Frequent Miler on the Air - Points & Miles 2 Player Mode | Frequent Miler on the Air Ep292 | 1-31-25

Episode Date: January 31, 2025

On this episode, we'll talk about a crazy new premium credit card, we'll debate double elite night hotel promotions to see if they're mattress run worthy, talk about a nice new way to use JetBlue points, and discuss how to double your rewards with a partner. (01:15) - One reader writes in about booking their family with roundtrip business class flights to Australia for Christmas and New Years!!! (05:00) - New JetBlue Premier Card... Learn more about the premier card here. (12:13) - IHG Premier offer up to 170K after $4K spend in 3 months Learn more about the IHG Premier card here. (13:33) - IHG overlapping promos Learn more about the targeted double elite nights here. (14:58) - Learn more about Double points here. (19:10) - Marriott's overlapping promos: Learn more about Double elite nights + 1K bonus per night here. (25:58) - Marriott increases top-end point prices Read our Marriott Complete Guide here. (30:30) - CardPointers Learn more about CardPointers here CardPointers here. (32:48) - Book TAP Air with JetBlue points (39:13) - More rewards Check out our How to video for maximizing rewards with Amex referrals here. (43:38) - More spend (44:56) - Companion Flights Find our How your Southwest Companion can fly 4 free | Coffee Break Ep32 here. Find our Complete Guide to the Southwest Companion Pass here. Find our Two for the price of one: How to get a free companion ticket | Ep218 here. (46:10) - Find our How to Use Delta Companion Certificates Video here. (47:33) - Free weekends (50:50) - One reader has One Amex Platinum Card and one Amex Business Platinum Card. If they cancel or downgrade one of the cards, how does that impact their Delta lounge access for the calendar year?

On today's show, we talk about a crazy new premium credit card, we debate double elite night hotel promotions, are they mattress run worthy, we talk about a nice new way to use JetBlue points, and of course, we talk about how to double your rewards with a partner. Frequent Miler on the air starts now. Today's main event, points and Miles, two-player mode. We've got couples on the mind right now because Valentine's Day is coming up in a couple weeks as we're recording this. And we're thinking about how when you play the game, when you play the Points and Miles game as a couple, you can often earn twice as many rewards by doing it together.

And, you know, it doesn't have to be your Valentine. Your player two could be a brother, a sister, a cousin, somebody else that you like to play this game with in order to be able to travel more. Of course, Valentine's Day is on the mind. But, of course, playing in two-player mode can happen in a lot of ways, and we'll talk about a bunch of those today. Remember, if you want to jump ahead to something

or you want to go back to something to take a second look at it, you can always find the timestamps in the show notes. So just make sure you expand the show notes for that. And also, that's where you'll find links to more information about a number of the things that we're going to talk about today. So let's get talking. Greg, drag out this week's Giant Mailbag. Will do. Today's Giant Mail comes from Aaron.

Aaron says, I'm a longtime fan of Frequent Miler, and I want to thank you for all of the fantastic points knowledge you've given me over the years. Aaron says, Caribbean, Europe with round-trip business class flights, and Alaska, plus a trip to Iceland with points flights and fancy free Marriott stays from a recent sign-up bonus. My coup de grace for the year, though, and an optimal use of the fruits of the Amex points parade, is that I just booked my family round-trip business class flights to Australia for Christmas and New Year's. It's great to be points-rich enough that I get to treat family and friends, and myself, to trips we would not otherwise take. Now, hopefully, I'll convince some of them to get into the hobby so I'm not footing the points bill alone. I can't thank you guys enough for helping me make this possible.

Well, you're welcome, Aaron, and congratulations to you on doing all the hard work there. We gave you some of the tools, I hope, but you did a lot of the heavy lifting, so give yourself some credit there. That's great. That sounds awesome. And it's one of the things I love about this hobby, that we can do these crazy things that we wouldn't have had on our mind otherwise, and you can really maximize. And I love that Aaron is planning a trip with family. My wife and I traveled a lot by ourselves for years and years. And now these last few years, we've been able to do some more travel with family and friends. And that's been really, really fun, because, you know, it's more shared memories with a group and things you can go back

and talk about and laugh about and whatnot. So I really enjoy that quite a bit. So I'm glad that you've done that. And as far as the cruises go, I agree, the time to get on that has probably come and gone for most people. Although I'll mention, if you have one of those free cruise offers that you haven't used yet, and you want to try to parlay that into something else, there are some other cruise lines out there. I've heard Margaritaville at sea has been offering free cruises. And sometimes if you match to something like that, you might be able to submit one of those free offers to another cruise line that you haven't tried. If you haven't tried princess or Holland America, you can try that sort of thing. So I just booked a stay at Atlantis recently. And my wife just booked her stay at Atlantis because our Caesar's

diamond status was scheduled to run out here in the 31st of January before this publishes. But we were hoping to use that complimentary stay booking to try to eke out a couple more free cruises. But you're right. That path is really drying up, unfortunately. But great job on taking advantage while you could. We often say you have to strike while the iron is hot. Well done. Absolutely.

And, you know, Erin mentions that she's hoping that her family will get into this stuff so that they can earn points and everything as well. And so that's so appropriate for today's show because, I mean, look at what Erin did herself. And so now imagine if she had someone else to work with, how much more even she could have accomplished. Although it's hard to imagine doing more than what Erin has planned for this year. But yeah, but I mean,

at least you know, you could do, you could work, I guess, half as hard as Erin and get just as much by having a player two involved, you know, or alternate years and collect enough miles and points to be able to kind of half as hard as Aaron and get just as much by having a player two involved. You know, or alternate years and collect enough miles and points to be able to kind of go back and forth and do this year after year. I mean, that's also part of the fun that it's become an ongoing thing for a lot of folks that are playing in multiplayer mode. So we'll talk more about that

in a bit. But before we get to all that, let's talk about what crazy thing did JetBlue and Barclays do this week. So JetBlue and Barclays announced an exciting new credit card, a premier version of the JetBlue card, and it's called JetBlue Premier. So why is that crazy? I mean, most of what Greg just said is true, except for the part where it's exciting because it is not. Oh, my goodness. So this card has a pretty ho-hum, regular, ordinary welcome bonus at the time of recording this anyway, about what you would often find as a quote unquote elevated-ish offer on the $100 or whatever it is plus card, the JetBlue plus card. And most of the benefits on this Premier card are more or less identical to the plus card. But the Premier card has a $499 annual fee, plus 150 bucks per authorized user. And really the marquee benefit of this Premier card is that it's going to offer JetBlue business class lounge access. JetBlue

is going to be launching their own lounges, and this card will offer lounge access. But if you are an astute listener, you've noticed that all of that was in the present or the future tense, rather, because those lounges aren't even open yet. The first of the JetBlue lounges is expected to open in late 2025. That'll be at New York JFK with Boston following quote unquote soon after. So I don't know when late 2025 is, but I'm sure not paying 500 bucks for a credit card now that gets me access if it opens as expected in late 2025. Just absolutely nutty. Yeah, I was so shocked at how bad this card is. Like, so there's part of it, a headline is something like $250, right,

in Paisley credits. $300, yes. $300. So I thought, oh, well, at least you could book travel through Paisley, which is what? It's sort of their portal for getting vacations and other stuff? You can book hotels and rental cars and, of course, vacation packages. You can also book activities.

And oddly, you can buy luggage through Paisley. They don't have a whole retail store, but they do have luggage. Right. So if you wanted to buy stuff through Paisley, it sounds like from a headline like, oh, well, you six times per year. So you have to book or buy six times through Paisley for 250 bucks or more each time in order to get the full $300 back. So if you make one booking that's $500, you're only going to get one $50 statement credit. Or even if your one booking is a thousand or $2 dollars you're gonna get 50 bucks back these are like these are these are like coupons these are these are like those those spam ads you get all the time in your email that that have a big headline like save 50 but then

when you click in you realize you have to spend more than 250 to save the 50 and and so you you you mark that as spam and it goes away but now what you're doing is you're paying what four hundred dollars for this card or something five hundred four nine hundred dollars for this card uh and uh and one of its biggest benefits is you get this coupon yeah yeah it doesn't make i'm like what what were they thinking i don't understand i don't know it just doesn't make any sense. So that's, yeah, that's the headline benefit that sounds like it's something. But you know, it's really not. It does come with a priority pass and global entry fee credit, and it should

for $500 a year. So those things to me are not really impressive value adds by any stretch. There's tons of cards that come with those things so those weren't particularly impressive and even the welcome bonus i misread this until steven pointed it out actually our own steven pepper so the welcome bonus as we record this as the card launches is 70 000 true blue points and five tiles after five thousand dollars spent in the first three months and i took that as a bonus five tiles. But I think Stephen's probably right. All of the JetBlue cards, including this one, earn one tile per $1,000 spent. So yeah, after you spend $5,000, you're going to earn five tiles, whether that's part of the welcome bonus period or not. I don't think it's an additional five tiles. Initially, I assumed it was. But when I went back and read it after he said that, I don't think it is.

And this is one of those questions that I don't feel a burning need to answer for sure because I'm not going to recommend this card to anyone. So the people who might want to consider it someday are those who fly JetBlue a lot out of Boston or New York and would like that lounge access. But keep in mind, JetBlue has been having financial issues. There have been bigger airlines sniffing around, talking about acquisitions or other things. I can't imagine if a big guy bought JetBlue that they would keep going with these lounge buildups that aren't consistent with the other things that airline is doing. So I wouldn't count on those lounges necessarily appearing.

I mean, hopefully I'm wrong, but I'm just saying it just seems. You wouldn't bet $500 on it today is what you're saying. Right. And why would you anyway? Like, wait till the lounge is open, then sign up for the card. I mean, there's no reason to get it now at all. Right. Well, and keep in mind, if you're flying transatlantic, you're going to get access.

Transatlantic business class, I should say. You're going to get access to these JetBlue lounges already. And if you're a Mosaic 4 member, you're going to get access to the lounges. And then, of course, they're going to sell a lounge membership. And so I feel like the the crowd for whom this card is designed is pretty limited because if you're flying jet blue enough you know like a ton then you probably get to mosaic four and you won't need this card to get access to the lounge and you know so i just it seems to me like a pretty limited crowd and also they're

limiting it even further because if you have or have had the jet blue plus card you're not eligible to sign up for this card although we've heard from jet blue plus card holders who received an email offer to upgrade to this card with no bonus at all which again i just don't understand why anybody would it doesn't make any sense i don't know what jet blue or barclays was thinking it seems like somebody accidentally launched this sooner than they meant right like? Like, well, did somebody hit the button early? Is that what happened? I don't know. I mean, whether it's early or late, it's still a bad offer. I mean, someone designed this offer and apparently didn't consider, you know, looking at any other offers out there, including their own alternative cards to see is this a good a good deal okay thank you

barclays and jet blue for providing the content for today's crazy thing but that's not it for card news this week let's talk about some more card news some perhaps better card news so the ihg premiere card is out with a new welcome offer of up to 170,000 IHG points after $4,000 spent in the first three months. What do you think? Yeah, that's excellent. The Premier card, that's a good solid card for your portfolio because it's what, $95, something like that,

and gives you a free night each year and other perks, fourth night free on award bookings. And the nice thing is the free night each year and other perks um fourth night free on award bookings um and the nice thing is the free night each year uh is top top offable top upable um top upable let's say that three times um where what you could do is like it's worth 40 000 points but if you're if you want to book use a uh the certificate to book a night that costs, let's say, 70,000 points, you can use the certificate plus 30,000 points to book the night. Yeah, that's great. So this is a good deal for people who are going to stay at IHG or want to take advantage of that. The free night certificate is a pretty easy win year after year on this card.

So, yeah, I think that that's a good offer if you had that card in mind to get so keep keep an eye out on that one and consider that one if you're an IHG person. All right, let's talk about mattress running the numbers. Speaking of IHG, IHG also has a number of overlapping promotions that have nothing to do necessarily with their credit card. For IHG fans, you can earn double elite nights perhaps, if you're targeted. So there's an offer through April 22nd when you're paying a cash rate, and it has to be a cash rate, award stays won't count, then you can earn double Elite Nights, up to 10 bonus Elite Nights, I think, right? That's right. That's right. And a cool thing here is these bonus elite knights do count towards milestone rewards so if you max this

out with uh you know if you have 10 knights uh and you 10 eligible knights and so you get 10 bonus knights on top of that you'll hit 20 knights and that'll get you the first milestone reward which includes a sweet upgrade award as one of the options. And that can be a really great opportunity under certain circumstances. Yeah. So, I mean, I wouldn't run out and book 10 nights just for that, but I could certainly see that being valuable enough to interest someone who has some nights they need to book. And maybe this will tip the balance towards IHG and away from someone else or someone who's already going to be part of the way there i mean certainly this could be a

nice way to get the rest of the way there uh to one of those sweet upgrades so that's pretty cool but ihg is not the or that's not the only thing that ihg is offering so they're offering double elite nights but also i think this one is for everyone. Double points starting on your second stay. So starting on your second IHG stay between now and March 31st. So this one ends a little bit sooner than the double Elite Knight credit. You can earn double points. I do believe you have to register in order to earn the double points. Is that right?

I assume so, yeah. Most of these promos you need to register first. Usually, and I haven't looked in the terms of these two, but usually existing book stays will still work as long as you've registered before your stay. But again, I'm not 100% sure with these, but check it out if that bothers you. So, all right.

So suppose you got targeted for the double elite knights and you've registered for the double points and you've got some opportunity for, let's say, a cheap IHG stay. Is it worth a mattress run? Is it worth booking this just for getting double points, starting with your second stay and double elite nights? Maybe. I think it depends on how much you value the milestone benefits and how many nights you'd be mattress running to get to one of them. I probably wouldn't be mattress running, you know, seven or 10 nights of this, but maybe a couple if you're pretty close to the suite upgrades, then maybe a couple of nights between the double points and the double elite night credit might be worth the cost to get that suite upgrade. But I think you have to value the milestone benefit that you're chasing. It's not going to be worth it unless you're chasing one of those milestone benefits.

Yeah. I mean, I think as Nick said, I think you have to be really close to make it worth a matchless run here. The thing is the double points, even without the fact that it only starts on your second stay, you're talking buy them when they're on sale for half a cent each. So that's about $5 in points back. On a $100 stay, yeah. Right. Is that what you're saying? Sorry. Yeah.

I meant to say 5% of the cost of the stay back. And so I would think of it more as like it's a little if you think about that you can book hd stays through shopping portals and sometimes get pretty good return on that i think this is like that's a little boost to how much you get back so you know maybe you're getting 12 back through a shopping portal and now because of this double points thing, okay, 5%-ish more than that. So it's nice, but it's not enough to make me run out and book an IG stay. So it really comes down to the elite knights for me. How much do I want extra elite knights? There's no way I would book 10 knights in order to get to 20 knights for the suite upgrade award, that would be crazy. But if you were close, I could see maybe it could make sense in the right circumstances,

especially if you had a state coming up where you think you can use it and get really good value with a really nice suite. Yeah, I mean, depending where you are in the world, if you're able to get nights for 50 or 60 bucks a night, you know, then maybe two or three of those, the double and become four or six, you know, then, you know, maybe you're talking about that, but might be a fair trade just for the elite nights. So like Greg said, the double points is just icing on the cake. But don't forget to click through a shopping portal and look for

card linked offers. Because there's a lot of ways to stack with IHG. We often see card-linked offers for IHG and shopping portals. I mean, Capital One Shopping, I've seen targeted rates. I've gotten targeted rates for IHG pretty regularly in the 15% to 20% back range. So between that and the points and a card-linked offer, it could make for a pretty cheap mattress. Unlike Greg said, I wouldn't do a lot of nights and certainly not at very much money. But if you're in the right place where you're able to do that cheaply, maybe. But not to be outdone, Marriott is also out

with their own promotions here for double elite nights and extra points. So Marriott's promotion is for double elite nights plus a thousand bonus points per night, right? Yeah, so that seems pretty good because when you compare to the IHG situation, you're not just getting the double elite nights with the one promo,

but you're also getting that thousand bonus points per night. And another thing I like here, like past Marriott promotions that were similar to this would have a bonus per stay, but then it had requirements, like you had to stay at least three nights or whatever it was. So you weren't at all guaranteed to get this, but this looks like it's just for every night of your stay, you're getting that thousand bonus. That's good. Yeah. And I mean, that may or may not be as good as double points, depending on how expensive the property that you're booking is.

Because if you're booking a particularly expensive property, the 1,000 points per night might not represent a huge chunk as compared to the cash rate. But it's the simplicity here that I think appeals. So these are going to be paid nights completed between February 11th and April 28th are going to count for this. Again, you do have to register. But usually you can find a link right in the Marriott app to register for promotions. Also, homes and villa stays are eligible for this. And that actually caught my eye on this one because I currently

have a Hyatt booked for an upcoming stay where a homes and villas property is available for a pretty comparable cost to the number of points that I'm using anyway. And, and Steven Pepper had reported that he had gotten targeted for 30% back via Capital One Shopping, you know, for Marriott Homes and Villas. And then we've seen card linked offers for Marriott Homes and Villas. So when you add on the double elite nights and the thousand bonus points per night, I mean, this might actually work out to be a pretty good promotion for me. Yeah, I think so. I think so.

Now, there's actually also another promotion that's relevant here, which is specific to Marriott Homes and Villas, which is you get double points as long as you book by February 13th. But you could book further out, like way further out. So these overlap. So you will get double points. But I'll caution that we're not talking big money here. We're talking about homes and villas. Normally you get five points per dollar, unlike most Marriott properties that get 10 points per dollar. So this double points promo is bringing Marriott homes and villas up to par with a normal Marriott stay.

Yeah, so not super exciting, similar to the IHD situation. Marriott points are worth a little bit more, but that's not going to move the needle hugely. But it'll help. It'll help. Every little bit kind of helps there. It'll help if you meet the criteria. So to get the double points, which is not that big of a deal right you have to you have to have at least three nights consecutive nights and spend fifteen

hundred dollars or more on that stay um so yeah i don't get it why why for such a lame promo i get it when they had those big promos like 40 000 bonus points for a marriott homes and villas day but um for double points, they shouldn't require that. They must not make much money on these homes and villas bookings, I guess really is what it comes down to, right? Cause they can't seem to afford to be particularly generous with the

rewards on them, but I guess that's just the way it is. I don't know. Yeah. So anyway, you've got those and don't forget, again, I mentioned the portals and the card linked offers. The Amex offer that's been out has been 250 back on $1,000. So I mean,

really, when you stack all that together, if you're able to get a good portal rate, and you're able to use the Amex offer, and you're spending 1500 in order to get the double points, and you're getting the double elite night credit, it might make for a good deal. Keep in mind that many properties listed on homes and villas are probably also listed on like Vacasa and VRBO and Airbnb or some combination of those different sites. So you do kind of have to comparison shop a little bit and make sure that you're getting a good deal. But you know, that certainly could be mattress run worthy. I'm probably going to end up booking a Marriott homesomes and Villas stay here because I've got 40 elite night credits with Marriott from my Bonvoy Brilliant card and having a Marriott business card. So I'm 10 nights short of the usual choice benefits at 50 for the

year. And then I need some more nights for lifetime status. I'm getting pretty close. I'll hit that early next year. And it just so happens that I need five nights. And so this will work out pretty well because if I book five nights, I'll get 10 elite night credits and that'll get me to my choice benefit for the year without having to think about Marriott again the rest of the year if I don't want to. So I might do that. But the question here is, is it worth doing as a mattress run? Or maybe we should rephrase it as like what price would it be worth what how much would you be willing to pay per night for two elite nights right yeah this early in the year not a lot you know and i say that because you got the whole year yet to have

trips that you didn't anticipate or didn't expect to have, I wouldn't probably be booking much of a mattress run right now. I don't think. I know in the IHG one, I said maybe if you're close to a milestone, but with Marriott, the 50 night choice benefits are not so good that I would feel a sense of urgency to complete those early in the year. What if it was going to get you to titanium status and that 40K free night? Okay. I mean, the 40K free night, I don't know our value for it off the top of my head,

but I know we're about three quarters of a cent per point on our reasonable redemption value. So times four, that's what? 300-ish dollars for the value of that 40K free night certificate. So I certainly wouldn't want to be spending anywhere near $300 in order to get it. So if I can mattress run to it for like $150, maybe. That'd probably be about my limit. Although keep in mind, you do get other perks like United and Air Canada Elite.

So maybe you value those things and you're willing to spend a little bit more. Depends how much you value them. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So, yep, you heard it here. Do it if it's cheap. Yeah.

Or consider changing up your plans if you're interested in Marriott Elite Status and see if Marriott Homes and Villas is a good fit for your needs. Or any Marriott, really, if you want to take advantage of the double elite Knights promo. True story. True story. But all that positive talk about Marriott makes me feel icky because Marriott, of course, we know is well known for bonvoying us. And so this week, of course, not to outdo themselves here, they made sure that we were

all feeling rather bonvoid this week because this week Marriott came out with increases to awards, price increases, I should say, to awards at some of their most aspirational properties. And so that really hurt. Yeah, yeah. You know, the first hint of it I got was on our Freak ofiler Insiders Facebook page where someone posted that the JW Marriott Masai Mara, which is that super luxury safari property in Kenya, I think, that they were seeing prices as high as 236,000 points per night. It wasn't

like cheap before that, but before it was like less than 200,000 per night. And yeah, so that went way up. And then we started seeing reports of other properties as well, where people knew these hadn't previously been so high. So let me talk a little bit about what's happening here behind the scenes. Before Marriott ditched their award charts, they had categories one through eight on their award chart of their hotels. And when they ditched their award charts, they kept those categories. They just kept them hidden. There's a way of seeing them by looking at the HTML source code of their website.

Those were still there, but they added a category nine, and then they added some exceptions. And for each of the categories, like one through eight and category 9, they seem to have a top point price. So even though the – it appeared that hotels were dynamically priced based on like the cash rate, they weren't really. There was a limit. So behind the scenes, a hotel might be category 7. And so there would be a limit to how much they would charge for a point stay at that hotel. And so what happened is a couple things. The top limits for all those category one through nine went up a bit since last year. But the other thing that happened that is more noticeable is more properties went

into the exceptions that aren't on the award chart and are priced whatever they're priced and have basically no cap. So we're seeing, for example, the St. Regis Maldives and the Ritz-Carlton Maldives pricing up to 198,000 points per night. We're seeing, well, we talked about the JW Marriott Massey Mara, the North Island and the Seychelles. Now that one was always an exception, but we're seeing that up to 605,000 points per night. And there's various Ritz-Carlton Reserve properties that are in the roughly 200,000 to 350,000 point per night range. So we're seeing some big outrageous point prices for these luxury properties. Yeah. And to be clear, these are for standard rooms that used to be somewhere in the award chart. Of course, some properties have

always let you book suites for maybe more points or a combination of cash and points. But these are the award rates for standard rooms at these properties that, again, used to be, most of them, apart from North Island, I think anyway, most of them under 150,000 points per night, and some of them significantly below that for a while. So it's a pretty big evaluation for those properties. So, right, right. And that's an important point. It does not necessarily mean that Marriott points on average are worth less than before that most people aren't booking, you know, you're not on average, always booking these top of the top end

properties. So the real question is, has the value changed for the sort of more middle-of-the-road properties that you're more often booking? That's something we're looking into now to redo our reasonable redemption values for Marriott points. And probably soon, if not already when the show comes out, we might have already republished our Marriott point values. We'll see. There you have it. All right. That's Bonvoyed, awards, points, and more. We have some news this week.

Card pointers. We are out with a discount, actually, for FrequentMiler listeners. You can save 30% off of card pointers, which is a useful app or browser plug-in, I guess, that you can use for managing your card linked offers to find your card linked offers and sync them up, see which ones you have. And so again, we have a way you can save 30% frequent miler.com slash card pointers. This is not a car or rather, this is not a situation of an affiliate type of a relationship. We're not earning any kind of a commission on this. It's just a tool that a lot of readers really, honestly, have recommended and found useful.

And we've used some and found that it is something that we think can probably save you time and money. Yeah. Yeah. Let me talk a little bit about how this works because it's pretty cool. If you put it into your browser, you put the plugin into your browser, then you log into your, let's say your Chase account. The card pointers doesn't need to know your Chase like password or anything because you're logged in and the plugin now can access your cards. And what it does is it will automatically add all of the Chase offers to all of your cards that are eligible for them. Same thing with American Express and other banks. And so that's really cool because it just makes it so easy.

It automatically loads them all up. And I love that especially for my Bank of America card because I use my premium rewards card a lot. And I hate having to go in and click through all those offers to add them just in case I might spend at one of them. And so the fact that they're all there just in case I might just see money back automatically is really cool. It also will load with, let's say, with American Express, where American Express, if you try to do it manually to load an offer to one card, you now won't be able to load it to another card. But this thing somehow magically loads it to all the cards that are eligible for it at once. All right. So that's card pointers.

Again, you can find more information about that at frequentmiler.com slash card pointers to get more information and a link to sign up for that. All right, that's not it for awards points and more, though. In other awards points and more news, you can now book years here, we've seen JetBlue continue to expand its partnerships and offer opportunities to now use your TrueBlue points on foreign airline partners. And so the latest here is Tap Air Portugal. You can book these awards right online on the JetBlue website.

Just check the box that says use TrueBlue points. And you can book economy class awards from the United States to from Portugal for 19,000 points each way. That's for the non-stops. So you're looking at Lisbon or maybe Porto if you're East Coast based for 19,000 points in economy class, no surcharges, just pay the $5.60 in tax departing the United States, or of course more in taxes when you're departing Europe, depending on the country of origin. And then business class awards are 59,000 points one way. Again, that's for the non-stops. If you have more segments, then the pricing is going to be some sort of weird cumulative thing that

might make sense or might make no sense at all. So you might be better off booking your different segments separately if the pricing looks weird or too high. But nonetheless, these are pretty good rates for business class, even from the East Coast or economy class. 19 and 59 are pretty good rates even from the East Coast. But it's even more exciting, I think, if you're West Coast based, because San Francisco to Lisbon for 59,000 points in business class or 19,000 points in economy class is a good deal. Yeah. Yeah, it really is. And if you also combine that with the fact that JetBlue lets you make free changes and cancellations and that the points are easy to get because they transfer from some transferable points programs, it's a really nice development. If you're flying economy, finding dates where it's available is actually really easy because once you do a search, when you go to change the calendar date, let's say you do a search for a particular day and it doesn't come up with anything, then you go to change the date,

it actually shows a calendar. The dropdown calendar that lets you pick the date shows you the price for every day. and so if you see that 19k on any given day that means a flight is available for that day if you see 59k it means uh business class is available and economy is not available uh unfortunately there's no way that i could find to find out whether both were available on a given day because it's always going to show the lower price that's available. Yeah, you got to click through. And so that's the kind of annoying part that you got to kind of click through and search day by day by day. Click on each of those days when you see availability in order to find business class awards, which, by the way, are not widely available as best I can tell.

I looked around and I didn't find a single one available. I didn't give it an exhaustive, exhaustive search, but that is to say anyway, it wasn't easy. I clicked on a bunch of dates and didn't find one. Right, right. I found some clicking around from Boston to Lisbon, but when I tried the West Coast, San Francisco or LA, I had a hard time until I switched to seats.aero to look across the whole year. So what I did is I took a different partner of Tap Air, United. And so I did an explore on Seats.Aero for the whole year. I filtered to Tap Air as the airline. And then I looked for flights from LA or San Francisco and I found at least one, San Francisco to Lisbon,

somewhere far out in the air, I think it was. And then I looked on JetBlue and sure enough, it was there. Yeah, that's great. That's great. And at Tap Air Portugal, I've flown their business class between the US and Europe a couple of times in the last few years. And I feel like they have a reputation

for not being fantastic and I think it's not correct. And, you know, I feel like they have a reputation for not being fantastic. And I think it's not correct. I don't know. Their business class seats are perfectly comfortable, lie flat. And I think food was pretty good, surprisingly good, really. Service, I mean, you know, it's not going to wow you, but I had fine experiences with their service. The ground game in Lisbon is a little disorganized. And so that's the part that each time I've been through, I've been a little not impressed with the disorganization in Lisbon, but at the same time at 59,000 points, it's a perfectly reasonable way to fly. If you're not checking bags and you're just flying to Portugal, I would absolutely fly Tap Air Portugal business class.

And even connecting, I would do it again. Quick question for you. So I think of, for some reason, I lump Iberia business class and Tap Air business class in sort of the same bucket in my mind because both of them have had great points deals for booking them and neither of them gets raves. I think you've flown both, right? Do you think one is significantly better than the other? I like the seats. They both have kind of, yeah, they both have that kind of boxy business class seat that is pretty common, I feel like, particularly on European carriers. That has like the throne seats in some rows if you're traveling all by yourself. And as a family traveler, I appreciate the fact that you can

sit next to each other in the middle seats. And you know, that way, when my kids need something, I'm within an arm's reach. So I actually find that type of layout rather than sort of the herringbone layout, much more convenient for family travel anyway. And, you know, again, like, I think the reputation, if I even calling it a poor reputation, I think is a bit of a stretch. But the somewhat poor reputation that those two airlines get, I think is because service tends to be a little disinterested on those airlines, but not always. I mean, it's not every single time that it's going to be that way. And most of the time when I'm flying business class between the US and Europe, I really just want to eat and sleep. So I'm not looking for a whole lot of doting anyway. So I don't know, I would, again, I would fly either of those. I like them just fine.

And I think they have good deals. I'm not particularly wowed by any of the airlines flying between the US and Europe for the most part. I mean, Singapore can be really nice, obviously. But so I again, I would fly either one of them, I would suggest that and I think they do fit in that same bucket. You're right for a lot suggest that. And I think they do fit in that same bucket. You're right for a lot of people. But I think they're great ways to get to Europe personally. All right. Sounds great.

So that's a great new opportunity with something to do with your JetBluePoints. All right. Let's get into today's main event because today's main event is all about two-player mode, right? Yep. Points and miles, two-player mode. Let's talk about how you can earn more points when you're working together with a partner. So we often refer to these as player one and player two, where player one means the person who's sort of most into the points and miles stuff and who figures out what should be done,

and player two who goes along with it and hopefully helps out by signing up for cards or doing other things that would be helpful to earn points and miles. So let's jump in. What can you do? Well, obviously, you can earn a lot more rewards if you have two people playing together. And, you know, so again, this could be husband and wife, could be boyfriend and girlfriend, could be, you know, cousins or brothers or, you know, whatever, your friend, maybe that you like to travel with.

So lots of different ways to earn more rewards. First of all, you can each apply for the same cards. And so, for instance, my wife and I both have Marriott cards that offer annual free night certificates. So, we'll both have cards like that. Or we've both earned great welcome bonuses. When there's been a hot welcome bonus out on a card, we'll both do it. And one common misconception or one common question people have is, okay, so if my wife

signs up for a card and then adds me as an authorized user on that card, am I eligible to get the welcome bonus on that card too? Yeah, absolutely. You can get the welcome bonus as a primary account holder. So yes, we will both get the same welcome bonuses. We don't always add each other as an authorized user, but if you do, that's fine. That's not going to prevent you from being able to get the card yourself.

Right, right. Another thing you could do is refer each other to new cards. So you have a Amex card, you could refer player two to the same Amex card or a different one. Chase, you can refer to usually the same card or a card in the same family, like from one Southwest card, you can refer to a different Southwest card. And that way,

when you're doing that referral to each other, you will usually get some kind of referral bonus, like maybe 20,000 points or whatever the offer is for you, but they'll get whatever the welcome bonus offer is. And so that can be a really great way to boost the number of points you get as a couple, because you're not just getting, again, you're not just doubling the welcome bonuses by each signing up for the same cards, but you're getting points on top of that. Those are the referral points you're getting on top of that. So that's fantastic. Do check out, we have a how-to video called uh how to maximize amex bonuses through referrals where we talk about specifically with american express how you could

refer even if you don't have the card that player two wants you could refer from a different card to that card and both of you get uh yeah bonuses yeah a great way to juice up your bonuses a little bit speaking of referring each other you can refer each other for lots of other types of stuff, too. You know, for instance, I do most of the online shopping in our household. I do most of the buying anyway. And so I've signed up for most of the portals and things, too. But sometimes portals offer great referral bonuses for getting somebody else to join. And so, for instance, just a couple of years or maybe the last holiday season, not this holiday season, but the one before,

I think Capital One Shopping offered something like $200 for both sides when you referred somebody and they signed up for the shopping portal. So yeah, I referred my wife. We got $400 between the two of us for her signing up for an account and earning $10 cash back. There are lots of great deals like that out there. And that's not limited to shopping portals. You see that sometimes with bank bonuses. So if there's a good new checking account bonus, sometimes that's available via referral. And so maybe I'll sign up and then I'll refer my wife so she can get the offer and we can earn the referral bonus in the middle too. So there's a lot of things like that, portals, bank account bonuses, new apps sometimes. The Pepper app came out. I think there was something, right?

It still is. Yeah, that's what I was going to say. Miscellaneous apps like the Pepper app where you can earn rewards for buying gift cards. You can refer each other and get points. Or the InKind app where you can save on dining, refer each other and get – or refer from one to another. You can't then refer back but um but those kind of things can definitely juice up the all kinds of miscellaneous rewards you can get by doing yeah absolutely whenever there's something hot and new like that we tend to both sign up and take advantage of that

opportunity so keep that in mind if you're playing in two-player mode of course if you have two people playing you can probably spend more money too right right? Yeah. I mean, you know, so if you're both, you know, if you were in just one player mode and you weren't sharing finances, then you're limited to, you know, how much you can spend to meet minimum spend requirements in order to earn new welcome bonuses. But if you're, if you're playing this together, you could, you could manage this. So you could say, all all right well together we can you know do the five thousand dollars required minimum spend by both working on that new card until it's done and then we can move on to player two to sign up for a card that has a a big minimum spend

requirement and then both work on that together if you want to do it that way so it can definitely help with the spend requirements by spreading out the out the amount of spend you have or being more, I guess, purposeful with how your spend works across both people and making it work for whoever needs the spend. Yeah, being purposeful is certainly an important aspect of this when you're playing in two-player mode. Anytime one of us is going to make a major purchase, we just make sure to check and say, okay, do we have any cards between the two of us that we need to hit a particular spending requirement on? Are we working on a welcome bonus? Is there a big spend bonus we want to achieve? And we kind of purposefully plan that stuff out. Speaking of welcome bonuses and things that you might want to achieve, let's talk about

companion flights. Because if you're playing in two-player mode, you probably want to travel some places together. And one of the best options for that is the Southwest Companion Pass, because the Southwest Companion Pass, once Southwest points to book your ticket, you can add your companion again and again and again. And you can even change the companion a few times a year. So this is certainly something that we've taken advantage of a lot in my household. If you want more information about how you can earn the companion pass with relative ease, you want to check out how your Southwest companion can fly for free. Our coffee break episode number 32. So again, that one was called How Your Southwest Companion Can Fly for Free,

Coffee Break episode 32. We do a deep dive into the Southwest Companion Pass and how to earn it and maximize value with it. Yeah, we'll also put a link to our Southwest Companion Pass guide in the show notes. Now beyond Southwest, we've got companion tickets from various airline credit cards. So Delta, their platinum and reserve cards offer each year upon renewal, you get a companion ticket. Alaska cards, it kind of varies, but usually what it is, is

they're a card you have to spend, I think it's $6,000 in a calendar year, or in your account year, I'm not sure which. You get a companion ticket. American Airlines, depends on which card you have, you have to spend like $20,000 or $30,000 to get their companion tickets but um if you fly a particular airline a lot and you want to do round trip these these mostly i guess the last ones are a little more flexible but the american airlines and delta ones require round trip travel and have a number of restrictions on how and when they can be used uh but they can be a great deal if you uh as long as you're making use of them um we have a couple of shows or videos you might want to check out.

So we've got our show episode 218, which was called Two for the Price of One, How to Get a Free Companion Ticket. So we'll talk about, in that show, we talked about a lot of these things there. And specifically about Delta, we have a how-to video, How to Use Delta Companion Certificates.

So check that out as well. Yeah, very good. All right. So those are some companion flight options. But once you've gotten to your destination, then you want to stay somewhere. So let's talk about how to get a free weekend if you want to travel and get away for the weekend. How can you get yourself a free weekend if you're playing in two-player mode? Yeah. Lots of hotel credit cards offer free,

like one free night, usually upon the anniversary when you re-up for the second year and further. And so what I like to do, or like to advise people to do, is if you're doing this in two-player mode, is sign up for those cards at the same time. And that way you'll get two cards, two free nights at the same time, and they'll have the same expiration dates or similar expiration dates. And that's really helpful for trip planning because it's so hard when you have, trust me, I know from experience, when you have a trip you're planning for February and you've got one of you has a free night expiring in January and the other one has one that hasn't been issued to you yet, but will be good in February. And it just makes it a mess. So get them at the same time if you can.

Some examples of where you can do this. The World of Hyatt personal card gives you a category one through four certificate each year, and you could get another one with $15,000 spend. So you could each have up to two free nights from well as each year upon renewal. And those are uncapped, so you could stay at really high-end luxury properties with that one. Most of the Marriott Bonvoy cards offer a free night automatically each year. Two exceptions are the Bevy and Bountiful cards, which require $15,000 spend to get those free nights, but most of them are just having the card gets you those. So those are all candidates. IHG Premier and the Premier Business card are about the same. They both offer 40K free nights each year that are top-upable.

So you can add points to those. I should have said with the Marriott ones. Marriott free nights are also top-up-able, but only up to 15,000 points. So if you get a $95 or $99 Marriott card and get the 35K free night certificate, you can only add up to 15,000 points to that to stay at a hotel that costs up to 50,000 points. With IHG, though, there's no cap. You get those 40,000 point free night certificates and you could add as many points as you have to get a free night with those. And yeah, that pretty much wraps up the usual suspects. Yeah. So like Greg said, you want to apply around the same time so that your certificates are issued around the same time every year. That certainly does make it far more convenient. And we've got a few of those situations in my household and a couple where they aren't lined up.

And so trying to fix that so that they are issued at the same time because that really does help. So good part of strategy there to figure that out before you get into it. All right. So, I mean, I think that those are a number of great ways to max out your points and miles playing in two-player it. All right. So, I mean, I think that those are a number of great ways to max out your points and miles playing in two player mode. All right. That brings us, I think, to this week's question of the week, this week's question of the week, we're going to change gears a little bit. It comes in from David. David says, dear Greg and Nick, I hold one vanilla Amex platinum cards. That's just the regular Amex platinum card and one Amex platinum business card. So he has the consumer platinum and the business platinum. So I will have 20,

24 hour visit periods to Delta Sky Clubs in 2025. What if mid-year I cancel or downgrade one of the cards? Will I still have 20 for the calendar year? Are each of my visits being redeemed from one card or the other, or just a combined pool of 20? Thanks, David. So Greg, I know you know about how Delta Lounge Access works, if anybody does. And we talked about this, of course, on a previous episode, we talked all about how to get your family into the Sky Club. But I don't know that we did talk about exactly how this works. So what can you tell David? Yeah, No, unfortunately, David, the visits are tied to your card. So what you'll want to do to make things easier, easy for you, what I'd recommend is the card that you're planning to downgrade, if you're only planning to downgrade one of them, make that your primary card in your Delta wallet. And then when you go to check into a Sky Club, it'll take your visit

from that card. And once you downgrade, if you have any remaining visits left, that's gone. And so at that point, you're going to want to switch your primary card in your Delta wallet to the other platinum card, assuming you haven't downgraded that and then you'll be able to work on those 10 visits it's worth noting that um what a visit means in this new uh delta limited sky club world is is a 24-hour period so you can uh if you're flying if you're flying around multiple airports within a 24-hour period uh you'll only pay one visit. Like, it'll only take one visit out of your 10 limit to, you know, at the departure airport, go into a Sky Club, at a layover airport on your way, go into a Sky Club,

at your destination, go into a Sky Club at arrival, and then you turn around an hour later and fly back. You could do that all again. So three more visits. So you could get, you know, in that example, you could get six actual visits, even though you're just spending one. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Spending one of your visits. Yeah. So I think the important moral of the story there, as Greg said at the beginning, is that the visits are tied to the card and you're going to use your platinum card to get access. So that's how they're going to know which card to subtract from. You know, you're not just going to show up and be like hey i'm a you know platinum card holder you're gonna have to pick one out i think uh and tell them which card you're gonna take the visit from yeah if right if

you don't have the the platinum card tied to your profile and delta then you'll have to actually get out your card and give it to them to get access but But if you have it in your profile, it should be just scanning your boarding pass, gets you in, and it will automatically use that one visit. Now, I'm saying that assuming they got all the programming right, this is, as we're recording this, this hasn't even taken effect yet.

It takes effect February 1st. We're recording this a few days before that. So hopefully Delta will have it right. But eventually, that's the way it'll work if it doesn't work that way smoothly. So what happens if you have more than one platinum card in your Delta wallet? I know you don't know yet because this hasn't even started yet, but let's say that David had both his consumer and his business platinum within his Delta wallet, so to speak. How would he know which one they're taking the visit from? Yeah, I'm pretty sure one is identified as the primary.

So that's one that you can assume will be used. But I don't think it would be a bad idea to take out the other one just in case to make sure that it's using the one you want to use. And that would be certainly the one that you're, if you're planning on only downgrading or canceling one mid year, you should definitely focus on using that one. Definitely. And it is a good idea, I would say to link up one of your platinum cards in your Delta wallet. If you're thinking to yourself, eh, I'll just make this easy. I'll just bring my physical card with me and show my physical card. That's usually how I get access to these things. But there was one day when my plans changed, and I had to book a different flight home than what I

initially intended. And Delta was one of the options. And I thought, oh, that'll be nice, because I can get into the Sky Club in between. And then I realized, oh, no, I don't have my Platinum card in my wallet today. And I don't have it linked up with my Delta account either. And so maybe there's a way to do that in the MX app. I didn't end up flying Delta that day. But anyway, it's an example that sometimes things will happen that you didn't expect. And so having something linked in your Delta wallet will certainly make it a little bit easier. So link one of those up if you don't have either of them in there yet. All right, that brings us to the end of today's episode. If you've enjoyed this episode, and you'd like to

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