Frequent Miler on the Air - Our next all travel card | Frequent Miler on the Air Ep315 | 7-18-25

Episode Date: July 18, 2025

In this podcast episode, we'll talk about how Bilt is going cardless (but with more cards). We'll see how Etihad is making unfavorable decisions, vying for our Bonvoyed of the year "award", and we'll talk about which credit card is the best for all kinds of travel expenses (since the Chase Sapphire Reserve® Card might night make sense for non-flight, non-hotel travel expenses anymore.) Giant Mailbag(01:16) - "In a recent episode, Greg and Nick talked about checking flights you already have booked to see if the [award] price has gone down..."Find our free checked bags via credit card resource here.Card News(07:01) - Citi Strata Elite to be launched in the third quarter of 2025(08:14) - Bilt switching from Wells Fargo to Cardless next year; adding two premium cardsBonvoyed(11:06) - Alliant cashback card changes to flat 1.6% everywhere on 9/1(12:15) - Etihad makes award changes & cancellations even more confusing and punitiveRead more about Etihad adding award fare buckets and increasing change fees here.Awards, Points, and More(17:06) - Greg easily booked a Preferred Hotel with points transferred from CitiMain Event: Our next "all travel" card(21:11) - Chase Sapphire Reserve® Card 3x grandfathered until Oct 26. Airlines, hotels, motels, timeshares, car rental agencies, cruise lines, travel agencies, discount travel sites, campgrounds and operators of passenger trains, buses, taxis, limousines, ferries, toll bridges and highways, and parking lots and garages...(23:26) - So what should our broad travel card be now? Here's what we're looking for...(24:13) - What about Chase's other cards?(27:45) - Travel cards that didn't make the cut due to narrow definition of travel(29:35) - Travel cards that almost made the cut(31:49) - Broad "Travel" definition cards(42:36) - What's our pick?Question of the Week(48:32) - What's the best strategy to go about closing cards with the intention of opening new ones? This listener offers the Chase Ink Business Unlimited® Credit Card as an example. Read our complete guide to credit card application rules here.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 VoyEscape podcast. You can find all of our travel podcasts from around the world at voyescape.com. On today's show, BILT is going cardless with more cards. Etihad is vying for Bonvoyed of the Year. And we discuss the best all travel card. Frequent Mylar on the air starts now. Today's main event, our next all travel card. The Sephora Reserve card used to be a great general all around travel card

in that it offered great rewards for nearly all travel purchases, as well as really good travel protections. But now things have changed. Now it still offers great travel protections, but now it only offers great rewards for airfare and hotels. And so we're going to be talking about what else is out there. What are we going to be turning to now that the Saffir Reserve isn't it? And if you'd like to turn directly to that, or you'd like to come back to something later on, don't forget that you'll always find the timestamps

in the show notes. So all you need to do is expand the description box to find those timestamps and links to more information about what we're talking about wherever you're watching or listening. Don't forget to like this video or podcast or give us a review and leave us a comment. We appreciate all that. Let's drag out this week's Giant Mailbag. In today's Giant Mail,

we have Kelly, the points novice who says in a recent episode, Greg and Nick talked about checking flights you have already booked to see if the price has gone down. I immediately checked our summer pre and post cruise one way flights on United. The first was the same, but the return from Fairbanks to Chicago showed saver award availability for 15,000 miles per person, down from our original booking at 30,500 miles per person. I know canceling and rebooking is standard practice for you, but it was a first for us Clicking that cancel button made me and my p2 my player to very nervous We did it anyway holding our breath the entire time until we were safely rebooked in the same seats 31,000 miles back in my account right before I read more. I think we should jump in and talk about

How we might have done that a little bit differently. Absolutely, because you didn't necessarily need to sweat out the cancellation, depending on which airline you had booked with at least, but I think most of the major US airlines would have been the same. You could just change and do a change to the same exact flight perhaps and get the difference back. Now again, that varies a little bit. Like for instance, with Southwest, it's very easy when you click to change and do that. You can just select the same exact flight you're on

and it'll show you that you're gonna get negative 15,000 miles on the change. So that might've been one way to avoid some of the sweat or nervousness over having to cancel and then rebook and pick your seats. Right. And to be clear, I'm not sure, and it sounds like Nick isn't either, whether United lets you do that.

But I've done that with Delta, Nick's done that with Southwest. It's pretty common that if you just go on to manage your trip, say change it, and then you search for flights and pick the same flight you're already booked on, the price can go down and that way you keep your same confirmation number and everything too. And of course you don't risk losing out on the award seats. But anyway, it's still the way Kelly did it, worked out great and Kelly got back more than half, just a tiny bit more than half, which was great. All right, Kelly goes on. Fast forward to the next day when I noticed the check baggage fee had not been waived. I'm a United card holder, so I called to inquire. Rookie mistake. I had paid the taxes with my Sapphire preferred instead of my United card. The agent couldn't change the method of payment for me.

So I repeated the process. Yes, including holding my breath. We are once again rebooked in the same seats, this time with free check bags. Okay. A couple, a couple of notes here. Um, first of all, uh, yeah, if you, if you want to change the credit card, then I don't think the method that we just mentioned of just clicking to change it is probably wouldn't work.

So if you want to change the credit card, you probably do need to cancel and rebook. The other thing is that United is almost unique in that you have to pay with your credit card in order to get a free check bag. Most airline credit cards that give you free check bags, the ability to get free check bags is tied to your loyalty account, your airline loyalty account, not to the way you purchase the tickets. So to find out whether, you know, the airline you're

flying on and which credit card you have, whether that applies to you, we actually have a guide for that. It's called free check bags via credit card complete guide. And we have a chart that just shows you that United and a couple other airlines do require you to pay with their airline card to get free check bags. But again, as I said, most of them do not. Yeah, as a, for instance, if you've got an American Airlines credit card that just gets tied to your

American Airlines advantage account numbers. So as long as your advantage account number is on the flight, then you'll get your free check bag. Doesn't matter what card you use to pay the taxes and fees. And even it would be possible even to have booked your flight using Partner Miles, perhaps. And as long as you get your American Airlines advantage number on that, you'd still get your free check back.

So I think that's a really important point for somebody that is a beginner, perhaps, that you won't necessarily have to worry about that with every airline. That's more of a unique-ish United thing. They're not the only ones, but one of the few. Yeah, United and Alaska is another one, I think, if I remember off the top of my head, and maybe one more, but I don't remember which one it is.

But Delta, for example, is another one that definitely just ties to your account. You don't have to use it to book the flight Mm-hmm And then Killy finishes up with thanks for all you share and everything you've taught me over the last two years since I found Your podcast I've made several basic points and miles redemptions and I'm ready to up my game So for 2026 I've challenged myself to book a luxury trip for the two of us to Hawaii For about ten days with as many Chase Capital One

City Points as we can throw at it and a cash budget of $2,500 or less. Your 100k vacay challenge will no doubt teach me some tricks to make that happen. That's excellent. Fantastic. Well done. I'm sure you can handle that, especially if you just kind of put some time and focus into learning how to use the various currencies. I think that's a very gettable goal. So good luck to you, Kelly. Totally. All right. Let's talk next about Card News.

So this week in Card News, we have an update that I don't know, maybe it will affect one of our predictions. We do predictions at the beginning of every year and I can't recall whether anybody predicted this this year or not, but Apparently the city is finally going to get with it for an ultra premium card And the city strata elite is going to be launched in the third quarter of 2025 at least if you believe whatever has been announced here, who knows? I mean it's city there's time for this to change, isn't there? There is.

This is the first time, there have been rumors about this card for a long time now. This is the first time that Citi has publicly announced it and gave a timeline of sorts, third quarter 2025. They haven't given any details what it is. There's a lot of speculation that it's a replacement of the old City Prestige card. And it could be that. But it might be something very different. We really just don't know.

We will see in the third quarter of 2025, apparently. So, so fine. If you've been waiting on Baited Breath for the City Ultra Premium card, it's coming. All right, next up, BILT is switching next year from Wells Fargo to Cardless. So it'll no longer be a Wells Fargo issued card. It will be a Cardless card that has a card. Cardless, of course, is the name of the kind of techie sort of startup credit card company. They issue a few cards that we've talked about

before the Qatar Airways cardless card and Avianca Life Miles cards years ago you may have remember them from the sports cards like the Manchester United card or New Orleans Pelicans New Orleans Pelicans cards those are no longer available but anyway Cardless has been making moves and the latest move is that they're going to be issuing the built card or I should say built cards because there are going to be three cards a no-fee card and $95 card and a $495 card we don't yet know much about those three different cards just that they're coming and that they've promised an easy transition which is kind of an important point because when they move from what was it evolved to Wells Fargo that they're coming and that they've promised an easy transition, which is kind of an important

point because when they moved from, what was it, Evolve to Wells Fargo, the transition was not so smooth. And I think they're well aware that some people at least have been pretty unhappy over that. So they certainly seem to be promising a much smoother transition this time. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, we'll see how well that goes. Hopefully it will go well. I mean, obviously the first time they switched, they had gone from a very, very small customer base to, you know, to change over to Wells Fargo. And, um, that didn't go great. Now they've got a very large customer base and they you know there's a lot of

incentive obviously to make that smooth because a lot of people will give up on them all together if it doesn't go well. Yeah yeah so hopefully we'll see something interesting not only something smooth but also something interesting with the three different tiers of cards they've also been pretty clear that the base level card they didn't say it wouldn't change, but they made it clear that existing card holders probably would be happy with whatever changes or whatever happens when that transition comes. So I'm really curious to see what ends up on the 95 and $495 cards. I think a lot of people have been curious about some

additional options from built. So I'll be curious to see what they add on those cards. I think a lot of people have been curious about some additional options from built So I'll be curious to see what they add on those cards They've also by the way made it clear that they don't intend for them to be coupon book models Let's see what that means. That's a really good point. They also told us that they don't intend for them to be Like what they so that they had surveyed members and given some examples of what the cards might they had surveyed members and given some examples of what the cards might look like in the future and it doesn't sound like they're gonna be like what what was in the

survey but we don't know we don't know we don't know we don't know yet we'll find out alright next up Bonvoid so we got a couple of Bonvoid items coming out here first up this week is the Alliant Cash Back card is changing to a flat 1.6% back everywhere on September 1st. The Alliant cash back card used to be very popular because for a while it was offering 3% back for the first year and 2.5% back every year thereafter or on subsequent purchases but then they switched things around and then if you met certain requirements you could get 2.5% back but only on the first X amount

of money per month and now it's gotten simpler but arguably quite a bit worse in that it's going to be a flat 1.6 percent back everywhere. That's not particularly interesting. There are plenty of cards on the market with no annual fee that offer 2 percent back. So if you've been putting all of your purchases on an Alliant card, which I just had this conversation with a friend a couple of weeks ago who is in that boat. So I'm going to have to give him a call and say, Hey, listen, that Alliant card here is not going to be the best card for you to use even if you just want simple cash back starting on September 1st. Right. Right. Okay.

But rounding up the Bonvoid category, we've got Eddie Hod, who's desperate to earn their merit in this category. So Eddie had has placed in this category before, because I think it was last year they made their award changes punitive in that there was no way if you canceled an award you can get back at most 75% of the miles you spent, but that was only if it was 21 days or more in advance and then it changed as it got closer in. 21 days or more in advance, and then it changed as it got closer in. Um, they decided that their policy for award changes and cancellation cancellations was not punitive and confusing enough.

So they've won up their game and dialed it up a notch. They really have. So now when you go to book an award, there are multiple sort of fair buckets of awards that you can book, starting with value, comfort, and deluxe. Now, when I've looked at business and first class awards, I've only seen comfort and deluxe as available, I think value might be limited to economy. I'm not really sure. But anyway, they now have different different change and cancellation rules for all three of those categories. And for value and comfort, I believe, the award change and

cancellation policies have gotten even worse than before. What? Is that even possible? Right. Deluxe, and I'm not going to get into details right here. You can read the post about this, but Deluxe has better than before, but you have to pay more to get into Deluxe. So I was looking at, I can't remember now if it was business or first- class awards with Eddie Hadden and you had to pay 30% more miles to get into Deluxe to make them mostly changeable and cancelable for free or for very little money depending on the timing of when you cancel or change. Yeah, and that's the whole calculation there

because then you're kind of like prepaying a cancellation penalty that, you know, it just gets kind of ugly. So yeah, that's too bad. Something to kind of like prepaying a cancellation penalty that, you know, it just gets kind of ugly. So, yeah, that's too bad. Something to kind of be aware of is that when they display the fairs now, particularly for the partner awards, don't necessarily take everything you see at face value initially. And here's what I mean. A reader had reached out saying that they didn't

expect that JetBlue awards booked through Adyahad would be blue fares or higher because they don't include free seat selection. And I had the opposite experience. I'd already booked a JetBlue award with Adyahad. I knew it did include seat selection. And then I went to write a post about the whole process of booking JetBlue awards throughout TAD. And I realized why they got that impression because on the initial award display page where it shows you're booking a value economy class flight on JetBlue, it says no seat selection, no free seat selection, among other things.

The free seat selection has a little red X saying you don't get that on a value booking, right? Except then when you get further in the process, it offers you the opportunity to select your seats for free on JetBlue. So, and you can indeed select them for free both through Adyahad and then after the fact when you're booking at JetBlue. So some of the different information they display seems to be probably more geared toward booking awards on AdTihad than on their partners. So don't buy too much into what it says

about those types of things. What you do need to be aware of, of course, are those really complicated and highly punitive cancellation fees. So check out the post. Also don't buy into what it says about how many points it costs, right? Ooh, yeah, that's also a great point because it doesn't cost whatever it says it costs,

which makes all sorts of sense. Thanks for that. I had to hide. Yeah. So in fact, and I wrote this in the post also, I had booked one where the tickets were 6,000 points apiece. That's what it showed for the JetBlue flight that I booked. 6,000 points per per passenger and it shows that price all the way through until you get to the final checkout screen when you find out it's six thousand thirty points per passenger why i don't know there's no way to know until you get to that final checkout screen exactly what that is so uh so i preemptively transferred over a few extra points i would probably have transferred over a few extra points. I would probably have transferred over a few less than I did if I knew exactly what it was gonna be,

but kind of annoying. Thanks for that, Etad. Thanks, Etihad. All right, so let's talk more about points, awards points and more. Tell me, what news do you have to share here under awards points and more this week? All right, so

you remember how booking preferred hotels with points has been a Big problem in that all kinds of things can go wrong when you when you try to do that. So a little background there there are two good ways of booking preferred hotels with points. And when I say good ways, I mean good value ways. One way is to use choice points, and they have a selection of preferred hotels that you can book with choice points. Another is using I prefer points, which is preferred hotels own points.

And in the past, when I've wanted to book a preferred hotel, I was able to do so with choice points but not with preferred points. There seemed to be a lot of problems with booking through the I prefer program at all. And so that was a good news for choice point bookers, but the bad news was like the reservation was all messed up in that the hotel tried to collect actual cash from me when they weren't supposed to and everything. And that's happened to other people too, who have written in.

And on the I prefer side though, you can sometimes get much better value because you can transfer from Citibank, thank you points, one to four to I prefer. And so that can make for some great value with your city points. And just the other day I went back to bat to try to mix my metaphor and kick that football. And because the value was just so good. And so I found some, I found a hotel that we really want to stay at.

It would be great value of city points. And I went ahead and I transferred the points from city, you know, across my fingers. And then I went into Bucket and there was absolutely no problem at all. And in fact, it was, yeah, it was kind of what, you know, a lot, it was kind of a complicated ish booking in that I wanted two rooms, uh, with, uh, two people in one room, one person in the other.

And the interface let me pick all that. It priced it exactly right. Checkout was totally fine. Um, I got an email confirmation right away. And I got another one saying that my elite status with Preferred Hotels was recognized and here's all the benefits I should expect. So I haven't stayed yet, so I can't promise that I won't get Bonvoid in the end. But so far, it's looking good.

So what you're saying is there's time. I'll report back in a few weeks. Well, that's looking good. So what you're saying is there's time. There's time. I'll report back in a few weeks. Well, that's good though. So far so good. It actually looks pretty normal. So that's great. I'll be really curious to hear if it all goes smoothly like the whole check-in process

and nobody trying to charge you a cash rate. That stuff all kind of matters. So we'll see how that part of it goes. It does matter. But the reason I'm hopeful is because this is booking through Preferred Hotel's own system. So I think that where the hotels get confused

is when you're booking with Choice Points. And so it looks to them like a cash booking because of the weird way they do that partnership. Yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense. Well, good. That's exciting news. And, you know, I keep thinking I need to check them a little bit more often. I had a couple of times I've checked. I never find something around where I'm going,

but I need to keep looking. And do we have a map view of where all of the I preferred hotels are? That's what we need. We need like a Google map that shows where all of the properties that you can book with either I prefer points or with choice privileges points actually are. Yeah, no we don't. We don't realize that. Yeah, yeah, I'd love to be able to see that. So there we go. There's a request for Craig the Frequent Myler. All right, let's talk more about travel and points as we get into this week's main event. Main event time. Our next all travel card. Yeah, we used to be all about the Sapphire reserve card because it, until recently, offered three points per dollar for travel and dining.

And the travel category is very broadly defined. And the card also offered and offered and still offers great travel protections, six hour trip delay, and things like medical and dental coverage, which very few cards offer that, the $100,000 worth of evacuation coverage, emergency evacuation coverage. So that combination was really nice. And if you had the card before what June 23rd, you still have the 3X for travel until October 26. And then what happens is the travel category becomes just 4X specifically for airfare and hotels and not for all that other stuff. You will get 8X for all travel booked through Chase Travel, but then that limits you to

just what's available through that portal and including whatever the rates are through that portal, which might not be as good as you can find elsewhere. Quick question on that. The 4X on flights and hotels and the 8X booking through Chase for existing card holders who had the card before June 23rd, do those rates not kick in until October

or are they already effective now? No, that's right. They don't kick in until October 26th. Yeah, okay. Very good. So yeah, great travel protections and it did offer an excellent bonus on travel in general. But after October 26th for existing card holders

or I should say pre-existing card holders or already for those who recently got the Sapphire Reserve card. It's not necessarily the best for all travel because it doesn't bonus lots and lots of different categories you might spend on when you travel. Right. And so that's why we have this main event to talk about.

Okay, well, what should your broad travel card be now that this is no longer it if you're booking anything other than flights and hotels or travel through chase? Yeah, we dug into the details of various travel cards, various popular travel cards to look at. Can we find one that offers good earnings for not just flights and hotels, but also car rentals, cruises, trains, taxis, ride shares, and even parking.

The Sapphire Reserve used to offer 3X for all of those things and more. And can we find one that not only offers good earnings for all that, but also offers good travel protections? So what do we have? First up, let's talk about what else is in Chase's inventory. You have the Inc Business Preferred card, which earns 3X for all travel, broadly defined, just like the Sapphire Reserve. So if you really loved your 3X for all travel and earning 3X ultimate rewards points for all travel, you still get that with Ink Business Preferred for now. I'm pretty darn sure that Chase is going to at some point in the next some number of months,

maybe a year, refresh this card. And then, you know, I think it's likely that they'll do something like what they did with the Sapphire Reserve to it. But in the meantime, we still have that 3X opportunity. The downside is that the travel protections aren't as good as the Sapphire Reserves. So for example, even though you do get primary car rental coverage, it's only primary within the US if you're traveling for work purposes, for business purposes, because this is a business card. Instead of six hour trip delay, it has 12 hour, there's no medical or dental coverage, there's no emergency evacuation and transportation.

All right, so that's a reasonable replacement, but not quite as good on the travel protection front. We also, if you aren't interested in a business card, then you also have the option of the Sapphire Preferred card, which offers 2X on all travel, again, broadly defined, and the same types of travel protections. So not bad on the travel protection side. The 12 hour trip delay is decent for a card that only costs 95 dollars a year.

It's got decent travel coverage, but not great travel coverage. And again, I think it doesn't have the does it have the emergency medical or dental? I don't think so. I'm a Sapphire preferred either. Right. So essentially the same protections that Greg just mentioned, some no K choice, although 2x for all travel 2x is like, not that good anymore. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Of course, if you're if you're willing to book travel through the Sapphire Reserve portal with a new

Sapphire Reserve card, Getting 8X on all travel is great, but I mean, there's lots of types of travel that we want to get bonus that you can't book through the portal, like parking, like ride shares and things like that, taxis. So that's not going to do it for you. And As I mentioned earlier, you're not always going to get as good of pricing by going through the portal. So I don't think of that as a realistic everywhere travel solution to always go through the portal. Very true, very true. Yeah.

I think that last part that you're not going to have access to the same pricing is really an important piece. People often ask, why don't we talk about booking car rentals through credit card portals like this? And the main reason is because the prices are usually significantly higher than what you can get elsewhere. So the 8X or 10X or whatever it is that's offered, depending on which card and which issuer you're talking about, just typically doesn't appeal to me because the prices are so much higher than what I pay elsewhere. So that's less exciting to me than it perhaps sounds at first glance.

Yeah, totally. All right. So now let's quickly mention a couple of popular travel cards that didn't make the cut because their definition of travel is way too narrow. One is the City Strata Premier card. That one earns three points per dollar for flights, hotels, and travel agencies. That's it. So it's pretty similar to the new Sapphire Reserve as far as which categories of bonuses. The Ritz card, I only included it here because I think Nick and I have personally talked about using it instead of the Sapphire Reserve at times for booking travel because it has the same great travel protections that the Sapphire Reserve has. But it only bonuses, as far as travel goes, only bonuses airline and car rental and Marriott hotels. That's it as far as travel bonus. So it doesn't really qualify in our roundup here.

No, definitely not. It's a card that I still consider using and do still use sometimes for award taxes. For instance, when I'm paying $5.60 in award taxes, for instance, when I'm paying $5.60 in award taxes, I'm not terribly concerned about whether it's the most rewarding travel card on the market. I'm more interested in the travel protections than I am the couple of points per dollar on such a small purchase. But if I were purchasing major travel expenses, obviously, first of all, it doesn't even bonus most of them. But second of all, if I'm spending thousands of dollars, then it becomes much more important to me what the rewards are on that spend along with the travel protections. So the Ritz card is not a good choice for even large purchases in

the areas where it does offer a bonus category and certainly not in things that are otherwise unboned. So yeah, so there you have the RIDs card. We have a few cards that almost made the cut right, but not quite. Yeah, yeah. So so there's a few more cards that have a have a broader definition of travel, but not quite everything we're looking for. So one is the built card, which offers 2X for travel and travels defined as airlines, hotels, motels, resorts, cruise lines, and car rental agencies. Now, if you think about what I just said, three of the items are really

hotels. So hotels, motels, resorts. So what we really have are airlines, hotels, cruise lines, and car rental agencies. So we're missing things like trains, taxis, ferries, parking. You know, there's quite a bit missing from that one. Yep, the Altitude Reserve offers 3X on travel, but it's also similarly missing ferries and parking. It does cover a number of other popular categories, but missing those. This Altitude Reserve does have decent travel protections, primary car rental, six-hour trip delay, etc., but no medical or dental and no luggage delay protection on the altitude reserve. It's a fairly uncommon perk these days to have

luggage delay protection, but that is something that Chase cards do have. And then finally, we have the US Bank Altitude Connect cards, the consumer version and the business version, both of which offer 4% or 4X on travel, which is again fairly broadly applicable. Airlines, hotels, car rental agencies, taxis, limousines, there's quite a few things that are included in that travel sort of category. But the Altitude Connect card on the consumer side has 12 hour trip delay protection, so not as good as some of the leading cards on the market.

And the business version of the card does have auto rental collision damage waiver and lost luggage insurance, but I don't know about their trip delay protection on the business version of the card. At any rate, they're not the most, or the best, rather, I should say, travel protections on those particular cards. Right.

No, exactly. All right. Let's talk about some that do offer really broad definitions of travel and give bonuses for those. One is the Amex Green Card, which offers 3X for a slew of things. They broke out travel and transit as two separate categories, but it's 3X for both. So under travel, you've got airfare, hotels, tours, campgrounds, vacation rentals. For transit, you have things like trains, taxi cabs, rideshare services, ferries, parking, buses and subways.

Tolls. Yeah, tolls. So it's really, really broad. The travel protections, not great. You've got secondary car rental coverage. You've got 12 hour trip delay. You have baggage insurance, but you don't have, you know, delayed bag coverage. Yeah, so I mean, it's not necessarily a bad choice. It does offer a pretty wide range of three acts. So when it comes to the purchase side,

decent travel protection side, not what we want, not bad, but not our ideal. So that's a good choice, not a great, great choice yet. How about the Bank of America Premium Rewards Elite Card? This is a card we don't talk about very much. You've heard us talk about the Bank of America Premium Rewards Card more than once or twice before probably, particularly because of the boost in earnings. If you keep a number of or an amount of savings or especially retirement accounts be a great way

to meet the minimum requirements to earn a greater return on many of your Bank of America cards in terms of your spend. The Premium Rewards Elite card we don't talk about as often because this is a more expensive card at five hundred and fifty dollars per year, but it does have a pretty broad definition of travel. Of course, travel only earns two X ordinarily on this card, so it wouldn't be terribly interesting to begin with. Although if you do have Bank of America preferred, what is it, Platinum Honors or preferred rewards, Platinum Honors. So that means you have $100,000

in cash or investments with Bank of America or Merrill Edge or Merrill Lynch, then you get a 75% bonus. So you could get as much as three and a half points per dollar or 3.5% back really is what it amounts to on a wide range of travel categories. So I mean, of course it includes the things like airlines and hotels and car rentals that we talked about, but there are things like parking lots and garages, tolls and bridge fees and tourist attractions. That's an interesting one, like exhibits and art galleries, amusement parks, carnivals,

circuses, et cetera. So quite a range of different things that you might spend on. So that's kind of interesting that it includes a lot of stuff that I wouldn't necessarily include in a travel category, but that I would spend money on while I travel. Yeah, yeah, no, it is interesting, you know, because it really does seem like between this and dining, which is another thing they bonus, they've pretty much got most of your travel expenses covered, right? So that's pretty darn good. But as you said, like a downside is, well, the points are not transferable.

So you can't get that kind of outsized value that you can get with the other programs we've been talking about. You can get 1.25 cents per point value if you book flights through the Bank of America travel portal. Unfortunately, those flights are often overpriced, so you're not necessarily actually getting outs outside value that way. The reason that this is still a strong contender, even though the rewards aren't exciting, is that the travel protections are really good. This is the closest I've found to matching what Chase offers with the Sapphire Reserve and the Ritz card. As far as travel protections go, you do have your primary car coverage.

You have your six hour trip delay. You've got baggage delay coverage and $100,000 emergency evacuation coverage. You don't have the medical and dental, but it seems like pretty much everything else is there to match up with the Sapphire Reserve's travel protections really well. So, you know, I could totally see someone, especially if what you're mostly interested in is cash back using this one as an effective, you know,

everywhere travel card. Yeah. I mean, if you have, especially if you have platinum monitor status and it's three and a half percent back on quite a wide range, but basically almost everything you're going to be spending money on while you're traveling. So that's a reasonable return to get. It's not as good, not as exciting to me as three transferable points per dollar. But if you're more of a cash back person, it's a really good return on a wide, wide range of stuff with good

travel protections. And this card also, not that this is weighing into this particular discussion, but it also has a pretty good priority pass, right? It does. You know, it lets you not only get priority pass, which lets you into priority pass restaurants and, you know, as well as of course the airport lounges. But you can also give this version of Priority Pass to up to four people total, counting yourself. And you don't have to add them as authorized users. You can just actually just set up four different Priority Pass accounts. And that's really unusual and a really nice feature. Now this card is $550 a year, but it has a number of coupons, let's say,

where you get back, you know, you get back money for spend. I forget off the top of my head, but there are categories that would be pretty easy to, if you use this card for pretty much everything, it'd be pretty easy to just get that money back in my opinion. And so you would be, if I remember right, I don't know, it wouldn't fully refund the annual fee, but it would get it, you know, maybe within $150 or something like that somewhere in that range. Yeah so it's certainly a reasonable card to consider for somebody who's

primarily interested in cash. All right also from Bank of America you get the premium rewards card. Now we just talked about premium rewards elite card that has a $550 annual fee but now we're going to switch gears to the Bank of America premium rewards card which has a $95 annual fee, but now we're going to switch gears to the Bank of America Premium Rewards card, which has a $95 annual fee. This is the card that we more frequently have talked about overall. It has the same earnings and travel categories as the Bank of America Premium Rewards Elite, but the travel coverages aren't quite as good. So you get secondary car rental coverage, which means if you've got primary, you've got insurance, car insurance, then that would count first and this would be secondary. 12 hour trip delay coverage, trip cancellation,

baggage delay, lost luggage, et cetera. So it does still include decent travel protections, just 12 hours rather than six hours on your trip delay coverage and secondary rather than primary on your car rental coverage. Otherwise, pretty decent and comparable coverages. Yeah, yeah, not bad at all. So that's worth looking at too.

Then on the Wells Fargo front, we've got the autograph card and the autograph journey card. They both offer three X for travel broadly defined. What the Autograph Journey Card adds is 5X for hotels and 4X for airlines and then 3X for all other travel. But you do have to pay $95 for the Autograph Journey Card, whereas the Autograph Card has no annual fee.

And they have the really broad definition of what travel is. Airline, hotels, timeshare, vehicle rentals, cruise lines, travel agencies, discount travel sites, campgrounds, passenger railway, taxis, limousines, ferries, toll bridges and highways, and parking lots and garages. So quite a quite a lot going on there. The real downside to these, even though they have these really good earning category, and even though Wells Fargo, these cards now earn transferable points to a small collection of airline programs and hotel programs. That's the good news. But the bad news

is there's not much going on with travel protections. So you don't have trip delay, you've got secondary car coverage. You do have a few things on the Autograph Journey card like travel accident coverage and lost baggage and trip cancellation, but you don't have those on the autograph. You just don't know how to grab journey. Yeah, you know, it's disappointing because these cards have so much potential, but without travel protections, it makes it really hard for me to consider the card as a serious travel contender. I would totally use the Wells Fargo autograph journey to pay for hotels when I'm paying a check out for the five points per dollar at hotels that can then be transferred to

at least a few airline and hotel transfer partners. They don't have the broadest selection of partners, but I'd be happy to collect 5X nonetheless when I'm paying a checkout. But I'd be pretty hesitant to book much travel far in advance with a card that doesn't have better travel protections. So that's kind of a big piece to me, the travel protection. So I can't really consider these serious contenders personally. I mean, would you put expensive flights

and prepaid hotels on a card that has no trip delay coverage and limited other travel protections? Yeah, not if I can help it. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so that's the to me the the Wells Fargo cards will be a hard sell for for that purpose. But they do offer a good bonus category and a wide range of spend. So certainly if I was paying for parking, for instance, if I lived in a big city and I was paying a monthly parking fee, well then, you know, that obviously might earn me some points to begin with. And depending on which types of travel you spend on, I don't know, maybe those cards have a place but I would be leaning more towards the Bank of America cards for similar return

on a lot of travel and just not quite as good on the airline and hotel front. But that's just me. What about you? What's your pick out of these? So the Sapphire Reserve has changed. It's not as good as it once was. So I know you've got to be looking at your other options here. What stands out to you as the card you're using now or going to be using for your travel

span moving forward? Yeah. to be using for your travel span moving forward? Yeah, so I still have until October 26th with my Sapphire Reserve card to keep using it as my all travel card and I will until then. At that point, maybe I'll be doing the City Strata Elite card. We'll see. We'll see what that offers, but it seems unlikely that that'll do very well for this general travel category. So, you know, I don't know for sure what I'm going to do, but the ones that are appealing to me are the Ink business preferred for as long as that lasts for 3x everywhere and as you said the Bank of America premium rewards card and I could imagine you know saying at some point that you you know what, I'm willing to give up the bigger rewards in order to have the

decent rewards and the peace of mind of knowing I have all that travel coverage. Knowing myself though, what I'm really most likely to do is turn to the Sapphire Reserve card for hotels and airfare and use whatever card earns the most for when I'm booking trains and parking and blah, blah, blah. So that way I'll still get Forex for hotels and airfare and great travel coverage there. For that other stuff, I'm not usually expecting to need coverage for those other kinds of things. Unless, like if I was booking an expensive train trip, then I would look hard at, maybe there I do wanna book through Bank of America, book with my Bank of America card

because I really want to book through Bank of America, you know, book with my Bank of America card because I really want good protections or just give up the earnings, you know, on the sufferers or be willing to suck up getting one exit. I can't see myself doing that. I can't see you doing that either. No, I don't think, well, maybe dead anyway, somebody would have to tell you, come on, Craig, snap out of it. You know, I think that the thing for me is most of my significant travel spend and I don't spend it. I don't know, I feel like I don't spend a wild amount of money on travel spend, at least not enough that's going to make a huge difference in my points balance at the end of the year

compared to the welcome bonuses I earn or various other regular category bonuses. So I don't obsess over the points per dollar on travel spend. That said, the things that I spend the most on in the travel categories are without a doubt airlines and hotels. So the Sapphire Reserve is still going to cover that. I don't spend a ton on ferries or trains or parking or any of those other things So for the most part, I'm not too concerned about the earnings on those in terms of like The loss of earnings. However, however, if you're booking like a cruise or something I'm not gonna do that at 1x on the Sapphire Reserve. That wouldn't make a lot of sense to me So right so I think you know, in that kind of a case, you really do probably need to look at the travel protections. And I, I think I agree. I think the Bank of America premium rewards

card would probably become my go to because at effectively 3.5% back, if you got platinum honor status and acceptably decent travel protections. Uh, I think that that seems like the best combination. And if we ever did get a premium rewards elite card in our household, then I think it would be almost a no brainer. I think that that would have to be my card to book a cruise or an expensive ferry or something like that.

Yeah. Because of the combination of getting well rewarded and good travel protections. The staff, the altitude reserve card though, for the time being, has become my other travel card because it covers most of the things that I'm likely to spend money on, including cruises. So I still have the altitude reserve card. I did use it recently actually on a cruise for my onboard purchases in order to get the 3x on that because those points can be used at one and a half cents per point towards travel. Effectively, it's kind of like a four and a half percent back. So the altitude reserve does cover most of the categories I spend

on. So right now that tends to be the one that's getting most of my other travel spend. And we'll see moving forward whether that continues to be the case. Plus with that card, you get 3X for tap to pay as well. Right. And so when you're paying through your phone and so a lot of those other miscellaneous things can often be paid for that way, like you're tapping on and off in a subway or wherever. So I think that's a really good choice. Unfortunately, it's not available new to people who are interested in that one.

So it's not a great one for us to recommend at this point, except to say, nah, nah, nah, nah, we got it when we could, which is not our way. No, no, it's not. But but but we do like the card collectibles. And we do. We do mention when they are collectibles that you should pick up because sometimes it's worth hanging on to them. Yeah. Anyway, so all right. Good discussion there, I think in terms of what there is to use and what there is to get and consider when you're booking your travel moving forward. I

think that brings us to this week's question of the week. So this week's question of the week came in via email from Dan and Dan has a couple different questions, but I think I'm going to pick out one specific one. So Dan says, I have a few cards that I'd like to close some to get a new welcome bonus. Some I have no use for specifically. I have the chase Inc. Business Unlimited, which I rarely use because I also have the freedom unlimited I'm both offer one and a half points per dollar on otherwise on bonus purchases It'd be nice to get the introductory bonus again on the ink unlimited Seconds my US bank altitude go which from a product change

Which I got from a product change. It did because my original card was discontinued. It's not my oldest card and it makes sense to me to close that one and allocate that available credit to something more useful. What's the best strategy to go about closing cards with the intention of opening new ones without anchoring the approval gods? So in order to obviously increase the odds of getting approved in the future. So what do you think? What's your strategy on closing cards in order to get approved but obviously increase the odds of getting approved in the future. So what do you think?

What's your strategy on closing cards in order to get approved for new ones? And specifically, I'm curious if your thoughts about the Inc. Business Unlimited conundrum that Dan finds himself in, in terms of whether to keep or cancel that one. Yeah. So there's a couple of things going on there,

but first, let me say that in many cases, you can get a new card without closing the one you have. And that's true with the ink cards. You don't necessarily have to close what you have in order to get a new one. And so I would try that first. I don't like closing cards, especially if they have no annual fee already. I would consider closing it only if there's a rule against getting it again, if you already have it, which we have a guide to that. You can look that up and see what the rules are for each issuer and major cards they have. Then I would consider it or consider product changing. So could your product change to a different no annual fee if what you want is to sign up for a particular card again and get the bonus again for that?

There is sometimes an advantage to canceling cards because there are some sometimes cases where a bank is concerned with how much credit that you have outstanding and they don't want to give you more credit. However, in many cases, especially with Chase, you can call the reconsideration line and say, I actually don't want more credit. You can take away, you can call the reconsideration line and say, I actually don't want more credit. You can take away, you can move credit from a different one of my chase cards to this one, if you're willing to open that for me. Now you can only do that like within personal cards or within business cards, you can't cross that divide, but they're usually pretty flexible with that. Yeah, and that's, I think, another piece that Dan had been curious about.

And so you'll sometimes hear people talk about the maximum exposure that Chase is willing to extend. And somehow they have some magical formula where they figure out how much credit they're willing to extend you individually and how they determine that as a mystery. I don't know how they determine it. I don't have any insight into the algorithms they use, but they look at you and your profile and whatever and say, OK, we're willing to extend this person this much credit overall overall of their cards.

And so, you know, with with Chase specifically, that will happen sometimes where you can get a whole bunch of cards, but you can't necessarily get more credit. It's usually easy to reallocate that over the phone like Greg said. And the maximum exposure numbers, I don't know whether it's a single number across all your business and consumer cards or separate numbers for the business side and separate for the consumer side. At any rate, like Greg said, you can't typically move credit line from business to consumer the other way around at least not with chase Barclays I think does sometimes allow that when you're opening a new card. I think sometimes

they will allow you to shift from business to personal or vice versa but that's rare. It's not something that's common with most issuers. Most issuers has to stay on one side or the other. So I don't have any insight as to how they determine that but I know that that does happen. And like Greg said, it's usually relatively easy to call and just shift things around. So yeah, I think Greg said exactly what I was thinking

on the ink unlimited card. I, there's no reason in my opinion to get rid of it. If you're running into that maximum exposure thing and you'd rather try for an automatic approval than having to call and speak to someone. A technique some people use is calling in to reduce the credit limit on their existing chase cards because if you have a large limit, perhaps you're bumping up against that maximum

exposure. So maybe if you reduce the limit on your existing cards, it'll give you better odds of getting an instant approval in the future. Personally, I don't believe strongly in that technique because I think that once you do that, you give up a bargaining chip that you would have had to be able to call reconsideration and say,

hey, I don't need all the available credit on card X. Can we move some of that to get card Y open? If you've already reduced the credit limit on card X, then you lose that bargaining chip. So I don't recommend that, but you'll find that some people do. Some people say that they think you should do that. And so I share that idea so you can make your own decisions.

But overall, yeah, I tend to keep cards that have no annual fee. Some people may also wanna just simplify and have fewer accounts to track, but on cards with no annual fee, I don't worry too much about getting rid of them if they're not directly impacting my odds of getting approved for one reason or another.

And I can't think of very many situations where those become a huge issue for people. Yeah, no, that's right. One more thing specifically about the Ink Business Card is that if you don't already have an Ink Business Cash Card, it can totally make sense to product change to the Business Cash, and then if you wanna sign up for another business unlimited, that's fine.

The Business Cash has some 5X categories that can be really handy, including office supply stores and phone and internet and whatever. And so that's just a good card to have handy, even if you rarely use it, the opportunity to get 5x for certain categories of 5x ultimate rewards points, which then can be moved to another card like the Sefer Preferred, the Sefer Reserve to make those points transferable to partners. Yep. Very good. All right. That, my friends, brings us to the end of this week's episode. If you've enjoyed what we've talked about today and you'd like to get more of this stuff in your email inbox each day or each week, you want to go to frequentmiler.com

slash subscribe to join our email lists. You can follow us on all the various social media and join our frequentmiler insiders Facebook group where you can ask questions like this one and get lots of different opinions from different members of the group. Wherever you're watching or listening, don't forget to give us a like and a thumbs up. And if you have a question that you would like to be considered for a future question of the week or a piece of feedback that you'd like to be considered for a future giant mailbag, you can send that to 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 stories, you'll get the tools to travel smarter and see the world differently. Find revolutionizing your journey at voyascape.com.