Frequent Miler on the Air - Our all-time favorite awards | Ep 130 | 12-25-21

Episode Date: December 25, 2021

The awards we enjoy remembering most, a last-minute status tip, and more on this week's show. 1:34 Giant Mailbag: 240x pushback 6:33 What crazy thing....did Citi do this week? 9:00 Mattress running the numbers: Don't forget this shortcut to Marriott Titanium status 12:40 The Main Event: Our all-time favorite awards https://frequentmiler.com/my-all-time-favorite-award-redemptions/ https://frequentmiler.com/my-all-time-favorite-award-redemptions/ On the LifeMiles manual booking mentioned: https://frequentmiler.com/when-lifemiles-com-shows-no-availability-try-a-manual-booking/ Dominik's post at Travelling the World: https://travellingtheworld.boardingarea.com/2016/09/book-lifemiles-awards-not-available-online/ 50:01 Question of the Week: What will code as fashion when the Point Titan card launches in spring 2022? Subscribe to our email list: https://frequentmiler.com/subscribe/ Music credit: Annie Yoder

Let's get into the giant mailbag. What crazy thing did Citi do this week? It's time for Mattress Running the Numbers. Ready for the main event? The main event. Frequent Miler on the air starts now. Today's main event, our all-time favorite awards. We've booked a lot of awards in our time and we're going to narrow it down to just

our very, very favorites and discuss the stories behind those awards. It'd be interesting to see what your favorite favorites are. Because, I mean, we each wrote a post about this, but I mean, I guess you numbered yours. I didn't really number mine. No, you didn't. And I'm also, I'm not going to go totally within those numbers. You know, and I'll explain why when we get to it yeah okay good good okay i'm glad we each have a little little something different to throw in there i'll give you the sneak preview if you read the post already i'm not using all redemptions that

were in the post well there you go find out more well and i'm not either and because we talked about we talked about having flight awards for this for this show we're gonna do flight awards we're gonna do lodging awards but we're also gonna do other other we'll see what that means at least i have another ready i don't know if you do i know i know i do i do have another i'm just curious if my other is similar it's not similar to your other i know that but i'm curious now what your other is similar. It's not similar to your other. I know that, but I'm curious now what your other is, but we'll find out if you're curious too. I'm curious. I know. I actually know what it is though. Anyway, I don't know what yours is. So let's get into the giant mailbag. Today's giant mail comes from Captain Greg. He's, he's made an appearance here several times before. Hi.

Captain Greg, along with several other readers who've reached out either publicly or privately, we're not thrilled with the way we handled the big Simply Miles deal from a week or two ago. And so what happened was we had made a choice about how to publish the original post about it and not kind of headline the big opportunity to get 240 points per dollar. And last week's show, we kind of questioned whether that was the right choice or not. And we debated whether it was or not. And Captain Greg weighed in with a very long comment. I'm not going to read the whole thing, but here's part of it. While I understand your reasons for not promoting the 240X headline, this does feel like the first time that FM has held back info from its readers.

There have been plenty of other too-good-to-be-true deals that you've immediately reported in the past, and while you occasionally get criticisms from curmudgeons about killing the golden goose, I'd say the vast majority of your readers jumped to defend those decisions. So to me, the way you reported this news seems like a break from the norm you've set and goes against part of what has created a very loyal base. It's a really interesting piece of feedback. I read it and I wrote a response and then I didn't finish it and I went back and I still didn't finish it because I totally get that piece of feedback.

I mean, that makes some sense there. And I have a lot of different thoughts about it. But one of the things that came to mind when he said that was, I want to be careful about how I say this. It's not the first time we've chosen not to write about something that we thought would die. So I feel like his word choice of feels like the first time you've held back. If I say, no, we've held things back before. It sounds like we're hiding things.

And that's not at all what I mean. But what I mean is sometimes there are things people share in confidence, or there are things that we know that are fragile, that we don't write about, because we know that it will kill them. So that's not an unprecedented thing. And that's not just us, you'll find that, you know, across the blogosphere, there's some things that just don't get talked about, right. But in this case, that, you know, it's interesting, because the information was public. It was advertised. And we've talked about that before, that when there's something that's advertised, we should

write about it. And so from that perspective, I think he's right. But then I sat there thinking through it and I was like, you know, let's imagine just for a moment, an alternate universe where we headline the two for, and we don't know what would have happened. Obviously, it's all speculation. But let's imagine that alternate universe where we write about the 240X on Saturday, view from the wing does, one mile at a time does. So everybody starts getting in on it

24 hours early. Does it seem conceivable to you that the deal could have gotten pulled 24 hours earlier than it did if we had headlined that 24 hours than it had been? And I think that that's a conceivable outcome. And if that had happened, then that would have been pulled before American Airlines confirmed it to Gary at View from the Wing. And I really feel like had it not been confirmed to Gary at View from the Wing, it would have been a lot easier to not honor that one and back out of it saying it was a mistake, it was a typo, it was a this, it was a that. So I feel like it stayed alive that way, but did we have the ability to predict the future and know that? Of course not. And I

have no idea in hindsight, really, whether that was true. So I get the frustration. I don't know. We're not going to get them all right. I'm still not sure whether it was right or wrong. I sleep okay with it. Right. My kind of feeling about it is, and I think I sort of said this last week, but I'm going to be more clear about it, is that I don't think I would make this, I wouldn't make the same decision again. My gut when it first came up was just go ahead and publish it. And I think that was the right choice, even if what happened ended up being better for more people. So, so Captain Greg and a few other people reached out to me were, were not people who worked out better for, for various reasons. And I get that, that, but our, our sort of guess here is that because of the things, the way things worked out, it happened to be that it was better for more people

the way it dribbled out. But yeah, just going back, I think I would just say, you know what? It was a publicly advertised deal. The fact that we saw an angle on it that was really good is something that our readers expect us to show them so there you go there you go all right there you go captain greg all right so then what crazy thing did city do this city you're back city the the the original crazy thing doer

this segment used to be permanently called What Crazy Thing Did City Do This Week? And then they stopped doing crazy things every week. And so that kind of forced us to change. They slowed down a little bit, but frequency wasn't quite as expected. But they've come back. They've roared back this week.

And what did they do? So Andrea wrote in who tried to apply for the Citi Premier card and said this. Strange thing happened when I applied. I was denied because I had too many inquiries. When they looked at my credit, sorry, I'm having a little reading trouble right now. They had too many inquiries when they looked at my credit via Experian. I had just put in an application with Chase about 10 minutes prior. No other inquiries for over two years. This was a hard stop for Citi and they would not reconsider even given my 20 year relationship with them. Seems harsh. I agree. That seems harsh. It does. That does seem very harsh.

That seems very, very, very harsh and weird. And Citi has been odd on stuff lately. On the flip side, I would say the same thing I frequently say, and that is whatever reason they're giving you is probably not the real reason. It's just the reason that the computer spit out. Somebody's going to read it to you or the computer is going to say it. But clearly in this case, it isn't that you had too many inquiries. And in fact, to me, that proves what I've been trying to scream from the rooftops for a while, that that whole too many inquiries thing is just a bunch of baloney. It's like it's just a reason that they write you to write.

I think they're required to give a reason. And so they have this they have this like magic eight ball that has like three reasons. Exactly. So it's not quite that. And they shake it and it says too many inquiries and that's, that's the reason. Right. Exactly. Exactly. Cause clearly that's not it here.

They just, whatever the other reason, maybe there were too many accounts overall or too much this or too much, too many balances, whatever it may be, the region you live in and who knows. Yeah. But whatever it is, there was some reason they didn't want to extend that and they just don't come out and tell you the truth. Right. Right. But city could use a better magic eight ball when it comes to this particular one.

They really can upgrade city. It's time to upgrade. All right. Mattress running the numbers this week. So this week we're reaching the end of the year. There's what not that many days left by the time this publishes, there'll be what, six days or so left in the year. Not much at all. And so that's cutting it tight for elite status, isn't it? It sure is. It sure is. And so we decided just to sort of remind people of something that might not be obvious. And this is for those who are seeking Marriott elite status. And if you're getting close to that 75 night level, which is not that crazy, if you had status last year, then I mean, the year before, then they gave you sort of half the nights required for that status again this year. And then if you have both a business and a personal credit card, that gives you another 30 nights. So that combination could put a lot

of people actually pretty darn close to 75 already, just to begin with, depending on what you had before. So anyway, the point is to remind you that one of the choice benefits you could get at 50 nights is five elite nights. And so if you are five elite nights or less away from 75 night elite status with Marriott, I think the best choice is to grab that five elite night choice, get to the 75 night. It's easy. It doesn't cost you anything except you don't get the the sweet night awards that you'd get at 50 nights but you could pick them at 75 nights instead so you really haven't lost anything yeah yeah i mean definitely it's a great reminder that that is one of the options for the 50 night choice benefit. And really the only two

options that are worth anything for the 50 night choice benefit, if I remember correctly, correct me if I'm wrong, Greg, but are either the five elite nights or the five sweet night awards. And it's a stretch to call those worth something because very difficult comparatively compared to Hyatt anyway, to use those. I mean, maybe you'll get lucky and be able to use them, but they're kind of restricted. There are so many properties that don't accept them. I mean, there are property types that you can't use them at all, like Ritz or whatever, but then there's lots of individual properties that just say, we don't take them. And it doesn't do it. It drives me crazy. They just don't take them. Right. So there's that issue. Then there's

the issue that they only clear five days in advance of your stay. Then there's the issue that you need one for every night of your stay. So if you're on a six night stay and you only have five suite night awards, you can't use them at all. Yeah. Can't use them at all.

Yeah. Can you use one? So, yeah. So I mean, they're kind of annoying. Great. When it works out,

but you know, it may not be very often. So might as well take those five elite nights if you're close to the 75 night stats. Exactly. Exactly. And I'm just going to throw out one other thing. A lot of people have reached out to me about Delta saying they're short on the qualifying dollars, the MQDs. And what tricks do I know? I don't. If you haven't spent enough on the credit card to get a waiver for the MQD, literally other than spending on Delta at this point, I mean, there's tricks around booking partner flights, but this is too late in the year to try to do something like that.

Preston Pyshko, Ph.D.: Probably, unless you're really lucky and also really adventurous in terms of booking an international trip at the very moment that we're, uh, we're going through now. So, so, uh, yeah, probably, probably not any big tricks there. All right. So make your last little runs here, do what you gotta do, get status locked up. Then I think that brings us to the main event. Yes. Our all-time favorite awards. So what we're going to do is we're going to talk about our favorite flight awards, our favorite lodging awards, and then our favorite other stuff awards. What else have we redeemed points for and what rose to the top as our favorites? So

let's talk about flights first. I'm going to let you go first. What was your all-time favorite flight award? So, you know, in a post that I wrote about my favorite awards, I wrote about some of the luxury flights that I've taken. I've been lucky to take lots of different luxury flights on great airlines and they've been fantastic. And you can read about a couple of them in the post that I wrote, but my favorite flight award, when I really got thinking about it, this came up in my mind after I had written the post and I really got thinking about it, this came up in my mind after I had written the post. And I was like, you know, I don't know how I didn't include that. So my favorite flight award wasn't even in the post. What I think I'd have to pick as my favorite

came from our 40 K to far away challenge, my favorite flight award. And now this isn't necessarily my favorite flight ever, but my favorite flight award was the crazy award that I put together through life miles to fly from Brisbane to Christ church, New Zealand, from Christ church, New Zealand to Nelson, New Zealand, where I took a bicycle ride for like 25 miles to nowhere. Uh, and then from Nelson, New Zealand to Auckland. Uh, so I had overnighted in Christ. I should say I started in Brisbane overnighted in Christ church, had a full like eight hour daytime layover in Nelson. When I did my 25 mile bike ride, then flew to Auckland overnighted in Auckland all on one

single economy class award ticket. And then the next morning from Auckland flew to new way, tiny little Island in the Pacific ocean, two flights in a week, two flights out a week. So once you get there, you're stuck for a few days because there's no flights in or out. So you're not going anywhere for a bit. And so new, I was a really interesting place just because it's so far away and isolated and not particularly easy to get to. And so that entire award cost me, like, I can't remember if it was 15,000 or 20,000 life miles and I had used a transfer bonus or something. So I can't remember which of those and $113 and I got stops in all those cities and I was able to put it together. Even though I couldn't get it to price out on

the LifeMiles website, I had found a post from Dominic at Traveling the World. I'm going to butcher the name of his blog. Now I can to butcher the name of his blog. Now I can't remember the name of his blog exactly, but so I'll have to link it in the show notes to the post that I had read about how to do a manual booking with LifeMiles. So with LifeMiles, you can find the individual segments. And if you find the individual segments available

on the LifeMiles site, you can email support at lifemiles.com and ask them to put together a manual booking and you will wait and wait and wait. So if it's like tight availability, forget about it, not going to happen. And then one day somebody is going to call you in the middle of the day, like no warning out of nowhere and be like, you've got 10 minutes to call me back and ticket this thing. It's like, it was really ridiculous it was a really short deadline to call back and uh but i did that and and magically it happened and it ticketed and i couldn't believe it that i had these like four flights for whatever it was 15 20 000 points where i was going to get layovers in several different cities in new zealand and get to this

tiny little pacific island nation so that was probably the coolest award that I've. Yeah. That's a great answer. That's a great answer. It almost makes me want to like change what I'm planning to say to, to, to the crazy United excursionist stuff I did during 40 K to far away. Not nearly as, as I think cool as what you did, but, but it's still fun and interesting, but, um, I know I'm going to keep though. My answer is, is about the flight, you know, not less about the award. I don't remember how much I paid for the award necessarily. It wasn't too much, but, um, my first experience flying Singapore suites. So this was back in 2013. I had been blogging for almost, well, I'd been blogging for about a year and a half at that point, I think, and had been reading all

about all the great international first-class flights that you could take, but I hadn't gone on any. I'd been on a couple business class flights, maybe three or so. I don't know. And that was great, but I hadn't done that like super luxury where you have caviar and they make up your bed with sheets and pillows and everything, top shelf champagne, all that kind of stuff. And so I booked a round the world trip on points all in first class. So I flew Lufthansa first class, then I flew Thai first class. And it all culminated or ended with flying back to the United States on Singapore suites. And it's so memorable to me because the earlier flights, while they were great, I still thought of them as being sort of incrementally better than business class. I'd be like, well, this is, you know, maybe 20% better, maybe 30% better.

I don't know. You know, it wasn't like a whole different world until I got into Singapore suites. And it's like, whoa, this is a whole different world. Yeah. You know, partially it was the product was this idea of having this whole sort of enclosed room almost. And I mean, it had windows to the aisle, you know tv screen and and um enormous when they pull out the table for for serving it you know it's an enormous table in front of you and everything but the the that was only a small part of what really wowed me the other part was just the the service was just incredible i mean i I had never experienced anything close to this where

the, the flight attendants and everybody, everybody involved, like a lot of different people introduced themselves to you and, and Singapore's rights. And, and it was a little bewildering, but they all seem to know what I preferred. So if I said something to one person, everyone knew what my preferences were. They knew things that I wanted before I knew I wanted them. And it was just kind of magical. And part of it, I think, was because it was the first time I did something that luxurious. you know? So like I would say, you know, many years later when I did Etihad First Apartments, that was probably objectively a nicer experience in many ways. Like service was also outstanding and it's an even nicer type of suite that you get there.

But there's nothing as spectacular as the first time you experience something along those levels. And so that's why I picked that. And I'm also picking it because I think it's going to be my next favorite award as well. Yeah. So you've got something exciting lined up here, right? So we had written a few weeks ago about how there was amazing Singapore suites award space from JFK to Frankfurt.

Which is rare, let's say. Which is very rare. Finding on that route, it's really difficult to find. Right. And for the longest time, they've flown a older style Singapore Suites, which is the same kind of flew in 2013. And I was able to find award space for both my wife and I. And so we'd be able to get like the double bed experience, which I saw in your post. You've done that when you flew with your wife on Singapore Suites. And again, the old style. And the exciting thing is that they've now announced that they're swapping out on that route as of, I think it's like late March, they're swapping in the new style suites, which are much bigger. Much bigger than the very obscenely big suite that it already was. And it's much better than

that. And at least the picture the pictures of the two together made up as a double it makes it look like you're you have a hotel room you know it does it definitely looks totally different i mean the the double bed in the old style suites like it kind of looks like a double bed but there's still like a divider in the middle and it's kind of like awkward and weird and and it's not it's not quite what it looks like it's kind of like awkward and weird. And it's not, it's not quite what it looks like. It's not like you can really just like spread out. And there's also no room like in your suite to like walk around once. Walk around and do anything else.

Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. You just got the bed that takes up all the space. Yeah. I know it's tough. It's a hard life, but well,

and the thing with the old Singapore suites, which is one of the most luxurious ways I've ever flown also. But the thing with the old Singapore suites, which is one of the most luxurious ways I've ever flown also. But the thing with the old Singapore suites is that the bed or the seat, you can't convert it into a bed yourself. The flight attendant has to do it. And it's either all bed or seat. It's not like you can pick varying levels of recline like you can on some other seats. But that's not a problem in the new suite, right? Because you have a seat and a bed. Right. Right. It's two separate things. Which is insane. Which is the same as what Etihad Apartments has or had now that they're not flying the A380s

right now. And yeah, so that's going to be, I think, is going to be amazing. Hopefully, we'll actually be able to take that flight as planned and I'm looking forward to that. Do you have that booked as well? I I'm looking forward to that. Do you have that booked as well? I know you're looking at it. No, I talked about it. Yeah. I thought about it a little bit, but no, it was more points than I thought it was worth without knowing that it was the new suites. If I had known that it was the new suites at the time, I probably would have had a hard time not doing it, but it was also an issue of, I found three seats on some days, but they weren't the dates that I really needed to travel to Europe. So it was also an issue of, I found three seats on some days, but they weren't the

dates that I really needed to travel to Europe. So it was like, ah, do I just book another speculative trip to Europe? I already kind of had two speculative trips to Europe in the books and I are on the books here and I have no idea whether these things are going to happen. My confidence level is definitely dropping at the moment as to whether or not those are going to happen. So we, we'll see. One of the things I'll just mention about that old style Singapore suites was I had my little suite and when it was time to make it up as a bed, they asked me if it'd be okay if they made up the suite that was across the hall from me as my bedroom.

So, you know. Yeah, I think that's probably, yeah, that'll do. Yeah, I was like, yeah, that'll be okay. So, now I had a bedroom and a living room and that was amazing. It was so comfortable. They have these like memory foam, you know, mattresses and pillows that was just crazy comfortable. So, and pillows that was just crazy comfortable so yeah that was the things that i didn't even know existed on an airplane before i got into this game like i i had no idea that that was a thing i mean i know now everybody's

seen like crazy rich asians the movie there and they have like something that sort of looks like singapore almost right you know playing that movie that, you know, so people have seen that idea, but I had never seen that idea. I don't think before I got into miles and points, I had no idea that. Right. No, me neither. And this is definitely the type of flight that I think is it's, it's worth like a bucket list. Like it's worth going out of your way for, um, agree. And so, yeah, so I'm excited about, all right. Should we talk about lodging now? We should, we should. Yeah. So, uh, so lodging for me, I had a hard time deciding, and this is one that I'm going to take actually from the post. And I had a hard time deciding between two, because for me, there was a big part of me that wanted to pick the Comfort Hotel Boulevard that I wrote about that was in Rome, because not necessarily because the

hotel was luxurious, but it was the first time I remember staying in a place that was like super centrally located, because before that I was too much of a cheapskate. I would be on the outskirts of town somewhere, you know, taking the subway in kind of a thing, not staying in the heart of everything. So that was, to me, that was a fun redemption for that. But I think if I have to pick my favorite, I think so far it's gotta be the St. Regis Bora Bora. Uh, and, and that's for a number of reasons, but you know, this game has given me the feeling more than once where I've just been odd. You know, you were kind of talking about that with Singapore suites a minute ago where you just kind of feel like, wow, this, this is my life. Like I don't, I didn't anticipate this. I didn't know this was going to be a thing. If you asked, you know, the me 10 or 15 years ago, if I was going to be flying into Bora Bora and just looking at this

gorgeous, gorgeous mountain in the crystal blue water. I mean, it was just something out of a movie where I felt like, wow. And your pictures of there are unbelievable. This is not where I would have thought I belonged. Unbelievable pictures. Oh, it was. It is beautiful. It's so, so pretty.

And they have a great lagoon there where you can go snorkeling and it's really easy. So if you're not a great swimmer, it's an enclosed lagoon, but it's huge. So it doesn't feel like you're swimming in an aquarium necessarily, apart from the fact that there are a lot of fish around. And so it's great ocean life viewing, so to speak there. The views of the mountain, like I said, are just absolutely phenomenal. The sunsets are just something that, oh man, I'll never get that out of my head. The sunsets there were just gorgeous. And it was the type of place that as people who are familiar with the game know is

way out of my league in terms of the price that I would pay. $1,000, $1,500 a night is where that place starts most of the year or all of the year, I think really. And it can get quite a bit more expensive. And it was a place that I didn't think I would probably ever stay at because before the merger with Marriott, it was not priced like a regular property. When it was a Starwood property, many of the... I shouldn't say many, a handful of Starwood properties like the St. Regis Maldives and the St. Regis Bora Bora were considered all suites properties. And so they cost a ridiculous number of points beyond the award chart, the old Starwood award chart. So there were so many points that I never considered going there, even though I knew I could use points until the merger with Marriott. And even then, many people would not have assumed

that it was going to be a regular award booking. But we had the good fortune to attend the Marriott event when they had the merger and to spend a good long while talking with the gentleman who was the vice president of the loyalty program at the time and confirming with him multiple times that yes, all of the properties would have standard rooms and they were all going to price at an incredible rate when the merger happened. So it cost me 48,000 Marriott points per night to stay in this incredible, incredible picturesque place. So that's a favorite for all of those reasons together. And it's something that reminds me that when there are those deals, you got to jump on them, right? I mean, now it'll cost you what, like 100,000 points per night most of the time. And then when they do away with the award chart

in March, goodness knows it's going to be a ridiculous number of points all the time. So the chance to have stayed for 48,000 points per night was something that I'll never regret having jumped on that. Right, right, right. Now, to be clear, that was when you say 48, that's based on getting the fifth night free, correct? Fifth night free. Yeah, correct. It was 60,000 points per night, fifth night free, dropped it to an average of 48. Yeah. I'm so sad. I had a few of those types of things booked back then and just, my travel plans never lined up right to actually make them happen. So unfortunately, I never got to take advantage of them, but I'm so glad you did. That was awesome. It was great. It was great. And they treated my son really, really well. That was awesome too,

traveling there with a kid. My wife and I have talked about going back before Marriott gets rid of the award chart or at least booking a stay before Marriott gets rid of the award chart while our kids are young because they ate for free. So that was also awesome. Yeah. And I ran into a couple of readers there that recognized me from the blog. So that was also a lot. Yeah, for sure.

Okay. So I had a hard time picking my favorite, not because it's actually completely obvious to me what my favorite, not because it's actually completely obvious to me what my favorite is. And it was number one on my, on my post about this, which is Necker Island. But I don't really want to talk about that because you can't book that anymore with points. And it's just such a stretch. And I, you know, I've talked about it a lot before. So, I was like, well, my next favorite is probably the Limerick in Maldives. But we've talked about that so much on the show. I want to talk about that.

So what do you got that's new for me, Greg? So I'm going to talk about Lila Ventana, Big Sur. I know I've talked about that too on the show, but let's just talk about it a little bit more. It's been a while since I've talked about it much, I guess, other than to say I love it. So my wife and I booked a stay at Ventana Big Sur, which is a Hyatt property. We stayed there right before the lockdowns in early 2020. And the Big Sur, I don't know if you've been to Big Sur, but it's such a beautiful area. So you drive along the coast and, and you just have these glorious redwood trees to one side and the crashing ocean on the other, like down below on a cliff. And, and, um, there's, there's amazing hiking all around, which is one of the

things that my wife and I love to do the most is, is hiking. And so geographically, you just can't beat the location of this with maybe one exception that it's on the non-ocean side of the road. So there's a well-known resort that's crazy expensive that you can't book with points that's on the ocean side of the road, which I'm sure is like fantastic because you have ocean views all the time. But the non-ocean views at Ventana are incredible as they are. And then you do have ocean views from some locations around Ventana, Big Sur. When I stayed there, I did not have top tier Hyatt status at the time. But one of the things we've talked about before that we love about Hyatt is that they have this thing called guest of honor. And so a top tier elite member can book the stay for you and you get all the benefits as if you're you have that top tier elite status.

So you get upgraded, you get free breakfast, you get free parking, you get, you know, all that kind of stuff. And Hyatt also lets you move points from one person to another for free. So I just tapped a friend who had globalist status at the time and said, I'll send you whatever it was, 150,000 points or something like that. And can you book this for me? And so we did it that way. We booked a regular room. We show up. They acknowledge the globalist status on the reservation. They upgrade us to a premium suite, not just a regular suite, but a premium suite. And everything, the staff were fantastic. The whole atmosphere is like, it's not, you can't compare it to a hotel or

it certainly don't compare it to like a resort because, um, it's more like having these luxury cabins, like in the woods in a way, uh, there's no feeling of like, you know, there's not hundreds and hundreds of people all milling about trying to, you know, there's not hundreds and hundreds of people all milling about trying, you know, lining up for food or whatever, like you haven't many resorts. There's not that many rooms there. So that brings you to one of the negatives of the place, which is that it can be hard to book an award stay there because there's not that many rooms, but if you do book it and you are able to book it, um, if you enjoy nature as much as my wife and I do, it was just spectacular. And after we were there, they converted it to all inclusive for food. So you even get all your, uh, all your

meals. So we, we just got free breakfast and that was nice. And, um, excuse me. Um, we are planning, hoping that we have a booking to go back and, and, uh, this coming winter. So hopefully that will happen barring, you know, any, uh, unforeseen variants. Yeah. Yeah. Well, let's, let's hope for the best there. Knock on wood because that's exciting. That'll be fun. I'm sure it'll be great to get back. I can't wait. I'm jealous. Yeah. Yeah. So, so yeah. So there you go there. There's my, there's my lodging pick. Awesome. That's a great pick. It's definitely one that I look at and I say, wow, it'd be great to stay there. I think it's adults only. Right. So it is. It is. Yeah. So I'm shut out. I'm stuck on that one for a while.

They love dogs though. So if you could dress up your kids as dogs, they'll get lots of attention. Halloween will be great. We get to go. Very good. So Stephen can bring truffles and he can let me know how it was. Very good. Okay. So now we're on to the other portion. What other thing do you got? I'm curious what your other thing is going to be because my other thing is still going to be award and it's going to be something I wrote about in the post, but I want to give more backstory than I was able to do. So in the post, I said a cheater answer

for my favorite redemption ever was my honeymoon because I took a very long honeymoon. We took a four-month honeymoon around the world, went to, I think, 18 different countries, flew mostly in business and first class. And it was absolutely amazing. I mean, the stuff of like storybook dream type things was something that was, again, one of those things that I never would have thought possible before discovering this. And that's where I wanted to actually talk about it a little bit, because I only had so much space in the post to give backstory. And I think the backstory for it, part of it was more fun. So I was not a person that was into credit cards. I grew up with parents who said, you never pay an annual fee to use your own money and you only need one credit card. And so that's what I had for a lot of years. And so my wife and I had one single

Capital One card. We used the points for a trip once and we were like, woohoo, we got a free trip. And so that was kind of our thing for a long time. And then I decided, my wife and I finally decided we were going to settle down and get married. And so for years, my wife and I had traveled on a shoestring budget because we both liked to travel. We didn't have very much money. So we'd work really hard, like 60, 70, 80 hours a week, go take a trip that was really cheap, stay in a really cheap place, but go see someplace awesome and then come back and work another 60 or 70 or 80 hours a week for a few months and then go take another trip,

et cetera, et cetera. So when we decided we were going to get married, we said, well, we're going to probably have kids and settle down and we're not going to be able to do this anymore. So let's have one big last hurrah and let's try to hit everything we can, but how are we going to do it? And so I'd started looking into cash round the world tickets. That's where this all started from because I was like, oh, I've heard about these round the world tickets. Will that be cheaper? Can we maybe see a lot of places without spending very much money? And that led me to reading about awards and led me to things like The Points Guy and Million Mile Secrets, where I kind of got started with it. And then from there, I fell into other blogs at boarding area, particularly Frequent Miler. And so I had

started to learn a bunch. And I thought that I knew quite a bit. And so I spent about a year reading and then about a year collecting. And I was part of the way into that year of collecting. And I happened to run the Chicago Marathon. And the marathon happened to be the same weekend as the Chicago seminars. And I have friends in Chicago. So I went out primarily to visit our friends and my friend and I ran the marathon. And so my friend Nate had a friend named Lance and Lance, who I hadn't met before, was into miles and points. And Lance's father was really into miles and points. So Lance's dad had been at the Chicago seminars. And that weekend after the marathon was done, we had a dinner together. Lance's dad was there and he and I started

talking and his dad was like, oh, well, you know, what about this? Do you know about that? And, and he was talking about things I'd never heard before. And I got really interested. And so he pulled out an iPad and he started showing me pictures from the presentations at the Chicago seminars. And I was like, oh, you can do this and that. And like, there's this sweet spot and that sweet spot. I had no idea at all. I had only been looking at like American and United and like, there's this sweet spot and that sweet spot. I had no idea at all. I had only been looking at like American and United and like very basic, simple award stuff. And he started showing me things that absolutely blew my mind. And so I was amazed and Lance already knew quite

a bit about it. So he, he said, you know, if you're interested in this stuff, there's another conference coming up, you know, check it out. It's called Frequent Traveler University. And he sent me the information. And I was like, you know, the stuff that his dad told me was kind of blowing my mind. I told my wife and she's like, well, maybe we ought to give this a shot. And so we went to Frequent Traveler University that year. It was just another month or two later.

And I sat down in a presentation that was about stacking. It was about stacking shopping portals and deals. And I thought that I knew everything I needed to know about how to stack a deal. I was like, all right, I'm going to listen to this guy talk about stacking deals. And I'm not really going to learn anything useful, probably, but there wasn't anything interesting I wanted to listen to. I was already doing that. I knew what I was doing.

And I already had that wrapped up. But the other presentations didn't sound interesting. So I was like, you know what? I kind of like this guy. I enjoy his blog. I'm going to listen to him talk about stacking some deals. And wouldn't you know it, it was Greg the Frequent Miler. And so Greg blew my mind. He was talking about double dipping and triple dipping. I knew about a shopping portal, but I had no idea about a double dip or a triple dip, which in many cases, those things aren't available anymore, but just totally like blew the roof off of things. So we went from, okay, we're going to collect a bunch of miles for a year and fly an economy class and stay in the cheap places on the outskirts of town to from

that moment, it was about, oh, I don't know, maybe 10 more months before we got married. And by the time we got married. And by the time we got married, we had the thing booked and we were flying almost entirely in business in first class, thanks to what I learned from him. So thank you very much for that. And then of course, obviously that all landed me here. So my honeymoon was really the ultimate redemption, not just for the trip itself, but for what came of it. Your whole life going forward. My whole life. Wow.

Wow. All right. Well, you know, that's kind of, as you said, kind of cheating in a way. It's not really what we're asking for here, but you got a good story in. So that's really what counts. Okay. I was hoping that you had done something like, you know, Dan's deals had redeemed a million SPG points to

throw out the first pitch in the, in the playoffs. Right. Uh, you know, and I've always wanted to do the world series, not that, but no, it's the world series series. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He threw out the first, I mean, that was, that was pretty amazing. And, and, you know, they used to do these like softball tournaments at Wrigley field. And it was like a ridiculously low number of points. You had to pay like, I don't know, eight or 12,000 star points or something in order to get on one of the teams and play for a few innings on Wrigley. I mean, come on. I totally should have done that back in the day, but no, I've never really done anything else like that with my points. I don't think so. That's why I'm really curious as to what your other thing is going to be.

Well, I'll tell you about the time I redeemed 100,000 Starwood points for a toaster. And no, no, no, no, no, no. Thank you for not telling us that story. That's what you should keep to yourself, Greg. No, Greg didn't really. No, I did not really do that. Those things are almost always, I hate to even use the word almost there. They're always really, really bad values for your points. So don't do it. Yeah. Those toasters are totally not worth it.

They're not, they're not that any kind of, any kind of merchandise. It's just, it's just not, not a good deal. No, the non-flight, non-lodging thing I did is I used points for my wife's 50th birthday trip. We booked Amtrak overnight train to Utah. So this was way back in the day, Chase Ultimate Awards used to transfer to Amtrak. And also way back in the day, ultimate awards used to transfer to amtrak and also way back in the day amtrak used to have an award chart so they would have like these different regions and a certain um amount of points required to go to each region and so on and i actually did not really optimize that because the optimal thing would have been to go Chicago to Denver and get off there because that was all within one region at the time.

But we went on to Utah because we would have missed the best part of it, which is the going up through the mountain, looking down at the river and everything was an amazing part of the trip. We enjoyed the train travel a lot. Um, at the time I I've heard that they've cut back on service since then, but at the time they, they had a nice dining car, uh, available just for the people who were staying in, in rooms and bedrooms. And, um, so you had, you would have nice meals on the train and they had a dedicated viewing car. So you have like a very pretty area to watch from while they had rangers actually come on and talk about what you're seeing. And if that got too crowded, yeah, you could go back to your room and look out from there because there was great views from there. So, you know, that all

was a great experience. Now, having said that, like, I think it was, it was perfect. Chicago to where we got off in Utah was about the right amount of time. Like, like we, we got on, I think it was like one, uh, evening maybe. And then kind of slept through going through like cornfields where there wasn't much to look, look at anyway, got up early in the morning, like in Denver and, and, and then we're, you know, fully awake and pretty much it, it was like all day ride, like through the mountains to, to get to Utah. And it was right after dinner that we stopped. So we got to enjoy the meal car multiple times. And I think spending like another day,

you know, another full day would have been tough because it's just very confined quarters, but I really, really enjoyed doing about 24 hours on the train. That was great. I always wanted to do it. So did you transfer points from ultimate rewards?

Is that what you said? Yeah. Yeah. Which was, that was, that, that was, that, that was one of the regret regrets that I have. It was something that I knew about.

And, and we said, Oh, we're going to do that one of these days. We're gonna do that one of these days. And then that day just didn't come. And I regret that we didn't make that happen. Cause that award chart was just fantastic.

Yeah. I mean, and you could play it back then you could play games with it. Like, because you could do things like in one zone, it was something like all the way from like Southern California, all the way to like, I don't know, somewhere in like the Northern Midwest kind of area. And so you could go all the way up the coast and then across. And I know a lot of people who did that. Um, yeah, I never optimized it that way, but, um, but I was glad I did.

I did something with the, with the train when I did. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. And, you know, I think that anybody who hasn't had much experience with Amtrak, I'm in that crowd, uh, but I have, I have had a little bit, I think that that whole experience of like the sightseeing car with the Ranger that explains stuff is really, really cool. I took the, uh, well, I can't remember which train it's called now, but there's a train that goes from Los Angeles up the coast through like Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo. Yes. It's something

like that. Is that, is it called coastal starlight? So starlight definitely sounds right. It's something like that. Yes. And, and so it's got that kind of thing, that car that is like all glass and, uh, you know, some ranger who seemed like he was a thousand years old, but it was, you know, like relating the history of the place. And it was so interesting just listening to him talk for a little bit. And, you know, just again, kind of a neat thing that it seems out of the norm for me, I guess, because I don't live somewhere where train travel is particularly common. I live in the middle of nowhere. Right, right I like that there's something about that old style. It's, it's, it's, I mean, it is, it's, it's, it's like having, you know, getting to, to relive part of like the 1940s or fifties or something. I don't know when it was, uh, you know, the cars

certainly, at least the cars we rode in, looked like they were last remodeled in the 1940s. 1940s or 50s, as did the Ranger probably. There was literally, between our room and the next one, there was literally duct tape, like holding things together. I don't know if they had that in the 40s, Greg. No, no, no. That's been remodeled since. but you know that's how they've

maintained it since then right right right right right which does vary i think on the trains just it also is very much like that uh many places but you know it's kind of fun it's i there's something i like about that sort of grittiness and like you said that old style and the cool thing is even, even though you can't transfer from, from chase ultimate awards, you can, you know, sign up for the Amtrak card when it's having a nice offer and get a lot of points and the points.

And even though they don't have that word chart anymore, the points are worth a lot towards these towards a train travel. They're worth almost 3 cents each. So I'm not convinced. Again, I said how I didn't optimize it. It cost me like 40,000 points a person, if I'm remembering right. And that would get you, like it might cause less today, depending on how much the straight up price of it would be. Right. That's a great point. And Amtrak has a shopping portal too. I use it sometimes every It might cause less today, depending on how much the straight up price of it would be. Right.

That's a great point. And Amtrak has a shopping portal too. I use it sometimes every now and then when I'm looking and it just seems like it'd be more beneficial. I do it and I don't have very many Amtrak points right now, but I build them up slowly and then I've used them once or twice here and there and you get good value. I just used that portal just the other day for a $1 purchase. To keep your points alive, I suppose. Yeah, exactly. The points are a few months away from expiring. Yeah. There you go. There you go. I used the Spirit portal earlier this week

because I realized I was at like 2,900 and change Spirit points. And I was like, what are the chances that I'm going to find a flight that's exactly 3 000 points probably better than the chances i'm going to find when it's 2 900 points so i was like all right it's like two miles per dollar through everybody you know what i'm gonna go through spirit on this 50 purchase thing yeah get myself to 3 000 never never would have occurred to me to do that just i'm not sure just one of those things where i was like you know it seems like i would if i were pricing awards i would price things where I was like, you know, it seems like I would, if I were pricing awards, I would price them in even increments. And, you know, of course,

I look at spirits so often to book awards that I'm not positive whether it's the case or not. But we'll see. So I gave it a shot anyway. So that's fun. I mean, that's a great one. I wish I had one quite like that. But nonetheless, maybe one of these days,

I will, maybe one of these days, I'll be able to redeem for it. Maybe you'll you'll throw out the first pitch maybe that'll be never very good all right well that i guess brings us then to the post roast do you have a post post roast ready i don't either so we're gonna go right into the question of the week and this week's question of the week is time for speculation. Okay. Speculation of the week. Our speculation of the week.

Our predictions are not always spot on, but I'm going to ask Greg to make a prediction. So it's going to start here with the point debit card. So if you're familiar with the point debit card, it's been really awesome this last year. Lots of promos has been like, you know, like right now they've got a streak going. You already had to have started it, Or actually, by the time this publishes, I guess

it'll have just ended where you spend $200 over seven days, you get 30 bucks back in points. And they've had 10 points per dollar at Costco and Amazon and a bunch of other Best Buy, other retailers, which is like 10% back, 5% more regularly, but 10% lately, 2% back everywhere through the end of the year as a debit card. So, I mean, they constantly run some pretty intriguing offers with the point card this year. And just recently, I actually had an email exchange with them because they had a promo where if you referred five people, you would get a Romoa bag, a Romoa suitcase or whatever. And five people signed up. Thank you to whoever they were through my link. And so I had triggered that promotion,

which that promotion might've been my other redemption, I guess, because what they did there was they reimbursed you in points for up to a thousand dollars for a bag. So you get up to a hundred thousand points. So there's, there's my other redemption. I got a suitcase that I never, ever would have bought. Yeah. Yeah. That's kind of fun. So yeah, it's exciting. It's kind of fun. So I was excited when it came and opened it up all about, but that's not what I'm here to talk about right now. Right. So that, that is all to say that they have been making this push. And I think the Ramona thing in particular, it seemed to me like they were trying to make this push to seem like stylish and fashionable and like something of that sort, like the status symbol, right? Because I mean, that's what it comes down

to, right? They were trying to encourage people to get into it with the status symbol. And sure enough, we found out this week that they are planning to come out with the point Titan card in the spring of 2022. So this Titan card, if I understand their promotional materials correctly, is going to be $399 a year, and it's going to be a charge card. So it's going to be like a credit card, but a charge card, no hard pull to open it. So it's going to be something that you won't have to get a hard pull. They say it won't affect your credit opening it, though, of course, the new account, I assume, will get reported and your limit will depend on your income and stuff.

And so what I read in their details where you're going to either need to have $100,000 in income per year or at least $10,000 in liquid assets that you can show in order to get approved for it. And it can be different flexible spending limits, blah, blah, blah. And there's some benefits like, oh, I don't know. There's stuff like priority pass and things like that, but that probably aren't worth $399. But the semi-interesting thing to me is that you will be able to configure your own rewards monthly, kind of like the Bank of America custom cash rewards, where you're going to get to pick two 5X options and two 3X options. So you can switch up. Now the 5X options, to be honest with

you, aren't particularly interesting. Probably most people are going to pick something like food delivery and I don't know, ride share fitness or something. It's not really going to be that exciting. The 3X categories is where I'm kind of curious because they've got travel, dining, groceries, entertainment, and fashion. What I wouldn't know, Craig, is what is going to code as 3X for fashion? Yeah. Like Simon Mall, perhaps? I mean, I like to go to the mall, Craig. I'm not a real fashionable guy, but I like to go to the mall. You know what I'm saying? I mean, I had the same thought when I saw that because I don't get that card otherwise. I. I wouldn't even want that. Nobody does. I mean, $395 and it doesn't even come close to comparing to other higher-end cards.

Not at all. Get the Venture X if you want to spend that much. Although I'm curious. Yes, I mean, totally agree. I'm curious what the airline transfers are going to be because they do say they're going to have airline transfers. And actually, where I lost my train of thought earlier was that when I got the Ramona bag, I was emailing back and forth with their support. And I asked them specifically because I had somebody who kept responding to me, the same person each day for several days. And so I was like, all right, well, I've got an in with somebody

here to talk. Let me ask him, do you have any plans to offer transfers to airline programs? And he said, that's definitely something we're looking at. You know, we've got new stuff on the horizon, basically. Not so many words, not exactly that way, but basically sounded like he confirmed that, yes, airline transfers may come in the future, but without like totally confirming it. And I only took that like at a 40% chance of being true. Cause I mean, you never really know

that a customer service person is telling you the truth. But if you scroll the information on the new point card, they do say you're going to be able to transfer points to airline miles, get instant cash back and even ride the crypto wave, whatever that means. And so for transfers, it says SkyTeam, One World, Star Alliance, JetBlue, Lufthansa and 20 others. So I found Lufthansa, miles and more. I mean, they pulled out of all the transfers, didn't they? Yeah,

they did. I thought it had something to do with German laws. So I was like, I was, I was very interested in finding out. Yes. Yes. Sign up for the wait list.

Cause I'm, I'm interested. It makes me think they don't know what they're talking about. Who wrote that? Maybe not. Maybe they got something interesting going on. We'll see. We'll see. see maybe they do and maybe i'll have to get extra fashionable we'll see yeah yeah unfortunately i mean even if they do transfer to lifthansa while there are some sweet spots in their word chart what i remember is you're still gonna get those giant um fuel

surcharges if you try to book flying lifthansa itself so So that's true. I'm not sure. I'd be all that excited anyway. Yeah, we'll see. We'll see. I mean, there are some other sweet spots that I have written once in a while because they had like a 75K offer on the card at some point. So I wrote a post

with some of the sweet spots anyway. So I'll be curious to see where that goes because face value of $399 for this. I mean, it seems like crazy and ridiculous, but I'll be curious. Yes, yes. Well, also, I mean, if they regularly do big spend promotions, like they've been doing with the debit card, then maybe it would have value after all. But it's a little weird asking people to invest like that much money upfront for the chance of getting those kind of offers.

Yeah. And I definitely wouldn't do it hoping that that's going to happen, if not for the fact that I do write about it. So maybe I will, because of my unique situation and because they have run such awesome promos on the card. I mean, they had 15X at Nike a few times and they advertised with the new card that they're going to have 15 X Ramona

and 15 X, I don't know, ASAP or a few different things that they're going to have 15 X. It's supposed to, we'll see. We'll see. I'd be curious to watch for that in the spring. Cool. So I was curious. That'll be a fun future episode. Then when we either, uh, say why it's good or rip it to shreds, one of the other, one or the other. All right, my friends, that brings us to the end for this week. If you enjoyed today's episode and you would like to get more of our posts right in your inbox, all you got to do is go to frequentmiler.com slash subscribe. Again, that's frequentmiler.com slash subscribe. Join our email list. You can follow us on social media. We're on Twitter and Instagram and all that stuff. Join our Frequent Miler Insiders

Facebook group so you can discuss this stuff with other folks and be in the know of all the hot new deals as they happen. Thank you very much for being out there with us. Don't forget to like subscribe, enable notifications, leave a comment that all helps the channel out. And we'll see you guys again soon. Bye everybody.