Frequent Miler on the Air - Preparing For The End of 2024 | Frequent Miler on the Air Ep284 | 12-6-24

Episode Date: December 6, 2024

There are a lot of things in the points and miles world that kind of come to a head at the end of the year, so you'll want to know what you should be taking care of here at the end of 2024. And of course, read our end of year checklist for 2024 here. (01:30) - What happens when a Choice Rewards hotel booking has no record of your reservation, but the points are missing? (07:32) - Preferred Hotels now bookable with iPrefer points (16:34) - Amex 40% transfer bonus to Virgin Atlantic (21:31) - Earn elite status (23:05) - Do you have enough MQDs for Delta elite status? Check out our post here. (24:48) - Remember to time your SouthWest companion pass properly Read our Complete Guide to the SouthWest companion pass here. (28:37) - Marriott Bonvoy: Easiest option is Bonvoy Brilliant, but you can read about the many other options here. (44:11) - Use airline incidental credits by December (47:42) - Platinum $200 calendar year. See Amex airline fee reimbursements. What still works? (56:19) - Apply for cards with annual credits (57:47) - Transfer / pool points (1:02:19) - Redeem points or miles for annual rebates (1:03:48) - With the Caesar's Diamond status match ending, is there anything Wyndham Earner Business card-holder's should take advantage of now? Read more about this status match ending here. Visit https://frequentmiler.com/subscribe to get updated on in-depth points and miles content like this, and don’t forget to like and follow us on social media. Music Credit – Beach Walk by Unicorn Heads

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. Today's main event, preparing for the end of 2024. There's lots of things in the Points and Miles world that kind of come to a head at the end of the calendar year. And you've got to be ready for them with if you're chasing elite status or things to button up there. If you're trying to use your credits on your credit cards are probably things that you sort of know that you need to get to, but haven't really thought about for a while. So it's time to get to them. We're going to talk about some of the bigger ones that you need to be attending to in today's main event. Yeah, and

it's great timing for me because just being early December here, we were taking a look today at spreadsheets and saying, okay, which benefits do we still have to use? What do we have to make sure we use up? Trying to make sure that we get all that stuff done so that we get full value out of our cards. So we'll talk more about how to do that today. But don't forget, if you want to jump ahead to a specific segment or come back to it later on, you'll always find the timestamps in the show notes. Just expand the show description to find that. We also always share links there to more resources about the stuff that we're talking about. So if you want to hear a little bit more about a particular topic, you can usually find it there. And don't forget, wherever you're watching or listening,

please give us a thumbs up, like the video, leave us a comment, leave us some feedback. We always appreciate those things. All right, Greg choice points for a resort in Honolulu. The resort is a preferred hotel, and I booked through the choice hotel's website. This afternoon, when I tried to cancel the reservation using the special email link given in the reservation confirmation, I received the message, no reservations found with this number or last name. After numerous calls to preferred hotels, choice rewards, and even the hotel itself, it appears that choice can confirm 96,000 points were deducted from my choice account, but little else. Preferred hotels and the hotel itself have no record of my reservation. This is very strange because I received an email confirmation from Preferred Hotels with all the details of my stay, including a Preferred Hotels confirmation number.

My request to cancel the reservation and get my 96,000 points returned went nowhere. Choice says their hands are tied and there's nothing they can do because the resort is not one of their hotels and they show no record of the reservation. Preferred Rewards says the problem must be resolved with choice, not through them since they have no record of the reservation. Where are my points? Do I have any recourse? The phone reps at Choice and Preferred Hotels seem to mean well, but they don't have any authority to look into this or escalate the inquiry. I can't imagine that I'm the only person this has ever happened to.

Okay, so Linda, I wrote back to Linda, and among other things, this is what I said. I recommend that you keep calling choice and ask to speak with a supervisor. You'll have to get someone on the phone who understands their relationship with preferred hotels. I don't think that most call reps know anything about it. Ultimately, since they took away your points, it's on them to get this resolved. So that was my advice to Linda. So if you go like way back in time, it used to be that you couldn't book choice hotels. You couldn't book preferred hotels online with Choice, but you could do it by- You had to get a hold of Milton on the phone, as I recall, right? That's right.

Was it Milton? You could book it by calling, but only if you get the one rep who has ever, ever heard that preferred hotels is a partner with Choice Hotels. And so it was a bear to get that done over the phone. And so it doesn't surprise me that trying to call for support is equally fraught. Linda wrote back saying, many thanks for your suggestion. I called Choice and insisted on speaking with a supervisor and actually got one. She admitted that she didn't know enough about the choice relationship with preferred hotels and opened up a case number so that the choice back office could investigate the matter she said she'd call me back in three days once they've researched it that's way more progress than i was able to make yesterday so i i haven't heard a final resolution from linda but hopefully she got her points back or got the stay uh red or something. But I wanted to bring that up because

we're going to be talking more about preferred hotels in a minute. Yeah. Well, you know, I think that that story is a good one to share for a few reasons. I mean, these strange partnerships like this, I mean, Greg's point is spot on that most call reps probably aren't going to know anything about these like super niche little like partnerships like this. So yeah, it doesn't surprise me at all that nobody knew what to do to get the points back here. But that doesn't make it good or right. You know, that really stinks because I don't know, like long-term, what recourse do you have here? Like, let's say choice just says, sorry, there's nothing we can do. It's not like money where you can file a charge back. Your points are gone. And I don't know what recourse you have in that case.

You know, if they just say, oh, I'm sorry, we don't have any record of it. I doubt that's what's going to happen. I imagine that at some point here, especially as things get escalated, somebody behind the scenes is going to get this across their desk and figure it out and probably get the points back. But I don't know what I would do if not. Yeah, it's a tough situation. Reminds me a little bit about what happened with people who booked Etihad first class through Aeroplan when that was was available it's not available now but when it was and then those flights got downgraded or changed to other flights and lots of bad things happen there and it's it's hard to get resolution when you've got that kind of partnership thing um both sides sort of have their hands tied because it it it's it's like nobody's job to to right right make people whole in that situation

and but it probably doesn't happen a lot i mean i gotta say i don't think this kind of situation is common or frequent it's just that when it happens man that's uh that yeah definitely is frustrating yeah and um with this particular thing with booking preferred hotels with choice, it didn't surprise me because I've heard from several people that after booking a preferred hotel with choice, it's not that they went to cancel, but when they showed up at the hotel, the hotel had no record of their stay. What? Yeah. So in each case, they were able to resolve it somehow and they were okay and they got their stay. But if you do book preferred hotels with points, I think it's a really good idea to call the hotel a couple weeks or whenever in advance of your stay and just make sure they know about it. Because you'll have an email. You'll have an email with a confirmation number and everything.

But double check before you show up for sure. Yeah. Wow. Good caveat there. All right. That's the mailbag for this week. Let's talk about awards points and more. And this is why I think you brought up preferred hotels in the first place, because there's more to talk about when it comes to preferred hotels. Yeah. So we've been excited in the past about the ability to book preferred hotels with choice points because at least those of us not named linda have been excited right linda was excited at once right no longer there was a time yeah we were excited uh previously because you could transfer if you have a city strata premier, you could transfer your city points one to two to Choice. And then Choice has that relationship with preferred hotels.

And you can book preferred hotels that way. But now there's another way, which is you can transfer your city points one to four to preferred hotels own program, which is called I prefer. And so you get four I prefer points for every city point. And we brought this up before, but at the time it wasn't possible to actually book hotels entirely with points, or there are only a couple where you could do that. But now all of a sudden there's, there's like over 200 that I've found bookable with points. And you're looking at some really, really great values. You're looking at a lot of hotels that are available to book for 50,000,

I prefer points per night. So that's 12,500 city points per night. And I'm talking some in really expensive locations. Like, you know, I saw some incredible value in New York City and Miami Beach, you know, places like that for 50,000 points a night. Now it does go up to as much as 150,000 points for some of the properties, but some of these are like $3,000 a night resorts, you know, and 150,000 points, remember, that's less than 40, city points so it's still you know we always talk about how great like hyatt point redemptions are but hyatt's top categories are 40 000 points or

more uh per night so you're talking about less than that at the top end here of if you start with city points so um that's great i, it seems pretty exciting and encouraging. Yeah, it really is exciting. The where, where it's problematic is that it is buggy. So, uh, there's all kinds of reports. Um, personally, I can't even get past the first screen. So I go to city. Thank you to transfer my points. And city just does not like my i prefer rewards number i'm like tempted to just create a whole new one but but i actually have elite status thanks to a deal that's no longer available but it just won't take it so i can't get past that first screen some others have reported that they were able to transfer, but they got errors suggesting that it didn't work.

But then they went and looked and they actually had the points and were very thankful they didn't start the transfer process over. Two other people so far at the time we record this have reported that they successfully transferred the points, but then couldn't book any hotels that like they would get an error message whenever they tried to book it others no problem at all they they transferred the points they got the points they booked the hotels and they're happy until they have a linda uh situation this is the point where i say i prefer a program with fewer buggy problems yeah a little this seems like something that's for those with a high pain tolerance. Well, you know, boy, I mean, I actually think most people will probably get through this process without any issues. And since the deals are potentially like really fantastic, I don't know.

Personally, if you've got the city points, I think it's worth taking a look and seeing what you could do here. On average, I'm seeing about half a cent per point value. That means two cents per point for city points, which is really good. But that's on average. The spread is really great. And so, I've seen lots of instances where you could get well over three cents per city point value. So there's lots of good stuff there, lots of great hotels, or at least great looking hotels. So I'm still excited, but yeah, cautiously excited because of all these bugs. And I do worry that the problems people have had with hotels that were booked, not showing up as actually booked by the hotel itself, that even though that was through the choice relationship, I feel like

preferred hotels is still working out how this whole point booking thing works at all. That's my sense. So it wouldn't surprise me at all if that happens at that end too. Finally, another buggy thing I forgot to mention is that you go to the preferred hotels website to find the points bookable hotels. You just go to the regular like book a hotel screen, change that you want it from. You do a search and you could do a search of like, you don't have to even put in a city or anything. You just search and it'll bring up everything and then change the results from cash to points. And that'll show all the points hotels available. But this is, this is kind of funny. Um, sometimes it'll show 182 hotels available, 196, 212. It's kind of a magical mystery machine there. Greg, you're not selling me on this right now. You're not selling me at all. So far, I'm like,

what do I want to deal with any of this for when I have regular hotel programs out there that I can use that also have good value but work? Guess what? I'm not even done. Oh my goodness, you're not done. Oh, wow. I talked about the way you can successfully find the points hotels okay the way you can't successfully find the point hotels at least as of the time of recording is by going logging into your i prefer account and looking at for points bookable hotels from your i prefer account um there it just it just gives a load error and shows you nothing. So at least that's what it's showing me. Oh my goodness. All right. So Greg says it's worth

looking at it. And I say, it's not, that's not worth the exercise and frustration for the average person with a limited pool of, I mean, you've got like a huge stack of city points and you know, you've got other ways to book something when this doesn't work great but i uh yeah i don't know i'm i'm not i'm not too hot on this i don't think i'm going to be clamoring to book one of these anytime soon it's it's part of the game nick it's you know the game is is challenging in this case right right and sometimes that that can be good you know when the game is challenging because then it does discourage all of the people that i'm telling right now not to bother with it right but uh so i mean maybe that will leave lots of great opportunities like greg said i'm sure it'll

probably work fine for a lot of people which is great until you show up at the hotel for your vacation in hawaii and they have no record of your reservation and you're like stuck scrambling. Right. That just does not seem like fun. Yeah. Yeah. You know, and so Linda was actually probably lucky that she decided to cancel. Well, yes.

Lucky-ish. Lucky-ish. Lucky-ish Linda. Hopefully. Hopefully you get the points back and then we'll consider it lucky. But yeah. So, all right. Well, so and then we'll consider it lucky. But yeah, so. All right.

Well, so there's some interesting potential possibilities there. And if you're willing to put up with those, I mean, I joke and people will say that I'm crazy for putting up with Turkish Airlines and some of the difficulties of booking awards through Turkish. But I've done that plenty of times and been like, oh, I don't understand what the big deal is. So so this is Greg's Turkish right here is what this is. It is. It's Greg's Turkish. It's been that way for a while too, even under choice, right? So the last thing to mention, I guess, about this, I'll probably think of more, but is that the hotels bookable with I prefer points

are not the same as the hotels bookable with choice points, which is kind of surprising to me. There is overlap, but only about 45% overlap, which I don't know what's going on there. Given everything else, that doesn't seem surprising to me,

but, but you're right. It's curious nonetheless. Right. Right. Yeah. And, and of course there's,

there's lots of preferred hotels that are not bookable with points at all. Is there a chance that the ones that are not in the 45% overlap are the ones that will lose your reservation? Or is it the ones that are in the overlap that are most likely? I don't know. I don't know. We'll need you, Nick, to do some experimenting since I can't actually transfer my points to try it out. I have to pass that one off to Tim or something.

We'll see. So, all right. It's buggy, but it's there. That's not all, though, for awards points and more. We do have some more here. Amex is out with a 40% transfer bonus to Virgin Atlantic Flying Club. This comes right on the heels of the Chase 40% bonus that just ended at the end of November and December hit. And we saw this Amex 40% bonus to Virgin Atlantic matching the 40% that Chase had offered last month. So this is bigger

than usual. We do see pretty frequent transfer bonuses to Virgin Atlantic Flying Club. In fact, I think if I remember correctly, this is the ninth in 2024 that we've seen from the various transferable currencies and the 10th going back 12 full months. So we've seen lots of transfer bonuses, but usually the transfer bonus is 30%. This time it's 40% as it was with Chase. So it's a little bit bigger than usual. And you got to keep in mind that Virgin is now a dynamically priced program for better and for worse. So even though we have, I would, or maybe I should say I, I have bemoaned the fact that Virgin is now dynamically priced and not very reliable because they tend to like to devalue with no notice or notification. But the fact is there have been some really good values since they went dynamic and readers

have pointed those out left and right. And lots of people have really good values since they went dynamic and readers have pointed those out left and right. And lots of people have booked great deals since they went dynamic. So it's worth taking a look. If you're planning a trip, I think it's definitely worth taking a look and seeing, hey, is there an award where I can get an even better deal? Because with a 40% transfer bonus, it certainly is possible to get a slamming deal through Virgin Atlantic if you find the award availability. But if really go ahead good yeah it really is possible to get some great deals it's also possible to get some horrendous deals yeah but it's

worth noticing that noting that the surcharges which were outrageously high before on business class and premium economy flights are much, much lower now. So if you do find that great deal, it's going to be a better deal than if during standard pricing, if they had it that low, because the surcharges will be less. Yeah. All right. And cruises, don't forget those. They do have cruise options, although I got to say the prices have really increased on the Cruise Redemption, Subversion, and Red. They're way more points now than they used to be.

So I mean, whether they'll run a deal on those again, I don't know, but they're not. Well, yeah, I get the idea that those have sort of always been dynamic or at least have been in the last year or two. And so I think we'll see that changing. Dynamic in a different way. Like they have short term like rates, like if you book between now and now, here's how much it is.

And that changes regularly. Yeah, you know, I remember seeing like, well, they would do that where they'd say it's 120 or 140,000 points. What I don't remember in the past, maybe I just didn't see is that now there's a lot of cruises that are available for like 250,000 points or 380,000 points. And like, I don't remember those being available at all in the past. So I guess maybe they're available now and they weren't before. I'm not sure. But you're right. The specific cruise deals like, you know, the 10 day European cruise for 140,000 or whatever, those usually were during limited windows. So maybe we'll continue to see some of those deals. Worth keeping an eye out for that. But now that begs the question,

is it worth the speculative transfer? 40% is a lot. No, I wouldn't speculatively transfer, but it is a really good transfer bonus. And so it's definitely worth, you know, taking a look at what your travel plans are and see whether there are any of those great deals we're talking about because you could really make out well. If you have some flexibility, I think it's worth like, you know, I would just

look at your, if your home airport, if Virgin Atlantic serves your home airport or an airport you could get to easily, are there any good flights to London that are a great deal at times when you could do it? Why not take a trip when you weren't necessarily planning to if the price is right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a great point. I wouldn't do it speculatively personally because the value does change. And so you may find a great deal today if you do great, book it. If you don't, though, I don't know whether there's going to be a great deal two or three months from now. So I'm much less excited about transferring

speculatively because you just never know where the deals are going to be with Virgin Atlantic and you have a much slimmer number of potential great uses. And then the other thing is the fact that we do see transfer bonuses so frequently. So it may not be 40 percent, it may be 30 percent. But personally, I would rather sacrifice the 10% and wait until I actually need the points to transfer, then transfer speculatively now and then be pigeonholed into only being able to look at Virgin Flights because I put all my points there or something. So that's my perspective on it. But definitely some great deals possible.

Speaking of great deals, we got some great deals to get ready for or prepare for or ways that we need to consider to eke value out of whatever it is that we're going after. So let's talk about this week's main event. Main event time, preparing for the end of 2024. Let's talk briefly, maybe it won't be that brief, but about elite status first. Then we'll get into some other topics. But let's start with airlines. If you're seeking elite status, what are some things to keep in mind with some of the airlines?

We're not going to cover all of them, just a few notable things. Yeah. So American Airlines is one that you can immediately say, well, I don't need to worry about it yet. If you're a procrastinator, that's fine because their elite year doesn't end until the end of February. So you don't have to hurry to get anything done in December with American Airlines. You got until the end of February to earn enough miles for elite status. So that's one you can kind of put on the back burner. If you're chasing status, you got a couple more months. That's right. That's right. And, you know, apparently they did that on purpose. They offset their their elite year in order to make it so that people weren't having to worry about mileage running over the Christmas holidays when you really don't want more people flying than is necessary. There's already more people flying than is necessary. I think that says a lot about Americans' faith in their own ability to manage their operation.

They're like, no, no, no, we don't want any extra people flying in December. We're going to have trouble with the ones that are flying already. Stay at home until February, please. That is 100% what was going on. 100%. All right. So AA, you don't have to worry about it yet. Do yourself a favor and don't try to cram that in in December because they know that you shouldn't.

That's right. That's right. That's right. Delta. So Delta, you may remember, they moved entirely to MQDs as a way of earning elite status, medallion qualifying dollars, which mostly translates to how much money have you spent with Delta. But there are actually a lot of alternatives or additional ways to earn MQDs beyond just flying with Delta, including, by the way, reward flights. When you book a reward with Delta SkyMiles, that counts towards earning MQDs.

So we have a whole post. Go check out our Delta Elite Shortcuts post, and we'll have a link to it in the notes. But one thing I do want to mention here is that if you're short on MQDs for whatever level of status you're hoping for, don't forget that the Delta, Platinum, and Reserve cards each offer 2,500 MQDs as a head start. So if you were to sign up right now,

I think you would get those MQDs before the end of the year, or at least I think they would backdate them to when you are approved for the card. And that's a lot. I mean, two cards could get you silver status right there. So it definitely can make the difference between getting the level status you want and not. So something to keep in mind. cards could get you silver status right there so um it definitely can make the difference between

getting the level status you want and and not so something to keep in mind yeah it's a really easy way people often at the end of the year are like oh how do i earn x amount in this amount of time you know because i need just a little bit more to reach the next level and that's a super easy way if you're pretty close to get to the next level just get one of those cards and you'll get the mqd head start you know the credit for the mQDs. So that's great. Yep. Yep. Southwest, if you're going for the companion pass, then keep in mind your timing. Be very careful with the timing because the Southwest companion pass, of course, requires that you earn one hundred and thirty five thousand or if you have one of the credit cards, one hundred and twenty five thousand rapid rewards points

within a single calendar year, not within000 rapid rewards points within a single calendar year, not within 12 months, but within the same calendar year. So you want to make sure you wait. If you're in a holding pattern right now, hold, wait until January to meet your spending requirements and earn your welcome bonuses in January. So I say welcome bonuses because of course you could open both a Southwest consumer card and a Southwest business card, timeout your spend, complete the spend for both of them in January or after your December statement cuts anyway, so that you earn the welcome bonuses for both of them in January. And then they'll combine together to earn you the companion pass. But we're saying,

be careful about your timing because we hear from people every single year, including just a few days ago, who meet the welcome spend too soon. Oh, no. Oh, no. Part of the welcome bonus. This just happened in Frequent Mylar Insiders the other day. Somebody accidentally spent on a card that they didn't meet. They were close to the spending threshold but were meant to wait until January. But a bill got put on that card that they forgot about or whatever.

And so sure enough, they met the spending requirement and were earning the bonus too soon. Yeah. So just to clarify, we've talked on the show before about how it's great to sign up for a couple of Southwest cards near the end of a calendar year and then wait until January to earn the points so that you can get the companion pass for the rest of, so in this case, the rest of all of 2025 and all of 2026, if you did it early enough in January. The flip side is, which we didn't mention yet, if you are trying to get the

companion pass this year, so you've already earned let's say 120 something thousand you know points or whatever it is and you're close to that threshold and you want to meet it you have to be careful about the timing there too because if you do it by spending on a chase card where the bill doesn't where the bill doesn't come due until january right uh i think you get the points in January, not this year. So you have to find other ways to get those last, like actually flying or something crazy like that.

We have a complete guide to the Southwest Companion Pass and it lists all the various things that count. You could, if you're just a few thousand short, you could place a couple of 1-800-Flowers orders with a code. I mean, you can earn through rental partners, through hotel. There's a few different ways.

You can earn points through the shopping portal, et cetera, to get there. So that's a great point if you're very close to 125. But even those, how quickly do they credit? And would they credit for this year? They should backdate. They will backdate? Yeah. Shopping portal will backdate to the date that you did it.

I would expect the same with everything else. Nick says so he'll he'll make you whole if he's right no i won't but but best of luck to you that you heard it here first it will probably work uh here first nick will not make you whole well i probably will do at least as well as choice privileges at least and preferred yeah yes right right so all right so yeah careful about your timing if you need the points now get them now and if you need them later make sure you wait and don't get them until later that's the moral of the story there uh and that's the companion

pass of course there's also elite status with southwest we don't really talk about that much because there's not a ton of benefit and elite status so really the companion pass is the thing to chase there what about hotels yeah so so most major hotel programs, their elite year is the calendar year. So if you're seeking elite status, you do need to be worrying about, have you met all the requirements before the end of this year? So for example, Marriott, I am chasing titanium status, 75 night status. Personally, I have both the Bonvoy Brilliant, which gives me 25 nights, and a Bonvoy Business card, which gives me 15 more nights.

So I get 40 nights automatically every year because I have that combination of cards. Having multiple personal cards does not stack. They don't add up, but having a personal card and a business card, that does add up. So, so that's good. And then I also, you know, have enough nights that I'm close. I I'm going to take my, my 50 night choice benefit of five nights. So that'll get me to, uh, with, with the nights I already have planned, that'll get me to 74 nights. So I need one more.

So what I did is I just finished, I noticed my Bonvoy, I also have a Bonvoy Boundless. Is that the card that, the chase card that gives you a elite night with every $5,000 spent. So I noticed I had already spent like about 3,500 on one. So I found like enough bills to pay with that one to get over that $5,000 threshold.

So I'm expecting one more night from Chase through that. So that's how I'm doing it there. We have a whole post, which we'll link to in the show notes, shortcuts to Marriott elite status. And you can find all of the tricks I just talked about, plus plenty more to shortcut your way to Marriott elite status. And you can find all of the tricks I just talked about, plus plenty more to shortcut your way to Marriott. There you go. Hilton. Hilton's even easier.

All you gotta do is get the right credit card. The Hilton Aspire card will give you automatic diamond status. So it's top tier Hilton status. So if you want diamond status, that's your card. The Aspire card, numerous different options that will give you gold status out there. For instance, an Amex Platinum card will give you Hilton gold status. Or if you get the Surpass card, the Hilton Surpass card.

Is that what it's called these days? It is the Surpass, right? Second guessing. They changed names years ago. I know. They changed it a while back, then changed it back to Surpass. Yeah. Crazy.

Okay. So the Surpass card gives you automatic gold status also. And so that's your sort of breakfast-y status. I say breakfast-y because within the United States gives you automatic gold status also and so that's your sort of breakfasty status i say breakfasty because within the united states you'll get a food and beverage credit but abroad you still get free complimentary uh you know continental breakfast so that's your breakfast status diamond status gets you lounge access so those are both really easy and relatively cheap to buy it doesn't cost a ton the surpass card i think is 150 195 now a year something like that the uh i can't remember which the aspire card is 550 right so yeah uh and and they come with uh enough perks both both of those cards and the business card to come with enough perks that

as long as you're using them regularly those perks outweigh those annual fees. So any of those are good choices, in my opinion, for getting Hilton Elite status, a much better choice than like booking stays just to earn the next level of status. So there's just no reason to do that with Hilton, in my opinion. Which is kind of crazy, kind of wacky, but yes, you're right, there isn't. So that's that. about ihg yeah so ihg uh a couple things to keep in mind here if if you're going for diamond status which is the breakfasty uh status where you get um two uh two people hot breakfast in any ihg property um almost any you uh just remember that there's an option besides doing 40 nights, there's an option to spend $40,000 in a calendar year on one of the IHG cards, either the Premier or the Premier

Business card. Also, keep in mind that IHG has some milestone rewards that you don't get with credit card spend. And it might actually be worth in some circumstances, you know, finding a cheap IHG night or two to reach either the 20 night or 40 night milestone level. If you're close to one of those, I wouldn't start anywhere near scratch to get to one of those. But you 20 nights, you can get a confirmable suite upgrade. And at 40 nights, you can get, if I remember right, both a confirmable suite upgrade and a year of membership for lounge access. So if you stay in especially intercontinental hotels a lot, you could get a ton of value from that. Also, last thing, timing is great for that because if you reach the 40 nights, you can wait till January 2nd to pick your choice benefit. And then you'll have that membership

for the lounges for the rest of 2025 and all of 2026. So you really get two years of that benefit. Yeah, that's pretty terrific. So that's a good one to go after if you're close. If you're close, it's worth a night or two or maybe even three, depending on how cheaply you're able to do them to be able to pick up a benefit like that. Speaking of being close, I am close with Hyatt,

but not where I want to be. So let's talk about the Hyatt levels. So, cause there's a whole bunch of different levels with Hyatt when it comes to elite status and particularly the milestone benefits. Right, right. So we talk about Hyatt's globalist benefits a lot. That's our top tier elite status. And that's fantastic because it has things like free breakfast, free parking on awards days, waived resort fees on paid stays. And, you know, it goes on and on, really great top tier benefits. And I said that first for a reason. So Hyatt now has these

milestone awards where at 40 nights, one of the things you can choose, one of the things you get automatically is at 40 nights is a guest of honor certificate and what that can be used for is uh applied to your own stay or you could gift it to someone else for their stay and for one stay up to seven nights you have uh you're treated as a globalist so that means you're you get top tier status for one stay uh starting at 40 nights with Hyatt. You also at 40 nights get to pick from a few options, including a suite upgrade, a confirmable at the time of booking suite upgrade certificate, which is the most valuable, I think, of those benefits. What do we have at 50 nights, Nick? 50 nights, you get to pick one. You pick 5,000 points or two suite upgrades or a $150 find credit. So I think that I guess it comes down

to whether or not you value the suite upgrades. But personally, I just hit 50 nights and was very excited to be able to select my two suite upgrades because I do tend to really enjoy the ability to apply those to stays. So I'm happy to pick up a couple of those. Yeah, absolutely. And then at 60 nights, that's when you get your globalist status. You also get a category one through seven free night certificate. You get two more suite upgrades. You get your my Hyatt concierge, which is someone you can email like all your requests to who can do all the things that you can't do online. And you get two more Guest of Honor certificates. If you give one of these Guest of Honor certificates to somebody else,

in the year in which they use it and when they check out, you get one Elite Night credit. So that helps you towards re-upping your status or getting further in your status, depending on when they do the stay. They will earn credit for however many nights they stayed. Yeah, yeah. And that's a great point. And probably worth a mention, if we didn't mention it already, is that those Guest of Honor and Suite Upgrade awards can be particularly valuable if you've got a longer stay. Because remember, the Suite Up upgrades, you can apply for a stay of up to seven nights. So you could have a booking, a week-long booking and get a suite for seven nights with one suite upgrade award.

Unlike Marriott, which requires one for every night of your stay, this is one will cover you for up to seven nights. And the guest of honor is the same thing. I think up to seven nights, I think. I don't know. Actually, I don't know if there's a limit, what the limit is. I think it's seven. Is it seven? I think it's seven nights and the guest of honor is the same thing. I think up to seven nights, I think, I don't know if actually, I don't know if there's a limit, what the limit is. I think it's seven.

I think it's seven nights, but yeah, I don't know. But at any rate, they can get at least a week. I'm sure of, of elite benefits of globalist level elite benefits. And that can really come in handy.

I stayed in New York city over the weekend, stayed at the Grayson hotel. And I didn't think that they had their own part. They don't have their own parking garage, but they do still include it as complimentary parking as complimentary for Global Ascent Award stays, which I didn't think was going to be the case. And so I almost booked a parking spot on my phone on the way to the hotel. But the lot that I was going to pick was about the same $75 that I thought Grayson was going to charge when I got there. So I decided, you know what, I'll just pay for it. You know, I'll, I'll pay for it at the hotel.

My mistake for not booking a hotel that owns its own parking garage. Cause usually you need the hotel to own the parking garage in order to get the complimentary parking. But much to my surprise, I got the complimentary, but I didn't realize they do complimentary parking, even though they don't own the garage there. So for a globalist on award stays. So that saved me $75, like, you know, right there. So definitely a good benefit to have. Yeah, it's big. One thing I want to mention about Hyatt is that all these things are giftable.

You can give the suite upgrades to someone else. You could give the free night certificates, the guest of honor things. And so there are situations where like if friends like travel together a lot, they might want to work together to have one person earn like all the nights, you know, always check in under the one person's name and then share the benefits. It's worth considering anyway. And it's a great program just to be able to do favors for people. I had dinner with friends the other night who had a trip this fall at some point, summer, fall, where he just reached out. My friend reached out to me and said, hey, I'm looking at going to this city.

Do you have any recommendations on the different Hyatt properties here? Because he knows that I like Hyatt. And I said, well, no, I actually haven't stayed at any of the Hyatts there. But if you're looking to stay at one, you don't have status. I can give you one of my guest of honor awards. And so we had dinner the other night and they were very thankful. They said the lounge was great, blah, blah, blah. They enjoyed the Guest of Honor benefits. And it was something that didn't cost me anything. I just transferred over a free award and for them, it was nicely valuable. So great to be able to do that.

Absolutely. So how do we get there though? We talked about why it's great and why we like it. What are the shortcuts? How do we get there, though? We talked about why it's great and why we like it. What are the shortcuts? How do we get status? How do we get these nights? Like who's really staying 40 nights in Hyatt hotels or 60 nights? These numbers we're talking about. So first of all, the World of Hyatt credit card, the consumer card, gives you five nights right off the bat just by having it.

Then you get two more nights for every $5,000 spend. So if you're spending $15,000 a year on that card in order to get, it also comes with a second free night certificate when you hit $15,000 spend each year. If you're doing that, then you have a total of six nights that you've earned just from having the card and putting that much spend on it. The Worldified Business Card doesn't have any automatic elite knights, but you will earn five for every $10,000 you spend with that card. Okay, wait, let me pop in with a question lots of people are going to have. And when I say lots of people, I mean me. How do they determine when you get the elite nights? So for instance, if your statement is already cut for December and you do, so let's say my statement cut on December 1st. And so now my next statement isn't going to be until January. If I do spend on my card now,

do I get the elite nights for this year or for next year? Yeah. You know, I think I, I think I wrote a post once that answered that. I don't remember the answer though i think i thought you did too that's why i was hoping you remembered yeah i think the answer is that you get them for this year but you better go read that and find out

all right we'll link to it too because because i'm sure people are gonna that's a question that makes sense to come in with us especially for those of us that are a little shorter where we want to be i want to hit 60 nights and so now it's a question of doing mattress run. Do I put spend on the card? What do I do to bridge that gap to get 60? Right, right. And also, if I remember right, the personal card and business card are different in one aspect. The personal card, I think this is true. I think this is still true. I know it used to be true. Every $5,000 spend was not, it was not constrained within a calendar year. So like if you spent $4,000 last year and then a thousand this year, it would add up to the 5,000 needed for the

two elite nights. Um, the business, and I think that's still true the business card though i think i believe every 10k spend has to be within a calendar year so if you spend 9 000 last year and then 1 000 this year you get nothing as far as elite nights go that's worth knowing that's good to know yeah and and and also good to know as i just checked in my hyatt statement doesn't close until december 26th so now I don't have to worry about the difference that I just asked you about. But at any rate, I'm sure a lot of other people will wonder. So worth checking out that post. Yeah. Okay. Another thing you could do is if you have some friends staying at Hyatt and they could use a, and you have, if you have a

guest of honor certificate that you could give them, as long as they're staying at a Hyatt and checking out this year, give them that guest of honor certificate. They apply it to their stay and they enjoy their stay more and you'll get one elite night. Doesn't matter how many nights they're staying. You get one. Another thing you could do, obviously you could book and check into cheap Hyatt hotels, but you may have forgotten that Mr. and Mrs. Smith hotels, if you book them through Hyatt, also earn elite nights.

And there are some reasonably inexpensive Mr. and Mrs. Smith properties around the world, so that's another option for some cheap stays in order to get elite nights. Another thing, if you've got any free night certificates about to expire, like if you could find any Hyatt nearby that would take it, even if you don't need that night, you know, why not use it and get your elite night that way? And on that note, remember that Hyatt allows those things. Those are giftable with Hyatt. So for instance, if my wife has a free night certificate in her account, but I really need the elite night credit, she can give me the free night certificate. She can gift that to me and I

can use it and I will get the elite night credit when I use it, if she gifts it to me. So you do have to click the buttons to gift it online. So, you know, to give it to the person that the recipient that wants to earn the Elite Credit. But that's a good point, too. Not only do I have my free night certificates to work with, but I have also potentially friends or family member free night certificates to work with, too. That's a really good point. And it's worth pointing out that that's not true of most other hotel programs. That's really special that they let you share the free nights so easily,

and actually that they let you share pretty much everything so easily. Right. Points, free nights, it's pretty crazy. It's a very shareable program. So we like that you like to share, Hyatt. We like to share our enthusiasm for Hyatt in return. So there you go. So there's some shortcuts to Hyatt status and Hyatt milestone benefits. All right. But that's not all we got to do to prepare for the end of the year, is it? It isn't. We've got to use up our credit card perks, right? There's a bunch of perks that expire at the end of the year. Let's start with airline incidental credits that expire at the end of December. There's a number of cards that have some kind of airline or travel credit that's calendar year based. All the platinum cards,

$200 per year. You've got the Chase Ritz Carlton card, $300 per year. Bank of America has both the premium rewards and the rewards elite card. One of the first ones, $100 per calendar year. Bank of America has both the premium rewards and the rewards elite card. One of the first ones, $100 per calendar year. The other one's $300 per calendar year. These are all airline incidental fee credits. So they're intended for things like check bags, like seat upgrades. Yeah. Lounge day pass, right. things like that. And, you know, we have a post on Amex Airlines fee reimbursements listing both, you know, what is listed as, you know, official uses, thank you. But also we've listed all the things that just seem to work anyway even if they're not officially listed and those things tend to work for these other cards too yeah yeah and it worth mentioning

that you know before you say oh does this still work if we don't have reports in there saying it doesn't work that's because it still works so the day that one of those things stops working you'll hear like it'll be shattered from the rooftops. There'll be 40,000 people running into that problem. And don't freak out. Like I see people all the time who are like, oh, my goodness, the pending charge says this. Is it going to work? I don't know.

But just relax. If it says it works, it probably still does. You'll be very unlikely to be the person that's like the first day that it stops working. So whatever the things are that work, work and go ahead and do those. And then just be patient because sometimes credits post very quickly and sometimes they take a week or two weeks or even three weeks or more. So be patient. But as long as you follow what it says in the post, make sure, for instance, you choose

your airline the day before you try to use the credit. As long as you follow the stuff that the post says, you should be good. I'm going to mention briefly, there are also a bunch of credits that are before you try to use the credit. As long as you follow the stuff that the post says, you should be good. Okay. Yeah, go ahead. I'm gonna mention briefly, there are also a bunch of credits that are card member year. So depending on when you signed up for the card, you may or may not need to rush to do these.

I'm not gonna list all of them, like all the details of them, but like the Venture X cards have $300 travel credit. That's membership year. Sapphire Preferred card is $50 in hotel credits booked through Chase. Sapphire Reserve has $300 in travel credits. The Altitude Reserve has $325 in travel and dining credits. All of those are membership year. So it just depends when you signed up for the card as to when those expire. Yeah, but incidentally, several of those cards initially launched around this time of year. So if you were an early adopter, you might be around that time. So it's worth taking a look. I know at least the Sapphire Reserve and the VentureX cards both

launched in fall time. So September, October, November time in the years that they came out. So if you're an early adopter, it's worth checking and seeing where you are in that member year. All right, next, use your annual and monthly credits. My goodness, there are a million of these coupon book credits these days, and you got to make sure you use them or you'll lose them. Yeah. So let's just talk about a few. I picked out like a handful of the bigger ones. We're not going to talk about those piddly $10 ones, but the bigger ones like the, if you have a business platinum card,

your semi-annual $200 Dell credit needs to be spent before the end of the year. And Dell, be careful. If they don't have that thing in stock that you ordered and they don't ship it until January, the charge is going to hit in January and for fine hotels and resorts or the hotel collection. You've got your Amex Gold card with the $50 semi-annual credit. I just used ours just last week. We're in North Carolina. We don't, for some reason, go off into resi-available ann arbor but uh elsewhere they're you know

we often run into them and so uh as long as we got the card with us we're good yeah just this morning the reason this popped into mind is because just this morning i said oh that's right there's a restaurant we like that's not too far away that's on the resi platform which surprised me i mentioned this a while back when this credit hit that i just didn't think there were any restaurants anywhere near me that were on resi, but they've expanded. And so if I found one and I was like, oh my goodness, that's just 20 minutes away. And my wife likes to go there a couple of times a year. So I, this morning said, we need to make sure that within this next week here, before we

forget about it, we get there and at least buy a gift card because that ought to probably trigger the credit. If that would trigger it. Yeah. Usually, I mean, unless they have some kind of other gift card system that's separate from their main thing. What I was going to say there is keep in mind that the restaurant just has to be listed on Resi.

You don't have to reserve it on Resi. So it's very confusing, but it's true. The Delta, Platinum, and Reserve cards also have Resi credits, but they're much smaller credits. Same thing is true with those that you just have to... And don't forget, you need to enroll. Don't forget to enroll because this is one of those benefits that you need to enroll. And if you don't enroll first in your online account, you won't get the credit. So there's several of these that are like that these days so if you have an amex card just log in and hit benefits on your card and make sure

you've enrolled in everything because there's no reason not to enroll in anything and you want to make sure you don't forget the benefits page at least for the platinum cards now has a section for like enroll you know benefits for enrolling and you can click there and you can quickly see which ones you've enrolled in uh and make sure that you um do if if you have a couple of similar cards so i have a couple variations on platinum cards and when i click through like so i was trying to make sure i was enrolled in in the i, I don't know, Dell credits for my business platinum. And I have a couple of business platinums. When I click through, it said I hadn't enrolled.

So I click through, it switched back to a different card in the enrollment screen. Wow. And so, you know, I thought I had enrolled, but I hadn't. So anyway, so you gotta be careful about all that if you have multiple cards. Right, right. Track it, make sure you get enrolled and everything. I missed a couple of credits. The business gold card has a monthly credit

for what is it? Office supply stores. And we didn't get it the first couple of months because I just forgot to enroll. I forgot that it was something I had to enroll in. I just made the charges thinking they were going to get reimbursed. And then when I realized they didn't,

I was like, oh man, I can't believe I forgot to enroll. So don't forget to do that. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Hilton Aspire. Here's a, here's a big one. It has their, their $200 semi-annual resort credit. So if you really want to be making up for the, that big annual fee, more than making up for it with in total, but you really want to be getting that $200 every six months, right? What can you do if you don't have a stay in December and you want to use up this half year's credit? Find a hotel that charges a deposit. So you find a hotel that charges like a one night deposit, for instance, they'll charge it at the time of booking and that'll get reimbursed.

And, you know, of course, if you pick a hotel that has a cancellation window, you still could potentially down the road, if plans change, cancel that reservation and probably get the refund also. So Las Vegas hotels are well known for collecting deposits. They're not the only ones out there, but that's one place where you might find a hotel that collects a one night deposit at the time of booking. So that would be one way to do it. I mean, another way, of course, obviously, is if you have an actual reservation for sometime next year, you might be able to contact the hotel in advance and ask them to run a charge on your card to make a deposit essentially towards the cost of your room. And a lot of hotels will probably

oblige that, not all of them, but some will. So that's a possibility also. I don't think that prepaid rates are probably going to work for that. Oddly enough, well, if they charge a deposit, it'll probably work if it's a postpaid rate. It's a prepaid rate. I'm not sure that it triggers the credit. So that's one thing to maybe be aware of. Now, keep in mind with the Hilton Aspire card, that's the expensive card. These credits are just for resorts.

So you got to check out which hotels are just for resorts so you gotta check out which which hotels are are um valid considered valid resorts it doesn't seem that list this year so you do need to take a second look if you haven't looked in a while right right having resort in the name is not necessarily the the giveaway so be careful there whereas the the less expensive cards, the Surpass and Business, they have their $50 and $60 quarterly Hilton credits, respectively. Those can be any Hilton hotel. And so you don't have to be as careful with those. The Spire also has their $50 quarterly flight credit. So you could earn this through those incidental credit tricks we mentioned earlier, but you could also just straight up use it for airfare because this one is not limited to incidental fees.

This is just airline charges at all. It may be worth a mention on the Hilton Surpassing business that buying a gift card online works for those also from Hilton. So that's another way. Right. Although a lot of people have had trouble using those well yes good point um so there have been issues where where they uh won't like they they are unable to like use the name the full amount of the gift card you know i i i think that they were set up like to hold back an amount for like a tip as if it was like a restaurant or

something along those lines but that's just my guess but weird stuff's happening there so i've kind of stayed away from that personally um since hearing about those issues yeah i have a couple of the cards in my bag that i haven't actually gone to use them so i can't speak to that myself i would not be surprised if you like go to use it and they they they might put like a preauthorization on it for a certain amount. And then that blocks off some of the amount of the card. So it probably has a little bit of a pain to actually get those to work. Right. But anyway,

that's that Delta cards. There are other, Oh yeah. You got the Delta stays rebates on those, right? Yeah. Yeah. So Delta,

all of the Delta cards, except for the blue card, have these Delta Stays credits, which are pretty significant. You just have to book a hotel through Delta Stays, which is basically Delta's branding on top of Expedia, I believe. And you do have to book a prepaid rate, but it can be a fully cancelable prepaid rate. I know I've done that. And you get back anywhere from $100 to $250, depending on which card you have. So the amount you get back goes up as you go from gold to platinum to reserve. And it also goes up $50 more for business versions of each of those cards is $50 more than

the personal version. So if you have one of those, book a hotel. It doesn't matter if the hotel stay is a year away from now because these are prepaid. So you can do this, you can do it now and make sure it's cancelable so that if you don't end up using that stay, you can do it now and make sure, just, you know, make sure it's cancelable so that if you don't end up taking that, using that stay, you get your money back. But you should get the credit as long as you use the right Delta card and you've registered for this benefit. Very good.

All right. Then the last, maybe not the last, one of the last couple of things to think about is applying for cards that have these credits that we've been talking about, because now is a great time of year to do it. And here's why. So if you were to pick up one of these cards that has a calendar year credit, like let's use an Amex Platinum card, for instance, here that has a $200 calendar year airline incidental fee credit. So if you were to open an Amex Platinum card now in December of 2024, then you could use the airline incidental credit in December for 2024, use this year's airline incidental credit. And then starting in January or anytime between January and December of next year, you will get a fresh new $200 airline incidental credit. And then your annual fee will post at some point in December of 2025, but won't be due until sometime in January of 2026. So starting on January 1st of 2026, you could use that calendar year airline incidental credit for

2026 also. And then if you decide you want to cancel the card, you could still cancel the card as long as you do it within 30 days of the annual fee posting, you'll get the annual fee back or won't have to pay the annual fee. At least that's the way it has always worked with Amex. So you could potentially triple dip if you open a card with a calendar year benefit like that in December. So this is a great time of year for that. It really is. All right. Getting near the end of our topics, this may be time to transfer or pool your points with others. If you've been trying to move points to, let's say, a family member's account or move their points to your account, a number of programs have annual limits. So if you're trying to move a lot,

make sure to move what you can this year, and then you can finish up next year. City thank you points has 100,000 point per year limit. Note that when you transfer points, you have to use them within 90 days or they expire. So be careful there. Marriott Bonvoy, you can transfer up to 100,000 points per calendar year, and you could receive up to 500,000. So again, do that if you're trying to move a lot more than 100,000 points from one person to another. Because he's saying that if you're trying to do more, you do 100,000 now in December, and then you can do another 100,000 in January, because that's what I mean.

Hilton. So Hilton has a much higher limit. You can each account can receive up to two million points by pooling in each calendar year. You are limited to six Hilton points pooling transactions per calendar year. So just something to keep in mind. Wyndham and Caesars. This one, this one's probably the most important of of this whole set to think about. All right, so one way of keeping Wyndham points alive. Wyndham points expire after like four years, regardless of whether you've had activity in your account or not. But one way to reset that calendar is by transferring them to Caesars

and then transferring back from Caesars to Wyndham and you get a new, they become fresh. And the Caesars has a limit that seems to change from time to time of what it is, of how many points can be moved. I think Nick is telling me that right now the limit is 60,000 points per calendar year to move from Caesars to Wyndham. It is.

It used to be 30, and then they periodically increased it to like 120 for a little while. But 60 seems to be the new limit. That's what is listed on the Wyndham Rewards website. So 60K, I think000 points, you want to make sure to, you know, do this transfer from Caesars to Wyndham before the end of December, then you could do the rest next year. mention that people have had trouble with the time that it takes or points actually showing up. This is kind of like one of those choice preferred hotel situations where your points disappear into the ether for a while and may not show up for a long time. So this is a, this is not an instant thing. So from Wyndham to Caesars, it's reasonably okay. I'm not even gonna say fast, like it's reasonably okay i'm not even gonna say fast like it's we're talking anywhere from like three to seven days probably to move in that direction the other direction from caesars to windham i

think is kind of fraught with problems in terms of how long it might take to get the points to show back up and wind them so it really is it really is problem. It can take months in some cases. It's just goes into this black hole. And yeah, it's like some guy named Joe, you know, eventually gets to it. It's sitting on his desk. It's like a to-do. Move these points. And, you know, he's like, these points are really heavy. I don't want to move them.

Come on, Joe. Come on, Joe. Come on, Joe. Pick up the pace, Joe. Joe, you know, you know, let's get it done. Yeah. So that's certainly a limitation to keep in mind, though, of course, obviously, if you want your points on one side or the other, there might be reasons for that, because keep in mind with Caesars, you'll get one cent per point for most stuff.

If you use it towards like your hotel bill and i think spa treatments and stuff like that you'll get one cent per point so uh and then you can also convert them to free bets with the sports book if you want to use them on the online sports book if you live in a state where that's an option yeah okay yeah so you definitely don't have to move them back to to windham um if you're going if you're doing that uh and yeah and, that could be a really good use. And it just depends because Wyndham also has its own sweet spots where you can get good value. But you could also get less than a penny per point value

with Wyndham. So Caesars may be a good place for them depending on what you're doing. All right, last but not least. Okay, last but not least is a really special case. But you know that Citi Rewards Plus card? It gives you 10% back on Citi thank you point award redemptions. And so that's per year with a maximum number of points back of 10,000 points back.

So at most, you can spend 100,000 C city thank you points each year and get 10% back of those. So that's a good value. And so if you know, you want to use your city points, like, you know, you want to transfer them to a certain program or, you know, you want to cash them out or you want to, whatever you want to do with them, this is a good time if you haven't yet gotten your 10% back to fill in that gap and make sure you get the full 10,000 points back. Yep. Very good. All right.

So don't forget to do that. So I think that's a pretty good list. That gives you a pretty good list of to-dos. Your to-do list for December is kind of long. It is. So you need to start to get on that. Kind of overwhelming, I'll tell you. I feel like we're the Grinches of Christmas this year, giving people this long to-do list.

Make sure you use your benefits. Yeah. It's true. It's true. But you got to use them. You got to use them or you lose them. So it's worth taking. I think it's worth taking some time.

If you're spending the money on these cards, it's worth taking some time to figure out how to maximize. It is. It is. It is. Yep. All right. I think that brings us to this week's question of the week. And this week's question of the week brings us back to Windham and Caesars.

So Ryan writes in and says, hi, Greg and Nick. I'm a big fan of all the resources and tips you share at frequent miler. I've learned a lot of helpful info. I have a question regarding the Caesars diamond status match using the Windham earner business card with the status match benefit ending in February,

is there anything you'd recommend cardholders take advantage of now before the match goes away? Does it make sense to book a trip to Vegas in January to use the Diamond benefits or to try to book as many cruises using the casino matching strategy as possible? Are you guys personally doing anything specific now to take advantage of the Caesars Diamond benefits? Thanks for all your advice and all you do with them. FM. Thanks, Ryan. So the only part of this question that I'm going to punt to you, Greg, is the, are you doing anything specific to take advantage of Caesar's diamond before it expires? So, I mean, this is a great question for, for Nick and which is why he's saying he's only punting part of it to me. Cause I'm curious what Nick's answer is. No,

I'm not doing anything right now to take advantage of that at all. Yeah, I figured probably not. So what Ryan's talking about, for anybody who's not familiar, is the Wyndham earner business card comes with Wyndham diamond status. That's just one of the benefits of the card. And Wyndham and Caesars have a partnership that's been longstanding, but changing soon, where right now still you can match your Wyndham diamond status. If you have Wyndham diamond status to Caesar's diamond status. And so then you get a bunch of benefits. And so we've written a lot about matching around for free cruises because there's a bunch of different ways you can leverage that Caesar's diamond status to end up getting a

whole bunch of free cruises. I think I've cruised eight or nine times in the last two years and I have a couple booked for next year already. And so now I'm thinking about, okay, well, what's the long game beyond that? So are there any things I'm doing? Yes. So the first thing to answer here though, is am I planning a trip to Las Vegas to use my Caesars diamond benefits? No, I'm not. The Caesars diamond benefits that are valuable in Las Vegas are number one, waived resort fees, which is great if you're staying at a Caesars property, but I'm not going to fly all the way to Las Vegas just for that. You also have the Diamond Celebration Dinner. It's a $100 credit, the dining credit that you can use. And I've

already used mine for this year, so I don't need to plan another trip to Las Vegas to do that. And that $100 Diamond Celebration credit, some people are told they need to earn 100 tier credits in order to be able to use it, and other people are able to use it without that. Anyway, I wouldn't plan a trip to Las Vegas just for those things. However, what am I personally doing to kind of prepare here? Because soon I won't have Caesar's Diamond status anymore, because if I didn't mention it, that's ending on February 1st. So Caesar's Diamond status, if you have it now expires January 31st and starting on February 1st, you're not going to be able to match your Wyndham diamond status more. If you got a credit card, you'd only be able to match if you earned it from stays with Wyndham, then you could

match it to Caesar's diamond. But if you earn it from the credit card, no longer will that get your Caesar's diamond status. So that's going to be going away soon. So here's what I'm doing. And this does not mean it's what you should be doing, Ryan, but I'll tell you what I'm going to do. So there are a bunch of matching opportunities in Atlantic City. And if you haven't done any of them yet, then what you could do now is take your Caesar's diamond status to Atlantic City, match that to hard rock icon status at hard Rock Atlantic City, and then match your Hard Rock Icon status to Ocean Prime status. And Ocean Prime will get you a complimentary cruise on MSC and two complimentary nights at Wynn in Las Vegas. However, now, starting December 1st, you have to earn 250 tier credits with Ocean in order to get the travel benefits. So those aren't free anymore.

Now you have to gamble some. So you have to be somebody who's interested in gambling to even do this anymore. Otherwise, it's not going to be worth it. And 250 tier credit seems like it's pretty low. I think Ocean Prime status ordinarily requires something like 30,000 tier credits. So earning 250 for the travel benefits is a relatively low bar, but it's not a no bar. It's definitely a, you're going to have to gamble some bar. So that's one thing you could do. I'm not doing that yet because now also Ocean Prime has

instituted a 24 month inactivity rule. So you have to have been inactive for 24 months in order to match again. And I matched about 18 months ago. So I'm not there yet. So what I'm going to do instead is I have not yet matched to Bally's. Bally's is another casino in Atlantic City, and it doesn't come with a ton of benefit in terms of matching. But here's what I'm going to do. In January, I am going to go to Atlantic City and I'm going to match my Caesars diamond to Bally's superstar. The reason for that is because Bally's membership year is January to December. So my Bally status is going to last all the way through December of 2025 by matching in January. If I match now, it would be done at the end of this year.

But if I wait until January, then I will match to Bally superstar for the entire calendar year of next year. And the reason I'll do that is because then after March 1st, I'll go back to Atlantic City and then I can match my ballet superstar to Hard Rock Icon and Hard Rock Icon to Ocean Prime. The reason for the timing there is because after March 1st, historically,

this is of course going to be assuming that it happens the same way this year. Ocean has matched you for the rest of the current year, which ends in June and all of the next year, which ends in June and all of the next year, which ends in the following June. So sometime after March 1st, sometime next year, I'll go to Atlantic City again. I'll match my Bali superstar status to Hard Rock Icon and then

Hard Rock Icon to Ocean Prime and hopefully have Ocean Prime status until June 30th of 2026. That should give me the ability to book an MSC cruise next year before the end of 2025. And then again, before June 30th of 2026, provided I earn the tier credits at Ocean. So I am going to have to still earn the tier credits. I have some thoughts about how to do that. I'm not going to go into detail here, but there are obviously various games and things you can play and ways you can earn tier credits. So I have some thoughts in mind as to how I will hopefully go about that and we'll see how that

works out and how much money I lose in my endeavor to, uh, to do that, whether it works out to be worth it, but probably if I'm able to use two cruises and the two free nights at win Las Vegas with the $50 diamond or a dining credit that you get, uh, it should be worth it. Even if I do lose a little bit in the quest to earn the tier credit. So that's what I'm doing. It's a little long, but there you go. There you have it. That's really cool. So can you then use your superstar icon prime status to match to Caesar's diamond? Well, we'll see. In the past, Caesar's has only done that match for new members. So presumably no. However, who knows what might

change between now and at this point, if my plan works the way I expect it to, I'm going to have status for all of next year. And then if all the rest of it works, I'll end up with ocean prime status until June 30th of 2026. I mean, that's almost two years away at this point, right? It's no more than a year and a half away. I don't know what's going to happen between now and then, but I'm at least going to position myself. And a point I meant to make here, but didn't is that the ballet superstar match has been around for a while, but I didn't do it because it didn't provide any particular tangible benefit.

And I didn't know when I might need it in the future. And here's that day. So sometimes I'll do a match, even though I don't need it, just thinking maybe I'll be able to use it. That's one that I held off because I thought maybe it'll become useful at some point in the future because it wasn't useful to me immediately. And I'm glad that I did because now I have that path for next year. So yeah, we'll see.

Yeah. Well, that's so cool. That was fun listening to that strategy. That was a really good strategy there. Hopefully, hopefully we'll see. Fingers crossed that it all works because, of course, all these matching things could always change. You never know when they're going to change. So who knows?

But that's the plan as of now. I like the game plan. That brings us to the end of today's episode. If you enjoyed this and you'd like to get more of this stuff in your email inbox each day or each week, you want to go to frequent miler dot com slash subscribe to join our email list. Follow us on all various social media. Join our frequent miler insiders Facebook group so you can ask questions just like that

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