Frequent Miler on the Air - Pay Taxes, Earn Big Rewards | Ep239 | 1-27-24

Episode Date: January 27, 2024

On this episode, Greg and Nick discuss the question of whether or not you can pay your taxes with a credit card. (Spoiler - you can!) 00:01:35 - Using ChatGPT to squeeze $300 from the Ritz-Carlton card (Giant Mailbag)  Read More: https://frequentmiler.com/ritz-fee-credits-what-works/ 00:10:57 - Capital One Spark Cash Plus: 2% Everywhere (Card Talk) Read more: https://frequentmiler.com/c1scplusbiz/ 00:16:30 - Pepper App (Crazy Thing) Read more: https://frequentmiler.com/pepper-app-get-5-10-back-on-amazon-walmart-and-more-plus-20-back-via-referral-maybe-15-via-portal/ 00:23:07 - Paris Hilton’s Slivingland on Roblox: Win 111,111 Hilton points, Diamond status (Mattress Running the Numbers) Read more: https://frequentmiler.com/win-111111-hilton-honors-points-or-diamond-status-with-roblox-partnership/ 00:31:30 - Free Delta stopovers via Air France / KLM Flying Blue (Award Talk) Read more: https://frequentmiler.com/flying-blue-multi-stopover-experiment/ 00:36:10 - Luxury stays (Leading Hotels of the World) thanks to Citibank (Award Talk) Read more: https://frequentmiler.com/sampling-leading-hotels-of-the-world-lhw-thanks-to-citi-thankyou-rewards/ 00:41:07 - Main Event: Pay Taxes, Earn Big Rewards Read more: https://frequentmiler.com/pay-taxes-via-credit-card/ 00:41:37 - Paying Federal taxes with a credit card 00:42:23 - Why pay a fee to use a credit card? 00:54:33 - What about other taxes? 00:58:06 - Is it OK to overpay taxes? 00:59:52 - Does it make sense to pay quarterly estimated taxes this way? 1:00:26 - What to do when the payment processor doesn't like my business credit card? 01:02:51 - 90 days to use ’em or lose ’em: Where would you transfer your points? (Question of the Week) Read more: https://frequentmiler.com/90-days-to-use-em-or-lose-em-where-would-you-transfer-your-points/ Music Credit: Annie Yoder @annilion

Let's get into the giant mailbag. What crazy thing did City do this week? It's time for Mattress Running the Numbers. Ready for the main event? The main event. Frequent Miler on the Air starts now. Frequent Miler on the Air starts now. Today's main event, pay taxes, earn big rewards.

Now, I don't love preparing my taxes, earn big rewards. Now, I don't love preparing my taxes, but I kind of have started to really like paying my taxes because there can be really, really big rewards involved. And we will get into the details of how to make that happen later on in the show. Yeah, you know, it's kind of crazy, actually, because obviously, mathematically speaking, credit card rewards don't outpace the value of what you're spending necessarily. But if you're earning a couple of big welcome bonuses while you're paying your taxes, I mean, it's pretty conceivable that you could end up with a trip that's worth more than

whatever you paid, right? So, you know, compared to the cash rates. So pretty crazy. So it is kind of fun paying your taxes when you're playing the game. But we'll talk more about that. Don't forget, wherever you're watching or listening to the show, please like it, subscribe, enable notifications, leave a comment. All of those things help other people find it. They help it get recommended to other folks, too. So please do all of that. We really appreciate that stuff.

And don't forget that the timestamps are in the show notes. So if you want to jump around to a specific segment or you want to return to a specific segment later on, then you can look for those timestamps in the show notes. You'll either have to expand the description box on YouTube or if you're listening in podcast platform, just look at the notes. So that's that. So let's move to that first segment up, which is the giant mailbag. Drag it out, Greg. All right. Today's giant mail requires some background. First, you have to understand what the Ritz Carlton credit card is all about. So this is a card that is no longer available new except sideways. So what do I mean by that is you can get a Chase Marriott card. They have like three or four different consumer cards.

You have to have a consumer card and then you can upgrade to the Ritz-Carlton card. So it's still available in that way. And one of the benefits, there's a number of benefits to the card, but just one that we're going to talk about right here is that it offers $300 per year in airline incidental credits. So if you basically pay to check bags or something, you can get up to $300 reimbursed for those types of charges. And in order to get those credits, you have to contact Chase and ask for them. That doesn't happen automagically. So I should mention, too, that that Nick has a whole post out about, you know, what types of charges actually work to get these credits. And the short answer is pretty much anything as long as the chase rep you contact thinks that it might apply, right? Right. No, that's definitely the short of it. It's totally human dependent, which simultaneously makes this benefit

hard for people who are new to the card, who haven't ever had the card because they're like, well, what works? And I'm like, well, it just depends. And so that makes it hard to plan because you don't know for sure which types of charges beyond the official ones. The official ones, things like check bags

and seat selection, things like that will definitely work. But beyond that, I mean, it really is just up to the agent, which personally I love. And you need to embrace if you're going to get the card because you never know what kind of charge might work. So it could be worth, you know, throwing something out there like we've had readers report success with airport parking, a blade helicopter transfer, things that clearly are not airline incidental fees, but it just depends on the person that is crediting it. But better yet,

it does get a little better, right? We got a tip from a reader about really the easiest way to do this. Potentially. Yeah, this comes from Michael. And I think this could easily be in our what crazy thing did a reader do this week segment. But no, this is in our giant mailbag. And Michael writes that I automatically put all travel related charges on my Ritz card. That includes ticket fees for award travel, seat upgrades, cheap airfare, you name it. Anything travel related. I downloaded my transactions, then fed it into chat GPT and asked it to put together a note requesting the Chase agent reimburse me per the $300 travel credit. Chat GPT put together a nice list of transactions and the

payee, et cetera, and a nice note to Chase. I pasted that into the secure messaging and the agent wrote back a few days later, some of these charges are valid, some are not. I pasted that into the secure messaging and the agent wrote back a few days later, some of these charges are valid, some are not. I've credited you $300. In other words, I have no idea what worked and what didn't, but I can tell you that if you present a bunch of airfare related charges, the agent will, I don't know, did the agent just give up and credit me or did the agent actually go through the charges? Who knows? But it took me maybe five minutes to download, upload to chat GPT and paste into the secure message to chase. Definitely worth it. I'll keep doing it that way. That is terrific. I mean, that's gold right there, right? That's hilarious. But I mean,

but true, right? I mean, if you just throw a whole bunch of charges at them, probably, you know, either they're going to go through all of them or they're going to look at it and be like, ah, that's enough. Get out of here. So, yeah, I mean, it's again, what I love about it is that it's entirely agent dependent. Now, some people I know that there are some people out there are going to be like, oh, but I don't want to put an airfare charge on there that I could put on a card where I get, you know, three ultimate rewards per dollar spent, blah, blah. And yeah, okay, so you're not going to put like, you know, 10s of 1000s of dollars worth of charges on it that you just might work. But but like, you know, a few hundred thousand dollars worth of charges or whatever, that you think something in there is going to work. I mean,

that seems like a reasonable strategy to me. I don't usually have much trouble. I should know, I don't usually have much trouble using this should know. I don't usually have much trouble using this legitimately because I tend to end up having to pay to check a bag or select a seat or something a few times a year. So usually the $300 comes in handy for me anyway. But truth be told, just about anything could work. Yeah. So are you going to try this in the future? I mean, I kind of want to just because it's fun, right? I mean, it's just a funny idea as to how to do it and really simplify your life a little bit. People often ask, well, what do you say in the message? Because we should back up. You have to manually request the credit. So things don't automatically credit, which we mentioned at the beginning. So there's two ways to request that. You can either call and talk to an agent over the phone, just call the number on the back of your card, or you can send a secure message through your account. And so that's what we're talking about here, Michael, sending a secure message. People often say, well, what do you type in the secure message? And I usually just type something like, I'd like to apply my travel credits to

these charges. And I just keep it pretty simple. And then if they ask more about what those are for, then we can talk more about what they were for. But I usually just provide the minimum and we don't usually, I just work. So, uh, so this is great because you don't even have to think about what to write. Just let chat GPT. Yeah, I, I, I do the same thing. I just, I actually, I think I usually do write something like, uh, these are seat assignment fees or something along those lines just to, you know, be clear that it's a, an included, you know, type of charge. But anyway, a little more Ritz news right now that we're going to sneak in here, even

though it's not really a mailbag segment. I guess it's, it's mail that came from Chase though. Well, right, right. It's an email. It is. Which is really how all of the mail comes in. Chase, though. Well, right, right. It's an email. It is. Which is really how all of the mail comes in. That is true. That is true.

So this email came from Chase to anyone who is a Ritz credit card holder that says, basically, we're bringing back the metal card. So they had switched the Ritz card to a plastic card. I don't know, a couple of years ago, I guess, but apparently people haven't liked that. And so they're bringing back the metal card like it or not. So you seem happy about this, Nick, but I'm not. I can tell because you're just you're a grumpy old man, Greg. That's really what it comes down to. Go ahead. Tell me what your complaints are. Yeah. Well, I don't like carrying around an 18-pound card. I mean, my wallet, my backpack is heavy enough without it being like 18 pounds heavier with the Ritz card. Also, this card in the past has set off the metal detector at the airport.

What are you doing going through a metal detector with something in your pocket, Greg? TSA pre-check, man. You don't have to take stuff out of your pockets. Oh, I take everything out. I don't have TSA pre-check, so that's part A. But part B is even if I did, I would take the stuff out

because I just don't want the extra hassle. I know stuff is going know stuff. Extra hassle. No, nothing else causes it except for, well, the phone. But I always take out my phone. So you reach in your pocket for that. But like, you know, one more thing out of the pocket, Craig. Well, to remember to fish through my wallet? No, no, thank you.

Anyway, I take the whole wallet out. But like it or not, it's like it or not. It at least will, if you keep it in your breast pocket, may prevent you from getting killed from a bullet. Well, and for anybody who was not a cardholder back in the day, you might think that this conversation seems ridiculous because you have a wallet full of metal cards. But if you never had the actual metal Ritz card, then you probably just don't quite get it yet. Hopefully you will.

Hopefully they are bringing it back the way we remember it. Because, well, I say hopefully. Greg hopes not. But when we're talking about this thing setting off metal detectors, it's because it was actual metal. Not like a piece of metal sandwiched between two pieces of plastic like a lot of the metal cards on the market. It was like a hunk of metal that was almost twice the weight of any of the other quote- of the metal cards on the market. It was like a hunk of metal that was almost twice the weight of any of the other quote unquote metal cards on the market. So yeah, it's heavy duty. And I love it because it comes in handy. I've used it as a tool. I used it as

a screwdriver to adjust the crib when I went to a hotel once and my son, the crib adjusted a little bit lower. I had a screwdriver right there in my wallet. I've used it to pop the metal top off of a glass bottle of water in Europe because, you know, it's a heavy metal card. I mean, it works for that kind of stuff. So I love having it around. I love also just kind of clunking it down on the counter. It's kind of fun. Yeah. You know, I didn't think about those uses.

It would be cool if they actually had it be more like a Swiss army knife type of card where you can pull out an actual screwdriver or a bottle opener and things like that. They should think about that. That would be quite the card. There you go. All right. So that's our giant mailbag for today. Let's talk about a card. This week's card talk, we're going to talk about Capital One's Spark Cash Plus card.

So the Spark Cash Plus is a business card, right, Greg? Yeah. Yeah. Business card. It has $150 annual fee, but no foreign transaction fees. It's a charge card. You have to pay it in full monthly, but that's great practice anyway with any cards. We always encourage that. The card earns 2% cash back, all purchases, with one exception, if you book hotels or rental cars through Capital One Travel, then you get 5% back for that. And that $150 annual fee, you can get it back every year that you spend at least $150,000 on the card. So, you know, I mean, I think a lot of business people probably do that anyway. So, you know, people who are spending that

much can think of it as a fee-free 2% back everywhere cash back card. And one of the coolest things for, in my mind about it, is that if if you decide if you're in a situation where you'd be better off transferring points to airline programs um and if you have in your household a uh a miles card from capital one like a venture card or a spark miles card which is their business version of the venture, such as the Spark Miles Select, which has no annual fee, you can move your cash back, right, Nick? You move your cash back into Miles and then transfer it? Yeah, you go right into your rewards. So if you're in your Spark Cash Plus account and you click view rewards, then one of the options is move rewards. And when you click that move rewards, it comes up and shows which other accounts are eligible to share with. And

you select one of your miles earning accounts. And then yeah, you convert cash back to miles at a rate of one cent is one mile. So if you have $500 in cash back, that's 50,000 miles. So you can convert over as much or as little as you want. There's no caps in terms of how much you can convert to miles. And you can also, Capital One allows you to share rewards with other people. So my wife has done this from her Spark Cash card to one of my venture cards. That requires a phone call if you want to send your rewards to another person. But if you want to send it to one of your other cards, you can do it yourself online, self-service, really easy. And for this reason, we have a Spark Cash,

not the Spark Cash Plus. We have the old credit card version of this. But for this reason, I put purchases on that over one of the venture cards because it gives me the added flexibility of redeeming for cash if I want, which of course you can always redeem venture miles for travel charges at a rate of one cent

each. But having it as cash back means I could actually take that out as cash if we prefer. So I like using the 2% card because I can always move it to miles later on if I want. At least that's the way Capital One has it set up. Now, to be clear, that's not a benefit that they advertise. It's just a feature that works. And we discovered that a couple of years ago and wrote about it. And so it's been working for a long time. It's something that they could discontinue. So keep that in mind. We don't know for sure that that'll be around forever.

But as things stand anyway, I like their 2% back cards for that reason. All right. So there you go. So we're fans of cards that earn 2x everywhere. And this one has the advantage of, as Nick said, that if you actually prefer the cash back, you can do it that way. And if you want to be able to transfer to miles or hotel points, you can do that by involving a second card in the mix. Now, quick question, though. Is this card worth $150 if you're not going to spend $150K per year on it?

I mean, obviously, usually there's a welcome bonus, and so there'd be reason to earn that. But beyond that initial year, is it worth paying $150 for a 2% back card? I mean, in general, I would say no, because there are fee-free cards that earn 2% cash back, but there's not many business cards. So if you really want a business card, not that, and I'm saying it that way because a business can use personal cards, but some business people prefer to use ones that are dedicated just to business. And so if you have to have that, then I think this is a decent choice. I don't know. Can you think of one off the top of your head that's fee-free? There might be, but... No, there might be. Yeah, I can't think of one either on the business side specifically.

And the other thing worth mentioning is, Greg mentioned it's a charge card, a pay-in-full card, as they call it. You have to pay the balance in full monthly. And presumably, theoretically, that should mean that you would have more spending power in the long term. Now, I say in the long term, because when you first get approved, Capital One can sometimes be really weird about how much they'll let you spend. But theoretically, anyway, based on your behavior in terms of charging and paying back, your spending capacity should increase over time. And you could theoretically put an unlimited number of charges on the card. And I say theoretically, because surely capital one is going to stop you at some point, but,

but if you have a legitimate business where you've got six figures and expenses per month, you may be able to use this card for that. So that also makes a difference in terms of this over other options. If you're looking to put, you know, that, that volume of spend through a single card yeah yep okay all right so that's that's our card talk for this week let's talk about a crazy thing what crazy thing did the pepper app do this week greg yeah i love this because uh our own stephen pepper he has he has his own website that's all about gift cards. He has a website called GC Galore, Gift Card Galore.

And so then out comes this app called the Pepper app, which is all about the ability to buy gift cards through the app. You get them instantly. And so the idea is that you're at a store and you're about to pay. And so you can type in how much you're about to pay and and buy the gift card to that store and you get five percent back that's the idea behind the pepper app it has nothing to do with steven pepper other than a name coincidence unless they named it for him secretly we don't know right but um but on the surface mean. With nothing else going on, if they actually could keep this five percent rebate thing long term, this is pretty great because there are merchants on there like Amazon and Walmart that aren't usually available to discount gift card sites. And so here's a way to get just 5% back in rewards. That's in addition to whatever you earn with your credit card by paying through it directly. Yeah. And paying for the gift card, that is. So you're paying Pepper for a gift card that you then use at the merchant. So yeah,

you'll get the 5% back from Pepper plus whatever you earn on your credit card when you're buying that gift card. So yeah, I mean, that would be pretty good. But it gets even better for the first month, presumably, because they're advertising right now. And they sent an email after I signed up, too, to remind me that for the first 30 days, they're supposed to double that 5%. So after 30 days, hopefully, we'll get another 5%. So end up earning 10% back in total for the first month, which 10% back on, like Greg said, certain brands like Amazon or Walmart or maybe Best Buy. I don't know. There are some other things in there that you don't typically see on sale. And 10% back on them is terrific. I mean, that's great. It's just easy money, it seems. Yeah, it really is. So I'm loving that. Now, it is a new startup app, and we've seen things like

this go south really quick before. So there's no 100% guarantee there know, at least so far, the 5% is working. And so fingers crossed with that. But there's more, right? So you can earn, you can refer friends and get $20 per referral. And if you use a referral, you get $20 if you spend $100 through the app. So for example, like when I signed up, I just bought a $100 Amazon gift card and immediately got $20 in my account for this sort of signup bonus, if you will. And the equivalent of $5 in these things they call coins or something that can also be used. So basically, I got $25 back to spend on more gift cards. And so that was pretty cool. Yeah. So that was, and it did work really well in the beginning. I did the same thing. And then I referred my wife and she bought a gift card. So I got $20 when she bought her $100 gift card and she got $20 plus her five for the 5% now. Hopefully the five later will come to. So that worked really well in the beginning. But apparently it seems that they had rampant abuse, so to speak, of that people self-referring endlessly in order to earn those credits. So they slowed things way down. So we wrote about this.

And then the next day, my account was deactivated for a while, as was Steven Pepper's because we had a lot of referrals, I think. And so anyway, eventually they fixed that. But they've told a reader since that they've changed the model to now the $20 referral bonus that you earn when you sign up and you spend $100 will post up to 30 days after you've made your first $100 purchase. So it seems that they're building in some buffer time to make sure that someone doesn't just endlessly refer themselves so they can catch that before they pay out an endless number of $20 bonuses, which is probably reasonable because the way it was happening, I can imagine they probably got rampant abuse of that. So it's not unreasonable, but it does change it a little bit in terms of now you have to have the faith if you sign up for it and spend

the $100 that you're going to get that $20 in the future. You'll get the five right away for the 5% now, and then you got to hope that you'll get the 5% later and the $20 later. I imagine you probably will. But at the same time, 10% back on some of these brands is not sustainable long term. So a little crazy, but I signed up right away. And I think it is another good example of one of those things that when you see these types of opportunities, you got to strike while the iron is hot, jump on it and take advantage because that's not a sustainable amount back. But if they're looking to build interest and they're willing to spend X number of dollars to build that interest, well,

take advantage of that. Absolutely. Absolutely. So that's great. And by the way, yeah, it's not sustainable, but they do it like instead of advertising, instead of spending a lot on advertising, they spend a lot on these cashback things. And that gets blogs like ours writing about it. So they're sort of paying for advertising indirectly by doing that. Yeah. And that's what I mean. If they've got a bunch of money to spend like that, then you might as well take them up on... They're looking to pay people to use the app, essentially.

Here's your chance to check it out. And so you've got to take advantage of that while you can because that's the purpose. That's why they do it. So you might as well strike while that iron is hot. So good luck there. Hopefully that'll continue to work out well for everybody in the long run. And by the way, for ongoing gift card purchases, word on the street is that if you spend more than a thousand dollars or a thousand dollars or more in a day, that's going to lead to getting your account suspended or shut down. So if you're like, Oh wow, 10% back on Amazon, I spend money on Amazon all the time or Walmart or whatever, go easy. I mean, we had no problem. My wife bought a $500 Walmart gift card and that

was fine. So she got her 5% back now and presumably will get the 5% later. But you can't go all in, so to speak, on that. Go slow. All right. That's a crazy thing. Let's talk about Mattress Running the Numbers. This week's Mattress Running the Numbers is kind of crazy. This could have been a what crazy thing. Mattress Running the Numbers for this week is the Hilton Roblox promotion, whereby you can earn 111,111 Hilton Honors points.

Are you in on this, Greg? That's a lot of ones. Well, let's talk a little more about this. So I'm going to let Hilton's PR department do the talking here. That's a good idea. Yeah. All right. Here's how it goes. And forgive me if I pronounce things completely wrong.

It says Paris Hilton's Slivingland. Yeah, it's like slaying and living. Like're gonna slay living sliving sliving sliving land will premiere an interactive hilton hotel lobby where users can participate in a scavenger hunt to collect hilton branded items and claim free limited sliving land digital wearables. In a first-of-its-kind metaverse to real-world activation, Hilton is giving away more than 12 million Hilton honors points through an exclusive virtual quest. 111 winners will revel in 111,111 Hilton honors points, and 11 winners will be crowned with diamond status for a year. All right.

Backing up here. What is with all these ones? What's the connection to one? Okay. I have no idea about that. I really don't. Did you catch that somewhere in the marketing? Why all the ones?

Because I didn't. No idea. There must be something. I don't know if it's as obvious when we're reading it out loud saying 111,000, but we're talking about 11, one, one, one, one, one. That's how many points they're giving out per person to 11 to one, one, one winners. And then one, one winners will be also get diamond status. So, yeah, I don't know if they have some weird.

Obsession with one. I don't, I'm not sure if they have some weird obsession with one. I don't I'm not sure. I'm not sure what that is. So but if you're like, OK, well, what is this living gland and interactive Hilton lobby? So Roblox is now forgive me because this is outside of my expertise. But I believe Roblox is an interactive metaverse sort of a game. And you can download the app. And I know that because I did. So you can download the app. And I know that because I did.

So you can download the app on your phone and play for free. So you create a little character and it's this whole virtual world thing. Now, my understanding is that Roblox is full of games that are developed by the users. So it's user generated content and supposed to theoretically be safe for kids and families to play the stuff. I guess it must get monitored somehow, or I don't know that for sure. So do your own research. But anyway, once you download and install the game, though, you can choose what you want to check out, and you can just in the search box type in Slivingland, and it will come up.

It doesn't auto-populate. You just have to type it in and hit the search button. But then you can just enter straight into the Slivingland. So it's not like you've got to wander around and figure out where this is on a map. You just put it in the search box and that's it. And then you're in this like virtual world and you start out in the Hilton lobby, but then you can walk around, you can leave the, after you find what you need to find in the Hilton, because you have to walk around the lobby, pick up some stuff, go up to the penthouse and find some stuff there and whatnot. And then you leave the hotel and you walk around and there's this funny

enough, the obsession continues. There's 1111 land or no, I'm sorry, the 1111 club, which is a nightclub. You can enter and walk around the nightclub and there's like a little DJ game you can play.

It's a little reminiscent of dance dance revolution. If you've ever played that. So a bunch of those types of things within the world there's other games in different places as you wander around and then somehow i ended up in state farmland and so i met jake farm and there was like some state it was weird there's some trampolines you had to jump up to get to like this dance floor and uh so yeah wait state farmland is inside it is living land living land it seems to be some sort of a, you know, cross brand promotion thing. Yeah.

Yeah. There's like you get into state farmland from there. Yeah. I don't know. All right. Huh. It's not entirely. Another twist.

It is. Did you did you run into Paris Hilton when you're when you're wandering around? Well, so funny enough, like when you start out in the Hilton Hotel lobby, there's an advertisement you're supposed to watch. So you got to like get in front of the front desk and look up at the TV behind the front desk. And so like it's animated, but there's an animated Paris Hilton in that. So and of course, it's like an animated world. So there's a couple of pictures here and there that are clearly Paris Hilton, but they're not, you know, they're animated. So so sort of I saw like 2D version. That's hilarious. So, so you could go into virtual reality and you, you don't even get to directly interact with a virtual reality Paris Hilton. You get to watch a commercial on a,

on a TV within the virtual reality. Yeah. So, so, so at least two, two levels of reality removed from Paris Hilton. Right. But you do get to hear her talk about how you're slaying this, and that's hot, and all of her various catchphrases. So you do get some of that as you go around. And then if you get into the apartment building, I think you end up in her apartment, I think. And so I was searching around. It really seemed like she had this model car up on a shelf, but I really thought, oh, there must be something to do with that. But I couldn't figure it out. So anyway, it's not super intuitive, but once you figure it out, it's not that hard. Like your right thumb jumps and your left thumb

is sort of like a controller, but there's no controller there. So you just need to move it around like there was a controller and up. And so anyway, you can wander around, but I think, I think, I think it's not actually that these bundles of points are hidden somewhere. Now, I only played for like an hour, a little over an hour maybe, which I'm already embarrassed to admit that much. But I wandered around this thing for a little while trying to see if I could find something hidden. And my impression, I think, is that this stuff will probably just get dropped in at some point. Either you're there or you're not when it gets dropped in is my thought, but maybe I'm wrong. So please go out there and play it.

So I feel less bad that I'm the only person in the world that played the, well, I know I'm not the only person because you could see other people running around other characters. You can create your little avatar. And we've talked way longer than I ever thought I would about a virtual reality Paris Hilton land on this show. So you can earn some Hilton points this way. Is it worth the time?

What do you think, Greg? Is it worth the hour and change that I put into this to hunt for points? No, no way. I mean, if you enjoy wandering around living lands, then obviously, sure, go for it. But is it worth your time for the chance of getting these Hilton points? No, I didn't even want to infect my device with this with this download. But I guess it would be fine. I mean, Roblox is right, right, is widely used, I guess, outside of living land. Well, I got that news for you, Greg.

I was on the clock while I was doing it. So that's right. I paid for it. Right, right. Oh, boy. And so you say that you say sliving land stands for slaying and living. Like you're slaying life. Right, right, right.

So it's not like slaying, like killing things. But you don't know what it means to slay. Like if somebody's like, oh, you slayed. You did really well. I get it. Okay. All right. Yeah. So not like slaying, like killing things. No, you don't know what it means to slay? Like if somebody's like, oh, you slayed. Yeah, no, I get it. Okay, all right, yeah. So you're slaying, slaving life. Yeah. I guess I didn't slay is the problem. That's really what it comes down to.

I just feel like I would do it if slaying meant like actual like bat in world battle. Yeah. I think you can do that somewhere in roblox and there's like ways to spend money in roblox so if you're like oh i'm gonna get my kid to play this and do it for me just like make sure you've got that set up to not spend your money because you can buy stuff so careful yeah really good tip with that not in this living land i don't think i don't think you buy stuff in that but like if you go to customize your avatar, there's all sorts of things you could you got to buy Robux, I think, in order to pay for stuff in Roblox, I guess. I don't know. Ask a kid. Ask a kid and they can probably explain it to you. But yeah,

I didn't win any points, but you can try if you want. All right. All right. That's enough. That's enough about Paris Hilton way more than I ever thought we'd talk about her. So let's talk about a word talk up next. So we're talking. You did some awesome work this week. I mean, you definitely were carrying the torch for all of us and leading us to how to book Flying Blue stopovers, right? Yeah. Yeah. I've got my scientist hat on trying to dig into this. So last year, Flying Blue, which is the Air France and KLM combined program, they announced that they were going to that they now offer free stopovers on award flights. But there was like zero guidance in the announcement about what counts as a free stopover. And the only information about how to book it was you have to call to book it.

So I decided I've got to dig into this and try to figure out what's going on here. Where can we get great value from this new capability and so on? So first I wrote a post where I took what little information was available online and analyzed it and said, well, I think this part means this and this other part means that. And if I understand it right, as long as you slip stick with a single carrier, you could have as many stopovers as you want for no additional charge. Um, so if that's true, uh, that's pretty exciting. And, um, anyway, so that was one post. And then a follow-up post was like, well, let's test out this unlimited stopover idea. And I tried first with KLM flights and I ran into some difficulty there, but more because they don't have like a lot of flights that you could string together. So there weren't too many routes where i could try it on but then i tried delta and i strung together a whole bunch of delta flights

and found that uh yeah in fact the uh it seems that you could add unlimited number of stopovers the it's it's not it's when i say for uh, the word price did go up a little bit. Um, but not as much as it would have gone up had I booked each segment separately. So, um, there's something, there's something good there. I am still, I still have a lot of follow-up experiments to do to figure it all out, but I think there's going to be some good, uh, opportunities to get a lot of value outup experiments to do to figure it all out. But I think there's going to be some good opportunities to get a lot of value out of your flying blue points. Yeah, that's really exciting. You're sliving with that discovery. Well done.

So one thing I think is worth mentioning, I'm curious to see where this goes as you do more research, because you mentioned in the post and mentioned just now that the award price didn't go up very much and certainly didn't go up as much as you would think for three separate segments, but it did go up by almost 50%. Percentage-wise, it was a large percentage. It was not very many. It was 9,000 extra miles, but that was almost half of what the initial award cost was. So I'll be curious to see how that affects a bigger plan you know, a bigger plan, a little longer, more stopovers. I mean, I'm sure still it will be less than booking them individually. And that's kind of exciting and interesting, but, uh, yeah. Yeah. Although when you say it went up, um, yeah,

it's, it's really hard to say that. So the way, because the way, the way it works, I was comparing to a nonstop flight. And even without stopovers, Flying Blue will charge more for a one-stop flight than a nonstop flight when flying Delta. So it's really hard to judge. The best I could do is figure out that when booking separately, it would cost more, you know, than booking it all together. So, um, and, and I'm kind of hoping that there's, that there's some, um, that there's, there's a, there's a maximum that they would charge. So like if you string together enough, then all the future ones would be free because you hit some, some maximum cap, but, uh, I'm not nowhere near getting to that piece of information yet.

Very interesting, though. Fascinating. Yeah, I'd be curious to check some of the Air France or KLM Fifth Freedom routes and see how one of them might play in also. I know they have some. You can find them through flight connections, probably, I would assume. If you take a look through there,

you can find some of those things. If you want to play along with Greg here and try to build your own, then you could potentially do that. So I'm excited about that because I think that this is a pretty untapped opportunity that hasn't been explored fully enough yet. So I'll be really interested in some of the creative ideas that you had both within that post and for the future sound really, really interesting. So I look forward to the results of that. But that's not all this week for Award Talk. We also had some research from you on the leading hotels of the world, right? Yeah. For your first experience with it.

Right. So last year, Citi added Leading Hotels of the World, their Leaders Club, as a point transfer option from Citi Thank You Rewards to Leading Hotels of the World, their Leaders Club, as a point transfer option from City Thank You Rewards to Leading Hotels of the World. And I was anxious to try it out. So I had an opportunity in Southeast Florida to book a two-night stay. I transferred a bunch of City Points over to Leaders Club and booked this very, what would be a very, very expensive hotel. And I'll tell you what, I was really pleasantly surprised with the outcome. So first of all, I got 1.8 cents per point value, meaning city thank-you points were worth that much compared to the cash

rate which I explored to see whether the cash rate was inflated and it was not in fact it was lower than most other avenues for booking the same hotel so so that's great value right there for city points and what I was really excited about was that leaders, which you have to join for free in order to get the points at all, offers some benefits at these hotels that I didn't even think about before booking it, that you automatically get benefits as if you have elite status or something. And so one of the benefits is a room upgrade and it, it explicitly says something like one category, but I got, we got upgraded all the way to a, uh, big suite.

Um, it offers free continental breakfast daily. And, uh, what they did for us is not continental breakfast, but a full free American breakfast for each of us or $40 off the breakfast charge daily. And then they also have things like early check-in, late checkout, which a little harder to test to what degree you're getting those benefits, but I was able to take advantage of late checkout. So some really nice perks for booking this way. So I'm excited. Another great way to use CityPoint. So that's terrific. Yeah, that sounds awesome. And I loved that you separated in the post between your experience with the program and the redemption versus your experience with a specific hotel, because the specific hotel seemed like it fell a little bit short of expectations, but I think it was really wise to not overemphasize that because the key part of the

story for most of us, you're not going to probably stay at that exact hotel. So that exact hotel doesn't matter all that much. What matters is how the process works and the process works. It seems really well. Yeah. Yeah. It was shocking how well the whole thing worked with one big exception. And it's just a warning to anyone who does it. Every piece of the process, it's going to look like they're going to charge you taxes and fees on top of the points, but they don't actually do that. I think it's just that their system doesn't know how to take that out of the confirmation and the checkout screen where it shows what you're paying. But you're really just paying the points and that's it.

So that's all good. And I'll say one thing about the hotel. They surprised that they have a new feature at this particular hotel, which is a uh complimentary yacht ride free yacht ride why not why not free yacht ride so so so my wife and i did that we were the only guests on the yacht and the two uh crew members um and had a great couple hours out on the Intracoastal and here's a funny thing too this game just in a period of a few months

my wife and I have done two very unique modes of transport thanks to this game so this was the second one riding a yacht thanks to points but first one as we've talked about before where the helicopter rides thanks to the JetBlue status match from Delta. So yeah, here's to more.

Living the life. Living the life. Yeah. That's awesome. That seemed really cool. And what a unique, interesting thing. I've not heard of a hotel doing something quite like that before. So that's a pretty unique inclusion. So yeah, very cool. Very interesting. A lot of fun.

So we'll have to keep our eyes out for more opportunities for leading hotels of the world and see what other unique stuff like that we might find. I mean, I guess at the price point for the cash rates they're charging, they can afford to do some of that stuff. So I wonder what other cool things might be out there that we're just not aware of yet. So very cool. All right. I think that brings us to this week's main event. Main event time, pay taxes, earn big rewards. So yeah, we all have to file our taxes, but at least we can earn some big rewards when we're paying for those taxes. And we're primarily going to be talking about paying federal taxes here,

but we will have a brief section about other types of taxes later on here. First, some background here. You can pay your federal taxes with a credit card, and there are three payment processors that the IRS works with for allowing you to do that. And they do charge a fee for using your credit card, but the fees are very reasonable compared to other places that charge fees for using credit cards. So the credit card fees on all three processors are a little bit under 2%. The current rates range from 1.82% to 1.98%. They tend to vary a little bit every year or two. So the exact amount, don't worry about just think of it as being like around 2%, but just tiny, tiny bit less. All right.

So let's talk about why, why should you use a credit card if you have to pay a fee? And I've got like four categories of answers to that. We'll drill into each one a little bit. advised one, because you're not talking about big money, is that there are cards that earn better than 2% cash back. So you could use those and earn some profit. So yeah, you say not big profit. And that's true for the vast majority of us. But you never know, some people might have a particularly large tax bill. I remember somebody talking to me at a conference years ago that had sold an expensive property in New York City, a home that they had lived in. And so they were going to owe a large amount of tax on however much that had gone up. And so something like that, I mean, maybe that small percentage would add up to a significant chunk of change. That's not going to be nearly as significant as the other

ways that we're going to talk about that you could come out far ahead. But maybe it's worth it for some people. It's a small win for most of us if you're using a card that earns more than 2% back. Like, for instance, if you've got the Bank of America premium rewards card or the unlimited cash rewards card that both earn 2.625% back if you also have platinum status with Bank of America, which requires having $100,000 in cash or investments with Bank of America and Merrill. And so if you've got that situation, yeah, you're earning, you know, seven tenths of a percentage point. Not going to be enough to make it worth it for most of us. But that's not the only play out there. There's better options, right?

Yeah. Yeah. So another option is if you want transferable points and it's a way to just buy those points cheaply. So transferable points, if you're using them right, you would be essentially buying points for around one cent per point because you're earning two points per dollar and you're paying just under 2%. So it's actually a little bit cheaper than one cent per point to buy points.

Capital One has a number of cards that earn 2X everywhere, so you could use any of those. Citi has their double cash card. Amex has their Blue Business Plus where you get 2X on all spend up to $50,000 a calendar year. And then BuildCard, if you happen to use it to pay taxes on rent day on the first of the month, then you get double rewards. You get 2X on built points. And, uh, personally, that's how I'm going to be using my built card is, uh, is paying

rent on the first of the month to, uh, get two X. I would buy built points for, you know, a penny each all day long. Um, plus it'll contribute towards getting, getting... Build has this thing where you can get more levels of elite status the more you spend in a calendar year. And so I want to re-up my platinum status with Build because they offer some great perks, specifically huge transfer bonuses to those with platinum status. Like the one coming up in just a few days on rent day. So there's plenty of reasons. Yeah, I'm very interested in that specifically now because these big transfer bonuses are continuing to happen. So I want to get in on that too. And so I intend to probably pursue getting a

built card and putting taxes on that this year on the first of the month. So I think that is a pretty interesting potential play, but not the only one out there. So those are good options if you're looking to pay a penny a point. And keep in mind, we will mention now the built transfer bonuses. It's going to turn out to potentially be far less than a penny a point if you take advantage of one of those really big transfer bonuses, right? I mean, if you got status and you take advantage of one of those transfer bonuses, you end up mean, if you got status and you take advantage of one of those transfer bonuses, you end up with 150% transfer bonus. You're paying a lot less than a penny a point.

Yeah, yeah. Every point becomes two and a half airline miles when you take advantage of one of those transfer bonuses and you have platinum status. So yeah, I can't say you're not- So you're talking about what is five, right? You're talking about five points per dollar essentially, right, effectively,

because you're getting two points on the first of the month. So one fifth of a cent to buy these, these miles. Yeah. That's amazing. That is pretty amazing. So yeah, so you know, I mean, now there are some other opportunities where you can earn welcome bonuses. And we'll talk about that in a second. But as far as an ongoing, yeah, if you're able to take advantage of one of those, which of course course we don't know if they'll continue forever uh or if there'll be another one but at this point they seem to be setting the precedent that they're going to keep coming out with them so that that's exciting yeah i'm just in my head to go on wait a minute it's two and a half uh miles per per built point not uh well you're earning if you pay it on the first of the month you're earning two built points right and so yeah yeah but but we were already factoring that that it's that it's

it's it's um one cent per point because you're earning two x rewards so so it's i think it's 0.4 cents per mile that you're paying so for for anyone doing the math out there, I believe that's the right answer. It's cheap. It's cheap. That's for sure. All right. So we talked about ways to buy miles relatively cheaply, but you could also earn valuable big spends bonuses or elite status or things like that, maybe a Southwest companion pass. So you've got a number of different options that could be compelling for using cards. Like for instance, the World of Hyatt credit card would be a particularly good one to use if you value a couple of things you can get from that card. With $15,000 calendar year spend on that card, you get a Category 1 to 4 free night certificate. So that's on top of the rewards you earn on spend.

Plus, you end up getting two Elite N knights for every $5,000 spent. So if you put $15,000 on a World of Hyatt card for your taxes, you earn a Category 1 to 4 free knight certificate, you earn the 15,000 points from doing the spend, and you earn six elite knights. So that could be a good card to put a large tax bill on. Absolutely. And there are so many that we didn't want to go through all the possibilities, but tons earn loyalty points towards status. Plus a number of American Airlines cards offer things like a companion ticket after spending $20,000 or $30,000, depending on the card. And so you can combine all those things to get all those perks with one big spend. Yep. Yeah. So a bunch of those types of things. And we do have,

by the way, a page for best big spend bonuses. So you can find a bunch of those types of things. And we do have, by the way, a page for best big spend bonuses. So you can find a link for that in the show notes with the best big spend bonuses. That way you can compare them across different cards and see which one fits you, because maybe you don't care about high elite status, don't have the high card. Maybe you're not an American Airlines person, but maybe you're going after Delta elite status this year. And so that might make sense. Or there's lots of other different cards that could make sense for that, for the big spend bonuses and elite status or credit and that sort of thing. But of course, bigger still is welcome bonuses, right? You can earn a valuable welcome bonus with this kind of spend. Well, that's the thing. To earn huge numbers of points

from new credit card welcome bonuses, you often have to spend a lot of money to meet the requirements of the welcome bonus. And so this is the way to do it. If you have your eye set on certain big offers that require $10,000, $15,000 spend, and you wouldn't normally be able to meet that spend, tax time is a great time to look at that and tackle those things then. So today, as we're recording this, here are just some examples of big offers that are out there. And you could find them on our best offers page, of course, on the blog. There's, for example, the Amex Platinum card, 150,000 points after $8,000 spend. Chase has their Inc. Business Preferred with 100,000 points after $8,000 spend. A little bit more

spend, the Amex Business Gold, 130,000 points after 10K spend. You want to spend even more? How about getting 150,000 points with the Business business platinum card after $15,000 spend? Or how about moving up to the VentureX business card where you could get 150,000 points after $20,000 spend? But that's not all with that offer. You got a big tax bill. Yeah. If you can, if you could, uh, handle a total of a hundred thousand dollars spend in six months, then you get another 150,000, uh, bonus miles. So a total of, of 300,000 points with a total of a hundred thousand dollars spend. And that's on top of the two X

points you earn from that spend. So you would earn a huge number of points if you could actually do that a hundred thousand dollars spend. Yeah. Half a million, five X on that a hundred thousand dollars spent. Yeah. And that's, that's terrific. So for those who have huge, huge tax bills, that's definitely worth considering. And there's a cash version of that. The Spark Cash Plus has the exact same welcome bonus terms, except that you're earning, instead of 150,000 points, you're earning $1,500 with 20K spend and $1,500 with $100,000 spend. So that's either way, whether you complete just the 20k, or you complete the full 100k, that's a great return on that spend. Yeah. And to be clear, you know, I'm sure that

there's somebody out there who heard us say, if you've got a really big tax bill of 100,000, then that's when you should really consider it. I'm sure there's somebody who's like, well, why wouldn't you open a platinum and a business platinum and a business gold and an ink business preferred if you got $100,000 spent, and you certainly could do that and end up with far more points. So if you're willing to open multiple cards and make multiple payments and you have a large tax bill, I mean, that could be a great time to earn tons of points. The VentureX Business or Spark Cash Plus is ideal for somebody who just wants to open one card and earn one bonus rather than putting that $100,000 in spend on one of the other options. You could earn even more with one of those offers. Right, right, right. Or you might have more than $100,000 in taxes to pay. And then

you could go after that one of those as well as some of the others. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So, but definitely, I always look at tax time as sign up on this time. I look at it and say, okay, well, and I've been thinking about it for weeks already now saying, okay, well, we've got taxes coming up. And then we also have this that we can spend on and that. And so I've been putting all of those ideas together in terms of what we can spend and where and how and try to formulate a strategy because it's a great time to pick up easy spend that counts. We should mention that counts for earning welcome bonuses. And that's something that people sometimes wonder, they're like, oh, am I going to get hit with a cash advance fee for paying my

taxes on a credit card? And the answer to that is no. The IRS is very clear that making tax payments will be treated as a purchase by credit card companies. Every now and then, we get a report from someone who says that they didn't get an Amex welcome bonus and they paid their taxes and an Amex agent told them it's because taxes and an Amex agent told them it's because taxes are a cash-like transaction. And it's wrong. I mean, people who followed up and continue to dig into it have, I think, almost invariably eventually gotten credited. I don't know why every now and then somebody doesn't automatically get a welcome bonus when they've made a large tax payment. But the vast majority of people who've done that, me included, by the way,

as of just a few months ago, we've gotten our welcome bonuses as expected paying taxes. Right. Yep. Yeah. Great. Okay. So what about other taxes, not federal taxes? So that's a harder story to tell because the answer varies by where you are. Basically, credit card options, you know, the ability to pay with a credit card at all or how much it costs. That's going to vary by by state for state taxes, going to vary by for your city, county taxes, your property taxes. They're all different in different areas. So, you know, I would just look into your local one and see, do they charge a reasonable amount? Do they allow it at all? Some of them probably have good, good deals. The other thing to check is log into your

PayPal account and go to bill payment and see whether your, uh, whatever, whoever your tax assessor is, whether they're listed as a, as a biller that you can pay through PayPal bill pay. And if so, chances are good, you'll be able to use a credit card with no fee to pay your taxes. So, uh, with PayPal and with some billers, they only let you pay with a debit card, but with most billers, they'll let you pay with a credit card. Yeah. Yeah. That's a great tip because that could be super useful for a lot of people. Also worth mentioning that some, I've heard every now and then from people who've been able to pay local taxes with a gift card and sometimes either without a fee or with a lower fee using gift

cards. Now, I think we mentioned back at the beginning for federal taxes, you can only do a certain number of payments per processor. What is it? Two payments per processor? Right. So if you're going to use gift cards, it's not super useful because you usually use a couple of them. But we've heard every now and then from someone who's been able to pay local taxes with more gift cards, essentially. So that could be a way to use up some of those, potentially. But certainly, like Greg said, check and see. Sometimes the fee is reasonable enough to pay local taxes that way.

And it's not always obvious that there's a way to do it online. I've looked at this with property taxes because I pay taxes for a few different family members. And the bill will come and it tells you where to mail the check. And then somewhere in small print, sometimes it says, oh, but you could pay this online and there's a site for it. It's not necessarily particularly difficult to do. And sometimes the fee is reasonable. Like Greg said, though, that varies tremendously by state and municipality and county and blah, blah, blah. Right, right. Now, in almost all cases, you could pay your taxes through a service, a bill payment service like Plastic, which is P-L-A-S-T-I-Q. But they charge about a 3% fee for using your credit card. So whether or not it's worth doing that, you'll have

to decide. It could be in cases where you're trying to hit big spend requirements for a new welcome bonus for sure. Yeah, I use that for some local taxes that can't be paid online. Some of the school district taxes and whatnot that can't be paid online. And I say some because, like I said, I do this for a number of family members. They just give me a check and I pay. So I do use plastic for some of them. The other thing worth noting, though, is nowadays they do also charge $1.50 to mail a check. So if you're mailing a paper check, they do charge a

small fee for that too. So that comes into play as well for you. But again, totally well worth it if you're earning 150,000 points from doing 15K spend or whatever the case may be. Right, right. Okay, now we regularly get some questions about paying taxes with credit cards. And one is, is it okay to overpay taxes? Like, will I get in trouble if I overpay my taxes? And the answer is yes, it's okay. The IRS is very happy to get a loan from you. And once you file your taxes, you will be refunded whatever you overpaid.

I mean, that's the whole idea of a tax refund, right? I mean, like millions of people overpay every year. And that's why tax refunds exist. So a lot of people do that. They will purposely overpay and, and in order to increase their credit card spend more. And, uh, but of course you need to be very, very, uh, careful about having, having the funds to, uh, pay your credit card bills while waiting for that payment. Cause there's no guarantee that

it'll come anytime soon. And so you need to not get in a situation where you're incurring interest on your credit cards because you haven't paid it in full. That's going to wipe out all the value you got from your rewards. Yeah, absolutely. Don't go after one of those 100k spend offers if you don't have 100k to pay the bill off right away, if you're overpaying your taxes, because usually the refund comes back relatively quickly, but sometimes it takes a lot longer. So yeah, you need to be prepared for that. So yeah, but definitely you can. And most people that overpay, overpay by their withholdings being too much, right? But if you make estimated payments and you estimate it too high,

probably they're not going to complain about that. Which gets to the other question people ask a lot, which is, does it make sense to reduce my withholdings so that I'll pay more in quarterly estimated tax. Or maybe you don't pay estimated tax at all. And by reducing your withholdings, you will start to pay estimated tax. And yeah, you can do the same thing with quarterly estimated taxes

as we talked about doing with your end of year taxes by paying through the same payment processors that we discussed earlier. So yeah, I think that makes sense. Yep. All right. And then the other question that we have listed. So yeah, I think that makes sense. Yep. All right. And then the other question that we have listed here is, what to do when the payment processor didn't like my business credit card?

Is that an issue people are running into? Yeah, that's a really specific issue that some of the payment processors don't like. With certain Chase business cards, for example, we'll say that's not a valid form of payment. And there is a workaround, which is to pay through PayPal. So the payment processors often offer PayPal as an option. And as long as you link your business credit card to your PayPal wallet, then you can pay that way and you still earn rewards and everything and you don't pay extra for going through PayPal. So that's all good. One of the payment processors though has a bug where picking PayPal is difficult because the screen to select what you're doing when you hit the PayPal button comes up and disappears right away. And there's a workaround around that, which is to set up a scheduled payment with PayPal instead of a one-time immediate payment through the payment processor. So there you go with that. Interesting. So how late in the game can you pay your taxes

with a credit card? What do you mean how late? What's the deadline to be on time for your taxes? Like, can you pay online the day the taxes are due? Oh, yeah. Yeah, you can. Yeah. Yeah. Right up, I think, until midnight, the day that they're due. I really thought you were asking me to recite the payment due dates for...

No. No, just wanted to be clear. If you're paying online, if you're using a service like Plastic that's mailing a check, it's a different story because your check's got to get postmarked. But if you're using one of the online payment processors, I've made a payment very close to midnight before. It's been fine. So, yeah, as long as you're paying on the day it's due, you'll get credited for having made the payment on the right day. Yeah.

At least with federal taxes. State and local, I don't know what your state and local municipality is up to or what their rules are. So check into that. All right. I think that's that. I think that rounds out

the discussion about paying taxes, pay your taxes and do it with a card, earn a big welcome bonus. If you're earning one of these like 150, 200,000 point welcome bonuses, those could easily buy you, like I said before,

a trip that's worth more than whatever you paid in taxes in order to get the points. So it's worth going after a welcome bonus, I think. Yep, totally agree. All right. This week's question of the week. Question of the week came in a few days ago, and I answered it already, but I need Greg's answer because I think his answer might be different than mine. So a reader wrote in and mentioned that there was a new law passed in New York State in December of 2023 that now basically guarantees that you'll have 90 days to use your rewards if your card account is getting shut down. So if a credit card issuer shuts you down, you get 90 days to use your points, whereas in the past, some issuers just make you forfeit all the points right away. So if that was your

situation, if you found yourself in a situation where the card issuer was closing your account, so you weren't going to be able to keep an account with that issuer long term. And so they said, okay, well, your account's closed. You have 90 days to use your points or lose them. Where would you transfer your points and why? And the question was intentionally left open for all of the various transfer point programs. So I'm curious was intentionally left open for all of the various transfer point programs. So I'm curious as to your answer for each of the major transferable currencies, at least. Yeah. So Chase, you said Hyatt and I say Hyatt as well. You could just get great value with Hyatt. So why not? Amex, I think you said, you said, um, Air Canada, right?

Yes, we did. Aeroplan. Yep. Yeah. Um, that, that would be, that'd be my pick as well. So Aeroplan. Oh, look at you. I thought for sure you were going to say something different.

Aeroplan. Why? Yeah. Uh, well, Aeroplan is, is extremely flexible. Uh, they have so many partners. Star Alliance is, is so is extremely flexible. They have so many partners. Star Alliance is so broad by itself. They don't charge fuel surcharges.

So a lot of good things about the program. And I like that you can optionally pay more for an award ticket to get free changes and cancellations. So that somewhat negates my biggest problem with Air Canada, although I guess my real biggest problem is not negated, which is that their call center is horrible. But if only they had better over-the-phone support, then it would be a really excellent program. Then Citi, oh oh boy that's tough because uh so i think you said choice right i did because i did because city bank if you have the premier card it transfers one to two to choice so you could get great value that way in my case so i have so many choice points that I wouldn't do it.

Yeah. So I would be looking most likely, I would normally look at Flying Blue. They transfer, everybody transfers to Flying Blue and Flying Blue, their award program has gotten better and better recently. So that would normally be my thing. But I just recently transferred

a whole bunch of built points at a at an incredible ratio with 150 transfer bonus to flying blue so i'm flush with flying blue right now to be clear that transfer bonus is expired that was the red day for january of 2024 so took advantage of that or maybe you took advantage of that. Or maybe you took advantage of one even before that. I don't know which one you did. No, that one, I think. That one, okay. And so, wow. So the one that I thought you had left out of your analysis, the one program that I thought you'd left out of your analysis, it's not necessarily one I would do, but I think a lot of people should consider is Avios. That, you know, Avios, the Avios points can be moved around between British Airways, Qatar, Iberia, and Aer Lingus.

And soon- You have somebody to correct Greg's pronunciation. And soon, who's being added in there to the obvious? Thin air. Thin air is coming soon. So that opens up so many possibilities. What I think it comes down to is I don't have much in the way of one world flights out of Detroit, out of my local airport. So I have limited opportunity to really use those kinds of points directly. But if you have a more one world friendly

airport nearby, I think having points in a program like that would be really useful. That's actually a pretty good answer. Obvious, I feel like, because there's a lot of flexibility there because you can move between the different programs and they have different sweet spots. While there are some awards that are very similarly priced, there are some that aren't so similar. And of course, all the major transferable currencies transferred to Avios, so very easy to keep the points alive by transferring in from other programs. So that's an interesting pick, but you just said that you don't really have much use for them.

So would you really transfer them to Avia? Yeah. No, no, I wouldn't personally. I just think it's worth mentioning that that would be a good one from Citi to consider. I know what you're going to say then, but go ahead. Keep going. What am I going to say? I want to know.

Well, I think even though you just said you don't have a lot of one world flights, I think you're going to say Asia miles. No. So I have a lot of one world flights, I think you're going to say Asia miles. No. So I, I have a bunch of, I used to think that Asia miles was the one world carrier. You should transfer your, your city points too. But then because of the party five challenge, I ran into that situation where they, they require you to name people. You're going to be to name people you're going to be adding, if you're going to be booking awards for others. You have to add them to your account, basically. And you can only add five people.

And if you want to take off anyone to replace them with someone else, you've got to pay them money to do that. It's totally ridiculous. And they'd also, not that long ago like they raised award prices and so uh i'm i'm much less enamored with them so no one uh obvious is the way i would go if i want one world coverage uh going forward um yeah i have such a hard time here because uh because like i said i already am flush with Choice and Flying Blue, which would be my two top picks. So I don't actually know what I would do in this case.

I see. And the problem is leading hotels of the world, which we talked about earlier, I think their points expire after two years or something. So I don't know whether they're refreshed with activity. That's something I need to look into. Yeah. Okay. Who's left? Built. Built. Yeah. I guess I would look to see, is there going to be a big transfer bonus before the time runs out? if so probably take care advantage of that otherwise uh i think it comes down to american airlines or hyatt and uh since i've presumably just transferred a million points to hyatt maybe it would be american airlines okay all right oh you know what we did leave another one out capital one capital one uh they do aeroplan right they do yes yeah i think i would

do aeroplan too all right interesting i'm i find it very interesting that you picked aeroplan but it makes sense for me too because there's just wide star alliance coverage to begin with it's a great alliance to have points in in my opinion and then beyond that air canada has so many partners beyond star alliance so it just opens up so many more possibilities. And that combined with the fact that you can combine different carriers on a single award very easily and create complex routings. Unfortunately, actually doing that is less easy because you do have to call somebody for really complicated bookings. And that's not easy at all because Air Canada just doesn't have enough phone agents. So that's not easy at all because air canada just doesn't have enough phone agents so that's the big downside but uh but yeah otherwise i that's a program i think if i were going to have to use them or lose them that would be a good pick for me too hopefully we won't be

in that situation now it's also worth noting a reader pointed this out and they're right and i thought about it when i went to write the post but it was a complication i didn't want to get into it and that is that you don't necessarily if you you're in this situation, have to move all your points to one partner. You probably could transfer some to one and some to another, blah, blah, blah. And in reality, I probably would do some of that. I'd want some Turkish miles because I know I'll probably find an opportunity to fly United, but I don't want to put all my miles there because they expire in three years and stuff like that. So. Yeah. Yeah. And that, that's a, that's a great point. And, and, uh, truth is I probably, if I was really doing this, I probably would add more to my flying blue collection. So,

you know, I, I fly out of Detroit, which has, um, has Eric France flies right out of Detroit. And, um, so flying blue miles can be useful for that. It can sometimes be useful for flying Delta. So I would want to have both flying blue and Air Canada represented in there if I could. Yeah, very good. Very good. And to be clear, those aren't necessarily my all-time favorite programs. That's just what I would do if I had like a use and reluse situation in those cases.

Like ANA is one that we didn't mention at all that I think is a fantastic American Express transfer partner. But it takes a couple of days to get the points there. So that can be kind of inconvenient. More importantly, the points expire after three years. And so if I were going to take all my Amex points and put them somewhere, I wouldn't want to put them in a program where they're going to have a hard expiration date. Yeah, no. You know what? I've got 86,000 ANA miles that expire end of March. So I'm still

trying to figure that out. You know, I almost asked you about those recently because I found a situation where I thought I might be able to use them. And so I was going to see, oh, do you still have those? But then I realized that one of the flights would be operated by Brussels Airlines and the surcharges were just absolutely ridiculous. So I was like, oh, no, that's not going to work. So yeah, that's a bummer with ANA. Great if you're going to fly ANA, then you can get a great value of 75K off-peak round trip in business class to Japan is a pretty amazing sweet spot. So maybe you just need to plan a trip back to Tokyo and go to Team Labs again, just for the weekend. Yeah, I might do that. If I could find the new

ANA business class, which I haven't flown yet, and and combine it with like a weekend like that. I definitely consider that. Cause I think standard pricing is like 85 K. So it would almost exactly use up my, yeah. Well, anyway, it would almost exactly use up my points.

That would be perfect. Yeah. Yeah. No, no, it would be, you should do it. You should do it,

Greg. I look forward to the Instagram story from that. All right. If you look forward to getting more of this stuff in your email inbox each day or each week, you want to go to frequentmiler.com slash subscribe if you haven't done so already. Anyway, that's frequentmiler.com slash subscribe to join our email list. You can follow us on all the various social media. We're on Instagram. You can find our Frequent Miler Insiders Facebook group and join that where people are constantly asking questions about this stuff and answering each other's questions.

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