Frequent Miler on the Air - Spit shining our 2024 crystal ball | Ep236 | 1-6-24

Episode Date: January 6, 2024

Each member of the Frequent Miler team made predictions for what will happen in loyalty news and credit cards in 2024, but this week we review which of those predictions we think are absolute hogwash and which you can bet your bottom dollar will happen in 2024. 00:00 Intro 01:30 Giant Mailbag 10:42 Award Talk: An Aeroplan cautionary tale 14:20 Follow up on Bonvoyed Awards https://frequentmiler.com/frequent-milers-readers-choice-bonvoyed-awards-2023-edition/ 16:56 Follow up on Deal of the Year https://frequentmiler.com/deal-of-the-year-2023-2/ 18:24 Main Event: Spit-shining our 2024 crystal ball https://frequentmiler.com/frequent-milers-2024-predictions-for-points-miles-and-travel/ 18:30 A look back at 2023 prediction results 22:04 Nick's predictions: Hogwash or cat bath? 24:39 Greg's predictions: Hogwash or cat bath? 28:52 Carrie's predictions: Hogwash or cat bath? 30:38 Stephen's predictions: Hogwash or cat bath? 34:15 Tim's predictions: Hogwash or cat bath? 46:24 Question of the Week #1: Should I reduce withholdings to make estimated tax payments with a credit card? https://frequentmiler.com/pay-taxes-via-credit-card/ 46:19 Question of the Week #2: Does it ever make sense to apply for a card knowing that you'll not get the welcome bonus? 50:49 Question of the Week #3: Have you considered releasing Ask Us Anything as a podcast? Music credit: Annie Yoder

Let's get into the giant mailbag. What crazy thing did City do this week? It's time for Mattress Running the Numbers. Ready for the main event? The main event. Frequent Miler on the air starts now. Today's main event, spit shining our 2024 crystal ball. Recently, the Frequent Miler team published points and miles predictions for 2024 and most of them are complete hogwash so nick and i today are going to cut through the hogwash and and figure out which ones are actually gonna happen and so this will be your roadmap to 2024

miles and points world what's really gonna happen this year and if you don't if you don't know where you're going, how are you going to get there? So we got to give you the map, right? So you'll have the map by the end of today's episode. Well, a map. I don't know if I'm going to call it the map. You'll have a map by the end of today's episode, and we'll see where it leads you in terms of accurate or inaccurate destinations. In the meantime, remember, if you're new to the show, you can always find the timestamps in the show notes. So if you scroll down to the description of the show or wherever you're listening to this, look at the description of the show. It'll have timestamps in there. So if you want to jump ahead, skip a segment, come back to a segment later on to listen to it again,

you can do that wherever you're watching or listening to this. Don't forget to like it. Give us a thumbs up. Leave a comment. We appreciate all those things. It helps other people discover the show too. So all that out of the way, let's drag out this week's giant mailbag. Yep. Today's giant mail comes from me. I recently published the 2023 Frequent Miler State of the Business Report. This is something I started in 2022, intending it to be an annual thing. And so I actually published it again in 2023. So now it's officially annual, now that we've done it twice. Basically, the idea is to let our followers know how the Frequent Miler business is doing, get a little peek under the covers on

the business side of things. And so I'll just summarize here in today's giant mailbag segment. First, our team, what changes we had to our team. Tim, who was previously part-time, transitioned to full-time in April of 2023. So that's been great. That's been great to have him. It really has been fantastic. And more recently, Carrie increased her time from 10 hours a week previously to 20 hours. So she doubled her time on the team. So that also has been fantastic. Nick and I remain full-time employees or I will Nick, at least you can call me what you will about how much time I spend but oh Greg dedicates plenty of time plenty of time you don't see everything Greg does that's true but uh as the owner of this enterprise I do have the option to uh not do things when I

don't want to and uh Stephen has continued to contribute 10 hours per week, as he has done for many years, and I think he's hitting way above his time allocation. For sure. So loving the team makeup today, and we're hoping for a future where Steven can find some more time to add as well. But we'll see. Yeah. All we need to do is double carry one more time for her to be full time, right? So one double, we're at 20.

One more double, we'll be at 40. And then we can pump Stephen's hours up a bit, too. Yeah, it'd be great. We love the help we've got. Right. I mean, we have a great team. I feel like that's we have the best. One of the things that. Yeah, we love each other.

We love we love being together. We love chatting together and working together. We trust each other to do great stuff. And we think we do. It's been terrific, but when we have more hours, we need to pay people more. And so luckily, revenue is up 40% over 2022. That's huge. And revenue in 2022 is already well up. So blog revenue-wise is doing really well. And as a reminder, the vast majority of our revenue comes from credit card affiliate links, which means if we have an affiliate relationship and we post it on the blog to a credit card

offer, then if you click through, get approved, then we get paid as if we're like a salesperson. We get a commission for that sale, in quotes. But as a further reminder, we don't publish the affiliate links when we know of a better offer. And that happens all the time. There's so often that we publish links to offers that don't pay us anything. And so it's remarkable that our revenue, including our affiliate revenue is up by 40%. That's just amazing. It is. And I want to clarify that for somebody who's not totally familiar with FrequentMiler yet, because one of the things that makes our blog stand out from others is that number one,

we don't include affiliate links within our posts, credit card affiliate links within our posts, that is. So when you say when Greg says that we publish links to offers that aren't our affiliate links, it's not like we just publish a post once and it's gone into the ether somewhere. Our links are only found on the card pages, which you can get to from our best offers page. So you can go to our best credit card offers page and you'll find the best offer for each card. So if you want to click through one of our links, you have to go to our best offers page. You have to go to the individual card page and click through from there. So that's the only place that an affiliate link would exist to begin with. And then we don't list our affiliate

links. Like Greg said, when there's a better offer available through something else, we just don't publish our affiliate link at all. So I just want to be clear because I don't want somebody to think that we write about both the ones that, you ones that are affiliate links and are the better offers or something. We write about whatever the best offer is on each individual card, whether that's an affiliate link or not. Absolutely. Absolutely. Okay. And so moving on to blog and podcast statistics, let's talk first about the blog. So first, a little background from 2015 to 2021. So that's quite a while. Our blog readership had hovered around 7 to 8 million page views per year,

which was terrific. We're very happy with that, but it wasn't increasing. It was sort of just hovering in that general area year after year. 2022, though, we saw an increase of 34% over 2021. And 2023, we saw an increase of 48% over 2022. Call that the Tim effect. That's the Tim effect, yeah. So as an aside, there's an app called Newsbreak that has at times driven a lot of traffic to our blog and it was almost always posts that tim wrote so we we joked internally in our team about how

uh newsbreak had a big crush on tim um unfortunately that crush seems to be over we haven't seen any news break traffic for a while that I've noticed. But anyway, in 2023, we had over 15 and a half million page views. So again, in the years preceding 2021, we're looking at seven to eight million per year. So we're almost double in 2023. That's incredible. Next up, YouTube, our YouTube channel views are up 63%. So that's the highest percentage increase I've mentioned yet. But now let's talk about the podcast. Downloads have increased by nearly 70% the past two years in a row. So two years in a row of 70% growth, that's great. So the podcast itself does seem to be our biggest growth area overall. And I think it helps all those other channels as well. There's an effect downward or outward, I guess, is a better way of saying it. So thank you to everybody who has contributed to these numbers. Thank you to everybody who has contributed to these numbers thank you to everybody who uh follows us regularly and and recommends us to friends and family we love it for sure you know

and at the beginning when you said something about how you publish this to give everyone kind of a like a peek behind the curtain so to speak to see uh you know the numbers behind the business i want to mention that this is also something that we only, like as a team, take a look at like once a year, right? So working for Frequent Miler is interesting and unique in that we don't have conversations about these kinds of numbers on a day-to-day basis. I mean, we notice when there's a lot of traffic on the blog and we get excited when we see that a post has had a lot of views. So we do notice that. But like when it comes to numbers like revenue and stuff like that just never comes up until the end of the year when we take a look back and we're like, oh, how did the year go?

So I think that makes it unique because there's not a constant focus on, well, how can we increase revenue? We're just trying to do what we're doing. And thankfully, lots of you out there seem to be following along and using our links when you can and listening and reading our posts. And we appreciate that. Thank you very much. Yeah. Yeah. It reminds me of a conversation I had with another blogger a couple of years ago where he was asking me, well, how are your Capital One links doing?

You know, I noticed this or that. I can't remember what it was he noticed and i just stared at him blankly like i have no idea because i literally like i never check those numbers i just i just see that that money comes in from our affiliate network monthly enough to pay the bills or more and um and that's great and uh the number of times i actually dig into what's happening with any given cards or or you know uh credit card issuers is uh you know maybe once or twice a year at most and usually that's just out of curiosity not not because i'm worried about revenue or whatever so anyway just mentioning that because like as nick said our our our focus is just on trying to deliver great content and having fun with it, not on the revenue. And luckily, the revenue has been following without us having to really work at it.

So that's been unbelievable. Careful, Greg, careful. Let's not make it sound like we don't work, all right? No, but it doesn't feel like it right they always say find something you enjoy doing and you never work a day in your life right and we enjoy this stuff it's fun so it's uh you know it's great it's great that it's been successful and again we appreciate all that support from all the people out there listening and reading so keep listening and keep reading and sharing it with your friends absolutely all right that i think then brings

us to the next topic for today which which is going to be award talk. Yeah. Today's award talk is sort of a cautionary tale from Tim. Tim wanted to book an award flight for his sister. So he found the award through Aeroplan online, and he transferred chase points to Air Canada Aeroplan to so he can make the booking and he immediately got an email saying the points came through and he logged into his Aeroplan account and he saw in the activity that the points were earned but his point total in his Aeroplan account did not show those

points he tried on the web. He tried on the app. As an aside, if you remember, I think it's Emirates will not show your point total on the web, but on the app it will, and then we'll let you book that way. But not for Tim, not with Aeroplan. So he tried to call,

and he was unable for a long, long, long, long, long time to get anyone on the phone. He said he would call in, the automated system would say call volumes are too high and just hang up on him. Call back later, yeah. Yeah, he tried over and over and over. He finally got a hold of a revenue booking agent

who transferred him to Aeroplan, the rewards program, and then the computer hung up on him there. So you can imagine he was not having a good couple days there. About 24 hours though after he did the transfer, the points finally did show up and he was able to book it. So sort of happy ending, but a lot of aggravation. And I just thought it was worth pointing out that, boy, sometimes these kind of things happen. And I don't know that there's any real solution to it. And it could happen with, I've seen it happen with various programs at various times. I remember people complaining about Hyatt transfers not

happening. I think United, once there was an issue there. Anyway, so you never know. And to be clear, the risk of that is low. Like this kind of thing doesn't happen often. I've transferred to Aeroplan and it's been instant plenty of times. I'm sure Tim probably has before too. But every now and then, yeah, these things happen. What really stinks, in my opinion, is that this has been the case at Aeroplan for a while now.

Last summer, I was called to book some awards, and I had the same thing where the computer system just told me, sorry, we're too busy. Call back later. And I was like, what is this? Hire some more people then. I totally agree. I think the takeaway here isn't the problem with the transfer of points. I mean, that is a problem. But the real big problem is that Aeroplan is not answering the phone. And that's terrible. I mean, that makes me think twice before wanting to do anything with Aeroplan Awards. So I really, really hope that they fix that.

And if it keeps happening, I mean, they're going to be they're going to be on our Bonvoy of the Year Award show for 2024. So hopefully it won't keep happening. Hopefully not. Hopefully not. But yeah, sometimes you're right. Right. Sometimes you'll run into that, though. So be, you know, just be aware that it can happen. And like Greg said, I don't think there's any way to avoid it.

And there's probably no easy fix if you run into that situation. Like Greg said, every now and then we get a report like that, but very rarely overall. All right. So that was Award Talk. Let's get into today's main event, right? Well, no, I guess sort of before the main event. I'm sorry. We've got some sort of new segments that are follow-ups to previous segments.

First off, speaking of Bonvoyed Awards, we did a show on the 2023 Bonvoyed Awards, and Nick picked Aeroplan's Etihad Alliance going astray as the number one Bonvoy of the year and I picked Hotels.com becoming 5x less rewarding. Nobody agreed with us. We published to the blog a poll to see what readers thought and

the three favorites or most least favorites, the most disliked, the most hated situations of 2023 regarding loyalty were uh number one the amex family rules limit access to the points parade so amex started uh limiting how many which types of cards you could get based on what other types of cards you already have 29 voted for that one delta dumps their devastation. So even though Delta had backed off their devaluation of their elite program, they have promised in quotes to bring

it back, bring back that devastation over time. And people really don't like that. And so 16% voted for that. And third place was the sky falls on united mileage plus this is something that we had forgotten to talk about in the show we forgot to add as a nominee but added it in the post uh united had uh devalued a lot of their awards in 2023 and 15 so third place voted for that so yeah you know i did we did we miss the mx family rule when we we did i think that was also messed up also yeah so i you know i have to hand it to readers i don't know how we missed the mx family rule because that certainly that should have been if i could go back and do it again i would uh pick that over the aeroplan one that i picked

which by the way my aeroplan pick was like 10th place, like 2% of the vote. So nobody agreed with me. Right, right. Whereas my Hotels.com one was fourth place. So I was close. You were close. I would have picked the Skyfalls on United mileage as mine, I think. Yeah, that one is I think that one hurts a lot of people it really took away the last uh useful value of united for me um not all of it but most of it yeah okay all right all right so those were the bonvoy picks but we also allowed readers to pick the deal of the year or their choice for a deal of the year right

that's right uh so in the show that we did on the deal of the year for 2023 nick and i both picked the 100 built transfer bonus to air france flying blue but we asked readers uh what are their picks and uh number one was the built uh slash hyatt fast track to globalist status uh that was offered in um second quarter of 2023. Number two were the Virgin Atlanta cruise deals. So Virgin had some amazing deals for these big, totally free cruises, balconies and everything. And then built came in number three. So the same one that Nick and I voted for,

the 100% transfer bonus to Air france flying blue uh was picked as third yep and we had mentioned that in a previous episode but but this was just a look back the numbers later because i had only just published i think that post a couple days before that podcast so uh still that that hyatt fast track was the the commanding champion It won by a decent margin, almost double second place. So that should be no surprise. That was widely available to anybody. You just had to join

the free built rewards program and link up your account. So it was a pretty widely available promo. So yeah, I'm not surprised in hindsight that that was picked by readers. Yeah, yeah.

All right. I think it's time for the main event. Spit shining our 2024 crystal ball uh first a real quick look back at 2023 what did we get right i'm going to list some of the things not everything but uh the hilton aspire annual fee we said will increase we were right it did uh we said that choice will announce the end of radisson rewards america because choice had bought radisson uh at least radisson america and yes indeed they not only announced it but it actually happened they ended it um we said and by we i mean steven not nick and i said that radisson points won't convert one to one to choice privileges true they did not what was it uh

two to one two to one choice yep yeah um we said that someone on our team said that bill will add another transfer partner and in fact they did they added both marriott and life miles and uh tim said that nick will take more than two free cruises in 2023. How many did you take again, Nick? I took three, so he snuck in there. He snuck down. Three in 2023. So pretty good.

We got a lot right, but we got a lot more wrong. So that's why we're doing this show is we did a prediction post, just like the 2023 one. We did a 2024 one recently on the blog, and each team member posted four or five predictions, and most of them are hogwash. And so we're going to identify the hogwash, which just as a side, that is a really weird term, hogwash. Hogwash. Yeah. What does that have to do with it? Where did that one come from?

What's the origin on that? Somebody give me the etymology. Yeah. So I'm going to tell you. Okay. What it is, if you ever ask a hog if they're going to wash up and they say yes, that's not true. And so it became a term, hogwash. If they say they're going to wash, don't believe it.

So what we're going to do, we're going to go through each of the predictions and identify them as either hogwash or cat bath. Hogwash or cat bath. So which one is more likely to actually happen there then? Well, Nick, I mean, come on, you're a cat owner, aren't you? If you ask a cat, are you going to wash up? And it says, yes, it is going to. Cats clean themselves all the time. So it's either hogwash or cat bath.

Got it? Sure. Yes. Yes. I was thinking about the propensity of cats to jump in the bath to wash off. And I was like, I don't know which is more likely here, but okay. All right. All right.

Hogwash or cat bath. Cat bath. All right. So okay all right all right hogwash or cat bath all right so so the important part is the hogwash so so that's true either one of us say a prediction is hogwash it's off it's out of here it's not going to last for the show so the only predictions that are going to last to the end are the ones that neither of us said hogwash to regardless of whether you remember to say cat bath that's irrelevant and uh those are the ones that are definitely going to happen because how could we be wrong wait before we do i'm going to ask how many readers have by now googled hogwash to see if greg made it up for or or not because i just did and i'm not going to tell you whether he made it up or not you'll have

to look it up for yourself. Yes, how many listeners? I'm sorry. How many audience members? How many watchers could be on YouTube? You never know. So, all right. Yeah. Let's get into this.

Regardless of it's true, you have to agree that if a hog says they're going to wash. Right. No. You can't believe them. Totally plausible. Totally plausible. Yes. All right.

So, let's get started. We're starting with my predictions. Is that what's going on? Yeah, we're going to cover our sets of predictions first, then go over the rest of the team. So we know these are all cat bath. We can just move on, right? Not at all.

In fact, I've got one of my own I'm going to hogwash. But anyway, starting with Nick's, Chase will add a transfer partner. Do you want to hogwash it or keep it? partner all right do you want to do you want to hogwash it or keep it i i want to keep it i think that there's a decent shot that avianca life miles gets added i mean maybe it won't be avianca i didn't say that it had to be avianca but i think there's a decent shot of that happening this year so yeah i'm gonna i want to keep this i think this is like no me too it's gonna happen I think Finnair is even more likely than LifeMiles, but either one could happen,

and it's been quite a while since we've seen Chase do something significant with their program. Your next one was Alaska mileage plan will become an unofficial transfer partner. So by that you meant through the Hawaiian, where Amex and Bilt can currently transfer to Hawaiian, Alaska will become an unofficial transfer partner. And then by the law of syllogisms, you'll be able to transfer your Amex or Bilt points to Alaska. What do you think, Greg?

I'm going to catbath it. I think that's likely. Yeah, I'm hopeful. I don't know. I feel like it's wishful thinking, but and especially wishful thinking for it to happen in 2024. Maybe this will happen. I think that it's like questionable as to whether it'll happen this year. But but are you going to hogwash it? No, I'm not going to hogwash my own. Come on now. It's not that one. All right. Virgin Atlantic will devalue Delta Awards to Europe. I'm going to hogwash it. Hopefully.

I am too. Nah. Not this year. They've kept it this long. Air France actually moved in the other direction with business class award prices to Europe. So I think it's going to stay at least another year. All right. Final Nick prediction.

Delta is going to make elite steps harder to get for 2025. So harder than in 2024, right? Right. So I'm predicting that they're going to announce in 2024 that the requirements are going up in 2025. Yeah, that's certain. That was a gimme. That was a gimme.

That's as certain as a cat cleaning itself. That will definitely happen. So, wow. So three of your four predictions survived are... Wow. Okay. Now on to my predictions. Amex will refresh,

couponize, and reprice the business green card. What do you think? I think this was maybe the best prediction in terms of a prediction that nobody else would have thought of. I feel like in terms of a unique prediction that wasn't obviously true, I think this is the best one of the bunch. So I think this is very Kat Bathey,

which is an adjective nobody has ever used before right now. There you go. Cat bathy. I agree. I love that prediction. I'm very bullish on it to add another animal to the fray. that Chase is going to make Ink Premier a real ink card, meaning it'll indirectly make points transferable to partners, which it can't do today. It's just a cashback card. I also think that's hogwash, unfortunately. I couldn't even hear it all out. It was hogwash as soon as I got to making Ink Premier. It's sad. I so want that to happen, but no, I don't think it will. Okay. Alaska's Hawaiian Air P air purchase won't be challenged i mean i i guess it's cat bath i like i don't yeah sure yeah probably not here's the

thing it's kind of like dependent if we cat cat bath the Alaska mileage plan becoming an indirect transfer partner, then this has to leave the purchase will actually go through. So there's a dependency there. Well, it won't be challenged doesn't mean that it won't make it through. Right. I mean, somebody could challenge it and it could still go through. But that's true. That's true. Yeah. I mean, I think ultimately, yes, it'll happen. Now that I think about all these dependencies, I'm going to go back and I'm going to hogwash the unofficial transfer partner. Oh, okay. All right. Yeah. I just feel like there's too many dependencies there to be as certain about it as a cat taking a bath. Okay. All right.

It's not that certain. Okay. All right. my next prediction choice will crack open the 100 day window so right now when booking awards with choice privileges you can only book up to 100 days in advance and i said they'll do something to crack it open for example maybe elite status will give you more more days that's like looking out the window at that hog and just really wishing somebody would give it a bath but no that's that's that's hogwash that's like i mean i'd love to have it happen but it's not

gonna happen choices had the ability to do this forever and hasn't wanted to and apparently hasn't needed to so i can't imagine that anything is changing there i don't think they care what everybody else is doing they have their own market segment that doesn't care enough to stop staying at choice over this. So yeah, no, I don't think so. Totally agree. Totally agree. Okay. Finally, from me, Finnair will be added as a transfer partner to at least one more program. I mean, isn't this a gimme, Greg? It already is a transfer partner. It's just a marketing thing to be like, hey, we also transfer to Finnair. I mean, it isn't and it is because you can transfer between Avios programs. So once Finnair joins Avios in March, then you

can move your British Airways Avios to Finnair from British Airways. So anybody that partners with British Airways indirectly partners with Finnair. So I guess it's a matter of them paying points.com, whatever it is they need to pay them to move those Avios to finnair instead and and skip a jump so yeah i mean this is surely going to happen uh you know and even if it didn't happen it's still kind of happening in march one way or another so right right right so so but we won't count it unless the program let's say specifically list finnair as a transfer partner um what i remember with when Cutter adopted Avios is that I think like one of the programs like pretty quickly added them as a direct transfer partner and then others it took longer. So that's kind of what I'm imagining will happen here. You know, maybe Amex or Chase or

someone will do it right away and then others may do it later. All right. So we got through Nick and me, our predictions. Let's go on to Kerry. So Kerry had predictions about each of us rather than predicting the loyalty point world. Kerry predicts that Greg will get corrected every time he says cutter or Qatar or. It just happened. Literally, somebody already commented, I think, somewhere when they heard you say it just a minute ago. So I'm not even going to try. I'm just going to say yes.

Yes, this is this is 100 percent cap out. All right. Nick will lose this year's annual challenge. 100 percent hogwash. All right. Well, Nick, you know, if Nick, as we said, either one of us could hogwash something, so that's out.

I don't even know what this year's challenge is going to be, and I'm going to hogwash it. Tim will win this year's annual challenge. Obviously, you're hogwashing that. I have to hogwash it. Sorry, Tim. I mean, you know, Tim, if we team up, then I have hope for you but uh but otherwise it's not like donkey kong and and then she says steven will settle down

what do you think i really don't want to hogwash three out of four of her predictions but it's hard it's hard to put money on this right yeah Yeah. I'm gonna hogwash that one. I think he may settle down in 2025, but I don't think 2024 is likely. Right. Okay. I wonder, so do you think he'll pick the place to settle down by the end of 2024? New prediction. Do you think he'll pick a place to settle down by the end of 2024? Yes.

Okay. All right. I'm going to say no. We'll see. All right. We'll see. We'll see. We won't remember to check, but we'll see.

That's okay. But maybe when he announces it, maybe we'll be like, oh, yeah, I predicted that. I didn't predict that. Okay. Stephen's predictions. Speaking of Stephen. He says airline loyalty programs will consolidate. So meaning that we're going to get more obvious airline, like more more airlines in the obvious program or more in the flying blue program. I mean, if that's what we're saying, then I guess so, because SAS is now going to be owned by Air France, right?

And Air France buying them. So probably they'll become part of Flying Blue. I think he predicted that and he's probably right. What's up with Asiana and Korean? Whatever happened there? Oh, yeah. Good question. I have no idea where that is. Anyway. Yeah. So this seems like likely that'll happen somewhere, right? Yeah. Some program will do that. Okay. So that survived. Next, he said choice privileges will revamp program, including, he specifically Next, he said choice privileges will revamp program including, he specifically said, increasing the 100-day window for elites. His mistake was including that. Hogwash.

Wells Fargo will add a new co-branded credit card. For example, in recent years, they added both built-in choice privileges. Will they add another one? That was, I think, the most innovative prediction. This was the second most, I think. Because I think this is somewhat likely that Wells Fargo will... You know what? Actually, I'm going to take that back. I thought when I read this the first time, I was in my mind picturing a transferable currency card. A new co-branded card? No, I'm going to hogwash that.

Yeah, me too. I don't think that... I mean, it could happen, but I wouldn't bet on it happening in 2024 um new amex airline fee credit option what do you mean specifically there is you know when when you're uh getting your platinum card benefit you have to pick which is your preferred airline and then if you pay fees on that airline you get you get money back up to 200 and he's saying that a new airline will be available on the list. Wait, you know, I initially was going to say hogwash, but then I was like, well, you got breeze airways and a velo, a velo, a velo, I think that I keep seeing more and more like advertisements for. So is there a chance that one of those low cost carriers will become available?

Uh, I, I'm going to say hogwash because they were moved frontier, right? So I don't think they're going to look to add any of those. So I'm going to hogwash it. Me too. I don't think there's any upside to them to add more. I mean, unless they're getting a lot of customers demanding it and I just don't see any of the airlines they don't have getting a lot of demand. Okay, finally from Steven, Amex will change the gold dining benefit again. So every now and then they have a list of merchants where if you spend on your gold card each month, you get up to $10 back.

And he's saying they're going to do something to add or subtract or change in that list. Yeah, probably. Because it seems like they're relying on, I'm assuming, the merchants to partially fund it and somebody will decide they don't want to continue paying for it or somebody will give them a better deal. Yeah, I think this is somewhat likely. What do you think? Yeah yeah i mean i i think it's likely in the next two three years i'm not gonna say it's likely for 2024 so i'm gonna hogwash it good enough i can't argue hard there all right moving on to tim's predictions alaska and hawaiian will be allowed to merge i think we already uh said that one was a good one. The Amex Hilton cards won't become part of the family rules, meaning Amex won't say,

oh, because you've had the Hilton Aspire card, you're not allowed to get the bonus on the Hilton Surpass card. So can you refresh my memory as to what his argument was, why he doesn't think the hilton cards will get family language uh why he doesn't think um or why he thinks they will that would require my remembering what he yeah remembering exactly what he wrote yeah i can't remember exactly either so all right so i i think this is hogwash i think that they're likely initially i thought that they wouldn't but now they've added it to the Marriott cards right

or the Delta cards or some one of the co-branded portfolio I can't even remember now which one I I think it's gonna happen I think it's gonna happen Delta that's right Delta is what it was okay yeah and Marriott actually yeah yeah they did some on the Marriott yeah it's so it's it's hard to even notice on Marriott because Marriott has so many overwhelming rules what you can sign up for but yes they did um yeah I would hogwash that one too all right um next one I'm hogwashing as I read it the distance between Wells Fargo and built transfer partners will be a kitten whisker so we've got another cat in here so he's going for the cat bath so, what he's saying is that Wells Fargo has been saying that they're going to come out with transferable, that they're going to make some of their points transferable to loyalty partners. They haven't said yet if it will be one-to-one or anything like that or what the partners will be.

He's thinking that because they issue the built card, that the list of Bilt transfer partners will be very similar to what Wells Fargo comes out with for their own card. What do you think? You're hogwashing that? This was the prediction that I meant. I thought it was the second most likely to come true.

So I know, I totally disagree with hogwashing this one because I have to imagine that this must have been part of the motivation behind Wells Fargo partnering up with Bill because somehow Bill got all these loyalty programs to play ball, right? I mean, it can't be easy. Otherwise, other issuers would do it all the time, right? And then we haven't seen another issuer get all of those programs. When I say all those programs, I mean like American and Hyatt and United and Marietta all played ball with a new transferable currency and Bill Tess. So I have to think that part of the agreement there was because they wanted access to those partners. Now, maybe Kittenwhisker was too close because I don't think they're going to get

the U.S.-based programs. The ones I just mentioned, I can't imagine they're going to get those because those programs have exclusives with credit card issuers. That's the thing. That's why I hogwash is that American, United, Hyatt, they only sort of were free to go with the built rewards program because it was presented as a rewards program, not as a credit card to them. And initially, that's all it was, even before the credit card came out. And so they were able to partner up with Bilt for that purpose. They're not going to be able to partner with Wells Fargo because of their exclusive deals with Chase and Amex and everything.

Yeah, that's true. But the rest of the international partners, I imagine, those relationships had to be part of the reason they wanted to pursue a relationship with Bill. I would. Yeah. But if if they don't have built best transfer partners and it's not a kind of American, then it's it's not a whisker. We're talking. We're talking like a torso or something or a tusk at the very least. So. OK. All right. All right. So we hogwashed it. Sorry, Tim. very least. So... Okay. All right. All right. So we hogwashed it.

Sorry, Tim. All right. Next one up. Hyatt will finally make it possible to transfer points online. He self-identified this as a bold prediction. So he's right off the bat saying he doesn't think it's super likely, I think. So did he just hogwash himself? I think he did.

I mean, I hope that happens. And I'm surprised. I'm legitimately surprised that Hyatt was able to implement the IT to make the Club Lounge Access Awards now easily transferable and applicable and the Suite Upgrade Awards and all the rest of that. So I'm pleasantly surprised with Hyatt's IT advancements. So I actually wouldn't be shocked if this comes true. But he identified it as bold. And so how can I not hogwash what he hogwashed? Yeah. I think that if they wanted to do this, they would have already done it. And so I think they have a reason. I don't know what that reason is, but I think they have a reason for making it difficult. I kind of hope they continue making it difficult because if they make it easy, I have to imagine they're going to have to limit how many points you can transfer each year. And right now there is no limit, right? I mean, you can transfer points to anybody just once every 30 days. You can't transfer in or out every 30 days, but there's not a quantity limit. And I imagine that they would probably institute both a time and quantity limit if they allowed it online. So I guess I should hope that this doesn't happen yeah the interesting thing is the need to transfer points has decreased um because now yeah like so before if if if uh you

didn't have globalist status and i did and you wanted me to book you a guest of honor awards day you could have transferred your points to me and then i could have booked you a guest of honor awards day now if i wanted to book you a guest i could just actually give you gift you the guest of honor award uh and then you could book your own stay apply that award to it and get the same benefits so um they've kind of flipped it on its head to where uh moving points is less important now that's a that's a good reason to hogwash it right there craig the frequent miler he's a smart guy folks uh agreed okay very good and Craig the Frequent Miler, he's a smart guy, folks. Agreed.

Okay, very good. And then he had a bonus prediction, right? He did. He said, Carrie will have one of Frequent Miler's top 10 posts of the year in 2024. I mean, that's hard to argue because she's had some pretty popular ones already these last couple of years when she writes one. So I think that that is fairly likely to happen, especially if she's increased her hours. I'm catbathing that one, too. Yeah, she she's written some great stuff. She's increased her hours. She's going to she's going to publish something that's going to get a lot of eyeballs.

And I think that people like it. She has a very different perspective than most of the rest of us. So some unique stuff comes out and sometimes it really grips the audience, I think. All right. Finally, I went through our blog post on the predictions and pulled out some reader predictions that we're going to either hogwash or catbath. Okay. Number one, Amex will drop Hawaiian as a transfer partner. Ah, hogwash.

I don't think it's likely to happen. Okay. Amex will add Latom as a transfer partner? Ah, hogwash. I don't think it's likely to happen. Okay. Amex will add Latom as a transfer partner. Hogwash. Again, I don't see that as Latom being a high demand partner that anybody would really care about. Yeah. British Airways credit card will earn tier points via spend.

So that's towards elite status, basically. I have no idea how likely that is. What do you say? I mean, I think it's a reasonable prediction, but sort of like I said earlier on a different one. Yeah, it's reasonable that this would happen the next two, three, four, five years, but I have no reason to think it would particularly happen this year. So I'm going to hogwash that. Chase will refresh and reprice the sapphire reserve card meaning they'll add some more benefits and increase the price they should at least refresh it but i think they won't they they don't tend to increase price that quickly they just increased by

a hundred dollars two years ago maybe or so is that about right it sounds longer than that to me but three years ago regardless regardless yeah i also don about right? It was longer than that to me, but regardless, regardless. Regardless, yeah. I also don't think it's too likely to happen this year. Chase will launch an ultra premium Hyatt card. I mean, it'd be nice if they did, but I, again, I'm going to hogwash this

because I don't, I just don't think it's likely to happen in 2024. If it were going to happen, I think it already would have happened. I'm highly skeptical that this would happen. Yeah, same. Okay.

Finally, Citi will launch an ultra-premium thank you card. I can't hogwash this hard enough. We've predicted, people on our team have predicted this in the past and did not re-predict this for this year. So yeah, this got hogwashed as well.

So one of the things I noticed reviewing all of these things is nobody predicted an exciting new credit card bonus. Nobody predicted an exciting new loyalty promotion. Nobody predicted a really major devaluation, program devaluation. So Nick, last chance to throw in any of these if he wants. You know, I think it's hard to predict an exciting new credit card bonus because, man, the bonuses these last couple of years have been so good. It's hard to imagine something that sounds exciting and realistic that's any better than anything we've seen. so i think that's probably

part of the reason why there were no exciting credit card bonus predictions exciting loyalty promo i mean again generally we haven't seen particularly exciting loyalty promos for the most part apart from built you know they've they've obviously had some great ones but otherwise the rest of the loyalty promotions have been pretty pedestrian the last year here so i don't there was that marriott one for the homes and villas that was pretty sweet but but you're right nothing but it was like half a cent a point right so i mean yeah like it wasn't terrible but you could probably ms marriott points if you really wanted to for less than half a cent a point so it's like it was it was decent but it wasn't like earth shattering right uh so i I don't know.

Yeah, major devaluation. I'm somewhat surprised that none of us predicted a major devaluation. And I think if there's one coming, it's going to be American. And that's exactly what I was thinking that that AA might devalue their partner award chart. They have such a good partner award chart alright so that prediction are we going to cat bath it

I unfortunately yeah I think it's going to happen if you've got American Airlines miles I think the time to use them is sooner rather than later for partner awards it's just sad to think of. Okay, I'm going to read now. Here are the things.

We now have a list. Here are the things that will really happen in 2024, 123% guaranteed. Okay, first off, Chase will add a transfer partner. Second, Delta is going to make it harder to earn elite status in 2024 for the 2025. No, in 2025, right? For the 2026 year. Because we already know what the 2024 requirements will be. Right. Amex will refresh, couponize, and reprice the business green card. Alaska's Hawaiian Air purchase won't be challenged, or at least it'll go through one way or another. And FinAir will be added as a transfer partner to at least one more program. Greg will get corrected every time he says cutter.

An airline loyalty program will, the airline loyalty programs will consolidate we're not saying which ones are when or how uh alaska and hawaiian will be allowed to merge so we already said that actually that was a duplicate carrie will have one of frequent miler's top 10 posts of the year in 2024 and sadly american airlines is going to devalue their partner award chart. Ouch. All right. Let us know, listeners, which ones of the final answers that you hogwash yourselves. And then hopefully it's the AA1 and we can eliminate it from the list thanks to your input.

Hopefully. Hopefully. All right. So that brings us, I think, to this week's question of the week. I think we had a good roadmap for 2024, but now we got to, I'm going to actually try to sneak in a rapid fire, a couple of questions of the week, because I think we got a couple of minutes and I think I have a couple of relatively quick ones that were pretty good. So first one up, Owen writes in and says on the podcast, Greg recently mentioned paying estimated taxes using a built card on rent day. I don't pay estimated taxes because my taxes are paid out of my salary via

W-4 withholding, but it gave me an idea. Could it make sense to reduce my W-4 withholding amount and pay estimated taxes instead so that I have the option of paying via a credit card for signup bonuses or rent day spend or whatever? Obviously, it'd be a pain, but it seems like it could be worth it despite the nearly 2% fee for paying by credit card. And I'd still have the option to pay directly for my bank account and avoid the fee if I wanted to. Thanks, Owen. What do you think, Craig?

Yeah, I do. I think that's a good idea. It's a good way to increase credit card spend. Yes, you pay nearly 2% in fees, but if you're working towards a new card welcome bonus, some kind of spend offer, the built, if you're working towards a new card welcome bonus, some kind of spend offer, the built, if you're paying on built rent day when they're doubling all rewards, all those things are areas where you're getting more than 2% in return. And as long as you're getting significantly more

than 2% as you value it in return for that spend, then that's a good idea. And I do want to mention too that you can overpay estimated taxes. I would do that at the end of the year or the beginning of the year before you've done year-end tax, before you've filed your year-end taxes, because then whatever you've overpaid, you'll get back sooner, basically. They'll just pay you back. And the IRS has never been against getting a short-term loan. So I wouldn't expect any negative repercussions of doing that, but it's a good way to increase your spend when you need to. It's worth mentioning that every now and then, processing time for refunds gets stretched out. So I do want to enter a word of caution there.

If you're going to overpay, to be sure that you can float whatever it is you're overpaying if your return takes longer than you expect to get back, because every now and then that does happen. The float is very important. That means you make sure you can pay all your bills, the credit card bills, without that money coming back. The good news is after a certain number of weeks, the IRS will actually pay interest if they haven't paid you back in time. So you're not really losing out much in terms of interest earnings, but you will be losing out, obviously, if you can't pay your bills. So, yeah.

Yep. Good caution. will be losing out, obviously, if you can't pay your bills. So, yeah. Yep. Yep. But I definitely do make a payment usually in the weeks before I file, you know, case I owe more than I expect. So that was that was question number one. So that was a good one. I thought, oh, and thank you for sending that one in. Question number two is going to be a relatively quick one, I think. And so this came via email from Dominique and And Dominique had a bunch of questions that I answered via email. But her primary question was, I thought, interesting. Is there ever a situation where you should apply for a card knowing that you'll not get the welcome

bonus, the intro bonus? Does it ever make sense to apply for a card, even though you know you're not going to qualify for the bonus, Greg? Yeah, I'd say actually there's lots of times. First, there's sort of a category of things, which is where you can have someone else in your family refer you so they can earn a referral bonus, even if you don't earn a welcome bonus, as long as you apply and are approved through the referral. So that's one reason right there. But lots of cards have benefits that make it worth having, even if they don't have a bonus. I mean, a lot of hotel cards have their annual free night, and you'll get that even if you're not eligible for the welcome bonus. There's things like the Amex Blue Business Plus card

that gives 2X rewards on all spend. That's just good to have. It's good to have also to keep your points alive in case you've canceled your other membership rewards earning cards. So yeah, I'd say there's a whole bunch of cards that absolutely make sense. Yep, there you go.

Good answer. And I think that that was worth a mention. All right, one last final question of the week. I know usually we do one, but we're doing three today because we're kind of doing them rapid fire and I thought they were good. So John writes in and says one suggestion, and I wanted to bring this one up so you could respond to it here. One suggestion. Wonder if you've ever considered it. I personally would really like it if you release the audio from the monthly Ask Us Anything as a podcast in the normal podcast feed. I never get around to watching these live and usually put the video in the background and just listen to it

on audio only. Keep up the great work, John. Now, I brought this one up because this comes up pretty frequently. And so I wanted to know your thoughts about it. I know we've probably talked about it before, but it's been a while. So for people who are newer anyway to the show, I've obviously had a lot of new readers and listeners in the last year or two so what do you think about that uh yeah i mean it's something that we've considered many times as a team uh each time we've decided not to do it we we want the podcast itself the podcast stream to be these kind of uh not scripted but uh mostly planned the shows are planned right we have regular segments we have uh are an outline set up in advance and everything and and so it's it's more well crafted than ask us anything can be anything we're talking about anything it can be

um stuff that if somebody a podcast listener who's like new to this stuff or doesn't have the background on it, stumbles across it, it could be very uninteresting for one, very confusing. Disjointed. Disjointed. I mean, there's all kinds of reasons why we don't want it in our regular podcast stream and talked about, well, should we have a second podcast? Let's ask us anything. And there just doesn't seem to be enough upside to do that. So we're going to keep it as just a YouTube video. And we understand why people want it on podcasts. And I'm sorry if you do, but that's our decision. The good news is that if you're on YouTube, I think it automatically

goes in YouTube podcasts. If you listen to YouTube music that if you're on YouTube, I think it automatically goes in YouTube podcasts. If you listen to like YouTube music, if you've got a subscription to that, I think it's automatically there. We have no control over that. It just gets categorized that way. So I think that might be a way to listen to it. But yeah, the ask us anything's I think I also in addition to everything that Greg said, like people sometimes ask questions that we just don't know the answer to. And we weren't prepared to think about it in advance and have something informative to say about it. And as Greg has said, we've seen a lot of growth from the podcast, a lot of new people discovering us from the podcast.

And so we'd rather have something that's somewhat prepared and thought about, even though, like Greg said, we don't really script the shows. We just kind of create an outline and discuss it a little bit. But it gives us a chance to think about what it is we want to talk about and say, and that's just a very different format. So that's, again, like you said, why we've made that decision. But we love that you love it, and we love doing it. So we'll see you. That's the first Wednesday of every month at 9 p.m.

if you want to catch it live and jump in the comments and ask a question. It's the first Wednesday of every month at 9 p.m. if you want to catch it live and jump in the comments and ask a question. It's the first Wednesday of every month at 9 p.m. Eastern, that is. And so if you want to check it out live or you can always check out the video on YouTube later on. Yeah. And make sure you're subscribed to our YouTube channel. And there's like a notification bell that you need to turn on to make sure you're notified of things, new videos and live events that appear. And that way you'll know when when one of these is on. Yep, absolutely. All right. Well, unfortunately, that brings us to the end of today's episode. If you've enjoyed this and you'd like to get more of this stuff in your email inbox each day or each

week, you can go to frequentmiler.com slash subscribe. Again, that's frequentmiler.com slash subscribe to join our email list. Follow us on all the various social media. Join our Frequent Miler Insiders Facebook group where readers constantly ask and answer each other's questions about all this type of stuff. And wherever you're watching or listening, don't forget to like, give us a thumbs up, like Greg just said, subscribe, enable notifications so you don't miss any of the new stuff that we post. Thank you guys very much for being with us today. And we will see you guys again next week. Bye, everybody.