Frequent Miler on the Air - Raising points while raising children: strategies to earn more points with your family | Ep67 | 10-10-20

Episode Date: October 10, 2020

Greg and Nick discuss: 00:29 Mailbag: A special congratulations 3:35 What crazy thing did Citi do this week? 5:55 Mattress running the numbers: Is it worth mattress running for Marriott status with the current off-peak promo? https://frequentmiler.boardingarea.com/marriott-promos-free-night-with-homes-villas-stay-and-more-with-week-of-wonders/ 13:33 Main Event: Raising points while raising children https://frequentmiler.boardingarea.com/a-bundle-of-points-with-our-bundle-of-joy-nearly-200k-points-earned-in-the-first-month-of-life/ 40:13 Post roast 55:12 Question of the Week: Orphaned Turkish miles will expire soon. Pay to extend, transfer more to book a speculative trip, or let them expire? Don't forget to like, subscribe, and leave a review! Music credit: Annie Yoder

frequent miler on the air starts now today's main event raising points while raising children having children isn't all bad not all not all just those first few sleepless nights but there's some good parts too as you showed this week you could get you could get some good points out of it. So, yeah, it's not all bad. Before we jump into that, of course, giant mailbag time. Let's find out. What is it? What do the people have to say this week, Greg? All right.

This week's feedback is not really feedback. It's from me. From you, okay. We got mail from me. Can you believe I went through all the trouble of mailing in my feedback? It's ridiculous. And we're happy you did. But I have all this like free, all these free stamps I've been getting thanks to the MX

Platinum, business platinum, $20 a month postage thingy. Anyway. Which, funny note on that. So, you know, my local post office only sells like stamps and stuff. They don't sell gift cards or anything like that. So, you know, my local post office only sells like stamps and stuff. They don't sell gift cards or anything like that. But we were out of the area this last week or the end of September and we pulled into to stop somewhere and there was a post office and my wife was going in. So I said, hey, you know, buy like $20 in stamps because it was the last day of September. I said like, buy like $20 in stamps or if you see something else that makes sense, buy that. And in my mind, I was thinking gift cards

are something else that makes sense, but I didn't actually say those words out loud. So she came back with stamps and she's like, you know, they had Amazon gift cards and Visa gift cards and stuff, but I wasn't sure if I should buy, if those things would work. And I was like, those were the other things

that might make sense. So anyway, we have more stamps now. So you got stamps too. We've all got stamps because of the platinum credits. Yes. So mail it in. Stamps. We don't know what to do with all these stamps.

Right. So yeah, no, actually today, I just wanted to congratulate some friends. So they are getting married today. And by today, I mean, Saturday, October 10. So that's when ceremony this year. And a lot of people have done, have had to do that. My nieces had to do that as well. But they picked 10, 10, 20, because I think the mathematical, it seemed nice. It'll make it hard to forget. But right about now, so the groom is a big fan of our show. And right about now, I think his bride is punching him saying,

I think he's talking about us. And so, yes, congratulations, Alexa and Josh. We're very happy for you. Congratulations. Exciting times. A lot of fun. All the best to you. And, you know, the thing about getting married

in 2020 is that you know it gets better from here right i mean it's all gonna be better from here right plus i think there's gonna be a badge of honor for anyone who has these kind of milestones on this year you know for sure i mean this is gonna be one of those things that gets remembered forever and ever for a long time so i mean hey right have it and hold it yeah yeah all right um so that's it's time to move on to the next segment which is what crazy thing did city do this week yeah and you know we have a habit lately of doing of talking about crazy things that other banks have done. So, or other organizations. Anyway, this one does come from a bank and it starts with the letter C.

So, is it Citi? I am going to predict that it's very close to Citi, White City. It's not. It's Capital One. I made it Capital One. Yeah. So Capital One sent us a official sounding email this morning, this morning being October 8th when we're recording this. And it said, Capital One announces a new solution for small businesses, and uh i read that and i'm sure you had the same reaction

that sounds familiar oh really it's nice of them to announce that it's nice of them to announce it so right right so it so i did a quick yeah did a quick google search to see why it sounded so familiar. Of course, I knew. But, yeah, Nick wrote about spring in July. So, you know, late July. Right, the end of July. So, give him a little bit of credit. It wasn't actually like, July sounds, you know, like it was all of July. It was just a little bit of July, all of August, all of September, and almost a third of October before they got around to announcing what we announced a couple months back.

So good job, Capital One. Congratulations for catching up. I'm glad you guys are reading Frequent Miler and just tossing things on the back burner for a while, apparently, because maybe we need to talk about Capital One more on this show, because we talked about City, and finally City got crazy, and of course we've demonstrated that everybody is listening to us before in the past but things like when hilton came after greg's points because he talked on the show about points right so we're talking about capital one now so capital one's going to start reading and and they're going to start hat tipping us in their announcements oh are they wait for it

wait for it all right cool i. All right, cool. I'm looking for that prediction to come true. That seems really likely. Okay. So let's move on to mattress running the numbers. So what do we got this week to mattress run the numbers? Something from Marriott, right? I mean, Marriott stuff this week that might be mattress runnable. Maybe. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, so, uh, you know, the, their, their slew of announcements, uh, wasn't super exciting, but, but one aspect caught my eye, which was that if you book by, uh, October 13th, I think it was October 15th, October 15th. October 15th. Sorry. All or most Marriott properties are price, are award priced at the off peak rate as opposed to the standard or peak rate.

But that's for stays through the end of November. And so the reason that's interesting for mattress running is at the bottom of the ward chart you have category one hotels standard price 7,500 points off-peak price which now is widely available 5,000 points a night and if you add that in with a fifth night free you can book five nights for a total of 20,000 points. If you're close to getting platinum or titanium status, this is a really cheap way of getting there. Now, this was possible before, but it was dependent on the odd situation where the category one near you is off peak for five days in a row. Now it is like, you know, if you look at, at the category ones, I looked at a couple of them and they were widely available the next

two months at, uh, 5,000 points a night. And so very easy to book five nights in a row or 10 nights in a row even, and, and, um, get it for an average of 4,000 points a night. So good way to add those elite nights, get to a valuable level of status. So how many of them would your mattress run? I mean, if you're five nights short, 10 nights short, 13 nights,

and then how, where's your cutoff? I mean, what is acceptable to mattress run for status? So, you know, it depends a lot on how much are you going to actually use that status. So the status will be good for the rest of this calendar year, all of the next, and then through February of the year after that.

If you're not planning on traveling much through that time, then you shouldn't do anything. If you're planning on traveling a little bit and you think Marriott's are likely, I think doing five nights is like, if that's how far away you are from either platinum or titanium, I think that's a no brainer. 10 nights is where it's, it's more, you got to think about, is it, you know, are you going to be getting good value from that? I think that's, that to me is sort of the, between five nights and 10 nights is where I still think 10 nights, a lot of people would come up with, you know, the answer saying, yeah,

it's worth it for me to spend 40,000 points to get there. But beyond that, I think it'd be pretty rare for, for someone to come to the conclusion that, that it makes sense that that's my kind of rule of thumb. And then obviously in between five and 10 nights, that's just, it's just a sliding scale. Well, you know, it starts to get kind of murky in there because like, all right, so if we, you know, if we value our Marriott points around seven tenths of a cent, because we realistically value them,

I think 0.72% or 0.72 cents per point, but let's keep the math a little bit easier and say seven tenths of a point. So 20,000 points, about $140 worth of points. If you go, that's five nights, costs you about $120,000 or $140,000 worth of points. So then- $140,000 worth of points.

$140 worth of points. Oh my goodness. I'm not doing this magic after all. I'm gonna have some editing on my hands today. So $140 worth of points for five nights. So 10 nights, you're looking at $280 worth of points. So it depends. How many breakfasts are you going to get out of that?

How many times do you need to check out at 4 p.m.? So $280, I feel like we're really pushing, unless you got some expensive days coming up. I mean, if you're going to go to the St. Regis Bora Bora next year, something like that, then, you know, obviously breakfast there is really expensive. So it'd probably be worth spending $280 worth of points on that. But if you don't know where you're going next year, I feel like five nights is about the barrier for me. Now, interestingly, five nights is 20,000 points. 10 nights is 40,000 points. But if you just add like two in there, if you're like seven short, as a lot of people are, then you're looking at 30,000, which to me, the jump from 20

to 30,000 is also kind of significant because I mean, now you're at like $210 worth of points. So that might not be enough to deter you if you do know you're going to have, or you have some expensive stays planned, some stays planned at very nice places if you don't have those days planned yet i don't know if i'd mattress run it or not i mean right right yeah uh no i agree i mean it's definitely uh hard to determine and and and it as i said in the beginning it depends so so much on what your likely travel plans are going to be. The other thought, you know, there are a lot of business people who have way more marriott points than they know what to do with. And if you would just enjoy, you know, having the higher level status, why not? Why not? Right. Right. The joy of free there. Right. I mean, it is. Right. Yeah. I should mention, though, probably the hardest part about all this is there's only so many

category one hotels in the United States. If you live in Texas, then they're everywhere. But in most states, there's not that many or none. Or none, right. A lot of states with none. And I'm glad you brought that up because that was the other thing I meant to ask you about this i meant to bring up so how far out of your way do you go for one of these i mean let's say you're five nights short and you so you decide 20 000 points is worth it but like is it worth an hour drive to check into a place that you got to check into for your mattress run two hours you're gonna get on a plane to go check in somewhere you know for your mattress run it's tough yeah i don't know how to answer that. I mean,

everyone's got to figure out like, you know, how much are they willing to do? I mean, I don't know. Yeah. I mean, that's a tough question. Some people have to grapple with it. We've got one in your backyard then. Yeah. No. Okay. Probably it makes sense to do the five nights. I guess. I would probably agree with greg for 20 000 points i don't know if i do much more than that and then if it's like way out of the way now you're starting to push it and of course i say that as somebody who's really

contemplating this hyatt 30 night mattress run so take my opinion with a grain of salt much much crazier than five or ten nights at five or 4,000 points a night. I think it's worth pointing out though, the, the Hyatt matches run we've been talking about where you, you plan your checkout date to be January 1st, 2nd, 3rd, or 4th means that you get two full years of status, as opposed to, we're talking about really one full year and change. Right. Right. I feel like it's more justified, but Hey, it's easy to say that right now. And poo poo the idea of a mattress running for Mary. But I, but I think it does make sense for some people. So we're going to give it, I think one thumb up and one thumb down, right?

Just depends on your situation. Well, let's give it two thumbs up for the five night. For the five night one. All night. All right. 20,000 points. All right. Okay. You can do 20,000 points. It's a deal. All right. So that brings us, I think, to the main event, which is mooching off of your kids to get free points or

using your kids or earning points, raising points while raising a family. Yeah. So Nick as his sort of or earning points, raising points while raising a family, right? So, yeah. So, Nick, as his sort of debut coming back from paternity leave, wrote a fantastic post about how he earned, I don't remember what it was, 140,000 points or something. 180 something, but that's all right.

Who's counting? 180,000. A bunch of points. A bunch of points. All as part of having a new baby. And I found that it was both very well written and fun to read article. Thank you. But it's fun to think about, you know, kids are expensive and there's all kinds of benefits to having kids that are most

mostly around emotional cognitive dissonance like if i'm doing all these horrible things i must enjoy it for some reason and so the point is not just the points i i suppose. Usually points, not just the points, but it's nice that for all the work and expense of having kids, there's also opportunities to earn a lot of points. So there's a little bit of a sort of a child rebate we get. Child rebate. I like it. I like it. The point rebate. There you go. There's another blog for you now, point rebate. There's another blog for you now, Point Rebates. All right. Can you quickly summarize what are the things that you wrote about? And then we'll talk about going forward from there.

Good. So the things that I wrote about this week, I talked about college savings. So we've been planning for a long time to put money away for our new son's college savings. So we had money earmarked for that. And we decided to go with a 529 plan, which the 529 plan isn't necessarily the right pick for everybody. There's some downsides to it, but a lot of upsides for me because here in New York State, we have a really customizable plan that features a lot of the different types of funds that I would want to invest in anyway. It's Vanguard, low cost, broad index funds, and again, a fair amount of customization.

So same stuff I'd invest the money in whether I were going to put it in a 529 or not. And in this case, I'll get a tax deduction because I'm a New York resident investing in the New York plan. Now that varies from state to state. So some states will give you a tax break, no matter which plan you invest in. Some you have to invest in the plan from your state. Some don't have any tax break. So you're gonna have to look it up for your state and see what it is. But anyway, we're going to get a tax break for it here in New York. And then of course, the long-term earnings of that are going to hopefully grow over the next 18 years before he hopefully decides to go to college. So it's not all for naught.

I mean, it's a smart financial thing to do anyway, as long as they're going to go to college. And actually, I mean, even the penalties aren't that bad if you end up taking it out, right? It's not the principal that you lose. It's the growth. You lose like 10% of the growth, plus that you get taxed on it, which you would have done anyway if you didn't have any room for a tax deferred retirement account. Right, exactly. So very little downside, a fair amount of upside with all the time that it would have to grow. And then of course, I didn't wanna just do that, but I wanted to earn some points doing it.

So I bought gift to college gift cards, which Greg has written extensively about. You can go to, I think milesforcollege.com, right? So- We still have that URL, yeah. We still have that URL. So you can go to milesforcollege.com if you can't remember to go to FrequentMiler

and search for it, milesforcollege.com. You're gonna find the whole list of how you do this, how you set it up, the mechanics. So I'm not gonna go over all that. The key is that you can buy gift-to-college gift cards in some stores in some regions around the US. And I happen to be lucky that in the Northeast and in much of New England and in New York State,

and then also parts of Florida, a gas station chain called Cumberland farms carries these gift to college gift cards. So I was able to buy them at the gas station for a bonus on my credit card. And of course the Marriott credit cards had been carrying a bonus of 10 points per dollar at gas stations. Now the cap on that with chase was 3,500 and it ended September 30th. Amex has got that going through the end of October up to 7,500 per card

so the short version of this long story that I'm spinning for you here is that I bought $10,000 worth of gift to college gift cards at 10 points per dollar on my Marriott card so I earned 100,000 Marriott points by putting money into a college savings fund that I was going to put into the fund no matter what it cost $119 in activation fees to come out with a hundred thousand Marriott points. So you're going to listen to that and say, and you were talking about not spending 20,000 points in status a few minutes ago. I mean, points cost me like next to nothing.

It was like a 10th of a cent, basically a point, a little bit over a 10th of a cent of points. So, so that was a, it's also easier just, just to interject. It's also easier for you to talk about not wasting your points on mattress running when you already have titanium status. True, true, true. Much easier for me to do it that way. So anyway, so we did the college savings. You can read more about that in the post. But again, the short version of the story is that I got 100,000 points for putting away money we were going to put away anyway. So that was a great deal. Then came, of course, the other things that we had to spend

money on, like, for instance, the hospital bill. And so since I knew we were going to have to pay a large hospital bill, I wanted to earn a large bonus for that. And there are lots of cards offering good bonuses. Just so happened that until the first of this month, the Alaska Airlines card had the best bonus I think it's ever had. So 65,000 total bonus points after spending 8,000 bucks in the first six months. And so I knew I was going to incur a large hospital bill. We had switched to a really expensive insurance plan this year that was costing a bunch. So I'm going to put the premiums on that card and the hospital bill on that card.

And that will easily trigger the new welcome bonus of 65,000 points. When you add in the 8,000 points from spend, that'll be 73,000 points just by paying the bill. Now, I mentioned within the post that we discovered recently that we used gift cards, we used Visa gift cards actually, in order to pay some of the previous hospital bills that we had. I had never thought to do that before, but it came to mind because I got stuck with all these Visa gift cards during the pandemic. So that's another option. Next week, starting on October 11th,

Staples is going to have another 5X deal on Visa gift cards. Well, they're going to have another fee-free Visa gift card deal where you can buy five cards at a time. So you can walk in there, spend $ thousand bucks, use a chasing cash card, and you walk out with 5,000 relatively free points in your pocket. And you could use those Visa gift cards to do something like pay the hospital bills.

So we did some of that already. And we discovered through the complicated billing system that if we overpaid the bill, which we did accidentally, we overpaid a bill, that they'd send us a check back. So, you know, maybe we'll make another mistake and overpay for a few cards and liquidate a few

cards because it's a confusing system. Almost worth having a third baby, huh? It's, you know, easy points. So, all right. So, I paid the bill and did that and that was all well and good. And then, of course, I was going to add my new son to one of my credit cards so that he'd have a credit card so that, you know, when And then, of course, I was going to add my new son to one of my credit cards so that he'd have a credit card so that when friends and family ask about when I'm going to get him started, I can pull it out and be like, oh, I mean, he's already got a credit card, right?

So that was just going to be a conversation piece no matter what. But of course, the email came from Marriott saying, hey, add an authorized user to your Chase Marriott card and we'll give you 10,000 points. And I thought, well, that's something I was going to do anyway. So thank you very much for your 10,000 points. Sounds like a great deal to me because Chase doesn't have any minimum age restriction that they list anywhere that I've seen.

In terms of authorized users, I added my first son to one of my Chase cards back when he was born. So you put in the birth date and everything online. And I did all of that, put in his birth date, name and address, and got the authorized user card. And there's some benefits to that, you know, because my son gives us now a little bit more bandwidth for different types of promotions. He's got his own credit card to participate in promotions now. And, you know, he put in the name and address and date of birth and all the rest of that. And so he might possibly live at my address in suite number three now. So there's a new billing address. Might possibly, I didn't say he does, but he could.

I mean, it's kind of room number three. Why not? Why not? So anyway, another way to take advantage of certain types of promotions that way. So that was a great deal too. So all of those things added up, came out pretty good. And then I didn't include in the post, but we spent a small fortune on Amazon buying diapers and wipes and a new car seat and all the different types of

accessories you need when you have a baby that we didn't have left over, the things that you go through and need to get again. So did a bunch of that kind of stuff on Amazon. And that was a 5X category on the Chase Freedom card through September 30th. So we maxed out that also. So altogether, he actually probably made us a little over 200,000 points when you add it all up, because we opened a new freedom card to take advantage of that and bought the Amazon gift cards at whole foods so that we could double dip on the

five X. There's a lot of points, a lot of points guys. So that's how I did. He's a little over a month old now, right? He is. He is. And he's already responsible for 200,000 points. 200,000. But what has he done for you lately? Right. I know. I, well, I'm, we're on month number two now,

so he's gotta, gotta get on the horse here. Cause he hasn't done much. He's got a high bar. Well, you know, I will say he's doing his part to make sure that I need to buy more diapers on Amazon every single day. Working his way through that four or five diapers per change. It's the fun that every parent knows about. So we've been having a lot of fun with that stuff. The gifts I keep on giving. Oh, you know it. Somebody did ask me on the blog if I had an EIN for him yet and it registered him as a poop manufacturer

so that I could get business cards. But no, I'm not going to do any of that all right slow down okay so those are the things that I did but what else that's what you've done so far but going forward there's going to be more things I mean you already sort of alluded to that there are deals where having more people in your family can give you more opportunity that That's hence the sweet number three. But sometimes all you need is another name, like that Aeroplan deal. You could sign him up with his Aeroplan account number and get the 2,500 bonus points after, I forget, after you have to earn some points, right?

Yeah, you have to get yourself a time machine and go back and earn the points by September 30th. Oh, okay. that's a great example of the type of thing. Yes, it is. Right, right, right. It is. Somebody, in fact, brought that up. They have four kids and they asked what kind of opportunities they might have. And I said, well, sign them all up for Aeroplan accounts and earn a mile with each one of them. Or you could have done that anyway. Earn a mile with each one, gotten 10,000 miles. And the nice thing about certain programs like Aeroplan, the new aeroplan is going to allow you to pull those miles and some programs allow you to do that so that's not just 2,500 miles kind of spread out over the middle of nowhere it's 10,000 miles you put together if you had four kids so definitely having a kid makes that type of thing

a little bit more advantageous right and of, you could also sign them up for other loyalty programs. And just to give an example of why that might be useful, IHG, they do those accelerate promos all the time where each person gets a different offers. And sometimes one person gets awesome offers, the other person gets terrible ones. Having another person in the family signed up, you might get something good. I had a deal. I had signed up. This is going back four years. Maybe I'd signed up my son for an SPG account. Remember those? And he got an offer for, you know, stay one night and get a free night certificate. We had to,

we had to spend a night at a SPG hotel anyway. So we just, uh, signed up for the night in his name and, and boom, free night certificate. So, you know, you never know when those things are going to happen, but. Yeah. Yeah. They, they, they definitely come around though. They come around time, time and time again, those types of opportunities come around or, or there'll be an opportunity. You mentioned SPG and the free night. And I don't know if Marriott's doing it right now, but I feel like at least once or twice

a year, we hear about Marriott doing an offer where new members stay like two times and earn a free night certificate or something like that. So very similar thing for new members only. So if you've got somebody in your family that can sign up, that's a great deal. IHG ran that deal a few years back where you had to fill out a bunch of postcards and you can get a bunch of points and free night certificates. And, you know, we did that for everybody in the family. So again, that type of thing. So all of those things can be advantageous to have somebody else in the family sign up for those shopping portal promotions with another person, et cetera. So that's very helpful. More people, more bandwidth. So right.

Oh, right. Glad to have them around. Right. And then once they get much older than your kids are now, once they're teenagers, you can sign them up as authorized users on Amex cards. And the reason that's cool is Amex very often does the type of authorized user promotion that you mentioned with your Bonvoy card. And so you can earn membership rewards points and other miles and things, depending on which kind of card you have, whenever those promotions surface. And the nice thing about that too, I should mention, you know, when I got the email about the Marriott bonus, 10,000 points for adding an authorized user, which that's targeted,

by the way, some people got a 5,000 point offer. Some people got a 10,000 point offer. We don't know yet if you didn't get an email, if you can add an authorized user and get any points. I assume no, but we don't yet know if it's open to everyone because not enough time has passed yet. But what I wanted to mention about that though is, so I got that email and it was actually on my wife's card. And so, you know, first instinct for a lot of people would have been, oh, to add, you know, me as an authorized user to her card, right? But I don't want to do that because then that's going to add another account that will look like it's added to my 524 account. If I apply for a new

Chase card, then I might get denied online. And usually you can call reconsideration and explain to them that it's an authorized user account. You're not responsible for it, blah, blah, blah. And they will usually ignore that. But hey, why bother with the phone call if I don't have to? If I don't have to add myself to that, then great. So having a son or daughter, child around to add for those types of promotions can be helpful because it won't add to your 524 accounts. Right. Now, eventually they'll be old enough where it matters and you don't want to hurt their 524. So once they turn 18, they can start signing up for credit cards as my son did when he turned 18. And so we started him off slow with a Discover It card, which is a great starter card, Discover It student card, great starter card, very easy to get approved. And in fact, even if you're not approved, they give you a equivalent card that's a sort of a guaranteed funds card where you have to add money in and you get that much of a credit limit basically. And so that's sort of a way of getting started if you're not approved. So anyway, you get to go

forward either way and no fees, you know, and all that kind of stuff. But then once you build up some credit, which he did, then you could start getting approved for other cards, including he's gotten business cards. And as you know, most business cards don't add your 524 count. So he has a couple of two or three personal cards now and a slew of business cards yeah yeah i mean they're great opportunity 524 yeah great opportunity exactly and you know we can smile about that and say you know that's that's great for the fact that he gets to earn a bunch of points but also for families it could be a little tough to pull together the points you need for a trip, right? So if you only have one or two people collecting points

and welcome bonuses, then it might be hard for you to earn the number of points you need to have a free trip. But if you've got an 18, 19-year-old kid in college that's taking the family trips with you and you can help them get themselves signed up for some cards and earn some points, it can make it a lot easier to plan those family vacations because you get another person to earn those big welcome bonuses. Because we know that the welcome bonuses are the fastest way to accumulate points.

I mean, we talk about manufactured spending and that's all well and good, but welcome bonuses are the fastest and easiest way to earn points. So, you know, that's something to keep in mind. Right. And when you earn in the big four transferable points currencies, there's ways of sharing the points so that you're not left like they'll only give the contrast. So some of the cards that my son signed up for were Delta business cards. And so he has a lot of Delta miles, which I can't pull together with my miles to book a single award. He has to book awards from his account, and then I book from mine, which is fine, but it's a little awkward for a number of reasons, one of which is just I'm the one with elite status, and so I get free award changes.

He doesn't. Not as important now that at least domestic awards are freely cancelable, but you know where I'm going with that. So, but all the, all the major transferable points currencies are combinable in some way, like Chase. As long as you have the same home address, you can just freely move the points from one person to another. Citi, you can move the points to anybody. Citi, thank you points I'm talking about. With points to anybody, they do expire soon after you move them to somebody else but so the trick is simply don't move them until you're ready to use them um capital one i think you can move to anyone with no restriction right it doesn't

cause no cause them to expire or anything no so that's the most friendly um and then um they did most difficult one and the reason I want to bring this up, is Amex will not let you share points as Amex points with other people, Amex membership rewards points. But what they will do is if you have an authorized user who's been an authorized user on your account for 90 days or more, then you can transfer your points to their loyalty program. So, for example, my son could transfer his Amex membership rewards points to my ANA account because I'm an authorized user or I'm actually a business card holder in one of his business card accounts.

And I did it that way for the same reason you talked about before, but it didn't add to my 524 account to get a business authorized user card, whereas a personal one would bump up my 524, sort of. Right, right, right. So that is a creative way to do it and something to keep in mind so that you can still combine those points. Because I mean, in that instance, Greg mentioned before, he's got Delta Elite status, right? And so his son's membership rewards points, because Greg is an employee card on one of the business cards, an authorized user card on one of his son's business cards, his son could move membership rewards points to Greg's Delta account

to book and get the benefits of Greg's Delta Elite status. So that kind of thing can be very useful within a family, particularly if you've got somebody who's doing most of the travel and earning most of the elite status and you want to get the points into one account or you want to be able to book all under one PNR so that if there's any kind of irregular operations, a risk you certainly run booking travel these days, right? You want to have everybody on the same PNR so that you get rebooked on the same flights, et cetera. So that can be really advantageous too. So being able to do that with another family member can be awesome. I've got a long wait ahead of me before I get to that point. Who knows how it's going to work by the time that happens.

Right. One other thing I want to say about that point is that you now have another person in your family, once they're 18, who can refer each other to new cards. for it where you get not just a bonus for referring someone, but you get an extra three points per dollar on all your spend for three months. And that could be absolutely huge if you could engineer enough spend to make it huge. And, you know, once you, you know, in my case, having a third person, there's more opportunities to do that kind of thing. So for example, you know, let's say my wife and I have gone through all the MX cards and maybe there's no signup bonuses we're eligible for. So referring each other isn't going to help. Well, we've got a third person we can refer to. And anyway, sort of mix them in and, and, and spread out what we're signing up for and get both the signup bonus and

the referral bonus. It's a lot of points. Yeah. Yeah. So that'll add up quickly. And there are a lot of other things too that you're able to take advantage of. Obviously we talked about saving for college, but let's say you're past that point. Let's say your kid is already at the point where they're, they're going to be going to college or they're already in college. You can also earn lots of points on paying for that school, right? Or private school if they're going to private going to college or they're already in college, you can also earn lots of points

on paying for that school, right? Or private school, if they're going to a private school or something like that. So how do you do it? Because I know you have a son in college and you've been able to take advantage of these gift of college cards in the past.

Yeah, yeah. So there's a few ways to do it. Some colleges will just let you pay with a credit card and that's of course without a fee. And that's of course the easiest way to do it. You can use Gift of College to indirectly pay for college, even if you don't have a 529 account. And that's because Gift of College gift cards can also be used to pay back student loans. So your child could get out a student loan to pay for college, and then you pay

back that student loan with gift of college gift cards. So that's an indirect way of doing it. What I've done is use the plastic, plastique, whichever way you want to say it, bill pay service to pay my son's tuition. I'm in the unique position though, of having lots of fee-free dollars with plastic. So I'm not charged the 2.85% fee as long as I have those fee-free dollars. But that 2.85% fee can be worth it if it's towards getting like a great big signup bonus. You know, so if you need you you know maybe you're looking at one of those cards where it has a great sign up bonus but twenty thousand dollar spend required like that capital 100k offer um then maybe capital one's not a good

good example i think plastic doesn't allow payments through there but anyway just roll with it all that pretend you can pretend you could you could um you could you could do it all you know by paying tuition and and yes you have a you have that fee but hopefully the signup bonus is worth way more than the fee as it would be in that case right you know with that fee on a 20 000 spend let's say you put the entire 20 on that card it would come to 57070 in swipe fees, which are in the fee that you'd pay to plastic there. But you would end up with $1,200 worth of well, no, I'm sorry, $1,400 worth of points because you get the two points per dollar on the

spend plus the 100,000 bonus on that particular card. So you come out $830 ahead on that particular bonus for paying the tuition that you're going to pay anyway. So might as to come out $830 a head on that particular bonus for paying the tuition that you're going to pay anyway. So might as well come out $830 a head, right? So, and that's just one example. There's lots of other examples like that. Sometimes there's big offers on the business platinum or the chasing business preferred that require big spend, or there's big spend bonuses. A lot of credit cards. We have a page for that. You can go to frequentmiler.com, excuse me, thefrequentmiler.com slash big-spend-bonuses or just go to our best offers page and you can find a link to the big spend bonuses. And you'll see that some cards have bonuses that might be worth it to you to spend $20,000 or $30,000 on a single card.

So definitely don't overlook those types of opportunities. It might cost you something to do the spend, but what you receive in exchange may be well worth paying, whatever that small fee may be. So definitely that's something. One last thing about paying for college. I know people who they buy Visa gift cards, they use those to buy money orders,

and they bring the money orders to the registrar's office and pay the tuition there. So that's also an option. And it has fewer risks, I think, than depositing to a bank account where you might, if you deposit too much too often, you could get your bank account shut down. Good point. And while we're talking about that kind of thing and paying for college and eating the fee on something like plastic because you're going after a new welcome bonus or a big spend bonus, daycare is probably another large expense for a lot of people. I mean, that's a major expense for most people. I have lots of friends paying upwards of $2,000 to $3,000 a month in daycare. And so you could be earning a

welcome bonus once a month. I mean, I'm not going to, I'm not recommending you sign up for a new card every month right now in the current environment necessarily. But fact of the matter is you could, and most welcome bonuses only require that two or $3,000 spend. And so then you're suddenly looking at, you know, less than $60 worth of fees to trigger a four or five, six, $800 bonus depending on which card you're opening and how much the points or miles or cash is worth to use. Right, right. And as they get older, I mean, if they go to private school, you're gonna be seeing much, much bigger bills.

So much, much bigger signup bonus opportunities there. Yeah, yeah. So that's the bright side. A lot of different opportunities. So don't, I mean, don't overlook it, I guess is the point. Don't, don't, the point is not the points. All right.

I didn't have a son just to make points from him, contrary to popular belief, but things are going to be expensive. So I might as well earn some, some return on that. And that's kind of the way I looked at it. I said, well, we're going to invest in his college. We're going to pay this expensive hospital bill. I want to get as much return as I can for those things. So don't forget to do that. And when I say as much return as you can, I know sometimes people think, oh, well, okay, the Freedom Unlimited, one and a half points per dollar. And yes, that's

great. I mean, you have a good everywhere else card like that, or the Bank of America premium rewards, the platinum honors, et cetera. Good to have those everywhere else cards, but also good sometimes to think about what other kinds of out of the box kind of ways you can earn a few more points for doing the spend. So lots of good stuff there. All right. I think that brings us to the post roast segment. Right.

We skipped it last week and people were distraught. They were. They were upset. And they said we couldn't skip it two weeks in a row. No, definitely not. So I'm going to be a gentleman and let you go first. Well, of course you are, because it's been like a month since I've had the opportunity to roast one of your posts.

So... So... Stretching here? I'm not... Do I need to be right here? Well, all right. Well, all right. So this, you wrote a post about the Marriott's week of wonders, which is all sorts of wonder, a sort of grab bag of mostly ho-hum promos going on with Marriott, right?

Right. And so my roast has to do with, I don't disagree that, you know, your post was basically like not a lot to see here. Mostly agree with that. But the one you chose to sort of highlight as like, this might be worth your attention is the, is the stay at the homes and villas and get a free night that's worth only up to a few points and, and only good for six

months, which with no chance of, of extending it, that, that sounds to me like a terrible, terrible deal. Whereas I, I actually think I'm not going to call it exciting, but the off-peak pricing for the hotels is a good promotion. Not great, but it's good. And yeah, it is. And let me tell you why. All right, please do. There are people with 35K certificates, lots of people with 35K certificates, lots of people with 35K certificates because they come with the credit cards, who whenever they've gone to try to stay at nearby Marriott's that are category,

what is it, five? That's 35K standard. They find their peak price. Right. Now you have at least two months. That's the downside of this promotion. It only goes to them in November now you have at least two months that's that's the downside of this promotion it only goes then in november you have at least two months where they're it's going to be priced at 30k um so you can actually use those certificates to to book that the other which i find even more interesting useful is for those who have been eager, those who have the 50k certificates that

come with Bonvoy Brilliant or the Ritz card, and have been eager to stay at a category seven, which is standard price 60k, but off-peak price 50k, now they could go try that out as long as it's before the end of November, and get to find out what, you know, how does the other half live? So category seven, just for those who don't know, is just below the top of Marriott's word chart. Word chart goes up to category eight. So yeah, no, so again, you know,

amazing, but I think that was the headline. I'm going to hard disagree with you. Hard disagree on this. Okay. I was, I was waiting. I was going to let you get all that out before I disagree, but I'm going to disagree. I don't think this is an exciting or interesting or even like remotely newsworthy deal. And here's why. All right. Nobody's traveling. I know that there's some recovery, but nobody's traveling right now. Places are cheap in general. Obviously there are going to be some places like you're in a harbor that are expensive. But in general, hotel rates are very cheap in a lot of places.

And I mean, it couldn't get much more off peak. We hear all these stories about hotels, only a few rooms occupied in these exotic places, the high end joints that just aren't at capacity because not very many people are traveling. So it should be off peak right now. And I'm not sure that it wasn't before they ran this promo because I wasn't looking at going anywhere in October or November. Now, I know some people have been, but let me tell you this.

Before I looked at the fine print and realized that this promotion was only through the end of November, I started looking at Hawaii next year because I booked a trip to Hawaii next year. And so I was looking at Kauai and I was looking at Maui and I was looking at the Big Island for places to use exactly what Greg is saying, my 35K certs and my 50K certs. And I was finding tons of them were off-peak. Almost all of the places were available at least a few days, almost every week. And we're talking well into the spring of next year at off-peak prices. And Hawaii is a super high demand type of a place. So for them to be off-peak in spring, the only explanation for that is because nobody's traveling right now.

So they're trying to get people to spend their money. So I don't necessarily think that it was totally notable. I would expect most places to be off-peak right now because there are very few places where a lot of people are traveling. Special events aren't having a lot of people. Most sporting events aren't particularly or aren't open to very many spectators, if at all.

So there just aren't the type of things that draw people in that create the competition. So I feel like it was nice of them to say, hey, everything is off-peak or almost everything is off. I think it's like 90% of the properties are off peak until November 30th. So it's not even quite everything, but a lot of the properties are off peak. They should be, they should be off peak right now. So that shouldn't be a promotion. That should just be the way things are, I think. And I'm not sure that it wasn't because I hadn't been looking that hard. Now, I don't know, maybe you had been looking at a bunch of these beforehand. And so, you know, that there are

suddenly a bunch of great deals, but I'm thinking that they just decided to, you know, put up a sign and say, Oh yeah, this is a promotion. So, so I'm going to have to disagree with you back. All right. Let's go. So, so with, with the, with the situation of everybody working remotely, my wife and I, who I always work remotely, but it's new for her, are freed up. We could go stay wherever that has good internet and, and enjoy some time away. And so I had been looking here and there for places to go in the fall for uh you know maybe somewhere that had a better color season or somewhere beautiful views or nice hiking and i have not seen lower prices at all places seem to be packed so at least the places i've

been looking have been packed and talking about the Inet Bay Harbor in Michigan that you mentioned earlier, I had specifically looked there, couldn't find anything for less than a gazillion dollars, no awards available. But then I looked this morning when this promo came out. And while it's true, not many weekend days were available all through the week, every day over the next two months, there was the 30k a night, which is very low for that. So you know, I could easily if I want to book five nights in a row, get fifth night free at that 30 at that 30k rate. And so not if I'm using free night certificates. And in a lot of places, you're going to run into a hotel that doesn't have a lounge open that

doesn't have their swimming pool open that doesn't have free breakfast or doesn't have a lounge open, that doesn't have their swimming pool open, that doesn't have free breakfast or doesn't have free breakfast, doesn't have breakfast in a restaurant in a Bay Harbor is an exception there. But as you know, from your recent trip, there are places that are going to give you a little basket, you know, with a muffin and one bottle of water for two people. So I don't, again, I don't get that excited about using that certificate right now. Obviously, I guess it's better than not using it and letting it expire. But I would be holding on to my certs right now. I'm not going to look to burn them unless there's a place that I really want to go to. I'm going to hesitate to say I definitely wouldn't use a 50K cert right now at a property where I'm not going to get a lot of the amenities that I want at a 50K property. I'm going to a 50K property.

I want a nice breakfast. I want a nice lounge. I want whatever the amenities are that are probably not all open right now. So, all right. We have different perspectives on that. You now need to go and take a look and see if there's something that you want to book

because now you've got to write back and say Greg was right or Nick was right. Let us know who was right. Did you find something you wanted to bug? I'm curious. Curious to hear from you. Next week's meal. Oh, yeah.

I can't wait to hear from everybody. All right. So that wraps up post-roast for the day. No, it doesn't. No, it doesn't. No, it doesn't. Slow down. Slow down.

I'm going to do a twofer because the first roast is not exactly a roast. But yeah, I'm going to do two for one because I can't. So the first one is not exactly a roast, like I said,'m going to do two for one because I can't. So the first one is not exactly a roast, like I said, but I definitely wanted to mention it. And it's minorly roast-y, but the heat's on low. So you republished... It's a simmer. It's a simmer. There you go. You republished a guide this week or a post this week called Flying Under 524, right? So it was a guide for staying under 524, signing up for business cards, et cetera, et cetera. If you haven't checked that out, you should. So I took a look at that,

you know, the updates you made, et cetera. I didn't immediately realize that it was a republished. I thought that I had read this before, but I didn't immediately realize you republished it. And I scrolled down to the comments and I started reading the comments. First few comments, people were talking about, did the business cards add to your 524 or not add to your 524? And your answers to some of those were things that I was like, it sounded like you didn't know. Like you're like, well, we think this or we don't think that. And I was like, what do you mean? We know this. What do you say in here? Like where you been the last few years, Greg? And then it dawned on me. I realized I finally saw next to the comments. It said four years ago.

And I said, ah, ah, these are old comments because the public, the post got republished. And so I had to resort the comments newest first. And then those old questions weren't there anymore. But so two minor roasts. So the minor roast number one is that, and we all need to do this. Me too, because I've been doing the same thing. We probably need to put some sort of a notification in there when we are republishing something to let, the site sorts the comments as the oldest ones first. So we probably ought to go back in and answer, re-answer some of those questions, edit some of those answers to say, Hey, you know, resort this by newest, but also, yeah, we know

that this won't add to your 524 account or that will, et cetera. So small row, not really a roast. Those are really good points. So that brings up sort of a topic, which is what we had tried sorting the comments the other way. And it was a disaster. Like, so the newest comments first, and it was a disaster because it didn't sort threaded conversations correctly. So where people are replying to each other, you need those to be in original order or else it just doesn't make any sense. And it didn't do it that way. We've since, I think we've since switched which comment system we use. So I'd be curious to see whether the one we're using now would do that sorting better. So

maybe we could improve that as well. But that's a really good point. Going back and, and fixing those old answers, maybe putting edit with a new date saying actually, yeah, chase business cards don't add to five 24 would be a really good thing to do. Yeah. Cause I was, I was just thinking if I had read that and I was relatively new, I would have just not, not known the things that we know. And so, you know, that's something small, small, small roast there.

So the other roast, which is connected, actually, similar kind of a thing and not exactly a roast. Again, this is just like kind of a marshmallow toast. All right. We'll call it a marshmallow toast. We've had a simmer and a toast. And a toast and a roast. So you also did the same kind of thing, sort of, with the Chase Freedom Unlimited guide, or perhaps you created that new. Maybe we didn't have that before.

It's new. It's new, okay. So you created a guide for the Chase Freedom Unlimited card. And so that has all of the information that anybody would want to know about the Chase Freedom Unlimited card. And so that's your go-to resource for all of your questions about it, which makes sense. Now, within that post, you have the current offer so that people can see what the current offer is on the card. And this is meant to be a resource post that people are able to go back to at any time,

kind of an evergreen sort of a thing, that the information is always current. But somebody commented, and I think they made a good point, that the current offer is particularly interesting because of the fact that it's got the 5X groceries for the first 12 months. And that isn't mentioned anywhere in the guide. It's there in small print in the current offer, but it's not really mentioned anywhere in the guide. Now, should it be? I understand why it isn't, and you can go ahead and explain if you want why it isn't in there, but should it be more prominently featured? Should we have something in those evergreen kind of guides that addresses those temporary opportunities? Yeah. I think it's a great question because it's certainly, even though we think of it as, so the reason it's not

there is we think of it as like part of the signup bonus. You only get that 5X for grocery if you're new signing up for it. You don't get it if you product change to it. You don't get it if you've had the card for a while, only if you're new signing up. And so it's the signup bonus. It's not a aspect of the card.

So we don't normally put in our guides details about the signup bonus because those change all the time, usually. However, this is a little different because most signup bonuses, like the person who signs up is very conscious, hopefully of, you know, got to meet the minimum spend and then I get all my bonus points. And then they forget about the signup bonus. Now they just have the card with which, with whatever its long-term properties are. This is different

because it's 12 months of 5X grocery. And so it's something that people have to keep in mind just as much as they do any of the other category bonuses that card has. So yeah, I think this is different in nature from most signup bonuses. And so I think, yes, I think it deserves to be in there. And we need a way, and I'm not sure what that way is, but a way to remind ourselves when Chase changes that offer to go and take that out of date every time they change an offer. So in the way we have it right now, the welcome offer on the card will automatically update when we update that on our website. So, so yeah, that's something to think about anyway. I thought that was a good point. I think that your points there were good as well. So again, see, it was, it was relatively painless and easy. It was a bit, it was a roast,

but something that was worth mentioning for people who are curious. All right. I got a slight tan from it. Slight tan. Okay, good. It'll look like you went on vacation. It'll look like you went on vacation. There you go. All right.

So that brings us to the question of the week, I think. And so our question of the week came from Samuel in our Frequent Miler Insiders group. So Samuel asked, I thought, an interesting question. Question for the FM family. He said, my wife and I both have about 3,600 Turkish miles expiring at the end of December. We don't currently have any travel plans, but had considered going to Hawaii sometime next year. Since it doesn't seem worth it to extend the expiration date of the miles, it's $10 per 1,000 miles with Turkish to extend the expiration date.

Would it be worth it to transfer miles from city to Turkish and book a speculative trip to Hawaii? I realize it's different for everyone, but I'm interested in hearing the group's thoughts. And or would you consider it to be worthwhile to extend the expiration date, cost them 60, 70 bucks between the two of them or so, in order to extend the expiration of all of the miles to be able to use them in the future? So if you're in that boat, if you got some miles expiring like that, what do you think? Would you keep them alive by transferring in some miles and keep them alive, so to speak, and book a speculative trip? Would you pay the fee in order to extend them? Would you just let them expire? Oh, wow. That's a tough question. So if I followed you correctly, it's one cent per mile to extend them.

More or less. That's a lot to spend to keep miles that you may or may not use. you're spending more in terms of points transferred over to get this, hopefully, this trip to Hawaii. I don't know anything about Turkish's change policies. So do you? So suppose they book a speculative trip. Yes, but not what you're going to ask. Yeah, go ahead. Okay. So if they book a speculative trip, flying United, it's not United rules that matter then. It's Turkish's award change rules if they want to change even just the date of that flight, right? Right. Which ordinarily would be a $25 fee with Turkish if you're able to change it.

I had a lot of trouble getting an agent who knew how to change it. So when I had to change a flight, I ended up just booking a new one and paying the $25 fee to cancel and then rebook the new flight. But the problem here is that we don't know what happens to miles that were scheduled to have expired. So if you book that speculative trip, then you have to change it sometime after the miles would have expired in December. I don't know if you get those miles back. I have no idea with Turkish.

Because with some programs, you would just forfeit those miles, right? I mean, ANA, I think, for example, you would just forfeit them, right? I think so. I think so. So I don't know how it works in Turkish. Yeah. I mean, with ANA, you'd have to hope that there would be a flight cancellation. Then they'll give you back after your miles expired,

then they'll give you back your miles and have a new expiration date on them. So you could do that. If you could somehow figure out what flight is likely to be canceled, book that with miles. Well, Turkish, we don't know. So not knowing what's going to happen. So you're going to either lock yourself into a speculative, let's pretend that these miles that are set to expire at the end of December,

if you book a trip with them, that's it. Those miles are gone. So choice then becomes one of three things. Either you transfer over points from city in order to book a trip that you will hopefully take, but you don't know whether you're going to take and potentially just risk even more miles now if your trip doesn't go through? Or do you pay the fee to extend them? Now, it is kind of expensive at one cent per mile, but also got to kind of keep in mind that we're talking about 3,600 miles, so about $36 more or less each, which is halfway to a one-way flight

within the United States. So they're fairly valuable miles in that sense. So do you pay the fee or do you let them go? So assuming he has plenty of city points, I don't know if that's true, letting him go, it's also not that costly to then replenish them when he's actually ready to use it. So you could argue that it's not much more expensive to do that. It depends how much he values the city points. But if, for example, he valued an amount of penny each, then it would be exactly the same cost to replenish from that point of view. And so I'd say, so my advice would be, unless he's

pretty confident that he will actually go on that Hawaii trip, I think he's in for more pain than gain by trying to keep those points by booking something prospectively and better off just saying, c'est la vie. What do you think? I think that that's very reasonable and logical, but I probably would not do it that way. I'd probably transfer over the points from Citi. And here's the thing. I mean, so they expire in December.

So by December, you'd be able to book travel up until next November. I hope that travel is normal enough by next November that, you know, it's not going to be a big deal to go to Hawaii. So, um, so I think I'd probably just book the trip and say, Hey, I got to go to Hawaii now. So I think I would lock myself into a Hawaii trip. Yeah. Now I'm never that true. You're right. Believe me. I am never against, no, I wasn't going to say that. I'm never against being locked into a trip to Hawaii. Don't get me wrong here. That I see as like a positive aspect of that.

That's kind of what I do. What I don't like, what I wouldn't like being locked into is having to deal with Turkish's customer service or whatever it is that you have to deal with in order to make changes. So even if I was pretty confident I could make changes, if I knew it was going to be painful to do so. It's like, why do I need that pain when I could just transfer over a handful of thank you points when I'm ready to actually book what I know I'm going to be doing. Good point. Good point. Greg wins this round. So let him go. Let him go unless you're pretty sure that you're going to make that trip to Hawaii happen. And then probably,

I guess we're saying, let them go. We want to hear from listeners too, about this, this topic too. So, so both, right.

We want to hear about the, what was the other one? Yeah. You're conveniently already forgetting about it. Aren't you? Is the Marriott off-peak pricing a big deal? Is it a big deal that they have off-peak pricing right now? I never said it was big i said

it was it was the headliner of the group of marriott okay i i definitely preceded that whole conversation with none of them are like super exciting but i thought you i thought you grabbed the wrong headline the wrong one yeah fair enough but yeah we want to hear we want to hear whether you're going to be taking advantage of this off-peak thing. Right. And if so, and if you have some really cool ways of doing it, we'd love to hear those. For sure. And what do you think about our Turkish answer here?

Did we get it right? Did we miss an option? Would you prefer that he just finds a way to book a flight for you? Let us know what you think there. So if you've enjoyed what we've been talking about today, then you'll want to go to thefrequentmiler.com slash subscribe so you can get on our email list and get our posts all the time. Yeah, it's going to be right up there. Again, that's thefrequentmiler.com slash subscribe.

Get on the email list, join our Facebook group, follow us on Twitter and all of those types of things. Thank you guys very much for being out there with us this week. We always enjoy having you here and hearing your comments afterwards. So don't forget to leave a comment, hit like, hit the subscribe button. If you're watching on YouTube, that all helps us out. See you guys again next week. And once again, congratulations, Alexa and Josh.

If you're still listening this far into the show, if not, you should be, you should, you should be. Congratulations, everybody. You should be. You should be. Congratulations, everybody. Bye-bye.