Frequent Miler on the Air - Pandemic vacation, take 3 | Ep61 | 8-29-20

Episode Date: August 29, 2020

1:02 Mailbag: Nick closes the loop on Capital One and offers Confession Time 7:13 What crazy thing did Citi do this week? https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-08-21/bofa-customer-opens-mobile-app-and-finds-an-extra-2-45-billion 9:50 Mattress Running the Numbers: Is the Marriott status challenge worth mattress running? https://frequentmiler.boardingarea.com/marriott-instant-status-match-challenge-from-ihg-hilton-hyatt-and-accor/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVurTjC6afE&t=1933s 19:28 Main Event: Pandemic Vacation Take 3 https://frequentmiler.boardingarea.com/miraval-berkshires-resort-my-failed-attempt-to-double-dip-deals/ https://frequentmiler.boardingarea.com/madison-beach-hotel-curio-collection-by-hilton-bottom-line-review/ 51:40 Question of the Week: Does opening credit cards affect your insurance rates? Don't forget to like & subscribe for more! Go to www.TheFrequentMiler.com/Subscribe. Music credit: Annie Yoder

frequent miler on the air starts now today's episode is all about my pandemic vacation my latest one this time i flew to yes my previous one i drove this one is flying it's like the whole shamil shamazel do you know what show that's from? I don't. I was like, as soon as you said it, I was like, I'd never heard that before. I've heard a lot of expressions, but not Shamil Shamazel. What? That's Laverne and Shirley. Do you know that show? You know, I do. Yes. I remember, I remember like the conveyor belt in the beginning and the song.

That's right. That's right. So part of the song was Shamil Shamazel, except for a corporate or something like that. Anyway. There you go. See, I remember it in reruns. It was at least that's my vague memory of it. I probably watch it again.

It's nothing like that. Anyway. So, yeah. So that's our main event. Yes. Right. Right. But first, of course, it's time for you to drag out the giant mailbag

here it comes see what's in there all right today oops i accidentally pulled out two things two look at that two one two they're both what they're both from you for me from you but what are the chances i can't read this handwriting that you're gonna have to you're gonna have to read them to us what does this say you know i don't know if greg's ever actually read this handwriting that you're going to have to, you're going to have to read them to us. What does this say? You know, I don't know if Greg's ever actually read my handwriting, but that statement would be really accurate. So terrible handwriting. So,

so two things from the, the, the mailbag this week, which are both really for me, like Greg said. So the first one I wanted to kind of close the loop because we talked about my, my capital one shenanigans a few weeks ago and how I upgraded my garbage card to a venture card.

And then the annual fee. Well, first of all, I got a MasterCard, a Venture MasterCard. And then the annual fee online was still showing the $39 for my old garbage card. So I get kind of excited about that. And then downside, I couldn't generate referral links. So, all right. Fast forward a couple of weeks and about a week ago or so, I saw a doctor of credit reported on Twitter that a whole bunch of people had had

their Capital One credit line slashed down to almost nothing. And I thought, oh, geez, I haven't used like my Venture One card apart from transferring miles and forever. And my wife has a one or two she hasn't used in a long time. So I thought, man, we're going to end up with all of our lines slashed. So I logged in to see and lo and behold, my credit line was not slashed. But positive note, all of a sudden I had the ability to generate referral links. So my MasterCard now can. So apparently that is not something limited to Visa after all. However, in the meantime, I received a letter in the mail from Capital One letting me know that despite what I might see online, my

next annual fee will indeed be $95, almost like they were listening to this podcast. The wording in it was very clear that though you may see something different online, I felt like it was the way it was worded was so funny that it was almost like they were listening. So definitely not going to get out of the next $95 annual fee. I'll get it this year for the $39 that I already paid. But you should be able to recoup more than that for referrals, hopefully. And do people who click on your referral end up with a MasterCard or a visa? They'll end up with a visa, yeah.

So I checked that out to see, and yeah, it clicks through to the regular Capital One Venture visa. They'll end up with a visa. Yeah. So I checked that out to see, and yeah, it clicks through to the regular Capital One Venture Visa. So it's the same one that Jennifer Gardner's excited about all the time. Exactly. Exactly. Maybe Jennifer can use my referral link because I'm sure she doesn't actually have the card. So, so that just wanted to close the loop on that one that yes, indeed, the annual fee will be the higher amount, not the lower amount. And apparently I can't generate the referral links now. So I have so so that was number one. Number two was confession time. Oh, everybody loves confession time. I can't wait. Confession time. So we talked recently about our wallets and about simplifying the wallets. And Greg has mentioned, well, first of all, Greg used to label all of the cards, right? And we talked just a few weeks ago about how he found that it was simpler for his wife to just make it like two cards. And then you don't have to worry

about the labels and, you know, happy wife, happy life and all that. And I've said before that my wife is, you know, pretty well into the game. She knows a decent amount. She likes to manufacture spend and stuff like that. But I try to keep things kind of simple-ish in her wallet. But clearly, I need the labels. Because she went to the grocery store last week and used the Amex Marriott Bonvoy card that earns two points per dollar at the grocery store.

And then she went for a massage and used her Amex Gold card that earns two points per dollar at the grocery store. And then she went for a massage and used her Amex gold card that earns one point per dollar instead of something that earns like two and a half percent cash back in her wallet. And then I called her on it and I said, first of all, I said, which card do you use at the grocery store? Just a pop quiz. And she said, the Amex Marriott right now, right? And I was like, well, at least you thought you were doing the right thing, but no. And so I told her, no, it's not earning a bonus. Should use this card, blah, blah, blah. And she looked at me and she said, you need to make me labels. I love it.

So, so labels it is. Labels are coming out. So it was my confession time that in my household, we have given up some free points these last couple of weeks. Right, right. I mean, in her defense, it's been really confusing. All these enhanced earning bonuses keep changing. And so, you know, what was grocery last month is gas station or whatever this month. And so. Exactly. Exactly.

I don't blame her. I don't blame her. And that's why I said no. I said dining and gas. She said gas station and grocery, right's, I said, no, I said dining and gas. She said gas station and grocery. Right. And I was like, no dining in gas station,

not grocery. That's okay. What are you going to do? So. Yeah. I almost made the same exact mistake as that. The grocery store, like started to pull out the,

the Bonvoy card. Like, Nope. Exactly. What they want to do. That's exactly. Yeah. You know, these short-term bonuses. That's the idea. Exactly. Hold the habit. You like, nope. That's exactly what they wanted you to do. That's exactly what these short-term bonuses. That's the idea, build the habit.

Exactly. Hopefully you keep it up. And hopefully my wife doesn't keep it up, but I'll have to put labels on. So hopefully we'll get that squared away. So I wanted to confess though, that we mess up that way in my household. Greg mentioned sometimes happens to him.

So happens to all of us, a little confusing. Maybe those labels aren't such a bad idea. Yeah, it's a great low tech solution. So I think I should address for those watching on video, why I'm huddling in the dark. We're not filming a horror movie in secret. There's not going to about to be a twist. Somebody with a knife that attacks Greg. Don't worry. All right. Don't be scared. Right. Right. It's just, you know, I'm hiding from the law. No, I'm in a B&B in Newport, Rhode Island. And, you know, it's a great B&B, but the lighting's not great in our room.

So this is what you're going to see. There you go anyway first before i talk more about that it's time for mattress running the numbers no it isn't it's not it's time for what what crazy thing did city do this week trying to skip ahead of us you could tell them on vacation i don't know you've got to keep me on my toes here. Right, exactly. How quickly we forget. So what crazy thing did Citi do this week? Yeah.

So this week, we've got crazy this week. Not from Citi this week. But Bank of America borrowed a piece of Citi's playbook and tried to give away two and a half billion dollars. So some Bank of America customer opened up his Bank of America app and found an extra, I think it was $2.4 billion

in his account. Yeah, not bad. Not bad. He actually, he thought Bank of America would just figure it out themselves, but they didn't. So he had to contact Bank of America to get that issue resolved, which... Which they said was a display issue, right? The money wasn't really there.

It was just a display issue. It's a little too bad he didn't test it out to see, you know, could he buy a few yachts before he goes away? Right. I mean, you know, he could have at least flashed his balance a few places and been like, Hey, I can afford this. Let me test drive that Ferrari. Cause look at the bank account. Yeah. So, you know, probably not a big deal. I mean,

they didn't actually give away any money as you know, but not like city, not like city last week. It's really a giveaway. deal. I mean, they didn't actually give away any money. Not like Citi. Not like Citi last week. Not like Citi that actually literally gave it away. This time they just kind of made it look like the guy had two and a half billion. If we could believe them anyway. Right. If we believe them. Because it's highly possible the money was in there. Who would know? It's all just zeros and ones on a computer screen, right? Right. Right. It'd be cool if it was an interest-bearing account and if he actually

earned interest for the time it was in there. cool if it was an interest-bearing account and if he actually earned interest for the time it was in there. I think it was a brokerage account though, wasn't it? I think it was on the Merrill Edge side, so. Yeah, probably. So yeah, yeah. It was probably just a cash account with no interest. If only he had invested that for a week.

I mean, the market's been booming lately, right? That would have been sweet. He'd be like, yeah, I bought, you know, Amazon. Right. Right. Bought Amazon. Yeah, literally. Oh man. So, all right. So Bank of America got a little crazy for us this week. Thank you Bank of America for playing along. We appreciate that. So then. We always appreciate these things. Then Greg is right. Now it is time for Mattress Running the Numbers. See, I was right. It was very close. We were almost there.

So Mattress Running the Numbers, Marriott came out with a new promo today. Right. So my understanding is they're back with their old status challenge in a way. It's a variant on it, right? So way back when, in fact, my first time getting Marriott status, platinum status, was through a challenge where you get status for a certain period of time. And during that time, if you meet whatever the challenge requirements are, you get to keep that status for the next year and a half approximately. Depends when you started, that's how long it is. But that approach of where you have status temporarily has mostly gone away.

You know, most chains now say you're going to meet the terms, then we'll give you the status. And that makes it less fun because then you can't just sign up for the challenge in order to have a good stay somewhere. Which doesn't really make sense to me because, you know, if you're going to try to attract people from another chain, you would think that you do have to offer them the benefits because they already have theoretically some sort of benefit in whatever program they're loyal with now. So if you're not offering them the benefits temporarily,

then they have to give up the benefits they could easily have on their, their chosen program in order to stay with you. So it just makes sense to me that you would give those benefits up front if you're going to do the challenge, but they haven't been for a while now. Nobody has. I remember Hyatt used to be very generous with theirs. And the truth is we did regularly, we meaning sort of this community did regularly game that you know right in fact we would write things uh you know a lot of blogs would write you know sign up for this card and you get two free nights but if you um there was a time where the two free nights were sweets if you had diamond status which was the top tier at the time. And so they'd say, no, sign up for the challenge, then sign up for the card and you get all that.

So we were definitely gaming it. And so I can understand why Hyatt pulled back from that. Anyway, so it's kind of neat to see Marriott bring that back, the ability to get the status up front. It is, yeah. And nice if you have a stay coming up where those benefits will come in handy, which, of course, is going to be a little variable right now

because I think the way everybody's handling elite benefits might vary a little bit in terms of what they're offering. And then I don't think Marriott's guaranteeing the benefits at this point. So it's not quite like it used to be where you'd have like a guarantee. If the benefits aren't met, the hotel has to pay you out something. I don't think they're enforcing that now, right? Right, right. In fact, speaking of the elite benefits not being the same right now, I'll tell you in a minute when we get to my pandemic vacation about that.

So first with this, so what are the terms? Like how long is the challenge for, and what do you have to do to, to get platinum? Let's talk about platinum status because gold status doesn't matter, right? Nobody wants to get, nobody's going to challenge for gold. So if you're going to challenge, you're going to challenge for platinum. And the nice thing is that you can challenge to platinum status from some pretty easy statuses to get. You probably already have a qualifying status. IHG platinum or Spire can match to Marriott Platinum.

And so IHG Platinum is a benefit from most of the IHG credit cards. If you have the $89 card, which is like the IHG Premier, I guess, or if you have the old $49 card, the IHG Classic or Select, I think is what it was. Those cards come with IH ihg platinum status as a benefit you can use that if you had at least one ihg stay in the last 12 months you could use that

to match to marriott platinum so again you can match from ihg platinum or higher you can match from hilton gold or higher again gold is another one you can get from a credit card mx platinum card or the hilton surpass i. You can match from Hilton, I'm sorry, from Hyatt rather. From Hyatt, you need Globalist status to get Platinum. So, I mean... That's a much higher hurdle. Yeah, it's probably not particularly exciting for you. And then a core Live Limitless,

I don't know, Platinum or Diamond or someone, who knows? Do you have Elite status in that program? I don't know. Well, there's so few in America that most of our audience probably doesn't have that. So if you have one of those other statuses, you match your way over to Marriott. Now, again, you need to have elite status and be able to prove your elite status with the competing program and be able to show one stay with that program within the last

12 months. You submit for the match with Marriott once they review that and approve it and tell you that you've been upgraded to the new level, Marriott Platinum in this case that we're talking about. You have 90 days from the day you're upgraded to do 15 nights. So you'll need to stay 15 nights with Marriott within 90 days in order to keep that status through February of 2022. So the nice thing there is that you end up with a status for basically the rest of 2020, right? I mean, 90 days, it's almost anyway, in September, October, November, three out of the four months to go, basically. So you're going to get it for most of the rest of the year. And the thing is, they say

that it might be limited to a certain number of people. So I think partially just to encourage people to register, they were saying you want to register sooner rather than later though. I would tell you, you want to register closer to when you intend to start your 15 stays than farther from that. So. Is there, is there an end date for assuming it doesn't fill up? Is there an end date for registration? I didn't see one. Did you?

I don't think so. I didn't. No, I didn't see one. Did you? I don't think so. I didn't. No, I didn't see one. Yeah. I don't think they did mention an end date. They just said that it was going to end based on the number of registrations, but they were intentionally probably vague in terms of how many registrations that's going to be. I assume that it'll probably last for at least a month or two. I can't imagine they're going to pull it too quickly the idea is they want to build up some people staying but you don't think it'll be like a permanent thing where uh it's always available so anytime you have a a big stay coming up you could just sign up for it and get platinum status during that state you know i would like to think that that's the case but at at the same time, at this point,

one of the points I made in the post, like everybody has a pretty easy path to marry a platinum status. And I don't know, at some point, are they going to decide that they don't want everybody to have platinum status? I guess if you think that they're not going to come to that conclusion,

maybe this will stick around forever. I really don't know. What do you think? Yeah, my guess is it's temporary that it's during this COVID stuff and they're just trying to encourage people to make irrational decisions about how much to stay at Marriott, right? Right. So, okay. So let's get into it. Is it worth, and these have to be paid nights, right? Right. Correct. 15 paid nights.

Yeah. Um, don't count for the award stays do normally count towards elite status, but they do not count when you're doing a challenge. All right. So this, this seems painfully obvious to me that the answer is it's not worth mattress running to do this.

Um, do you have a different answer? Is there any, is there any world in which it makes sense? Uh, not to area, Not to complete the 15 nights. The scenario where it makes sense is if you're one of those people that's at 43 nights because Greg had written a post about being seven nights short of platinum status and is it worth going after that? And we debated and discussed and I said, I didn't think it probably was. And Greg said, ah, maybe. So you can go back and watch that previous episode if you want to hear the argument as to whether or

not it's worth those seven stays. But if you're somebody who had gold status last year and you have a business and a personal card, you're at 43 nights right now, you're seven short of 50. If you think you're going to do those seven nights in the next three months, I think you'd be silly not to sign up for this because if you sign up for this now, you're going to have the platinum benefits right from the get-go instead of waiting seven stays to get them. So if you've got 43 nights and you think you're going to do the other seven, yeah, sign up, get yourself free breakfast and lounge access and late checkout for those seven nights that you're going to do anyway ahead of time.

But no, it doesn't make sense to do the 15 nights. No. Yeah. I just don't see it you're not getting that kind of so as you mentioned in your post about this uh if you have a business and a personal marriott card every year you you start with 30 nights and so you only need 20 to get to platinum on any year and that's for the whole year you're not not limited to 90 days. And award stays do count in that scenario. Right.

Whereas here they don't. So, yeah. All right. Two thumbs down on mattress running for. And on my point for the seven nights, if you're seven nights short and you plan on doing those seven nights, keep in mind if you start at the challenge, you're going to get platinum benefits right away. And then you can do those seven nights as award stays and get platinum benefits on your award stays and still make it to 150. So it's definitely sort of as we started,

it's a good thing. Like it's a great thing to have that option to do the challenge. It's just not necessarily a good idea. It's not a good idea to do the challenge and then mattress run to do the challenge, uh, and then mattress rent to meet the challenge so that you can plan on status. I wouldn't do that combination,

but if you have a big paid stay coming up, um, do it. And as Nick saying, worst thing is you, you have platinum says during the stay, but maybe you have so many nights with your upcoming paid stays that you would actually meet it.

And then again, you might as well do it. Right. Okay. Okay you would actually meet it. And then again, you might as well do it. Right. Okay. Okay. So are you ready? That brings us to the main event. And I'm very curious to hear about this because Greg, if you don't know, has been on vacation this week. If you haven't noticed his absence from the blog, he's been on vacation, kicking back, relaxing, forgetting about the crazy things that city did for a few days. And so now I'm really curious how it's been. Cause this, this time you flew last time mentioned earlier,

last time you drove, but this time you flew. So I'm curious about everything. What was the lounge like the flight, like the hotels, the car rentals, the whole nine yards. Well,

let me back up a little bit. So a little over a week ago before we're recording this, my wife and I were talking about how excited we were about our upcoming trip which was to california to uh we had it all planned we were flying delta non-stop to san francisco we'd have rental car drive down to big sur where we would go to the ventana and which you know we love we had a reserved, which I've talked about on the show, how I got that. A great deal he got on that, yep. Yep.

And then actually at the end of the stay, which I didn't talk about, we had two nights booked at the Ritz Half Moon Bay. Oh man, that one looks beautiful. And we were going to fly back. It does. So that was our trip. We were excited about it

and we were talking about how excited about it we were. That was your mistake. And then we saw a headline about the wildfires in California. And we sort of said, we should check on that tomorrow. And so we did check on it tomorrow. And it turned out they were awfully close to Big Sur. And so we did a little more research into it. And Ventana at the time was saying, you know, we're still open.

Everything's fine. But air quality is not great. And so even with just that, we were like, we don't want it. Like the whole point of going is being out in nature a lot we love hiking and everything and that's hiking in the redwood trees amazing and by the ocean there but um not if the air quality is going to be bad so right not if you're breathing in ash yeah yeah so so anyway um it actually so we made a decision to to cancel that whole trip which we did and since, things got worse and worse.

Ventana actually ended up closing for the whole time. Oh, wow. Yeah, so it was the right decision, without a doubt. Delta completely refunded our money, like actually refunded to the credit card, not with a voucher or anything. So I was surprised because it wasn't like their flight was canceled right but that's terrific so was that something that was just because of your elite status or was that something i didn't feel like it i i think you know delta in general seems to tend to uh be nice and do do the nicer things even if it's not necessarily the policy.

So anyway, that was great. It might have been all leads to us, so I don't know. So then our next plan was to, we were like, well, we have the week already blocked off, so what are we going to do? Well, we've been eyeing that new Miraval in the Berkshires, which is in Massachusetts. And so we thought, oh, that would be cool. And by the way, my uncle lives fairly close to there in Connecticut. So let's go see him in Connecticut and then go over to the Berkshires and stay at the Miraval. So this was like at night when we sort of decided this outline of plans.

I looked at – I didn't want to stay – It sounds like a good plan. It sounds like a great master plan, right? Oh, it's a great plan, and we're excited about it. So that night we – you know, I checked with my uncle. He's like, that's great, um, you know, I checked with my uncle, he's like, that's great, but you know, don't really, we're not really ready to have guests here because we're worried about COVID and totally fine. Um, because there's a Hilton Curio collection, just a few doors down from him, which I've been dying to try. I had looked it up. It had award

nights available. Um, so we booked that. So we had three nights in that, in that Hilton Curio. And then, then at night I booked as an award, the Miraval, but I couldn't, I couldn't book the buy one, get one deal because you have to do that on the phone. So I just, I just booked it online. And then the next morning I, then it was, it was getting late. So I told my wife, all right, tomorrow morning, I'll book the flights, the rental car, and, uh, and I'll call Miraval. So I did the first two, no problem booking the flights or the rental car. And then I call Miraval and, um, long story short, uh, there, the, the buy one, get one offer was, was full. So, uh, for August, so I wasn't going to be able to get in on that, but worse, he asked

which state I was from. And when I told him, he said, uh, yeah, you'd have to either quarantine for 14 days or show a, uh, a negative test within 72 hours. And at first I was like, no, no, no, Michigan's not on that list. We're for Michigan. Maybe he misunderstood me. Because I had checked New York and I had checked Connecticut, and it just never occurred to me that Massachusetts would have more strident rules than those two.

But they do. So there were only six states allowed into Massachusetts. And Michigan's not one of them. Not one of them. Who would have known? Who would have known? Crazy times, huh? Yeah.

So then we were like, all right, can we make the whole vacation be by my uncle's house? No, there were no more award nights available. Did some more research. Striking out. Swinging a mess. Swinging a mess. Rhode Island sounded nice. And I also asked my uncle and he suggested Newport, like without us talking about that as a, as an option. So, so I thought, all right, two people came up with that plan. Let's, let's give it a try. So sure. That's where I am now. So this is actually working out. Um, boy, that was a long winded way. So, so the, so, so is this your first time in Newport, by the way? Yeah. Interesting.

First time in Rhode Island. Yeah. That makes sense. That makes sense being Michigan based. So yeah, my wife's aunt was stationed in Newport for a number of years. So her family went out to Newport a number of times. And I heard lots of great stories. And we made our way out there a few years ago. Yeah.

Beautiful, beautiful area. Yeah. It is really beautiful and uh so so we're staying we found um unfortunately there used to be a hyatt here it's not here anymore so that's not an option there is a marriott it was available but kind of gets mixed reviews it sounds like it's a it's fine it'd be perfectly fine, but not an exciting stay. And then I found a fantastic looking B&B that's called the Melbourne House. I'm trying to remember what this is called.

The Francis Melbourne House. And it was running a two for three or three for two offer. So three nights. They just decided to charge you for three nights when they heard you mispronounce the name. Greg spent another night at checkout, guys. Right, right. And so, you know, I checked different ways of booking it, like through hotels.com and where I can get gift cards at a discount and things like that, but it turned out going direct to them was significantly cheaper than the others

because you couldn't get that three nights for the price of two deal elsewhere. So I booked direct, and the way I think of it is like with Chase Points, for example, now that I can cash them out at one and a half, the per night price is coming to, let's say, around 23,000 points per night. So certainly not cheap, but it's a lot cheaper than Ventana with points, which was 30,000 points a night, plus an upgrade certificate. And the B&B has fantastic breakfast.

They actually take your orders. At least this morning, they had two different dishes. And then they have a whole bunch of things, sort of buffet style, but where you go up and you look through the glass and just tell them what you want. So you get all of that's included for breakfast. And then they have a afternoon tea, which is, uh, a incredible food spread in addition to tea and coffee. And so we actually, we, we ate so much at that last night that we didn't actually go out to dinner because uh it was yeah it was great and we ate in this they have a beautiful courtyard where we ate in and so we actually just we love this place that sounds pretty terrific i mean compared to compared to a lot of play i feel like i keep

seeing pictures on social media of like packaged buffets and stuff like that at chain properties or you know snacks that you can take and go you know granola bars and that kind of thing it sounds really pretty good compared to what a lot of chain properties are snacks that you can take and go, granola bars and that kind of thing. It sounds really pretty good compared to what a lot of chain properties are doing these days. Right. So let's talk about the Madison Beach Hotel Curio Collection. It's Hilton Curio Collection. That's where I stayed in Connecticut. It has unbelievable views. Beautiful, right on the water. I saw your pictures. I'm going to put a few pictures in this if you're watching on YouTube because it's worth checking out.

Yeah, you should. And so, I mean, I liked the stay very much, but breakfast. Uh-oh. Uh-oh. Wasn't enough to bring you over to the Hilton site. Not enough to decide that you want the Aspire card right away? You what we want in the basket the night before? Or how does that work? And she said, no, it'll just be brought to your door. You get what you get, and you don't get upset. You get what you get. And so sure enough, it was outside the door at

about seven in the morning. And it had a banana, an apple, a muffin, and a little piece of banana bread, one bottle of water and one juice. I was going to say, I heard all of those A's there as though there were not one for each of you. There was nothing that there were two of, not a single thing. So I thought, okay, I've made this mistake before where I've, you know, by default, all the booking systems default to one adult, right? So I thought, oh, all right. I accidentally booked one. So I called them to let them know that there were two adults in the room. And he said, yep.

And I said, but we only got breakfast for one. And he's like, no, that's what they do. You get a banana or an apple or something else. And as an example, I said, there's only one muffin. And he said, yeah, that's what we do. There's a knife in the mini bar. You can split that right now. Right, right.

He said, would you like another one? And I thought he meant another basket. I said, sure, okay. But he came to the door with another basket. I said, sure, okay. But he came to the door with another muffin. Like, all right, well, that's better than nothing. But I think what they're doing is, yeah, I think they're providing that breakfast basket to everybody,

even those who don't have breakfast included. So the only thing we got for elite status at all was two drink coupons. Wow. So that's it. You didn't get two bottles of water in the morning. Well, they'll give anyone water if you ask for it. But one in the basket. One in the basket.

Like, come on. You got to like divvy that up, take a sip. I mean one right like come on you gotta like divvy that up take a sip and i could i mean like yeah it's hard to believe that they think that's a good solution for multiple people i don't think that right right and i mean that was it's curio collection that's like the boutique brand from hill it's not like this was like a Hampton Inn or something. This is a place on the beach. This is a $500 a night. Yeah, right. $500 a night. Yeah.

I think with taxes, it would have been close to $600 a night if I had wanted to pay for it. Yeah. Which you wouldn't after that breakfast. Well, I mean, for a lot of people, what's important is the view. And you certainly get that. You get a nice little beach area with an attendant setting things up for you. And they have, well, they have a number of water sport thingies that you could rent extra. It's not included. And you could pay $20 a day to park if you don't park at your uncle's house down the road. Always nice to get that opportunity. So in normal times, to be fair, they probably have an actual breakfast of some sort. Yeah.

So they have a great restaurant with an outdoor balcony, right, looking out at the ocean. And we were looking forward to that. But it only opened each day at noon during the, during these times. Right. So yeah. That's interesting. It only opens at noon. Is there? Yeah. I don't, I don't really get it. Like why? Right. Who are they protecting by doing that? Didn't you know, Greg? I mean, it just, it's, it's, the virus is a morning person, basically. It's, it's, you know, it likes to be up and around. Yeah. That's a, you know, Greg, I mean, it just, it's, it's, the virus is a morning person. Basically it's, it's, you know,

it likes to be up and around. Yeah. That's a, you know, do you worry at all that that's going to kind of become a longterm thing that this like kind of, if they can get away with it for a while, I mean,

do you think that benefits like that will start to get trimmed? Part of me is like, man, if they can get away with giving that for breakfast for diamond members, why would they change that when, you know, the restaurant suddenly opened for breakfast? Yeah. Well, I mean, competition is one reason, right? I mean, so certainly not all hotels are doing this.

The one I did, the Marriott I did in Michigan, the Anna Bay Harbor, full breakfast, menu service or buffet. That's great. And I recommend menu service. But yeah, so that was too bad. Now the actual travel experience. Yeah, what's that been like? Airports, airplanes, lounge? Tell me about it.

You know, we were a little nervous going in, but in the end, other than wearing a mask all the time, it didn't feel all that different from usual. We flew out early one morning, and yes, there were very few people, so that was very nice. We park in an off-site parking, and normally we have to share the shuttle bus with several other families to get to the airport from there. We had a private shuttle bus. Great. Go in, TSA pre-check. It's literally nobody in line. So that's very nice. Went into the Sky Club and things were, again, pretty similar to usual other than everyone wearing masks and it being pretty sparsely populated. And the food was all pre-wrapped, which I think is a great thing, because if you if you don't have much time, you just grab it and take it on the plane or in fact in our original like when we were trying to figure out about when we're going to be flying to california that's a

pretty long flight and so we thought we'd have to pre-pack food because they don't serve a meal service right now they just have a snack basket and um but seeing the sky club i mean we could definitely just pop in the sky club ahead of time and grab some sandwiches and take it on board so yeah so i i think that's good um alcohol now is is uh they have added a bartender where it used to be self-serve which seems totally fine to me um you know the snack thing you brought up, that's kind of interesting because you mentioned that on the flight, they don't serve a meal now,

they just serve a snack. And that popped something in my mind because I wrote this week about booking with Turkish Miles and Smiles and the trip that I booked to Hawaii. And I was really taken aback for a second, at least when I took a look at my booking online in business class

on United from Newark to Honolulu, like a 10 plus hour flight. And for meal, it said snack. That could be a problem. That's not going to work with a toddler. So yeah, that's a good point though. I have some lounge passes for the United Club there that I could probably hopefully be able to use at Newark. So I wouldn't have even thought about that, being able to grab snacks out of the club to bring with you. If they're prepackaged, it's pretty easy.

That's one change I kind of hope sticks around. Yeah. I've always found that those buffets where everybody, all those 90-nose kids are grabbing the tongs and reaching under the glass partition and sneezing and everything i've always found that a little disturbing so you know having it pre-wrapped i think that's a good thing yeah yeah not bad maybe a little more trash than necessary though yeah that's the downside that's the downside yeah yeah but okay so so club airport not bad it sounds like. Yeah, then shuttle to the rental car place was, were we alone?

I can't remember. Yeah, I think we were. I can't remember. How about the flight itself? We skipped the flight itself. How about the flight itself? It was a very small airplane. We were in first class.

But it was, you know, it was about half full, I guess. I don't know. It seemed like a non-event. Everybody's wearing their masks. You know, I think I felt comforted by the fact that I've read that airplanes have the good HEPA filters. And so we were sitting closer to other people than I expected to. So in first, it's such a small first class. It only had three rows. And so they put people in row one and row two. And we were in row two. And you'd think they would do one and three to space people out.

But then I guess they didn't do that because they had the first row of comfort plus uh filled and which was right behind row three i guess uh so yeah yeah anyway so so the the distancing didn't seem good but i never you know to me both wearing a mask having the good hepa filter system it didn't feel scary at all great at least that was my opinion now one advantage since it's such a short flight between Michigan and uh Connecticut where we flew into is that we didn't have to take off our mask to eat or drink like we just kept our masks on the whole time yeah long flight of course you're gonna have to take the mask off and so that that, um, suppose you and others more because other people are taking off their masks as well. Right. Right. Right. So, all right. So non-event

there basically sounds like business as usual, got to the airport. You said the shuttle to the rental car and how did the rental car experience go? Yeah. So it was national. So we, uh, the shuttle was, was empty. Uh, they So we, uh, the shuttle was, was empty. Uh, they have seats blocked off in the shuttles, you know, so that people will social distance in the shuttles.

You do wear your mask in them, uh, because it's national. You just pick your own car and get in and go. I mean, and. Are they doing anything special to like, I don't know what they could do. Are they doing anything special to like i don't know what they could do are they doing

anything special to make the cars seem extra sanitized or anything i don't know you know yeah the the uh i can't remember the details but yeah they have signs about all the things they're doing and i always take these things with a grain of salt like right are they really doing all those things i don't have any way to know the the hotels though so so we got to uh the hilton and uh the there's a seal there was like a sticker across the door to the wall saying this room has been sanitized so that's kind of nice there's There's at least a hint that no one's been in there since the cleaners cleaned it. And then you go in and there are things noticeably different, like the remote control was wrapped in a little like sort of plastic bag thing with a sticker saying it had been sanitized. And so, you know, those kinds of things are different.

There weren't any hand sanitizer in the Marriott estate in Michigan that they had as a standard thing in the room, like packets of hand sanitizer. They didn't have that, but, but there were hand sanitizer stations all over the hotel in the elevator, at the lobby and everything. Oh good. You have that everywhere. Imagine we'll be seeing that for a while to come yet

in terms of hotels and other shared spaces. We'll probably continue to see hand sanitizer. And hey, there's nothing wrong with that. That's probably a good thing. Right. So, all right. So the hotel seems like it was reasonably good. I mean, how was mask compliance amongst the hotel employees and things like that and other guests? Were most people wearing their masks most of the time? Did you feel uncomfortable at all? I know you talked about the hotel at Bay Harbor. You talked about the elevator and being a little uncomfortable over the elevator with some guests wearing masks, some not, etc. How did that play out for you? Right. So that was kind of a non-event for us because we were on the second floor.

We took the stairs and we generally, the way the hotel's organized, you go out one way to go to the beach, go out the other way to go to the road, which is the way we'd go to go to my uncle's house, which is what we're usually doing. He's right on the beach too. And so rather hang out on the beach there with him than, than the hotel. So we did not interact with other guests at all. Um, the only time we were even close to any other guests was, uh, there was an outside bar where we went and, uh, used our two drink vouchers. Um, mask compliance was great. But that was a pretty small data point. But that was outside, too, and still mask compliance was very good there.

In the airport, mask compliance, even with employees, was not great, at least at the Detroit airport. So, so everyone had a mask was where technically wearing one, but they often let it slip below their nose. And so we saw a lot of people walking around with their nose exposed and I don't know how much good a mask does if it's just over your mouth. Right, right, right. See that in a lot of places. And I keep reading stories about that too. And particularly, like you said, with airport employees, even with TSA employees. I know Lucky at one mile a time had written a post about a customs officer that wasn't wearing a mask at all in Miami when he came back in. So, yeah, I mean, there's I think there's definitely going to be some of that.

I see that even here around me. Lots of places like, go where people just don't have it around their nose. And I think, why are you wearing it? But the nice thing is, you know, things are so spread out. Yeah, that's nice. Because there's so few passengers and the airports are big. Most airports are really big. Certainly Detroit Airport is huge. Easy to keep distance. Again, I never felt unsafe because I was so far from anyone who was noncompliant.

Interesting. Yeah, so it's kind of feeling like it's almost becoming like an acceptable normal to just be wearing a mask and doing the things that we used to do. It's not that hard to put on the mask. The hardest thing is sometimes you take it off at a restaurant. Now, we always eat outside at restaurants, but still you take it off when you're sitting at the table you're supposed to put it back on if you go if you get up from the table go to the bathroom or anything and it's easy to forget that you get

up from the table because you're just not thinking about it and then i'm sure i'm back that's right yeah yeah i've done that even in the car getting out of the car when i stop at the grocery store or something i get out of the car and walk all the way up to the door and then say, I forgot to grab my mask. It's like sitting right there. It's just not a habit for us yet. Yeah. Getting there. So overall, I mean, does the vacation feel like vacation? Does it feel relaxing and vacation-like like past vacations? Obviously there's a little bit different in terms of having to wear the mask,

like you said, but I mean, does it feel as relaxing as you would have hoped and as enjoyable as it changed what you've done? I know, obviously you've spent more time outside, I'm sure. And that, right. So yeah. So I think at least when you're during good weather, to me, it, it feels as good as any other vacation. So, you know, we spent a lot of time at the beach and didn't wear our mask when we're on the beach. So it felt exactly like any beach vacation and getting in the water and everything is great. You know, there's a few awkward things like, so with my uncle and aunt, like when we talked about driving somewhere, it was like, well, let's take two cars so that we're not all in one small enclosed place, which, which makes sense for them. But so that makes things a little

different, you know, a little more awkward, I guess. But but you know, overall the big picture is I'd say that I think we're at a place where we can vacation safely as long as you do the right thing and you kind of avoid the people who aren't. And I didn't find it hard to avoid the people who aren't. Nice. Yeah, I think it's got it. I think one kind of really interesting aspect of all this that never occurred to me has to do with my situation with Massachusetts, where I couldn't go to Massachusetts. I've been thinking a lot about how it seems like some states are more powerful states now than others as far as where you can travel to. Almost like the passport thing, right? Almost like the passport thing, right? Almost like the passport thing, right.

And so I was thinking that, like New York, for example, it's on that top six list. I think it's on the list that can go to Costa Rica now. There's only like six states that can. I'm not sure if it is. So I was thinking that New York is probably one of the most powerful states as far as that goes. But then I realized that. So assuming you want to adhere to all the rules, I think if you go to a state that's on the no travel list and you come back, then you have to quarantine.

Right. Whereas I don't have to because we don't have a quarantine rule in michigan so you could you could argue that states like michigan that are that are safe enough to be allowed into new york um but not and so safe that you don't even have to worry about picking it up while you're gone so you can just go back to normal life that you know so so you could argue i have more options than you do. Right. You certainly do from that point of view, because most people have to go to work and that sort of thing when they come home. So that's something you have to think about now. Am I going to have to stay at home? Am I going to be able to go to the office if you have to go to the office or that sort of thing when you come back? So yeah, I mean, that definitely is a totally new dynamic in travel

that never would have thought about before, right? Whether or not you can go to a state and then I have to stay at home for two weeks when I come back from that state. Definitely. That's just what a wild world, you know? Right, right. So those kinds of things could sort of play bigger in a way to your vacation plans than mask or not, I think. Sure. Yeah, that's a great point. I haven't really thought about going anywhere, but certainly that's a point that I would have to consider for sure, if I were going to go somewhere, you know, what are they going to be the requirements when I come back, I work from home. So so does my wife. So we wouldn't have to worry too much. Probably not a big issue, but

important to know and think about anyway, especially. And for your plans, whatever, you know, make sure you have the next two weeks free. Right, exactly. To stay home. Nothing important like the birth of a baby or anything like that. So you want to watch out for those things. Well, that's pretty cool. So it sounds like overall, it's been a win.

It's been a good vacation. So I kind of feel like. Vacation number three, you know, take three, we're calling it because we had two set plans before getting to this one. It's kind of funny how that worked out. So you've stayed at the B&B now, and you stayed at Marriott, and you stayed at a, I'm sorry, the B&B and a Hilton on this trip, Marriott previously.

Right. Would you, do you think, is there a direction you would err in for your next trip where you would be more likely to stay in a particular chain or in a chain versus a B&B or mom and pop type of a property or Airbnbs? Is there one way or another that you feel like you would lean more strongly after having experiences in a number of different places? Yeah. Or would it just be whatever place is convenient? Yeah. I mean,

not necessarily because it kind of just depends what you're looking for. And, and, uh, I don't have any wisdom there. Just curious. I wouldn't avoid, you know, I wouldn't avoid Hilton because of this one experience. I don't think they all do it this way. So I think, I think I might though, if, if i had

my choice between otherwise you know uh similar properties i might do some research and see what what are they doing for breakfast or other services you know which ones are trimmed back and and uh opt for one that has that has more available because even if if we had to pay for if they had breakfast there even if we had to pay for it, if they had breakfast there, even if we had to pay for it, that would have been more convenient than us. Of course. We were running out to get breakfast each day

and bring it back to the room. Because we had a great balcony overlooking the ocean. So we wanted to eat back over it. Wanted to have it there, yeah. But they didn't even have room service. And I think that this is interesting because the place you're staying at now, the bed and breakfast,

has a lot of those types of benefits we would normally associate with elite status between breakfast and the afternoon tea and that sort of thing. And so that might make those independent places worth a second look right now, because your elite benefits might not get you as much as they ordinarily do. It's true. Although, you know, some of these independent places might handle things just like the basket thing. Right. I can, I can imagine a lot of doing that. And so I'm very grateful that this place is, is you know, as full service as it is. I mean, surprisingly. So I had no,

I had no idea that, you know, it did mention on their website this afternoon, T but no idea it would be so, so extreme. So speaking of that, we need to wrap up pretty soon because they because they told me that uh homemade ice cream sandwiches are on offer this afternoon so okay all right all right so so there's there you have it pandemic vacation over done with so we're gonna we're gonna skip over post roast i think this week because yeah i you know i've been on vacation. You've been on vacation.

Yeah. Nothing to roast anyway. Don't worry. It was all good. Everything was great while you were gone. So then question of the week. So I'm going to hit you with a question that I don't necessarily know has a clear answer, but I thought it was a good question because it was something different than the types

of questions that we ordinarily get. So the question came from our Frequent Miler Insiders group. And so Jeremy and the Frequent Miler Insiders group asked, has anyone had their auto and home insurance rates affected by opening too many credit cards? I started playing the credit card game significantly back in 2011 and was on my parents' insurance until 2016, buying my first house. Over the last four years, my insurance rates have gone up despite no claims on the renewal of the past two years. And they've indicated too many new accounts have impacted his rate. So over the past year,

he's only opened two new cards. So he's not sure why that would be such a big deal. So have you ever heard of this being correlated, opening too many cards and paying more for your insurance? Have you run into that at all? Or other side effects like that that you might not consider from opening a lot of cards yeah yeah no i i haven't personally run into it but we've gotten similar feedback from readers uh i'd say twice over the past nine years of running the blog so so this would be the third maybe uh where that's happened and so i i had looked into it a little bit before and found that, yeah, even though opening up a number of cards doesn't hurt your credit score and can, in fact, make it better,

the insurance companies don't always use the FICO score as the end-all. Some of them have their own algorithms for how they measure your... It's not even credit worthiness necessarily. They're using that as a... There's a correlation between the credit risk and risk in general. Right. And so that's, that's what they're looking at. And so I don't, I, because it hasn't happened to me or, or to many people that I know, my guess is that only, you know, only a few companies do it that way where they include the number of cards opened as part of the risk or a big enough part to be noticeable, I guess.

Right. So I don't have any advice for that other than maybe shop around. Shop around a little. Yeah. That seemed to be the general consensus from members of the Frequent Miler Insiders group that responded to it. Shop around. Check other places because you're not going to likely run into that problem with very many places. But I thought it was interesting, something that you might run into that is worth knowing and keeping an eye

on your rates. And if they do go up and maybe shop around, like Greg said, somebody else probably has a different algorithm, so it's worth shopping around. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

And that's unfortunate that, you know, opening cards, especially since we've been telling people, well, it won't hurt your score. Well, that's true,

but it can have these weird side effects. Adverse side effects every now and then. Yeah. Strange things like that. Yeah. All right. Well, that brings us to the end for this week. So if you want to hear more

about what we've been talking about and you want to check out all the posts, get the emails, get on our Facebook group and follow us on Twitter and all that jazz, you want to go to thefrequentmiler.com slash subscribe. Again, that's thefrequentmiler.com slash subscribe. Also, we're doing a bi-weekly

series called Card Talk, where we're doing credit card interventions with people who need advice on which cards to keep, which cards to cancel, which cards to go after planning for a new trip. So if you're interested in volunteering for that, you can go to thefrequentmiler.com slash Card Talk. Again, that's thefrequentmiler.com slash card talk and leave a comment there. Let us know what your situation is and we'll be getting in touch with more people for those in the coming weeks here. So Greg, I hope you enjoy the rest of your vacation. It was great being here for all the listeners today and we'll see you guys next week.

All right. See everybody later. I'm going off to eat my homemade ice cream sandwich. Lucky guy. Lucky guy. Bye everyone. See everybody later. I'm going off to eat my homemade ice cream sandwich. Lucky guy. Bye, everyone. See you next week.