of them that way? Meanwhile, just the other day, I had a conversation with my son who's at the other end of this. It's not that he's not traveling. It's just that he has these chase points and built points that I won't let him use for poor value. And so the only good value or the main way to use them for good value is through travel.

But he really is in a point of his life where cash back is more meaningful. And so I figured if there's two people close to me in my life that are in this situation where they have transferable points but don't really want to use them for travel, that'd be worth talking about. What are ways to cash them out? And specifically, how do you get at least one cent per point value? Because some of these programs like Build, like Amex, if you just use their their built in system to cash them out directly you're going to get way less than a penny per point value and that's a crying shame if that happens.

So I won't let you do that. Good. You shouldn't. You should because really if you're going to collect the points you want them to be worth. Well, certainly if you're going to collect points from spend, there are very few situations where it would make sense to be collecting points through spend if you're not getting at least one cent per point in value.

You can almost always do better with a cash back card. That's certainly true if you're using a card that only earns one point per dollar. But even in bonus categories, for the most part, you want to be able to get one cent per point or better in most bonus categories to make that card worth using over just using a simple cash back card. So it's important to find ways to get good value. Yeah. Yeah. All right.

Now we're going to talk about brokers and talk about why we're not going to talk about brokers. So there are airline mileage brokers that will buy your miles. But I can't stand the whole thing. And here's why we're not we don't recommend this. There's a few things. One is that the loyalty programs have explicit terms barring that if if you're found to have sold your miles to a broker, they'll shut down your account, you know. But sort But a bigger picture thing is,

I think brokers are just so bad for this hobby. What they do, they book freely cancelable, changeable awards or cheaply cancelable, changeable awards way in advance. And so they lock up all kinds of award space that we can't get access to because they're holding until they're ready to sell that space. And it also causes airlines to implement customer unfriendly practices like increasing change and cancellation fees, for example. So they're just so bad for our hobby, I think.

And also for the people traveling, for people who buy travel from brokers, bad things can happen to them too. Their flights can be canceled without their knowledge even. They could get stopped mid travel because it's been known that sometimes you could be at an airport trying to check in for the flight, maybe it's a flight home,

and be told, okay, show me the credit card used to purchase this airfare. Well, you don't have it. It was the broker or the person selling the miles to the broker that actually used their credit card, and so you're stuck and you can't fly that flight. So there's all kinds of reasons. I don't like the whole broker practice, and we're not going to talk about using that. We're also not going to talk about options that kind of go against the general way points should be used by the programs. Because keep in mind, these are things that I would freely tell my uncle to do and I'm not going to tell him to do things that are that are kind of shady and so I'm sure you can find ways to cash out your points that are not explicitly allowed and you know by thinking outside the box you can find ways to do that. So let's talk about the various transferable currencies then through that lens and how you can get decent value out of

your points one cent per point or better. So let's start out with a softball here. MX membership rewards points, which I said start out with a softball. But actually, like Greg said, if you were to just redeem for a statement credit, I think they give you something like six tenths of a cent per point. If you try to cash it out or something like that, right? It's terrible. Whatever it may say 10th. So whatever. Yeah, it's something else. I don't know if the top my head Yeah, yeah, so just cashing out directly in most cases is a really bad idea

But you can unlock One cent to one point one cent per point value with certain platinum cards I'm gonna talk through that and don't tune out if you don't have a platinum card right now one cent per point value with certain platinum cards. I'm gonna talk through that and don't tune out if you don't have a platinum card right now. We're gonna talk also about how to get one and how to make that cost effective. But if you have the platinum card from Schwab,

you can convert points to your Schwab investment account for 1.1 cents per point value. So just you get cash for cash them out directly that way. So that's excellent and easy. Morgan Stanley Platinum Card is a similar thing, but that's only one cent per point. Finally, if you have the business Platinum Card and you open a business checking account with Amex, now those accounts are free. a business checking account with with Amex. Now those accounts are free.

And there's also often a 30,000 point welcome offer available with those business checking accounts. So if you have that combination business platinum card plus business checking account, you can cash out to your business checking account for one cent per point. So those are the options for getting one cent per point or better. Let's talk about what happens if you don't already have one of those cards.

Well, ideally you can apply and get a welcome bonus. Most of us can't really apply for the Morgan Stanley card because you have to have a Morgan Stanley investment account. And there's not an easy way to do that outside of having an expensive account with them. So if you don't already have an account with them it's not worth trying to open one just for that. Schwab is much easier. You can open an account no problem with Schwab and then apply for the Schwab Platinum card and of course Business Plat card, anyone with even the tiniest small business can apply for the business platinum card. So these cards all have $695 annual fees as we're recording this. You might wonder why I'm recommending getting a card where you have to pay $700

when what you're trying to do is get money out of Amex. Well, the thing is the points you could get for a welcome offer would way exceed the cost of the annual fee. So for example, if you got just a 100,000 point welcome offer, and you were able to cash out for just one cent per point, that's a thousand dollars cashed out. So at a hundred thousand points, you're ahead. If you got a big, you know, business platinum, 200,000 point offer, you're obviously way, way ahead that way. So anyway, so if you can apply and get a welcome bonus

and then cash out those points, then, you know, you're ahead in two ways. You have that new welcome bonus, plus all the points you already had, which you can cash out. And then when the next annual fee comes due, you can cancel the card and not have to pay the next year. So overall, it should do you well. Many people, though, are not going to be in a situation where they can get a welcome bonus right now. One might be that you just don't have the capacity for spend in order to meet the minimum spend requirements for a new welcome bonus. Another might be that you've already

had these cards or you've had certain cards that make you ineligible for a welcome offer. So you might get a pop-up when you apply saying, saying you're not eligible for a welcome offer. Do you want to apply anyway? And let's talk through briefly what would happen if you applied anyway, or if you have a business green card or business gold card, another option is to just upgrade to the business platinum card from one of those. Unfortunately, there's no upgrade pass to the Schwab

or Morgan Stanley Platinum cards that I'm aware of. Anyway, so if you apply and don't get a welcome bonus, what you still can do is earn all of the credits that are available on these cards, because these cards are full of coupons, perks, basically rebates for various things. And there's a lot. And so if you do it right, you can get a lot of credits back in that one year. Now, it might be a lot of work that you're not planning on doing.

So that's something to factor in, but it can add up to a lot. So for example, all of the platinum cards have $200 airline fee reimbursements per calendar year. If you sign up mid-year, that means you could get $200 this year and $200 next year for net $400 before canceling your account when the next annual fee comes due. You could sign up for Clear Plus, get $209 of value that way. With the business

platinum, there's about $620 more of sort of easy-ish to get credits. There's up to $200 in Hilton credits you can get over the course of a year, $120 in wireless phone credits you can get over the course of a year, $10 at a time, and up to $300 in Dell credits. On the personal card side, there's $200 of Uber credits, where it's $15 a month and $35 in December, and $400 in fine hotels and resorts or the hotel collection credits, $200 this year and $200 next year, and $240 in digital entertainment credits. That's things like signing up for Disney Plus and other services that are credited back

to you, up to $20 per month there, and two $50 SACS credits. So altogether, if you can use these credits effectively over the course of the year having the card, you can get back way more than the annual fee in value. And even if you don't get quite that much, it might be worth it to you too if you have a lot of membership rewards points

that you wanna cash out, it might be worth it to you anyway. Yeah, you know, if you've been collecting membership rewards points for years and years and you're suddenly in a situation where you can't travel, then some cost to cash them out might be worth it to you. And you know, some of the things that Greg talked about, like the final hotels and resorts credits

and the Hilton credits probably don't apply to you if you're looking to cash out your points because you're not traveling. But maybe you'll find a use anyway for you or a family member. Or again, the rest of the credits add up to pretty close to the annual fee and potential value even for things that don't require any travel there. So maybe not fully the annual fee, but close enough to it to justify getting it in order to cash out a big chunk of AMEX membership rewards points. So that's how you're gonna get one cent or better

out of your membership rewards points, but that's not the only transferable currency on the block. So let's talk about the newer kid on the block, built rewards. Yeah, so built rewards are tough, you can cash out for statement credits for 0.55 cents per point. Don't do that. Uh, you could cash out by, by spending on points on Amazon, Lyft, buying gift

cards for a 0.7 cents per point. There's probably other things too, like that 0.7 cents per point. Don't do that either. What you want to do if what you want is cash, the options are pretty darn limited at this time, but one great option is to use points for a house down payment and get 1.5 cents per point value. So that's for example, I could tell my son, just keep your built points until you're ready to buy a house and then you'll get some good value from that way. Of course, you can get much better value with travel with built.

They have great transfer partners. They often do these great transfer bonuses to increase the value even more. But if you're not planning to use it for travel, 1.5 is great. The other thing you could use is a little bit of a They often do these great transfer bonuses to increase the value even more. But if you're not planning to use it for travel, 1.5 is great. The other thing you could use it for is if you have student loan repayments to make, you can get one cent per point value that way.

There you go. By the way, you mentioned the Amazon ability to use points in Amazon. And many of these transferable currencies offer the ability to use points at Amazon. And universally, you don't want to do that horrible currencies, offer the ability to use points at Amazon, and universally you don't want to do that to buy stuff at Amazon in full with your points. So I mean, you can do that with Amex, you can do that with all the other issuers too,

basically, even some of the hotel points and things. And generally, you don't want to do that because you're getting really poor value, much less than one cent per point. I know it feels like free stuff, but if you can find a way to cash out for one cent per point, you can get all your free stuff and still have three tenths of a cent per point left over probably. So don't don't do that. We want to avoid that. Now every now and then there's a promotion where it's like use at least one point and get 40% off or 60% or whatever. Those those promos are great. Use one point in order to get the discount. Don't use all your points to buy your stuff. Right, right. Yeah, totally. Also, a sneaky thing that sometimes happens with some

cards is if you try to use them at a gas station, the gas station terminal might say, do you want to redeem your points for this gas? And it's hard right there at the pump trying to do the math to see what value am I getting? Well, let me answer that for you. You're getting terrible value if you say no. Right. I see the same thing each time I take a lift now because it tells me how much my built points are worth and every time I'm like, oh man, you want to think about that because it's again an awful value for the points. So don't do that. Right. Okay. so what about capital one miles? What can we do if we want to cash out our capital one miles

and we're not traveling? Not a lot, you know, because there's really not a good way. If you cash them out for a statement credit, you get what, half a cent per mile or something ridiculous like that. And while you can move cash back to miles, the same is not true in reverse. You can't move the miles to cash back on a cash back card. So your options are very limited. I mean, obviously there are times where things

like the baseball tickets can be purchased, you know, using your points at good value, but that's only a few tickets per game. And that's a really specific use. Those types of things come up now and then where maybe there's something that you might find useful, but not very likely. So really, I mean, your option there is mostly to use them for travel. There's not a great additional option. Yeah. Yeah. So I don't think my uncle has capital

one miles, but if he did, I would just say, you know what, you still sometimes probably pay for travel for your grandkids or someone. Keep the points for that. Use your card to pay for that travel and then you can go into your account and erase those travel purchases at one cent per mile. That's the thing to do. Or actually transfer them to airline miles to book flights from airline programs for your grandchildren or whoever it is and your family is traveling. Good. All right. Citi, thank you rewards are up next. Yeah. So Citi is, used to be very, very simple in that you'd get one cent per point,

just cashing out directly from any of your thank you rewards cards. But recently that changed or is about to change. So the Strata Premier card and Prestige card starting August 24th, cashing out will only give you 0.75 cents per point if you just cash out. But there's an easy workaround. Like if you have, for example, a double cash, a custom cash, one of those cards that, um, is, uh, is not subject to this, you know, 0.75 thing, then what you could

do is as long as you've pooled your points together on, in the thank you portal, uh, then you could still cash out for one cent per point, regardless of where the points came from, you could also transfer your for one cent per point regardless of where the points came from. You could also transfer your Strata Premier or Prestige points to somebody else or to another card of yours. When you make a transfer, you've got 90 days to do something with the points, but let's say your spouse or someone else in your family has a double cash card just to pick one out of the blue. You could move your city prestige or city strata premier cards to their account.

And then just points to their account and then make sure that they cash out for you within 90 days. And then you get the one cent per point. We used to have the ability to also get a 10% rebate if we had the rewards plus card, but they've discontinued that. And so I think as we're recording this, we still have a few weeks maybe to to leverage that, but that's not an ongoing thing that we can do. Very good. And you sort of mentioned this, but to be very explicit, if you transfer the points to another cardholder, you have 90 days to use them and then they expire if you don't use them. So that was the part I just wanted to make sure we added that if they don't get used within that 90 days, they disappear. So you only want to transfer your points to another cardholder when you know that there

is an imminent use in mind, whether that's cashing them out or doing something else with them. There has to be you have to to use them or lose them right away. Right, right, right. You know, and I should have mentioned that about Capital One Miles too. One of the nice things there is you can move your points to someone else. So, you know, going back to my uncle's case,

if he had a bunch of Capital One Miles, maybe he would just want to gift them to his son or a grandchild or someone and just boom you know and then that person just needs to have a Capital One miles card of any sort in order to receive them. Yeah and that's a really important point with Capital One because that sticks out versus some other issuers. Now Citi also you can transfer I think to anybody else that's got a qualifying card but Capital One and Citi I think are unique in that way

where it's hard to do that with most other programs. So anybody has a Capital One miles account, you can move your Capital One miles to them. You just need to call and have the card numbers. So it doesn't have to be somebody that lives in your house or even a family member. It could be a friend that you give the miles to. So very easy to do that.

There's no cap or limit with Capital One. I don't remember if there's a limit. I think there is with Citi as to how many points you can Oh yeah, I think there might be a hundred thousand point limit per year, something like that. The Capital One also unlike Citi, like transferring your points to someone else, it doesn't cause them to expire after 90 days or anything like that. So they're safe. They're actually fine to keep them as Capital One miles like that. So they're safe. They're actually fine to keep them as capital one miles until they're ready to use them. So that would be good. All right. What about Chase? Well, Chase is pretty easy to get one cent per point out of because that's the standard redemption for ultimate rewards points. Whatever ultimate rewards earning card you've got,

that's going to be an option to you to just redeem them at one cent per point. Now, you could like, sometimes book travel. Now, I know we're talking about not traveling, but you could like book travel and use your points to sort of erase the purchase kind of like capital one, but you don't probably want to do that. Instead, you probably want to cash those points out. And then if you were going to book something, then you would just book that separately and earn points on that, pay it off with the money that you cashed out so cashing out at one cent per point is easy to do and that's the way you do it if you want to get just one cent per point out of your ultimate rewards points but you can do a little

bit better in some ways so chase has their pay yourself back different categories that sometimes change the categories change and sometimes the redemption rate for those categories change but right now you can for those categories change, but right now you can redeem ultimate rewards points at 1.5 cents per point for select charities. If you have a Sapphire Reserve, that is if you have a Sapphire Reserve, you also can usually get 1.25 cents per point paying the annual fee and then there

are other categories that rotate as we record this in July of 2025. Categories I think are groceries, gas and home improvement. So those could be pretty useful categories to cash out points at 1.25 cents per point. Yeah. Yeah. And, and to be clear here, here's how this works. It's, it's a lot like how capital one miles work is in that you charge these qualifying purchases to your

card just like you would normally do. You use your card in the grocery store to buy things and then you go to the Chase Pay Yourself Back screen to erase those charges and you get 1.25 cents per point value if you have the consumer Sapphire Reserve card, while that is one of the eligible categories. There's a special play with the Aeroplan card, but again, we're back to booking travel. So again, if this was like my uncle, I would say, well, all right, this is if you're buying travel, that you're once a year travel or you're buying travel for your grandkids or whatever. Because, but it's worth talking about

just because it's an interesting and kind of convoluted situation. If you have Chase Ultimate Rewards points and you also have the Chase Aeroplane card, then a few things happen. One, you get a 10% bonus when you transfer your ultimate rewards points to aeroplane. And then the aeroplane card has its own pay yourself back of

1.25 cents for travel, also for paying back the annual fee. So the idea is you pay for travel with your aeroplane card, and then you could erase those purchases and get 1.25 cents value. Well, if you got those Aeroplan miles by transferring from chase with the 10% bonus, that's like getting 1.37.5 cents per point value with your chase points. Things get even better in that chase periodically does a 20% transfer bonus from Chase Ultimate Rewards to AeroPlan.

And if you're a card holder, you have that normal 10% bonus on top of that. So you have a 30% transfer bonus. And then if you erase charges that way, the math works out to 1.625 cents per point value. So I wanted to point all that out, even though we're, we're talking about ways to avoid travel and get, and get at least one cent per point. But this is just such a clever, uh, play that, that I heard from someone else. I didn't, you know, figure this out, but, um, that, uh, it, you know, it's, it's, it's worth keeping in mind if you have that combination of things and you have at least some travel to spend,

you can only do this up to 200,000 points per year that you could pay yourself back with the aeroplane card Yeah, there you go and and if All of your 200,000 points came from transferring from other programs to aeroplan You may end up having a problem with that So, you know if this is this is something to do if you're transferring mainly from Chase Ultimate Rewards to Aeroplan and or earning your points with your Aeroplan card. But the transfer is really where it's compelling because as Greg mentioned, if you're able to combine a transfer bonus with the 10% card

holder bonus, then the value per point really becomes very interesting. I mean, we talk about it being great. You can get like 1.6 cents per point out of your city points for certain hotel programs. This is 1.625 and it's not limited to a specific hotel program. So it's a good potential redemption. Right. And the great thing is you can buy travel any way you want to, you know, directly from travel providers. You could go through portals, get extra cash back or other rewards that way. And so, you know, you could use all the discounts you have available to you to book travel. So, um, it really is a, uh, a nice way to go. Yeah. Yeah. So not great for your uncle, unless your uncle wants to book some travel for you or, uh,

or his grandkids or whatever else somebody else he knows who is traveling anyway, then maybe that works out to be. He probably, he probably wants to book me some JetBlue flights. I imagine so. At 1.65 cents per point, I bet he's ready. Let's go, let's go Uncle Myler. Do it for everybody rooting for Greg to do the trip. All right, so I think that wraps up our ways

of kind of getting one cent per point or better, kind of following the terms of the various programs there. So there you have it. Let's move on to this week's question of the week. Now, this week's question of the week is a question that comes from me, and it will also be answered by me. Sorry, Greg.

But I had a question that I thought was relevant, potentially, particularly because of Greg's mention of the JetBlue bonus, or the JetBlue promotion rather. So my question this week for myself is, how can you book a JetBlue flight with Etihad miles to an airport that Etihad says doesn't exist? And so pretty specific set of questions. So I'm gonna back up to why this even matters.

So JetBlue's 25 for 25 promotion requires flying to 25 of their destinations and flying in a fair class of blue or better. And we were told in the beginning that both cash bookings and award bookings, both made through JetBlue and made through JetBlue's partners, including partner award redemptions, would qualify as long as they're in blue fare classes or higher.

We didn't quite believe that, so we have followed up multiple times and gotten it straight from JetBlue that yes, booking flights with Etihad Guestmiles or Qatar Airways Avios will count as long as you're in a blue fare class or higher and as long as you get your jet blue true blue number associated with it and that is worth keeping in mind because there are some situations where Etihad gas miles are particularly valuable for jet blue flights. Now it's not every single flight it's not all the time sometimes it's not going to work out to be a good deal at all but there are sometimes where it's a slammin deal to book through ad to head gas. So it's worth

using an award search tool to find award availability. Now that said, I was using an award search tool and I came across one of those situations where it was a slammin deal to use ad to head gas miles. And I'm going to make up different airport codes because I don't want to give up the routing that I was I was using right now. So I'm going to make up something else that mimics anyway what I was talking about. So this isn't the exact situation. So if you go looking for this, you're like, oh, this isn't doesn't work out the way you said. Just know that I'm painting a picture for you.

So I was looking at an itinerary. say it was from Hartford, Connecticut to DCA, the Washington Reagan Airport to Fort Lauderdale. And so I was trying to search that and through an award search tool it was showing me an itinerary like that. Okay again Hartford to DCA does not exist it's just for the purposes of this example. So through the award search tool is showing me that I could book that through Etihad Guest for an attractive number of miles. But when I went to Etihad Guest and I put in Hartford as my origination point, it would not let me put in the Fort Lauderdale end. It said that the airport code wasn't found and it was ridiculous because Fort Lauderdale is a huge airport and Fort Lauderdale is not the airport in question here, but it was a similarly big airport. So so I knew that it wasn't that Etihad doesn't know that that airport exists. But for whatever reason, it just wouldn't let me combine it

with the origin point that I was in. And so frustrated, I was like messing around with this for a while, saying the award search tool says the award is there. There must be a way to get it to see this. Right. And and actually backing way up, if I had clicked through from the award search tool says the award is there. There must be a way to get it to see this, right? And actually backing way up, if I had clicked through from the award search tool it would have done the

heavy lifting for me here, so that would have been the easiest way to do this, but what I discovered on my own was that if I looked up from DCA, Washington Reagan Airport to Fort Lauderdale, it would give me results for that part of the journey and then I could go in and edit the search and only edit the origination airport to Hartford let's say in this case and it would

keep the destination airport of Fort Lauderdale in there I didn't if I didn't touch that I just changed the origin airport it would keep the destination airport and then boom found the award so so moral of the story is if you run into that situation with that tab where it's telling to change the origin airport. It would keep the destination airport and then, boom, found the award. So, moral of the story is if you run into that situation with that tab where it's telling you that the destination airport can't be found, try some search from some other airport to the airport you want to end up at. Then go back and modify the search premiere.

After you run the search, go back and modify the search parameters to change the origination airport, and you may well find the award that you're looking for. Now in my case I didn't actually book it right at that moment and it eventually disappeared so a lot of frustration on that end. But moral of the story is you can play around with that and that's a trick that I actually learned from Greg I think years ago because Virgin Atlantic used to have a very similar quirk with their search tool where sometimes it would tell you you couldn't find an airport but then if you ran a different type of a search and then you went

back and edited the search then you could keep the destination airport in there. I think it was almost the same exact situation with the Virgin Atlantic website years ago. Yeah, yeah and sometimes when that kind of thing happens you can also sometimes not always edit the URL, like put in whatever airports and then if those airports show up in the URL on the on the search results screen, you might be able to just change those airport codes in the URL and refresh and do it that way, but not all of them work that way. So I'm just saying. And then one final thing I want to throw out there is one of the, actually two final, two additional two, two additional pieces throughout there with us.

Um, one is that one of the rules of the promotion, the 25 or 25 promotions that you have to get your jet blue, true blue number associated with the reservation. And so I didn't actually complete this booking, but if I had there, I would have had to have somehow found the jet blue confirmation code to bring it up in the jet blue app and then I should probably be able to add everybody's jet blue true blue numbers in there instead I was trying to do it on the at the hot end and you can do that you can select the the loyalty program I think and I say I think because this was a situation where I think the award inventory was either phantom or it was disappearing or something I think that I had to keep my ad to had guest number in for me in order to book it

But it was it put that in there by default and wouldn't let me change it until I checked the box to book for somebody else And then I could book for myself as though I was somebody else Except the system didn't seem to like that so I'm not totally confident. That's gonna work yet but hopefully I'll have more to report on that front on the blog relatively soon, because I'm sure that there will be a couple of flights I'm gonna book via to head guest. And that might be kind of surprising to anybody

who's listened to the show for a while, because I always talk about how horrible it is to book anything through it to head guest, because their cancellation policy is the worst in the world. And so I ordinarily would not even remotely consider booking through ad to had guests. In this case, it was pretty close to departure. So I was pretty confident we were going to take it. So I was not as worried about the cancellation policy.

I'd be much more worried farther in advance. And if I were depending on like the first jet blue flight to happen in order to get to this next one, there could definitely be some problems with booking through ad to hide. You could set yourself up for a problem if you're not familiar with the drawbacks of the program and you're kind of booking risky flights. So be careful out there with it, but it could be a great tool because you could save a whole ton depending on the situation. So it's worth

keeping an eye on that. And then final tip that I was going to add to that is I did have to set up accounts for my kids, which was easy to do in the JetBlue app. You can just go into the app, and if you scroll down far enough, it'll say something about creating an account for a child. And that was really simple. I just had to enter their names, date of birth,

and email address, and boom, it gave me a JetBlue, TrueBlue number for each of them. I'm not sure if it immediately activated though, because I later realized that they got an email that said to complete your account Activation click here and set a password It made it look in the app like it was a done deal as soon as I entered their email address and date of birth But you may have to set that password So that's a final safety tip for anybody out there trying to go for jet blues 25 for 25 with a family

There you go. All right. That's the end of today's episode. That brings us to the end. If you enjoyed this episode, you'd like to get more of this stuff in your email inbox each day or each week, go to frequentmiler.com slash subscribe. Again, that's frequentmiler.com slash subscribe. To join our email list, follow us on all the various social media. Join our frequentmiler insiders Facebook group where you can ask questions about this stuff

any time of day and get answers from lots of different knowledgeable people. And if you have a question that you'd like to be considered for a future question of the week or a comment that you'd like to be considered for a giant mailbag, you can send those too. Send it to mailbag at frequentmiler.com. Bye everybody. Hey, I'm DeAndre Koch, financial advisor, world traveler, and host of Revolutionizing Your Journey. If you're ready to unlock luxury without the luxury price tag, this show is for you. Each week I sit down with experts to reveal how to fly in $10,000 business and first class seats for 90% off and stay in 5-star resorts for nearly free using the power of points and miles. From insider tips to real traveler

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