Frequent Miler on the Air - Responsive redesign, StayCay from Sunday, spend your way to status and more

Episode Date: April 18, 2020

Subscribe here & at http://thefrequentmiler.com/subscribe. This week, Greg and Nick discuss: -Frequent Miler site redesign: initial reader outrage, immediate adjustments, and how it is better today. -Hyatt credit card promo: How much spending will Greg do toward Hyatt Globalist with this promo? -Southwest: The response to the pandemic and the opportunity that may exist for converting "other" points to Southwest. -StayCay to Far Away Challenge: This year the newly-expanded Frequent Miler team takes on an at-home set of video challenges. Early polling suggests an unexpected frontrunner. Timestamps: 1:17 Reader feedback: Our redesign (including our discussion about the redesign) 12:07 World of Hyatt credit card promo: Is it worth spending toward status? How much will Greg do? 23:04 Southwest's response to COVID-19 31:12 Potential opportunity to convert other credit card points to Southwest. 41:38: StayCay to Far Away: What the new challenge is and who the early front-runner is. 57:35 Question of the week: Should you proactively convert Citi Double Cash rewards to ThankYou points? 1:02: Tag question: Is the Double Cash worth a 5/24 slot?

Welcome to Frequent Miler on the Air. How are you doing, Nick? Whoever that is that I'm talking to. I'm doing well. I'm doing well. Always happy to be here. So I just got done trying to prep something for our new challenge that we're going to be talking about here today. And I definitely recorded some stuff.

So I'm cooking. I'm up first and I have to prep something. And so I spent, you know, like a good hour and change trying to prep something and I have nothing to eat right now. So that's about how well it's been going for me so far. So I'm setting the bar low for you. Yeah. Well, it sounds like you're about as good of a chef as I am. I don't think it's going to be better than what people expect in terms of my skill level, but hopefully that translates into better than what people expect in terms of entertainment value.

Right. I mean, that's really what we need here. Because if you just prepared something perfectly, that'd be no fun at all. Right. No, not fun. Not fun. Except for the people who eat it. Well, we'll explain soon what we're talking about here. We'll come back to this. Today's episode, the main topic for today is about our site redesign. Frequent Miler. It's all new, all fresh.

And we're going to get into that in a second. But first, feedback time. Read your feedback. And I had to introduce the topic first because i i tried to slide right past it last time no no no not not for that reason okay because the feedback's related to the site redesign so on i think it was wednesday we put out a post announcing hey we've got a brand new home page come check it out and our readers were appalled at least some of them were some of them were appalled yeah certainly maybe that's an extreme

but all right i picked out one one comment as an example okay lucas says not a fan all caps at all he gives some specifics and says i wish i could find one thing positive but i can't and i love capital love you guys this actually might turn me off from visiting as frequently so that's a shame because we're frequent miler and so we'd be like less frequent miler if right it'd be the infrequent miler. Infrequent miler. There you go. That sounds good. So, you know, if it was just one person, that would be one thing. Or if there were a lot of like nitpicky complaints that we thought people just don't like change, that'd be another thing. But we went through all the comments that were on the blog, on Facebook, on Twitter, and found there was a lot of consistency actually. So we had separated on the homepage what we think of as featured articles to separate out from everything else.

And people found that very, very confusing. And so 90% of the feedback was, how do I just see all the recent articles? And so we got together very next morning and hammered out a plan. How can we change things up? So it still looks good. We're still excited about it. But it addresses this one thing, like, let's make it simpler, make it easy for people to find the latest article. And so now instead of sort of a bajillion different things happening, I'm exaggerating, but now there's really just a few spotlight articles at the top. And on mobile, it's just a single one with a carousel that you can swipe if you're interested in seeing the other spotlighted articles. And then right below that, it begins all recent posts. We're not trying to differentiate there between featured and quick deals and quick tips and all those other things. So it's really simple and obvious now, I think. And a few down from that, we have the video, we have a section of multimedia. And so that's a new thing, but I'm getting ahead of myself. Anyway, so we simplified it. We did it all in really

maybe six hours or so, overhauled it based on the feedback and then reposted about, you know, hey, look again. And the feedback was mostly very, very positive after that. So I just picked out one example. Sam says, hey, I just wanted to thank y'all for your humility and willingness to take feedback from those who frequent your site frequent again to make this update to your update i'm sure it didn't feel great that months of work and effort weren't well received by your audience yet you put your egos aside and responded to the criticism by incorporating people's feedback in the new new new design so that's just an example of of some of the positive feedback we got afterwards and so so I think I'm really excited.

I really love the new design. And I think I like it a lot better than what we rolled out at first. So I think the community feedback not only helped readers, but us too. Us too, yeah. Yeah, I think it was good feedback. You know, I think the aim that we had initially was we thought we were making it easier to find the content that people wanted by splitting it up so that the people who are interested in seeing the quick deals would be able to find that. And the people who wanted more of the meat and potatoes articles that delve into the details of things like we'll talk about Hyatt, whether or not to spend your way towards elite status later on. And those types of articles we were trying to feature more prominently at the top and figuring that splitting that out might make it easier. But obviously that wasn't the case for

everybody. And I actually, I agree with Greg. I like the way that it looks now and the way that it chronologically posts things for people who want it chronologically, but also features that stuff that, you know, at the end of the day, you may be interested in the ability to earn 3000 Wyndham points by ordering through DoorDash this week, or maybe you've already ordered through DoorDash and that doesn't matter for you. So that's why we really wanted to be able to feature those articles that probably do matter on a wider scale. Like should you cancel or downgrade your credit card or, you know, should you spend towards high elite status and that kind of thing. So we wanted a way to be able to feature that stuff. And we, we found a way to be able to do both and keep the multimedia in there too. So I hope that

people who are still finding it a little different, give it some time to get used to it and see, because I do think that those changes, especially after the feedback from readers, have made it relatively intuitive, I think, and give it a nice, cool, clean look that I think is an improvement over where we were. Yeah, absolutely.

And I'm going to not actually say the F-bomb word right now, but I just noticed that Squadcast isn't recording. Oh, no. I'm going to, while you're talking, I'm going to just take a moment to fix that. And I think we'll probably have to grab the sound out of the other video where I may be able to time together. We'll see. You work on that. So the other piece that I wanted to say about that, I guess while we're on it, if I've got a second while Greg is trying to figure that out,

is interestingly on the old frequent miler, the articles weren't in quite a straight chronological order either. So I found it interesting. A lot of people were thrown off by the fact that things weren't totally chronological because they haven't always been. the morning posts, like the key morning posts from the day has always been at the top and then newer stuff was underneath that.

And essentially that was, that's kind of what it is now too, that those key morning posts are at the top and then the newer stuff is underneath it. So it's actually kind of very similar in that regard that it hasn't been chronological. The advantage here is that if you missed Greg's post on Wednesday, now you may still see that on Thursday or Friday in those featured articles at the top. So you get a chance to see that rather than it being buried under 16 quick deals. So hopefully that gives you a chance to find things that matter to you. Yeah, yeah. So absolutely. So what's your favorite part of the new design? I like the fact that we've got the multimedia somewhere where people can find it.

You know, we're spending more and more time doing the podcast and the YouTube thing here and trying to give people different ways to absorb content because different people like to absorb content in different ways. So I like the fact that that's featured now. It also just feels more modern to me. And I think that, you know,

we want to be a trusted source for people. And I think that, you know, we want to be a trusted source for people. And I think that, you know, appearances are important in being trusted, right? I mean, that's why bankers wear suits. And that's why, you know, they use different color schemes for different types of businesses to tell you, hey, you should trust this kind of a thing. So I feel like having a more modern design does kind of lend to that reputation in the long run, even though it's a little jarring initially when you see a new redesign. But I feel like having a more modern design does kind of lend to that reputation in the long run, even though it's a little jarring initially when you see a new redesign. But I feel like this looks like a legit, modern, cool site. So multimedia and the sort of modern, fresh look to it.

What about you? Yeah. No, you know, those same things are big for me. I love the way it looks. I think Kerry did a great job making it just look stylish. And I, I like that the mobile experience feels like a mobile experience. It was never mobile ready before we kind of shoehorned it in. Cause it was an old theme that didn't support, you know,

mobile. I forget what it's called anyway. Right. It didn't support adjusting based on mobile automatically. So I just love that now it's the way it should be. It acts like a mobile website. And a little thing that I really love, I think you might've been the first to point it out, was that if you use the search bar, that's at the very top, there's a little magnifying glass at the very, very top.

If you use that and you start typing like Hyatt or something, it auto completes and shows all the articles that, that match that search criteria as you're typing. And so it's so fast now to find articles that we want. So I used to actually go out to Google to find my own articles, but now I'm doing it right from the site. I hated doing that. I feel like I've been frustrated with the search tool for a while. And when I say I can't find something, you've said before, they use Google to find it. And so

I've kind of gotten myself in the habit of Googling things in order to find Frequent Miler articles, but that's kind of been driving me nuts for a while. So I'm glad now to have a really easy way to search on the site and find a whole bunch of articles at once so I can find exactly the one I want. So yeah, I'm very happy with that too. That was a very good adjustment and update on the mobile experience. Right. And then if anyone's listening to this and has the mobile site up, press the little menu bar at the top because it just looks really cool. When it pops out, it has this really cool look to it.

So you'll see. You'll see. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's a joy to look at it on mobile now, I feel like. And maybe that's partly because I'm so tied to the site, but I feel like it's much, I don't know, much more intuitive to me on the phone now than it was before. So I think that's a big improvement.

Anyway, so, and you know what else? It's loading faster. One of our big things was the old site was taking forever to load. And there are still optimizations we need to make here. But the new site, just because it's on a new theme, new technology, is already loading faster. And so that's a big plus as well. Right, absolutely. A big plus for the user experience

and a big plus for the quality of the site overall. And I'm sure probably a plus for things like Google results and stuff like that too. So a lot of different hidden pluses in there and being able to optimize that and modernize it. So overall, I think all around, I think it's going to be a win long-term for most people. And if it isn't for you, let us know why.

And just like we incorporated feedback on round one here, surely there will be small tweaks that we make along the way. And as we get the same kind of feedback about something in particular, we'll adjust and adapt to that and try and make it better. I mean, our goal is always to make the site as user-friendly and good for the readers as possible. So let us know what we can do better. All right, great.

So next up, World of Hyatt. Yeah. They have a new promotion, which is to offer three, the World of Hyatt credit card, the Chase credit card, offer three elite nights per $5,000 of spend instead of two. On the one hand, that seems incredibly underwhelming as a promotion at this time. Like, shouldn't they be offering tens of thousands of bonus points in addition to more elite knights? Right. On the other hand, some of us were looking to earn top tier hyatt status through

spend on that card this year some of us meaning like me and so this is a great opportunity you're like oh man it's gonna be a little bit faster than it would have been right so it's a great opportunity to get there faster but will if i if i spent this promotion only goes till end of june so it's only two and a half months and so if i spend if i spend away like crazy to to get all the nights i need i already have about 31 in my hyatt account so i would need, I think it's 30K spend. Is that right? To get to Globalist. And so if I do that now, it might happen that they'll come out with other promotions that I would have preferred to use to get there. Wait, you need more than 30K spend, wouldn't you? Yeah, maybe. I don't know if I did the math right.

That's fine. But at any rate, there's... Oh, wouldn't you? Yeah, maybe. I don't know if I did the math right. That's fine. But at any rate, there's- Oh, you're right. You're right. Yeah. Good bit of spend there. Because that'd be six fives, right? A lot of spend, actually.

Yeah, you'd need more than that. But that's okay. The key is you can get there faster if that's what you're looking to do. Especially if you already have some nights in your account, then it might be worth it. Especially because nowadays, Hyatt gives those milestone rewards along the way. So as you're spending your way towards globalist status, you're going to pick up a couple of lounge upgrade awards, which won't matter if you hit globalist, of course, and she'll get that all the time anyway. But you will pick up a couple of free nights, a category one to four

night at 30 nights and a category one to seven night at 60 nights plus globalist status. So there's- And suite upgrade awards. Suite upgrade awards. 50 nights and again at 60 nights. globalist status. So there's great awards, 50 nights. And again, it's 60 nights. Those are really valuable. Yeah. Right. Right. So you get a lot of valuable things. And I wrote about that today that depending on, you know, how many nights you're going to end on, if you somehow magically knew you were going to, you know,

have 32 nights through every, through all the other means that you're getting elite nights, then you could calculate, is it worth it to put X amount of spend on the card to either get to the next milestone reward, which those milestone rewards happen at every 10,000 points starting at 20, every 10 nights starting at 20 nights. Right. Um, so yeah, so, uh, so, so anyway, I, I sort of did the math to say, if you get to, you know, 32, if you expect to get to 32 nights, it might not be worth it to try to get to 40 for that next milestone reward. But if you get to, you know, 34, then it's probably worth it to spend 10 K to get six, you know, to get, uh, yeah, six more elite nights to get to 40 and so on. So you can check out the chart I put there. But, uh, what about you? Are you, do you have any interest in going

for globalist again? Okay. So that's, that's a different question. Do you have any interest in going for Globalist again? Okay, so that's a different question. Do I have any interest in going for Globalist? Of course, I do. Globalist is the best elite status out there, hands down. I mean, there's no competition from other hotel statuses in terms of benefits. The free parking that you get, the no resort fee, even when you're on a paid stay. Everybody has no resort fees on award stays with Hyatt, but even on paid stays, you don't pay those as a globalist. And of course, free breakfast and lounge upgrades and suite upgrades and blah, blah, blah. There's a lot of great benefits. However, am I going to spend my way to it? No, no. I have two Hyatt nights so far this year, and I don't anticipate getting very many for the rest of the year, even if and when travel comes

back to normal. We're expecting a baby in September. There's no way I'm going to spend very many nights in a Hyatt this year. And I'm not going to spend a hundred grand for Hyatt status. So especially in two and a half months, it's just not going to happen. So no, not me. And especially because if I were to try to spend the ridiculous amount of money that I would have to spend in order to get it, then I would need to be able to somehow liquidate if I was buying gift cards. And that's just not very easy right now, given the fact that we're all

staying at home. And now New York's been extended here to May 15th that we're keeping people at home. So I just don't see myself being able to MS enough to do that. But I'm jealous of people who are in position to do it. So you've got like 32 nights already this year with Hyatt? 31. Yeah. That's crazy. That's crazy. So yeah, I mean, for you, then it totally makes sense, doesn't it? In your chart, say if you're going to say 30 nights. Oh, yeah, yeah. It totally makes sense because the value of getting 40 nights plus 50 nights, you know, the milestones at each of those. And at 60, getting globalist status on top of the milestone rewards, the value of all that way outweighs the cost if I'm assuming. So in the post, I assumed maybe you overpay your taxes to do it. And I said, well, it's almost 2% fee. So I just said, let's assume a 2% fee. And so I compared that fee, subtracted out

the value of the points you earn on the credit card, said, all right, so it's costing you this much. Are the benefits you get worth at least that much? And I was very, very conservative, extremely conservative with the value of those rewards because I think that's important. I think when people say things like well i think i'm gonna get i'm gonna use that free night certificate for a 300 hotel that that is not a reason to spend 300 to get that free night certificate because at best in that scenario you at best you break even. Right. Right. And if you, you know, you probably weren't going to spend $300 on a hotel night. And if you were, you probably could

have gone through like either a shopping portal or Hyatt, you wouldn't be able to go through a shopping portal, but maybe through Hyatt per day or something, gotten a whole bunch of extra benefits if you're going to spend that. So you want to be able to get that $300 a night for significantly less than $300 in cost. Exactly. Exactly. So as you know, I always look at it as when you're looking at these kinds of things, how much would you be willing to pay if you could just buy that benefit? How much would you pay for that free night certificate? It shouldn't be anywhere near $300, even if you think you'll book a $300 hotel room. So I was, and I was very conservative. I said, all right, the category one to four, I'm only willing to pay about $75 for it.

Now that was again, really, really low balling because I, I do know that, you know, in the past I've booked $250 hotel rooms with those kinds of certificates. But these certificates also expire after a year. And so you have to look at those kinds of things and say, you know, what is it realistically worth? So anyway, that's how I put all that together. You're going to do it in two and a half months time? You're going to make the spend? Well, all right. So if I recalculate. Then it starts to become a more, like there's some more difficult math

because are you going to finish doing spend at only two elite nights for every 5K for the rest of the year? And if you don't quite get all the way to the 60 that you need, are you going to count on staying any other nights the rest of this year? I mean, how are you going to figure out how much to spend?

Well, that's an issue. I think if travel, it kind of depends when travel opens up. I would like to spend more nights, but I don't know if that'll happen. And so it's tough. I think when I redid the math in my head, I think it's 50,000 spent to get the 30 nights. Does that sound right to you? Yeah, that sounds right. Okay. So yeah, exactly. That's, that's the main, the, my main fear there is, is around drawing Chase's attention on that much. 50K in two and a half months. Yeah. That's a lot of spend. So then do you do 20, do you do 30? I think, I think. And leave yourself with a lot of spend. So then do you do 20, do you do 30 and leave yourself with a bunch to pick up still? I think I'll try to hit about 30 and leave myself stuff and count on the

fact that there will be other promotions. Probably. So that's what I'm going to count on. Yeah. That's a good bet. You know, and I think that you also have to consider, and I didn't think about this math before I started to say this sentence, so maybe it's going to be totally wrong, but you also might want to consider the fact that, well, no, I take that back. So I was thinking high at off-peak nights are only 3,500 points per night, except they decided not to implement the off-peak chart until next year. So that won't matter. People chasing status this year. I was going to say, maybe you have to consider your cost to MS on either the Ink Business Unlimited or an Ink Cash at five points per dollar

and figure out, okay, well, if I can mattress run nights at 3,500 points, then where does that come into play with the cost of MSing status? But that doesn't matter this year because this year, it's still a floor level of 5K per night. Right, right. And my post from late last year, I think I looked at 5K night hotels and said, is it worth MSing on the in cash type of thing to 5X and then transfer the ultimate rewards points to Hyatt and book those 5,000 point free nights in order to get my elite nights that I need for status. And I found

that the breaking point was I had to be able to, what was it? Actually, no, I can't remember what the breaking point, but anyway, it turned out that spending on the Hyatt credit card was a better deal for me for the situation that I laid out there. Right. So, yeah, I mean, I think another thing that people probably have to consider there is whatever MS costs they're going to incur in terms of fees and that sort of thing too, because it's going to cost you, obviously there's the opportunity cost like you figured out, but, but you literally are going to have to pay something out of pocket if you're MSing. Well, again, the post was assuming you're just paying your taxes. And so it was saying,

all right, it's about 2%. And that's the fee. Right. So do the math, figure it out, check out Greg's post, because I think there was some really interesting material on there in terms of determining whether or not it's worth it for you. And while we're talking about points then and MSing and all that fun stuff, then I think I want to pivot next to talking about Southwest, right? Is that the next thing that was on our list today? Yeah.

Yeah. So Southwest announced what they're doing with elite status and the companion pass and extensions, et cetera, et cetera. I know a lot of people seem to have been kind of like, you know, concerned with what Southwest is going to do. And now we finally know. So Southwest is extending elite status, if you had it that was expiring at the end of 2020, it'll now be valid until the end of 2021.

And more importantly, for many people, the companion pass, if you had one that was set to expire December 31 of this year, it will be extended until June of next year. So that's June 30th of 2021. You're going to get six additional months there. And then this year, it's going to be, you know, a little bit easier to get the companion pass. They're going to kind of credit everybody with some points. You're not actually going to get the points, but you'll get like a discount, so to speak. You'll get, you know, status points or elite points, so to speak, towards the companion pass elite or companion pass qualifying points, as they call it, you get 25,000 points towards that. So you need to earn 100,000 still this year to get a companion pass. And those things I wrote a

bunch about, I'm kind of disappointed in that part of it, right? I mean, I don't know if you feel the same way about that. I do. And I think it's worth mentioning that yesterday we were on our Frequent Miler live show, which we're doing every Thursday afternoon. And while we were talking about Southwest, we were talking about how Southwest hadn't made an announcement. Right. Somebody asked us. They said, what gives or something, right? Right, right. What gives? Why haven't they announced this? Southwest is literally making the announcement while we were saying that. But during that conversation, you also said you had more than 100% faith in Southwest. You were listening there, huh? You were hoping I wouldn't. In doing the right thing here, do you think they did the right thing? Did they

let you down? They let me down. They let me down. No, they didn't. You know, it stinks because I think they did as well as they were going to if they announced their solution right now. And I don't say that as a cop out, because I definitely expected Southwest to do better. And I'm disappointed with how they did handle the companion pass, particularly both for people who had one that is expiring next year and aren't getting anything. And people have already earned one this year and aren't going to get anything extra at this point either. And even their most loyal flyers who are still going to have to pick up a hundred thousand Southwest points from flying this year. I mean, that's

crazy. Nobody's going to be able to complete that. So I'm disappointed with Southwest from a number of different perspectives. However, I said all along that I didn't think they would announce anything for a while because it doesn't make a difference right now. I think they probably got bombarded with questions about it, just the same as many of the rest of us have been asked, when's Southwest going to do something? When's Southwest going to do something? And maybe they just got sick of it and said, okay, well, everybody else has announced, we're going to announce too. And the problem is if they announce today, they have to make that assumption or make the assumption that travel will probably return to normal sooner rather than

later. And so they're going to have to base those requirements on, okay, well, if people start traveling again next month, then it'll be a little bit more than a half year. They have to qualify, blah, blah, blah. But we don't know if people are really going to start traveling next month. Maybe people won't start traveling until June. It's going to kind of trickle back slowly from there. I think if they had waited until June to announce, we would have had a better solution. But because they had to announce now, they had to announce something assuming that people get back to travel relatively soon. So I think that they kind of were cornered into a poor announcement. But I don't say that to apologize for them. They did a bad job. Right, right. No, and I think it's worth mentioning

the reasoning that you gave in the post. I thought this was really well thought out about why the six month extension of the companion passes is really bad. And if I remember your logic right, you were basically saying, you know, people are mainly usually trying to use those companion tickets over the summer for summer travel. And so this summer, probably not going to happen. So they got the companion pass, they were loyal enough to get it, can use it this summer and now it's going to extend until june 30th june 30th i don't know school and in the middle of june like you know barely you can maybe get one flight in using it right right so yeah i mean you're not going to get summer 2021 trial or 20 yeah 2021 travel either yeah i mean you end up with a companion

pass and basically no ability to use it during the summer. And again, we look at it from a credit card perspective, right? So us and most of our readers probably earn a companion pass early in the year and have it for two years. But I want to look at this from the perspective of the loyal Southwest customer that spends an entire year flying or using their credit card to earn up a hundred thousand points or 110. It was, and now it's 125 and they earned their companion pass in December. And then all of a sudden haven't been able to use it now basically aren't going to get a single summer out of it because they were only most people would only have a companion pass for like about one year, right? They're not going to get a full summer out of it. That stinks.

It does stink. Now, one thing that might be making it harder for Southwest, I'm just guessing here, but we've talked about before how things like elite status from the airlines doesn't probably cost them much. So for United and Delta and whatnot to say, oh, you have status for another year, what does that really cost them? But I mean, I guess it's maybe costing them some incremental flying that we would have done to try to keep status. But still, Southwest, you could argue that the Comanion Pass thing is costing them big money, potentially. It definitely costs them something. Yeah. And whatever that something is, is definitely more than the chance at a free upgrade and a free drink now and then or something like that. It's definitely costing them more in the sense that at least some of those trips you would have taken anyway and paid for a second passenger. So definitely, and it takes up a seat that somebody else could have

potentially paid for because I've been on plenty of sold out Southwest. Even uses more fuel because there's more weight on the plane. Right, right. So there's definitely a pretty concrete cost. So you're right. It is. It's an expensive benefit for them. And in the post, I mentioned that I felt disappointed that they only basically chopped 25,000 points off of what you need to earn this year. So that's a fifth, 20% of what it would normally take to get the companion pass. And I think we're going to lose a lot more than a fifth of the year, a lot more than 20% of this year for travel. I mean, we've already lost two months. We're probably going to lose a couple more than a fifth of the year, a lot more than 20% of this year for travel. I mean, we've already lost two months. We're probably going to lose a couple more, probably, most likely, or we lost a little more than a month anyway. It's going to be several more. So I feel

like that wasn't a fair solution, but at the same time, you got a whole ton of credit card holders out there that have opened up credit cards that offered 60, 70, 80,000 points as a welcome bonus. So if they drop the requirement to 80,000 points, suddenly you've got a huge sum of companion pass holders, some of which probably didn't even know about the companion pass. They just signed up for a credit card on a plane or in the airport. And then all of a sudden they're sitting with a companion pass that, uh, that now obviously they're going to look to use and that's going to be more expensive for Southwest or it'll be very close within reach for those people. And so I don't think that it would have been a financially easy decision for Southwest

to have dropped it much more than they did. So I think that they didn't have a good way out of that. It was gonna be expensive for them no matter what. They chose a way out that sounds fair-ish. It was a little bit disappointing. Until you think hard about it. Is your prediction that they're going to come back later with something better? I don't know. I wouldn't count on it. I would have counted

on them to have made the right decision the first time around and stuck with it. So I wouldn't count on it. Over 100% guaranteed. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Right. I mean, they did extend it, right? So from that perspective, I guess, sort of. For a few people who learned it the regular way, they extended it. So anyway, so that aside, there's also an opportunity in the Southwest announcement. was set to expire between March 1st and September 7th, or if you have a new travel certificate generated during that time. So for instance, you book a flight and it gets canceled or you cancel it, then you end up with these travel funds. So if you have travel funds that are generated between March 1st and September 7th or scheduled to expire in that timeframe, they're extending them until September of 2022. So that's more than two years from now. And they said that those certificates will be convertible to Southwest Rapid Rewards points. And that's where it could

be interesting. It definitely could be. So there's lots of ways we might be able to play that depending on what the conversion ratio is. But assuming it's fair, I'm get, well, anyway, I'm not going to guess wrong so much this year. It could be fair. If it's fair, they say that it's going to be based on the same value, so to speak today, the way they worded it in, in the press release wasn't clear. But what I think based on what they said is that it'll be whatever the number of points would have been to pay for that flight in points. So I think the value will differ for different people, because if you had a ticket to Mexico, then those points are theoretically worth a little bit more. And you can check out our new true value of Southwest Post that Greg

did a while back that explains how they can be worth up to 1.9 cents each. And if you booked a flight within the United States, it's going to be worth a little bit less. And if you booked an anytime fare or whatever, it's going to be even less. So I think it'll be probably tied to what the points cost of that flight would have been when you booked it, I think. So just hypothetically, if I were to book one of those flights to or from Mexico and it canceled it to get the travel credit. And then, then I should

get the opportunity to turn that into my, into not miles into Southwest points. Um, is this a way to convert credit card points that today can only be, where you get the best value for travel purchases? Is this a way to convert those points to Southwest points? Potentially a better than one-to-one. It could be. It could be a lot better than one-to-one even. Right. It could, it certainly could be. Yeah. Because, you know,

if you're able to buy, so on those types of flights where the points are worth almost two cents, a little less than two cents each, let's say you got a hundred dollar flight, then we're talking about, it must cost a little over 5,000 points one way, right? So, so. Oh, so you actually want to go the other way, don't you?

You want to get, you want to, you want to find the flights that have the worst value, not the best value. because the best value ones are where you're you're paying the fewest number of points right so you don't want to get the fewest number of points back you want to get the most points and so right um all right so i need all right i need to think how to find that but anyway so about a little less than one and a half cents each is where we probably are, right? Although, would you then want to get the anytime fares? Boy, this is going to be some math.

This is a post right here. You see, it's formulating. This is how it happens, guys. So anyway, so if it were about a penny and a half each, then that $100 flight would get you about, what, 7,500 Southwest points, right? Yeah. So if you were to book that $100 flight with, say, venture points from the Capital One venture card, it would cost you ten thousand Capital One points. And if you're able to then cash it in for Southwest points, you'd end up with seventy five hundred Southwest points. So it basically be ten thousand points for seventy five hundred Southwest points.

That's not a bad ratio for Capital One to Southwest, probably. And it's certainly not. It's pretty similar to all the other airline mile transfers. And it lets you go to one that obviously is not currently supported by anyone but Chase. So it's a way to get it from another bank. So obviously you can book Southwest flights with Capital One points because with Capital One, you just use your credit card to pay

and that's how it works. But what about things like Citi? So Citi thank you points where we still have the ability, if you have a premier card to book at 1.25 cents value. And so that hundred dollar flight, if you could book Southwest flights, that's the part I don't know. If there's a way to book Southwest flights with thank you points, could you book that $100 flight for 8,000 thank you points approximately, and then turn that into 7,500 Southwest points, which for a lot of people could be a good trade? Yeah, I mean, it certainly could be if you want Southwest points. And for some people that are locked out of Chase cards, whether that's because they're above 524 or because they

got shut down by Chase or whatever else, they don't have any other path to Southwest points because they're not transfer partners with any of the other credit card programs. So if you're in that boat and you're a city person because you can't be a chase person, that may not be a bad trade. However, I'm not sure if you can, you can book it. I tried to call and I couldn't get through to anybody today. So, uh, I don't know if you can book Southwest flights with city points or not. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know either. Um, so there's, there's several programs like that where you have to book through them. And it's so it's going to depend on whether you can actually make that happen. How about not using credit card points, but airline incidental fees. So we find that very low fares often show up as if they are airline incidental fees.

So is this a way to get the credit card company to basically fund your Southwest points? Maybe. Maybe. You know, we've seen Amex be very clawback happy this last year. And I think it's particularly frustrating for people that they have seen clawbacks now on flights that got canceled because of this COVID-19 pandemic. So they paid- But would they even know that? In this example, so you use your Amex card to buy a Southwest flight. You don't cancel- Right. No, I understand.

So you cancel it, but the credit doesn't go back to your credit card. So you can't see them clawing that back. Not because you canceled the Southwest flight, just because at some point, eight months down the road, they realized that you bought a Southwest Airlines ticket. These days, Amex has been known to do that now and then and claw things back way down the road. I see what you're saying.

So it's just a risk about buying the tickets. And yeah, that's regardless of whether or not you can cash it out into Southwest points. It's just Amex has been fairly clawback happy over this last year. So yeah, it will work today and maybe it will stick or maybe you'll close the card and six months later, get a letter in the mail saying that, you know, they want that money back. So not that that's been a common occurrence, but we've seen it happen with the SACS credits, the SACS 5th Ave credits on the personal platinum. We've seen some people that have gotten charged because they bought a $50 gift card like, you know, eight months before and Amex finally caught up with it. So I'd be a little hesitant. Am I saying I wouldn't do it? No, I'm not saying i wouldn't do it but but i'd be a

little hesitant maybe to recommend it as a thing to do because i think the last time that we recommended something like that they shut it down like the next day so that's true and unfortunately like amex listens to everything we say and then right then right clearly next day they shut down everything clearly clearly yeah sorry i mentioned it but there's a possibility there. The other one that comes to mind though, even better than Citi and also equally easy is altitude reserve points. If you've got those, because those can be used obviously to erase travel purchases, real-time mobile rewards. So you can go ahead and book at southwest.com and get a text message and erase it that way, right? Oh, absolutely. Sure. You can definitely do that.

And at one and a half cents each, it's an even better deal than converting city points potentially. So it would cost you even fewer altitude reserve points to convert. Yeah, I think it would be, depending on how they do it, but I think it'd be pretty close to one-to-one. Pretty close, yeah.

Conversion of altitude points to Southwest points. Yeah. So, I mean, if you have uses of Southwest points or you want to have some points in your account, that sort of thing, this could be a way to convert some of altitude points to Southwest points. Yeah, so I mean, if you have uses of Southwest points or you wanna have some points in your account, that sort of thing, this could be a way to convert some of those points. Or if you're looking to close an account, like if you're looking to close your city account

or your altitude reserve account and you wanna do something with those points other than buy travel before you close it down, then that may be a way to preserve those points, especially because Southwest points don't expire. So they're gonna be there forever. Do you think these points will be companion pass eligible? No, no, no.

Well, you know, the thing is you do, you earn points when you're buying the ticket, but I think when you cancel it, I assume that they, well, I don't know how that works. That's a, somebody brought that up and I dismissed it out of mind initially. And now that I think about it, yeah, I mean, you buy the ticket, right? And you get the points when you buy it, don't you? You have to fly it. I don't remember. I don't fly that many paid Southwest. I assume. I mean, most airlines, you earn the points when you fly, not when you buy the ticket. So I assume Southwest is that way. So I would assume there's no play. But this is different.

This is about earning Southwest points, which sometimes, like with credit cards, when you earn them on your credit card, those are companion pass eligible points. Right. So I agree with you that it's unlikely that these will be companion pass eligible, but it's possible.

But we don't know how they're going to credit them. It's possible. Yeah, I mean, they've never done this before, so it's possible. And it's a short these will be companion pass eligible, but. But we don't know how they're going to credit them. It's possible. Yeah. I mean, they've never done this before, so it's possible. And it's a short-term thing. So they, even if they accidentally do it, they might not. Catch it. Right.

And change it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So there could potentially be a play there. And because the window is so big, it's until September 7th. Surely we'll know before, you know, that window is shut, whether or not that's worth pursuing. So I would assume it's going to 7th, surely we'll know before that window is shut whether or not that's

worth pursuing. So I would assume it's going to be a few weeks. All of these things, it takes a bit to get the IT caught up. So it's going to probably be a few weeks before we see exactly how that all works. But it'll be interesting once we find that out. So speaking of a few weeks, the next few weeks I'm pretty excited about because we got some fun stuff going on here at Frequent Miler. We've got the new challenge coming. Really, what's going on? The new challenge. Oh, right.

Yeah, I really what's coming. He's just trying to play us here and make us think that he's not behind the scenes scheming about how he's going to try to be a two-time Frequent Miler challenge champion here. Because Greg, of course, if you didn't read it last year, you should have,

and you should go back and check it out now. But of course wiped the floor with us for the 40k to far away challenge last year and now this year he thinks he's going to do it again but but none of none of our readers think that we right when we when we announced so last year we called it 40k to far away this year we're calling it stay K to far away. And when we announced the challenge in the blog, I put a poll at the bottom saying, who do you think will win? This year, Carrie is one of the contestants. So we have four contestants this year. Last year it was the three of us. And by far, most people think Carrie is going to win. They do. They do. She picked up a huge percentage of the vote. So, I mean, there's four of us. And I think she had something like 40, 43 percent or it was a

large percentage, at least for a long time. Maybe it ended up dropping a little bit from there. But she certainly had close to half of the vote just by herself. So, expectations are high. So, I'm wondering, why do you think that is like so she hasn't blogged on her been on these videos yet she i mean except when her face showed up briefly on some live uh stuff but um so unless they know her from Travel is Free or something like that, the audience doesn't know much about her, right? They just have that little faith in us, Greg. I think that's what it is. They're like, I don't think these guys can make good videos.

Right. I mean, you know, so if you looked at the voting early on in the first few hours, Carrie was way out front. I had a nice little handful of votes. And then Stephen was in there and Greg for a few hours had a single vote. And I was like, that was really nice of his wife, but I'm glad his son knew who to vote for. No, actually, my wife and I both voted for Kerry. There you go. So she even got a boost there.

So everybody thinks that Carrie's going to win. We're going to see what happens though. So, all right. So if you missed the post about the challenge, tell everybody just briefly a quick little overview of what we're doing. Sure. Yeah. So we defined four mini challenges that we're all going to do.

All four of us are going to do these challenges. One of them is destination cooking. mini challenges that we're all going to do. All four of us are going to do these challenges. One of them is destination cooking. So the idea is pick a food from somewhere around the world or well, yeah, or something that reminds you of travel in some way, food, and do like a cooking show, basically. And we're kind of hoping that while if someone's really good at it, I guess it might be a good cooking show, but we're hoping that it'll actually be funny because most of us don't know much about cooking. And so I know personally, I'm going to try something that I think is going to be really hard. And so I'm hoping it'll lend itself to some funny moments. And then on the flip side, I picked something that

I didn't know how it would be. But when I started looking at the directions, I was like, oh, wow, this sounds pretty easy. And I spent, you know, like a good hour working my way towards having no food so far. So. So, okay. So there's the cooking segment, cooking challenge. There's the, um, oh boy, what the, the imitation travel. So, so the idea is to take a, either a, a scene or a, or a something about a foreign place or a place that you've been and use objects in your house to kind of recreate that scene. And it could be you're making like a still sort of diorama or it could be that you're making a video walkthrough of a city or it could be really anything that you want. The point is just you're recreating something, a destination.

And I've got an idea on that one. So I think actually I feel pretty good about that, but I'm not up on that just yet. So I got some time to work my way towards that, but I'm actually getting, that was actually my least favorite from the beginning. When we came up with that one, I was like, I don't know. I don't really have an idea. I'm not really creative in that way. I don't have any artistic ability. So I thought it might make for great TV, but not necessarily my favorite one to put together. But now I'm excited. So I think I got something there. So okay, good. We're gonna do the imitation travel. And then we also have a life hack. So we're gonna try to come up with something that's gonna hopefully be on par with Greg's eye mask, face mask post. If you didn't see that. My wife's

eye mask, face mask. That's right. Oh my goodness. My apologies to Mrs. Myler. Please let her know that I give her credit. So Mrs. Myler. Dr. Myler to you. She's Professor Myler. Professor Myler. Professor Myler came up with a brilliant idea to use an eye shade as a face mask to be able to go out and shop safely when you got to go out shopping and that sort of thing. So in fact, I've given a couple to family members now. So from my many kids. Yeah. Yeah. So and they've been appreciative. So especially because here in New York now, you're going to be required, I think starting today is what it is. You're required to wear a mask in public. So that's certainly been something that's come in handy. So we're going to try to come up with our own life hacks,

hopefully maybe travel-themed life hacks, and make some videos on those. Do you have any good ideas for that yourself? I do. I do actually. Yeah, I do have a good one. So I'm ready on that. That one I'm like ready to – I could film that one now. Oh, wow. The idea for the imitation travel, it's formulating. I have the idea, but it's not done. Yeah. See, I could film that one now. Oh, I do have for the imitation travel. Yeah. It's formulating. I have the idea, but it's not, not that. Yeah. See, I'm the opposite. I'm a little

further along on the imitation travel in my mind, but the life hack thing or yeah, the travel life hack. I'm yeah, I'm struggling here because I don't want to just copy. I've, you know, I've seen a lot of, lot of examples of ones people have put out on Twitter or wherever, and there's some great ones, but I don't want to copy what someone else has done. Of course. So I've got one that is something that I got from my dad many years ago that I've never seen anybody else with. So I don't want to build it up too much and have it be a big fail, but I've got one that I think at least some people, you know, I'm struggling with whether or not I'm going to

call it a hack though. I think I've got a good idea. I'm going to leave it at that. So we got different videos. Something to make a wagon travel more comfortable. I don't know how my dad feels about how old he sounds now, but I'm going to let him know you said that. He does read. He'll comment on something. Watch out. He'll be one of those trolls. So, okay, we have the cooking show.

We've got the imitation travel. We've got the life hack. What's the other one? Improv travel. So this is where each of us make a scene, a background scene for another contestant, another person on the team and that other person. So for example, Carrie made for me, she took a bunch of photos that she had of some destination.

She put it together into a sort of movie. And then I stand in front of it like I did with my Walking Around England video, where I use Zoom to make that video be behind me. And I narrate it as if I'm giving you a tour of whatever this is. But you have to start recording before you've ever looked at the video. So it's new to you as a contestant as it's rolling. And so that's the challenge. And, and, you know, hopefully we can be funny, uh, when doing it, you know, um, it's hard, uh, kind of improvising and trying to narrate somebody else's travel photos as though they're your own, right? Right. That's the idea. Yeah. And,

so I actually filmed mine today. You're feeling confident. I'm not, not at all. So I think there's parts of it that I did okay, but, but, but Carrie's moving a little higher up the scale already. I was already at the bottom. I mean, no place but up for me. So yeah, I don't know.

I think I should have taken some improv classes or something before doing this. Because I was struggling. I don't know. Maybe you can't tell me if you can't tell me that's fine, but did you do it on the treadmill? Um, no, I mean, so I didn't have the truck. I use, I, I, I have all my, my video equipment set up at the treadmill. So sort of on the treadmill, but not like not, not running. I wasn't walking the way I did in the other other I thought maybe we'd get a chance to see you

actually let loose and run on it. But but I might have maybe maybe the juices would have flown better. And I would have had better, you know, inspiration to say funny things as different pictures were coming by. I don't know. But it's okay. It's okay. If people want to watch and see and figure this out, when is all of this coming out? Yeah. So over the next four weeks, every week over the next four weeks, we're going to be publishing a different video on Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. So around noon. So the cooking videos will be every Sunday. Nick's doing this Sunday and so on, a different person each Sunday. Mondays we're doing, I don't actually remember the schedule off the top of my head, but anyway, a different one each day. I think Wednesday is the imitation

travel. And then on Thursday, we'll do a blog post where, link to all of them so that people who aren't watching on YouTube all along can at least, you know, see what was happening. I guess we'll also spit out, we'll spit out a blog post each day as well. Right. So you'll be able to follow along, whether you're a blog reader or if you subscribe to our YouTube channel, you'll get, hopefully you get notifications from YouTube when we put new stuff there. And then when you like something you're seeing, hit the like button because that's gonna be the main way we judge who wins.

Right, right. So you are going to help pick the winner by making sure that you like all of my videos, all right? And make sure you get all your friends to like those videos too. Tell them, send them a link. Like here, check this out, hit the like button. Right. Right. And don't, you know, don't not like a video if you did like it just because you don't want that person to win. Right. I mean, I know you don't want me to win, but

if you liked it, hit the like button. All right, hit the like button. So hopefully we're going to produce some stuff that's good. And the nice thing is it'll be a different thing each day, Sunday, Monday, every Sunday is going to be the same every Monday, every Tuesday, every Wednesday, just a different person each week. So you can follow along with the schedule. It'll all be on the website and you'll be able to check it out. Like he said, around noon each day, we'll come out with the latest of the video posts. So you can view it and hit like on YouTube. So if you're viewing it on the, on our frequent, my other site, just make sure you click over to YouTube so that you can hit like on YouTube. So if you're viewing it on the, on our frequent, my other site, just make sure you click over to YouTube so that you can hit like. Good point. Yeah. Somehow we can't make that like button appear right in the, in the,

in the blog post. I don't know why not, but I'd like you to like it. So you just have to hit the YouTube thing and especially when you're watching my videos, click over to YouTube, hit like, don't pop. Everybody else is just watching this. That's all right. It doesn't matter. Carrie's going to win anyway't matter carrie's gonna win anyway right she's way out we're fighting for second place yeah so so one other thing each week we're gonna have a weekly winner and that'll be again based on the number of likes that happen by i don't remember exactly by saturday or something yep and then at the end of the four weeks we're gonna have the mini contest winners. So who got the

most likes for the cooking video, who got the most likes for, you know, imitation travel and so on. And then we'll also have an overall winner picked a different way. That will be a new poll. So before you already picked who you thought would win. Now we'll give you a chance to say who really won. And this is why you shouldn't be too concerned about, you know, oh no, I liked all four videos, so I'm not really voting. Like, don't think of it that way because you will get a chance to vote at the end for who you think won overall.

Right, so feel free to like as many videos as you want along the way because you're going to pick the overall winner with a vote in the end. So check out the videos, though. It's going to be fun. I'm looking forward to it. I think there's going to be some good creativity between Greg and Steven and Carrie and me. I think that, you know, we're going to come out with hopefully some stuff that's fun and some of these things you can do. And speaking of doing it, if you're interested in participating on your own and kind of making your own video, we're also kind of open to readers that might be interested in that too. So if you want to make a cooking video, then,

you know, let us know, let us know what you got. We'll take a look at it and check it out. And we'd love to have people get involved in it and find a way to enjoy spending some time at home, because we're all at home right now, most of us anyway. And so you got some time on your hands. And so we're looking to have a little bit of fun and bring a frequent miler challenge out. Last weekend, we said, you know, we're still going to do the challenge. We didn't, of course, have it announced on the blog yet. But we had done the 40k challenge last year. This year, we can't do the travel challenge we intended. So we're traveling from home. And hopefully, that'll be a lot of fun for everyone. Exactly. So last time, 40k far away,

you talked a lot of smack. You were pretty confident you were going to win. And I don't hear that same swagger this time. Well, you see, because I can enjoy being the underdog this time. Okay. And it's not just the underdog to you. It's the underdog to Kerry. So even better here. So instead, I can rib Greg here for being at the bottom of the pile,

having the least expectation. I mean, how is it the guy who won last time had one vote for hours on this one? I don't know. That's what I'm wondering. I'm trying to figure that out. But maybe you're just trying to set us all up to be overconfident. Well, you know, I think I might have been last in the order in the, in the poll. Oh, is that what it is?

There might be an ordering effect. I don't know. I don't know. People, people just voted for the first name and assume that that was you. They were like, oh, that must be the Frequent Miler guy. People just like whoever's on top. Maybe that's what it is. Maybe that's what it is.

Well, so I, I, I'm going to say that I feel pretty good about my cooking video. I think my life hack is at least going to be useful for a segment of people. And in my imitation or my tiny travel sort of a thing, traveling from home, I think will probably be decent. I don't know about the unprepared presenter here, the imitation travel presentation, so to speak, that we're doing where we get the slideshow behind us because I have no idea what to expect for the improv travel. I have no idea what to expect for that. So I don't know if that's going to be good or bad, but at least I think 75% of my videos are going to be pretty decent, I hope. All right. Well, I'm looking forward to seeing and heckling.

We'll see. So that person commenting at the bottom of my videos is really Greg. That's right. I'll forget to log in as a different person. I'll show frequent milers. All right. So that brings me to the question of the week, I think. So this week there was a question and I actually don't have the exact question, but I have the information from the question. So I didn't have it pulled up. But the question was essentially that, so points from the, and I have my own question that I'm going to tag with it. So the Citi Double Cash, we wrote quite a bit this week.

Greg wrote a post about the three Citi cards now that make for a really cool trio. You get the Premier, which is a $95 annual fee, and then you pair it with two no annual fee cards, the Double Cash and the Rewards Plus. You got a heck of a three card combination a $95 annual fee. And then you pair it with two, no annual fee cards, the double cash and the rewards. Plus you got a heck of a three card combination for 95 bucks. You basically add two X everywhere and three exit a lot of the places you're going to spend a lot of your money each year. So that's a great earning combination for only $95 and the points are transferable to airline partners. So on, you know, very hard to beat that combination. It is, it is. So I like what you

said there that the points are transferable to airline partners because you have the premier. If you have the premier card or the prestige card, you can transfer to partners. Now the double cash actually earns cash back. It doesn't actually earn thank you points. It earns cash back that you can then convert to thank you points. So two-part question. Somebody asked me, should, and I want your take on this, should we go ahead and convert that cash to thank you points right away? Like when we earn our cash back at the beginning, should we just make it thank you points to have it all pulled together in the one account? And then my second piece is, is there a limit on how many points

you can move to your premier from the double cash? I can't remember if there's a limit. That's a good question. There's a limit from person to person, right? So if I had a double cash and I wanted to transfer it to your premier. Then there's a 100K limit. But this is different.

This is converting the cash back to thank you points. So yeah, I'll have to look that up. So we won't be able to answer that right here. But it's important to understand how this double cash thing works. When you set up your account to allow it to transfer to thank you points, the cash back to transfer to thank you points, the cash back to transfer to thank you points, you actually get a thank you account that's tied to but a separate account number than your double cash. So you have this sort of double cash thank you account that's a separate thing from your double cash card rewards account. So the reason I'm saying that is because there's been some confusion about in order to use your thank you points from your double cash to transfer to partners,

the best way to do that is to combine the double cash thank you account with the premier thank you account. And that gives you all the power that the premier has to transfer to partners and so there's been some confusion about that like once you combine does that mean you can't have the option of cash back anymore is that like a one-time thing is not because remember the thank you part of the double cash is a separate thing and you can at any time it's not a one-time thing say i want to earn thank you part of the double cash is a separate thing. And you can at any time, it's not a one-time thing, say, I want to earn thank you points from now on. It's not that at all.

You're always earning cash back first. And then you're picking, oh, I want to move some of that cash back over to my thank you points account. And that's when, if it's pooled with your Premier card, you can transfer it. So anyway, so my answer to that question is I don't see any reason to rush moving it into the thank you program. Because once you move it into the thank you program, it becomes harder if you wanted cash back, it becomes harder to get it at full value. So if there's a chance that you'll ever want that cashback as cashback,

just leave it sitting as cashback and then if you ever need those thank you points, then initiate that move over. It should happen instantly. Now there have been technical difficulties some people have run into, so you might have that. But in most cases it just works smoothly and you're good to go. So, so there's, there's no reason to convert it to thank you points up front and

transfer to airline partners or, or, or, well, because you can transfer to airline partners, you're better off keeping it as cash, keeping it flexible, and then just moving it over when it's time to be able to redeem. That's right. Now, I'm going to tag a second question with it because I can't. Somebody asked, is the double cash then worth a 524 slot because it earns two thank you points per dollar? Theoretically, I think it's uncapped. I know the cash back is uncapped, so I think it's uncapped in terms of transferring it over to thank you,

but I hadn't thought hard about it before. Yeah, I think it is. So anyway, so if assuming that it is, is it worth a 524 slot to get that card? Because, you know, here's the thing with the double cash card, it's not really worth applying for the double cash because there's no welcome bonus. So probably your best path to a double cash is to open, for example, an American Airlines credit card and then down the road downgrad it, except I think you'd have to wait a year for that, right? So then is it worth skipping that

if you want those double cash points now and applying for a double cash now and tying up a 524 slot? Yeah. I mean, I think everyone's situation is different with answering that. So how much would you have to, like what would make it worth it?

In what situation would it be worth a 524? Because if you're going to use it, use up a 524 slot, you're giving up the chance to get a welcome bonus. So welcome bonus on whatever card, and most welcome bonuses are, especially if you look at the chase cards, if you're giving up a 524 slot, you have 50,000 points for most of the better chase cards. So, well, I mean, not everybody's signing up for that many cards. So using up a 524 slot doesn't mean you're giving

up the ability to, to sign up for chase cards. You, you might, might be, you only sign up for a couple of cards a year, in which case you're not going to hit the 524 limit anyway. So that's why I'm like, it really depends on your situation. I don't know. I mean, you would have to have a... If doing this means giving up a sign-up bonus, then probably not because you'd have to do a heck of a lot of spend

at 2x to do better than like um a sign up bonus right so assuming you would have put that spend on a one or one and a half x card then uh you would need like you know sixty thousand000 of spend to get 60,000 points more. Yeah. To match a, a like 60 K signup bonus. Yeah. You know, when I looked at it, I was like, I just, it's, it would be hard to justify it in place of a welcome bonus or, or even to get it and spend on it.

If you're having any trouble meeting the welcome spend for whatever signup bonuses you want each year, then wouldn't make any sense to put it on a two X card. Um, so it's kind of an interesting dilemma because I feel like that three card combo is very interesting, very, uh, you know, very intriguing and potentially very good, but I don't know when you get the double cash. If, if you don't have it right now, you know, when do you get it? Do you open it new? Do you wait, you know, open something else and wait a year? I mean, a lot of people have American Airlines cards from Citi. And if it's a consumer one, you can product change to the double cash. And that's what I recommend a lot of people do. Even someone who wants a double cash, but isn't, doesn't mind waiting a year, I'd say sign up for

the first year, no annual fee, a platinum card for, I think it's got 50 or 60 K signup bonus right now and get that, get those miles. And then in a year, um, product change to the double cash. Yep. I think that's a good, a good technique. Cause you don't want a product change, a thank you card to the double cash. Cause it's not a thank you card. It's different, different families. So you don't want to do that because then your points would expire any points you had earned on the thank you card would expire thank you card would expire yeah right so unless you're going to use up all those points anyway whereas that's not true with american airlines cards because the miles are with american airlines not with the bank that's why it's different uh yeah so sign

up for the american airlines card and then if you spend $2 million on that card between now and, I forget, September or something. Then American Airlines will wait until just after you've hit the $8 million spend and then shut down your account. To end the story, then you'll have lifetime platinum status. Lifetime platinum status.

That's all you can do, $2 million spend. $2 million between now and the end of, I think it's the end of the year, actually. Is it the end of the year? It was. It's not between now. It's between May 1st and December 31st. Oh, okay.

It hasn't started yet. So sign up now so that way you can start this thing. I shouldn't have spent a million dollars on mine yet. Big mistake. Big mistake. All right. Well, that, my friends, brings us to the end for this week. It does.

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