Frequent Miler on the Air - Reader feedback, CNB exit plan, no-brainers, 5K awards and more

Episode Date: November 2, 2019

On this week's Frequent Miler on the air, listen in as Greg and Nick discuss why we write about the deals we do, what you need to consider for your CNB exit plan, which card is a no-brainer for most (and why it's not for Greg), 5,000-mile award tickets to New Zealand and more. 

Welcome to Frequent Miler on the air. I'm Greg, the Frequent Miler, and I'm here with Nick Reyes. I am the Frequent Miler senior author. Great to have you guys here. Yeah. So just to give everybody a little background on what's going on, we mentioned last week we switched to new technology for recording these. And so that worked last week successfully to get us really clear audio for our podcast. For the video, it was really clear on my side because I'm recording the video entirely from my side. And it was a little rough on Nick's side. This time we made sure that the internet connection was better from Nick, so hopefully it'll record well. We'll see. The other improvement we have

just internally, this doesn't matter to anyone, any of our audience, but last week it took us about a day to get the technology up and running this morning it took us an hour so that's a big improvement even though it's it's still really frustrating but uh hopefully going forward it'll be it'll be uh straightforward um we do have uh three topics to cover today but first i i'm going to surprise nick with a special topic a special new feature of of this uh fm on the air which um which is um podcast i'm excited and nervous at the same time i want to get your your un you know thought about reactions to these things so the first is a uh comment that was put on our fm on the air last week so last week we talked a lot about the um sofi money deal and how great that is right all right so let's see what uh what a reviewer um said about that all right

nate bolkowski says never witnessed fm push referral links as hard as you've done on this post. No wonder you're calling the SoFi deal the deal of the year. It's the greatest deal for referrals. Yeah. What do you think? It sure is the greatest deal for referrals, which is why we're sharing it with readers, because it's just an easy money deal. I look at that and I say, don't miss the forest for the trees here. I've shared this with tons of friends and family. And specifically, actually, I sent it to a number

of friends who have huge social networks because they said, here, listen, take this, share it with your friends. Everybody gets free money and you can also earn a bunch of referral money doing it. It's a win-win. And when we look at publishing things like this, we talk about it. It's a win-win, you know, and when we look at publishing things like this, you know, we talk about it and when it's a win for readers, why wouldn't we publish it? You know, like when I look at something like this, yes, certainly I picked up referrals too, but that's not the reason we published it. If we publish stuff just to earn referrals, there'd be a lot of different content on FrequentMiler than there is. You know, we have affiliate links for lots of different things that you don't see on FrequentMiler because they just aren't good deals for readers. But this particular deal, I mean, it's just easy, free money.

So I think it'd almost be silly to not publish that and not let people know. And the thing is, with this particular deal, it sounds too good to be true. When I tell friends, hey, listen, as a married couple, you can easily make $200, $250, some free stock if you want. With just a few minutes of work. With just four minutes of work. I mean, it sounds like a scam, right? It sounds too good to be true. And I had some friends who definitely thought it sounded too good to be true. And I was like, don't sleep on this. It's real. So it would seem silly to hide that and not tell people about it.

How would our podcast have been different last week if there were no referrals for so fine it was just like sign up and you get 200 bucks let's yeah we still would have talked about it right i mean like if it was just sign up and you get 200 well if it was sign up and you get 200 in your pocket of course we'd still tell people about it right still be a great deal wouldn't and we'd still yeah and we i think we would have maybe even push it harder i don't know but um we did we did have a lot of fun last week in the podcast. What we did was we were joking around saying, you know, stop whatever you're doing. Do this right now. And I could see why someone would think, you know, take that as like, oh, you're pushing this really hard.

But to me, I thought it was one of the more fun podcasts we had done because of that. It was like, this is a smoking hot deal, which it is. It is. So stop everything and do it now. Right. So anyway, so that's one. All right. Right.

Still going on, by the way. It is still going on. Still going on. So stop everything. Stop everything again. This week, you're allowed to watch the rest of this podcast and then do it. Well, let me add to this, just for Nate's benefit, that we also have a referral thread going in Frequent Miler Insiders, where there's like 300 comments from readers who are sharing

their links and using other people's links. So feel free to use anybody's link you want. You don't have to use our links. Absolutely. If you don't want to. That's why we set that kind of thing up to help people out so that they can take advantage of it and benefit from it, too. So you don't have to use our links, but my goodness, sign up. It's free money. Right, right, right, right. And a lot of people are saying, I use the other links that

are in the Frequent Mailer Insiders. And that's awesome. It is awesome. Yes, that's what we want. We want readers to, and viewers, listeners, audience, I guess. I was trying to think of what's a word when we're doing both a video podcast and an audio podcast and we're also publishing this stuff. So audience. Okay, so now I'm gonna move on to Apple Podcasts. Did you know there's reviews on Apple? Like, so when you go to, I know you don't have it.

I might have assumed, but you don't have i've assumed but i don't have any apple product right so so um good news our podcast has five stars five out of five five out of five five out of five and and uh now both people to do that thanks guys yes everybody who who um both readers thank you for. Both readers. Now, one person wrote a, this is the top written review. By that, I mean the only written review. Here it goes. It says, the best, all in caps, the best exclamation, all other points, travel sites, podcasts compete for second. Frequent Miler is the best points travel blog out there i have

learned so much from greg steven and nick and they really work hard to offer real advice instead of pandering to credit card companies for compensation like almost every other site these guys are also extremely keen and know how to take advantage of deals and points like no one else. Once I found this website and Twitter and podcast, I unfollowed everywhere else because Frequent Miler tells me about important deals and ignores the fluff all the other sites are dishing out. They are just the best. No other way to put it, by far, the best.

Thanks, mom. Hey, I was holding that joke back for me. I was going to say exactly the same. So thank you, Mom, for writing that review. No, I appreciate whoever wrote that. Thank you very much. It's terrific to get good feedback. I'm glad people are enjoying the site.

I wouldn't necessarily tell you you have to unfollow everybody else. There's lots of great blogs out there, lots of good information, and everybody specializes in different stuff. So, you know, you don't feel like you have to only check out our site. But, I mean, at the same time, if you do just check out our site, you will find out about a lot of the good stuff. So, you know, thank you. I appreciate the feedback. What was your thought when you heard that?

Oh, no. You know, it's always nice to get positive feedback. Everybody likes positive. that oh no it's you know it's always it's always nice to get positive feedback and everybody likes positive the nice thing about this one being sort of over the top positive is that um you know as as uh authors uh we tend to or i tend to internalize the negative more than the positive and and um something about this one being over the you know sort of over the top positive helped uh help push up its weight a little bit i guess nice to hear that everybody likes positive feedback right so it's nice it's nice nice to hear that all right so what what topic do we have first

up this week so the cnb card i mean like kind of uh you know reminiscent of a couple of big devaluations lately they've just blown up the value of something talk about destroying it cnb just like turned this card that was like the holy grail of cards and just you know put it right in the recycle bin so uh so tell us about the the changes a little bit and yeah is it worth keeping still or not what do you think so so a little background on the CMB Crystal Visa Infinite card is that up until now, you could get this card and add three authorized users. Some said they were able to add four authorized users for free. But let's just say you add three. And each card, each of the four cards will give you $250 per year, per calendar year in airline incidental fee rebates. You were able to buy. Wait, wait, wait.

Do the math there. That's $1,000. Right. And this is a $400 a year card. So if you knew how to cash in those those fee rebates you were getting a thousand dollars back for that four hundred dollar investment that's before all the cards other perks which it had um some really nice uh other things but anybody ever asked you would you trade four hundred dollars for a thousand your answer would probably be yeah i think so right it was

worth it was worth a hard pull and and all the uh excruciating work that they made us go through to uh sign up for this signing up for the card was a lot more like signing up for a new loan like a new mortgage uh than it was signing up for a credit card um but it was worth it you know a thousand dollars a year even if you bought uh airline gift cards you're buying a thousand dollars worth of gift cards for 400 bucks a year uh that was a great deal um it also gave you priority pass with uh for two of your four people uh and uh with unlimited guests uh that's what it had before and it also had um the uh airline rebate thing or it had that thing i can't remember what it's called but these infinite airfare discount it's a hundred dollars off when you book two people round trip

for a domestic economy class flight so right or two or more people but you would of course do it in increments of two so two people 100 bucks off right which which is great if you can find you know if you're especially if you're uh traveling on a cheap round trip uh for two people getting a hundred dollars off it can be really significant can bring the whole thing down to close to zero um and uh but that's going away january 1st uh priority pass the uh ability to bring in guests for free. Gone. January 1st.

It also had great 3X categories, including it had travel and gas and grocery, which was a great combination. Gas and grocery, gone. And the biggest hit, of course, though, is the airline incidental fee rebate. Now they're capping that at $350 per year altogether. Um, the good news for those who didn't have authorized users is that means your, uh, your credits go up, you know, before you were getting a maximum two 50, now you're getting maximum three 50. it's go up you know before you were getting a maximum 250 now you're getting maximum 350 so for those who just had the one card uh that's at least a little bit of good news um and uh it went from a no but the bad news for those people is that they were giving away hundreds of dollars

a year but that's true that's true um so it went from a like-brainer, if you could get the card, you should, to now. It's still not a horrible card, because if you do get the full $350 back each year, your net is $50 cost for the card, and you do get priority pass for yourself and for one other person. But I it's no longer worth it to me. You know, so my annual fee is going to come due at the end of this month. Oh, yeah. And so I need to, I'm going to cancel it. And what I need to do, though, is spend down the points, right? Because if you're going to cancel, like you have other CNB cards, where you can pull the points with something else, right? So you've got to use them all up, right? Use them or lose them, right? Exactly, exactly. That's what you do.

Yeah, yeah. So in the past, airfare was the best deal. You could get close to 1.3 cents value from your points. That recently changed. So now the average is about 1.1 cents per point, which, you know, it's still better than one cent a point. So if you have airfare, you can buy with it. You can go ahead and do that.

And the more expensive the airfare, the closer you'll get to 1.2, which is now the theoretical top. But a reader in my post about the 1.1 average value now of the points, a reader pointed out that the experiences, or not experience, but like activities, the activities that you get by, you go to CMB rewards and select, you want to redeem for travel and then look for activities.

That those actually value out at the full 1.2 and that the prices are sometimes, the cash prices that CMB declares are sometimes better than competing sites like Expedia. So I can't guarantee that they're better than if you went directly to those vendors. But that seems to me like a pretty good way to get some good value. if nothing else, enjoy those points by picking up, you know, go whale watching or whatever it is that is something that you could do where you're going to be or where you are now. Right, right, right. So if you have some upcoming travel planned already,

then it's worth taking a look and seeing what activities you can book and otherwise maybe airfare. Now, I don't know, just thinking out loud here is I don't have the card, but if you have those points in there you know obviously you're going to use them or lose them here quickly if you book airfare what happens like i know as an executive platinum you probably get the chance to cancel or change or non-executive platinum whatever uh delta diamond there we go that's your your elite status maybe you have abilities to make cancels or changes or maybe book first class and it's a refundable fare what happens if you have to refund it down the road yeah uh that's that's i think going to be a problem i i don't know and and that's been that's made me hesitant to buy airfare um i do

have a flight uh that we want to book for december so it's like close enough that, you know, the chances are low, I think that we'll have to cancel. So, so I might do that. Um, I mean, if you need somebody to help you burn points, more than welcome.

Thank you. Do my part. That's so sweet. Um, I haven't yet looked into if there's any like good, like gift cards or something to just cash out at sort of one cent each, which would, you know,

do you have the alternative to cash out at one cent each? Uh uh no i don't think so i don't think so so i think you'd have to do something like gift cards if they even have that i i haven't looked through their other things for a long time i did way back when when i first looked and that's when i saw that flights at the time were the best deal right um so now i want to look at other things because of exactly what you said i'm a little worried about booking a flight and not having that credit card available anymore right um but uh yeah no that should be all right uh there might also be excursion options or activity options that um where you're not pinned down to a particular time date yeah you know date like so just an example this is on the very low end but um uh you know there are uh activities where you can get um city

audio tours or whatever you just download those tend to be only like a dollar or whatever so it's not like a way to use a lot of points but there might be other things like that that don't have time limits and you could just get them and use them later. Yeah. Sometimes theme park tickets. I don't know if they have any through the, through CNB, but sometimes those have open ended dates where you can buy a day pass that they could be used anytime during the season. So it might be something worth looking at for people interested in that. But, uh, but again, I'm not sure if, if CNB offers that certainly though, if your annual fee is coming up soon, then you're going to want to start taking a look sooner rather than later, because I can't imagine that many people will keep the card with a number of other much better cards that have priority pass.

That's not probably likely to be a benefit, especially without any guest privileges these days and 350 credits for a $400 fee. I just don't see very much benefit to holding the card and keeping the card long-term. Right, right. And for those who want benefits that are similar to what CNB has until the end of December, the Ritz card comes the closest. And the path to getting the Ritz card is complicated because it's no longer available for new applicants. But we have heard some positive experiences of people product changing from the Chase Marriott Bonvoy. That would only be the consumer version, not the business version. So it might be possible to get it. And that will give you that, at least for now, it'll give you that airfare discount on round trip travel.

I, that wouldn't surprise me at all. If that's going away, it also for now will give you unlimited authorized users, each of which could have their own priority pass, each of which is allowed unlimited guests. Again, I'd be shocked if that sticks around as well.

You and me both. That's the way it is today. To me, that was the worst news in the CNB thing. It had nothing to do with CNB because I don't have the card. I do have the Ritz card. And I thought, oh my goodness, the Ritz card is on life support here, right? Because I mean, that's the only one now that offers the Visa Infinite airfare discount in the US, I think. And it's the only one that offers

unlimited guests on a priority pass now too,, right? So and those are two benefits that actually haven't been making use of the airfare discount, though I anticipate I might next year start using it a little bit more because I'll hit Marriott titanium status this year. That'll give me United Silver status, which is at least a little something. And now that my son will be over two, I'm not sure if we're going to have another companion pass next year or not with Southwest, and we're going to need another ticket anyway. And so I see myself potentially buying some more flights next year and doing some more domestic travel. So that benefit will help me, I think, next year a little bit more.

So I'm hoping to be able to keep it. And the unlimited guests is also useful because I travel with family sometimes that don't have priority pass. And I did test it, by the way, for anybody who's curious, does the Ritz really still have the unlimited guests? And yeah, I guested people into lounges. And my recent trip and the way back from the 40k challenge, I brought three people in at a time and it was no problem there. And I used it at a few restaurants where, you know, I guested in some new friends that I met too and was able to use it for multiple people. So the Ritz one definitely still works for unlimited guests at this point. And like I said, I got my fingers crossed that it will continue, but I can't imagine that it's going to.

I imagine that that's going to eventually die too. So not great news on that front, but for now, the Ritz is your best alternative, I guess, if you're looking for something different. For those particular features. For those features, yeah. It's not necessarily a slam dunk for everybody as far as the annual fee goes. So it has, what, $450? I think that's the fee now. And you get up to $300 in airline fee rebates.

So $150 net, but you also get a 50K free night certificate each year. So for those who value that 50K certificate highly, then it's an easy to justify card. It's not a no-brainer where it's giving you $1,000 a year, but it's easy to justify. And now I want to ask you if there's any other cards that are no-brainers like the CNB.

But first, I just remembered something about spending down your CNB points. Milenomics? Am I saying the name of the blog right? I can't remember. Okay, so Milenomics published a very interesting post about combining the use of points with that airfare discount. So they were able to – so normally when you use that $100 discount, you have to pay cash or you have to use your credit card. Because you have to book through the dedicated site. Dedicated site and you can't use your points.

He found that if you call the concierge, they can go through that site for you. It'll initially charge all to your credit card, but then the points will be withdrawn and pay back your credit card at the 1.1, I think. So that's a good way. That's a great way to get both of those features all in one if you have a have a round trip domestic flight for two or three. Right. Right. I mean, then it certainly could be and could be a good way to use the points on really cheap flights, too, because there are certainly some really cheap domestic flights where, like Greg said before, you could be paying close to nothing for two people. You know, $50 or less for two people to fly around trip on some of the cheaper domestic routes. So it might be well worth it for someone looking for some cheap weekend trips, and then also to cash out the points at the same time. I think it could be a good play there. So

it could also be a good status run for somebody who's able to qualify for status on segments if you're crediting to a foreign program that offers that. So some potential interesting things there too. But but so okay, but but a second ago, you mentioned, are there other cards that are no brainers? And so the thing with the CNB card is, it's a premium, ultra premium card. And those really expensive ultra premium cards in general, are usually cards that you get specifically for the benefits, not so much for spending, but rather for the ancillary benefits. Though often the calculation is a little murky, like Greg said, with the Ritzary benefits. Though often the calculation is a little murky, like Greg said with the RITS card, where, you know, is the certificate worth more

than the fee to you? Not, you know, it's kind of a personal calculation, but there are some that are no brainers. And the one that sticks out to me as the absolute no brainer is the Hilton Aspire card. The Amex Hilton Aspire card every year comes with $250 in airline incidental credits. Now, a lot of people have gotten upset this year that that no longer works for buying airline gift cards. But if you see the post that Greg's written, there's plenty of other ways to be able to use those credits without buying gift cards that arguably were a better use than buying gift cards to begin with. So, that's really not an issue for me. To me, that's $250 that is like cash rebate, basically. Well, it's a little bit of work, right?

I mean, it's not... A little bit. A little bit. Just a little. Very, very little bit. I agree. It's not a lot. Right.

You're right. It's there. You're right. It's not nothing. All right. So we'll say it's $240 to me. All right. Yep.

Yep. Pretty close to face value on that to me. So then they get $250 airline and senile credit every year. Then you also get a $250 Hilton resort credit every year, which is good at Hilton resorts, which you have to look at the dedicated website for that. Not all of the Hilton resorts are what you would classically think of as resort and not every place that has resort in the name is a Hilton resort. So it's a little complex. It's not the easiest benefit in the world to use. However, I wrote a post a while back about how to use that even if you don't intend to stay at a Hilton resort every single year. So there are some ways to potentially

cash that out and get your money back to or certainly you can use it by the way for room rate, you can use it for things you charge to room rate, you can use it for things you charge to your room. You can use it for, you know, if you have to pay a deposit on a hotel, et cetera. So lots of ways to get most of your money back out of that two 50, what were you going to say? Okay. Well, so, so you mentioned a way to basically prepay, uh, to use it like the next year or whatever, but, um, you just said something about caching it out. And that's not something we've written about, I don't think. Is that something that you're going to get?

We're going to get questions about that. And is there anything we could tell people publicly? I mean, I tried to just throw out a couple of hints in what I said. But I guess what I was... Go back out a couple of hints in what I said, but I guess, I guess what I was- Go back through, rewind and listen again. So, okay. You can use it on room rates. Yes. You can use it on things you charge to your room. You can use it if you make a deposit on a room, when you make a reservation, sometimes hotels will take a deposit that may be refundable in the future. If plans change, you could use it to prepay things for a hotel

stay the next year and again sometimes things change um and then uh you know you can also use it obviously for uh uh well no i think that those are the those are the various that's good enough that's it okay so those are pretty clear but lots of options there so so anyway 250 250 500 basically they're giving you back and then on top that, you get a free weekend night certificate every year. So you get a free annual weekend night at a Hilton property, almost any Hilton property. There's a couple of exceptions, but they aren't even the places you would expect to be exceptions. They aren't like, you know, the place in the Maldives. You can use it at the Waldorf Astoria there.

Excuse me. Sorry about that. You can use it at almost any Hilton around the world, which can be great value, even if you're not traveling halfway around the world to the Maldives. I'm in New York this weekend, and I looked at using a weekend night certificate. I didn't end up using it. But all the hotels that I was looking at were $200 a night and up. So I think it's not difficult to get $200 in value out of a free weekend night certificate that's valid anywhere in the world.

And so those three things, $250, $250, and you got to value the certificate, I think, at at least $200. I mean, you're looking at it. That's been bugging me. Ah, well, even the cat agrees. it's a no-brainer the cat wants to get on here and say yes guys he's like i'm in on this but but you don't have this card right right craig why not i don't have the card yet um well first before i forget i i just want to um caution readers who who might have heard um ways of cashing out that $250 credit that Amex has more and more been clawing back in situations

like where people were buying those Saks gift cards in store and getting those refunded with their platinum card. We've seen people getting those clawed back. There have been other situations where people buy things in order to get the rebate, then return them or some other way, get their money back. And more and more we've seen Amex claw the back. Doesn't happen always,

but it's always possible. And so I think that if you're going to get the card, I think you should go in thinking that the way I'm going to do it is have like a really nice weekend each year where you use the 250 credit plus that free weekend night and you know and that's the way we've been using it in my family i i should note that i i see opportunities for people that need opportunities to be able to use it in different ways but but certainly the way i have used it so far has been exactly that nice places where we've enjoyed staying and eating very cheaply or covering all of our food costs or a spa visit or that sort of thing it's been a great because great because in playing in two-player mode, then you end up with two certificates, one of you if you're playing this game with a husband, wife, et cetera.

So two people each get a weekend night certificate, each get a $250 credit. That's an awesome weekend away, right? I mean, so certainly I would go into it. I agree with that perspective that you probably can get a great weekend away every year and between the two of you get a bunch of airline credits i mean i think there's a lot of potential yeah uh so what about this so i think it was probably about a year ago that um all the amex platinum cards went up from 450 to 550.

Is that right? Right. And we just heard recently the Delta Reserve cards are going up from 450 to 550. It seems likely that the Hilton Aspire and the Bonvoy Brilliant or whatever it's called, the 450 one, will also go up to 550. And will it still be a no-brainer at 550? Yes. But yeah, I mean, I think it'll be a no-brainer still, because again,

the two $250 credits are quite easy to use. So I mean, the airline credit I've used every year because I choose Southwest as my airline because we've had the companion pass for years. And I book lots of Southwest flights, and it's been rebating all the fees on those for a long time. So I have no issue using the airline credits every year. And the hotel credit, like you said, goes well to me along with a nice stay. So I'm probably going to enjoy at least one nice weekend stay somewhere throughout the course of the year. So I think the annual night certificate is worth at least 200 bucks. I would say that the airline incidentals to me are worth the full 250.

So that's 450. If I get anything more than $100 in value out of the $250 resort credit, then I'm still ahead. Now, there's some who will argue I'm prepaying too much there for that. But I think that's not a bad deal still. And you end up with Hilton Diamond status, which isn't the most amazing hotel status in the world. But it does give you lounge access, which I find useful traveling with a family. It's great when you do have a lounge somewhere because then you have access to things like, you know, milk for your son or daughter or snacks and that sort of thing. Maybe the baby takes a nap during the afternoon and you want to get a cup of coffee, that sort of thing. So, I think

having Hilton Diamond status is worthwhile if it's that easy and if it's coming essentially what feels like for free with benefits that I still think outweigh the fee. So, at $550, I think it's still worth it. Okay. All right. You asked me why I haven't picked up the card yet. There's two reasons. One is I already have five Amex credit cards and, you know, Amex won't approve me for a sixth.

So, I hadn't yet decided which one I'm willing to ditch. That's one reason. The other reason is the sort of mental tax of having more free things that have to be spent before the end of the year. So every time I acquire another credit card that has airline incidental fees, for example, I add it to, I have a spreadsheet.

I have, because I manage these for my whole family, I've got probably about seven different cards where I have to make sure through the course of the calendar year to spend down all those airline incidental fees. So I track them all that way. So it's just another one to do that. And then to add on, that free weekend night, I think that's even harder for me because especially last year. So last year, all this stuff was happening with the Marriott SBG merger and there were all these opportunities. And so we were, you know, we had travel packages, we had,

you know, free nights from all these different credit cards like there were a lot of stuff where um that was taking up like my first thought of where am i gonna stay it's gonna be at a marriott or you know uh and um adding to it at least at that point like oh i need to also figure out where i'm gonna stay on at hilton um and it has to be a weekend only um i i just i i do so part of me loves the idea of like i'm being forced to have like a luxury weekend somewhere um the other part of me sees it as some pressure. What am I going to do with this? Let me give you an example. We're on our last year,

last IHG free night certificates that are uncapped. Mine expires. My wife's expires in January january mine expires in december and um and now we could just like go to new york or chicago and have a perfectly nice weekend at a at a hotel that would have been about two hundred dollars a night um but i feel like man I need to go out in style because this is the last time with these uncapped certificates. So, you know, you look around it.

What are some of the most aspirational properties to get to? And some of those are very, very far away, and we don't have a lot of time before we um do this so um what i landed on is um the uh sea fire in grand cayman uh the uh nights uh around the time we're looking at are about 700 per night which is actually less than usual but um uh it's gotten fantastic reviews. I know a lot of people on our FM Insiders group have raved about it. And it's on Seven Mile Beach, which I know is beautiful. It was there last year. So we're thinking of doing that.

And it's kind of funny. So not only is this costing me like ungodly amounts of time and trying to find the right flights to get there but um you know i'm realizing well we might have to rent a car and then we're gonna probably book some excursions you know i mean maybe we'll use the cnb points for that but um but i'm realizing these free nights are costing me like huge amount of time and money you know i'm on the opposite end of that where like there are a number of times lately I've been like, man, I wish I had another free night certificate because I don't really want to spend 35,000 points on this Marriott, but it would still be a decent value if

I were using a 35K certificate. So I'm on the opposite end of that. And like I look at a city like New York where I think it's always a great place to come for a weekend. Of course, easier for me because I'm only a few hours away from New York. But actually, what I was going to do here was stay at the new Conrad in Midtown because it used to be a different brand. Now it's become a Conrad. And one of the standard rooms is a one-bedroom suite, like one of the 95-case standard rooms is a one-bedroom suite.

So, I mean, to me, that's a no-brainer, easy use. I'm telling you, you should have those weekend night certificates. But I hear what you're saying. You do sometimes end up either under pressure to spend a lot of extra money to use your certificate someplace great, or you start to realize, oh, no, it's going to expire, and I'm going to have to use it at this airport overnight or a road trip overnight where I could have gotten a room for not much more than the cost of the annual fee anyway. Right. So if nothing else, hopefully you now understand why this no brainer is not a no brainer for me. But for I think for a lot of people it is and mathematically it is. I agree.

And I'll add to this. The difference to me between the IHG certificates and the Hilton ones is if you've got the Aspire card, then you have diamond status. So you're getting free breakfast and free lounge access if you're staying in a hotel with a lounge. Whereas with the IHG certificates, if you're staying at a really nice place with an IHG certificate, you know, it's going to cost you an arm and a leg if you want to have breakfast. So that adds on more expense. And so that's one of the frustrations I've always had with the IHG certificates. Yeah, great. I can stay at a nice place, but it better be in a place like New York where I can walk down the street and potentially get a bagel or something cheaply. Cause if I'm going to go to like the Kempton sea fire, then I'm going to be stuck paying like, you know, whatever, 40, 50, $60 a day, $80, $100 a day for

breakfast, whatever it is, they charge is more than what I would normally spend on breakfast. And then the certificate doesn't feel free to me. And when you start to add on the destination fees or resort fees and stuff that a lot of IHG properties do, the IHG certificate in particular has been one that for me has been less fun to use over the years. Yeah, I was going to mention the resort fees. So Hilton is not supposed to charge resort fees on awards days. And then it includes the free night certificates, yeah. Hyatt also has that policy.

IHG does not have that policy. Marriott does not have that policy. I don't know about the other brands. But those are good reasons to stay at H. H Chains, Hyatt and Hilton. Yeah, no, the Seafire, the K kimpton seafire is uh 70 a day resort fee yeah yeah so that that's not cheap no no so between that and if you do have breakfast on property then i you know it starts to like you said starts to get expensive and tough but that's

why i'm telling you the hilton one is a no-brainer because you're not gonna have to worry about that you're gonna get free breakfast and it's not like marriott where you got to consult a special page to figure out whether or not you know you're going to have breakfast at the ac or the moxie or the residence or this or that right you're just going to get breakfast it's pretty straightforward right right i'm a plus they named they named they named their brand after your son they did they did so so special place special place all right one more thing i want to mention about the seafire just because it occurred um the uh resort fee is actually according to the website is not only 70 a day but 10 of how much you paid which on an awards day

it's going to be zero so it's going to be just the 70 but it occurred to me that it would already be crazy to book that for a cash rate when you could use points if you could buy points for half a cent each let's say it's a 70k a night property I'm not even sure but then it'll be 350 a night compared to normally it's 800 or more a night. So, you know, you'd be crazy to use, not use points anyway, but then, um, you'd also have to pay, let's say you're paying a thousand dollars a night to make the math easy, an extra hundred bucks a day for the resort fee, just cause that 10% assessment. That's insane. It's crazy. It's crazy, crazy, crazy. But you know, you were mentioning that it's going to cost you a bunch of money in flights in order to get there. And and that makes me think about the possibility to maybe not spend a fortune on flights, because a lot of airlines been running

these flash sales, I just saw a few minutes before we went online that Delta's got a flash sale to Europe from 16,000 points round trip, not necessarily a great deal. It's during low season. And when you add taxes, it's not necessarily as amazing as it sounds but certainly it could be good 16k round trip but that pales in comparison right pales in comparison though to the american airlines economy web specials that we've been seeing lately yes this week we saw something amazing unbelievable yes unbelievable so if you've had it in mind to go to New Zealand, maybe you should check out the American Airlines site every now and then and hope and pray that we ever see this again. I don't know as though we will, but what do you think, Greg? Was this a mistake? Was it something that they planned to do to promote it and get people talking about it?

It certainly did get people talking about American Airlines for a day yeah so earlier this week they had economy web specials where it was 5 000 miles to go all the way to new zealand or or australia or australia yeah um which is just mind-bogglingly cheap i mean if you think about uh points being worth only a penny each that's 50 bucks if you think of them being worth a penny each that's 50 bucks if you think of them being worth two cents each that's 100 bucks either way that's one taxes for like 27 one way yeah um so so so our you know my first reaction was is this a mistake like you know but um it wasn't an obvious mistake um because it wasn't something like a zero is missing because 50,000 would have been too many points. And so what's going on?

I mean, these were new routes. It seemed like they were trying to drum up excitement about the new routes. That's what I thought initially, at least the routes to New Zealand. I thought they were just trying to drum up some excitement, get people talking about it. And I mean, it certainly achieved that result. I think that there are few people who have American Airlines miles probably who, well, I shouldn't say that. Few people who follow miles and points anyway who weren't talking about American Airlines and New Zealand this week and looking at trips and trying to figure out, can I book a trip to New Zealand in April or May? Can I fit that into my schedule? Or Australia, once people found that that worked also, because I mean, for 10,000 miles round trip, it's a long way to fly an economy

class and people who collect miles to fly up front might look at that and say, oh man, I don't want to fly that far in economy. But having just finished the 40K challenge, I got to say it's doable for 5 000 miles oh my goodness that's a you know an incredible deal right right um i mean if you look at it it i think it was a brilliant marketing move it got everybody talking about it all the blogs probably hit regular mainstream news i would expect um probably yeah um and then they didn't stop with that i mean that was the most eye-catching thing but then very close on the heels of that was uh 10 000 miles one way to hawaii right right which in any

year when turkish airlines didn't start offering them for 7 500 would have been like the talk of the town right absolutely and it still got plenty of attention and well deserved because 10 000 miles each way to hawaii from the mainland is incredible i mean it's incredible plus i mean you'll find i think i think there's a lot of people who have aa miles who don't have um city thank you points to transfer turkish so for it made it accessible uh super cheaply to lots of people right it gives them a great way to get good value out of American Airlines miles, flying on American Airlines. One of the most common complaints we get about American Airlines, you know, if we post a quick deal post about a new welcome offer on an American Airlines credit

card, there's inevitably somebody who's like, oh, American Airlines miles are garbage. I can't find any flights and blah, blah, blah. And often it seems that the people who are most unhappy are people who are trying to use their miles to fly in American Airlines. And I often say that they are not good for domestic travel on American Airlines. That is absolutely true most of the time. But this proved that, well, they can be good

for use on American Airlines. And one of the interesting things to me is these economy web specials and this variable pricing that airlines are going to, A, make it worth checking every now and then, just taking a look at the places you're interested in going to, because you never know when something's going to pop up. And B, I think they make it awfully hard for the airlines to argue price mistake at some point in the future, because who knows what the price is anymore? That's a good point.

If it could be 5,000 miles to fly to New Zealand and that stands in Australia, then how can they say anything is a mistake? Who would know these days? How would you reasonably know that it's a mistake? And that's, you know, hearing Greg talk about a flight for 5,000 miles to New Zealand and saying that it wasn't clearly a mistake. I think if we said that like five or six years ago, people would have been like, stop being ridiculous. Obviously, that's a mistake. But these days, who knows? Exactly. I think it might have been a marketing ploy.

And well done. You know, cheers, American. Yes, yes, yes. If you want to do a web special to get us talking about Grand Cayman, Greg would be very appreciative. I would. I would. And start doing some, you know, first class web specials, too. I wouldn't mind flying in first to Grand Cayman. I would. I would. And start doing some first-class web specials, too.

I wouldn't mind flying in first to Grand Cayman. Now, it wasn't just awards that were super cheap this week. We saw for Halloween $31 fares. So who all did those $31 fares? I know it was JetBlue was one. JetBlue and American Airlines. And then I guess Southwest eventually got in the game also late in the game, late in the day. And so it made for some terrific opportunities as far as flying around the country. And we included in the post a tool for looking for that kind of thing is to use Google Flights and put in your home airport in the United States as the destination.

And you'll see the places that you can fly in the United States, and you can filter by price. I filtered it to under $50 to see where you could fly for $31. But it was incredible because flights, we're not just talking like Los Angeles to Las Vegas. These were trans cons, New York to LA, Burbank to New York, et cetera. Yeah, the $31, they were all over the place. You had to fly that day.

Well, you did. So it came out on Wednesday and you had to fly Thursday? Is that how it was? Yes, but, and I don't know if this worked. Free changes. Right, some people might have been able to do that. Somebody brought that up to me, the thought of flights,

people with status that had the ability to make free changes may have been able to leverage that into well not only that i forgot about this i can't believe i forgot about this so southwest when they have weather related um free changes people have found they can this is like quite a hack but people have found that they can book like crazy cheap fares between like two cities that they don't aren't even gonna fly and then change it to where they really want to go and um so people might have done that yeah yeah i think there were some opportunities there that somebody

brought up and i thought you know that that's i hadn't looked at it that way but i think that there was potential to have leveraged that and in in the future, I'll keep that in mind. Yeah, are bad. I mean, I looked at it as like, well, I can't travel today. So this doesn't mean anything to me. That's what I said too. And then a friend said,

well, you don't necessarily have to travel today. I was like, well, that's an interesting point. But anyway, so that was a really cool deal. And I'll say at least one reader got in on it really well. I'd say that they did a great job with it. They flew from Hartford, Connecticut, they said. They grabbed the 6 a.m. flight to Orlando and then the 9 p.m. flight.

So 6 a.m. on, I think it was on American or JetBlue. I can't remember one of the two. And then at 9 p.m. that night, they were flying back on Southwest. So 60 or 70 bucks round trip. They were going to spend the day at Disney World. And they wrote a little report afterwards about everything they did at disney for the day so i mean great little spontaneous 60 70 trip to disney world you know that that that is that was a cool use that is awesome deal, or they spent down

their CNB points. That would be really good. I don't know if you could get Disney tickets. I don't either. I don't either. But if you can, Matt, it might be something worth looking at. That's one of those theme parks I was thinking of where the tickets are variable for different days. So, some potential there. Now, I want to change to a different topic that we didn't talk about in advance. I'm going to surprise you with a quick topic here, too. I know we're going a little long, but I want to surprise you with one

that might be really short. Have you read the article about Airbnb? The article about Airbnb? And if you have to say that, then you haven't. Okay, I guess I haven't. Yeah, that's why I asked that way, because you haven't. So good, okay. that way, because you haven't. So good. Okay. I'm intrigued.

So let me ask you this. How have your experiences with Airbnb been? Would you book an Airbnb in the future? Just based on your experiences so far with Airbnb, what are your general impressions? Good? Bad? What do you think? Generally good. So I haven't had a lot of experience yet but um we booked um three or four nights in kyoto japan and it was a fantastic experience just from great soup to nuts perfect yeah great so you you think you would consider it in the future your opinion is going to change after you read the article that's going to be in week in review around the web later on today okay all right not yet read the article about Airbnb,

and again, if you don't know what article I'm talking about, then you haven't read the article, then you want to check out the Week in Review around the web. It came from Vice, but fascinating article. I'm going to say it right now for anybody who happens to be listening. You want to read the whole thing. Don't get halfway through and be like, okay, I got the story and stop because it gets more interesting.

I'm intrigued. So you'll have to check that out. And we can review around the web later on tonight. Greg will never stay at an Airbnb again, I bet. Nor would anybody else, I think. Well, no, I shouldn't say anybody else. Airbnb can be good. I've had good experiences with Airbnb.

I've had bad experiences with Airbnb. I didn't realize how bad the experiences could be. So you'll have to check that out later on. So that's that. Then one last thing that I wanted to get in here before we run out of time is, uh, Rakuten this week, right? They made a big positive change for a lot of people finally. Right. So, so tell us more about that and why it's. Yeah. Yeah. So, so a while ago, um, they added an option to sign up for their portal. So

they used to be Ebates, right? Um, they added an option to sign up for their portal. So they used to be Ebates, right? They added an option to sign up for their portal where you'd earn membership rewards points instead of cash back. And this was incredible for a couple reasons. But one is that they frequently run 10% back deals on a lot of different stores or even bigger. They have a lot of specials where their cashback rates are much better than the competition. And when you could get those same rates in membership rewards points, which most of us are worth more than a penny each, it becomes just unbelievable to get 10x or even 20x membership rewards points for buying something through the portal.

The other reason it was very special and continues to be very special is if you get a, what was Ebates, now Rakuten Visa credit card, and you use that card when shopping through the portal, you get three, you get whatever the portal gives you in membership rewards points, but you also get three membership rewards points per dollar by having spent, uh, paid for your, your things with the, uh, with the visa. And, um, for those who do any manufactured spend really exciting because you can go through the portal, get one X at giftcards.com or giftcardmall.com buying $500 Visa cards. And then because you paid with your Rakuten Visa, you're getting another 3X. You're getting a total of 4X and just from home, right? I mean, you don't have to do anything special.

In your pajamas, just order it and it comes to your mailbox. So that's been great. I've loved that. But the difficulty has been people who already had a portal account that earned cash back, there was no way to switch it over. Now, if you didn't have the visa, that wasn't a big deal. You could just close that account or create a new account with a different email address. The problem was if you already had the visa card, the visa credit card, there was no way to switch which account it was pointed at. So it was just stuck earning cash back no matter what. I even have a friend who, after this all happened, signed up everything and and kind of messed up the

steps a little bit and ended up with a cash back version um so it was frustrating for everyone in those kind of situations where they wanted membership rewards points there was just no way to get it and literally at the time if you wanted the if you had the cashback version of the credit card, you would have to have canceled it and reapplied. And reapplying was no... Shoe-in. Yeah, no shoe-in. They're really tough on approval.

So anyway, so now finally, log into your account, go to your payout preferences, and you can just change it right there. It's great. You do need to have at least one Amex card in your portfolio that earns membership rewards points to make it happen. Right. But if you do, then I think it's a no-brainer switch for most people because membership rewards points will be worth more than the cash back. I will say Ebates varies. Obviously, sometimes they have fantastic rates. Sometimes they don't have

fantastic rates. So you'll have to keep an eye on it like you would with any shopping portal. But when they do have fantastic rates, and then you're earning something that's worth even more than the cash back, then it really becomes pretty special. So I think it's definitely worth making the switch. And even sometimes when their rate is a little bit less than other people. Again, if you're earning three, six, eight, 10, 12, 15 membership rewards points per dollar, that's a, you know, a pretty terrific return on your spend. So, uh, so I definitely think it's, it's worthwhile making the switch for those people who haven't yet and are looking for a way to do it. So certainly something to look into. Let me also say for those people who don't have cards that are in membership rewards, or

maybe they have something like the platinum card and are planning on canceling it when the annual fee comes due, you should pick up either the MX Blue Business Plus, which has no annual fee, or the Every Day. Every Day. Both of those have no annual fee, earn full power membership rewards that are transferable to airlines. So there's really no – and it'll just keep your account. All your membership rewards pool together in the same place. So then you're free to cancel your other membership rewards cards and you at least keep your membership rewards points safe uh and effective so unlike city where uh city and chase where if you only have no fee cards in those cases you can't then you can keep you can preserve your points but you can't um transfer them transfer them to partners or at least not effectively in city's case there's

a couple partners that you could transfer at lower rate but um or one partner i guess yeah jet blue i think blue yeah um but uh yeah the amex gives you the full power right right so so definitely there's options there to keep that alive keep it going and and uh and it's worth probably making the switch for most people especially it's not like that's the only portal in the world so if you do want to earn cash back on something you have plenty of other portals to do that with very rare to be able to earn that many transferable points that easily it's such a wide range of places so right i think it's worth making the switch and i'm going to point out you know one um kind of cool thing is is uh you know they do do those they every now and then they have just incredible specials usually they're one day only so having your account all set up ahead of time so that you can earn the 20

points per dollar at Dell or whatever it is, is huge, especially if you stack that on other Dell discounts that you would get from Amex, for example. Definitely. Yeah. Yeah.

Very good. All right. Well, I think that just about wraps this up for the week, right? I think it does. All right. Well,

if you're just tuning in here towards the end and you're wondering where you can find us and where you can read more about all these things we're talking about, the answer to that question is thefrequentmiler.com. Don't forget T-H-E, frequentmiler.com. You can find us on Twitter at Frequent Miler or on Facebook. You can find our Frequent Miler Facebook page, and you can join our Frequent Miler Insiders Facebook group where you can connect with other people, ask questions, answer questions, and share information about all these deals that we talk about. And of course, you can find me on Twitter also at Nick at FM. And so you have all those different options. If you're watching this and you prefer to be able to listen to it, you can download it on all your favorite podcast formats, or you can check it out if you're listening in

podcast format, and you'd like to see our smiling faces you can go to our youtube channel which is also frequent miler and find us there so plenty of places to find us and listen and and tune in and leave your comments and questions and we'll certainly try and get back to you and talk about you maybe on the next show and uh when you leave a comment on one of our uh our podcasts or videos here we'll uh maybe we'll talk about you next week you never know you're so such a natural at this, Nick. Good job. All right. Thanks, everyone. And see you next week. Great. Take care.